I smother back a smile. “Lofty goals. Do ya think you can stick to them?”
“We’ll see,” she says with a wink. As she walks off, I could swear there’s an extra shimmy in her step. I lower my eyes back to my work and try not to think about what it would feel like to cup my hands around her ass.
The bell rings again in the early afternoon. But rather than our lunch delivery, it’s one of our favorite fiery-tempered customers.
“Goddamn it, Tommy, I told Lynette I wasn’t gonna come back about this, but I gotta talk to you about the Winchester one more time. That goddamn thing has got a curse on it. I took it back out this past weekend, and it’s still pullin’ to the left.”
I speak up from the workbench, “Johnny. Tommy’s not in today.”
Johnny stops in the middle of the shop floor. A multitude of expressions move across his face. First there is confusion because Tommy is rarely absent. Then there’s disappointment and the realization that he walked into our shop cursing a blue streak in front of a young woman he doesn’t even know.
“Oh, well shit. I mean shoot. I didn’t mean to curse so much, ma’am. I apologize. I don’t usually curse. Well, sometimes I do. But not in front of the ladies.”
Picking up on his name from me, she says soothingly, “It’s fine, Johnny. I have a brother. I’ve heard worse than that before breakfast.”
Johnny squints at her across the shop. “Now wait a minute. Do I happen to know your brother?”
She grins at him. “I’ll give you a little hint. He owns half this shop with Flint.”
“Wait. Hold up just a damn minute,” Johnny says, clearly taken aback. “You’re tellin’ me that you’re Tommy’s sister?”
“Yes, sir, I am. My name is Jules. It’s real nice to meet you.”
“Well, I will be damned all to hell and back again. Tommy has a sister.” He sticks his big hand across the counter and they shakes hands. “It’s damn nice to meet you. Your brother is a hell of a good man, Jules. He’s real smart and likes to talk almost as much as I do.”
“Thank you, Johnny. My brother has always had a gift for gab.”
“So where is Tommy today? I hope he’s not sick or nothin’ like that.”
Jules gives me a questioning glance. I give her the smallest possible head shake. We agreed before we came in this morning that Tommy’s situation with the Vultures isn’t public information yet. I want to keep it that way until he is more established over there.
She turns back to him without missing a beat. “He’s taking some well-deserved vacation time. I’m helping Flint out at the counter while he’s away.”
“Vacation time. Are you sure he’s not off to a biker rally?”
Jules just shrugs. “There’s no telling with my brother. We’ll just have to wait for him to come back and get it straight from the horse’s mouth.”
“Lynette was just sayin’ the other night that we hadn’t seen Tommy around the bar in a hot minute, and she was wonderin’ if maybe he’d gone and gotten himself a girlfriend.”
Jules’s face lights up. She leans both forearms on the counter and tips her head towards him in a way that is one hundred percent designed to get the man talking.
“My brother getting himself a lady? Johnny, you can’t leave me hanging with a comment like that. Who’s Lynette, and what makes her think my brother has a girl?”
Johnny leans his own elbows on the counter and grins. I can tell he’s been dying to tell somebody this story.
“Well, see, Lynette is my wife. And here’s what happened. About two weeks back, Lynette and I were drivin’ out to her sister’s place on the lake, and we stopped at the gas station out on the county road, the one with the good biscuits in the morning. And there was Tommy’s motorcycle parked at the gas pump, but he was inside talkin’ to the cashier.”
“Was he doing that thing where he leans on one shoulder against the doorframe?”
“How the hell did you know that?” Johnny asks in a tone of disbelief.
Jules waves his question away. “He always does that when he’s trying to look cool. Now tell me about this woman. Is she nice?”
The two of them talk all about how Tommy stood, how long he talked, and every single thing to do with Johnny and the girl who ran his card through the machine to pay for gas. I gotta admit that the whole thing sounds exhausting, but these two thrive on nosing around in a man’s personal life.
I go back to my bench and listen to Johnny tell Jules a story with Jules holding up her share of the conversation by asking pointed questions.
Eventually, Johnny leaves, telling Jules that he’s got to go and tell Lynette about her working at the gun shop. That’s when I realize Johnny is the town gossip. The shop finally gets quiet after the lunch rush. That’s when Jules eats the sandwich we ordered but didn’t get a chance to eat. She takes a few bites before pulling out her sketchbook. When she bends over the page with a pencil in her hand, I get curious and decide to join her.
