Page 101 of Tito

Tito

While Reggie and I shared our morning cup of coffee together, I received a text from the automated maintenance system warning me that a pump had failed in a north San Diego car wash.

Disappointed to cut our morning short, I finished my coffee and gave her a kiss. “Sorry, I’ve got to take care of this.”

“I understand.” She looked up and smiled. “I guess I’ll see you after I get off work.”

Reggie wasn’t a morning person. She often took an hour or so to crawl out of the shell that a night of sleep left her in. For some reason, however, she was in an exceptionally good mood for being awake no more than ten minutes.

I looked her over. Dressed in sweats and a weathered tee shirt, she was wearing her hair in a sloppy bun. She looked adorable.

I grinned at the sight. “For just waking up, you’re rather spry this morning.”

“I had really vivid dreams last night,” she explained. “In one, I lived in a treehouse. I had this crazy long hair. Like, thirty feet long. It cascaded out the window of the treehouse and all the way to the ground. Down below, there were flowers everywhere. I think it was in a forest. A flower forest. Anyway.” She shrugged. “Maybe those dreams made me happy.”

“Like Rapunzel,” I said.

She gave me a confused look. “Huh?”

“Your hair. Sounds like Rapunzel. The fairy tale from the Brothers Grimm?”

Her eyes widened. “Oh. Rapunzel. Yeah. I never put two and two together.” She sipped her coffee. “I’ll give that some thought while you’re fixing your pump.”

I kissed her. “I love you, Rapunzel. See you this evening.”

She smiled. “Love you, too.”

By eleven o’clock the pump was repaired, and I had nothing else to do. A ride along the coast brought a sense of peace, but not what I was accustomed to.

Our botched robbery left each of us searching for a way to rid our minds of what happened. It seemed the only thing that worked for me was to spend time away from the club. In the absence of the members of the MC, I was able to deny my participation in the events of that night, leaving me to dwell in a fictitious world where they were responsible, and I was nothing more than an innocent bystander.

Guided by my nothing more than my heart’s desire, I rode all the way to El Cajon. As I came to a stop in the shopping mall’s parking lot, I smiled to myself. I hadn’t made a conscious decision to see Reggie. I’d ridden the thirty miles to her place of work without a moment’s thought of where I was going or what I was doing. Eager to see her—and hoping she could slip away to the food court for lunch—I meandered into the mall.

Upon seeing me walk into the store, Raymond looked up from organizing a display of surf attire. “Hey, Taddeo.”

“How’s it going, Raymond?”

“Splendidly,” he replied. He cocked his hip and gave me a quick once-over. “Do you feel strangely unsatisfied this morning?”

He was wearing a pair of turquoise-colored pants and a yellow tee shirt, both of which fit him like a coat of paint. As always, his hair and makeup defined perfection. A pair of spotless Old School Van’s completed his wardrobe.

Brows raised, he waited for me to respond. His eyes glistened with guilt. He looked like the cat that got away with eating the canary.

“Not particularly,” I responded with a laugh. “Why?”

“Oh, no real reason.” He diverted his attention to the shirts, but it didn’t last long. He adjusted the same stack that he was messing with when I arrived, and then looked up. “Do you have, I don’t know, a lot of pent up frustration, or anything?”

I cocked an eyebrow. “What going on, Raymond?”

He examined his cuticles. “Oh, nothing.”

I raised my other brow. “Spill it, Raymond.”

He looked like a suspect that had been interrogated by police for six solid hours and was on the cusp of telling them everything they wanted to know.

He looked away. “I can’t.”

“You will,” I demanded, trying my best to keep from laughing.