Between Brothers: The Sacred Brotherhood Book IV

by A. J. Downey

  I met his eyes with mine and gave a grave nod. Leaning back he said, “Good; glad we had this talk,” his tone dripping with sarcasm. I huffed a bit of a laugh and finished my food, watching Hayley move around the diner refilling coffee and serving the few patrons present, including a couple of sheriff’s deputies that’d come in after us.

  They talked to her, a few tables down, and she looked up and our way. She turned back to them and smiled, murmuring something I couldn’t hear, the piped in music and the clatter of utensils drowning out her voice, which was sort of quiet to begin with.

  “Jesus Christ, you need to move on this.” I blinked and looked back to Cell who was laughing at me again.

  I nodded; I had every intention of it. She set down our bill and drifted away and I pushed the receipt paper in his direction with a pointed look. He rolled his eyes and took a pen out of his cut, scribbling whatever it was this time on the back before sliding it back over to me so I could get to work.

  I made sure what he’d wrote was suitable and not douche before I got to work folding it into a delicate and tiny origami orchid, using the paper wrapping from my straw to fashion a vine. I twisted it back on itself and cocked my head, my pulse speeding just a bit. With a hard swallow, I went for it, looping it, and thinking on it a second. I went through my pockets and looked up at Cell.

  “I need a piece of tape.”

  He smirked, hitching back with a laugh making some comment about getting stupid with my paper art. Still, he humored me and went through the pockets of his jacket and cut, coming up with a roll of green electrical tape. Even better! I grinned at him and took it, finishing working my magic with the tiny bits of paper. He shook his head and said, “You’re somethin’ else, man.”

  “Go smoke your cigarette,” I muttered and his eyebrows shot up.

  “Don’t mind if I do, pay the bill when you’re done with your arts and crafts, fucknugget.”

  I nodded, and handed him his tape. He shoved it back in his pocket, his cigarette already out, tapping the filter against the base of his latest Bic lighter. He liked them better when it came to improvising explosive devices. The plastic melted and didn’t leave behind fingerprints. He always said Zippos were too nice to get rid of and were a disaster waiting to happen when it came to trace evidence.

  “Hurry it the fuck up,” he called over his shoulder and pushed through the diner’s door and went outside. He paused just outside the door, smirking through the glass at me, and lit up. I rolled my eyes and shook my head. I mean, did he want me to pull the trigger on this or not?

  I finished my handiwork and pleased that it was secure, and wouldn’t fall apart easily looked up to Hayley standing by my table with a water pitcher in her hand. She blinked at me with those lovely dark eyes and I smiled up at her crookedly. I took her free hand gently and slid the paper and tape orchid ring on her right ring finger, glad her left was occupied because I didn’t want to come across too creepy.

  “I see you,” I breathed and her eyes never left mine. I felt it, the moment, falling from a great height, cutting through the tension between us her body language softened. I stood up, pulling my wallet out blindly, fishing in it for all the cash, knowing there was way more than what was required to pay for the meal. I pressed it all into her hands, and took a moment to brush her cheek with my thumb while she stood there, wide eyed and motionless.

  I winked at her, and went out the door and into the night, catching up to Duracell.

  Chapter 2

  Hayley

  “They bothering you?”

  “What?” I followed the deputy’s look up the line of booths to where Blue was watching. I turned back to refill the second deputy’s coffee and shook my head saying to the first, “No, they’re actually regulars. Blue, the one facing us, is actually kind of sweet.”

  “You be careful around those guys, they have a rough reputation.”

  “I will,” I said smiling and moved away from the sheriff deputies’ table and on to a different one.

  Duracell got up and went outside for his usual after meal cigarette while Blue hunched over their table absorbed in folding their receipt as he usually did… even though they hadn’t paid yet. I put the coffee carafe back on the warmer and picked up the water pitcher wandering over to see what he was doing and secretly excited. I loved the little paper creations that he left me, it was one of my favorite parts about them coming in.

  I paused quietly by his side. It was fascinating watching him work so finely, his long fingers wrapping a bit of green vinyl tape around a bit of straw wrapper. He looked up and smiled at me and I lost my breath, frozen in place by the look in his eyes. He took my hand gently and slid whatever little trinket he’d created onto my finger like a ring.

  “I see you,” he breathed and I believed him. I believed him so hard that my throat closed up and tears very nearly sprang to my eyes. He stood up and I took an automatic step back to let him out of the booth. Still, he was so close, closer than he’d ever been and well within my personal space. I wasn’t really too surprised to find that I didn’t at all mind. Instead I held very still and closed my eyes, breathing in the scent of clean man and leather which in turn forced me into the position of trying valiantly not to shiver.

  It’d been a very long time for me. A little over two years, to be precise. I opened my eyes when his thumb grazed my cheek, the barest whisper of a touch against my skin. He shoved a sheaf of folded bills into my hand and before I could find my voice, he was gone. I looked down at the wad of crisp, twenty dollar bills in my hand and looked back up and out the dark front window. Just as I made to take a step in the direction of the door, their motorcycles fired up and I jumped slightly.

  I looked back down to my hands dumbly. Too much, he had paid me far too much, but I think he knew that. I set down the water and blinked. With what was in my hand, he’d left me over a one hundred and twenty dollar tip. That’d never happened to me before. I turned my hand over and looked at the ring he’d put on my finger, a delicate little paper orchid resting just below my knuckle.

  I felt my heart give that little flutter and I treasured when it did that. It let me know it wasn’t completely frozen or dead. I swallowed hard and put the money in my apron pocket. I went back to work serving my other tables and sighed more than a few times doing it. At least now I knew their disappearing from the diner wasn’t me. I mean, they wouldn’t have been half so friendly to me if it was, right?

  I hadn’t had the nerve to ask Melody, what with her just coming back after the awful time she had having Chandler. I was so grateful she’d returned, too. She was good at our job and it’d been a struggle to keep up without her, but I’d managed… just like I was managing now.

  It’d been a long, long day and now it was dragging into a deep long night. I drifted between tables refilling coffee between stealing sips of my own from behind the counter. I was half dead on my feet by the time my dad came through the door to cook for the breakfast and lunch crowd.

  “That’s enough for you, Sweetheart. You good to drive home or you need a nap in the corner booth first?”

  “I’ll be fine, I can make it.”

  “Get on out of here, then.”

  I nodded and he wrapped fingers around the back of my neck, dragging my forehead to his lips. He smacked a kiss between my eyebrows, gave me a little shake and let me go. I emptied its pockets and unwound my apron from around my waist and heaved a sigh, folding it up, so I could stash it in a back corner beneath the register.

  Straightening, I called out a last goodbye to my dad and smiled when Melody walked through the door. I would have gone regardless, but still, perfect timing.

  “What happened to your uniform?” she called out, hanging her coat on the coat tree by the door. She didn’t carry her purse in here, just her ID and a bit of money in her apron. It was a good habit, and one I had adopted, too.

  “Nightshift called out twenty minutes into her shift with no replacement, so guess what I got to do?�
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  “Aww, you look half dead.”

  I chuckled, “Good to know I look how I feel.”

  “I see Blue was by last night at least.”

  I startled and held out my hand, unable to resist my charmed little half smile at the memory.

  “Yeah, he and Cell both.”

  Mel rolled her eyes, “When isn’t it Blue and Cell both?”

  I shook my head, I mean, it was a valid point. I sighed again only this time it was in a bid to stifle a yawn.

  “I’m sorry, Mel, but it looks like you’re on your own today.”

  “Don’t you worry about that, I can handle this hungry horde. You go home and get some sleep and I’ll see you when I see you.”

  We hugged quickly and I smiled, “I’ll see you when I see you,” I agreed and she let me go. I stepped aside to let a couple of our regulars in the door and ducked out past them as Melody greeted them and led them to a table with a couple of menus she snatched from beside the register. I stood outside watching for a minute and had to smile. She fit seamlessly into the diner and had become a good friend, for all that I didn’t see her too much outside of work.

  I got into my tired, old Volkswagen Golf and started it up. I carefully drove myself home realizing about half way there just how tired I really was. I should have gotten a lift, but then again, I really didn’t want to accept a lift from the night cook. Not that there was anything wrong with him. I just knew that it would have led to small talk, and I just was plain out of any ability to deal with people anymore. At least until after I showered and slept, and not necessarily in that particular order, either.

  I pulled into the long driveway and went right past the house around back, parking alongside my studio my dad had built. It was a one and a half story, converted two car garage painted yellow with white trim, just like our house. It had a loft with a bed in it for when I worked late nights and was closer than the walk to the house. I’d rather climb the seven rungs of ladder or so than the twenty steps up to the second floor and my real bedroom.

  I dragged butt out of my car and went to the studio’s door, unlocking it and letting myself in. I loved it in here. It was full of windows and light. I shut and locked the door behind me and I nearly dropped my keys and purse right there on the floor, I was so tired. However, my mother never would have done that no matter how tired she was after a shift, so I didn’t either. I shuffled my aching feet the several feet to my left and hung the purse that’d been stashed under the seat of my car neatly on the coatrack. I pulled my ID and tips from my pockets and stuffed them unceremoniously in the open zippered top of the small black bag as my one concession of wanting to just not care and be messy.

  The keys went on the small hook set into a board by the coat rack, well out of the reach of any of the panes of glass set into the door to the outside. Straight ahead of me was a closed, white paneled door that led into the bathroom my dad had put in here for my mom.

  This had been her studio for painting long before it’d ever been mine for stained glass. She’d died of breast cancer when I was fifteen, it’d been just dad and me ever since. When I had said I was ready to use the studio for my passion, my dad had spent every evening and weekend for over a month redoing the interior of this place so it fit me, insisting that mom would have wanted it that way. I knew he was right, still, it would have been nice to keep some of her in here.

  I flipped on the bathroom’s light switch and half thought about showering or drawing a bath, but couldn’t bring myself to do it. I barely had it in me to drag a toothbrush across my teeth before hauling myself up out of my hunch over the white porcelain pedestal sink. I stared at myself in the oval mirror on the wall and was almost disappointed to see I didn’t look at all how I felt.

  I felt like I should have deep, dark, circles under my eyes but nope. Instead my mother’s face, only younger than I remembered it, stared back at me. I pulled the elastic holding the end of my braid together off and set it by the tap handle at the top of the sink. I unwound the thick, dark strands from around each other until I was left with a foaming wavy mass framing my face. My unremarkable brown eyes bounced over my lightly tanned face, picking out slight imperfections and flaws every which way. I sighed and shook my head, closing my eyes for a moment before turning back to the door. I only opened them to see where I was going and once I knew I was well clear of my reflection.

  I made beautiful things with glass, but I wasn’t what anyone would consider beautiful myself… well, except for my dad, but I was pretty sure he was biased. I kicked out of my shoes at the bottom of the wood ladder set into the wall by the bathroom door and relished the cool, polished cement floor under my sock covered feet.

  Oh god, that felt so good against hot, sore feet. I couldn’t even begin to tell you. The only thing that felt better was the lovely stretch the round rungs of the ladder pressing into my arches gave them. It felt so good, I simply stood on the bottom rung and bounced, getting in a deep stretch that was to die for.

  I climbed the rest of the way up into the loft above my bathroom that had just enough headroom for me to stand up straight and not have to worry about cracking my head on a ceiling beam. There was just enough room up here for a quaint bedroom setup. I had a queen sized mattress and box spring on the floor, which I had up against the spindled railing overlooking the studio and next to it, I had an old apple crate turned on its side for a nightstand. A corner desk and chair were in the one corner that had just enough to have walls on both sides. The entire rest of the one wall opposite the railing was taken up by paned windows and gauzy curtains, facing into tall, thick, lilac bushes that separated our yard from the next door neighbors.

  I crawled out of my pants and just kept on my shirt and panties before crawling into bed. I reached for the bedside apple crate and pulled down the medicine bottle, taking out one of the anti-depressants inside and popping it onto the very center of my tongue. I dragged down the bottle of water I kept beside it and took three giant swigs to make sure I’d washed it down all of the way. As soon as I set it back down, I keeled over; dragging the blankets up over me. I gently pulled the carefully crafted paper orchid from my finger and set it on the edge of the crate so I could stare at it. All of the rest of Blue’s creations hung from fishing line, dangling from the beams above my bed so all I had to do was turn onto my back and stare up at them.

  Every flower and bird I could imagine hung above me. One for every visit he’d made to the diner, whether he and Cell sat in my section or not. I loved them all, so very much, and still wondered how he had ever learned to fold paper so delicately or beautifully. I was too shy to ask, but it was one of the things I looked forward to the most about going to work. A few had come here and there in the beginning when they stopped showing up to my shift, but then nothing until they’d been there last night.

  Doesn’t mean he didn’t make them for you, it might just mean the night waitress never passed them on… I told myself for the thousandth time.

  I closed my eyes and just breathed, Blue’s words echoing back to me…

  I see you.

  I believed him. I also believed that he deserved much better than me with my burden of sadness and low self-esteem. I was damaged goods and no man wanted any part of that. Especially not one as hot as Blue. I sighed and took one last look at the paper creations suspended above me before I closed my eyes for the last time, cuddling down into my bed. I pulled the blankets over my head so I was swallowed by the dark and wished so much that I were a whole person. Normal, like everyone else, but that was likely an impossible goal to reach, even with the medication.

  God, I hated being depressed.

  Chapter 3

  Blue

  Mid-October sunshine beating down, leaves turning a rich golden red, and a deep sense of fall was riding the air… but it was still over seventy degrees out here. It was officially an Indian summer as far as any of us were concerned, but lacking the haze and conditions to make it a real one by Farmer’s Almanac s
tandards. Yet another thing I’d learned while locked up. The only other thing besides the art of folding paper to keep me occupied had been the prison library and I’d gone through their selection pretty quick. After the first year, anything that came in that I could use to stave off boredom with, I would… up to and including the shit ton of outdated Reader’s Digest and The Farmer’s Almanacs that sat dusting in the library’s corner.

  Cell and I had been back on day shift with the road crew for a little over a month which meant we’d been back at the diner on Haley’s shift. Unfortunately, I’d gone and done the one thing I’d never in a million years had wanted to… I’d scared her, and she’d gone back into her shell again. She was quiet, skittish, and yet when I did manage to make eye contact I could see such a longing in her deep brown eyes. A chink in her armor, maybe? I hoped so.

  Duracell slapped me in the chest and I startled from my thoughts, shaking myself as if coming awake. We were at the Harvest Days Carnival as a club, but also as a family with all the ol’ ladies and kids in tow and we’d been having a blast so far. I scowled at him and he laughed at me, gesturing up the slight incline we were standing at the bottom of at the cotton candy cart at the top.

  I followed Duracell’s gesture and gaze to a pair of worn cowboy boots, up a pair of gorgeous as fuck legs, over a damn near perfect ass and hourglass figure below a white peasant’s blouse. Long dark hair spilled down her back and it was beautiful when it was free like that.

  She usually only wore it in a braid with that fringe of bangs kissing her forehead, but not today. Today the top half was pulled up and held by a pewter clip in the shape of an owl. Today she was almost smiling as she took the fluffy blue cloud of candy from the vendor. Today her eyes sparkled as she tore a bit off and licked it off her thumb and oh, god…