AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I’m ready to roll the dice.
I’m pretty sure I mean that.
ChapterThirty-One
Danny
I’m already on edge as I walk into the bar. It’s too early for it to be busy, but it’s already loud and bright. It’s a sensory assault, like if someone peeled my eyelids open and made me watch the cartoons Ruthie used to like when she was a kid.The Powerpuff Girls, specifically—all pink and purple and glitter. I wouldn’t exactly call it pleasant, being in here, and yet…
I see touches of Mira everywhere. In my mind’s eye, I can see her pouring the bar into resin molds, the way she told me she did. I can see her choosing the mismatched glassware with a mischievous grin, like she thought she was getting away with something, because her mother sounds like a woman who’d throw away a set just because one dish is missing. I can see Mira making the trays, all molded from records, and the decorations hanging from the walls. There’s so much of her here, and even though it’s overwhelming, I can’t hate it.
It’s a relief—an unexpected boon thrown to me by the universe.
I only make it a couple of steps before the bartender, a woman with a septum piercing and long, rainbow dyed hair, gestures for me to come over. I look behind me—nothing—and then back.
“Danny,” she says, leaving no doubt, or at least very minimal doubt, about who she’s talking to. “Mira asked me to set a booth aside for you.”
“Oh. Great. Thank you,” I say, the words stumbling over each other. “You must be Azalea.”
She lifts her eyebrows. “How’d you guess?”
“No one else is working here,” I say before realizing it’s a dumb response. “Sorry,” I add. “I’m a little…on edge.”
She slides out from behind the counter, slinging a tie-dyed rag over her shoulder. “It’s not every day you meet with an undercover detective who’s been following you around.”
“Jesus, how much did she tell you?” I say before I can moderate my reaction with a more polite response.
She grins. “Both more and less than I wanted to know.” Then she leads me over to a booth in the back. It’s quieter here. Darker.
Mira chose it for you because she knew being here would be a lot for you.
It’s a thought that comforts me—and troubles me. I don’t like having to be a person she makes accommodations for…but I also am that person.
“I’m going to go make you a Moment of Truth,” Azalea says. “Unless you want something different.”
“No, that seems pretty apropos right now.”
Her lips twitch like she wants to smile. I feel like telling her to go for it—the world would be better if people smiled when they felt like it and didn’t when they did not. “You’re not much like Mira’s other men.”
“I hope there aren’t too many of us,” I say as I lower into the back of the booth, facing the front door. Better to see what’s coming.
“What if I told you there was a whole army?” she asks, lifting her eyebrows.
“I’d have to figure out how to kill them all and make it look like an accident.”
Azalea laughs and slaps the top of the booth next to her.
Which is of course when I register that Big Mike is approaching us. He probably didn’t hear me, but it’s definitely not the sort of thing you should be caught saying when an undercover detective who’s taken an interest in you is in the vicinity.
“Would you like a drink?” I ask him. “Azalea here is getting me a Moment of Truth.” He looks like he’s having trouble parsing the sentence, so I lift up two fingers. “We’ll have two.”
“All right,” she agrees, still grinning. “Two existential dilemmas coming right up.”
“I feel like that would be a different drink,” I say, maybe to myself, “more bitter.”
She’s laughing again as she walks away. Well, I suppose there are worse impressions a man could make.
Big Mike looks confused as hell, which doesn’t feel like a bad thing. I want him to be off his game.
