Ride Steady(42)

“Sixty cents!” I yelled at his back.

But he was gone.

I stared at the door, wondering how that went.

There were no kisses or even heated glances (outside angry heat, but that didn’t count). He didn’t even act like he was talking to a woman he’d kissed (thoroughly) just the day before.

That was bad.

But he’d given in relatively easily to me cleaning his space and doing his laundry.

However, this could be so he wouldn’t have to be around me in order to fight about it.

That would also be bad.

But it could be he liked the idea of me hanging around because he liked the idea of me being around. It also could be, since he obviously didn’t have anyone to look after him, and didn’t look after himself, he liked the idea of someone doing that.

Before I could make my decision about which it was, good or bad, I focused on the door I was staring at distractedly.

One of the men who’d been sitting with Joker at the bar the day before was standing in it. He was older than Joker. Stockier. He had slivers of gray in his dark brown hair that was shorter than Joker’s but still messy. He had what I was approximating as nine weeks of stubble, also silvered with gray.

He also had his eyes on me.

“Uh, hi,” I called.

“Hey,” he replied.

“I saw you yesterday but I didn’t introduce myself. I’m Carissa.”

“High.”

“Um…” I tipped my head to the side, wondering why he was greeting me again. “Hi.”

“No, babe. That’s my name. High. With a g and h.”

“Oh!” I grinned at him. “High. Right, hello, High. Nice to meet you.”

He didn’t return that sentiment.

He gave me a look that made me brace and said in a quiet voice, “Don’t give up.”

I felt my head jerk in confusion. “On Joker’s room?”

“On Joker,” he stated.

I felt my eyes go round.

He disappeared.

*

The next day, I walked to the door of the Compound wondering if I’d made the right decision.

I’d come before my shift at LeLane’s, and after I did what I had to do, I had to go straight to LeLane’s. So I was in my LeLane’s uniform of polo, khakis, and Converse (though, LeLane’s didn’t require Converse, that was my nod to style because everyone knew Converse rocked).

Joker had mentioned he’d thought my dress was cute and my heels were sexy. I didn’t have an excess of cute dresses and shoes (well, I did, but none of them fit me anymore), but I was a cute-dress-and-heels type of girl. I had more than just the butterfly one that fit me.

But this was me. The new me. A single mom, grocery store clerk in khakis and Converse. And if he asked me out on a date and eventually kissed me again, this would be the woman he’d be kissing.

I hadn’t been about me. Not for a long time. Maybe never. I had been coasting in life for so long, I actually didn’t know who me was.

I just knew right now most of me was being a mom and a grocery store clerk.

So the LeLane’s uniform it was.

I threw open the door and kept walking in as my eyes adjusted to the dim.

They’d just done that when I heard, “Fuck, you movin’ in?”

I turned my head right and saw Joker at the bar with three other people. One was the lanky guy from the first time I’d been there. The other two were a man and woman. Both looked about my age. Both looked a lot like the goateed man I met the first time I was there. They had to be brother and sister. Though, she was with the lanky guy. I knew this by the casual way his arm was flung around her shoulders.

They all were outside the bar, Joker was behind it.

“I believe the tally is now seventy cents,” I returned.

Joker put both hands to the bar, spread wide, leaned his weight into them, and dropped his head.

He was handsome even in a pose of frustration.

“Seventy cents?” the girl asked, and I stopped taking in Joker’s handsome and looked to her.

“He owes me a nickel for every curse word, a dime for every bad one,” I explained.

At my explanation, without hesitation, the girl burst into laughter. It took a moment for the two guys to process it, in fact, they looked so surprised by this, I wasn’t sure they were going to process it. But once they did, they joined her.

Joker lifted his head and glowered at them before he turned that glower to me.