Page 6 of Mine

Most of our conversations degraded to name-calling, tickling, water fights, food fights, pillow fights, kissing, groping, rubbing, and then him held down and begging. It had been working seamlessly for two years.

The first thing I did was remove him from his circle and put him into mine. It wasn’t that my friends were paragons of virtue. They were not perfect. But they were loyal and trustworthy and dependable and true. They were also, it turned out, really possessive, just like I was. So when some guy put his hands on Landry in a club, by the time I got back from the bathroom, the guy had already been run off, humiliated, jeered at, and one time, because the guy wasn’t hearing the no, hit. The message was clear: Landry Carter was no longer available, and he would not be passing himself around like a party favor anymore. He belonged to me and me alone.

In the two years we had been together, the changes in the man were stunning. After six months, I helped him live out his dream of opening his own jewelry store, and in midtown Detroit, in the middle of a recession, he still did well. There was an online catalog and a website, and you could visit the showroom and order custom pieces once you got there. When people wondered why I was so beautifully accessorized, I always told them. My triple-wrap leather bracelets were always complimented, and he said the best thing he ever did was make me wear them. I saw so many people, and they all saw my bracelets and asked me where to get one. As far as I knew, I was the only runner who carried his boyfriend’s business card.

He was doing well. Business was booming, his jewelry was in several upscale boutiques downtown, and he had just hired a public relations firm to help him launch a new line geared to the department store crowd. I was very proud of him, and between my savings and his being on the cusp of greatness, we were poised to move, buy a house, buy other property, and start to see a change in our lifestyle from living paycheck to paycheck to having some extra cash in the bank. I had done my days of peanut butter and ramen noodles before I met him, but when we first moved in together, before he knew what he wanted to do, it had been both of us on my single feast or famine money cycle. But things were looking way up for us, so the timing, with his family suddenly appearing, made me wary.

“SO TELL me,” Chris said, returning me to the present from my walk down memory lane. “How does it work?”

I was confused. Me and Landry? “What?”

“What you do for the bookie, how does that work?”

Bookie? Who even used that word anymore?

“I can tell you,” Landry offered, sitting up, leaning forward out of my hold but still pressed against me, his leg sliding over mine.

“Okay,” Chris agreed, and I could tell he was dying to get Landry to open up to him at all. And I understood; I was a slave to having the man’s attention myself. “Guys call Trev and ask, like, hey, what’s the line on whatever game, or gimme the line for half of the game or the over or the under, and then they place their bets. If they win, they get whatever they bet, but if they lose, they gotta pay what they bet plus the juice.”

“Juice?” he asked.

“Yeah, that’s the money the house makes if you lose, it’s usually like 20 percent, but it could be more depending on the house. Trevan’s takes twenty.”

“Oh, okay.”

“But there’s all kinds of different bets,” Landry continued, fiddling with the black leather wrap bracelet on my left wrist, hematite and turquoise, before touching the hammered silver ring that made me look like I was married. “There’s teaser bets and parlay bets, but the more points you buy, the less your payout is.”

His eyes flicked to Chris to check if he was listening. He shouldn’t have worried.

“Let’s say,” he continued, “you have Green Bay and Indianapolis and the spread is ten points. Sometimes guys will say I want to teaser that bet by three points, so instead of the spread being ten points, it’s seven. But the more points you buy, the less your payout is.”

“Interesting,” Chris said, not caring in the least about my business but able to talk to his brother because of it. He looked over at me then. “So Trevan, where do you come in?”

“He’s the runner, like I said,” Landry answered for me. “Trev collects what’s owed and pays out winnings. On Monday and Tuesday he collects; on Wednesday he pays everybody.”

“So you’re popular on Wednesday.” Chris smiled at me.

“Pretty much, yeah.” I nodded.

“So what if guys don’t have the money to pay you? Do you break their legs?”

“No.” Landry grinned at him. “Trevan just cuts the guy off, and once the word’s out that you’re a welsher, you’re pretty much done, ya know?”

There was more to it than that, but my boyfriend did not need to know all the ins and outs of my business. I answered to the house, and if the guys that I went to collect from didn’t pay me, then the money had to come from somewhere. The house, or in this case, Adrian Eramo, didn’t care who paid me, he only cared that he got paid. Period.

“You’re not a cop now, are you?” Landry snapped suddenly, realizing everything he’d already said, his voice betraying him, the shiver in it. “You’re not here to hurt Trev.”

“No.” Chris’s voice nearly broke. “I’m here to get you to come home. That’s all I want. I’m just a college student, Lan, I’m completely nonthreatening, I assure you.”

Landry nodded, a quick shiver running through him as my phone rang. Normally I wouldn’t have even bothered with it, but the number was my boss, so I turned it to Landry so he could see it. He moved his leg from where it was between mine, and I stood up to answer it.

“Trev,” Landry said before I could walk away.

I looked at him but said nothing.

“Don’t be long.”

When I stroked my fingers through his hair, taking hold of a clump of it, he tipped his head back and closed his eyes. I bent and kissed his forehead, letting him go before I walked toward the living-room window that looked out on the park behind the apartment building. I answered by the eighth ring.