I shake my head, take another sip. “You lazy fuck.”
He waits for me to look at him again before flipping me off.
“You gonna tell me why the fuck I woke up to a hundred missed calls?” Harlen exhales, burps. He finishes his drink, drops the can to the ground, squashing it beneath his socked foot. “That’s damn clingy, I’m starting to think you...”
“Fuck you, I was writing.” My voice echoes inside my drink.
“Ahhh.” Harlen nods, his golden ear-length curls doing much the same. “It really was a matter of life and death.”
When I don’t reply, because I know the motherfucker is looking for a bite, he cuts his dark blue gaze toward me and grins. “What went wrong?”
“I couldn't find what was missing.” I squash my own can, then crack my neck. The pop is loud and aggressive; it rings in my ears. “But Jade did.”
“Show me,” he says, jerking his head toward the clubhouse and pushing to his feet. He doesn’t wait for me, moving for the back door.
I follow behind him, catching the door he hauls open and stepping through it.
It’s quiet, no one except Kali is here.
The brick walls that usually carry testosterone and insults and a buzz of calamity, now echo the soft rap music drifting from Kali’s phone perched behind the old timber bar.
“You boys want some fruit?” she offers, slicing into a watermelon, placing the cut triangles onto a large ceramic platter.
Kali had been hanging around the club for longer than I had. A tortured soul that became part of the furniture. Though no one's specifically, she was in some way, someone to everyone. Big heart, with an even bigger set of tits.
I look down at the bag of Doritos stuffed in my back pocket and decide it’d be worth fueling my body with something half decent today. Weaving my way around green-felt topped pool tables and tattered leather couches, I reach over the scarred bar and snatch a piece of watermelon, pushing it into my mouth, and taking another in my free hand.
Harlen does the same. “Thanks, Kal.” He smiles. “You’re the best.”
A blush crawls across her freckled cheeks, her curly black hair feathering her long dark eyelashes.
“I know.” She returns his smile with much brazenness. “Oh, also…” She spins and bends at the knees, reaching into the under-bench drink fridge. When she raises to her feet, she holds a golden pie in the palms of her hands. “I made an apple?—”
I cut her off, and I know it’s rude, ungrateful, even disrespectful but the thought of eating another slice of pie sends bile trekking up the back of my throat. “I’m all good, thanks though.”
Harlen shoves the piece of watermelon into his mouth and speaks around it, “More for me.” He is rubbing the palms of his hands together, and he rounds the corner of the bar and steps up beside her.
Kali takes a knife and begins cutting a slice. When she pushes the tip of the blade to make a second cut, Harlen stops her, readjusting the knife to make it a larger slice. Kali drops it to a plastic plate.
“You really are the best,” Harlen confirms, shoveling a mouthful with a moan. He pulls her in for a one arm hug, smacking his mouth, expressing his gratitude.
And at least one of us could.
It has me thinking of my mother, the pie she’d labored over for hours, the effort to placate a mess she didn’t create, then Iquickly shove the thought away, not letting myself return there today.
With a small kiss on Kali’s cheek, Harlen steps back. “Okay, show me.” He is talking to me now about the song I’d been working on.
We both amble our way down a small hallway, slipping into another, much smaller room in the back.
The derelict couch that I upgraded to from the park bench after my father started kicking me out at fifteen, sits in the corner, its red leather torn and peeling away, revealing patches of white foam.
Flecks of red had embedded into the dark beige carpet beneath, and I knew this room hadn’t been vacuumed in years, because I spent more time in it than the one I had at home.
I didn’t like handouts, and avoided them where I could, but Harlen and his father Rusty, were insistent when they found out I was sleeping on the streets.
I fall into it when Harlen wheels the chair out from behind a small desk that holds an old computer, a couple of half-empty pens and scraped notepads, and too many empty bottles of beer.
He slides the chair to the side, along the same flattened carpet that the wheels had traveled many times before and grabs the acoustic guitar resting against the old brick wall. Pressing it over his lap, he tunes it, then tangles his fingers with the strings before pushing his palm to the opening, silencing the reverb that bangs around in the hollowed circle face.
