“It looks exactly the same when I come out. Not a scratch, not a ding, not a cracked tail light.”
“You got yourself a deal, homie.” He grins, and I feel a twinge of sympathy for his dentist. Meth is a helluva drug. “Shit, at first I thought you was one of them uppity rich fuckers, but now I see you a stand-up guy.”
I hand over the money. “Nah. I’m an uppity rich fucker. I just really like my car.”
He nods. “Hell, I like it too.”
I head inside, and am soon swallowed by the sweet, sweet sounds of George Thorogood and the Destroyers.
As my old grandma would say, Jesus save us all.
Some Time During the Summer, About Eleven or So Months Earlier
Cam’s Letter
Dear Aimee,
Congratulations! I’ve never written a letter before, which makes you the first person to ever get a letter from me! Don’t get too big a head. I might have written Eric a letter instead, but he’s snoring away in the room next door, so I don’t have to write to him.
Did I mention the walls are thin here? My heart goes out to anyone that spends the night with him. He’s got a helluva case of sleep apnea.
Rome was nice. They have a lot of buildings made out of rock there. Also, I saw the place where Jean Claude Van Damme and Dennis Rodman fought Mickey Rourke. Talk about history!
This is weird. I think this is probably the longest I’ve gone without seeing you since we were, like, eight years old. Is that weird to you? It doesn’t feel…right. And after…you know…it’s even more weird.
You probably don’t want to talk about that, right? And what a relief! Can you imagine me wanting to talk about feelings? Think what that would do to my reputation. I’d wind up on a talk show.
How is Chicago? How is the job? I hear those things are like work, but with more politics. Are the people there treating you well? If they’re not, just tell them who I am and remind them that money buys a lot of alibi. Not that I’m feeling protective. Just offering services if necessary.
Seriously, though, if anyone is being mean to you I’ll murder them and no one will ever find them.
In other news, I am coming to realize that I’m really not a big fan of pasta. I mean, it’s everywhere here. You can’t get away from it. It’s starting to soften me up and I’m losing my six-pack. Did you know I have a six-pack? Have I ever showed you? Seriously, it’s something you should see.
I miss you. Say the word and I’ll trade you for Eric as a travel-buddy in a heartbeat. I’ll buy you a villa in some country where they call them “villas” instead of “houses”.
You don’t snore, do you?
I want to talk to you. I miss your voice.
I’m not sure whether to sign this one with, “Love,” or “XOXOXO,” or “Sincerely.” So instead, I’ll just go with,
Cam
P.S. Dessert. Oh my God, if a somewhat distant relative was standing between me and an Italian dessert, I would happily run them over with my new Vespa to get to it. It’s that good.
P.P.S. Dessert is definitely not what is going on with my abs. That is 100% the pasta’s fault. Don’t believe the lies they tell you about dessert. It’s good for you.
P.P.P.S. I lied. I want to talk to you about our kiss. It doesn’t matter if I have to hunt your evasive ass to South America, if I have to sail down a funky river filled with piranhas and fight Pygmies just to get five minutes with you to talk about it. Or if I have to crash some board meeting that you’re running and make a scene in front of a bunch of VPs and the CFO, I’m perfectly willing to do that, too. You know I have virtually no inhibitions. I do not recommend you test me.
P.P.P.P.S. That’s not a threat. More of an exaggeration. Can you imagine what the Amazon River would do to my shoes? Don’t run to South America. It would be a huge pain in the ass.
Too Pretty For This Kind Of Thing
Aimee
ESPN is showing some boxing match tonight, and it’s on all the televisions in the place. I have no idea who’s fighting, but everybody seems excited, so it must be important. My friend Eric would know all about it. When I think of Eric I smile, momentarily forgetting about Corey and his prick friends. Eric was always the other guy in our little growing-up trifecta. Never quite as tight as Cam and me, but he never seemed to mind being a third wheel. And he always, always had our backs. I kinda wish he was here now.
I fight my way through the crowd to get to the kitchen. Marie, one of the other servers and my best friend here at work, passes me on the way out with a tray of burgers and beer. I must have a look on my face, because she glances at me, pauses, then looks again and stops so suddenly that her blond curls try to keep going, swirling around her face.
“You okay?” Her blue eyes crinkle with concern.
“Yeah, I just—” I begin. I just can’t seem to keep all the pieces of my life from falling apart. Everything is a disaster. All I want to do is cry and hide. I’m totally fine. “No. Not really.”
She turns to me, ready to talk because bless her heart, that’s just the way she is. Customers be damned, she’s ready to drop everything to help a friend if she can. “You want to talk?”
I, on the other hand, can see orders piling up at the window and the look of impatience the cook flashes at us.
“Thanks, sweetie. Maybe later.”
Marie hesitates, then nods. “After close.” And without another word wades into the crowd.
I grab my order and head back out myself, holding the tray well above my head. I have to walk past the table Corey and Co. are sitting at, and as I pass I feel fingers brush across my ass. I start and the tray wobbles. I shift my weight to correct it so I don’t drop someone’s meal onto the crowd around me, and hear laughter behind me. Fuckers. I want to turn, to say something, but the tray is heavy and just keeping it from falling takes all my concentration. Fortunately, I get it under control and unload it in front of the four guys that ordered it.
These guys are in leathers, MC colors proudly on display. They look like very serious men, with very serious facial hair. The sort of people Corey and his friends would like to grow up to be, but probably never could. They all seem irritated about the world, in general, and the bar, specifically. One of them, a tall, narrow man with a blade of a nose and a scar under one eye, says, “Them boys giving you a problem?” and nods in the direction I’ve come. He sounds like a gentle country redneck, a soft voice that is almost grandfatherly, but his hands are big and the knots of his knuckles are abraded and thick.
I give him my best winning smile. “Not really,” I lie. “It’s Friday.”
He scowls, lifting a bottle of beer to his lips. “Friday ain’t no reason to be an asshole.” He’s still looking behind me, and then his eyes narrow.
I can feel a presence, the pressure of another body behind mine, and think, “Jesus, not tonight.” I hate breaking up fights, especially ones that start over some stupid idea like my personal honor.
So I turn, expecting to have to defuse hostility between Corey the wannabe and my new best friend, Grampa Biker. But where I expect to meet Corey’s eyes I see an Adam’s apple, and instead of a tee shirt there’s a tie and a sport coat. Not the sort of attire one regularly sees in O’Donnelly’s. I recognize the tie tack immediately, and the cream linen shirt behind the tie makes me—almost—smile. But I don’t. I’m half relieved, half irritated, and all in a hurry to get back to the kitchen to grab the next order.
“Cam,” I say, somewhat—but not entirely—shocked to see him. “What are you doing here?”
From behind me one of the bikers says, “Ain’t this one dandy?” I can see that Cam hears him, too, because his lips quirk up in the ghost of a smile.
“I came to see you,” he says simply.
I glance around, taking in the crazy crowd with my eyes. “This isn’t the time,” I say, sidling around him. “Or the place.” This hurts him, I can see his face go slack the way it does when his feelings are hurt, but I don’t have time to deal
with Cam’s feelings right now.
“But I couldn’t reach you earlier.”
I’m walking away from him now. “Maybe I don’t want to be reached, Cam,” I say over my shoulder. He’s still behind me, keeping pace. Which is why he can see when Corey’s hand snakes out and grabs my wrist, and things get very sideways, very fast.
Cam
Aimee told me a long time ago—before we were dating, before we were even out of high school—that two things she absolutely could not stand in a man were jealousy and over-protectiveness. She said that both were just another way of trying to declare ownership of another person.
As an admittedly over-privileged man I have to admit to a certain sense of entitlement. But I honestly never had to try very hard to follow those pretty basic guidelines. Fortunately for me, I’ve never been the type to get jealous. I guess that’s just one of the many benefits of almost otherworldly self-confidence: I’ve never worried about losing a woman to another man, because I was always just a wink and a smile away from going home with her best friend. At least, until I started dating Aimee. And then…well, I just never felt the slightest hint that I should ever be jealous. My out-of-character musings of this afternoon notwithstanding.
And I never felt over-protective of her, either. Because Aimee just never needed protecting. Underneath all that soft skin and those freckles and that glossy auburn hair, she’s a badass. Eric wasn’t joking when he said she’ll kick my ass when she finds out what I need to say to her. There is every chance she’ll put her dainty foot right in my balls.
The girl can take care of herself. And so, in any situation when I might otherwise become the “Hey, stay the fuck away from my girlfriend!” type, I just haven’t. Never even felt the urge.
Until right now. Right this minute. This very second, when some greasy piece of shit reaches out and takes hold of her wrist, a sneer on his face as he pulls her around and an empty beer bottle falls off her tray and shatters on the floor.
“Hey—” she yells, her face twisting in a level of fury I thought she reserved entirely for me.
His lips twist in a smirk that infuriates me. “Hey yourself, Toots—” and I completely forget how much she hates overprotective men.
He doesn’t see me. His eyes are only for Aimee, and they strafe the length of her body quickly, resting for the barest moment on her chest (truth be told, my own gaze has lingered there more than once in the past) before meeting her gaze again. I’m impressed he can withstand the molten loathing coming off her in waves.
“You know—” he starts, but he doesn’t get any more out because I reach between them, clamp my left hand around his throat, and jerk him backward. He lets go of Aimee’s wrist to grab hold of mine. He makes a choking sound that I don’t like, so I squeeze harder until the air doesn’t move in his windpipe any more and he stops making that sound. His eyes turn into saucers and roll toward me.
“Cam!” Aimee yells, and grabs at my arm.
Normally when Aimee says something to me, I listen, but right now all I can hear is the blood in my ears, broken glass crunching under the soles of my Cole-Haans, and a low growling sound that I realize is grating up from my own throat. Everything else, the entire bar, is silent.
I give a heave, and the guy staggers back and lands on his ass, the momentum scooting him a couple feet across the floor. Some part of my mind notices that, in all of this, his hair has not moved. Not a fraction of an inch.
Too pretty for this kind of thing. But who am I kidding?
So am I.
To the guy’s credit, he gets his legs under him. Fine by me. On his feet, I have four inches on him. Thirty pounds. Years of getting getting knocked around as Eric’s sparring partner has toughened me up at least a little bit. Sobriety is on my side. No contest. I have come to think of him as “my guy.” Mine because I’m about to do whatever I want with him, which right now mostly entails bouncing him around this room.
Then, to my left, chairs scrape on the floor. I glance over, keeping one eye on my guy. Two other men are standing from their table...the same table my guy had been sitting at. Their eyes are angry above their careful facial hair, and scowl lines crease the skin between those angry eyes.
Three against one now. Also no contest, but in the other direction. I’m not Eric, after all. I don’t train for this kind of thing. What I lack in skill I make up for in size and brute force, but in a heavy-odds fight like this one is becoming, you do kinda need more than just strength.
From the bar a deep voice bellows, “What the fuck are you idiots doing? Get the fuck out of my bar!” But the voice is too far away to do me any good. My guy’s two friends are moving toward me, and so is my guy, stretching his head back and forth to un-kink his neck.
What I lack in skill I try to make up for in brains. But sometimes, in complex equations like this one, I still find myself coming up short.
What I lack in brains I make up for with money. I reach into the breast pocket of my sport coat again.
For the space of one long inhale the entire crowd contracts away from me, including the two friends. Because this is that kind of bar. My guy doesn’t retreat, and I can’t tell if it’s because he’s too drunk to possess a keen sense of self-preservation, or if he perhaps isn’t as easily impressed as everyone else here.
I hold a hand out to him, one finger pointing up up in the universal, “Wait,” sign. “Hold up a minute.”
I pull my hand out of my pocket, once again filled with green paper.
Behind me Aimee says, “Oh, Cam,” her voice filled with exasperation and disappointment, and I know it’s because she hates when I flash money around.
My guy pauses, confusion blooming across his face. He glances at his friends, who had backed up half a step when they thought I was pulling a gun.
I raise my voice. “I’ve got&emdash;” and I start skinning hundreds off the stack in my hand until I have a tidy little package that I hold up for everyone in the area to see. “I’ve got a thousand dollars right here for whoever keeps those two clowns&emdash;” I point at my guy’s friends, “as uninterested as possible in what’s happening right now between me and this piece of shit in front of me.”
From behind my guy, a voice answers. It’s relatively soft, definitely older, but seems to carry a heavy weight with it. “You make that two grand,” the voice says, “and we’ll cart them two out of here and show ‘em the road.” The speaker stands, and three other men stand with him. They are the bikers Aimee had served only moments ago. The man speaking looks like a late-middle-aged Clint Eastwood. Not so much an Outlaw Josie Wales Eastwood. More like a Heartbreak Ridge Eastwood. Lean, ferocious-looking. Like the Wu Tang Clan, this guy is nuthin’ to fuck with.
My guy cranes his neck to glance at the bikers behind him. I should hit him now. Just drop him and get things out of the way. But I’m too interested in the deal Clint has just offered. I dip back into my pocket.
“You got yourself a deal, Mr.&emdash;” is all I get out. My guy spins on his heel, corkscrewing his whole body, and punches me. His fist clips the point of my chin. If he were a professional, or even moderately well-trained, it would be lights-out for me. It’s near enough. I spin and stagger backward into a table. The table tips, beer and food cascading onto the floor and onto my wool slacks. Hundred dollar bills erupt from my fist and float up into the air, then down.
Irate voices are coming from the table I’ve just knocked over, excited voices from people nearby who are making a grab for my money, and I’ve got this strange ringing in my ears. A lot more people are standing up now. I look up and find my guy right in front of me, his fist cocked back to finish what he started with that first punch. I barely have time to wince.
But before he lets fly with the knockout, someone leaps for a floating Benjamin and crashes into him sideways. The punch intended for me goes wide, hits a big guy in a denim shirt in the ear. That guy lets out a roar, grabs my guy by the front of his shirt, and hurls him over a table.
&nbs
p; His hair still hasn’t moved.
To my left, where the bearded friends used to be, there is a swirling knot of fist and leather. To my right, a bunch of previously uninvolved people are engaged in something that looks like a mosh pit until a wooden chair rises up from the mass and comes crashing down across someone’s back.
The place has become a full-blown bar brawl.
Way out of hand.
Aimee is in this somewhere.
Oh my God.
I turn, looking for her where she had been behind me, but a hand grabs my arm and jerks, pulling me off balance.
Not now, you fucking jerkoff, I have&emdash; I snarl.
And then I see that it’s Aimee that has hold of me. I grin and she scowls and pulls my arm again. She is heading back into the kitchen, and she’s pulling me with her.
I’d thought to take care of her, but Aimee is taking care of me. I feel myself smiling even though my jaw is a bit numb.
The kitchen is hot and humid and three people&emdash;a grease-covered short-order cook, a waitress I don’t recognize, and one I do recognize as Marie Clark, Aimee’s best friend. Other best friend. Other other best friend. The one that both likes me and despises me, depending on some set of internal criteria I have never been able to fathom. They all look out the door and the short-order window with dismay. Something crashes out in the bar.
“Aimee, what&emdash;” Marie starts, turning toward us, and then she sees me. “Oh.” Her face twists. “Jesus, Cam.”
Aimee just shakes her head, pulling me toward a door in back. Someone has mopped the floor in the past few minutes, and my shoes squeak and slide. Then she kicks the panic bar and the door flies open, and we are out in the cold night behind the bar.
She half-pulls, half-tosses me at the gravel in front of her. Always been stronger than she looks. I stumble, but I blame it on the shot I just took to the chin a minute before.
Her scowl has become a full-blown death mask of fury. Aimee’s fists are clenched at her sides and her shoulders are squared. She looks for all the world as if she would hit me with a rock if she could find a big enough one.
All Yours: A Second Chance Romance Page 4
