Coming Home(44)

“What? Nothing,” he said as he sat up and ran his hand through his hair.

“Not nothing,” Jake said around a mouthful of chips. “Who was that text from?”

Danny made a face as he stood up and popped the hood of the Cadillac. “What are you, a f*cking detective?”

“Was it a chick?” he asked, completely unfazed.

“Go change the spark plugs on the Pontiac out back.”

“Did it already,” he said, shoving another handful of chips in his mouth. “So what’d this girl say to make you so goddamn pissy?”

Danny ignored him, taking off the transmission’s filler cap.

“Did she say your dick was small?”

He laughed before he could stop himself. “You wish, *.”

“Well, then what the hell did she say?” he asked, balling up the empty bag and making a jump shot for the trash can across the garage, missing by several feet.

“Nothing. She asked me to meet her at The Rabbit Hole,” he said, grabbing the bottle of transmission fluid and pouring it through the opening of the funnel.

“Nice,” Jake said with a nod, handing Danny a rag. After a few seconds of silence, he said, “Are you gonna go?”

“No.”

“Why the f*ck not?”

Danny exhaled heavily as he tossed the empty bottle behind him and grabbed the next one, uncapping it. “You know why not.”

“No, I don’t,” Jake said deliberately. “You already know what my opinion of the whole thing is.”

Danny poured the second bottle into the transmission, saying nothing.

“I told you, you should be having as much fun as you can right now. Do whatever you gotta do. Go f*ck that girl six ways from Sunday.”

Danny laughed, trying to keep his hand steady as he glanced up. “I hope you have a daughter one day.”

Jake’s face dropped. “Dude, f*ck you, that’s not even funny.”

“Go clean that up,” he said, motioning to the crumpled bag of chips on the floor, “and then change the brake pads on the blue Mustang.”

“On it,” Jake said with a salute before he crossed to the other side of the garage, and Danny watched him go, shaking his head as he tossed the empty bottle into the trash and put the filler cap back on.

It wasn’t the first time Jake had given him that piece of advice, but in this case, there was one glaring problem.

He didn’t want to f*ck her six ways from Sunday.

Well, he did, but that wasn’t all he wanted. Because the day they had lunch together, he didn’t want the meal to end, and that night on the phone, he could have talked to her for hours.

With her it would be more than just a fling, more than some hookup he used to entertain himself while he still could.

“Yo,” Tommy said, coming in from the reception area. “Jake said we’re hittin’ up The Rabbit Hole tonight?”

Danny closed his eyes and dropped his head.

“Did he now?” Fucking douche.

“I just texted Damon. He’s on tonight, so we should definitely go.”

Danny took a deep breath before he opened his eyes and looked up. “Alright. I’m in,” he said, vowing to make Jake wash the shop floor every night for the next year.



“Goddamn, this place is ripe tonight,” Jake said, taking a sip of his beer as he scanned the crowd below.

The Rabbit Hole was part club, part bar; on the lower level, there was a large dance floor, with the main bar taking up the entire wall on the right. Surrounding the dance floor on all other sides were a few small tables, and above that—on the second level—were the roped-off VIP areas, each one consisting of a large U-shaped white leather couch with a low table in the center. The middle of the second floor was cut out so that each booth looked down on the dance floor and the main bar.