Page 244 of Property of Whiskey

That thought pisses me off. Then Twila bends over to unzip her bag, and another thought replaces it.

Her shorts are fucking criminal.

“Stop.”

She doesn’t even look back. “What?”

“Whatever you’re thinking.”

“You don’t know what I’m thinking.”

“I can feel it on my ass.”

She straightens in her ring gear, black shorts with silver trim and a top cut low enough to make me reconsider religion. Her bright pink boots sit beside the bench. Her service pistol is secured in the locked gear case beneath the bench, exactly where she put it before stripping down to ring gear.

“Magenta,” she says.

“I didn’t say anything. Still pink.”

“Get out.”

“No.”

“You can’t be back here.”

“Looks like I am.”

“You ain’t talent.”

I smile. “Pretty sure I got talents.”

Her gaze drops slowly.

Then comes back up.

“Not those.”

I laugh.

A woman sitting across the room starts cackling.

Sheila. Kentucky Fried Carnage herself.

She’s taping one wrist and watching us like she got free entertainment with admission.

“So this the biker?”

Twila stops. “What biker?”

Sheila looks at me, then Twila. “The one you been watching like you wanna climb him.”

I immediately like Sheila.

Twila does not. “Shut the fuck up.”

She sits on the bench and starts taping her wrists.

The shift in her is immediate. One minute she’s arguing with me, the next she’s focused, working the tape around one wrist with quick practiced pulls before rolling her shoulders and stretching one leg in front of her.