It sounded like a threat.
It was even meant as one.
But I knew, because I knew him, that it wasn't actually one. He was just trying to get his way without having to go over her head, without having to involve town committees and local politicians. Because, well, he and I both knew that the eighty-grand sure as heck didn't come from the tips he made at She's Bean Around on Saturday nights.
That was arms-dealing money.
And he would have a hard time explaining its origins if people started asking.
Barb, unable, she knew, to snap at an outlaw biker, jerked her head to me, chin raising, nose - as it often did - going up in the air. "Interesting company you keep, Miss Washington," she clucked, then turned on her barely-there heel, and stormed away to the other side of the lot where her own car was parked.
"She been giving you shit all day?" Cyrus asked, drawing my attention away from Barb's disappearing headlights - taking with her the only distraction I had from the upcoming confrontation with Cyrus.
And it had to be a confrontation.
There was no way around that, right?
You couldn't just run off, be a jerk for a month, then make a big gesture, and have everything go on like the former things never happened.
If there was one thing my mother had always drilled into me when I was younger - perhaps worried that my shyness, my timidity, my tendency to keep to myself, and allow those around me to do their own thing, would make me susceptible to being walked all over - it was that you teach people how to treat you. If you let something that upset you go without comment, you were inviting the behavior again. And again. And again. And you had no one to blame but yourself.
So if I wanted Cyrus to know that just disappearing without a word was not only hurtful, but unacceptable, I was going to have to do the unthinkable.
I was going to have to say something about it.
That was, well, as you can guess, not my strong suit.
Confrontation was simply not my thing.
Confrontation was Kenzi's thing.
In fact, when the DNA gods were handing out the confrontation genes, I was pretty sure they got jostled, and the whole can of it fell into Kenzi's pool, leaving none leftover for me.
Sure, once in a blue moon, when she was being especially difficult at the preparation of Sunday dinners, I maybe got in her face a little. But she was my sister. We had a lifetime of putting up with each other.
It was completely different.
And maybe you're wondering how I got to the ripe old age I was without having confrontations with a guy.
Well, my brothers treated me like spun gold. We never argued.
And with the boyfriends I had had, few and far between as they were, it had never seemed to get passionate enough, invested enough for either of us to start needing to fight over anything. Things just fizzled out, and eventually I kind of just said something about how they didn't seem happy, which was a roundabout way of saying I wasn't either, and it always led to an amicable end to the relationship.
But it would have likely been easier with my brothers or boyfriends than it was going to be with Cy.
Cy who was not my brother.
Cy who was not my boyfriend, but for whom I had decidedly boyfriend-like feelings for, who I didn't necessarily want to know I had such feelings for, but whom I wanted to know that doing the fair-weather friend thing to me wasn't going to fly, no matter what capacity he was in my life.
In or out.
No in between.
That was only fair, right?
"I know I'm a sexy motherfucker, Ree," his voice said, tone teasing, "but how long are you planning on staring at me?"
"I wasn't staring at you," I immediately denied. Though I totally had been. "I was thinking."
"About me?" he asked, head tipping to the side, watching me with eyes that were oddly unreadable for someone who had always been rather open with me.
Here goes. Ready or not.
"In a way," I agreed, nodding a bit, moving out of the street, but not exactly toward him either.
"Okay," he said, moving to lean his butt on the seat of his bike. "In what way?"
"That wasn't an apology," I blurted, closing my eyes at my words as soon as they were out of my mouth.
That wasn't the way to go about it, right? When you were having a discussion, it was supposed to be 'I' and 'me' words along with feelings.
I felt like my heart took a beating when you left my life.
I wanted that kiss.
That hurt me.
"What wasn't an apology?"
"The money. That money wasn't an apology."
"I know," he agreed.
"You... know?" I sputtered, shaking my head.