AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I don’t want to talk about it, Gun.”
“JJ, come on. You know I was in your shoes for a long time, right? Running the pumps, stewing in shit watching everybody else get to do real work. I fuckin’ suck at exams—everything about book learning, really. Then Leah talked me into getting diagnosed with dyslexia, and I got ... whatchacallit ... special consideration for the exams. They gave me somebody to read the exam to me. That’s how I passed.”
“I’m not dyslexic, Gun. I read fine.”
“I know. But maybe there’s somethin’ else goin’ on. You know this shit. You’re good at the work. So it’s gotta be somethin’ about the exams. Maybe you have that test anxiety thing. Larissa has that. She gets extra time and a special room for exams. Her grades came way up once she got to take her time and be on her own.”
Anxiety? Just another name for fear. And Gun’s daughter was a fluttery little girly girl. Great, now Gun was calling him a pussy, too. His good day was going down in flames. “I don’t have anxiety. I just suck. And I’m done fuckin’ talking about it.”
Gun stared hard at him. “You’d seriously rather pump gas than do something to help you pass the ASE. That is some pussy bullshit right there.”
Jay was very fucking tired of being called a pussy.
His first impulse, and a powerful one at that, was to drive his fist straight into Gunner’s nose. But Gun was in his fifties. He was scrappy as fuck and the one who’d taught Jay to fight dirty, but he was an old man, thirty years his senior. Jay would feel bad even to fight him in the ring.
Besides, if he punched him right now, Gun would definitely punch back, and then they’d be going at it in the service bays in the middle of a weekday afternoon.
He was trying not to be reckless. So he reined in the impulse for violence and instead simply said, “I’m going to NAPA on my own. Get your own fuckin’ burrito,” and walked away.
––––––––
~oOo~
––––––––
Jay shoved his bathroomkit in his pack and zipped the pack up. As he put it on his shoulder, he considered the state of his room. Should he make his bed?
Nah. Making the bed would be like putting a bow on a dumpster.
“Come on, pups,” he called, and Marv and Rose followed him out of the room.
They’d been following him around since he got up, even cramming their unwieldy bodies into the bathroom with him. They knew anybody getting up before dawn was going away, and they attached their snouts to his ass like they thought he’d forget they were there and let them follow him to Nevada.
In the kitchen, Mom was pouring kibble into their bowls, but the dogs even thought twice about that, their heads swinging to Jay and to their food.
“Go on, it’s breakfast time.” He waved them off. Marv, extremely food-motivated, went first. After one last longing look at Jay, Rose followed her brother.
“Do you have time for breakfast?” Mom asked. It wasn’t quite dawn yet, but she always got up when one of her guys was leaving on a run. With Pop retired and Zach moved away, it didn’t happen that often anymore. In the olden days, she used to pack Zach and him up and follow Pop to the clubhouse to see him off, but she hadn’t done that in a long time. Most old ladies and girlfriends said goodbye to their Bulls in private these days.
“Sorry,” he answered her as he ripped a banana off the bunch in the fruit bowl. “I gotta move.”
“Okay, but hold on.” She opened the bread box and pulled out two plastic containers, one about twice as big as the other. She set them on the counter in front of him and tapped the smaller container on top. “That’s for you. Peanut butter blossoms. The other one’s for Zach and Lyra.” She gave him a narrow, wise look. “He asked for them, so he knows they’re coming. Only the top container’s for you.”
“The small one. Yeah, I got it. Typical.” He was mostly teasing, but Mom frowned.
“You live with the peanut-butter-blossom maker, Jacob. At least, this is where your mail comes. You’ve hardly been home the past few days. Everything okay?”
“I was just messin’ around about the cookies, Mom. And yeah, everything’s good. Just busy.”
Busy being with Petra as much as he could be. After their date on Tuesday, he’d spent Wednesday and Thursday night at her place, even doing laundry there so he had some clean clothes. He would have spent last night, too, but he knew Mom would have chased him down the highway if he hadn’t had this morning thing with her before he left on a run.
Usually Pop was up to say goodbye, too. Jay had been avoiding him since Tildy’s party, but he wanted to say goodbye. Ninety percent of the time, club runs, even when they were hauling black market weapons, went smoothly, but every Bull knew any run could go wrong at any time. They made sure to have their goodbyes.
“Where’s Pop?”
A dark cloud went through Mom’s eyes. “He’s sleeping. He’s had a rough couple of days, I think.”
Jay stopped in the middle of putting the cookie containers in his pack. “Like heart trouble rough?”
