Page 48 of Till The Sun Dies (Checkmate 2)

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I need specialty parts,and seeing as this car was manufactured more than half a century ago, I need them sourced fast.

Just hours after I drive the Buick into Kane’s driveway and leave it in his garage with the hood up, I drive my Charger toward my bandmate and best friend’s newly renovated A-frame not so far out of town.

Marc’s fiancé stands on the front stairs with their new baby in her arms and long blonde hair cascading over her back. Meg is stunning in the traditional sense, as in, model perfect, even with a new baby attached to her chest and no time to work out or do her makeup.

And yet, I think of Laine and her sweatpants.

Laine and her hoodie.

Laine and her bruised eyes.

I climb out of the car and pocket my keys, since I need to use Marc’s truck to haul the parts. I glance over at Marc and his pet cow – also named Meg – as they crunch gravel beneath their feet over by the barn. Walking toward us, Marc watches his girl and baby, and snorts when she blows an air kiss – not at him, but at me.

“She’s trouble.” I meet him at his beat-up truck and climb in the passenger side.

He switches on the rumbling engine. “Hm?”

“Meg.” I nod in her direction and grin at her tinkling laughter. “She’s gonna send you to an early grave.”

He flashes a fast grin and clips his belt. “Don’t I know it. She’s a pain in my ass more often than not. She’s always flirting with my friends, and it’s hard to pretend I’m mad when it actually makes me laugh. So…?” He turns to me. “Where are we going?”

“City. I’ve gotta see a guy at a specialty dealership.”

Rolling forward along his driveway, he taps the steering wheel in lieu of having a radio in his old truck. “The Charger having troubles?”

“Nope. I’m rebuilding an old Buick.”

“Some old coot wants to revisit his heyday and rebuild the car he lost his virginity in?”

I grin and crank the old window open. Spring is in full swing, and the breeze is perfect. “Not some old coot. This one’s for me.”

“Yeah?” He turns to catch my eye. “What about the Charger?”

“I’m keeping both.”

“Jesus,” he laughs. “You’re ballin’ in your old age, huh? The life of a single man; no kids, no missus, no debt, no worries.”

“Yeah.” My best friends know nothing about me. For three decades, I’ve kept my trap shut and cruised under the surface. They don’t know my family life – not really. They know I come from a shitty home; it’s hard to pretend you’re middle class when your clothes are dirty and you turn up late for school more than half the time. And years of stepping in front of girls to protect them – even girls we don’t know – has led them to catch on that maybe my mom was beaten more often than not.

But they don’t know I attended her funeral and never told them. I called out sick one school day – I forged a sick note claiming I had the flu – and on a rainy day in the fall, I sat at the cemetery and ate my packed lunch.

Eating a PB&J at the cemetery might seem weird, but it was my daily routine, and that day, I was at my wit’s end.

I couldn’t handle that much change in one day.

A funeral was my limit, so I kept everything else the same, including my peanut butter sandwich.

The guys don’t know that the little flower that now sits behind my rearview mirror – the fabric one with its wire stem – watches over me while I drive.

They don’t know that I found little fabric flowers scattered in the wind a few days after she was buried. They weren’t for her, I hadn’t brought them, but when one ended up sitting on the clumped dirt, I knew.

I knew the woman that was unable to look out for herself in life had been tasked with looking after me in death.

I’m not dead yet, so that means she’s either doing her job, or… its just not my time to go yet.

My friends don’t know what happened to my dad, they just know I moved my ass out of home before high school ended. If they noticed I hung out at The Shed – the place our band played every single weekend – more than usual, they never mentioned it.

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