CHAPTER SIX

 

Well that was awesome. 

You give a guy a hot dog and he shits all over you. 

Figuratively, not literally.  But still. 

Feeling irritable, I grabbed a stapler that Aspen had decorated with blue glitter and began angrily stapling together invoices that didn’t really need to be stapled. After every satisfying click a tiny shred of my frustration would fall away but I was still confused. 

Curtis Mulligan was a jerk and yet I’d caught him glancing at me with a kind of naked hunger I’d seen before. Usually I ignored it but I’d already figured out that ignoring Curtis wouldn’t be so easy.  Beneath the web of tattoos, unshaven jaw and faded clothes that had seen better days, he was definitely sexy in a gruff kind of way.  Yet so far, every conversation with Curtis left me feeling both flustered and like I might enjoy tossing heavy objects at his head. 

Maybe he was a natural born asshole. 

Maybe he was socially awkward. 

Maybe I just shouldn’t give a damn. 

I stopped abusing the invoices and set the stapler down.  The rest of the staff was beginning to return from lunch and they might wonder why I was going hog wild on the office equipment. 

Plus my last thought had given me pause. 

Why the hell did I care if Curtis Mulligan wanted to be a dickhead?  We didn’t need to be friends.  He probably didn’t even have any friends.  He probably cultivated that sneering bad boy persona on purpose, thinking every female he encountered would be totally into it.  If I had to guess, I’d say he hung out in his mother’s basement playing video games when he wasn’t on the hunt for some gullible girl who liked being treated like shit. 

Personally, I didn’t enjoy being treated like shit.  And I wasn’t going to make any more effort where he was concerned. 

“Hi, Cassie,” waved Zach, one of the ink artists, as he walked through the front doors smelling like cigarette smoke.  He pushed his long black hair out of his eyes and gave me a shy smile as he passed. 

“Hi, Zach,” I said, thinking how easy it was to be nice to some guys while others made it nearly impossible. 

Then I had to table all thoughts of Curtis Mulligan because a very tall man in a designer suit arrived and approached the desk so he could whisper that he was here for his scrotal piercing.  

The afternoon proved to be busier than the morning.  When I accepted my dad’s offer to work at Scratch, I had figured it would be an easy transition.  I was used to providing good customer service due to my various jobs in retail, plus I was already very familiar with the way things were run because Cami and I had been running around this place since we cut our first teeth.  Except for the Curtis situation, I’d been right about the easiness of the job.  Aspen had left copious notes in case there was anything I was unsure about and as I read them over I found everything was pretty much as I expected.  The best part was I’d have plenty of time for homework and reading.  I’d been slowly getting acclimated to college life by taking a handful of credits each semester and I was very proud of the A’s I was racking up.  Back in high school I’d never had Cami’s outstanding grades, but I’d done all right. 

Until senior year. 

Until I allowed the fallout from one dumb stunt to shatter my confidence and drive me to the depths of despair. 

Sometimes I wished I could relive those days again, just so I could do something I hadn’t been able to do at the time; hold my head up and tell all those bastards to go to hell. 

One bastard in particular.  

At five o’clock there weren’t any customers in the lobby and I figured I wouldn’t miss anything if I stepped away from the desk and wandered down to my dad’s office for a minute.  Along the way I avoided looking directly into the rooms, mostly because I didn’t want to lock eyes with a certain cranky staff member. 

My father’s office door was closed but he answered my quick knock with a cheerful, “Come in.” 

Cordero Gentry was in his element, leaning back in his chair with a sketchpad in his hands as his fingers flew over the page.  Cami and I used to beg him to teach us how to draw like he did but our efforts usually wound up looking like a collection of radioactive mutants. 

“Hi, honey,” my dad said, lowering his pencil immediately and giving me an expectant look.  “How are things working out up front?”

“Great,” I said.  “Thanks again for the job.” 

He smiled.  When Cami and I hit our teens we became aware that girls we barely knew suddenly had a hobby of finding reasons to visit our house.  When we caught on that they were staring at our father we were horrified. I mean, he was DADDY.  He was goofy and strict and really old (to us, anyway) and he told the corniest bedtime stories.  The fact that our peers started drooling over him as if he was some kind of rock star icon made us gag and scream. 

After looking behind me to check whether anyone else was waiting in the hallway, I stepped into the office and closed the door. 

“So I’m curious, what’s up with that Curtis dude?”

“Curtis?” My dad was suddenly alert.  “Why, is he giving you a problem?” 

“No, not at all.”  I shook my head for emphasis.  I wasn’t too fond of Curtis Mulligan right now but I didn’t want to make trouble for him over nothing.  “You just hadn’t mentioned anything about a new employee.” 

My dad’s expression relaxed.  “Deck vouched for the kid.  He’s from Emblem and Deck knew the family.  Curtis has had his share of troubles, used to run around with one of the gangs down there.” 

“A gang?” I was startled.  My father had been known to give people a chance but he didn’t often bring real hardened criminals into the fold.  “He’s a gang member?”

“Was,” my dad emphasized.  He shrugged.  “He’s trying to turn his life around. Deck swears he’s a straight arrow now.” 

“Then I’m sure it’s true,” I said, feeling slightly unsettled by the idea that the guy who’d been deprived of his lunch burrito probably had a history of violence. Of course I’d noted his riot of tattoos but I’d been raised around men who had a ton of ink and knew it said nothing about a man’s character other than the fact that he liked ink.  Now that I had learned a thing or two about Curtis I realized my earlier assumption had been wrong.  He probably wasn’t putting on a gruff bad boy act. He was an actual real life bad boy.  In a way I ought to be glad we hadn’t exactly hit it off because I had no interest in playing with fire.  If I ever did take a chance on a guy again, he wouldn’t be some surly ex-gang member.  It also surprised me to hear that he was from Emblem.  I’d never lived there but I’d heard enough about it growing up to draw my own conclusions.

Emblem, the prison town my family came from, wasn’t the worst place in the world but it probably had more than its fair share of rough and scary characters.  I still had a grandfather who lived down there and whenever we saw him he would complain that the town was going downhill, courtesy of the opioid epidemic that was devastating so many places.  Other than my Grandpa McCann, I didn’t have any real ties to Emblem.  Supposedly my grandmother still lived in the area too but she and my mother had been estranged since my mother announced her marriage plans many years ago.  Welcoming a low life Gentry into the family was not something my status conscious grandmother was willing to endure.  My mother always assured us it was no great loss but her mouth would turn down slightly when she said it so I was sure the rejection still troubled her. 

As for my father’s parents, all I knew of them were things I’d heard in whispers and conversation fragments.  My father was one of three triplets born into a violent home and he was lucky to survive his childhood.  He escaped with Uncle Creed and Uncle Chase the moment it was legally possible, thus ending a legacy of violence and despair that stretched back for generations and stuck to our family name like glue.  I’d never felt anything but pride in my last name but I knew that hadn’t been the case for him.  I’d never met his parents, Benton and Maggie Gentry.  They died when I was little.  But I wouldn’t have met them even if they’d lived.  Once I heard my father say that he would have cut his own arm off before he let his father get within forty yards of his girls. 

“Cassie.”  My father snapped his fingers and I was startled to attention. 

“Sorry, Dad. What did you say?”

“Just asked if you had class tonight.” 

“Yeah.”  I checked my watch.  “In less than an hour.” 

“What time will you be home?” 

“It’s a three hour class so I guess by nine thirty.  Why?”

His grin was a little sad.  “The house is pretty empty these days, especially with Cadence gone to summer camp.” 

“You could always have another kid,” I teased.  “A baby would keep you company for a good long time.” 

He snorted.  “I’ll relay the suggestion to your mother.” 

“I’m sure she’ll be wildly enthusiastic.”   

My dad waved me off.  “Get to class.” 

“Marian’s not here yet.”  Marian was the part time receptionist who worked the evening shifts on the days Scratch had late hours.   

“She texted me to say she’d be about twenty minutes late.  You don’t want to be late on your first day of school though so just leave the bell on the counter and take off.”   

“You sure?”  Usually my dad hated to leave the reception desk unattended. 

“I’m sure,” he said.

Five minutes later, after I’d tidied up the reception desk for Marian and retrieved my handbag, I was on my way out the door.  And as luck would have it, so was Curtis Mulligan.  What were the chances that with all the Scratch employees coming and going the two of us were the only ones heading to the parking lot right now?  The gods of coincidence must have a sense of humor. 

Curtis held the door open but didn’t look me in the eye when I mumbled my thanks.  I could hear his heavy steps right behind me and pretended to check my phone to make the moment a little less awkward. For some reason I was hyper aware of the fact that he was close by.  It had to be some internal instinct for danger now that I knew Curtis had a criminal history.  It couldn’t be because I was kind of attracted to him despite his rather crusty personality.

“Cassie.” 

The sound of my name being uttered in his deep voice startled me so much I dropped my phone right on the cracked asphalt. 

Curtis didn’t miss a beat and scooped my phone right up.  He brushed the dirt off before handing it over. 

“Thanks,” I said, tossing the thing in my handbag without checking whether the screen had been damaged.  

Curtis watched me from three feet away with an indecipherable expression.  I noticed he was tapping one hand against his leg and the action seemed strangely nervous, which was ridiculous.  Curtis was a hardened ex gang member.   He wouldn’t shrink from an encounter with a five foot three female. 

“What?” I challenged him. 

He blinked.  “Huh?” 

“You called my name.  What did you want?” 

He focused on me in the blazing heat of the parking lot.  The color of his eyes was lost somewhere between brown and green, nothing remarkable, yet an unwitting shiver rolled through me. There was a brief flash of the look I’d seen earlier.  Just a quick spark but enough for me to catch a glimpse.  Then, as now, I understood why. Basic lust. That shouldn’t have excited me, not from him.  But it did. 

Just then the doors of Scratch swung open and Terry, another of the tattoo artists, exited while whistling a Jimi Hendrix song.  He stopped whistling long enough to give us a smile.   

“Drive safe, kids,” he said before climbing on his motorcycle and revving the engine.  Terry was older than Uncle Deck and had been working at Scratch for at least a decade.  He’d lost his wife to lung cancer last year.

“Look,” I said to Curtis after Terry made a right turn onto the main road.  “I think we started off on a sour note.” 

Curtis didn’t agree or disagree.  He didn’t apologize or say thank you or suggest that we ought to just forget our prior confrontations.  He tossed an object in my direction without warning. 

“You won’t get far without those,” he said after I caught my own car keys, which I must have left behind on the counter at Scratch.  That explained why Curtis had been trying to get my attention. 

I didn’t have time to comment on the matter because Curtis was already climbing into his crappy car.  The engine sputtered and coughed to life after exhaling a small cloud of acrid smoke.  The car itself was a grey sedan full of dents, scrapes and ugly patches where someone had made a half ass job at painting over something worse.  The whole vehicle looked as if it was maybe one kick away from falling to pieces.  Whatever unlawful enterprises Curtis had involved himself in before turning over a new leaf must not have been very lucrative. 

Instead of standing there stupidly in the parking lot and staring after Curtis’s departing car, I got behind the wheel of my Toyota. I rooted around in my purse, popped three sticks of spearmint gum in my mouth and swore to myself that would be the last time I’d make the slightest overture of civility toward Curtis Mulligan.  As far as I was concerned there was no such thing as Curtis Mulligan.  The hulking, brooding former citizen of Emblem’s underworld was just part of the furniture and nothing he had said or did bothered me in the slightest.  

But…

“Thanks for granting me permission to eat, princess.” 

The words were as clear as if they had just been spoken, and with the same vague contempt that had infected them the first time. 

“Who the fuck does he think he is?” I asked my steering wheel. 

As I rolled out of the parking lot I decided I was abandoning my brand new health regimen and stopped to get something deep-fried from the nearest drive thru.  By the time I was done soothing my indignation with junk food I discovered I’d need to rush a little in order to make it to class on time. 

Sonora Community College wasn’t a huge, beautiful campus like Arizona State.  It was small and functional and populated by people who were always rushing around and full of purpose instead of lounging on one of the grassy areas.  I was slightly out of breath when I reached my statistics classroom but I noted with satisfaction that there were still two minutes to spare before the start of class. 

There were some empty chairs at the front because, true to form, people had gravitated toward the back rows.  I slid into a front row seat near the door. The instructor wasn’t in sight yet so I took the time to check on my email.  While I was reading a reminder to pay my vehicle registration fee a creepy feeling overcame me, as if I was being quietly examined. 

I thought it was my imagination.  So when I glanced up I nearly fell right out of my chair and onto the green linoleum because there was a pair of eyes locked on mine. The eyes were attached to someone unexpected, someone who might be the most unwelcome person to possibly inhabit the chair beside mine in statistics class. 

My first instinct was to bolt right the fuck out of there.  But I needed this class.  It was an easy way to fulfill the math requirement. Plus I’d registered for it months ago.  I wouldn’t be the one to leave.  If anyone was leaving it was going to be him. 

“Son of a bitch,” I whispered.  

A slow, rather sheepish smile spread across his lips.  “Hey, Cassie.”   

I didn’t say hello back.  Instead I said the words that had been on my mind for the past five years. “Go to hell you callous prick!” 

Unfortunately I said them just as the instructor was walking into the classroom.  A thickset man in his fifties, he paused and blinked at me behind a pair of glasses that were too small for his fleshy face. 

“And what do we have here?” he wanted to know. 

What did we have here? 

I looked at my unwanted neighbor.  He looked back at me. 

“Nothing,” I said, calmly removing a notebook from my purse and resolving to absorb something meaningful despite the deafening noise of blood roaring through my head. 

As for the aforementioned ‘callous prick’, I didn’t look his way again for the rest of class.  Not once.