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Summer promised to stay out of it going forward. I got the same text from Summer as my ma; I ignored it.
The phone went dark after I didn’t answer Francie’s call, but then there was a moment of silence in the movie where it started up again, and Gigi’s head popped up. She reached for her phone and as she got it into her grasp, she deflated.
“Shit,” she muttered, eyes bouncing to my face.
Life had been blissfully Francie-free for weeks.
I paused the movie as it was clear she was about to answer. She did, carefully rolling off me onto the floor beside me, with a timid, “Hello?”
I rose to go take a piss as soon as I heard the raspy bitchiness coming through the phone.
When I was back, she was still holding the phone to her ear, so I decided I’d had enough movie time, shut the TV off, made sure the place was locked, then headed for bed with a paperback.
She joined me a few minutes later. “Can we stop by there before we go back to Aberdeen?” she asked hesitantly, crawling in beside me.
“For?”
“She’s threatening to throw Kailey’s boxes out.”
“She’s what?”
“Kailey left some boxes in the closet and she’s threatening to throw them out.”
“That’s why she called tonight and called twice in a row?”
“I don’t know what’s in there, but I don’t want her throwing them out without looking. It’s probably mostly junk, but I wanna go through them.”
I shoved away my irritation. “Yeah, all right.”
“I think this is her way of getting me there. Getting me to visit.”
“No shit, Sherlock,” I muttered.
“You don’t have to come in. You can just wait in the truck. I’ll grab the boxes and we can just go. Or I can-”
“I’m not makin’ you face her on your own.”
She exhaled hard. “I’ve messaged her a bunch of times since moving to Aberdeen and she never says much, won’t give me much of an update. This’ll maybe gimme a chance to make sure she’s really okay.”
“And if she’s not?” I asked.
She winced.
“We’ll see where things are at tomorrow,” I amended. “No point getting ahead of ourselves. I’m sayin’ one thing though.”
“Okay…”
“You’re not stayin’ there with her.”
She stared without speaking but her lip-biting tell made me add, “I mean it, G.”
She nodded. I didn’t like the hesitation in her eyes, but no point getting into a spat before we saw what was what, so my eyes moved back to the book in my hand.
***
A twenty-year-old pickup truck sat in the driveway behind Francie’s minivan.
“Shit,” Gigi whispered, eyes on it.
“Who’s truck?”
“My father’s,” she whispered. “Maybe we should just-”
The screen door swung open and Francie appeared in the doorway, eyes on us, Gigi’s hair on her head.
“Fuck,” Gigi clipped. And then her eyes cut to me. “Maybe you can wait out-”
“Nope,” I stated unmistakably.
“Fuck,” she repeated.
“You gonna be pissed if I’m not nice?” I asked as I threw it into park.
“Um…”
I threw the door open, opened the tailgate, then walked to her side and opened her door, reaching for her hand.
“I gotta be nice?” I asked.
“I wouldn’t ever ask you to be anybody but who you are, baby,” she whispered.
I planted a wet one on her mouth, grabbed her hand and strolled up the walkway knowing more than ever that this was my fucking girl.
“Francie,” I greeted.
“Hey Aunt Francie,” G greeted, giving her a hug.
“Jesse,” she returned looking smug while patting her niece’s back.
Smug?
“Gonna go grab those boxes you’re in such a hurry to get rid of. Where are they?”
“Four of ‘em in the closet in the spare room,” she told me, a weird gleam in her eyes as she sidestepped, holding the door open for me.
I marched in. On the couch sat a slim, tall blond guy in his upper forties or early fifties. Grey around the temples. Slight receding hairline. Gigi had his blue eyes. And his chin cleft. His was more pronounced. His eyes narrowed on me.
“Who’re you?”
“Hey, Daddy,” Gigi greeted from behind me.
I looked over my shoulder at her. There was no cheerfulness in her voice. I heard what sounded like fatigue.
Yeah, she was probably sick of this man’s bullshit.
“Oh hey, Lil’ Bit. This your boyfriend? Francie said you hooked up with a biker.”
He held out his hand for me to shake.
I could take it as a sign of disrespect that he didn’t stand up, but it was a miscalculation on his part because I got to look down at him as I shook his hand. What I wanted to do was punch his face.
“Grant Jones. So, you’re the biker?”
“Jesse Garcia. Yeah, I am.”
“You a Mexican, too?” He looked me over and my back went straighter.
“What if I am?”
My ma’s parents are Portuguese, Romanian, and Colombian. My father was Mexican and British. Not that it was any of this clown’s fucking business.
He raised his hands defensively. “Just a question.”
