Page 71 of Fast and Dirty

“I won’t let them do this for me. Or you. And as much love as I feel from you and everyone else, there’d be nothing anyone could do to get me to forgive myself. I don’t want that. I can’t live like that, so don’t make me.”

“Kira, I can’t-”

“Don’t make me live that way, West.” She holds a finger up in my face, her blue eyes fierce. “If you love me, you won’t do that.” That’s a suckerpunch in the gonads. With that, she lunges herself up onto her toes and kisses the hell out of me. I wish I could register the feel of her warm lips, but I’ve been impaled by a steel spear of reality, straight through my chest. I don’t feel like I’m even in my own body as she floats down the front steps, her suitcase gracelessly clunking behind her. I don’t think I even feel myself jump the front steps in one leap or my boots hitting the pavement in thundering strides chasing the black SUV up the road until it’s out of sight.

28

WEST

“It’ll be okay Westy boy,” Agnes tells me over the breath of pot smoke she’s holding in. “That dick hole she’s marrying will likely take a mistress and she’ll take those opportunities to come back and rendezvous with you.” She blows out the billow of smoke as she pats my head. “It’s kind of sexy when you think about it. You’ll be her dangerous, bad boy lover from the wrong side of the tracks who makes her feel like a goddess.”

“But I don’t want to just be her side piece,” I gripe from my splayed out position on Agnes’s couch, cradling my sixth beer to my chest. “I want to be the guy she sees every day and that she marries in that pretty wedding gown.” Did I mention I’m cuddling a bottle of Jack in my other arm? That’s probably why I sound like a pathetic little asshole right now.

I see Agnes nod. “As much as I love that dear old Inn, I think I’ve grown to love her more.

“What’s not to love?” I bring my beer to my lips. Ugh! Never mind, that was the whiskey. “She’s so kind and smart,” I cough out after my unintentional shot. “The thing is, she loves that old Inn too. And she knows what it means to the town whether it’s open or not. Even if this whole town tried to stop her fromleaving with that bag of dicks and got her to stay, I don’t think it would be the same. She’d always feel remorse that she’s the reason for it not being here.”

“I thought it was the crazy dress fetish that hooked me, but it was so much more than that,” I ramble on, slurring my words.

“Dress fetish?” Agnes pipes up. “Do tell…”

“It’s stupid,” I mumble.

As I feel a sleepy haze start to pass over me, I can hear Agnes in the background doing … what the fuck is she doing? I hear her puttering around, opening and shutting doors while humming to herself, but what really gets my hackles up almost enough to be jarred out of my doze off is the metal clanging.

“Agnes?” I call out, still unable to peel my eyelids open. “What’s going on?”

“Don’t you worry your pretty little head about it,” she calls back along with the sound of more metal clanging and something heavy being dragged across the floor.

Before I can protest, I hear her front door slam closed, and my brain shuts off.

I blink awake,feeling stiff as a petrified board and as if someone removed my brain and replaced it with cotton balls.

Ugh. Drunk on Agnes’s couch is not a sleeping method I’d recommend.

One thing worth noting as I push myself up into a sitting position, however, is how eerily quiet the place is. There’s nothing quiet about Agnes, so this is concerning.

“Agnes?” I call out, wincing at the gong in my head that goes off in protest to my own voice.

I shuffle around the main floor of her abode, trying to bring my eyes into focus. I need a cup of straight up black deathcoffee if I’m going to see through this hangover. After I make my way into the kitchen I find a Post-it note stuck to the coffee maker. Peeling it off, I have to blink a few times to be able to read the handwriting scrawled across it.

Hey Sexy ManMuffin,

Meet me at the Inn

-A

I bring my car roaring up to the Inn and I can already see Agnes has chained herself to the porch. I throw the car in park and cut the engine in quick succession before pushing my door open and climbing out.

“Agnes!” I bark. “What in the everloving hell are you doing?!” I shout.

“This is how we handled things back in my day!” She hoots, looking perfectly content with her arms pinned to her sides by the thick chain that’s wrapped around her. Is that what I heard her messing with last night?

“Your Jacob fucking Marley impression really screwed with my half-drunk, half-asleep brain last night, you madwoman.” I point at her. “But that’s beside the point.” I take out my phone and have a rushed conversation with a half-awake Hattie. Not knowing what else to do, I pace for the next ten minutes, waiting for her to arrive and hopefully talk some sense into her grandmother - if that’s possible.

Ned is sitting nearby in a lawn chair, sipping from a travel coffee mug and thumbing through a magazine that says Pickleball Monthly on the cover. “Did you do this?” I demand.

He doesn’t even look up. “She wanted me to.”

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