It was evidence you got used to that bell going.
Both of these conspired to keep my nose in a chapter called “The Great Liam Chase” instead of looking up to the door.
A mistake.
Because I only had Lottie’s murmured, “Smithie, cool it,” before I heard my boss shout, “What the fuck, Evan?”
I looked up at Smithie, a tall, stout African American man who had a fierce bark, no bite and a heart of gold.
“Smithie—”
“I swung by your place…” he started.
I wished people would quit doing that.
“…and it was a nightmare!” he finished.
“She knows, Smithie, she’s seen it,” Lottie said. “She doesn’t need you shouting that reminder at her.”
“I’m okay,” I assured him with a total lie.
Smithie ran a strip club. He could spot a lie at a hundred paces.
This was probably why he shouted, “You’re okay? Bullshit! Why didn’t you tell me your shit was this whacked?”
Perhaps softening the blow to Smithie last night had not been my best course of action.
“Well…”
I didn’t finish that.
I liked him. He paid well, offered great health insurance and acted more like my father than my father, which was not a difficult endeavor, but Smithie aced it.
So, obviously, I wouldn’t want to drag him into my nightmare.
“I don’t…I don’t even…I can’t…” He was looking around, for what, I had no idea, then he focused on Tex. “Is this shit starting up again?” he asked.
“I hope so,” was an answer that further put up for debate Tex’s sanity.
“Ohmigod,” the customer standing in line in front of Tex breathed loudly. “Is this a new Rock Chick?” she asked no one in particular, speaking while gazing at me.
“She isn’t a Rock Chick, she’s a Smithie’s Chick,” Lottie corrected.
“Do not pin any of this shit on me,” Smithie demanded.
“Commando Chick?” Lottie asked Ava.
“Maybe Dancing Chick?” Ava asked Lottie.
The bell over the door went and I’d learned, so I looked right there.
Which meant I got the whole show when Mag walked in wearing his navy cargo pants, his tight navy tee that shared the mayor should consider giving his chest its own zip code (I mean, that morning when I’d seen it uncovered in all its glory—dayum) and black boots that looked utilitarian, but he was Mag, so he worked them.
“Ohmigod,” the customer again breathed.
Mag didn’t hear her, or a greater possibility, he was so used to women having that response when he arrived somewhere, he didn’t care.
He also didn’t care much that Smithie was there, looking ready to blow his top.
Or about anything.
But me.
I knew this as I watched him say a perfunctory, “Yo,” to Smithie as he passed him to get to me.
Then he bent right down.
Bent right down!
He then kissed my nose…
Kissed my nose!
He pulled back, grinned gorgeously in my face and said words I’d longed to hear my entire life.
“You’re gonna have to eat the ice cream first. It’s melting.”
“I started coming here after all the other Rock Chicks were done and claimed. I cannot believe I’m here at ground zero during a new one!” the customer exclaimed.
Mag’s brows shot together but he didn’t move out of my face.
“She thinks I’m a new Rock Chick,” I told him.
“She’s wrong,” Lottie decreed, snatching the bags out of Mag’s hands. “You’re a Dream Maker.”
Mag had turned his head to aim his grin at Lottie, who was retreating with the food, but, I would note, he did not move from being bent to me.
“Lottie’s romantic,” I said, and regained Mag’s attention. “For a stripper.”
That earned me another smile.
Then I got my hand captured and I was pulled out of the couch.
Apparently, Mag and his cargo pants and utilitarian boots and zip-code chest entering the vicinity served to calm Smithie down, and I knew this because his head didn’t explode, and he didn’t shout anymore.
Instead, he went to Tex, cut the line and ordered a coffee.
Mag sat us at a big table in the corner, everyone joined us, and as food was distributed and tucked into, I watched how they worked this.
Mag was not one of them, but he was Lottie’s, so he fit.
I was Lottie’s, so I fit.
We sat. We ate. They chatted. Mag flatly refused anyone paying him for their food, he got a lot of, “My turn next time” and “Catch you on the flipside” and it was just…
It was just…
A family get-together in a used bookstore and coffee emporium.
But me?
I’d had a bag filled with drugs in the trunk of my car just yesterday.
My apartment had been tossed, my brother was in mortal danger and I hadn’t told my mother, my father or my sister, nor gone to them for help, because I couldn’t be sure if they would and I couldn’t take the blow if they wouldn’t.
And I was realizing my best friend was a senior citizen I took shopping and out to family chain restaurants because I didn’t have time to do lunch or go to movies or out to clubs with people my own age.
But furthermore, I was just so weird, no one wanted to hang with me anyway.
And I essentially had to pay Gert to spend time with me (though she would do it even if I didn’t grab the check).
It wasn’t only my apartment that was in ruins.
My life was.
And it was me who’d led it to that.
“Hey.”
I’d gone to a storage unit in the middle of the night even if a man who probably was in the position to know just how lunatic that was advised me against it.
“Hey.”
And I helped my brother out, my mom, dad, sister, whoever, all the time.
Whenever they needed it, I was there.
But I didn’t let them lean on me.
I let them shit all over me.
“Hey.”
It was Mag’s tone but also the fact he took hold of my chin and turned my head from staring unseeing at my puddle of melting custard to his amazing face.
“Baby,” he murmured when he got one look at me.
My next thoughts came unexpected and tore through me like a bullet.
I want you to be mine. I want that to be my world. That a guy like you would turn out as awesome as you seem and I’d earn your attention, then your heart, and then we’d teach our kids to be smart and protective and funny like you and not anything like me.
“Evie, honey,” he whispered. “Come back to me, yeah?”
I made myself nod.
He took his fingers from my chin but did it gliding one along my jaw a little in a light, sweet, reassuring touch.
“You’re gonna have moments like that,” he shared. “When I’m not here, you still got people around. Let them help you pull yourself out of ’em. Okay?”
I made myself nod again.
“This is gonna get sorted, Evie. It seems a lot and it seems scary, but,” he grinned a grin I could tell he didn’t fully mean, glanced toward the store then back to me and joked, “we haven’t lost one yet.”
I made myself smile.
He knew I didn’t fully mean it either when he vowed, “I promise, it’s gonna be okay. Yeah?”
“Yeah,” I pushed out.
His face got soft.
Oh God.
That look.
That look on Daniel Magnusson aimed at me.
I WANNA MAKE YOU MINE! I screamed in my head.
“Forget the custard,” he ordered. “I’ll take you for more when you can eat it without it being melted. Eat your curds and your burger.”
“Roger that, sergeant.”
“I only made corporal.”
“What?”
“Nothin’,” he said then took a massive bite of his burger.
Why did dudes do that?
It wasn’t going to fly out of his hands and make its escape before he shoved the whole thing in his mouth.
He watched me watching him chewing.
And with his mouth still full, he asked, “What?”
“You eat like a frat boy.” I said it like a tease so he wouldn’t take offense.
He didn’t.
He swallowed, smiled (again! gah!) and then leaned close to me. “This is normally fifteenth- or maybe sixteenth-date stuff. You know, when I really got my hooks in you after dazzling you with fried cheese curds and impressing you with my masculinity that I didn’t cry when they killed John Wick’s dog. But just sayin’, that’s only ’cause I’ve seen it so often, the tears for that little fella are done and gone. But heads up, I am a frat boy, Evie. I’ll prove it to you tonight when we shotgun some beers.”
I started giggling.
Mag stopped looking so worried.
I fought crying.
“Eat,” he whispered.
I nodded and turned my attention to the burger and curds.
“How long you stayin’?” Mag asked, and I cast my gaze in the direction of his question.
It was to Tex.
“As long as you need me to stay.”
These people.
These crazy, kindhearted people.
And then there was…
Me.
“I don’t want her leaving you, Duke and Nightingale’s cameras,” Mag went on. “And I won’t be done until around five thirty, six.”
“We don’t close until seven so you’re good,” Tex replied. “You get tied up, I’ll take her to Nightingale’s offices. They always got someone workin’ in the control room. She can hang with whoever that is.”
Mag nodded.
“We gotta get stuck into sorting out Evie’s place,” Lottie said to Mag then looked to me. “Ava and me are gonna head out in a bit. You cool with hanging here and reading?”
I nodded.
I’d had other things to do with my day, which was an unusual day off, this being when I did those other things. Like pay bills. Laundry. Go to the grocery store. Clean the house. Check in on my sister to make sure she hadn’t done something outlandish to garner attention from the online community. Like film herself allowing strangers to do shots off her body (not something I made up in my head, something she passed by me as an “idea that held merit,” but it wasn’t me who talked her out of it, apparently someone else did that as their shtick).
I had no house, or laundry, and the bills could wait.
And honestly, if my sister wanted to let random people do body shots off her, what did it matter to me?
“Yeah, I’m cool with hanging and reading,” I told Lottie. “And I need to call my insurance company about my car.”
“After the police were done with it,” Mag cut in, “Auggie secured it. If they need access, let me know and I’ll text you the details on where it is.”
Before I could ask after that, any of it (the police, I knew, his friend Auggie had called them in and they’d done their thing at my apartment and with my car—the other bit, my car being “secured” and Mag giving me the details if my insurance company needed it, I did not know), Lottie spoke.
“We’ll just clean up,” she assured me. “We won’t throw anything away until you have a chance to go through it.”
“Thanks,” I replied.
“Tex’ll listen, Duke too, and I’m just a phone call away, you get another one of those moments,” she went on.
So she hadn’t missed it.
“I’m okay,” I promised.
“Tex’ll listen, Duke too, and they’re both good at it,” she asserted. “But I’m just a phone call away.”
“Thanks, Lottie,” I muttered.
“He’s my boy and you’re my girl,” she stated, jerking her head in turn to Mag and me, and I stared at her, not sure why she was saying that. “I would not fix him up with anyone who didn’t deserve him, and the same with you. Are you understanding me, Evie?”
I nodded.
“You really need to understand me, Evie,” she said quietly, but there was a fierceness to her tone.
I thought I understood her, but that fierceness to her tone made me wonder.
Nevertheless, I nodded again.
She looked to Duke, who was sitting with us, throwing curds into his mouth like M&M’s. “I don’t think she does.”
“They don’t,” he said sagely. “Then they do. It’s a process that can’t be rushed. Don’t rush it, darlin’.”
Lottie heaved a sigh.
Before he left, Mag did the holding-my-hand-and-guiding-me-to-the-door thing that ended with the lip touch, but he added, “I’m not on anything intense. You need me, baby, you call.”
I wondered what “anything intense” was.
I didn’t ask because it wasn’t my business but also because “intense” seemed an alias for “scary as shit” and I wasn’t ready for more scary.
I just, again, nodded.
Mag took off.
Lottie and Ava took off.
I cleared away the detritus from Culver’s, then sat down with my book but didn’t open it because Smithie was looming over me.
“It’s always the quiet ones,” he said when I looked up at him.
“Sorry?” I asked.
“Child,” he murmured gently, “the minute I looked at you, you broke my heart. That lost look in your eyes. Damn.”
Oh God.
I felt my chest rise and fall with the effort to stop myself from crying.
“Look around, Evie,” he said. “You’ve been found.”
I swallowed.
Actually, it was more like a gulp.
Smithie bent and kissed my cheek.
When he straightened, he told me, “I got a phone too. You need anything, darlin’, you call on me.”
As if he sensed I was about to lose it, he didn’t offer me any further kindnesses.
He left.
I concentrated on finding my insurance agent’s number, calling her, reporting the incident and learning that they’d have to come and look at my car.
I then texted Mag that I needed the deets.
Within a minute, he’d texted me the deets.
It was already at a body shop, waiting for the go-ahead to be fixed.
Not surprising with these good, kindhearted people.
I sat with the book.
Jet took a break and sat with me.
Indy took a break and sat with me.
Tex boomed at me.
Duke studied me like he was trying to figure me out (so I avoided looking at Duke).
Then Roxie showed with two men she introduced as Tod and Stevie, who both wore wedding bands and made it clear in sweet ways that they belonged to each other.
Roxie also had a number of bags, and after she made the introductions and Jet and Indy had wandered over, she said apropos of nothing, “Shut up. I won’t hear it.”
She then yanked out three pairs of faded jeans (two distressed, all three cool), five tees (and they were fab) and two cardigans (slouchy and overlarge, in great colors).
And after all of this littered the seating area I was in, she dumped two big Soma bags at my feet and stated, “Undies, bras and nightwear. And the other stuff is no big deal since we got it all at a vintage store, so it cost practically nothing.”
It was the “practically” part of that that bothered me.
Then Tod dumped a big Sephora bag at my feet and said, “Cleanser, toner, moisturizer and some cosmetics. And shut up, I won’t hear it either.”
“But I don’t even know you,” I noted.
“Girl, we got a communal slush fund for shit like this,” he returned.
I’d been reading so I did not find this surprising.
Still.
“I—” I started.
“Shut up,” To
d said.
“But I—”
“Shut up,” Tod and Roxie said in unison.
“But—”
“Shut up!” Tod, Stevie, Roxie, Indy and Jet all said once.
I shut up.
Air kisses were then exchanged, even with me, and Tod, Stevie and Roxie took off, Jet going with them to pick up her boys (she had three sons) and get home to make dinner for her family, Indy going to pick up her kids (she had a girl and boy) before she met up with Lee and they went to her in-laws for dinner.
This was when I got call number two from Mag.
“Hey,” I greeted.
“How’s things?” he asked.
“The Rock Chicks are bossy,” I informed him.
“Good bossy, or bad bossy?” he asked.
“Is there a good bossy?” I asked in return.
“Yes,” he answered.
Hmm.
“I have a bunch of new stuff and I don’t think they’re going to let me pay them back for any of it,” I shared.
“Then it’s the good bossy,” he stated. “See you around six.”
He hung up before I could say another word.
I folded all my new stuff up and returned it to the bags.
Then I went back to reading.
It happened at close to six.
With perfectly imperfect timing, it happened just when the bell over the door rang and I looked up from reading about when Indy performed with Tod at a drag show and then she, Ally and Tex got into a car chase after shots were fired at the gay bar.
I looked up to see Mag walking in, eyes on me, a smile on his handsome face.
Because of this…
Because I’d spent the day with nice people who looked after me, got me lunch, bought me stuff I needed, handed me orgasmic coffees, instead of what I might have been doing if Lottie and Mag had not intervened in my life: cowering in fear while sorting through the ruin of my apartment…
Because of all of this, when my phone rang and I looked down at it and saw it was my mother calling, I took the call without thinking.
I put it to my ear as Mag approached me, my eyes to him, and began, “Hey—”
“What the fuck is the matter with you!” my mother shrieked in my ear.
My blood turned to ice and Mag disappeared from sight, seeing as my mind blanked and I had no vision at all.
“Do you know how much shit Mick is in right now?” Mom asked. “Do you, Evie? Do you?”
I did not answer as my phone was slid out of my hand and I watched Mag’s long forefinger hit the button for speaker.
Dream Maker Page 13
