by Ivy Black
Max was somehow able to bridge that gap and walk between the two worlds. Kind of. I know he and Bellamy had something of a friendship. At least in classes, with the occasional acknowledgment in the hallways. I seem to recall he onetime dumped a cup of juice in his own lap and dared anybody to say something. He did it because Bellamy was already having a rough go of things and had accidentally spilled her juice in her lap, touching off a firestorm of heckling. After that, they were friends. Or at least, friends-ish.
Which, of course, was a hell of a lot more than I ever was with her. I’m half convinced that she never knew who I was or that I existed. There were never any friendly greetings in the hallways. No acknowledgment of each other in classes. I mean, we would once in a while catch each other’s gaze and exchange a smile, but that was pretty much it.
I remember having a class with her once. We were working in groups at one point and it hit me that she didn’t know my name when she kept calling me Donny. Even after I corrected her several times. It was Donny for the rest of the year. But that was fine with me back then. At least it was an acknowledgment of sorts, I suppose.
But back then, I was so incredibly jealous of Max for pulling the dumping the juice in his lap thing. I wanted to be him more than anything because he’d earned her respect. Her affection. He had earned her gratitude from that point on and I wanted to kick myself for not thinking of it at the time. Maybe there’s still a little piece of me, even to this day, that envies him for that.
“So, how’s she doing?” I ask, trying to sound casual.
“Smokeshow, man. She’s a total smokeshow,” he says. “She done growed up real nice.”
I laugh. “Shut up, dude.”
“I’m serious, actually,” he says with a smile. “She’s actually even more beautiful today than she was back then. It’s like adulthood has really agreed with her.”
“Yeah? That’s a good thing,” I say. “So, she’s turned out to be the complete opposite of you then.”
He shrugs. “Pretty much,” he replies. “But she’s still the same old Bellamy. Sweet. Kind. Caring. She’s teaching over at the junior high now.”
“Oh, wow, that’s great,” I say.
There was part of me hoping she’d turned into some hunchback troglodyte with a really bad attitude, and that she’d somehow gotten dumb or become a horrible person. The last thing I wanted to hear is that she’s still the same incredible, amazing woman I fell in love with as a kid. The same incredible, amazing woman I’m still carrying a torch for after all these years.
“So, why I’m telling you all that is so that you can take your baby nuts over to the junior high and talk to her,” he says. “Now that you, too, are all growed up and have some hair on your balls, you can go tell her how you’ve felt about her all this time.”
“You know what the best thing about being in love with somebody from afar is?”
“Do tell.”
“You never have to get close enough to spoil the fantasy.”
He arches an eyebrow at me. “You know every bit as well as I do that Bellamy Young is far better than any fantasy you can conjure up,” he says. “She’s the total package and you know it.”
I don’t say anything. Instead, I drain the last of my coffee and pointedly look at my watch to subtly let him know we have an appointment to keep. He chuckles, recognizing the tactic, and sits back in the booth with his coffee mug in hand to subtly tell me not to worry about the time.
“She asked about you,” he tells me.
“You’re so full of shit.”
“I’m serious, bro. She did.”
“Dude, she didn’t even know my name back in high school.”
He leans forward again, showing me his eyes to let me see how serious he is and that he’s not bullshitting me.
“She clearly did because she straight up asked me, ‘How is Derek doing?’ Just like that.”
“Did you bring me up first?”
“No,” he says. “Why would I talk about you when I’m tryin’ to get my shine on with some hottie in a parking lot.”
“You better not be getting your shine on—whatever that means—with anybody but me. Especially in a parking lot,” Ashley declares as she stops at our table.
“Busted,” I say with a grin.
Domino laughs. “I’m talking about Bellamy. I told you about her earlier.”
Her face lights up. “Oh, yeah,” she says then rounds on me. “So, when are you going to go get your shine on with her. I’m assuming that’s a good thing, right?”
“Let’s pump the brakes here,” I reply. “I haven’t seen her in a decade—”
“She asked about him. By name,” Domino says.
Ashley grins. “Clearly, you’ve been on her mind over this last decade. That’s all but an invitation to go talk to her,” she tells me. “Trust me, I understand girl speak.”
“She understands girl speak,” Domino says. “Can’t argue with that.”
“You are both so full of shit.”
The three of us share a laugh, but my insides are suddenly roiling. The last I’d heard was that Bellamy had moved to Colorado to start a new life for herself. After her dad died, her entire life fell apart and she needed a fresh page. I understood and was happy for her. Sort of. But to know that she’s back is throwing me for a total loop. That is literally the last thing I expected to hear today.
But I’m saying it’s a bad thing. In fact, I’m pretty intrigued. I’d like to see how the last decade or so has treated her for myself.
Chapter Five
Spyder
My bike rumbles beneath me, rattling my body from head to toe. Some people don’t like the feeling of being on a bike. They say it’s too jarring. They say it rattles their bodies too hard. But I like the feeling of being on my bike. I enjoy that jarring, rattling feeling that shakes your body good and hard.
To me, it’s a comforting feeling. To me, it’s the feeling of being free. The feeling of being able to wake up one morning and just go. Anywhere. I can point my bike in a direction and just ride. And for no other reason than just feeling like it. That’s the feeling of being truly free. It’s a feeling that, sadly, most people don’t understand. And even fewer get to experience.
We take the road out to the edge of the town. It’s the part of town the more upstanding citizens of Blue Rock like to pretend doesn’t exist. It’s the more rural section of town. The poorer section of town. Acknowledging there are people who aren’t as well-off as they are would be an affront to the rich, snooty pricks who make up the Blue Rock Bay elite. The ones who think they own the town and control everything that happens within the borders.
What none of these pricks understand, or at least pretend to be ignorant to, is that they aren’t the power in Blue Rock. We are. The Pharaohs. We control the town, and we protect it. We make sure the streets are safe, and we make sure none of the problems other cities have, namely with drugs running freely, happen here.
Domino waves to get my attention and then flashes the hand signal that tells me we’re here. We pull to the curb and turn off the engines of our bikes. I sit astride mine for another minute and look around. The neighborhood is old and run-down. Most of the houses are small craftsman style and are in dire need of a coat of paint and some repair. I see more windows that’ve been broken out than ones that still have glass in them.
The lawns I see are all little more than dirt, and the few fences fronting the houses are busted. There are rusted-out cars in driveways and more up on blocks on the lawns in front of the houses. The poverty around here is evident, and you can practically smell the desperation.
In the distance, a dog barks and is quickly answered by another. The sun beats down on us and I feel the beads of sweat rolling down the back of my neck, slipping under the rib of my T-shirt, and then down my back. I take my helmet off and then my gloves, stuffing them all into my saddlebag. I look over at Domino who’s casting a suspicious eye around the neighborhood.
�
�What’s up?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “Nothin’. Just gettin’ the lay of the land.”
I look around, searching for whatever seems to have caught Domino’s attention. He’s on alert for something, I can tell. All around us, I can almost sense the people in the houses. They’re watching us. It feels like everybody is holding their breath, waiting for the storm to pass.
We’ve had to deliver messages to this part of town before. In fact, we’ve had to deliver messages to this very neighborhood before. People around here know that when they hear our bikes, they better scramble for cover because we’re not coming for a social call. When we come, it’s because somebody’s in deep shit. And today, the person in deep shit is named Peter Wells.
“Gray house,” Domino says after checking his phone.
“Pretty sure that was white,” I reply.
“Yeah, well, maybe he should slap a new coat of paint on,” he replies. “Or just wash the damn thing.”
“Not everybody’s as particular about their home as you, brother.”
Domino grins at me. “All I’m sayin’ is have a little pride in your place. That’s all. Is that so hard?”
I chuckle and shake my head. Domino is pretty uptight about some things, but he’s nowhere near as Type-A about shit as Monk.
“You ready to do this?” he asks.
“We’re all dressed up. Might as well dance,” I reply as I get off my bike.
We start across the street, heading for Peter Wells’ house. I know we’re here to do a job and that I should have my game face on, but I’m having a hard time getting into character. The news he broke to me earlier still has me feeling off-kilter and I can’t get the thoughts of Bellamy out of my head.
Knowing that she’s back in town has my heart and my brain turning somersaults inside of me. It’s crazy, considering how long it’s been since I last saw her. And let’s be real here, it’s not like the last time I saw her, we were friends. We were barely acquaintances.
“Hey, did Bellamy really ask about me?”
Domino casts a sidelong glance at me, a smirk curling his lip upward. “Really? You’re asking about that now?”
I shrug. “I just want to know.”
“Yeah, she asked about you, bro. By name,” he says. “I may yank your chain about a lot of shit, but not about something like that. I know what she meant to you. I wouldn’t screw with that.”
I give him a nod. I believe him, and it’s a thought that sets my mind on fire. The thought that she asked about me is hitting me hard. But in a good way.
“Game face on,” Domino says.
I do my best as we climb the stairs up to the porch. Though there are hinges, there’s no steel security door, which makes things a lot easier. I step forward and drive my foot into the wooden door. It cracks and groans, blowing inward in a hail of splinters and pieces of the door’s hardware.
Domino and I follow the door in and rush into the living room. Wells is sitting on a battered and torn old La-Z-Boy recliner and jumps to his feet as we storm in. I drive my fist into his gut with all the force I can muster. Wells doubles over with a loud grunt as the air is driven out of his lungs. As he gasps for air, I push him backward and he flops into his recliner, wheezing, his face purple.
“Stay the fuck down,” I growl.
Wells is tall. Probably about six-three. He’s wide through the shoulders and chest, but he’s got a paunch around his middle. His hair is a dull, dirty blond that hangs limply to his shoulders. It looks greasy as if it hadn’t been washed in a while. Wells’ skin is sallow, his cheeks pocked with acne scars, and his eyes are a dull, lifeless brown. He’s not an attractive man, to say the least. Probably why he had to start dealing drugs. It’s the only way he could get laid.
Wells finally catches his breath and raises his head, glaring at me. He starts to push himself up from the chair again, so I wade in and deliver a haymaker. My fist connects with his face and I hear the satisfying crunch of his nose splintering as he flops back into his chair again. He gargles and sputters as the blood flows freely down his face. His porcine eyes are wide and filled with rage… but also with the first stirrings of fear.
“I told you to stay the fuck down,” I shout at him. “Listen this time, asshole.”
“Who the fuck are you guys?” he asks.
Domino steps forward. “We’re the welcoming committee,” he says. “We heard you moved into town recently, so here we are. Welcome to Blue Rock Bay.”
“And now, it’s time for you to go,” I say.
“I ain’t goin’ anywhere.”
“Oh, I think you are,” I reply.
“See, you aren’t welcome here,” Domino adds. “We know you’re dealin’ drugs out of this house and we have a very strict rule in our city.”
“You don’t deal within town limits, I say.”
Wells obviously isn’t very bright as he starts to get to his feet again. Tired of punching this brainless meat sack, I pull the .45 out of the holster on my hip and press the barrel to his forehead. His eyes widen and he wisely sits back down.
“See? You can teach an old dog new tricks,” I say.
“Hold him here,” Domino tells me. “I’m gonna toss this dump and see what I can find.”
“You ain’t got no right—”
I press the barrel of my sidearm to his forehead harder to get his attention, and when he turns his eyes to me, I put my finger to my lips.
“Quiet now,” I tell him. “Yellin’ makes me nervous. And when I get nervous, I tend to get a little twitchy. I’d hate to blow a hole in your melon the size of a Cadillac because you made me nervous.”
The corner of his eye twitches and his lips quiver, but he falls silent and leans back in his chair, his face a twisted mask of rage and fear.
“Good boy,” I say.
The sound of things crashing to the floor and breaking comes from the back of the house as Domino goes through everything, looking for the drugs. I sit down on a plastic lawn chair that, for whatever reason, is sitting in the middle of Wells’ living room, keeping my weapon trained on him.
I look around the living room and wrinkle my nose in disgust. There are empty pizza boxes, food containers, and beer cans everywhere. With everything happening so fast when we stormed in here, I didn’t notice it at first, but there is a serious odor in here. It’s the smell of rot and decay and I feel my stomach turning over on itself.
“Dude, how can you live in this?” I ask. “Do you have no sense of smell? I’ve been in Porta-Potties that smell better than this.”
“Fuck you,” he spits. “What gives you the fuckin’ right to bust in here like this? What gives you the right to do this shit you’re doin’?”
I point to my kutte. “See this? This is what gives us the right,” I tell him. “Blue Rock is our town, and we decide who gets to live here. More importantly, we get to decide who doesn’t get to live here.”
Something heavy hits the floor with a loud crack and a splintering sound in the back room. Wells’ face twists in rage.
“Don’t worry about it, man,” I tell him. “Judging by the look of this place and the way you live in it, there’s nothin’ valuable back there.”
“Kiss my ass.”
Domino strolls back into the living room holding a black gym bag. Wells groans and his face darkens. He looks like he’s thinking about jumping to his feet, so I tap the barrel of my weapon on my thigh, just to remind him it’s here.
“Look what I found,” Domino says.
He unzips the bag and shows me what looks like a thousand packets of white powder. Heroin, most likely. I whistle low and shake my head.
“You done fucked up now, Petey,” I say.
“That’s my shit. You can’t take my shit,” he shouts.
“Afraid I can. This is bein’ seized on account of it being fucking illegal,” Domino shouts, cuffing him on the back of the head to underscore his point. “What makes you think you can bring this shit into our town in th
e first place?”
“I don’t need your permission—”
“Actually, you do, Petey,” I tell him. “It’s like I told you, this is our town. And you don’t bring that shit into our town. And you sure as hell don’t sell that shit in our town.”
“This ain’t your town!” Wells screams.
“And I keep telling you it is,” I reply.
“Here’s the deal, Pete,” Domino says. “This bag right here is disqualifying. This bag is why you’re not welcome in Blue Rock anymore. Ever again, actually.”
“Pack your shit and get out of town,” I tell him. “You’ve lost all privileges to Blue Rock Bay.”
“You have until midnight. We see you on the street after that and we will fucking kill you, Pete,” Domino says. “Believe that. You stay here, you die.”
Pete moves pretty quickly for a big man and launches himself at Domino. I can’t squeeze off a shot without hitting Domino, so I hold back. Not that I needed to worry anyway since it seemed like he was expecting Pete to lunge at him. His fist slams into Wells’ nose, smashing it again and setting off a new round of agonized wailing from the man. And when he doubles over, his hands covering his nose, blood squeezing out from between his fingers, Domino steps forward and drives his boot into Wells’ side.
His breath bursts from his mouth and he staggers to the side. I slip my sidearm back into my holster, then step forward and throw a punch to the side of his face and I see a tooth shoot out of his mouth. Wells staggers and falls with a meaty thump, his breathing ragged and blood pouring out of his mouth. Just to emphasize our point, Domino and I both deliver a couple of more kicks to his gut, making sure we have his full attention.
“Midnight, Pete. And we’ll be checking this house to make sure you’re gone,” I say. “Clear out now, get out of town, or I swear you’ll catch a couple of bullets in the back of the head.”
Domino and I bump fists and walk out of his place, leaving him in a blubbering, wheezing, bloody heap. Message delivered.
