“Sounds about right.”
Decoy slid another bottle across the bar. “How are you doing? We’ve missed you.”
“Really?” Five bottles and three Jägerbombs deep, my scepticism was harder to contain. “I don’t bring shit to your life, bro.”
Decoy’s steady gaze didn’t waver. “I used to think that about myself.”
“What changed?”
“Folk.”
“Not my type.”
Unoffended, Decoy grinned. “Regardless, it’s good to see you.”
He left it at that and got busy serving the crowd as the bar filled up with after work drinkers. Brothers, members, hang-arounds. I knew most of the faces, liked about three of them. And even then, I didn’t care enough to communicate more than a vague up-nod.
Regretted that. Being around people kept my mind busy, and I’d learned the hard way what happened these days when my subconscious was left to its own devices, vacillating between picturing Viktor half naked on his living room floor, and half dead on the muddy ground. It was a shade less fucking hideous than imagining him dead for real, but the difference was minimal, and my mood tanked. Some arsehole put the football on. My dad’s team was playing and the beer in my belly turned to acid.
I turned away from it, gripping a beer bottle with an iron fist, but the stadium noise deafened me, the green of the pitch flashing in my peripheral.
Fucking hate football.
Lies. I didn’t. I hated how it made mefeel. The grief, the anger, the fear, and it sucked arse to be scared of something that had already happened. To be afraid of a festering wound that was never going to heal.
Decoy reached over the bar. “All right, mate?”
I evaded and walked out, cold air hitting me. A drizzle of rain. Acrid smoke in my lungs. None of it cured the pain, but away from the blare of the TV, it hurt less, giving way to Viktor again.
Irritated, I copped a seat on the bar steps, nursing my smoke. A bunch of old guard had to weave around me, but I didn’t like them, so I didn’t move.
“Crow bitch,” one of them growled.
I grit my teeth. It wasn’t the words that bothered me. I’d heard them my whole adult life, and truly only blamed myself for picking the wrong club to ride with.
You didn’t pick them. Rocco did.
Facts. But I wasn’t about to blame my dead friend for the arseholes still baring their teeth at me. Or the visceral reaction their aggression stoked in my bunched muscles. Suddenly, I was seven years old again and bracing for a vicious backhand, crying for someone I’d never see again, and wasn’t that a fucking treat?
The fossilised wankers got bored staring me down and stomped through the bar doors. It left me alone with a bitter pit in my stomach, but Finch blew up my phone before I could dwell on it too much.
Finch:Stop being grumpy
Ranger:who said i’m grumpy?
Finch:I have my sources
Ranger:are ur sources 3 foot tall and armed with sticks?
Finch:Maybe. But they’ve never let me down
Ranger:till now. i’m not grumpy
Finch:Are you okay, though? I didn’t get to ask you properly the other day
Ranger:babe, i’m fine
Finch:Don’t babe me. I’m not enamoured with you enough to fall for the deflection
