“Hell no. I’m not a stalker. I came to the closest hardware store to the Blue Dog to pick up a couple of packs of lightbulbs. The one in the men’s bathroom went out.” He looked begrudging as he answered my questions. I trailed my eyes down to his hand and saw that he was carrying a white plastic bag at his side. “And as for what happened in there, I think you meant to thank me.’”
I sighed, breaking eye contact. He was right. I was embarrassed about the whole thing, but I still owed him some gratitude.
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” he said. Blade started walking backward toward his bike so that he could still speak to me as he walked away. “It’s okay to need help sometimes, tough girl.”
I didn’t have a response to that. He’d helped me out back there, and I didn’t want to fight with him right now. So, I turned around and walked away, deciding to buy my paint from somewhere else on another day.
Twenty
Blade
“That’s one sweet-ass ride, man,” I turned toward the voice speaking and saw a group of four men standing on the edge of the Blue Dog’s parking lot. They were all smoking joints and looked like biker wannabes. They were toocleanwith their perfectly trimmed fingernails and leather jackets that looked like they just came off the hanger at the store.
“Thanks,” I said with a nod, but I didn’t stop to talk.
Walking into the bar, I waited for a second for my eyes to adjust before looking around. Trainer was sitting in his usual spot at the bar, while Hawk and Pin played a game of pool in the back. It looked like they both sucked, but half of their attention was on a college football game on the flat screens hanging around the bar.
The only other person in the place was Axel, who was behind the bar. I took a seat next to Trainer, and Axel handed over a beer before I even had to ask.
“What’s up?” I asked Trainer as I shrugged out of my jacket.
“Taking Eve on a date tonight,” he shrugged. “Little time out of the house without the kids.”
“Nice.”
“It would be nicer if she’d let Swole keep the kids overnight.”
I laughed. Poor guy must have been sex-deprived since the baby came along. “Why won’t she?”
“She says Ashley is too little to be away from us overnight.”
“At three months old? She must be crazy. That girl should have her own place by now.”
Trainer punched me in the arm. I thought it was meant to be playful, but the guy was so damn big that he couldn’t seem to help packing a wallop.
“You know I’m crazy about my baby girl, but I want a night with my wife.”
“That’s a bummer,” I said. I really didn’t have any pearls of wisdom for the guy. I had never spent much time around kids and had no intention of having my own.
“Gee, thanks. What about you? What are you up to tonight?”
I lifted my beer bottle and gave him a wry grin. “Just a whole lot of this.”
“Now,that’sthe bummer.”
I shrugged. I was just glad that it wasn’t my turn to go walk around with a metal detector for three hours. That was probably why the bar was so empty on a Friday evening. We’d probably get some townies in later, mostly women looking for a good time. I didn’t see myself picking any of them up, though. I couldn’t get my stupid mind off Kat long enough to take anyone else to bed.
The door of the bar opened again, and I glanced over to see the four men from the parking lot enter. The smell of pot clung to them, and they were all downright giddy.
“What’s up, boys?” the same man that had addressed me asked the room at large as the four of them took a table near the jukebox.
None of us answered directly. We just watched him as he approached the bar.
“Four of your finest domestic brews for me and my buddies,” the man said, slapping a fifty-dollar bill on the bar.
Ah, that made sense. This guy was probably from Fletcher Pointe, a wealthy town just to the east of La Playa. We got people like this in here sometimes, rich guys that wanted to play like they were tough guys. They had romanticized the biker life, or maybe they thought it would get them women, and the ultimate way of showing off was to come to arealbiker bar, to fraternize with the Outlaw Souls as if they belonged. People like this were generally harmless and occasionally amusing.
