Chapter Nine
Laurel woke first, sleepy morning light from the tall windows coaxing her eyes open. She peeled her body from Flynn’s, still in the same positions as when they’d fallen asleep. He groaned as she stood from the bed.
“What time is it?”
She squinted at the microwave. “Nine thirty-two.”
“Oh fuck.” He sat up, confirmed the time and swung his legs to the floor. “This is real obnoxious, but we gotta get going.”
For real? She’d been looking forward to a lazy couple of hours before she had to go home and get ready for work. “Seriously? It’s Sunday.”
“I know. I gotta drive my sister to frigging church.” He yanked his underwear and jeans up his legs. “I can drop you at home, if that works for you.”
“Okay. Sure.” She dressed and threw on some mascara and concealer, frowned at the reflection of her hair, parted weirdly from being slept on damp.
Flynn looked ready to go when she emerged.
“Sorry about the rush,” he said. “I don’t usually sleep so late. You must have fucked the sense out of me.”
The compliment took the edge off her disappointment. “It’s fine. I have to work in a bit, so I should probably get going anyhow.”
She assembled her purse and Flynn locked up behind them. They took the elevator down three flights and she followed him to apartment 202. Flynn knocked and female voices flared behind the door.
“They’re never fuckin’ ready on time.” He thumped a couple more times. “Jesus can’t wait all day, ladies.”
Laurel raised an eyebrow at him. “What was your stance on impatient people again?”
“Punctuality trumps patience.”
“And where exactly does hypocrisy fit in?”
Flynn’s smirking retort was cut off as the door opened and a harried-looking woman appeared before them. She was tall and pale like Flynn but with unconvincing auburn hair and at least an extra decade’s wear and tear.
“You have to pound my door so fuckin’ hard, Mike?”
“It’s nearly ten of. Heather, this is Laurel, Laurel, this is my sister, Heather.”
Heather put out a hand and gave Laurel’s a firm shake with a faint bite of acrylic nail. “Nice to meet you. Kim’s just putting her face on.” Heather left the door open and disappeared inside, replaced by a faint whiff of cigarettes.
Laurel looked to Flynn. “Putting her face on? I thought your niece was, like, six years old.”
“That’s my grandniece. Or great-niece? Anyway, that’s Kayla. She’s usually at her dad’s on the weekends, or with his mom, at any rate. My niece Kim is twenty-two.”
“How old is Heather?” Laurel asked, keeping her voice low.
Flynn did a calculation in his head. “Forty-six.”
“Wow, big gap.”
“There’s a few more of us in between, but I’m only close with Heather.”
His sister reappeared in the doorway. “Yeah, I raised his ass.”
Flynn nodded. “Yeah, she raised my ass. Fine, upstanding citizen you created too.”
Heather’s penciled eyebrows rose dryly. “Sober, employed, no record. I did just fine, thank you.”
A plump young woman materialized behind her, looking more prepared for loitering outside a convenience store than for church. Snug jeans with overdone fade marks, brassy-blonde hair pulled back in a tight bun, two long corkscrew curls hanging down in front of her ears. Her makeup suggested she was looking to make an unlikely impression on her Lord and Savior.
“Hey,” she said. “I’m Kim.”
“Laurel.” They shook hands as Heather locked up.
Flynn led them to the elevator and a minute later they piled into his car, shotgun entrusted to Laurel. He started the engine and made a U-turn onto the street.
“So where’s Ricky these days?” he asked, eyes on the rearview mirror at one of the women. No one spoke. “What’s a shrug mean?” he asked. “Prison? Rehab? Cult?”
Kim spoke, sounding theatrically bored. “No. He’s around.”
“Around where?”
“I dunno,” she sighed. “Someplace.”
“He still in school?”
Another sigh, angstier than the last. “If I see him I’ll ask him.”
“Where’s Kayla? With his mom?”
Another silent reply via the rearview.
Laurel stared straight ahead at the road, wondering how often Flynn’s fly-by-night lovers drove around with his family on a given Sunday morning.
“Your eye looks better,” Heather said.
“This one’s been playin’ nurse, takin’ good care of me,” Flynn said, jerking a thumb at Laurel.
She blushed, glad the women wouldn’t see.
Flynn pulled up beside a stone church five minutes later.
“Thanks, Mike,” Heather said. “Nice to meet you, Lauren.”
“Laurel,” Flynn corrected. “See you at twelve. Pray for my soul.”
The women climbed out and Kim mumbled a goodbye before the doors slammed.
“Right,” Flynn said. “Straight home, or you need a lift someplace special?”
“Home’s fine. I have to work at one.”
Flynn flipped on the radio and they drove into Boston without speaking. His silence seemed comfortable but Laurel’s felt melancholy. She blamed the damp air and the flat gray sky. She turned to him as they passed the huge waterfront hotel, mere steps from where they’d met.
“I sort of get why you were so hard on that idiot couple, that afternoon I bought you lunch.” As soon as the words came out she worried he’d take it as an insult, think she was calling his niece obnoxious.
But all Flynn said was, “I want to shake her sometimes. And her fucktard boyfriend.”
“Is your sister married?”
He shook his head. “But they were together for a long time, her and Kim’s dad—Robbie, the guy who taught me to box. On and off, but mostly on. Really good dude. They broke up maybe five years ago. I try to bust Kim’s balls as much as I guess he would, if he was here.”
“Was he like a father figure to you or something?”
Flynn gave a dismissive sort of snort. “No. He was just my sister’s cool-ass boyfriend, who treated me like a grown-up when I was twelve. Every guy I knew whose dad was around, they made me pretty sure a father’s just there to yell a fuck of a lot and to have a bottle surgically attached to their hand the second they got home from work. If they worked. Robbie found Jesus or something when he was, like, eighteen and I never saw him drink anything harder than Red Bull in the twenty years I knew him.”
“Are you religious?”
He shook his head. “Not since I was about ten.”
“Your tattoo looks religious,” she said. She’d Googled the Latin already but decided not to share this fact in case it sounded like something a stalker might do.
“It is,” he said. “It’s about Saint Michael.”
Laurel grinned. Archangel Michael. Holy ass-kicker.
“That’s actually Robbie’s fault too,” Flynn said. “When I was in high school he photocopied this painting for me out of an old art history book, of Saint Michael slaying Lucifer, since he’s my namesake or whatever. I think he was trying to make religion seem bad-ass.”
“Maybe it worked. You did get the tattoo.”
Flynn shrugged.
“He sounds cool,” Laurel said. “Robbie, I mean. I’d like to meet him sometime.”
“Wish you could, sweetheart, but he’s dead.”
She winced, taking a psychic punch to the gut. “Oh. I’m sorry.”
Flynn kept his blue eyes firmly on the road. “He shot himself a couple years ago.” He crossed himself in such a reflexive-looking fashion Laurel wondered if he even knew he’d done it. “Cool motherfucker though. He went with me for a school thing when I was in, like, eighth grade. I forget why but he chaperoned, and I felt like the hottest shit happening, showin’ up with my sister’s tattooed, welterweight boyfriend to go to the aquarium or whatever.”
Laurel studied his smile from the passenger seat. “Was he much like you?”
He shrugged. “I hope I’m something like him.”
“Sounds like you are. Fighter, tattoos, non-drinker.”
“It’s a start. Anyhow, he was in the Army Reserve and then everything went and fucked its own ass in 2001. He got shipped out, came back after a couple years, all different. Real angry. He mellowed after a while, but he was always sort of…tired after that. He always cared more about stuff than everybody else around him. Tried harder. Just gave more of a shit than everybody else. I think it fucked him up to be over there, then to come back and see everything the same here, everybody still fuckin’ around, being idiots, pissing their lives away, after he saw whatever he did in Iraq.”
“Ah.”
“You know when you spill, like, cleaning fluid or butane on something plastic, and it takes all the shine off it?” Flynn asked. “It’s like Robbie was shiny when he left, and he came back dull.”
Laurel frowned at this sad scrap of poetry and watched the pedestrians as Flynn turned them down this street and that through the North End. He pulled up at her building and put the car in neutral.
He wrapped his arm around his headrest and turned to her. “When do I see you again?”
“Oh um…I’m off Wednesday night again, if that works.”
He nodded. “I’ve got training from four to six then I’ll grab some dinner and a shower, see you around eight?”
“Sounds good. Well, thanks for the ride.”
He dropped his arm and leaned in, took her face in his hands and gave her a long, hard, tongue-less kiss, fingers shoved deep in her hair. “Don’t you take any shit from any tourists.”
She smirked at him. “Only from townies.”
He ran his thumb over her chin and smiled. “Fuckin’ right. See you in a few days, kiddo.”