Baker snaps a rubber band off a wad of bills and slaps it into my palm like he’s doing me a favor instead of screwing me over.
“Tell your landlord he’ll get the money next week,” he grunts. “This is all Fisher told me to give you.”
The cash is warm and grimy, like he’s been storing it in his boot or his underwear. Two hundred bucks. Not five.
I stare at it a beat too long, then I smile, slow and flat.
“Cute. Where’s the part where you stop fucking with me?”
“Crew needs supplies for Easter,” he says, like that explains everything. “You’ll get the rest when it blows over.”
I peel my fingers off the cash as the familiar anger in my chest pulls at my ribs.
“Right,” I say. “And in the meantime, I’m supposed to pay rent with good intentions and the spirit of the holiday?”
Baker doesn’t even blink. I flick the cash back at him, and he just lets it hit the floor.
“This isn’t the crew’s flop house,” I say mildly. “My landlord doesn’t let off the hook like that.”
Baker shrugs, looking around the loft again like he’s appraising it for scrap. I can practically hear the judgment. The cannery this, the cannery that. They all love pretending that living with the crew is better than paying a little bit more cash and getting the comfort for it.
“You could’ve moved into the cannery months ago,” he says. “Don’t act like you’re better than the rest of us.”
“Oh, absolutely,” I nod. “Who wouldn’t want to live in a fish mausoleum with free tetanus and a side of pneumonia.”
His lip curls.
“Roof’s still freer than yours. But sure, keep pretending that promise to some old woman is worth sleeping with one foot out the door every month. Your grandmother’s dead, Talon. Nobody cares about your silly little promise.”
My smile stays exactly where it is. My jaw doesn’t.
He doesn’t get it, that’s the thing. Guys like Baker think loyalty can exist only for those who are still there to threaten you with a bullet. Nobody ever gave him a reason to believe otherwise.
I’ve got a different story.
One day, my grandma just… acquired a child. As in: my addict mother dropped me on her porch during a rainstorm, wrapped in a literal trash bag because that’s all she had clean, and left me there. And instead of dumping me off at some state home like anyone else would’ve, Gran brought me inside, cleaned me up, and put me in her bed.
She didn’t have much, but she made me promise one thing before she died. Don’t end up like that bitch. Get a flat. Own a car. Learn which pills to keep in the medicine cabinet and which ones rot your brain. Keep your shit clean. Keep yourself clean.
I’ve kept that promise, mostly. The loft isn’t much, but it’s mine. The rent’s late sometimes, but the walls don’t smell like dead fish, and the mattress isn’t soaked through with saltwaterand mold. And when I wake up, I don’t hear rats fighting over garbage. That’s worth something.
Of course, the one thing Gran never planned for was that I’d end up funding all this ‘clean living’ with money from a crew that couldn’t keep a glove compartment organized if their lives depended on it. Christ, they barely know what day of the week it is, let alone rent day.
But I don’t say any of that. Because Baker’s petty with a capital ‘P’, and for someone I’d love to hit with a chair, I want his favor. You offend him once and he’ll make sport out of ruining you. Man shot a guy because someone laughed at one of his tattoos. And honestly, they should’ve laughed harder. That girl on his arm looks like she’s permanently taking a shit on his skin.
I squat to gather the scattered cash.
“Why wasn’t this prepped earlier?” I ask. “It’s Easter. You’d think nobody could fuck up remembering a national calendar event.”
Baker comes over to my beat-up couch and throws himself so hard on it, I swear he wants to break it. He puts his boots up on my coffee table and the heel of one scuffed sneaker digs into a stack of car mags I’ve been meaning to sell.
“Legs. Off.” I shove until his heel thuds to the floor.
He gives me a lazy smirk. “So proper.”
“Fuck yeah. They called and said I'm a long lost prince. Didn’t you know?”
He laughs. It’s the kind of laugh that collapses halfway into a cough from too much weed, and then he has to wipe his nose with his thumb. When it passes, he exhales like the room suddenly got heavy.
