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After all that the lunch isn’t much fun, even though we’re all trying to force it. It’s also over much sooner than I expected it to be.
I could go drive around looking for cats to save. I could go home and bury myself in more research. I could sit alone by the pool at my parents' house and try to think of nothing.
But instead, I dial Ruin’s number while sitting in my car by the curb in front of the restaurant.
“Ariel, is something wrong?” he asks after picking up on the second ring.
His reaction is weird, but it makes sense. I’ve never called him before. Only texted. And even that only after he texted first. I have no idea why now. Having someone is better than having no one. Even if you worry about them all the time. And especially if they make you feel like a whole human being and not just the ghost of one. The way it is between Ruin and me. I should’ve told the girls that.
“I’m fine,” I tell him. “I’m doing a thing tomorrow and was wondering if you wanted to come too.”
I spoke fast, wanting to get the words out before I changed my mind.
“What’s that?” he asks, but I think he sounds happy.
I explain all about the trap-neuter-release event.
He chuckles when I’m done.
“What?”
“You ask me out for the first time and it’s to trap cats?” he says.
“I just thought… how you were worried about stuff the other night… well, saving kittens will make you a good man, guaranteed.”
I was smiling as I said it, but he inhales sharply and then stays silent once I’m done. I’m pretty sure I just said the absolute worst thing I could for the third time today. Why am I so awkward with people? Why can’t I ever read the room right? Will that ever go away?
He chuckles. “Technically, I’ll be preventing kittens from being born, if I understood you right.”
“Yes… well, sure… I meant… “
“Yes, I’d love to come,” he says, putting me out of my stuttering misery. It literally feels like a huge weight was lifted off my chest. A weight I didn’t even know was there.
I’m smiling again as I tell him where and when to meet me tomorrow morning. Then he asks me more questions about the cats and off I go again, explaining it all. And I’d love to just continue chatting with him for the rest of the afternoon. But I hear men talking behind him and he tells me he has to go. For a change I don’t regret anything as I let him go. And I usually regret pretty much everything that comes out of my mouth lately. Plus, I’m still smiling.
7
Ruin
To say we’re doing a half-assed job of keeping tabs on this Joker guy would be giving us a compliment. For the past two days, all I’ve done has either been trying to persuade the gruesome threesome of Fossil, Bane, and Archer to get their asses up in the morning, or to stop drinking and get some sleep to so they could get up in the morning.
We actually never left the bar/whorehouse/motel we’re in now. Because Joker hasn’t either. This place is called Fire & Heart Inn, though heart isn’t something I’d accuse any of the patrons or staff of having.
Edge and I both questioned whether it was a good idea to just follow the guy we’re supposed to be watching into a random bar and stay there drinking all night, given that we’re at war with god knows how many clubs. But our three charges just laughed in our faces and in we went.
No one had any issue with us being Devil’s Nightmare MC, though. Least of all Joker. And no one bothered us. We spent most of the time since we’ve been here playing Texas Hold ‘Em and drinking. I lost more money than I care to admit and for a while, Joker played with us too.
I saw nothing to suggest Fossil, Bane, or Archer are friendly with anyone but each other, and even that not all the time. So far, I’ve had to break up two fist fights between Bane and Fossil and one between all three of them.
The room I slept in had no window and smelled worse than the toilet in the bar. The girl who tried to share the bed with me was no spring flower in any sense of those words and by the time noon came around I was seriously considering talking my way out of doing this job.
I’m still seriously considering doing that now, with the glaring sunlight in my eyes and Fossil and Archer grumbling about having to be up this early. It’s nearing two PM. It took me half an hour to wake them up. Bane is still dead to the world. Edge is trying to rouse him.
“There’s no fucking reason for all of us to be awake,” Fossil grumbles and spits into the dust at our feet. The parking lot we’re standing in is paved, but it hasn’t been swept in so long the debris covering it is inches thick. “Joker’s still asleep and he lives here. He’s not going anywhere.”
“We have no idea if he lives here,” I counter. “All we know is he spent the night.”
And we only know that because I was up until dawn making sure Joker never left, and after that Edge took the post so I could get a couple of hours of sleep in that smelly bedroom of mine.
