“So, what, you’re going down there alone?” I squinted at her, not really buying it.
“I hope not, I want to take Joplin with me. She’ll be better off with me than in the place she is now.”
“Yeah? Why isn’t she here now?”
“She’s only fifteen. My mom will let me take her, but when she sobers up, she’ll report it and claim ignorance. I’d rather be in Texas than Illinois when that happens.”
“You intend to adopt her?”
“She’s better off with me,” Crystal repeated, her attention shifting from me as the waitress returned.
She laid the food out and flashed a smile before heading off again.
“So, what’s your story?” Crystal asked, while pinching a piece of breading off her cauliflower. Steam rolled out of the opening she created.
“What do you mean?”
She dunked the cauliflower in her ranch and studied my face like she was imploring me to be serious, “You want me to believe thedreams you’re selling, and you say you’re real, but you’ve told me more about your brother, than you have yourself.”
I broke up the two crackers in the plastic pouch, ripped the corner off and poured it over the soup, “What do you want to know?”
“The things you don’t tell people. What’s your biggest secret?”
I huffed, folded the crackers into the soup and glanced toward her, “If you were mine, I’d answer.”
“Yeah?” She almost sounded shocked before the sarcasm bled in, “And what percentage of the truth would that answer carry?”
“Damn, girl…” I dropped the spoon and tried my best to look wounded.
“I saw who you entered the Cabaret with, your friends. One introduced us, remember?”
“What does that mean?” I asked.
She smiled and returned her attention to her cauliflower.
“Nah, what does it mean… To you?” I repeated.
“Your patch? Not a damn thing. I’ve seen it around Swanwick.” She shook her head and raised a single shoulder. “But I wasn’t around long enough to get tangled up with them.”
“Then what makes you think I’d have anything to lie to you about?”
She slowly nodded her head and cleared her throat, before saluting me with her tea. “See.”
Her eyes said more than her lips, she shut up after that one little word, wrapped them around the straw and stared at me while she sipped.
“What am I supposed to see?”
“You don’t have any reason to lie to me, and yet you’d have me believe the Steel Disciples are–”
“An MC,” I finished for her.
“As long as we agree they’re not boy scouts.” She smirked and spooned some of her soup.
“They’re my family, my friends.”
“What about your aunt and brother?”
I gently bobbed my head in confirmation, “It’s been the two of us since I was in middle school.”
