Page 9 of Bourbon & Blood

“Do what?” I asked innocently.

“Think about them,” she said. “Don’t you dare.”

“Sorry,” I murmured.

“I saidno, Queen!” She pushed against my shoulder with her toes in their pink fluffy low socks that she wore around the apartment, using them to slide over the polished hardwood floors.

I smiled and shook my head. See what I mean? She was the best.

We’d become friends when I was nineteen and we waitressed at the same place. Her dad had cut her off, and she’d been on the struggle bus for a bit. But she hadn’t cared and we’d become fast friends, bitching about the grabby-hands practical-pedophile of a manager we’d had to work under.

Yeah, Maya had gotten fired from that job and arrested for assault when she’d dumped a tray of drinks on the floor and started wailing on that manager with the tray when he was getting more than a little too up close and personal with a fifteen-year-old waitress, having backed her into a corner.

I’d kept my job, mostly because I’d stood there too shocked to say or do anything.

It was like Maya had been born with all the fire in her spirit and I’d just gotten it in my hair.

I’d started looking elsewhere for employment right away, and Maya’s dad had bailed her out of jail. Unfortunately, it didn’t do much for their relationship being as Maya’s dad was a prominent city political figure. He didn’t care why she did it. All he cared about were theoptics.

Boy, did I feel that. I was raised the same way, only I didn’t know who the hell my grandmother had been trying to impress. She wasn’t prominent in any way unless you considered her for the position of reigning Southern Ice Queen. Then she took the title to town and there wasn’t anyone more prominent in the city than her – or so she thought. The irony of her name beingKarenwasn’t lost on me.

Anyway, Maya and I stayed friends. The best of friends. I’d managed through hard work and determination, as well as selling some of my art on the side, to work my way up in the restaurant industry from waitress to hostess, ping-ponging back and forth until I was old enough to legally serve and then bartend – where therealtips were at if you asked me.

Maya had beaten me there by a few months and had passed me along all kinds of tips and tricks, which was great and had helped a lot.

Then, somehow, some way, she’d found something more suited to her wild nature. She’d started working at a strip club behind the bar, and while she wouldn’t dance, she’d somehow gotten into the world of escorting andwhew… the money she made. I wished, but I couldnever!I just wasn’t built like Maya was. She was resilient, fierce, brave beyond your wildest dreams.

…but not me.

No, I had way too many hang-ups from my pseudo-southern Baptist and thoroughly weird upbringing.

I don’t think I would ever come to grips or understand how my grandmother came from my sweet grandma grandma. I totally understand how my bio mom came about from my grandmother, though. Sheesh.

We watched the sword-swinging fantasy epic with the long, silver-haired hero and the snappy dialogue between him and his Bard friend, who was the type of hot that it might as well be criminal with how dopey he could be.

We crunched popcorn and binged several episodes until I couldn’t stop yawning and with a smirk, and the glimmer of sunrise coming in around the ratan blinds over our windows and French doors, Maya nudged me with her foot and sent me to bed.

I smiled tiredly and clambered to my feet.

“G’night, girl,” she called after me, turning off the television.

“G’morning,” I said, waving over my shoulder. I went into my room and shut the door.

I mean, it was what it was, and what it was, was morning. I hated getting it wrong… it was just one of my things.

CHAPTERFOUR

La Croix…

“Lenny, boy, c’mere and see if you can get this man his part. I can’t figure what the hell he’s sayin’.”

I had just set my tool tray down and was only half through wiping my hands on the filthy red rag I’d found somewhere out there in the yard when Big Saul called me over. I went to the front counter and frowned. The old-timer in front of the desk was one of my people – that’s to say, one of the swamp people.

He looked at me through watery blue eyes and held out what he was lookin’ for and I asked him a few questions. He perked up at the Cajun comin’ out of my mouth and fired back in rapid French-Creole that I could keep up with, but barely. Language was like a muscle. If it went unflexed long enough, you lost some tone or whatever.

Still, I worked out well enough from the busted shit he handed me what it was he needed. Nodding, I picked my tool tray up off the counter and jerked my head at the man to follow me out into the yard full of weed-choked and rusting hulks of boat motors and hulls.

I wiped the sweat from my brow and midway through pulling his part, I had to stop for my phone ringing in the back pocket of my coveralls.

---