“I don’t think so, but she’s been weird about this one so maybe it is about the thing.”
Thethingwe’re referring to is Leo’s uterus.
One of the supposed many secrets our girl still has was revealed to me by accident when I got the mail and opened the reminder for an upcoming appointment. I immediately went to Leonor with it so she didn’t think I was snooping but I saw part of what it said before I handed it over.
Her doctor found a mass on her uterus during her last PAP smear. Ultrasounds are a standard part for her now since she had so many complications from the attack, and the appointment was to talk about what to do next.
Leo still doesn’t know I know that, or that I told the guys, but I’m trying to find the balance between letting her come to us with things, and freaking the fuck out over all of it. I know it was wrong, we all do, but Jesus, a fucking mass isn’t somethingto hide from the people who love you, not when it’s clearly something Leonor has known about for quite some time.
Sure, there is a better than likely possibility it’s just scar tissue but they don’t know for sure so this appointment was super important, and we’ve been waiting on bated breath for our girl to tell usanythingabout it. Except, in classic Leo fashion, she did not call a single soul, and we’ve been on pins and needles for hours.
Hours.
Even though I can almost guarantee Leonor still won’t tell us shit.
“I’m sure it went fine. Probably just gonna do a scan, maybe a biopsy. It’s probably just scar tissue,” I say, unsure if it’s because I need to hear it or Lucky does.
This kind of shit hits way too close to home.
Pete’s mom passed when we were in high school from ovarian cancer and the older of his sisters, Sara and her husband have had multiple miscarriages due to some issues with her body, and that led to two emergency c-sections when they were finally able to carry to term.
We were there for all of that, Pete’s mom while she was sick, Sara while she mourned their babies. It was hard as hell watching so many people I cared about hurt, watching my chosen family go through so much pain. I think it was almost harder to watch Lucky and Pete go through that than I realized it would be because of what they are to each other, and to me.
They’ve been best friends since they were three, they started the band when they were in the sixth grade, and Peter’s mama was the only one Luck and I had for a while.
Not discrediting Nanny Vee for what she did, for how she raised me, but she always was and always will be my grandmother.
Our sweet boy joined those two when they were in seventh grade, which is when Norm started middle school. He’s a couple years younger but was only a grade below the three of us because he skipped fifth grade, and none of that matter once Pete saved him during lunch.
I wasn’t around yet but I guess there was a group of eighth graders who were trying to pants Norman in front of a bunch of girls after knocking his books and papers all over the hall, and breaking his glasses. Lucky says Pete went allninja badasson the bigger kids, then helped Norm get his shit together before basically telling him he was their friend now.
Which tracks.
When they found out he could fucking shred the guitar and was basically a musical prodigy—a lot like Leo—they immediately made Norm their third member. So, he joined The Ravens, grew out his hair, ditched the glasses for contacts, and really came into his own from the confidence it gave him. We still needed to keep the bigger kids away from him for a while, mainly until Norman started using his confidence instead of trying to be humble all the time, but he was always right there telling them to fuck off while the three of us kicked their asses.
I transferred to their school in eighth grade when my mom left me at Nanny’s house the summer before and never came back to pick me up. She got popped on multiple warrants, cried the blues to the cops about herbaby boyand when they came knocking on Nanny Ves’s door she told them to give her guardianship or fuck off. Surprisingly, they did, and my mom gave up any parental rights she had a few months later.
But coming to New Orleans was the best thing to happen to me.
I met Lucky the second day of school while I was trying to lug the piano from the choir room to the back parking lot. When all he did was ask if I needed help, didn’t question why the fuckI was doing what I was doing or snitch on me for it, I told him we were going to be the best of friends and they asked me to join their band. They had no idea I knew how to play an instrument or sing, but trying to steal a piano from school was my in. And when they found out my grandpa—Grampy Gee because that’s how they roll—was the conductor of an orchestra back in the fifties and sixties who taught me to read music and play damn near every brass and string instrument ever created, my place was set in stone.
You combine our natural god given talents, mine and Lucky’s musical backgrounds with Pete’s hard ass determination, well you get the first version of The Ravens that did ok locally for a while but didn’t quite have the direction needed to take things to the next level. Then we met our firecracker of a lead singer backstage at a show at Mother Love’s a few years after high school and the rest is history.
It’s exactly why we have always been insanely protective of Leonor.
You find your missing pieces, you don’t let any fucking thing happen to them.
“Who the fuck is that asshole?”
I snap out of my walk down memory lane as we pull around the back of the carriage house and see some big, bearded motherfucker caging Leo against the side of her car, an arm on either side of her head while he towers over her.
Narrowing my eyes, I clench my jaw and grunt, “Let’s go find the fuck out.”
The van barely stops moving before I’m throwing my door open and all but running at Leo. More like charging because the closer I get, I can tell that she’s pissed off but she’s also scared. Her hands are rolled into fists at her sides and her black eyes are narrowed on this asshat’s face but her chest is pumping sohard you’d think she just ran a marathon while smoking a pack of cigarettes.
“I just want to help you, Leonor. I think you could really benefit from letting someone like me into your life.” He lifts his hand from the Prius and fingers a loose strand of hair that’s fallen from the knot on Leo’s head. “Let me help you.”
“Hey!” I bark out because I’m too fucking mad to articulate my thoughts. “Hey, asshole!”
