Page 34 of Absinthe Dreams
“It ain’t much to look at, sorry about that,” I mumbled, following Cy up onto the front porch and into the house. “Used to be LaCroix’s daddy’s old place. He died a while back, and LaCroix can’t stand it here for a bunch of reasons, so he had me, Cy, and Axe move in here to keep the place from rotting completely. We got plans to really restore it, but we got so much shit going on and not enough hours in the day. You get it, I’m sure.”
“I do,” she admitted.
“Such is the life of a working man,” I said. “Gimme just a few minutes to grab stuff and we’ll go.”
“Take your time!” she urged. “Not like I’m in a hurry.”
I smiled and turned to go down the hall past the stairs to my room in the back.
She stayed behind in the living room. My room was a pit, so I was grateful for that.
It wasn’t no time at all before I had my shit in a bag and was in the bathroom to toss the last of my shit – beard wash, soap, shampoo, conditioner, beard oil, hot comb, beard balm, cologne – all the things, in with my laundry.
Gym bag stuffed to the gills, I found her looking at dusty photos on the wall in the living room. None of them had anything of LaCroix or his family past the age of eight or so when his mom… well… it was sad. Let’s just leave it at that.
“Ready?” I asked.
“Yeah.” She smiled, and I could see the curiosity, clear and bright, behind those eyes – but she resisted the urge to ask.
We flew back to the city, making the forty-minute drive or so in less than thirty. She was kind enough to wear the bag across her chest rather than let me struggle with parsing shit out to make it fit between my two cases.
We pulled up behind her house, and I parked in the driveway outside her closed garage door. One of the first things I checkedwas that it was secure before I let her go up to key our way in through the back door.
I took my bag off her after she’d locked up behind us, her cat running up the back hall to scream at her for being gone and leaving him cooped up inside the house.
“Sorry, Charlie,” she said with a little chuckle.
“I’m just going to put this in the living room,” I said, slipping past her.
“All good,” she said and went into the kitchen to appease the cat with a treat or some wet food or some shit.
“Anything you need done?” I asked.
“Actually, yeah,” she said. “I need to hit the grocery store. I usually do this time of the week.”
“I gotcha.”
“We’ll take my car, if it’s alright.”
“Sure,” I said.
I moved the bike out of the way, she pulled out, and I tucked it off to the side on the opposite side of the garage along the back stoop. It was in the short strip of dying grass between the house and the alleyway, but safe from getting hit, which was all I cared about.
Fuck ever bringing my truck back here.
I usually hated shit like grocery shopping, but taking the trip with Genesis was a delight. We talked about food, the things we liked, and the things we couldn’t stand. It was nice that she wasn’t picky or high-maintenance. I was more obnoxious on that front with the dietary restrictions that I followed to maintain my fitness.
She made some concessions, and so did I. We met somewhere in the middle, and it was soeasywith her.
It definitely piqued my interest further.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Genesis…
Everything with Chainsaw was so…easy, and besides that, it wasfun. We were in my small kitchen, and he was handing me things out of our grocery haul and watching where I put them away.
“If today told me anything, it’s that I need to get out more,” I said, rolling my eyes at myself.
