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So he wasn’t the only one who’d noticed. “Why do you think I’m out here jogging in twenty degrees? Pedro’s on my ass.”
“Yeah, you better watch that one. Hey, anytime you want to leave more signed photos around…”
“I got you. I’ll drop some off later.” Archie used them to promote the bar, and he was fine with that.
“Good, I’ll spread the word among the female population.” Archie winked at him. “Reminds me, a girl came in earlier asking when you’d be here. Didn’t recognize her.”
“What girl? What did she look like?” He racked his brain for anyone who knew about his connection to Deuces, but who Archie wouldn’t recognize, and came up empty.
Archie shrugged. “Normal. Young-ish. Blond-ish.”
“Not Jenna.”
“Fuck, man, of course not. I know Jenna. The only time she comes here is when she has to pick up her dad.”
Jenna’s dad…
A memory came flooding back of the first time he’d met Jenna’s father, right here at Deuces.
Jenna was supposed to meet him at their usual place by the lake, but she was late, and when she flew down the path toward him, he knew something was wrong. Her face was bright pink and streaked with tears.
“Is your car here?” she demanded before he could even speak.
He gestured to where his ancient hand-me-down Sentra was parked. “Yeah, what’s wrong?”
“I’ll explain on the way.” She grabbed his hand and they raced toward his car. He’d never seen Jenna like this. Compared to him, she always had her shit together. Good grades, good attitude, good friends, a good after-school job at city hall. She was like a sunshiny day in the form of a pretty girl. He never told her this, but he often felt like the dark side of the moon compared to her.
But now she was frantic, and she needed his help.
“I can’t reach Annika,” she said when they were zooming down the road headed out of town. “She has to turn her phone off in class. I couldn’t get the car started. I rode my bike here.”
“Should we go back and grab it?” He started to slow down.
“No! Just bring me back when we’re done. And Billy.” She made him turn away from the road to meet her desperate gaze. “You have to promise me you’ll never say anything about this to anyone. Not your brothers, not anyone.”
“About what?”
“Promise!”
Even if he wasn’t crazy obsessed with her, even if he didn’t live for the moments he got to kiss her, he would have promised her anything. She was so panicked, so urgent.
He understood when they walked into Deuces and found a man staggering in the middle of the bar, a wine bottle raised in the air as he recited some kind of epic poem by memory. He wore a conductor’s hat and a hobo-looking coat, and looked about as different from Jenna as a person could—except for those gray eyes, which were just like hers.
“Sometimes my father goes on a bender,” she explained in a whisper as they hesitated in the entryway, which was papered with flyers and business cards. “He won’t let anyone get close to him except me or my sister.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Just drive. I’ll do the rest.”
He didn’t like that; he knew how to handle people under the influence. He was an expert at dealing with his mother, guiding her into a bed, making sure she wasn’t on her back, covering her up so she didn’t get cold.
Jenna approached her father cautiously, step by step across the floor planks littered with sawdust and peanut shells. “Papa? Are you ready to go home?”
He swung toward her, brandishing the wine bottle. “What’s the next line? What is it?”
She recited a few lines in some flowery poetic Old English type of verse, and Billy realized that taking care of her father was nothing like taking care of his mother.
Except for the standing-by-while-they-threw-up part. And the getting-them-to-safety part.
