Sidewalk Flower (43 page)

* * * *

Trista’s voice interrupted an old,
soulful hymn he’d been humming along to.
 
“Jaxon, the reason we’re out here tonight.
 
I owe you that much.”

He sniffed loudly and adjusted himself in
the seat.
 
“I’m listening.
 
But one thing, you do realize that if Lucky
is the cause of all this, I’m not gonna just let it pass.
 
He’s gonna have some explaining to do when we
get back.
 
And it better be to my
satisfaction or I’ll kick his ass.
 
I
don’t care if he’s my family, Trissy.”
 

“I think Lucky is the one.”
 

He’d been ready to hear something
altogether different, what with Trissy’s sour mood.
 
“You do?
 
Really?”
 

“Yes, I do.”
 
Again, it was as if she confessed the
realization as much to herself as to him.

“Okay, so that only confuses me more
then.
 
Is he playing games with you,
Trissy?
 
I knew I should have stuck
around longer when he was growing up.
 
Taught him some things.”
 
He shook his head then pressed each of his ten fingertips deeply through
his hairline, loosening the moussed poof of his bangs.
 

 
“No, Jaxon.
 
He’s not playing games or doing anything wrong.
 
It’s me.
 
I’m the one who can’t seem to get around herself to the good thing in
front of her.”

“Maybe it’s not entirely about you,
Trissy.
 
Maybe you’re here with me
tonight because there’s something we need to work out.
 
Something I failed you with by not going on
that trip, not going to the creek.
 
To
your mum’s grave.”
 
He couldn’t look her
in the eye, so he didn’t even try.

* * * *

She knew Jaxon was right.
 
Did he realize what he was about to enter them
into though?
 
Because
she’d been feeling it the past couple months.
 
The gnawing at her heartstrings as one by
one, they plucked and snapped, severing the ties she had with one in order to
make room for those of another.
 

Jaxon alternated between avoiding her
eyes and then looking at her so intensely she thought he might take her chin
into his grasp.
 
“Look, baby girl, you
don’t have to do this anymore.
 
You’re
constantly there for me, even when I ask you to keep your distance.
 
It’s insanely pleasing yet so incredibly
wrong of me to hold onto you that way.
 
Especially if you think you’ve finally found someone.
 
It’s like I told you the night I screwed
everything up and kissed you.”
 
He
stroked her cheekbone as he looked past her eyes that questioned what he was
saying.
 

Was he letting her go?
 
Was he the one ending their friendship?
 
Was it really necessary?

The past sixteen years came crashing down
on her.
 
He’d been her life.
 
There wasn’t a boy she’d been with who she
hadn’t told him about, a song’s words that had made her cry that she hadn’t
called him about had he not already been singing it to her there in
person.
 
She’d held his hand through
countless nights of binge drinking and then along the hard road he’d recently
fought to sobriety.
 
There wasn’t a dark
place she was afraid to go into it, if it was Jaxon who needed her to go
there.
 
And she had stepped aside, to
make room for Vangie.

She’d moved out of the place she and
Jaxon shared for seven years when he met and fell in love with Vangie so he
could have that space for a different kind of happiness.
 
The one she and Jaxon had naturally never
ventured to together.
 
And she’d moved
back in after his heart had been wrought to pieces whenever Vangie left
him.
 
And back out again as Vangie
invented the games she would play with Jaxon and the way she would use Maryella
to get her way.
 
And sadly, she saw how
much of a pawn she’d become in her own life as a part of his.
 
Maybe they couldn’t just be friends.
 
But they were family.
 
She couldn’t lose the big brother he was to
her.
 

“I love you, Jaxon.
 
There has to be a way for us to make this all
work.
 
I think Lucky will
understand.
 
He’s a really good man.”

“I know Trissy, I lov—.”

A light beam streamed in through the
window on Jaxon’s side of the car.
 
“Huh,
what’s Jimmy doing back here already?”

Then on her side, a tap-tap-tap and
another flashlight shone in the car.
 

“That’s not Jimmy.
 
There are two of them; maybe they’re his
night guards.
 
Jimmy probably forgot to
tell them he let us stay here.”
 
She
pressed her knees closer together, uncomfortable with the stream of light even
if it was the law outside.

“Well, I don’t appreciate the way they’re
shining their lights in here.”

Yeah, it was pretty disgusting and naive
for whoever they were to think they could just flash her crotch for that
long.
 
She hadn’t seen Jaxon go ballistic
in nearly a year.
 
“Just roll the window
down and see what they want.”
 
His mouth
might get him in trouble, but if he got out, his fists might get him arrested.

“They’re gonna need to be taught some
manners.
 
You lock the doors when I get
out.
 
If I have to kick some ass, I don’t
want the fight coming in here.
 
Do you
understand me?”
 
How could she not when
he enunciated each syllable?
 

“Jaxon, don’t get crazy.
 
Just tell them Jimmy gave us the okay.”

The one on Jaxon’s side tapped again on
the glass and instead of rolling the window down, sure enough, he opened the
door and stepped out.
 
She caught him
flexing his fists.
 
This was not going to
be good.

But she trusted he knew what he was doing
so she did as Jaxon instructed and locked the doors.
 
With an unnatural thud, something heavy fell
against the driver side of the car a moment after Jaxon got out.
 
An unfamiliar young man stood where Jaxon
should be located but then this stranger also ducked or fell to the ground; she
couldn’t be sure which it was.
 

“Shit!” she cursed to the empty car.
 
Instinctively, she searched for something to
use as a weapon.
 
She still couldn’t see
Jaxon.
 
Where was he?
 
Who knew what he was tangled up in?
 
Hopefully they were just more punk kids,
maybe looking to make off with some cash.
 
Jaxon was a good fighter.
 
She’d
never worried about him in his late night scuffles with the dregs that kept his
company.
 
He should be able to hold his
own outside with these assholes.

But just as she’d convinced herself Jaxon
would return any minute to his empty seat and whisk them away, the guy standing
outside her door began to mash at the window with the butt of a baseball bat.
The noise reverberated through the small car and in that moment, she flashed
into a different frame of mind.
 
It
became hard to catch her breath and her skin chilled from the inside as
adrenaline mixed with fear and belligerence.
 
What did these punks think they were doing?

She yanked the key ring from the ignition
and wrapped it around her fingers as makeshift brass knuckles and then
frantically fished her phone out of her pocket.
 
Stefan’s phone went straight to voicemail.
 
Big Mike didn’t pick up either.
 

Was this really happening?
 

She had the mind to open her door and
kick the guy in the balls for his incessant smashing against Stefan’s car.
 
It would be tame compared to what their lead
singer would do if he showed up.
 
But
then the bat struck through the final tiny piece of glass that had so far held
its ground.
 
The window began to dissolve
into mosaic-like shards.
 
Fear struck her
and she dialed Lucky.
 
He might be the
only one still awake, awaiting her call.
 

* * * *

Lucky had made it back to his room,
packed his duffel bag and then stretched out on the bed to get some sleep
before he planned on checking out and heading home, again.

Lucas Dylan Mason, the
North and the South, the internal soul’s civil war, ringing his guts and
showing him what he was.
 
He was
the good man and the bad boy, the caring lover and the almost unfaithful
cheat.
 
How had he let himself come so
close to being the very thing he hated in cheating men?
 
Falling in love with Trista so fast and so
hard had just hurt too damn much when he thought he’d lost her.
 

She knew people.
 
She had to have seen clear into his soul
tonight.
 
He’d been beating himself up
over confessing the night he’d come close to being with the woman at
Slanger’s—the vacation he’d given his brain and heart from functioning as their
normal and good selves.
  
But Trista had
seen it in his eyes tonight.
 
Seen the truth behind the serenade.
 
It was like she knew what he was going to say
before he’d uttered the words.
 

It was time for him to stop thinking that
what he’d done was no worse than what she’d done with Jaxon.
 
That argument had only lasted the length of
the bus ride home from California.
 
And
the ten minutes he’d sat in the parking lot of Slanger’s, debating if he’d let
the meaningless woman be someone he knew or a complete stranger.
 
His only stipulation that
it not be a blonde.
  
And then
half the time it’d taken him to come to his senses and drive from the hotel
around the corner back to his house.
 

By the time he was halfway home, he knew
he’d almost acted in complete idiocy.
 
First of all, his anger was at Jaxon, not really at Trista.
 
And what was he going to do?
 
Call Jaxon up and say “Hey Cuz, I just banged
a nameless, attractive brunette with long legs and no strings so now we’re
even.”?
 
It sounded as lame in his head
then as it did now, in this posh hotel room.
 

The worst and saddest
part?
 
Trista would have stuck to her forgiveness
had they stayed in her room and talked it out earlier.
 
She would let him pull that kind of
crap.
 
So he was glad she’d walked out on
him.
 
Sort of.

Just then, her number flashed on his
phone; it was nearly three in the morning.
 
The only thing he could think of was that she’d taken time to think over
his offer and maybe was ready to talk about it.
   

* * * *

The phone rang twice and then she heard
his voice.
 
It started out distant but
instantly progressed to worried.
 
“Trista?
 
Is that
you?
 
What’s that noise?”

“Lucky, we need help.”
 
She was sure of it now.

“Are you okay?
 
Where are you?”
   

“The venue from tonight—” and then the
phone fell from her hands as the last blow from the attacker’s bat smashed
completely through the window, loaded with sharp glass fragments.
 
She couldn’t scramble to pick the phone back
up.
 
She had to start fighting.
 

* * * *

The sound of her voice, panicked and
pleading for help, power washed away all the non-sense he’d been blundering
over.
 
Instinct to protect her kicked in
as he kept the phone to his ear.
 
Faint
shouts and other convoluted noises made their way through the cell’s receiver
but he couldn’t get her to answer again.
 
What in the world had Jaxon gotten her into?
 

* * * *

Where was Jaxon?