If I would have been less tired, I probably would have wondered what the hell was going on instead of falling right back asleep, but I wasn’t, and trying to figure out Dex’s actions wasn’t something a half-asleep brain, much less a fully competent one, could handle.
Chapter Eight
When I got up the next morning, I was seriously asking myself what the hell had happened the night before.
I knew it couldn’t have been a dream. Dex The Dick carrying me to my room had happened.
It. Had. Happened.
And I couldn’t understand for the life of me why A) he’d been at Sonny’s house so late. B) Why he’d taken it upon himself to get me to my bedroom. C) Was a repeat of A and B.
I could have walked or at least stumbled my way to bed.
It being Monday, my brother was at work by the time I woke up. Dinner from the night before had mysteriously disappeared and the dishes had been washed.
Hallelujah.
Limited by the lack of funds in my account until payday, I had to settle for the free things life had to offer. Like laying around the house, watching television, going through catalogues Sonny had on the kitchen table. Basically, I was a lazy ass the first half of the day.
In the middle of it, I sent Will another email. It’d been more than a month since the last time I’d talked to him but that wasn’t completely unheard of. In the past year, I'd only gotten to see him a total of a week's worth. I should have been a seasoned professional at keeping calm when I didn’t get anything from him but the fact was, I worried about Will every day.
He was my little brother. The boy I'd cared for like he was mine, before and after our mom had died. He was the reason why I learned what working a double was, the reason why I'd worked two jobs even while I was sick, and the reason for so many other things I learned.
A lot of times I felt like I was alive just for him. And then he'd joined the Army and left me in Florida. I mean, he was happy and that's what mattered but it still didn't fix the fact that I missed him.
That was life, wasn't it? Losing and regaining?
By mid-afternoon, I started to get cabin fever and walked out of the house to see if there was anything to do outside. There was. Sonny had weeds coming out every square inch around his bushes and lawn. Under normal circumstances, I probably would have pretended like there was nothing to do, but that’s just how bored I was and how badly I wanted my mind on other things.
I found a pair of thick gloves in Sonny’s garage that were way too big, pulled a long sleeve shirt on to avoid getting burned and went to work.
An hour and a half later, when my back was aching and I felt a warm tingle on my neck that screamed sunburn, I stuffed all the weeds into a trash bag and stood in the middle of the lawn, exhausted. The loud purr of multiple motorcycles echoed through the neighborhood. It being after work hours, a lot of people had pulled into their homes so I wasn’t really planning to go out of my way to look and see where the bikes were coming from. It was second nature. A bike was a bike, wasn't it?
In the middle of hoisting a bag over my head to throw into the trash, two bikers with buzz cuts and hard glares drove by slowly. Their eyes were on me and the house. They didn’t stop, but as soon as they’d crossed the driveway, they picked up speed and zoomed out of the neighborhood.
Weird.
~ * ~ *
The worst part of going to work on Tuesday was not knowing how to act around Dex. It shouldn’t surprise me that he was hanging out with Sonny if they were in the same club, but still. Sonny was warm and sweet—though he had been specific and said it was only to me—while Dex was a temperamental bag of beaver dung. Maybe it was that whole “opposites attract” thing they had going on.
Maybe.
Luckily, it was Blake that came in and opened, leaving me to wonder where The Dick was. I sure as hell wasn’t going to ask Blake or anyone, but I let myself think about it in my head. It was like mentally preparing myself for an incoming hurricane.
Business was pretty steady right from doors opening when Slim showed up. There was tattoo after tattoo for the first couple of hours, then a nipple piercing—which made my own nipples hurt—and a guy who wanted an eyebrow pierced. It was closer to eight at night when Dex finally showed up, looking mildly annoyed as usual, and striding directly to the back without a wave or a nod to anyone.
Once again, no one said anything. Blake and Slim didn’t even look at each other. I didn’t understand that at all because I was annoyed when he walked in.
In hindsight, I should have just gone to the back and lived with a tongue lashing from Dex for simply living so that I could order supplies for the month instead of staying in the front, talking to a customer’s girlfriend about getting her nose pierced. But I didn’t. In my quest to keep being a bitch because my feelings had been hurt, I stayed up front.
Mistake? Uh, yeah.
~ * ~ *
“Sweetie.”
I looked over at the man standing in front of the reception desk. A man with a full beard and glassy, red-rimmed eyes, who smelled like rubbing alcohol. It was disgusting and it made my nose burn.
But this was my job and everyone had been nice up until then, so I didn’t think anything of it. “Yes?”
“Need to get a tat.”
I gave him a little smile without looking at the appointment log. Even if both Slim and Blake weren't busy and Dex had come out from the back, he still couldn't get tattooed. Whoops. "I'm sorry, but we can't help you if you've been drinking.”
“Sweetie, I need a tat. Now,” the guy slurred, smacking his lips so roughly spittle flew out.
Gross. The smell of alcohol got even stronger. Yuck.
I cringed a little. “I'm sorry but we really can't—,” I tried to explain to him.
Alcohol Cologne grunted. “Get Dex.”
“Dex isn’t scheduled right now.”
“Sweetie, get Dex.”
Oh boy.
I took a deep breath and nodded, pushing away from my chair. “Let me see if I can get him.” Years of mottos that highlighted “The customer is always right” was engraved into me. The music was so loud it wasn’t a surprise that Blake and Slim didn’t hear what was going on. They blasted it. Metal and heavy rock pounded through the speakers most nights after seven.
The office door was closed when I came up to it, but I couldn’t hear anything from inside. I knocked a couple of times but there was no response. The light from the bathroom was on, and I wasn’t about to go bother a man when he was on the toilet regardless of whether it was my asshole boss or not. Toilet time was personal time, I thought.
“Dex isn’t available right now,” I started to tell the guy who, with another look over confirmed that he was blitzed out of his mind. “But if you wait a few minutes, I’ll try to get him to talk—“
He snapped.
I wasn’t a drinker, and the couple of friends I’d had in passing weren’t much either. They were occasional drunks. Funny drunks. Silly drunks. Loving drunks. I was okay with that. But a mean drunk was something I couldn’t handle at all.
“Look, bitch, I don’t have time! Get fucking Dex right now before I—“
The arm swiped at my waist from out of nowhere. Way too distracted, I realized it was Dex who had an arm wrapped around me, pulling me to his side. His fingers clenched the material of my cardigan.
I couldn’t see his face but I didn’t need to.
Dex The Dick was pissed. Enraged. I half expected him to shed his clothes and turn into a green skinned monster ten times his current—already tall and broad—size.
His wide shoulders were tense and the big man, well over six feet tall, seemed even more intimidating then. I think everyone could sense that unsettling dangerous mist of pissed off biker in their bones.