For You (The 'Burg #1)(8)

Since she’d been home, to his knowledge, she hadn’t had a man. Not for lack of offers. J&J’s was the only bar within the city limits, right on Main Street. There were a few bars outside the limits, mostly hunters’, fishers’ or golfers’ havens. There were restaurants that had bars. And there were several bars closer to the raceway, their clientele transient, mostly rough folk, drag, NASCAR and midget race groupies, going to those places because they were close and convenient to the campgrounds. Over the years others bars had opened in the city limits and failed because everyone went to J&J’s. The men went there more now that Feb was back. He knew the boys at work jacked off regularly thinking about her even (and especially) the married ones. He’d unfortunately heard all about it.

The chokers were the problem and the silver dangling around her neck. You could almost hear those necklaces jingling while you imagined f**king her or as she rolled in her sleep in your bed.

But mostly, it was the chokers. Something about them said something he suspected Feb didn’t want them to say, maybe didn’t even know they were saying, but they spoke to men all the same.

It was good she was home. No one would mess with Morrie and, if they were stupid enough, most had heard what Colt had done for her and absolutely no one would go there. Colt couldn’t imagine, since he knew while she was away she’d lived the nomad’s life tending bars in small towns all over the place, how she lived her life those fifteen years, beat the men back without Morrie and Colt having her back. Maybe she didn’t and she just wasn’t going to shit where she lived. Then again, maybe she’d learned her lesson.

It was no longer his business or his problem, never would be again.

That was, unless someone made it his problem. He was still Colt and no matter what had happened, she was still February.

He saw Darryl tending the other end of the bar and he wanted a drink but he went directly to the small office in the back.

Morrie was sitting at the cluttered desk, his body hunched, his elbow on the desk, forehead in his hand.

This pose did not give Colt a good feeling.

Colt closed the door behind him and Morrie jumped.

“Fuck. Fuck. Fuckin’ hell, I’m glad you’re here,” Morrie said, getting up and moving swiftly.

For a big man he was surprisingly fast and agile. This probably had something to do with the fact that they played one-on-one basketball together every Saturday or, when the weather was shit, they’d play racquetball. They’d both been athletes all their lives even though, when they were young, they’d intermittently get drunk, high and smoke, still they’d both always stayed obsessively fit.

For Colt, this was because he spent most of his youth watching his mother popping pills, chain-smoking cigarettes and sucking on a bottle of vodka. She didn’t even bother pouring it, drank it straight out of the bottle, uncut. He never remembered a time when she wasn’t zoned out or hammered, mostly both. She was thin as a rail, rarely ate and, even when she was young, her skin hung on her like old-lady flesh.

His father wasn’t much better. He didn’t pop pills but he smoked weed and snorted coke when he had the money to buy it. He remained sober during the day when he had a job but at night he’d get hammered right along with Colt’s Mom. Most of the time he didn’t have a job so Colt’s memories of his Dad were pretty much filled with him less than sober.

For Morrie, he stayed fit because he’d been around Colt’s Mom and Dad not to mention grew up in a bar.

Morrie picked up a Ziploc bag with a piece of lined paper in it and handed it to Colt.

“This came in the mail today, addressed to Feb,” Morrie waved his hand at the paper. “I put it in that thing, the bag. I didn’t want it to get tainted. Once I figured out what it was, I barely touched it,” he jerked his head to the desk, another bag containing an envelope was lying there. “Did the same with the envelope, it’s here too.”

It was good Morrie watched cop shows.

Colt looked at the paper. He hadn’t seen paper like that in a long time. It was something you’d have at school. It seemed old, the writing faded. On the top in pencil, Feb’s name was written.

He read the note, not understanding it. It sounded like teenage girl bullshit, a handwritten pissy fit. It even mentioned Kevin Kercher who’d gone to IU after high school and never came back, not even for reunions. Colt got to the bottom where the sender signed her name.

Angie.

“What the f**k?”

“What the f**k is right!” Morrie exploded. “Look at the back!”

Colt flipped the paper over and saw, again in pencil, this darker, newer, in different handwriting, the words, For you.

Something heavy and disturbing settled in his gut. Something he didn’t want there. It felt like it felt when he was a kid in his room, listening to his Mom and Dad fight, knowing exactly when it would escalate by the change in their voices, being able to count it off to within seconds before he heard her head hit the wall or her cry of pain before her body hit the floor. He hadn’t had that feeling in years, not in years. Not since he sat on that toilet seat with Feb wiping away the blood his father caused to flow from his face while Morrie got the ice and Jack and Jackie left their kids to take care of him, knowing they’d raised good kids who’d know what to do while they went about the business of rocking his world.

He wanted to open his own flesh and tear the heavy thing out. It didn’t belong there. He’d worked for years making himself into a man who didn’t carry that kind of weight around. Jack and Jackie had helped him get rid of it, and Morrie and Feb. He didn’t want it back, not ever, but particularly not when it being there had to do with Feb.