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Incredible as always, Bonez offers a contrite, singular nod, that says it all—you’re welcome, and please don’t screw over my brother, among a dozen other sentiments.
Before long, we hang up with the promise to keep in touch, and I return the phone to Big, who’s hovering on the outskirts, eavesdropping, and chatting with a man named Kai. The giant with a ponytail down his spine plucks the phone from my palm and deposits his cell into his back pocket. Not wanting to be a nuisance, I return to my chair. Adam pulled up another beside mine. He hands me a Styrofoam cup of tea. I accept it with a sad but gracious smile.
Then we wait.
And while we do, I overanalyze every morsel, down to the minutia, of what I’ve learned.
Gunz is visited by Niki. Seeing her. Feeling her. Explicitly.
Sucking on my bottom lip, I shiver at the thought.
That isn’t something you hear every day.
I close my eyes and try hard not to picture them together. I try not to think about him coming inside her. It’s futile. Because it’s all there. In vivid color. Them. Their relationship—the kissing, the fucking, the bond. Bile surges up my throat as the spike of jealousy does what it does best—takes root and poisons you from the inside out.
People have pasts. I understand this. That’s not a problem.
It’s the woman he screwed at the fire. The one with Niki’s face. The one he thought was her.
Bonez omitted most of the details but told me just the same. He’s probably concerned Gunz wouldn’t share, since he hasn’t been the most forthcoming, or maybe he wanted to take the heat off his brother. Perhaps a little of both. If I had a sibling I was as close to, that’s what I’d do.
Truth? From me to you… I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with all this information.
If you could help a lady out and give me your thoughts, I’d appreciate it. Because now I’m not just worried about him. I’m hurt even more than I was before. I’m…
Dammit.
I’m tired.
Resting my head on Adam’s shoulder, he drops a kiss there as I shove all these icky feelings down, way, way, way down, to deal with later. I’m done crying tonight.
I’m just… done.
Throughout the night, Loretta and Jade stop by to check on me before they leave. In and out, I doze, resting on my son—fifteen minutes here, half an hour there. For hours, we linger with no update. Apart from a nurse stopping by to see if we need our cart refilled and to flirt with the remaining brothers, we’re left in the dark.
Light filters through the tall windows as the sun rises.
Finishing what’s left of my now cold tea, I stretch a bit and massage a kink out of my neck. The surrounding chairs are filled with snoring brothers, most of who could use a trip to the ENT to get checked for sleep apnea. Their poor partners. I sure lucked out with my guy.
I sigh inwardly.
My. Guy.
Gunz.
Erik.
Less than six months ago, I was eating chicken over the sink for dinner, so I didn’t have extra dishes to wash. I spent my nights watching television and grading papers. On occasion, Adam and I would have lunch together.
Now look where we are.
My son’s wearing a leather vest with his name on it—Oz.
That’s what the brothers have named him. Oz. Adam and Gunz explained it to me over dinner one night. Something about it meaning strength. Also, Adam’s a bit like Dorothy, according to them. There was something in there about him following a path, making friends, encountering some witches, whatever that means, and making it back home—to the Sacred Sinners and his father. It’s poetic in its own way. Weird, too. When you’ve been calling your son Adam all his life, and now everyone around you calls him Oz, it’s an adjustment. Just as I’ve become Kit. No longer Melanie. That woman died the moment I rolled onto the SS compound in my jacked-up truck.
Life is…in the wise words of Forrest Gump,like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get.
And so, we wait to see what the next gooey filling has to offer.
