I put it in and nudged it back to him.
“Any special folders I should be avoiding?” he asked as he clicked around.
“Not jerkin’ it in my office.”
“Maybe you’re edging yourself. I don’t know what you get down with.”
Ignoring him, I looked at the prospect. “You from Texas?”
Even as I asked, I doubted it. There wasn’t a hint of a twang in his voice. I’d bounced around my entire childhood, including down south. Then I’d spent nearly a year in Austin during my wanderer phase across the country. It’d been long enough to pick up a few vocal habits that were hard to shake.
Like thedarlin’that Lo disliked so much.
“No,” he muttered, confirming my suspicions while not offering an explanation for the name.
That didn’t fly with Glitch. His lips tipped as he ordered, “Tell him why we call you that.”
“I’ve got a birthmark shaped like the state on my ass cheek.” Texas’s obvious discomfort didn’t match with the simple answer he gave.
“Strip searches part of the process now?” I asked.
“Tell him,” Glitch repeated.
“You know how Mayhem parties get,” Texas evaded.
“He would if he ever dragged himself away from work to attend one. And that’s not telling him.”
The kid sighed. “I got drunk and overheated.”
“And?”
“And passed out on the front landing.”
“With?” Glitch prodded.
“Not with. I was just using the Mrs. Butterworth cutout as a blanket.”
“Right. And her cardboard head just happened to be face down on your exposed dick.”
The life-size cutout was originally given to Judge as a joke after O had caught him adjusting himself at an inopportune time. Hollywood had his own drunken encounter with her and some syrup.
“You had a turn with her?” I shook my head. “Mrs. Butterworth will put out for anyone willing to give her a good flip.”
“Not anymore,” Glitch said before kissing his index and middle finger and pointing them to the sky. “RIP, you sticky syrup siren.”
Morbid curiosity filled me to mix with a hefty dose of revulsion.
“No,” Texas hurried out. “Not like that. It got rained on.”
“I don’t remember seeing a cloud in that sky,” Glitch said, giving him a hard time—hopefully. “But we all saw the moon when he scrambled up, we got an eyeful of his pasty ass with that birthmark, and a name was born.”
“At least they didn’t call you Tiny,” I said.
Texas tilted his head before slowly nodding. “Good point.”
“He’s not patched in yet, so there’s always time to… uh… change that…” Glitch muttered distractedly as he started typing.
“Need anything else?” I asked while I still had a portion of his attention. Once he locked in on whatever he was doing on my computer, it would be impossible to carry on a conversation.
