Page 92 of Road Queens
“Yes, but you know what I mean. Sticks around mentally, I guess. That’s a ridiculous phrase, but I’m too tired to fix it. Will we all go back to ignoring each other, or will we kind of rebuild the friendship? Operation Starfish is now in history’s dustbin, but is there anything beyond that? What does a pack of vigilantes do when they stop being vigilantes, separate, and then come together again? Join the Y? Take up gardening? Write a memoir?”
“You could just ... be friends. Like you were before OpStar. See what happens.”
“Yes. Be friends and hope the cops don’t follow a trail of bread crumbs to Cass, but regardless, never talk about the past. Is it still a viable friendship if it’s different from what you had before?”
“Sure. People change, their lifestyles change. You’re not the person you were when you were sixteen or twenty. Neither am I, neither are they. You can all turn over new leaves and forge a new path.”
“You’re killing me with the clichés.”
“Tough. You’ll just have to endure. And what about us?”
“We’ll have to endure,” she teased. “But c’mon ... what ‘us’? We haven’t even known each other a week. It’s too soon for ‘us.’”
“You’re right,” he agreed, and wished he wasn’t. “But I need to—I mean, I’d like to see you again.”
“See me? You’d better watch those euphemisms around Sidney.”
He almost shuddered. “I like her, but she’s terrifying.”
“Naw, it’s all bluff and bluster. Sidney Derecho’s biggest fear is that people will find out she’s secretly a sweetheart. And moths. Those are the two big fears. Especially the big fat ones that land on lamps and flap their wingsreallyhard when you try to shoo them away. Which I totally get.”
“Have you ever seen one up close?”
“Why the hell would I do that?”
“They have cute faces.”
“Moths and their faces are irrelevant since they’re terrifying. And I’d like to, ahem, ‘see’ you again too. I’ve never been with anyone who knew about my baggage and my friends’ baggage going in.” She tittered. “No pun intended.”
He rolled his eyes. “Finally, a flaw. Thank God; perfection gets old. And it doesn’t have to be one sided. I’ll tell you all the sordid tales from my childhood. The time I fell out of a tree and got a concussion. And all the times I fell out of a tree and didn’t get a concussion. And the time I took up baking and decided flour and powdered sugar were essentially the same thing.”
“Stop it,” she giggled. “You’re making that up.”
“Nope. And the time a bat got into my apartment—how, I’ll never know—and I dealt with it by screaming for twenty minutes. I’ll tell you whatever you want to know about me. Everyone’s got baggage, y’know? I knew that years before I pinned on a badge.”
“Baggage.” Her pretty brow furrowed in thought. He leaned over, poked his phone, and saw it was past midnight.
“Do you want me to go?”Please say no.“It’s not a problem if you want me to leave.I’dwant me to leave ... Amanda?”
“Hmmm?” She looked at him, then bent to haul the blankets off the floor, and covered them both. “Don’t be ridiculous, of course you should stay. You ... hmm.”
“Are you okay?”
“Hmmm? Sorry, I’m fine, I’m just ... I’m thinking about what you said. About baggage. And accidents. It’s right there in my brain, just a bit out of reach. I’d probably be able to put a thought together if you hadn’t made me come about a dozen times.”
“Sorry,” he said, and got a poke in the ribs for it. He shotgunned the last of his malt and set the empty glass down with a determined thud.
“Uh-oh.”
“Ice cream headache.”
“I can fix that.”
“Would you?” He opened obligingly, then caught her wrist and sucked on her thumb, and pulled her closer.
“Again?” she murmured, watching his face. He lightly bit her thumb, then pulled it out of his mouth and kissed her deeply, rolled her on her back, rubbed against her like a big cat, and kissed the hollow of her throat.
“If you wouldn’t mind terribly.”
