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“Can we get together before that, too, then?” Eight was so shocked at himself, he took the phone from his ear and stared at the screen. What waswithhim?
Marcella was surprised, too. When he put the phone back to his ear, there was quiet on the line.
Finally, she said, “You really want to go to his soccer game?”
“I guess I do.”
“Huh. Okay. Um. Well. We’re busy tomorrow evening, so that just leaves tonight?”
This time, he knew what he was going to say. His heart leapt into his throat and started dancing. “Tonight works for me.”
“Okay, okay. Yeah. Uh, okay.”
Hearing how completely he’d rocked Marcella, and really enjoying it, Eight settled a bit. He grinned. “Where and when?”
“Ajax thinks we should share a meal. He says it’s easier to get to know new people when there’s something else to do.”
Eight chuckled. “He’s right.”
“Yeah. How about The Roost, about six-thirty?”
“That works. See you there.”
“Don’t you fucking flake, Eight Ball.”
He noticed she’d stopped calling him the name he hated. He was really fucking glad, but he wondered why she’d stopped stabbing him with that.
“I’ll be there, Marce. Cross my heart.”
“Okay. Good. See you later, then. Bye.”
The call over, Eight put his phone away and faced himself in the mirror. His nose was already turning purple, and the skin under his eyes as well. Rad had managed a couple good strikes in that small space.
Welp, his kid would get to meet him as he really was.
His kid.
Hiskid.
Fucking hell, he had akid.
He barely made it to the toilet before he was sick.
~oOo~
The Roost was a Tulsa institution. Around longer than Eight had been alive, it had reinvented itself several times. It had started out as a greasy-spoon kind of place, and then remodeled into a family-style restaurant more like a Denny’s, but without the assembly-line franchise atmosphere. Then it had tried out a ‘sports bar’ thing. Then Toots Bingham, the original owner, had finally kicked, and the family had sold the place. The new owner had taken it back to its roots and buffed it up a little. Now, The Roost was just a good neighborhood restaurant, serving homestyle country cooking and specializing in the best fucking fried chicken in the Great Plains.
That chicken had been the one constant in all its incarnations. The family must have sold Toots’ recipe for buttermilk breading with the restaurant.
Normally, Eight loved eating here. Tonight, however, he’d been sitting on his Fat Boy for pushing ten minutes. Just sitting here, staring at the restaurant. Marcella was sitting at a booth in the front corner, smiling and laughing as she talked. Every now and then, she glanced toward the front door. He was parked off to the side a bit, and she hadn’t seen him yet. Even if she looked his way, it was probably too dark to make him out.
From his vantage, Eight could see her, but not the person she sat with.
His kid.
Hisson.
A faint wave of nausea went through him again, and he cleared his throat to settle it down.
