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I sat down between Warren and Luke, thinking I’d make a good buffer between them. Something in the back of my mind told me I shouldn’t have worried.
“So… you two are okay now?” I asked, jerking a thumb between them. “You’re playing nice?”
“Playing nice,” laughed Warren. He turned to Luke. “What do you think? Are we playing nice?”
“We’d better be,” Luke said, folding his arms. “At least while I’m doing the books.”
I looked at them strangely. Waiting. Watching…
“We’re in business together,” Warren finally explained. “That garage I used to work at? Tommy’s?”
“Yeah?”
“We bought it, a few years back. Luke and I.”
My eyes went wide, like two full moons. I couldn’t believe it!
“You’rekidding, right?” I cried. “After everything you guys went through? All those nasty fights? The crazy arguments? Even the physical stuff, and all the hateful things you said about each other before you both left town?”
I scanned each of their faces, then glanced over to Adrian for help. He was leaning back against the wall, casually sipping his beer. In his button-down shirt he looked like a tattooed businessman, with silver cuff-links that matched the thick chain around his neck.Twilight Zoneindeed.
“Well a couple of things have happened sinceyouleft town,” said Luke. “Most notably, we both came back.”
I remembered how full of rage they were when they’d left, and how neither of them could stand to even look at each other. At that point, they could barely look at me.
In business together! Of all the crazy things—
I’d felt tremendous guilt at being the unwilling wedge that ultimately drove them apart. And yet in dating Luke, I’d done just that. What began as something pure and beautiful got twisted in a hurry. I didn’t know what to do. Who to approach, or what I would even say.
And then they’d both found out of state colleges that would accept them… and that was it.
“Are you surprised?” asked Warren.
“That the two of you patched things up? To put it mildly, fuck yes.”
“Well it wasn’t easy,” said Luke. “We returned to North Glade at around the same time, both of us sick of college.”
“Probably sicker of college than we were of each other,” Warren added.
“Yeah, so it was about two years since we’d seen each other,” said Luke. “Then one day I’m gassing up at the Mobile station and this lunatic pulls right into the pump on the opposite side of me.”
I could picture it in my mind, almost as if I were there.
“Uh oh,” I said. “So what happened?”
“He sucker-punched me,” said Luke.
“Bullshit,” laughed Warren. “You shoved me first.”
“I wouldn’t have shoved you if you weren’t two inches from my face,” Luke pointed out. “But yeah, we started right up where we left off. Only this time it came to blows. We got into a knock down, drag out fight,” he went on. “Right in front of that waterfall-fountain thing at the edge of the property.”
“The one with the fish in it?”
“You mean the one thatusedto have fish in it,” Adrian smirked. “Until these assholes broke it.”
“More like shattered it,” Luke admitted. “But yeah. It’s not there anymore.”
I shook my head, half excited, half still in disbelief. “Oh my God! So what happened after that?”
