"Do you think I'm being a bitch?" I asked after completely ignoring Dex when he stood by my desk, talking to a customer a few minutes before.
Slim cocked an eyebrow at me from behind the tablet he was currentlypeckingat. "A bitch?" He said the word so slowly it immediately made my hackles go up.
"Yeah."
He scrunched up his face. "I wouldn't say abitchexactly."
Oh lord.
For Slim of all people to put it like that...damn it. Guilt brushed at the sides of my mind. Did I have a good reason to stay mad? I thought so. On the other hand, did Dex have a good reason to have lost his shit like that? Not to that extent. To add onto that...he had tried to apologize in his own Dex-way.
Slim glanced up before looking back at the screen. "Do you want me to tell you the truth or do you want me to be nice?"
Double oh lord. Had I really been that much of a bitch?
"The truth, Slimmy," I huffed, already feeling like a jerk before my friend had even started talking.
"Well, Ris, you're kinda being just awee bitunreasonable," he stated evenly. Slim tapped at his tablet. "If somebody yelled at my sister like he yelled at you, I'd try to beat their ass." I almost snorted at the keyword in his sentence: try. But he kept going so I couldn't make a crack. "But if my sis did the shit you did, I would've yelled at her like that."
Ugh.
"He onlygot that pissed offbecause he cares, you know that?" he asked carefully, finally glancing up at me with those bright green eyes.
Andthat comment deflated me.
"Yeah..." I sighed.
"But," he winked, "That 'go fuck yourself' was pretty dead on, Rainbow Ris."
I had said that, hadn't I? Whoops.
Slim smiled indulgently, erasing the last pieces of anger that had clung to my chest. He had a point. "You ever do that shit again though, and I'll hunt you down myself next time. You got it?"
"Yeah, I got it."
And just like that, I felt a little relieved. Staying angry was toomuch work. I needed to figure out how to apologize to Dex without completely rolling over in submission. I wouldn't give him that much.
So when the phone rang a little while later, the chance fell onto... my desk.
"Pins and Needles, this is Iris speaking, how can I help you?"
A prerecorded message stated that I was receiving a call from an inmate at Byrd Unit.
The name triggered a memory of my dad. Was that where he'd gone to jail before he'd met my mom? Something steered me toward a yes.
I probably shouldhave hung up, but I stayed on the line while the call connected and my brain ran. Was my dad in jail? I didn't think it'd been long enough from the last time he'd been in town but there was a chance.
"'Lo?" a rough voice on the other end finally answered. It wasn't him. Ten years later, and I know I'd recognize his voice.
"Pins and Needles," I answered in a weirdway. Okay then, why would someone be calling the shop from jail?
There was some shuffling before the man spoke again. "I need to speak to Dex."
It hit me right then who was calling. There was only one other person in jail that would be calling Pins—Dex's dad. Crap!
It wasn't my place to guard his calls or any aspect of his life but I made myself forget that. He'd been in such a terrible mood since I'd blown him off at the theater, and this would tip his off-balance scales. There was no way in any dimension of hell that Dex would want to speak to his father.
"He's not available right now. I can take a message." A message that would be written in invisible ink.
