Wild Wind: A Chaos Novella (Chaos #6.6)(38)

“Well, shit. Now I gotta like you,” Joany replied.

“We can hold that lamp for you at checkout if you want to keep shopping,” Archie offered.

“Cool,” the woman said to Archie, then to Joany, “I want your shirt.”

“Well, girl,” Joany started, taking the lamp from her and extending it Archie’s way without looking at her. “We happen to have these in stock. Allow me to lead the way.”

Archie moved forward to grab the lamp.

Joany took off with the customer toward the clothing section.

Archie came back to Jagger.

“I would have texted, but you were already on your way. Fabe had a situation and he had to take off. I’m down an SA and I can’t leave Joany alone to close. We lock the doors at seven. You cool to hang?”

“Absolutely,” he replied.

She grinned at him and moved.

He followed, and they hit the checkout area that was to the left of the front door.

They walked up the two steps behind it and she set the lamp on the back counter.

He pulled his ass up on it.

She then rested her back against it close enough her body was touching his knee.

From their perch, they both studied the store.

“Any trouble with the twins?” he asked.

“No,” she answered.

“Mal doing okay?”

“Far as I can tell.”

“Otherwise good day?”

“Some days, I’m lucky I own the building. Other days, I rejoice I’ll be able to upgrade my yurt when I go to Big Sur. Today’s one of those own-the-building days.”

“Sorry, baby,” he muttered. Then, “Big Sur Yurt?”

“As noted, today was slow. I did some adventure research.”

“Ah.”

“You been to Big Sur?” she asked.

“No,” he answered.

“Wanna go?”

“Will you be there?”

He looked down at her profile, watched her cheek move with her smile and she didn’t push for a further response seeing as she already had the one she wanted.

“Is this before or after Iceland?” he asked.

“This is for whenever we feel like bagging on life for a few days.”

“So, tomorrow.”

She laughed.

Then she queried, “Your day?”

“Think we licked the rust on the Bronco. May be able to make a stab at getting that fucker running next week.”

“Awesome.”

“Yeah,” he agreed. “You need me to go up and start dinner?”

She looked up at him. “Are you hungry?”

“Not overly, but if you are…?”

“I’m making sweet and sour shrimp. It’s a shortcut recipe. It takes half an hour. Work for you?”

He nodded.

She turned back to the store.

He looked to his side, saw a turntable with a record spinning, then up on the wall above it, a Plexiglas shelf on which was the Catch a Fire album sleeve with the Zippo lighter on it.

“Can I pick the next album?” he requested.

She twisted her neck and tipped her head back again, and he saw her lips turned up.

“Sure.”

“Can I have a cherry Coke?”

The lip curve turned into a big smile.

“Sure,” she repeated.

Jag bent and kissed her before he hopped off the counter and headed to the album section.





“So, there was a lot of baggage there,” Archie was saying.

They were both sitting on stools at the bar to her kitchen, their dirty dishes shoved away, and there were a bunch of those old square photographs scattered in front of them.

“And it never left,” she went on. “Mom was never tight with her grandparents. It wasn’t just Grandma’s white parents, it was also Granddad’s Black ones. No one ever came to terms with them being together. Sign of the times, I guess. It still was fucked up.”

He didn’t have to agree to the indisputable.

Because it was totally fucked up.

Jag took in the handsome Black man and the pretty white woman—Archie’s grandparents on her mother’s side—and he saw hints of both in Archie.

But it was the more recent photos that were mingled with the rest where he saw a lot of his girl.

In the pictures of her mother.

“And making this weirder still, Granddad was not a big fan of Dad,” she continued. “He saw Mom being with a white guy as her rejection of him as a Black man. Though, eventually, he got over it.”

“They didn’t kick in when your mom passed?” Jag asked.

She shrugged. “We were all rocked, obviously. But Mom was an only child. I remember thinking they seemed to age twenty years from the last time I saw them before she died, to the time after.” She turned her head and looked at Jagger. “They never recovered. Neither of them were old-old when they died. After she was gone, I think they just gave up and did their time until they were gone too.”

This info made Jag both pissed and sad.

“Sorry, sweetheart,” he murmured. “It would have been good one adult in your life took your back.”

Slowly, she turned her attention back to the photos, reaching out a hand and scooting them around.