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“Leave Syd with Maggie for a few hours, come to the Roadside tonight and I’ll show you a good place to sit and watch from a distance. Before you toss everything away for an idea of what she’s doing, come and see what she is doing. And if it makes you want to crack a man’s skull in two for crossing a line, Cream’s got you off of a murder wrap once, twice shouldn’t be too hard. We’ll get you a punch card going where the tenth one is free.”
As if on cue, Sydney came out of Maggie’s with a Tupperware container in hand and a bright smile. Running down the porch and across the gravel road between the two places. If he did find a permanent home in Turnabout he might need to make it a trailer on the other side of Maggie’s.
“Daddy, Nana Maggie and I made monster cookies,” the little girl beamed, had it barely been a month ago she could barely lift her eyes to anyone and now she was able to find pockets of happiness. “Hey Hack, you want to try a cookie?”
“If Maggie taught you the way I’m sure she did,” Hack said, taking a M and M spotted cookie and he did the same. “You might have to hide the container from me.”
“Daddy, why is your face red?” she questioned, her hand gently touching the tender area right under his eye.
“Would you believe, Creek thought he could sneak up on me and test my fighting skills.”
“Like that silly movie we watched with the panther?”
“Yep, what can I say, he thinks he’s my Kato.” Mike laughed.
“That is silly, but Daddy, his name is Hack, not Creek,” Sydney corrected. “Because it makes him smile like when I call Porsche, Turbo.”
He didn’t want to be with Porsche for Sydney. She was a bonus for him, a mother who actually could be one and one who protected what he considered most precious.
“Hey Syd, if daddy had to go out for a little bit tonight, who would you want to babysit you?”
“Turbo.”
“Besides Turbo, she’s working,” he said.
“Um, would Rose come over here?” she asked Hack. “Or would I have to go over to your house?”
“We could do either,” Hack offered.
“I didn’t think you knew Rose.”
“I know everybody, Daddy.” Once again light illuminated her face. “Rose knows how to braid hair and she was teaching me.”
“I’ll bring Rose over around seven and swap her out for your dad, sound like a deal?”
Sydney nodded and Hack eyed the container of cookies.
“It’s going to cost you three cookies.”
“Two,” she said, being a shrewd negotiator. “You’ve already had one and I need to save some for Turbo.”
Snagging his fee, Hack stood and headed toward his bike. “Put some ice on that cheek, Bugs.”
“That an order, Hack,” Bugs replied.
“I do out rank you here, so yeah, it’s an order.”
Who gets nervous about going to a strip club? Seriously, Mike had lost his damn mind. The nausea and sharpened senses came from him not wanting to have the truth of it all to come full circle. It didn’t matter what Turbo or Hack said, he knew himself and couldn’t see a situation where he would be okay with her working at the Roadside. What happened to the college classes she was looking at? Following Hack in the car he’d been borrowing from Baldy since his truck was still at his mom’s, Bugs made his way into the town with so much even if it was so small it didn’t even have the one horse to make it one.
The music bled into the street. Gushing out of the place every time the door was opened, but leaking even when it was closed. The idea of a quiet place to raise your kid didn’t play out in the one street downtown area. There was a light on in the clinic across the street, but just one.
“Come on, you act like you’ve never been in a bar before,” Hack said. “I swear you’re like a damn guppy out here on his first leave.”
“In a port where the drinking age is eighteen not twenty-one,” he replied shaking his head at the visual. “Why am I nervous?”
“Because once you step in there you’re either going to confirm what Turbo is doing is more than you can handle and lose the woman you’re in love with,” Hack said. “Or you’re going to realize you’re a fuckwad and have to find a way to convince her you were an idiot and to take you back.”
“Maybe.”
