She bit her lip again conceding I probably had a valid point and pulled the car into the coffee shop. I practically bolted out, eager to stretch my legs and get a little distance from her typically haughty attitude. There was a line when I got inside and I cast a quick look around to see if I recognized anyone because Brookside was a pretty small town and usually when I stopped by on the weekends I inevitably ran into some I used to go to school with. I hadn’t bothered to ask Shaw if she wanted me to grab her anything because she was still being all uppity about having to stop in the first place. It was almost my turn to order when my phone started blasting a Social Distortion song in my pocket. I dug it out after ordering a big ass black coffee and took a spot on the counter next to a cute brunette that was trying her hardest not get caught checking me out.
“What up?”
I could hear the music in the shop blaring behind Nash when he asked, “How did this morning go?”
Nash knew my faults and bad habits better than anyone and the reason we had maintained our friendship as long as we had was because he never judged me based on those factors.
“Sucked. I’m hung-over, grumpy and about to sit through yet another forced family function, plus Shaw is rare form today.”
“How was the chick from last night?”
“No clue. I don’t even remember getting home from the bar but apparently I did a huge piece on her side so she was a little pissed I didn’t remember who she was, so ouch.”
He chuckled on the other end of the line. “She told you that like six times last night, she even tried to pull her top off to show you and I drove your dumb ass home last drunko. I tried to get you to leave at like midnight but you weren’t having any of it as usual.”
I snorted and reached for the coffee when the guy behind the counter called my name. I noticed the brunette’s eyes follow the hand that wrapped around the cardboard cup. It was the one that had the flared head of a king cobra on it. The rest of the snake wound its way up my forearm and around my elbow, the extended forked tongue made the “L” on my ring finger in the tattoo of my name that was inked across the four knuckles of the same hand. Her mouth made a little O of surprise so I flashed her a wink and walked back to the BMW.
“Sorry dude. How did your appointment go?”
Nash’s Uncle Phil had opened the shop years ago on Capitol Hill when it mainly catered to gangbangers and bikers, now with the influx of young urbanites and hipsters’ populating the area ‘The Marked’ was one of the busiest tattoo parlors in town. Nash and I met in fifth grade in art class and had been inseparable since, in fact it had been his plan since we were about twelve that we would eventually move to the city and work for Phil. We both had mad skills and the personality to make the shop bump with business so Phil had no qualms apprenticing us and putting us to work before we were both in our twenties. It was killer to have a friend in the same field; I had a plethora of ink on my skin that ranged from great to not so great that chronicled Nash getting better and better at his craft and he could state the exact same thing.
“Finished that back piece that I’ve been working on since July, it turned out better than I thought and the dude is talking about doing the front so I’ll take it because he’s a fat tipper.”
“Nice”, I was juggling the phone and the coffee and trying to open the door to the car when a female voice stopped me in my tracks.
“Hey,” I looked over my shoulder and the brunette was standing a car over with a smile on her face. “I really like your tattoos.”
I smiled back at her and jumped back narrowly missing spilling scalding coffee all down my crotch as Shaw shoved the door open from the inside.
“Thanks.” If we were closer to home and Shaw wasn’t already putting the car in reverse I probably would have taken a second to ask the girl for her number. Shaw shot me a look of contempt that I promptly ignored and went back to my conversation with Nash. “Rome is home, apparently he got in an accident and Shaw said he’s got a few weeks of R&R coming to him. I guess that’s why mom was blowing my phone up all week.”
“Kick ass. Ask him if he wants to roll with us for a few days, I miss that surly bastard.”
I sipped on the coffee and my head finally started to calm down. “That’s the plan. I’ll hit you up on my way home and let you know what the story is.”
I flicked my thumb across the screen to end the call and settled back into the seat. Shaw glowered at me and I swore her eyes glowed at me in her anger. Really I had never seen anything that green anywhere else in nature and when she was mad they were just otherworldly.
“Your mom called while you were busy flirting. She’s mad we’re late.”
I sucked on more of the black nectar of the Gods and started tapping out a beat on my knee with my free hand. I was always kind of a fidgety guy and the closer we got to my parent’s house the worse it usually got. Brunch was always stilted and forced, I couldn’t figure out why they insisted on going through with it every single week, couldn’t figure out why Shaw enabled the farce, but I went every week even when I knew nothing would ever change.
“She’s mad you’re late. We both know she could care less if I was there or not.” My fingers moved faster and faster as she wheeled the car into a gated community and past rows and rows of cookie cutter mini mansions that were built back into the mountains.
“That’s not true and you know it, Rule. I do not suffer through these car rides every weekend, subject myself to the delight of your morning after nastiness because your parents want me to have eggs and pancakes every Sunday. I do it because they want to see you, want to try and have a relationship with you no matter how many times you hurt them or push them away. I owe it to your parents and more importantly I owe it to Remy to try and make you act right even though lord knows that’s almost a full time job.”
I sucked in a breath as the blinding pain that always came when someone mentioned Remy’s name barreled through my chest. My fingers involuntarily opened and closed around the coffee cup and I whipped my head around to glare at her.
“Remy wouldn’t be all over my ass to try and be something to them I’m not. I was never good enough for them, and never will be. He understood that better than anyone and worked overtime to try and be everything to them I never could be.”
She sighed and pulled the car to a stop in the driveway behind my dad’s SUV. “The only difference between you and Remy was that he let people love him and you,” she yanked open the driver’s door and glared at me across the space that separated us. “You have always been determined to make everyone that cares about you prove it beyond a shadow of a doubt. You’ve never wanted to be easy to love Rule and you make damn sure that nobody can ever forget it.” She slammed the door with enough force that it rattled my back teeth and made my head start to throb again.