Page 2 of Whiskey Shivers

I started playing some Billie Holiday on my phone and went to the fridge, opening it up with a heavy sigh and letting my eyes rove its contents.

Mark cursed under his breath from the other room and I waited for it. Sure enough…

“Can you turn it down? I can’t concentrate.”

It was barely playing, but this was becoming typical.

“Sure,” I said. I switched the music off and set to work, fixing dinner in silence.

There was a reason I’d been holding off on actuallyplanningthe wedding. I guess I wasn’t quite to the point of throwing in the towel, but I certainly didn’t think that at the rate we were going, things were going to last. And damn if that didn’t hurt.

CHAPTERTWO

Hex…

“You’re here late,” I said. I didn’t even bother to hide the surprise in my voice as Corliss Legare looked up from her laptop screen at her desk, putting her readers up on top of her head. I raised an eyebrow at that and said, “A little on the young side for needing those, aren’t you?”

She smiled and raised her arms over her head, giving a long stretch like a cat.

“There’s no accounting for crappy genetics. My fiancé is running late at the office. My car is in the shop. He’s supposed to give me a ride home, but I expect I’ll be taking a rideshare or something.” She made a face.

All I really took from that was that she was off the market, so I downshifted from my intent to flirt some to just plain being her friend. There was just something in those blue eyes of hers that radiated a fractured sort of ache. That said, she could use one right now.

“Oh, well, I’ve got about an hour left. I could swing back by if you need and see if you’re still here? If you are, I live over down in the ninth. If it’s your direction, too, I could give you a lift.”

She looked thoughtful as I picked up the trashcan by her desk and emptied it into my big rolling can.

“No pressure, not trying to be forward or anything. Just trying to be helpful,” I added when she mulled it over just a little too long.

She smiled, looked up, and said, “Thank you.” Then, nodding, she said, “If I’m still here, I would gratefully take you up on that.”

“No problem,” I said.

She turned back to her laptop and I went about my business in her room, collecting the trash and wiping a few things down. I didn’t run the canister vac I was packing around on my back. I didn’t want to disturb her any more than necessary – plus, the floor of her classroom wasn’t that bad. It could wait until tomorrow.

I fully admitted my disappointment when I came around an hour later and her classroom was both locked up and dark.

Looks like her ride had shown up. I didn’t blame her for not finding and telling me. The school was a large one and had multiple floors. I could have been anywhere. If I’d been down in the boiler room or the custodian’s pen, she likely wouldn’t have been able to find me at all. This old building could be a maze and none of the teachers knew it like the custodians and maintenance guys did.

I got out, locked up, and waved goodbye to ol’ Curtis, the custodian in charge. I guess you could call the lanky black man my boss, but he didn’t like it. Nah, he liked to see the custodial staff as equals. Said there wasn’t no need for a man in charge, even if he was the one who had to sign off on shit. He was a good man. I could respect him.

I drove my truck home. I didn’t ride to the school very often and when I did – never with my colors on. I liked my job. I dug fixing and cleaning things. It reminded me of my old man growing up. He was a school custodian too, and everybody at that school adored him. He’d been into some shit like me outside of school – nothing as heavy as the Voodoo Bastards, though. No, my dad had just been an old-school Appalachian moonshiner. Still, it’d been damn useful the things he’d taught me both on the right and the wrong side of the law.

His motto in all things had been “work smarter, not harder”and he had a penchant for some good ‘ol redneck ingenuity. He’d also had a pretty unhealthy dislike for authority, which had gotten him into trouble more than a time or two. It was certainly something he’d passed on down to me – his only child.

By comparison, I didn’t have the best relationship with my momma. Hell, she’d been the reason I’d moved all the way out here. My daddy always said she was a good woman – a woman he’d certainly loved dearly right up until the day he’d died; butgoddamn,did that woman try to smother me. Always with the damned unattainable expectations and shit howdy, it was like she hadn’t known my fuckin’ daddy at all. Constantly with the refrain of how disappointed my daddy would be with me for not doing this, that, or the other.

It was one of the reasons I didn’t come around too often to the old homestead out in Tennessee. I just couldn’t bring myself to deal with her nitpicking. It’d like to drive me insane.

My phone went off the second I’d planted my butt in my seat of my truck, and I checked the screen.

It was Louie, our newest member, going on a year or more now.

Louie: You coming by the clubhouse tonight? I got that part you were looking for!

I grinned.

Me: Well shit, howdy! Good on you, boy! Yeah, I’m leaving the ol’ day job now. I’ll be by in the next couple of hours.

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