Page 11 of Rooke
Her hand tightened around the broken glass. “I don’t want to do this anymore, James. We’re done, okay? I just…I have to go home.”
“And I told you—”
“God,please. Just let me go. I can’t stand this anymore. I’m being torn apart. It’s too much to deal with right now. Maybe in time—”
“What? The past will suddenly no longer matter? You think there’ll come a time when you don’t wake up screaming in the middle of the night? When you’re not looking over your shoulder every time you walk down an unfamiliar street?” I laugh, shaking my head. “I’m disappointed. I thought you wanted to be brave. I thought you were ready to let go of everything that happened.”
She visibly shrinks before me. My words are harsh, I know, but she needs to hear them. She can’t go on living like this, jumping every time a car backfires.
I slam the book closed, slowly closing my eyes. It’s becoming apparent why Kayla picked this specific book. She’s not particularly known for her subtlety, but I really do have to give it to her this time. The female protagonist in the book hasn’t lost her child, she was kidnapped and held against her will by a demented man who escaped from prison, and yet there are startling similarities between myself and the fictional girl in the book: she’s haunted by her past; she can’t seem to get her life back in order after her ordeal; persistent nightmares plague her every time she closes her eyes; and she finds it hard to trust men. Especially the dark-haired rogue who refuses to cease and desist in his borderline stalker-esque pursuit of her.
Somehow, I think Kayla is trying to show me that a brooding, sarcastic asshole in my life is exactly what I need to break me out of my melancholia. I can’t seem to understand her logic. And who is she to speak, anyway? She’s been professionally single for the past three years, ever since she caught her ex-husband fucking his secretary in the basement of their house, and have I given her a hard time about her personal life choices? No, I have not. I don’t judge. I don’t comment on anyone else’s decisions, mistakes or general quirks. All I ask is that I’m afforded the same treatment in return. With Kayla, it never really matters what anyone else wants, though. She’ll do whatever she thinks is right, irrespective of who it might piss off.
I set down the book, thinking about the main guy in the story, James. He’s from a broken home. The thought of having a long-term, committed relationship with a woman has never occurred to him until he meets Isobel, the female lead, of course. He’s a reprobate, a criminal, a dangerous gun-toting kind of guy you wouldn’t want to meet in a dark alleyway. He has very little going for him when you consider him as potential boyfriend material, and yet when I think about him I can almost feel the touch of his fingers against my mouth. I can almost imagine how it would feel to be locked inside his arms, half afraid and half melting with desire as he breathes heavily against the sensitive skin of my neck.
Why is it that the idea of a reckless, frightening man like him is enough to get my heart racing, and yet the idea of a sensible investment banker from Hoboken makes me want to vomit?
Maybe it’s because Andrew was an investment banker from Hoboken. Maybe sensible, reliable men with no psychopathic tendencies are always going to remind me of him, and in turn what we lost. Or maybe it’s the fact that edgy, dark, moody men with hidden pasts are bad for women like me, and I hit my self-destruct button a long time ago.
SIX
PAYDAY
ROOKE
Another text message this morning. Another car. This time the boost is an easy one. “Fifteen grand. You’re not getting a cent more from me, Rooke. I don’t need to remind you how badly you ripped me off with the other night, do I?”
“I’m not exactly popping the hood on these things to check the engines, Jericho. If it runs when I cross the wires, I take the fucking thing. You can’t blame me if the vehicles I bring you aren’t in pristine working condition sometimes.”
Apparently the Merc was a dud. He fucking wanted it, though. He was the one who told me specifically where it was. Jericho uses the nail on his little finger to scratch at the corner of his mouth, frowning deeply. He curses under his breath, using language that would make a sailor blush. “How about a wager? Double or nothing, my friend. Spice things up a little.”
“No, thanks. I’ll stick with the twenty you promised.” I’ve learned my lesson with Jericho. He never places a bet he knows he can’t win. His coins are double-sided. His decks are stacked. If I chose to go head-to-head with him every time he proposed a bet, I’d be the poorest car thief in the tri-state area.
“All right, man. Twenty,” he says. “But I’m telling you now, if I lose money on this thing I’m coming after you for the balance. And I don’t want to have to get on a bus to Brooklyn, asshole. That would be some bullshit right there.” Despite his role as mechanic and “used car salesman,” Jericho hates driving cars. He prefers to sit on the back seat of a bus whenever he has to get around, generally falling asleep with his mouth hanging open and missing his stop at least twice. There’s no reasoning with the man, though. No matter how many times I try to persuade him it would be more efficient to use one of the many cars he has on hand in his garage, he refuses to budge on the matter.
“How do I get pulled over by the cops if I’m riding a goddamn bus? How do I get caught for some stupid small shit like speeding, only to get dragged down to the station on an outstanding warrant, if I’m minding my own damn business at the back of the Q54, huh, Cuervo?”
He calls me Cuervo because he thinks I’m ignorant to the fact that it means crow in Spanish. He has no idea how I spent my time in juvenile detention, though, my adult-sized legs concertinaed beneath a child-sized desk as I pored over high school AP Spanish textbooks, mouthing the translations to phrases, verbs, adjectives and nouns silently as my eyes hungrily skipped over the pages. I’m pretty much fucking fluent these days.
“You won’t have to come looking for me,” I assure him. “It’s perfect. It’s last year’s model. No problems with the head gasket on this one, I promise. And even if there was a problem, you could always take it into a service center. It’s less than a year old. I’m sure it’s still under warranty.”
The broad, mildly overweight Mexican man now leaning against the driver’s side door shoots me a withering look that’s made lesser men turn tail and run in the past. He doesn’t say it:how am I supposed to take a car into a manufacturer’s service center if it’s been stolen and I don’t have any of the paperwork?He just lets the look hang between us for a moment, searing into me, doing the talking for him. I’m probably getting sunburn from the intensity of his glare.
“Funny man,” he says eventually. “I always forget how funny you are. And then you show up here and remind me, and I find myself wanting to forget all over again.”
“That’s a little harsh.”
He shrugs. “You’re funny. I’m harsh. We all have our crosses to bear.” I follow him as he leaves the metallic blue Land Rover I’ve boosted for him and heads into the back of the garage, where his office is located. I’ve spent half my life in places like this—mechanic’s shops, choked with car parts, everything covered in grease, stinking like sweat and cigarette smoke. Jericho’s place is unique, though. There are no pictures of naked women on the walls. Not one single poster. According to Raul, Jericho has seven older sisters who raised him after his mother died, and as such he won’t hear a bad word spoken against a woman. He beat a guy with a tire iron once because the guy in question called a hooker standing outside on the street cornerputa.
Inside Jericho’s office, he gestures for me to have a seat. He turns his back to me while he opens up his small wall safe, entering digits into a keypad hidden behind an old photograph of a stern looking Mexican dude with a moustache in full military dress. Porfirio Diaz. I know the guy’s name because I made the mistake of asking Jericho about him once. Forty minutes later, I’d been well educated in the history of Diaz, including the fact that he served seven full terms as president of Mexico. He died in 1915. Jericho doesn’t appear to have gotten over the tragedy of it just yet.
I can hear him counting to himself as he retrieves my payment for the Land Rover. My phone goes off in my pocket but I leave it where it is. Jericho and I are on good, if a little spiky, terms. He’s a guy that demands your full attention, though. Texting in his office would no doubt be considered disrespectful on my part.
“There,” he says, turning around. “Twenty thousand. I don’t have any small bills I am afraid.”
Great. Hundred dollar bills are a nightmare to get rid of. Try to pay with a Benjamin in most of the establishments Jake and I frequent and you’ll get a suspicious look in the very least. At worst, the bill will be returned to you and you’ll be told to go break it somewhere else or they’ll call the cops. Still, money is money. It’s not like I’m planning on spending it anyway.
I take the small black carrier bag he’s holding out to me. “Any idea what you might like next? And don’t say a fucking Tesla.” I don’t normally grumble, but fuck. That’s all he seems to ask for, and those cars are virtually impossible to misappropriate.
