Page 65 of Cognac Secrets

“Sure did,” she said.

“I should have you do mine soon,” Sandrine said, looking at her own chipped polish.

True rolled her eyes.

“You start peeling the polish in like a day, all my hard work chipping off in like ten minutes flat, I swear.”

“I can’t help it!” Sandrine cried. “I work with the public in The Quarter on the daily. I need to do something to keep myself from going insane.”

“The Mystic’s Dream, right?” Alina asked.

Sandrine nodded.

“Yeah, that’s right.”

“I keep meaning to come by and check it out, but just haven’t had the time with everything we’re pulling together for Swamp Witch Designs.”

“I totally get that,” Sandrine said and I just sat back and enjoyed listening to the women talk about this and that, bantering about life in retail and bar service in The Quarter, and took the time to study True who was clearly studying me back – which was fine. I could tell she was protective of her best friend and just so happened we had that shit in common.

We had good barbecue and good times, laughing and drinking around the fire, music playing but low key this time. Not at headache inducing, feel the pulse in your soul kind of volume we usually had the stereo cranked up to.

It was a good night so far. We’d given up on the camp chairs and had drug the couches and shit back here to sit around the burn barrel and it was cozier, I was on the loveseat with Sandrine, kicked back and relaxing, short enough that I was stretched out much like True was along the couch, her head in Louie’s lap as she smiled at something on her phone.

They looked relaxed, and I think it was the first time I hadn’t seen Louie jump when someone touched him. I’d caught him off to the side with Sandrine talking in furious whispers over by the bathroom and I hadn’t said anything, but Sandrine had caught me watching and had filled me in.

Louiereallyliked True, like,likedliked her, and he had questions he obviously hadn’t felt comfortable coming to any of us guys with.

Sandrine had left it at that, but it was enough for me to catch the gist… Louie had a very real and very valid aversion to male touching in ah, alustfulsort of way. Like, we all knew he likedwomen– and True certainly looked like a woman andwasa woman with everything from how she dressed to how she spoke to how she just plainvibed– because, well, shewas a woman… but she wasn’t packing a vagina in her pants and that seemed to get Louie hitched up in all sorts of ways but the fact True wasn’t interested in sex, like at all, and Louie really wasn’t either – even though the attraction and the urges were there for him.

Yeah. It was a Gordian knot of complicated, and thank fuck Sandy was the one to navigate it and not any of the jackals we called brothers. I think they would have meant well by our brother Louie, but we just weren’t equipped for these kinds of nuanced situations. Shit, when every problem looked like a nail to a guy, the only solution we wound up with in our toolboxes was a big fuckin’ hammer – and this was so not a job for a fuckin’ hammer.

Sandrine was delicate, and handling it with grace, and for my fuckin’ part – I did what I could behind the scenes to help by quietly going to the guys individually throughout the course of the night and telling ‘em, if they fucked this up for Louie – we were fighting and I was gonna be pissed.

No one wanted to fuck with that when they’d been on the receiving end of my calculated hits and knew how much I punched to make it fuckin’ hurt and how I gave no fucking shits about exploiting the fuck out of their weaknesses.

I’d also done the math and had gone to Hex first, to get him to back me up on this. Id gave me a small point of internal pride to visibly see the respect in his eyes for me go up a notch when I’d explained out what was happening. He’d looked from me, to Louie, and back to me and hadn’t said a word. He didn’t have to. The single curt nod he’d given me was enough.

Like I said, it was a good night so far, and we were all feeling pretty fine when True looked up at Louie and said, “So about this moonshine Sandy was telling me about.”

Louie looked down and grinned and Hex called out, “Gonna get into the shine, get the good shit out from underneath the bar so we can show these girls the good, the bad, and the ugly an’ give ‘em a proper education.”

“I love it when you talk dirty, baby,” Cor said from Hex’s lap before laying one on him.

For anyone not in the know, Cor was a teacher before all that shit went down at her school. Now she was fixing to become a millionaire as soon as the settlement or judgment or whatever came through from the New Orleans school district. She was doing okay, still didn’t really remember a thing – which was a blessing, but also a bit of a curse. She worried about it something awful, the not remembering part, but the rest of us were nothing but relieved she didn’t. The attack on her person had been fuckingbrutaland had landed her in the hospital for quite some time.

She’d healed physically, but the memories may or may not still be there. Hex said some nights she had awful nightmares, but when he got her woke up, she never remembered what they were about.

I liked to think it was her own mind protecting itself. Processing things in the background like some of the apps on our phones.

Louie looked to LaCroix like he was his daddy or something and LaCroix gave a nod of his head before Louie paused before getting up, allowing True to sit up out of his way.

“Be back in a flash,” he said.

“Bennie why don’t you help him out, get that mid-grade shit – I’ll grab the rotgut and we’ll have us a little proper moonshine tasting for the ladies all fancy like,” Hex declared.

“On it,” I said with a smile, and Sandy whined but sat up for me so I could slide out from under her.

“I was comfy,” she complained and I bent down to give her a kiss and as before, when I went to straighten up too soon for her liking, she balled a hand in the lapel of my cut and pulled me down for more.

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