Dream Maker

by Kristen Ashley

  Mag’s crew was Mo, Auggie, as well as Axl and Boone, the last two out on assignments.

  Being on Mo’s crew, Aug was also in line for a Lottie fix-up (as were Axl and Boone).

  But all Mag could see right then was Auggie, who scored more pussy than Mag just by catching a woman’s eyes and quirking a smile.

  If Evie caught sight of Aug, she wouldn’t crack her head into a counter after she dropped her lip gloss.

  She’d walk into a wall.

  “You’re not lookin’ into it,” Mag told him.

  Auggie’s dark eyes shifted to him and they were amused.

  Motherfucker.

  “Which one is she?” Auggie asked.

  “What?” Mag asked back.

  “Which one of Smithie’s girls?” Auggie gave detail to his question.

  As far as Mag knew, he, Axl and Auggie had been to one show at Smithie’s club, when Lottie went back to work after the sick-fuck who’d fixated on her was taken out of commission, Mo couldn’t be there, so they were in his stead to provide moral support.

  And Evie did not dance that night.

  In fact, upon seeing her, Mag was very interested in going one night to watch her dance.

  Two minutes into meeting her, he had to force himself not to think about it or he’d go caveman, that being locking her in his bedroom and keeping her there until he convinced her to stop dancing, and she wouldn’t like that.

  Now, he was thinking about Auggie seeing her dance.

  And he didn’t like that.

  “You been back?” Mag asked.

  “No,” Auggie answered.

  “She wasn’t on that night,” Mag told him.

  “Mystery pretty,” Auggie said. “Best kind.”

  Mag ground his teeth.

  He then turned to Hawk.

  “If anyone’s on her, I’m on her.”

  And if she didn’t like it, fuck it.

  Hawk was right, she was in over her head.

  If she didn’t realize that, that wasn’t his problem.

  Her shit needed to be dealt with and she had no clue.

  So, he had to wade in.

  He should never have left last night.

  He should have called Slim his damned self.

  Now, he was going to take another crack at talking her into doing it.

  And if she refused, he’d make the call.

  Tack spoke for the first time.

  To Hawk.

  “I think you’re fighting a losing cause here, brother.”

  Hawk didn’t even look Tack’s way.

  He stared at Mag.

  Then he said, “Personal shit on personal time.”

  “Gotcha,” Mag muttered, wondering, since his day involved desk work, which he hated, how he’d wait until after it was done to track down Evan and lay into her ass.

  “Shit gets twisted, Mag,” Hawk continued, and Mag refocused on him, “her trouble worsens—”

  “I’m gonna get her to call Slim,” he assured.

  “What I was gonna say is,” Hawk went on, “you get approval before you use company resources.”

  Tack started chuckling.

  Tex guffawed.

  Elvira said, “Well, hump day just turned into bump day.”

  She then held out her fist to Tex.

  Who did not hesitate to bump it with his own.

  Fuck.

  Chapter Five

  Give Them Harmony

  Evie

  The sun wasn’t even up in the sky before I rolled out of a bed I’d eventually put myself in after I’d stopped blubbing.

  But I didn’t get that first wink of sleep.

  I grabbed my phone off the charging mat and went to my texts just to torture myself.

  My plea to Mr. Shade of the Long Car,

  Please instruct on where to take this bag.

  ASAP.

  …still had the red UNDELIVERED warning next to it.

  I had hit TRY AGAIN so often, I probably wore off my fingerprint.

  But I did it once more anyway.

  The message failed to send.

  I realized I wasn’t breathing properly so I forced myself to do that thinking I had limited options of what came next.

  But, even if it was akin to banging my head against a wall, I was going to explore them.

  I showered, didn’t wash my hair, and pulled on my Wonder Woman tee, some frayed jeans, my red Chucks and a sloppy cardigan.

  I then took the Trader Joe’s bag I’d shoved the plastic sheeting back into and then hidden under my dirty clothes in my hamper, grabbed my bag and keys and went out to my car.

  It wasn’t even seven o’clock in the morning, but I didn’t care.

  The weather was chilly.

  It was late February in Denver and that could mean anything from the possibility you could lay out to a blizzard hitting.

  We’d had a mild spell.

  That, apparently, was over.

  With the bag stowed in my trunk, I drove to my mother’s.

  I was in such a state, I didn’t even sigh when I saw my stepfather’s big truck sitting next to my mother’s SUV in their drive.

  The gas-guzzler family.

  I got out, locked up and jogged up to their front door.

  I then leaned on the doorbell and didn’t let up until the door opened.

  Rob, my stepdad, wearing a faded tee and even more faded pajama bottoms, looked at me, his expression went from annoyed to alarmed, and he asked, “Jesus, Evie, you okay?” at the same time he was urgently pushing open the storm door.

  Rob was a couple inches taller than me, relatively built with a bit of a beer belly, and good-looking, I supposed, for a stepdad.

  He was also three years younger than my mother, something he didn’t know about until two years after their wedding.

  He’d thought he was three years older.

  Mick had let that slip, and Rob had lost his mind.

  I had to hand it to him, he wasn’t angry because he was younger than my mom and had some idea that the man in a relationship should be older.

  He was angry because she’d lied to him, kept up that lie for years, married him amid a deception, and he was not down with that.

  I was there during one of their many fights on this subject and heard him say (or shout) that it wasn’t only a lie she’d told and didn’t intend ever to divulge the truth. And it wasn’t the age, he didn’t care about the age.

  It was that she didn’t trust in his love enough not to care about the age herself.

  I had to say, I was with him on all that.

  Sadly, thus began the cheating, and I suspected that wasn’t about being married to an “older woman.”

  His strike back was messed up, and I way did not condone it.

  But what Mom had done was messed up too.

  It sucked he was a cheater, because there was a lot to like about him.

  He was nice. He could be funny. He was responsible in the sense he’d been gainfully employed the whole time I’d known him with the goal of working toward a decent retirement. He treated his own kids from his first marriage great and seemed at his best when his mingled family was together. He got irritated when I did stuff for myself that required tools, and that wasn’t an “I’m a man” thing; that was an “I’m your stepdad and your real dad is a waste of space so better late than never you having someone who gives a shit” thing.

  And he thought my sister was wasting her life and someone should shake some sense into my brother.

  “Is Mom home?” I asked, moving in when he moved out of the way.

  “She’s still sleeping. I was about to jump into the shower. I’ll wake her up in a sec,” he said, closing the door behind me. “Now, answer me, sweetheart. Are you okay?”

  I looked right into his eyes and stated, “Mick’s got some trouble.”

  His face morphed right to pissed and he bit out, “That fuckin’ guy.” He got a lock on it and said, “Hang tight. I’ll get your ma.”

/>   I hung as tight as I could when I felt like I was going to fly apart.

  I also realized I hadn’t made myself coffee, or stopped for one, which, after a night with no sleep, was a mistake.

  It took some time, but Mom eventually came out with her mass of dyed-blonde hair falling in attractive, messy waves around her face and shoulders, and she was wearing a long, satin, sexy nightgown the likes she’d worn to bed her whole life.

  They were also the likes no kid ever wanted to see her mom in, no matter that kid was now twenty-seven years of age.

  “Jesus, Evie, it’s barely seven” was her greeting.

  Most of the adult population was awake and getting ready for work at “barely seven.”

  I didn’t get into that.

  I was about to launch in when she continued.

  “And for God’s sakes, I keep telling you,” she jerked her head impatiently at my body, “you’re never gonna find a man dressing like that.”

  I shut my mouth and stood immobile, staring at her.

  She crossed her arms on her chest and prompted, “Well?” This before she looked to Rob and informed him, “Baby, I need coffee.”

  Rob was not pleased about this thinly veiled order to serve her and he communicated that by asking, “Carol, are you lookin’ at your daughter?”

  She gave him narrowed eyes. “Yeah.”

  “Your son was arrested again two days ago,” he went on.

  Mom turned to me. “Is this about Mick?”

  “Of course it’s about Mick. It’s always about Mick,” Rob answered for me.

  “I don’t under—” Mom began.

  But Rob threw a long arm out my way, finger pointed, and he exploded, “You don’t understand? She didn’t make that boy!”

  Mom turned fully to Rob and shouted back, “Don’t shout at me!”

  “Jesus Christ, you’re a piece of work,” he clipped.

  “Fuck you, Rob. You wanna talk about a piece of work? I bet that brunette you’re boning is a piece of fucking work,” Mom shot back.

  “Oh no, your girl is not showin’ at our door first thing in the morning looking freaked right the fuck out and you use whatever you can grab hold of to continue to shirk responsibility for that fuckwit son you raised,” he retorted.

  “Do not talk about Mick that way!” Mom yelled.

  Rob turned to me.

  “Why are you here, sweetheart?” he asked.

  “I—” I started.

  “Listen, Evie, Mick’s a big boy and he’s made his own decisions for a long time,” Mom cut me off to say. “They’re not on me.”

  “And they’re not on Evie either,” Rob declared.

  She rounded on him and snapped, “This is family business, Rob,” making me wince because those words were regrettably familiar.

  “You don’t got my ring on your finger?” Rob asked.

  “It isn’t worth dick,” Mom fired back.

  Rob assumed an expression like she’d slapped him then opened his mouth.

  “Stop it!” I shrieked, and they both turned to me.

  Mom looked infuriated, and not just at Rob, at me.

  If someone was going to be shrieking, she liked it to be her.

  Rob looked even more concerned, mostly because I was a crier, not a shrieker, and he’d been around for five years, so he knew that.

  Mom tried to assume a Mom Tone.

  “Calm down, Evan.”

  No way I could calm down.

  I was in a mess not of my own making.

  And maybe the nicest guy I’d ever met walked out my door last night because I’d been a raving bitch for the purpose of him doing just that to save him from the likes of this.

  “Mick gave my number to some shady guy who’s making me guard a bag of meth and coke and oxy, waiting for instructions, and if I don’t keep that stuff safe, something is going to happen to Mick,” I informed them.

  Mom’s face paled.

  Rob bellowed, “Fuck!”

  “Why are you here?” Mom blurted, her entire demeanor now panicked, and my body jolted as if I’d been sucker punched.

  Rob slowly turned to Mom, his face a mask of fury.

  He thought better of whatever he might have said because he then looked back to me.

  “Call the cops,” he ordered.

  “Don’t!” Mom cried, and Rob’s head ticked in shock. “Just do what they tell you, Evan,” she commanded me.

  “Mom—” I began.

  “Carol, have you lost your mind?” Rob asked.

  “No,” she snapped at him. “Mick wouldn’t put Evie in danger.” She again looked to me. “Just do what they say, it’ll be done, and Mick will be safe.”

  Mick will be safe?

  “Mom, I’m in possession of a grocery bag filled with narcotics,” I said. “Because of Mick.”

  “Call the cops, Evie,” Rob urged.

  “Do not call the cops, Evan,” Mom clipped. “Mick trusts you to handle this. Just handle it.”

  “I cannot believe what I’m fuckin’ hearing,” Rob declared, scowling at my mother.

  “Stay out of it,” Mom returned.

  “Mom—”

  “You know your brother,” she said to me. “If this was problematic, he wouldn’t lay it on you.”

  “I’m in possession of a grocery bag filled with drugs!” I exclaimed.

  “Just stay cool and handle it,” she retorted.

  “Time to go shopping, baby,” Rob said with supreme sarcasm. “Get yourself a new outfit so you can be all dolled up when they present you with your Mother of the Year award.”

  Mom’s frame went into attack mode. I knew this since I’d seen it a million times.

  And then she attacked.

  “I will, love of my life,” she snarled, “and right after that, we’ll pick up your Husband of the Year award. That is, if you can tear yourself away from screwing everything that moves.”

  “I have not stepped out on you since Alice,” he growled.

  “Do not say that woman’s name in my house!” Mom screeched.

  And there we were.

  “Right then, this is all about you,” Rob returned.

  “You can’t just snap your fingers,” Mom lifted a hand and did just that, “and trust again, Rob.”

  “Tell me about it, Carol.”

  I didn’t have time to stick around for the show.

  I’d seen it often enough, anyway.

  And I wasn’t that big of a fan.

  So I turned around, walked out the door, headed to my car and was mildly surprised when Rob came jogging out into the chill in his bare feet and pajamas, calling, “Evie!”

  I stopped at the door of my car and watched his approach as my mother stood in the door to their home and screamed, “Rob! We were not done talking!”

  Rob ignored her, rounded my hood and stopped in front of me.

  “I’ll call off work, go with you to the station. Be with you when you turn those drugs over to the police and report this,” he offered.

  I stared up at him, and it wasn’t mild surprise he’d left Mom’s scene to see to me.

  It was shock.

  “And what about Mick?” I asked.

  His voice grew gentle when he replied, “Sweetheart, I think the time is now that you need to stop asking yourself that question.”

  I had a feeling he was right.

  This wasn’t posting bail, something Mick always paid back.

  Eventually.

  And this wasn’t helping Mick move when his latest girlfriend kicked him out, an event where Mick always did something nice in return, even if he could just afford a twenty-dollar gift card to Anthropologie.

  Or this wasn’t Mick borrowing my car when his broke down.

  Or Mick begging me to talk Smithie into letting him be a bouncer (something Smithie didn’t do because he didn’t hire anyone with a record if they hadn’t been clean without any charges for less than six months, but Smithie, being Smithie, even though the effort was f
utile, ran a check on him anyway in an attempt to help me out).

  So as annoying as all this was with Mick, and how over it I thought I was getting, it was just a part of being Mick’s sister.

  Now, Rob was right.

  I should stop asking myself that question.

  The problem was, now, I sensed Mick was in serious trouble.

  And if I didn’t look out for him, it’d be on me if that trouble landed on him.

  And I didn’t know if I could live with that.

  “Evan, really, your best course of action with this is to give that shit to the cops and let them sort it out,” Rob pressed.

  “I’ll think about it,” I mumbled.

  “Please, I’m beggin’ you, do that,” he said, and I blinked up at him at the earnest tone of his voice. “And anytime, day, night, I’m at work, whatever, if you want me with you when you make the right decision, I’m there.”

  Well…

  Wow.

  “Thanks, Rob,” I whispered.

  “You take too much on, Evie,” he whispered back. “I lose sleep over you.”

  He did?

  Oh God.

  I was gonna cry.

  I had no idea.

  “I’ll…think” was all I could say.

  He nodded.

  He then turned and started to round my car but stopped at my front bumper.

  “I love her,” he said.

  I didn’t move, even to speak.

  “I know it isn’t healthy, not for either of us, the way we treat each other, but I can’t walk away, can’t cut her loose, even though the good we had turned bad, because I love her,” he declared.

  “I can’t really talk to you about this right now,” I told him.

  Or ever.

  “I know. I just want you not to have to think about one more thing. It’s fucked up, but it’s what we got, it’s the way we are, we both choose to stay, and it’s not yours to take on. You with me?”

  That was as bizarre as it was sweet.

  I nodded.

  “Do right, Evie,” he bid.

  He had conflicting ideas as to what Mick thought was right.

  But between Rob and Mag, that was two votes for the cops.

  Rob jogged to the sidewalk and stood there in his pajamas while I got in my car and drove away.

  And there it was.

  My limited option exhausted.