CHAPTER ONE
CHARLIE
The bedroom door went flying open with a burst so loud I thought I was back in the sand box. I was about to propel myself out of bed for cover when a very masculine voice started screaming at my bedmate.
"Chelsea? What the hell?!"
"It's not what it looks like, Brad! I swear!"
Oh, but sweetheart, it was exactly what it looked like. We were completely naked, barely covered by sheets, with clothes all over the place. Bradley over there picked up the ripped condom wrapper I'd chucked behind me. He made a fist around it and punched the wall, leaving a small dent.
Welp. Time to go.
Chelsea, many thanks to Bradley for reminding me of her name, managed to break free of the twisted sheets and jumped between us — her bouncing, naked tits were all part of some totally legitimate set of circumstances. It bought me enough time to pull on some jeans, grab a t-shirt, and leap over the bed. My dick was throbbing from her abrupt dismount moments ago but the second I stopped to adjust, Brad turned his beefy vision towards me.
"The fuck do you think you're going?" He threw another fist at the wall. "Get off me, Chelsea. I'm going to kick this guy's ass."
Ah, the magic words. I had the bedroom window halfway up when I stopped and turned to look the dude dead in the eye. I wasn't good at a lot of things, but proving some douchewad wrong was something I retained excellent skills in. I widened my stance and shook out my arms, giving him a full glimpse of what he was about to tangle with.
"Are you, champ?" I cocked an eyebrow at him. "I've taken shits bigger than you. Maybe you wanna try again."
Chelsea, now crying on top of the bed, begged us to stop. In my defense, she'd been hitting on me for at least two weeks, coming in every night to the bar I worked at, flashing her tits for free shots and dumping fistfuls of cash into my tip jar. She came on to me. I'm not going to ask for proof of boyfriend before fucking someone, much less someone who made the first move. That's her responsibility.
Normally, I'd pity Brad and call Chelsea a hoe, and away we'd part... but challenging me? Bring that shit on.
Brad dug in his back pocket and pulled out a knife. He flicked it open easily, like it was something he'd been practicing since he was twelve for this very moment. That wasn't what stopped me. It was his buddy who walked in behind him. With a bigger knife.
"You're all goddamn insane." I puffed up my chest and put my hand to my back pocket. "Trying to take on a Marine in a knife fight? I could kill you in three seconds."
Instead of pulling out a weapon, I shattered the window behind me and dove out of it before they knew what was going on. I dropped down onto the floor and landed on my side, completely missing the bushes I was hoping for, and the world went fuzzy. I took a second to shake it off and leapt to my feet. Experience taught me I didn't have much time. Bradley the Dumbfuck was climbing out of the window and I had little doubt his backup was already charging down the stairs.
"I'll fucking kill you!" He screamed through the window. "I know where to find you!"
I flipped him off and jogged to my truck across the small parking lot. Less than two minutes passed before I skidded out of the dingy parking lot. My left thumb throbbed, it took the brunt of the weight when I landed, but it was a small price to pay to not get stabbed.
One look in the mirror behind me was all it took to laugh my ass off. Fuck, it was good to be me.
"What did you do this time?" Martha frowned at me when I walked through the doors of my usual haunt. "You look like you fell out of a window."
"Funny story." I bounced into my usual booth. "I did."
She rolled her eyes and tutted at me. "One of these days, Charlie, you're going to be killed."
"Unlikely." I pretended to take interest in the menu sprawled out before me. "Do you have any specials tonight?"
"You think you're bulletproof, but one day the bullet will learn to bite."
I blinked once at her. "Martha, it's a good thing your carnitas are out of this world, because you are goddamn crazy. You know that?"
"Mark my words. You'll get it one day." Martha's gray bob shook as she snatched up the menu. "The usual?"
"You know how I like it."
"I think I'm the only one." Still, she winked at me before disappearing into the back to let loose a stream of rapid-fire Spanish to her husband manning the grill plates.
I slumped back in the booth to examine my thumb. Other than the two-year-old scars, it looked fine, probably something as simple as a sprain. This was coconuts to the things I had been accustomed to dealing with, but a few old memories took the opportunity to come surging back. Things I thought I'd carefully buried.
My chest tightened and the room started to shrink. Between the sex and falling out of a window, my buzz had completely burned off and left me with gnawing phantom pains. Little by little, ringing overtook my ears and the room felt tiny and suffocating. If I closed my eyes, all I saw was sad and blood.
I pushed past Martha with my glass of water and hurried outside for fresh air.
It didn't matter how long it'd been. It didn't matter how many times I saw the stupid shrink. It didn't matter how much beer I drank. Like I would never outrun it. I threw a fist into the back panel of my truck and kicked the tire.
"I knew those had terrible gas mileage, but there's no reason to beat it up over it."
You know those deer caught out in the open? How perfectly they stand still even though they are ready to haul ass in the blink of an eye? That was me, except instead of flight, I was ready to destroy.
"I was only kidding." She said quickly. "I mean, sort of. You shouldn’t beat up your truck. But it is a gas guzzling monstrosity."
I turned very slowly to see a silhouette of curves behind me. All I could make out of her in the dim light of the diner was the burning red ember of the cigarette she lifted to her shadowed lips. I tried to swallow down the knot building in my chest, because raging at a girl was completely out of the question. If she'd been a dude...
"And how is it you're so well versed in truck gas mileage?"
"The internet." She said it like it was a hilarious joke. She was probably just another drunk sorority girl, looking for tacos to soak up the two Cosmos that obliterated her. I rolled my eyes and walked back inside.
"That shit's terrible for you." I muttered.
"So's falling out of a window, but what do I know?"
I almost stopped to see how this was, who had seen me fall out of Chelsea’s apartment window, but the demons were tight. All I wanted was to sit down, have eight margaritas, and pull my shit together. Getting into fights with some drunk girl would only make shit worse. Then I’d have to beat myself up about that, too, and I’d hit my quota of being hurled out of windows for the night.
Martha had a margarita and a small plastic warmer of tortillas waiting at my seat. Straight tequila would have been ideal but this was better than nothing. I threw the straw on the table and chugged it straight from the glass, drowning out every voice floating in my cracked brain.