Chapter 6
Eli leaned against the bay door on Monday night and eyed Shane. Shane was eyeing the Superbird. Eli had stopped on his way to clock out because he thought that his friend was finally making plans for what needed to be done. The longer he watched though, the more sure he was that Shane didn’t even see the car that was right in front of him.
“Everything all right?” Eli finally asked.
Shane spun around. “What? Yeah, of course.”
Eli raised an eyebrow. “You don’t look like it. And staring at the car isn’t gonna fix it. I think you might actually have to put your hands on it.”
Shane shrugged negligently. “He said I could take my time.”
“Well sure, but I think he probably expected to hear something by now. At least a diagnostic. It’s been two weeks, man.”
“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but it’s not your name on the door,” Shane snapped. “I don’t need you to tell me how to run my business.”
Eli held back the retort that came to mind and took a breath. He hadn’t been to a meeting since leaving prison, but AA had ingrained some things into him successfully. He counted to ten before he said anything else.
“Okay,” he said in a level voice as he turned to walk out. “I’m headed out for the night. Call me if you need anything.”
“Hang on,” Shane said.
Eli stopped and turned back. Shane combed his fingers through his hair and sighed in frustration. This was the most that they’d spoken all day, so Eli waited patiently for Shane to spit out what was bugging him.
“It’s been a hell of a day, but I shouldn’t take it out on you. Sorry.”
Eli shrugged and crossed his arms. “We all have ‘em. Anything I can do?”
Shane shook his head. “I don’t think so. Not unless you want to try to convince my sister that she’s being an idiot.”
“What’s she doing?” Eli asked, trying to sound casual and not worried. Riley had kept her word about not calling him again over the weekend. He’d spent the time trying desperately not to call her.
“She’s moving out, for one thing,” Shane said.
“Oh. Did she, uh, did she meet someone?” Eli put his hands into his pockets so that Shane wouldn’t see how tightly his fists were clenched. That couldn’t be it. She’d been with him two nights ago. But there had been that other guy in the bar. Now that he thought about it, he had no idea how far things had gone between the two of them. But she wouldn’t have moved in with him. Or at least, he didn’t think she would.
Shane shook his head. “No, she’s moving to a place by herself.” He sighed heavily. “At least, I think she is.” He dropped down onto a chair and gave a bitter half laugh. “Hell, I don’t know. She probably wouldn’t tell me if she was moving in with someone. I can count the number of conversations we’ve had since she got back on one hand.”
“Come have a beer with me,” Eli offered.
“Not tonight, I--”
“Come on. You said it yourself. It’s been a hell of a day. If you go home you’re either gonna fight with your sister or get ignored by her, so let’s go out and have a responsible number of drinks.”
Shane smiled slightly. “A responsible number of drinks does sound pretty good right about now.”
****
In the bar, once they’d ordered and had beers set down in front of them by a waitress who couldn’t seem to keep her eyes off of Shane, Eli said, “All right, Harris. Spill it.”
“I already did,” Shane said in confusion as he took a long drink of his beer.
“No, you didn’t. Come on. Tell me all your problems.” When his friend didn’t look inclined to do so, Eli said, “I don’t play counselor much. You should take advantage of it. Offer expires in three...two...one and a half...”
Shane frowned slightly and took a longer drink of his beer. “All right, fine. The thing is, Riley was always such a good kid.”
Of all the ways that Eli would have described her: headstrong, impulsive, temperamental...he hadn’t really expected to hear that. He tried hard not to look surprised.
“She got straight A’s from kindergarten all the way through college,” Shane went on. “And I thought that she was happy with the job she found after college too, but she didn’t even give them notice when she left, apparently.”
“What did she do?” Eli remembered that she’d said something about computers, but he couldn’t remember what it was. He’d been distracted by other things that day. Things like her body and the fact that she was his best friend’s sister.
“Hell, I barely understood it,” Shane admitted with a shrug. “Some kind of computer software thing. She was always talking about it when she called, but it was completely over my head.”
“Shane, word documents are over your head.”
“Fuck off. Anyway, about a year ago, she stopped calling as much, but I kind of figured that maybe she was busy. She said she was taking on a lot of extra hours at work and I thought that she and Mark were maybe planning a wedding. I don’t know. I mean, I know most sisters don’t call their brothers on a weekly basis, so I tried not to bug her about it. Now I wish I had. Maybe then she’d still be talking to me.” Shane leaned back and sighed.
“Sounds like the two of you were really close.” That made Eli feel even worse.
“Yeah. I mean, it was just the two of us after we lost mom and dad. She was only fourteen when they died, so I basically raised her.”
Oh God. “I’m gonna get another,” Eli said. “Want one?”
Shane nodded abstractedly and Eli headed for the bar. There was no way around it. He had to tell Shane what was going on. Or rather, what had been going on. Maybe after the second beer. That made sense. The second beer was going to be the best possible time.
As he was waiting for their drinks, his phone buzzed and he pulled it out of his pocket. Apparently he’d gotten several texts and hadn’t heard the ringer. All of them were from Riley. He opened the message and read over it quickly.
“Hey there. Miss me?”
“Eli, are you ignoring me?”
“I kind of need you to come get me. I’m not feeling so great.”
“Fine. I found a ride with somebody else. Don’t bother to answer this message.”
There were enough spelling and punctuation errors to convince him that she’d been pretty drunk when she was typing. He was just about to call her in spite of the last message when he felt a tap on his shoulder. Shane was standing there, his face completely white.
“What’s wrong?” Eli asked.
“I just got a call that my sister’s in the hospital,” Shane said, his voice tight. “I have to go.”
“I’ll go with you,” Eli said without thinking. “Whoever she got a ride with must’ve been drunk too.”
“What? How do you...” Shane trailed off when he glanced down and saw the messages on Eli’s screen. “Are those from...you’ve been seeing Riley?”
“Not...I mean, sort of...but...”
Shane cut him off. “I don’t have time for this right now,” he said. “Let’s just get to the hospital.”