Page 93 of Whiskey Shivers

“For now, we got anything else for tonight?” La Croix asked.

“I think that’s it,” Bennie said, looking over his notes on the meeting. He only kept the innocuous stuff wrote down. Made us look positively boring, but that was by design if the cops ever came knockin’.

“Alright then, let’s call this and get out to our women if we got ‘em,” La Croix said.

“Rub it in, why don’t you,” Collier teased.

I huffed a laugh.

“All in good time, all in good time,” I told him.

“Easy to say when you got a beauty like Cor sittin’ waitin’ on you to come home,” Axe said with a wink.

“Ain’t you hittin’ that fine ass down near the Garden District?” Saint asked him.

Axe shrugged. “Yeah, she’s older and married, though. Just a way to pass the time if you know what I mean.”

We all laughed a little and La Croix rumbled, “Just don’t get your ass caught or shot or somethin’ stupid.”

Axe laughed, “Her husband’s a milquetoast motherfucker. Why you think she’s riding my dick?”

“Motherfucker, you’re one of the quiet ones!” Chainsaw grinned. “You oughta know best to look out for your kind.”

“I somehow doubt the accountant is a serial killer,” Axe said, and Bennie piped up with a, “Watch it!”

Laughter went around the table and we naturally just sort of broke up from there.

When I got out into the main part of the club, it was to find my woman on one of the couches, a tote bag at her hip with a strand of yarn coming from it as she crocheted her way through something or other, a video up on her phone. She was trying to find something other than reading to occupy her and she’d been into crochet as a kid or something. Something about a foster mom teaching her some things or what not.

“How’s it going?” I asked her and she looked up and smiled holding up the triangle of whatever for me to see.

I squinted. “Are those faces?” I asked. She nodded.

“It’s called the ‘lost souls’ shawl and it’s got skulls.”

“I’ll be damned! It does!” I realized when I really looked at it. The moment she said it, my brain making sense of the pattern in it. “Looks real nice, Fable.”

“Thank you,” she said. “I’m trying to get it down, but after a certain point they’re just like ‘now repeat this for rows ten through sixteen’ and I’m like having this brain block or whatever and can’t seem to get it right on keeping this a triangle. Like I know I have to add but…” she blew a breath up and her fresh new bangs out of her eyes.

I hated the bangs, but I didn’t get a vote. It was her hair. Thankfully, I think she hated them too and was already trying to grow them back out.

I smiled at her and asked, “You hungry?”

“Starved, actually,” she said.

“Home and dinner or are you gonna let me take my girl out to eat.”

She tucked her things away. “Depends. Where’d you have in mind?” she asked.

“Favorite place, nothin’ fancy.”

She nodded. “I could definitely go for that.”

“Alright now.” I held down a hand and she took it, hauling herself to her feet. She bent over to tuck her work back into her bag and I admired the view.

“You don’t smack that, I think we’re all going to be disappointed in you,” Saint called out from the bar and Corliss straightened up like I’d lit that ass on fire before I could do anything.

“Don’t you dare!” she cried and she blushed a subtle pink.

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