“Funny, I was just about to ask Tango the same thing,” she said, grinning back, and saw Tango’s congratulatory smile over her brother’s shoulder.
“I didn’t miss you.” Aidan reached down and snagged a strip of bacon from her plate, folding it into his mouth. “So didn’t miss you.”
“Back at ya. So, what are you guys really doing here?” She shot him a pointed look. “I saw a lone wolf wandering around and thought maybe he was looking for you.”
Aidan’s smile tightened a fraction, a quick show of regret that she’d seen the Carpathian. “Yeah, maybe he was. But that’s not something you ought to worry about.”
The grin rebounded and he clapped Ronnie hard on the back. “You’ve got your guard-poodle to watch out for you.”
“Ass,” she accused.
“It’s a damn fine one, isn’t it?” He smacked himself as he turned to head down the sidewalk.
Ava sighed.
“Bye, hon,” Tango told her, a little rap of his knuckles on the railing in farewell.
“Bye, Kev.” She gave him a genuine smile. “Don’t let his fine ass blind you.”
He chuckled as he followed his friend.
When she glanced back at Ronnie, she said, “Our Town, huh?”
“Our Townon crack.”
The sound of a hand slapping down on the tool chest beside his left ear was like a grenade going off inside his head. Mercy ground his molars together and wasn’t surprised to find Aidan dropping down onto the wooden bench beside his work space.
“I’m curious,” Aidan said, pushing his shades into his curly hair, grinning, “how much alcohol it takes to get a six-five Cajun drunk enough to make a damn fool of himself in public.”
“Enough to put you under the table twice.”
“Don’t doubt it.” Aidan dug his pack of smokes from his cut pocket, but didn’t light up. He turned it in his hands, flicking the top, just to have something to do with his hands. “It’s Sunday,” he observed, nodding toward the bike Mercy worked on.
Mercy shrugged. “Not much else to do.”
Aidan’s face shifted, a subtle change in his energy that told Mercy this conversation wasn’t going to be as casual as it had seemed at first glance, and he wasn’t going to like it much. “The prospect said my sister and her boyfriend were there.”
Man, fuck that prospect. Mercy withdrew all his internal promises of support for the kid. “They might have been,” he said, off-hand, reaching for his wrench. “I wasn’t really paying attention.”
Aidan sighed, and sounded more like his father than he probably knew. “Merc.”
Mercy gave him the stare-down. “What?”
Unperturbed, Aidan returned the stare. “None of us like that snotrag boyfriend of hers, okay? But…she’s doing good these days.” For a second, his eyes were Ghost’s eyes. “You need to just leave her be, man.”
His mind went back to Friday night. She hadn’t even been in town twelve hours, and he’d laid hands on her. It was pretty fucked up if he thought about it.
He lifted his hands. “I am.” If there was a defensive bite to his voice, so be it. “You think I don’t have enough shit to worry about?”
“I think I misjudged you, five years ago,” Aidan said, levelly. “And I won’t make that mistake again.”
Mercy watched him rise and walk away, stunned.
Wherever she was, whichever city or state, whatever mood she was in, there was nothing like a book store to fill her up with happiness. Her favorite in Knoxville was Fourth Down, a tiny, cramped shop that boasted selling second-, third- , and fourthhand books of all genres, just around the corner from the university, the wall behind the register hosting a huge, artistic shot of Neyland. In this shop, she didn’t have to slog through the double-spaced, fast-read novels that leapt off the center displays in the chain bookstores. Here was where she found fat paperbacks with curling covers, cramped print, and coffee stains on the edges of the pages. Here were her favorites from the nineties, the lyrical novels that redefined genres. Here was where she stumbled across faded hardbacks with handwritten dedications in the fronts, that collection of Kipling poems dedicated to Martha, dated 1917. Fourth Down smelled of ink and dusty paper, collapsing bindings and musty cardboard covers. Dust motes swirled in big sprightly columns in the narrow shafts of sunlight that came in through the high windows. It was a magic place: books on shelves, on stools, in stacks on the floor, spread out in heaps on tables, piled to the ceiling between the windows. Shopping here always brought to mind the scene fromFellowship of the Ring, Gandalf digging through scrolls at Minis Tirith.
“Isn’t it wonderful?” she asked, voice dreamy, as she floated down an aisle and passed a finger along the spines of the books.
Ronnie followed a few steps behind. “It smells like–”
