“Is he napping? It’s quiet in here?” Her eyebrows furrowed as she squared up with me again.
“Get it over with. Whatever you’re here for. Just lay it on me.” I raised my hands and closed my eyes, tilting my head back like I was waiting for her to punch me, because honestly it was the same thing.
She snickered, but it sounded weak. “You always were a rude little shit.”
“Then, you shouldn’t expect any different.” I tapped my fingers on the doorjamb and raised my eyebrows. “What do you need?”
“Where is my son?” She slapped her hands on her thighs. “He isn’t answering his phone.”
I stared at her.
She glared back.
“Don’t make me explain what an unanswered phone means.” I laughed, running a hand down my face. “No idea where he is.”
Her mouth fell open and she shook a finger at me, getting right in my face. “You promised in the hospital! You said you would look after him! He isn’t answering his phone. He could be dead in a ditch for all you know.”
There was no way to fend her off without possibly hurting her, so I let her shove my chest and do a thousand things I would ruin anyone else on the planet for attempting. Her singular saving grace was that she’d produced Will. I took a big step back, and she stumbled.
“He’s got some issues, but he can still think. He isn’t about to wander into traffic.” I winced internally as I remembered the vehicles breezing past me on the street while he shouted at me earlier, not very much different from this, actually.
She marched forward, grabbed the straps of my bookbag, and gave me a shake that did not endear her to me. “I thought you were watching him. Why won’t he talk to me? I’ve been trying to get him to have a conversation with me for at least a month.” She sounded so distressed that my anxiety began to amp up.
“This—” I waved at her. “—is why he isn’t answering his fucking phone.”
She gave me a shove and stalked around me to the front lawn. Her rain hat blew away in a stiff breeze and in the distance thunder rumbled as gray clouds closed in. “Where is my son?”
“Fuck this. He’s at my tattoo parlor getting inked. Go yell at him there.” I waved my hand at her and locked the front door, deliberately checking to make sure it wouldn’t open while staring her dead in the eyes.
“No,” she moaned, cupping her cheeks. “He already has so many! I should’ve made him come home and move back in with me.”
The laughter that struggled out of my throat took me by surprise. “Go tell him that.” I took a card for Ink Well out of the front pocket of my backpack and handed it to her. “See what happens.”
She stomped her foot. “He won’t have a choice.”
I laughed like an asshole as she got into her yellow Kia and drove off, gears grinding. I didn’t even realize they made manual transmissions for those cars, but she was clearly too furious to be driving it. I shook my head. There was a reason she didn’t get along with Will, and it was because they were too damned much alike. Once they got something in their heads, it stayed there until they chewed it up and spit it out in smaller pieces than an old dog bone.
For a second, I rubbed my chest as anxiety swirled there, but then I shrugged it off. Will was mostly in his right mind, no matter what she thought, and she couldn’t take him away. She couldn’t make him do anything. Even when he’d been fresh out of a fucking coma, he’d refused to go with her because he remembered enough to know how fucking nuts she drove him. I’d already volunteered to help him get back on his feet anyway, which she hadn’t appreciated. She’d been livid to learn that I’d been his medical contact for over a decade.
“Fuck!” I glared at the sky. Lightning forked and thunder boomed overhead. The storm moving in brought a bright ozone scent with it, and I loved that smell. It made me want to get on my bike and ride, which was counterintuitive because rain wasdangerous, but I couldn’t explain it. I grabbed my Triumph and sped off into the city, not sure where I was going.
Eventually, I found myself in the rundown neighborhood that housed Derek Uhlig’s illegal casino, and I knew better than to go within a hundred feet of that place. Simply seeing a King’s cut might start shit between Uhlig and the club, so I detoured away to a side street with a lot of businesses I’d never visited. There was a hookah café, and I hadn’t been in one for a couple of years, so it would be as good a spot as any to kill an afternoon.
Inside, the rich smell of scented tobacco greeted me. There were several round tables of old-timers sitting around bullshitting, reading the paper, and otherwise pursuing the favorite pastimes of old men everywhere. Maybe if Will and I were lucky and calmed our asses down, we’d get to do things like that together when we had gray hair. I fought back a smile.
No, I was fucking mad at him right now. My lips still twitched toward a grin.
One table in the back was surrounded by what looked like college students.
Shrugging, I took a booth against the big front window to get a good view of the storm. A tall man with an impressive belly and a long white beard came over, grinning at me. His brown eyes had happy laugh lines crinkled in the corners.
“Flavor?” he asked as he plopped a shiny red-and-silver hookah in the middle of the table.
I shrugged. “Surprise me.”
He brought out coals and tobacco, and when I finally hit the hookah, the tobacco was a shocking pineapple blend that had me smiling back at him.
He patted my shoulder and walked away. “I’ll get you Turkish coffee. The hookah is for friends! You should find some!”
