I had lived by it for years.
And now the feel of her mouth on me had made my stomach turn.
I was screwed.
Completely.
Thoroughly.
Professionally screwed.
I picked up the bottle and left the bar before another woman decided I looked like a challenge.
The sand was cool under my feet once I kicked off the sandals. The beach stretched dark and quiet away from the music, the lights fading behind me with every step. Somewhere down the shore, beyond the curve and the palms and the private walls, Destiny slept inside a villa full of guards and secrets.
I couldn’t see it.
Good.
Bad.
Both.
I walked until the noise from the bar became nothing but a pulse behind me. Then I found a lonely palm tree leaning slightly toward the water, like even it wanted to get away from shore. I dropped down beneath it with the bottle, my back against the trunk, knees bent, eyes on the boats bobbing in the distance.
The tequila went down hot.
The memories came up hotter.
I didn’t want to go there.
Of course I went there.
That was how ghosts worked. They waited until a man was drunk, tired, and stupid enough to sit still.
My old man came first.
He always did.
I saw him in the doorway of a cheap apartment that smelled like fried grease, mildew, and stale beer. Work boots scuffed to hell. Shirt stained from whatever car he’d spent all day bent over. Hands cracked from chemicals and cold weather. Eyes already gone soft and mean from drinking before he even made it home.
He worked some nine-to-five job that never ended at five.
Mechanic. Grease under his nails. Back always hurting. Paycheck always too small. The dealership took the real money. Customers paid big for labor, parts, repairs, diagnostics, all those shiny words printed on clean invoices. But the men doing the dirty work went home with sore hands, bad knees, and enough cash to almost cover rent if nothing broke and nobody got sick.
Something always broke.
Somebody was always sick.
We weren’t homeless poor.
That was what people said like it mattered.
We were food-stamp poor. Public-health-clinic poor. Secondhand-coat poor. Free-lunch-card poor. The kind of poor where teachers used a softer voice when they asked if everything was okay at home, and other kids used a sharper one when they asked why you wore the same jeans three days in a row.
I had one pair for a while.
One.
