Sidecar Crush

My truce offering was met with a chorus of ayes. Including Gibs.

“Count us up, Scar.”

“One,” she said. “Two… three.”

Bowie and I nodded to each other, dropped the food in our hands and stood, looking warily over at Gibson. He held his empty hands up slightly, and we did the same.

“Y’all clean up this mess,” Scarlett said. She went over to the cooler and started pulling out beers—handed them to the girls. They dragged chairs to the side of the room and sat, like they were standing guard over the clean-up. Probably not a bad idea, that.

Gibson grumbled, but got to work. Bowie and I righted the table and we picked all the shit up off the floor. Money, chips, cards, and a ton of food. Took a solid forty-five minutes before the room was in decent shape again.

Sonny Fullson, Build-a-Shine’s owner, came in and appraised the room. His dark hair was shaggy and his black apron had the store’s name in white. “What the hell happened back here? Someone cheatin’ at cards?”

“Nah,” Bowie said, stepping up, as he usually did, to be the diplomat. “Sorry about all this, Sonny. We got a little carried away. We’ll all chip in extra for clean up.”

I half-expected Sonny to throw us all out and ban us from coming back. Instead, he put his hands on his hips and shook his head.

“Tell you what,” Sonny said. “Y’all make sure the Cock Spurs win next time you play the Perrinville Bootleggers. Those filthy buggers had no right using Bootleggers as their mascot. You win, we’re even. If not, we’ll work something out.”

“Sounds fair.” Bowie shook his hand.

Sonny went back out to the front. I’d avoided Gibson during clean-up, and he left first, sparing me the need to say anything to him. Leah Mae gave me a sympathetic smile when I grabbed my jacket and headed toward the door. I didn’t know what money was mine, and I didn’t much care. I just wanted to get out of there and be done with it.

Thankfully, Scarlett didn’t try to interrogate me. Just patted me on the arm before I left. I followed Leah Mae out and we got in my truck. Drove silently back to my place.

Under different circumstances, I’d have been laughing over it all. A bunch of grown men throwing food at each other. Certainly wasn’t the first food fight that had broken out between the Bodine brothers. But I had a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. The weight of everything was heavy on my shoulders. The gossip. My dad. Callie Kendall. My sculpture. Fighting with Gibs just made everything worse.

And Leah Mae. She was my refuge, yet there were still unanswered questions between us. Was she going to stay in Bootleg Springs? Was she making plans to go? I knew she wasn’t moving back to L.A., but where was she going next? Was this just a stopover while she figured things out? Was I just a distraction? I wasn’t sure.

All I knew was that I didn’t want to talk about it tonight. We got back to my place and I cleaned up. We curled up on the couch together to watch TV. Later, I took out some of my pent-up aggression on her, in ways she liked quite a lot. Fell asleep with her in my arms, exhausted and drifting in the scent of her…

…with a hint of guacamole.

28

JAMESON

A voiding Gibson was easy, with Leah Mae staying with me and plenty of reasons to not go out. Truth be told, I avoided all my siblings. Even Jonah. He was around, as roommates generally are, but he had a lot of clients in town now, so that kept him busy. Leah Mae visited her dad, and I spent time in my workshop.

Then, about a week after the taco fight, she dropped a bomb on me.

“I have to go to L.A. next week,” she said, her voice casual, like that wasn’t big news.

We were sitting out on the back porch while the sun went down, sipping some apple pie moonshine. I had on a thick flannel over my t-shirt to keep off the chilly September air, and she was wrapped in a light gray sweater, her cowboy boots dangling over the side of the wooden deck chair.

“I’m sorry, what was that?” I asked.

“The show’s final episode airs next week, so we’re all supposed to go to this big end-of-season party,” she said.

“Is the media going to be there?”