Page 17 of Apex of the Curve
I listened to the line go dead and sighed.
I really found myself wanting to get to know this woman, but my dad was right. She just didn’t seem the type to be able to handle the life and I couldn’t change. It would leave my brother’s in a lurch.
I set my phone aside and went back to work on cleaning up the smooth, earthenware dishes.
* * *
Four or fivedays later and I still couldn’t get Aspen out of my mind. It was driving me nuts, and I finally broke.
“Hey, D.T.” The big man looked up from his phone, his beer sitting frosty but untouched nearby on the bar.
“What’s up?” he asked.
“Take a short ride with me?”
He frowned, looked around and asked, “How short?”
“Georgetown.”
“What’s in Georgetown?”
“Man, never mind.” I shook my head.
“Man, don’t be like that! Little Bird is on her way back. I don’t want to leave before she gets here,” he said.
“Oh. Well, she can ride with us on this one,” I said. “It’s nothing sketch.”
“Why you being all cagey?” he asked with a grin. I shrugged and didn’t say anything. I didn’t want the rest of the guys to give me a ration of shit, and I didn’t want to ride past her shop by myself. If we rode past, the pair of us, then it wouldn’t look like I was being a creepy stalker fuck… which yeah, okay, I was sort of being a creepy stalker fuck, what of it?
Dump Truck turned around more fully and fixed me with a look. I cocked my head and gave him a warning glare and his eyebrows went up. He held up his hands in surrender and cocked his head just as Little Bird came in the back door.
“Hey, baby,” she called and the smile he had for her was something else.
“That’s my line,” he said, pulling her into the circle of his arms and laying one on her. She giggled and twined her arms around his neck and not for the first time – I was jealous.
“Wanna take a ride with me and Fen to Georgetown?” he asked her. She drew her head back in confusion.
“What’s in Georgetown?” she asked.
“Fen won’t tell me,” he said, and she glanced in my direction and gave a shrug.
“Not like we have anything else going on tonight, so sure, let’s go.”
I stood up, my own beer half empty and forgotten on the coffee table in front of the couch I’d been sitting on.
“Alright then, let’s go.”
We rode down Roxbury, got over the First Ave. S. bridge and took the exit onto Michigan. I followed it all the way to Airport Way and hung a left, Dump Truck and Little Bird keeping pace and following my lead. I slowed down to a cruise and checked out Clayrity as we rode by. The lights were on, but dim. Shelves lined the walls all the way around the space with long tables set up.
I glimpsed Aspen behind the register, a mousy young thing chatting with her as she did the night’s paperwork. It was a hell of a candid look and for whatever reason, it just made me want to know the woman more.
I pulled up down the block, flipping an illegal U-turn in the middle of the block to back in against the curb in front of the Jules Maes Saloon. Dump Truck followed suit and killed the engine to his bike the same time I did.
“Okay, brother, enough of the cloak and dagger bullshit. Why you so suddenly interested in fuckin’ pottery?”
“He’s not,” Little Bird said, grinning, lifting off her lid. “I’d say it was the blonde, if I had to guess.”
I tapped my index finger against the tip of my nose and Little Bird grinned.
