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“But if you can’t get to the bedroom, you shoot and you don’t think twice about it. If it’s you against someone else, you always have to pick yourself.”
“Got it,” he agreed, suddenly looking a lot younger to me. I probably should have been telling him to go back to his place where he was, relatively, safe. But as a former kid who wanted an out, and hadn’t been offered one, I couldn’t rip it away from him now that he had it.
“Good. I’m gonna pick up a new door. That piece of shit could be kicked in by an eighty-year-old with a double knee replacement,” I said, shaking my head at it. “Maybe I’ll try to get that done tonight.”
“I can help,” Joel offered as he grabbed two mugs.
“Yeah?” I asked.
“My old man, he did construction. Before he jacked up his back and…” he trailed off.
I didn’t need help filling that in.
Workplace accidents to prescription pills to street drugs. It was a lot more common than people realized.
“I know some things,” he added, pouring two cups of coffee.
“Good. Because I don’t,” I admitted.
“But you know how to kick ass, which is, arguably, better,” he said, holding out a mug toward me.
“How about you teach me home maintenance shit, and I teach you to fight,” I offered.
“Deal,” he agreed, turning to put a cup of sugar in his mug before drinking.
The food showed up, and we ate over another episode of Buffy before he had to dip into his apartment to get a change of clothes. It was quiet for a change, his parents worn out from fighting finally.
I got myself together by the time he came back, and we walked out together.
“Aren’t you supposed to wait for Dav?” he asked, shooting me a knowing glance.
“I’m not supposed to wait for anyone,” I told him. “We’re both equals in the organization. I’ve been going out on my own since I was nineteen.”
“But—“ he objected.
“I’m fine,” I insisted, waving him off as he ducked down the street for the high school as I kept moving.
The thing was, I actually wanted to wait for Dav.
That was exactly why I didn’t.
I didn’t want to start getting dependent on someone else because I was doubting myself. That wasn’t how a capo acted. Sure, we had crews. We had men and women to rely on when a job was too big. But I didn’t need someone hanging over my shoulder watching me do my job.
So I began working on the mental list I’d started as I got myself ready for the day. All the names of the people who I did jobs with, who might be pissed at me.
And I… started dropping in for unexpected visits.
I figured the best way to truly gauge if someone was holding a grudge was to show up unexpectedly and see their knee-jerk reactions.
The first two people I visited had just been perplexed, not understanding why they were seeing me again when things had been squared away for so long.
The third snorted at me as I walked in, shaking his head. “Here to take the actual food out of my mouth?” he’d asked. “That’s about all I got left.”
But that was all bruised pride and the frustrations that came with life beating you down.
Not something he’d hire people to attack me about. He couldn’t even afford it if he wanted to.
“You seen this guy around?” I asked them each, holding out my phone to show the picture of Chet.
