Easy
Authors: Dahlia West
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Romance, #Contemporary, #Military
Special Thanks To:
Donna
Gail
Judy
Leslie
Rosheen
Sandra
Shari
For being a kickass group of ladies and helping whip this book into shape.
Table of Contents
Daisy Cutter opened her wallet even though she already knew what she’d find. She counted out the $52 as though by some miracle more bills would appear. When they didn’t, she sighed and looked up at the Arrival/Departure screen on the monitor in front of her. She didn’t have enough for a bus ticket back to Nebraska, just as she hadn’t eight months ago.
She stuffed her wallet
back into her jeans pocket and pulled out her cell phone. She frowned as she looked down at it. Matt’s number was first on the list. If she loathed calling her mama at this moment, she absolutely refused to call Matt. He was the whole reason she was here in the first place. She scrolled down and chose her mama’s number. Daisy tapped her foot as she listened to it ring, wondering what kind of mood the woman would be in as though she had any other kind of mood aside from ‘irritated’.
“Yeah,” came Sue Cutter’s perpetually haggard voice. Daisy’s frown deepened. It was, apparently, impossible to catch the woman in a good mood. Daisy wondered, briefly, if her mama had even bothered to look at the Caller ID before answering.
“Mama,” she said, keeping her voice light. It wouldn’t do to sass someone when you were about to beg for money. It wasn’t like Sue needed to be reminded that she and her daughter didn’t see eye-to-eye on anything.
Daisy’s mama was quiet for a moment, and Daisy wondered if she was simply going to hang up on her. Instead, she said, “Got your phone back.”
Daisy grimaced and glanced around at the other people in the terminal, people who
had
enough money to get where they were going.
“Yeah,” Daisy confirmed. “Thanks for keeping up the bill.”
Sue snorted, and Daisy realized that her mother had more or less simply forgotten about the phone. Sue Cutter wasn’t the type to throw money away, as she was about to remind her wayward daughter.
“Don’t got no cash,” she informed Daisy, “if that’s why you’re calling.” The story had been the same when Daisy called way back in August. She bristled, feeling both irritated and embarrassed. She was calling for money, but it wasn’t as though Daisy wouldn’t pay it back- eventually.
“Well, I’m not,” she lied and kicked a bench with her cowboy boot. She winced as her big toe throbbed.
“So, when are you coming back?” There was no mistaking the underlying tone in her voice.
Last August, Daisy had announced that she was finally,
finally
getting out of their shithole town. She told her mother, and anyone else who would listen, that she and Matt were headed to Sturgis, and if Daisy liked what she saw, well then maybe she’d move there.
Sue Cutter had not been impressed.
She’d told Daisy that Matt was nearly as useless as Daisy herself, and the sooner Daisy Mae put down the crayons and started focusing on a real job, the better off they’d all be.
Daisy adjusted her backpack and heard the
colored pencils
-thank you very damn much- clack together in the front pocket. Her mother had never found Daisy useful for anything- and her drawing even less so.
“Don’t see no point in spending money on something that don’t come to nothing,” Sue Cutter would repeat, often and loudly.
Daisy always resisted the urge to point out that stocking your fridge with beer for a guy who only stopped by a few times a month was just as pointless. If Earl Minor hadn’t rescued them from the Vista Valley Trailer Court by now, he wasn’t going to.
“I’m not coming back,” Daisy said in as firm a tone as she could muster considering she was flat broke and stuck in an unfamiliar city.
“Oh, really? Got your new
career
all worked out?”
Daisy wasn’t sure if her mother meant her art or something else. She spun on her heel and walked out of the bus terminal through the double doors that led out to the sidewalk. “Anyway,” she said loudly into the phone. “I was just calling to let you know I’m staying.”
Sue snorted. “What’s your new man’s name?” she asked sarcastically. “Cause Matt Clawson’s too busy with Steph Newtown to bother with you, not that he was ever any kind of catch to begin with. Boy, you sure can pick ‘em.”
Daisy also resisted the urge to point out just where she’d gotten her unfortunate taste in men. She sighed and shielded her eyes from the harsh morning sunlight. “Bye, mama. I’ll call you again when I get settled.”
Not wanting to go yet another round with the older woman, Daisy disconnected the call. She looked around and decided for no good reason to take a left. She headed up the block, following the chain link fence until it gave way to a railroad track. Beyond it was a place called the “Rainbow Motel,” or the “Rain ow,” as it were, seeing as how one light bulb was burned out. Daisy smirked as she headed for the rat trap. She could relate. She might have one bulb burned out, but she wasn’t worried. She could still shine.
The lobby smelled like stale cigarette smoke. If she closed her eyes, she could almost convince herself she was standing in the middle of the double-wide with the orange shag carpet and the lumpy
, brown couch pushed up against the wall, but the lobby of the motel had a dingy tile floor and a counter instead, and it was marred with deep-set scratches.
An old woman sat perched on a stool and gave Daisy a cool-eyed assessment as she stepped through the door. Daisy straightened her shoulders. She was no stranger to that look. Though, frankly, what the old woman had to feel superior about was anyone’s guess with her stained shirt and her leathered face. The woman looked like she’d been rode hard and put away wet a few too many times. Daisy was only 24, and though she was aware of what people often thought of her appearance, she had a clean shirt
on and a smooth face.
Daisy slid half of her only remaining cash across the counter.
“Do much entertaining?” the woman asked.
Daisy bristled at her tone. At first, she was a mixture of embarrassed and incensed, but then she remembered she was new in town. This woman didn’t know shit about shit and had no basis to form such a low opinion of Daisy.
The woman sighed and eyed the TV she’d obviously rather be watching. “You bring any johns back to your room,” she told Daisy, “I get ten bucks.”
Daisy glared at her. For a moment she almost reached out and cracked the woman’s jaw. The woman turned back to her and eyeballed her again. “Don’t imagine you’d have that many takers, what with all that ink and that nail in your nose.”
Daisy, irritated but not cowed, put her tattooed arms on the counter, leaned in close enough so the woman could see it was a stud and not a nail. “I’m not a whore,” she seethed.
The woman merely shrugged. “Don’t care what you call yourself,
if you
sell
yourself, I get a cut.”
Daisy snatched the room key off the counter and walked away. It wasn’t until she was safely in her room that she threw her backpack at the wall. It thudded and then bounced onto the bed. She looked around the room with a grimace, but shrugged it off. It was just tem
porary. Things would get better; they always did.
She checked to see that her pencils hadn’t broken and laid them gingerly on the small, wobbly table alongside her sketchbook. She had a little more than twenty bucks and three changes of clothes. It wasn’t much to build a life on, but you had to start somewhere.
Jimmy “Easy” Turnbull walked into the one-bedroom house he rented from his former lieutenant, now boss, Chris
“Shooter” Sullivan. He shed his grease-stained shirt, tossed it directly into the washing machine, and headed down the hall. In the small bathroom, he unzipped his black cargo pants and yanked them down his hips as he settled onto the crapper. He was practically vibrating from excitement; he had business to take care of, and it had nothing to do with the porcelain throne. He slid off the work boot on his right and tossed it onto the floor, but still within reach.
He pressed the pin on the ankle of his prosthetic and detached it. A year and a half ago, he could barely get it on and off, mostly because he’d refused to try. In the VA hospital, he’d been surrounded by artificially cheerful physical therapists who never stopped telling him how lucky he was that he survived and how quickly he’d learn to walk again if he gave it some effort. But Easy hadn’t wanted to learn how to walk again. He hadn’t even wanted to be alive, and he definitely could not see how getting ambushed by a roadside bomb
in Iraq was in any way ‘lucky.’ A slightly-above-the-knee amputation was nothing to celebrate.
He rolled down the neoprene sleeve and the comfort sock around his thigh and tossed them into the sink. The redness and swelling had taken over a year to go away as he’d struggled with learning how to negotiate what he still thought of as the bane of his existence. It was still a temporary prosthesis. He’d gone through three different socket types already in an attempt to find the right fit. Once they had it figured out, he could get a custom leg made, but having a leg made seemed so... permanent... so accepting, like losing another battle, the
biggest
battle. He could learn to live as an amputee, but he didn’t have to fucking
like
it.
He heaved himself up and reached into the shower to turn on the water. He frowned as he negotiated his way into the stall and lowered himself onto the small, white, plastic stool. He’d forgotten about the shower. He’d cleaned the place up from top to bottom, but he hadn’t thought about the stupid stool. He cursed himself as he lathered up with the soap. The bedroom was fine. He could leave the lights off, and with Brenda a little bit tipsy she’d barely notice his leg- hopefully. However, the bathroom was a problem he hadn’t thought of. If she spent the night, and he actually was hoping she would, she’d need to use the shower. Though Easy had come to terms with the fact that his life would never be what he envisioned, he’d be damned if he’d hang out
a huge fucking banner that said “Handicapped” on it.
They’d go to her place, he decided, as he shampooed his short, blonde hair. She had two roommates, but surely she had her own room. He could deal with that. In his other life, before the IED, he’d have fucked
all three
of them, all night long, and, if they were any fun, he might call one or two of them the next week. He’d had more than his share of women but none in the last three years since he’d lost his leg. He hadn’t even come close, always backing out at the last second before closing the deal.
At first he wasn’t sure how he’d man
age it; his balance hadn’t been exactly perfect. He had enough trouble maneuvering himself into bed, let alone with anyone else. Plus, in the back of his mind he always knew he looked like a freak with the leg off. The stump, though healed, was something out of a horror movie, not that Brenda would have to look at it. He’d leave on the neoprene sock, but there would be no denying the missing limb.
Brenda knew, though. Everyone did. It was no secret that Easy, Shooter, Hawk, Tex, and Caleb were the only remaining members of an Army Ranger unit that had served both in Iraq and Afghanistan. It was also no secret that some of them had not come back in the same condition in which they’d enlisted. Shooter had scars across his torso that looked like ground chuck. He always kept his shirt on for that reason. Easy never wore anything but pants or jeans and did everything he could to hide his limp, which was usually only a problem toward the end of a long day when his muscles could take no more. He couldn’t get underneath the cars at the garage quite as easily as the others, but he still did it. He was determined to pull his own weight on the job.
As he sat on the toilet once more and dried himself off with a towel, he was surprised to notice his hands were shaking just a bit. Three years was a long time to go without. Brenda was perfect though, with long, brown hair and a great ass. She was cute and flirty without being too obvious. She was exactly the type of girl he’d thought he’d be married to by now. Without the bomb, he’d have been an Army Officer with a beautiful wife, adorable kids, and a house with a yard that didn’t take him four fucking hours to mow because he kept slipping in the wet grass.
He couldn’t have the uniform; he’d long since given up on that. He could, however, have the wife and kids. He’d only been hanging out with Brenda at Maria’s bar for a few weeks now, far too early to be thinking about family life. Right now, he just had to concentrate on getting the fucking right. It could work, though. It
would
work.
He reattached the leg and pulled on a fresh pair of blue jeans from the bottom dresser drawer. He pulled a tight, grey t-shirt over his head and his large biceps stretched the fabric. He was probably overcompensating with the wardrobe, but he didn’t want to think about that too hard. As he reached for his cell on top of his dresser, his hand passed over a tiny silver box. He smirked at it as he picked up the phone and dialed. It had been a long time since he’d even glanced at that box. In fact, he might throw that box away.
Brenda answered on the third ring, giggling into the phone. He couldn’t help but smile.
“Hey!” she greeted him, in a sing-song voice.
“Hey,” he replied, picking up his keys and pocketing them. He had the truck, but she’d probably rather take his bike. So far he hadn’t taken anyone for a ride, but he figured if it was going to be a night of firsts, he could just add that to the list. “You gonna meet me tonight?”
More giggling. “Of course,” she replied, and that had him smiling all over again. He couldn’t help that he was born with an Angel’s looks and a Devil’s grin. He may have lost a lot of things, but he’d never lost his ability to charm women’s panties off.
“You gonna have breakfast with me, too?” he drawled and closed the dresser drawer.
Brenda gasped and he chuckled to himself.
“God,” she breathed into the phone.
“Is that a yes?” he prompted, checking his hair in the mirror hanging on the back of the bathroom door. He kept it short, a remnant from his Army days. It looked fairly dry.
“God, yes!”
“See you tonight, baby,” Easy told her.
“Bye!”
He caught sight of his shirt in the mirror, looking slightly disheveled on one side. He tugged at it to straighten it. Over his phone he heard a clatter and then “Was that him?”
“Oh, it was totally him!” Brenda told either Roommate 1 or Roommate 2. Easy didn’t actually remember their names. Brenda was the most attractive of the three, and he’d been monopolizing her since the first night he’d spotted her at the bar.
“Yeah, and... ?” nameless Roommate asked.
Easy cleared his throat and opened his mouth. Brenda clearly thought her phone was disconnected. He was about to call out to get her attention, when another voice, Roommate 2, he guessed, said, “The cop or the other one?”
Caleb had spent a fair bit of ti
me schmoozing the trio of women as well, though that would never go anywhere. Caleb had a steady thing in Sioux Falls. He wasn’t above the occasional flirting on a Friday or Saturday night, but it always ended there.
“The other one,” Brenda replied. “He wants to get
breakfast
!”
Roommate 1 (or was it 2?) squealed and then devolved into a fit of laughter. “You gonna
hop
into bed with him?”
Easy closed his mouth.
“Anna!” Brenda scolded, but to his chagrin, she laughed, too.
“No,” said Roommate 2. “She’s gonna play Pirates and draw him a treasure map to her booty!”
“Stop!” Brenda cried, laughing hard.
Easy’s jaw twitched.
“He’s got the peg leg,” Roommate 1 declared. “All he needs is an eye patch.”
Easy quietly hit the End Call button on his phone and stared at it for a moment. It didn’t matter, he told himself. It wasn’t like Brenda was
The One
. It wasn’t like she was anything at all. He slid the phone into his pocket but couldn’t manage to do any more than that. His anger slowly boiled over into rage as he looked at himself in the mirror across the room. He looked fine- fine God damn it! But he didn’t
feel
fine. He had never felt fine since the day he woke up in a hospital bed two years ago, missing so much more than just his lower right leg. In fact, he might never feel fine again. That thought scared him so badly that, without thinking, he suddenly reached out to the dresser.
He grabbed it with both hands and, with a shout, pulled the whole thing down. It landed with a loud crash on the floor at the foot of the bed. The tiny, silver box went flying, and Easy’s eyes tracked it. He stared at it as it landed on the carpet. A moment of white hot rage solidified into something halfway between resolve and despair. He took a step toward it. He was halfway across the room when he heard a familiar voice calling his name.
Easy took a deep, steadying breath, shocked at himself. “Y-yeah,” he called out to Hawk, as he heard the large man’s boots coming down the hall. Hawk and his girl Tildy had moved into the house next door, which had also belonged to Shooter before they bought it from him. It was mostly nice to have a brother living next door, and Easy really liked Tildy, but there was a distinct lack of privacy. It had been a bad idea to bring Brenda here anyway, stool or no stool, because it would bring on too many questions.
Hawk entered the bedroom and eyed the dresser on the floor. Easy wiped his palms on his jeans. “Redecorating?” Hawk asked, cautiously.
“My damn leg,” Easy said with a shrug, and his belly twisted at his own words. His damn leg, wasn’t it always his damn leg? “Gave out on me,” Easy lied, stepping toward the middle of the room. “I grabbed the dresser, but it went down.”
Hawk nodded and helped Easy put the room back to rights. His large hand swept over the silver box and plucked it off the carpet. Easy reached out and snatched it from him. “Thanks, man,” he told Hawk, tossing the box back on top of the dresser and gesturing toward the door.
Easy skipped a jacket, because it was May and not necessary. He locked the front door and followed Hawk down the porch steps. “Tildy coming tonight?” he asked, for lack of anything better to say.
Hawk shook his head. “Nah. She’s staying with Slick.”
Slick’s real name was Sarah, and she was Chris’ wife. She was also a new mother and often spent her Friday and Saturday nights at home. Chris still made an occasional appearance at the bar to remind the clientele that Maria’s was under his protection, but he preferred more and more to be home with his family.
Easy didn’t think it was his business to ask how long it would be before Tildy ended up pregnant and took Hawk out of rotation as well, but the two houses were small and close together, and furniture being knocked over wasn’t the only thing that could occasionally be heard.
“Thanks for the help,” Easy said to Hawk and pulled his keys back out of his pocket. “Let’s go.” He couldn’t get laid, but he could still get a drink and God he needed one right about now.