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I follow his voice in the dark to find him standing beside Jovie’s little, blue car.
“What is it?” I ask.
He gestures into the window and I look inside to see Jovie lying across the backseat. Her backpack is stuffed under her head like a pillow. She’s wrapped up in her coat with the hood barely covering her head. Her eyes twitch, deep in slumber.
I tap my flashlight off, feeling instantly sober. “Tuck, call Marv. Tell him it was a false alarm.”
“And what are you gonna do?”
“Just do it, man.”
He lowers his light, hesitating for a moment before nodding. “All right.”
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” I say, keeping a concerned eye on Jovie.
Tucker walks off slowly. As he approaches the garage exit, I hear him talking into his phone and the door slides closed.
I watch her sleep and suddenly remember the last time I did. It was a cold night in February. I’d already bought the ring I planned to give her. I sat at my desk, trying to come up with the perfect way to propose to her, when I heard the knock on my window. There she was, standing outside with tears in her eyes.
‘Hank,’she said.
I let her inside and she curled up in my bed like a shaking cat. I spent the night with one eye on her and another on my door just in case anyone decided to come walking in without knocking. She snuck out with the sunrise the next morning. I never did get an explanation but I never got the chance to ask for one either.
I reach out and tap twice on the window.
Jovie shoots up instantly, her sleepy, panicked eyes firing off in every direction.
“Jove, it’s me,” I say. “Open up.”
She lays a hand over her heart and exhales. “Fucking hell, Will…” she gasps before sliding over and popping the lock.
I open the door and lower myself onto the backseat.
“You scared the hell outta me!” She slaps my shoulder and scoots back to make extra room for me.
“And you scared the hell outta Lola down the street.”
She yawns. “That old bitch is still alive?”
“One more good fright like this might do it, I think,” I joke, closing the door behind me. “What are you doing in here?”
“Sleeping,” she answers.
“Right. Why?”
She laughs and rubs her neck. “Hank.”
“He kicked you out?”
“He got drunk and decided the extension on my rent he already agreed to give me wasn’t legally binding, so I walked out to let him sleep it off.”
“He’s charging you rent?”
“Seventy-five bucks a week. I figure he won’t remember the fight tomorrow. Never did before.” She buries her nose in her jacket. “Ugh, I can still smell his booze on me…” She pauses and leans over to sniff me. “No, wait. That’s you.”
“Tuck and I were having a few drinks when Marv called about someone breaking into the shop. You’re lucky he called me and not the police.”
She rolls her eyes. “No one’s gonna arrest me for sleeping in my own property.”
