“Ah, well, we’re not really close friends, Meadow. Went through school together but never hung out, if you know what I mean?”Was he sweating?It sure felt as if his palms were damp.
“You have a lovely aura, Jay. Positive and uplifting. You’re a welcoming person. A bit wounded, but peaceful and kind, and in a world where there sometimes isn’t a lot of that, it’s a wonderful thing to have. My girl could do with some of that in her life at the moment,” Meadow said. She then patted his cheek and headed back to the kitchen.
“She has really soft hands,” he said when nothing else came to mind.
“But never hung out?” Ryder raised a brow as he lowered Jay’s coffee to the counter. “You and Blue have known each other for years, which means you’re friends, surely?”
“Not close friends,” Jay said. “And she has plenty of people in her corner?—”
“And let’s not forget that aura you have. Go you, being all positive and uplifting and shit.”
“Fuck off,” Jay muttered. “Box up my food, or I’m not paying for the coffee.”
“You never pay until the end of the month, so don’t give me that crap.”
Ryder got his food while he took a mouthful of really good coffee and wondered what was off with Blue Jay McAllister.
“You need to get anything off your chest?” Ryder asked when he handed over the box of food.
“Why would you think I have anything on my chest, other than lots of muscle?”
“Ha ha, you’re a wimp, and don’t forget it.”
“Fun as this is, I have a job, so, see you, Ryder.”
“Bye, Jay, and you know we’re all here for you, right?”
He looked at Ryder and noted his expression was no longer humorous. He was now deadly serious.
“I know and appreciate it. Same for me, not that you Dukes need anything. You’re always gnawing each other’s problems to death.”
“There is that.”
He left the cafe and headed for his car.
“Morning, Jay.”
“Red, Dee,” he acknowledged the Hecklers.
They were the oddest couple that worked. Dee wore the most revealing, fitted clothes of any person he knew, and Red was a big bear of a man who in school had been gentle and never made a scene. His wife loved a good scene.
“Have a breakfast date?” Jay asked.
“Any day out without the kids is a date. Even a trip to the store for milk,” Red said, slinging an arm around his wife’s shoulders.
“When are you settling down, Jay?”
“Ah—well, I have no plans to, Dee.”
“You need a nice girl. Let me have a think about who is single in town,” she said, tapping a long, blood-red talon on her cheek.
“I can see him panicking, honey, so leave the man alone,” Red said.
Jay raised a hand and climbed into his car quickly. First Meadow telling him to come and see Blue and that aura crap, and now Dee telling him he needed to get loved up. It was enough to put a man off his food—if something like that could put him off what was in that box now on the passenger’s seat beside him—and it was only 10:30 a.m.
He headed up the main street, turned into the residential area, and then pulled into the driveway of his house.
It wasn’t huge. Single-story, and all his. When you were raised with instability, you craved stability. This house gave him that. He got out of his car and let himself inside.
