Deconstructed(55)

I couldn’t see any of those ladies, Cricket included, helping me dye my hair purple for the Young Mutherf*ckers concert, binge-watching Zombie Death Wars, or cruising out to the sandbars of Caddo Lake to drink Jack and Coke with the welders and wildcatters of the ArkLaTex. Those girls’ world was a black American Express card. Mine was a black eye.

But Ty holding me in his arms on that dance floor made me feel like I didn’t have to worry about what people thought of me.

Hell, why was I worried about what these lame-ass people thought about me?

Of course, I still hadn’t told Ty or Cricket that I had spent two years in jail.

Ty kissed my temple and whispered, “Wanna get out of here?”

I knew what that meant—I wasn’t born yesterday. But I really wanted to get out of there, so I nodded. “Yeah. And do you think we can get something to eat? A Natchitoches meat pie and a mini–crab cake wasn’t nearly enough. No wonder half these people are bombed.”

Ty chuckled, taking my hand and leading me off the dance floor. “A burger sounds amazing.”

So we went to Head Honcho’s, a burger dive right off Centenary’s campus. It was mostly empty, just a few tables occupied by collegiate types with earbuds in, and we only got one double glance for strolling into a dive in our dressy duds. I didn’t want to ruin my dress, so I layered napkins, tucking them into my bodice, as we settled into cheeseburgers, tots, and cherry Cokes. Ty had chosen a booth in the far corner, and for a moment, with all the retro decor, I felt like we were in a fifties movie. Like a reverse characterization of The Outsiders with me being Ponyboy.

“So tell me about your family, Ty,” I said, realizing that I didn’t know too much about him. Maybe I needed to if I was going to go much further.

“Not much to tell. I grew up in Georgia. My mom and dad divorced when I was eight. My mom lives there with her third husband, who is a total asshole, so I don’t see her much. I’ve been ping-ponging between my parents for a while, but I usually stay with Dad. He has an investment company along with some other businesses. We also build housing projects and stuff like that. That’s why we moved here. He’s gathering some new investors for a real estate deal revolving around a retirement community. We hope to break ground in the fall. It’s a pretty big project and should make the investors a tidy profit.”

“Why come here?”

Ty shrugged a shoulder. “He had friends here. Grew up down around Alexandria.”

“Oh, that makes sense. So are you the attorney for his company?”

“Yeah. I graduated law school two years ago. I thought I would work for the company I interned with, but when Dad ran into his own lawsuit, he talked me into coming to work for him. I’m the guy who works the numbers and pulls permits and so on. Dealing with the government in any capacity is exhausting. Moves at the speed of a sloth.”

I snorted. “Sounds fun.”

“What about you? You said you have family around here. What’s the deal with yours?”

Here was the moment to tell him. To lay out my cards, talk about my mother, my absent father who called so rarely that I often forgot his voice. To talk about how my family could give the Corleones a run for their money. “Most of my family lives in north Shreveport. Remember that bar we went to?”

He popped a tot into his mouth and nodded. “Sure. The dickhead bartender and your, um, colorful cousin?”

“Yep. My cousin Griffin owns a tow truck company right next to the bar. My colorful cousin is a private investigator who leases space above the bar. The rest of the clan lives out near Caddo Lake. My grandmother has a place right outside Mooringsport. So we’re a little country.”

And a little criminal.

“I like country.”

“Oh, not gather-eggs-and-sip-lemonade country,” I laughed, teetering on whether to dive in or not. I knew I should give him the lay of the land, but I wasn’t ready to have him dump me in a burger joint in the middle of Shreveport.

“Well, good. I can’t imagine you barefoot, gathering eggs, and then making me lemonade,” he said, giving me a smile.

“Oh, I can do those things, though I would never go into the coop barefooted. I don’t like chicken poop between my toes,” I quipped, chickening out, poop or no poop. Admitting to someone that you’re a convict sort of puts a damper on any situation, unless it’s one in which you’re required to be a badass with some street cred.

“I could see how that could be a problem,” he said, looking hungrily at my tots.

“Do you want some of my tots?” I asked, noting he’d mowed through his.

“Please.” He reached over toward my box.

I smacked his hand. “You should never touch a lady’s tots without permission.”

His eyes widened. “Oh, I don’t usually need permission. I know how to read a room.”

“So you’re saying I’m asking to have my tots touched?” Flirty banter was so much better than serious talk about my family and my precarious future. Yep, let’s just do innuendos.

“Oh, I’m not just going to touch your tots. I’m going to devour your tots.” He struck fast, swiping two and popping them into his mouth. He made an exaggerated face of ecstasy. “Oh yeah. Your tots are soooo good.”

I couldn’t help but laugh at the sexy, silly Ty who had been chipping away at my defenses and keeping me enough off-kilter that I found myself tumbling toward him. If things kept going in this direction, I would have to tell him about my time in the clink and about my family that sometimes skirted the law. I couldn’t keep hiding who I was. It was as bad as not telling someone you’d been married or that you had herpes or something. If one got to a certain point in a relationship and hadn’t come clean, it looked deceitful. And that was something I didn’t want to ever be. I wasn’t going to blast my past mistakes to the treetops of Shreveport, but neither was I going to treat what I had done . . . or rather hadn’t known I had done . . . like a black mark. I tired of carrying shame. My back was bowed from it.