Dannika Dark - Seven Years

“Have a seat, Austin,” I said. “Shit—I mean shoot. I forgot the napkins. Be right back.”

“I work as a dancer, but it’s just a temporary thing until I find something better,” Naya went on. “I know exactly where you’re coming from. We all want something better for ourselves. Is your family here with you?”

“My brothers are here.”

“Not married?”

I almost cringed as I grabbed a stack of paper napkins from the kitchen and returned. Austin was still standing beside the table. When I sat down and took a sip of wine, he pulled back his chair and relaxed in his seat. The legs creaked as he settled.

Austin stared at my finger as it tapped repeatedly against the wood table. If he remembered anything about me, he knew I was a finger-tapper whenever something was irritating me. On a table, on a wall, on my leg, on a keyboard—didn’t matter.

It was just my thing.

Naya and I had grown used to the music blaring from the neighbor’s apartment, but with company over, it was embarrassing. Apparently, the cop hadn’t put enough of a scare into them, so we sat there listening to the Who singing about a teenage wasteland.

“Naya, you left your phone over here last night,” I said conversationally.

Relief washed over her lovely face. “Oh, thank God. I was looking everywhere for it this morning. I get so many important calls and half of them don’t leave messages. That’s my biggest peeve.”

“Naya doesn’t have a home phone,” I pointed out.

She shook her head and savored a small sip of Merlot. “Who needs a home phone? You don’t even have a cell phone. Get with the times, girl. Where did you put it?”

“On the bar next to the deck of cards,” I said, pointing over my shoulder. “Hope you don’t mind that I used it.”

Lucky for me it didn’t break when I threw it earlier, thanks to the lawnmower man who hadn’t cut the grass in over a month.

“Damn, Naya, this is really good.” I took a second bite of creamy noodles and made an approving moan. Only Naya could whip up something decadent from a can of soup. “Naya’s a great cook,” I said to Austin, giving her a few brownie points with him. “If you ever taste her lobster, you’ll probably want to make babies with her.”

“Lexi,” Naya said with a giggle.

Austin twirled his pasta but didn’t take a single bite of it. That was his pissed-off look. I’d seen it plenty of times. He’d given it to a guy who called me a hot piece of ass when I was seventeen and walking out of a convenience store. Austin had left me in the car with my Popsicle while he and Wes got out, locked the doors, and yanked that redneck out of his green Ford pickup truck. They dragged him around the side of the building and when they returned, Wes had a bloody lip and Austin’s knuckles were bruised.

“Don’t you like it?” Naya asked.

The fork clicked against the plate and Austin stood up. “I’ll be right back.”

“Where are you going?”

He lowered his chin. “Stay here.”

When he left the apartment, Naya finished her wine. “He’s a beast of a man, Lexi. This is your old friend? Hot tamale, girly. You’ve been holding out on me. Any feelings still there?”

“I don’t even know him anymore,” I said with a pitiful sigh.

“Can I get to know him?” She lifted her hands defensively and laughed. “If you want him, Lexi, just say the word and I’ll take my dinner and go.”

“Nah. He’s practically family.”

“I thought you liked big, strong men?”

“Beckett was the exception. I don’t usually go for all the roughnecks,” I lied. Well, at least not all the time. “Remember Lance, the guy who worked at the coffee shop?”

“The painter?” she said with disdain. “Come on, Lexi. Aspire to something greater.”

“Muscles don’t make the man.”

“True, darling, but they give you something nice to hold on to,” she said.

“I just can’t be with a guy who worships his body more than mine.”

Naya raised her hand for a high five and we laughed.

Which abruptly stopped when the silence became deafening.

“The music cut off,” she said, stating the obvious.

I swiveled around to look at the clock. “That’s a first. It’s not even close to midnight.”

Naya chewed on a bite of spaghetti and froze when the heavy sound of footsteps came up the stairs. Naya got nervy about unlocked doors. We knew it was probably Austin, but when the knob turned, her eyes went wide.

But it was him.

Austin gave us a demonstration of swagger as he crossed the room to claim his chair. Naya did a little finger swirl around the rim of her glass. She must have been used to crystal, because mine was made of glass and barely made a squeak.

“You forgot to lock the door,” Naya pointed out.

Austin scooped a giant forkful of pasta into his mouth. “When I’m here, you don’t need a lock.”

His chiseled jaw worked hard, making Naya crumble like a cookie at the sight of a handsome man devouring her food. Austin was better looking than he’d ever been in his youth, even if it was mixed with a tough exterior like a street fighter looking for action.

“Did you confront my neighbors?”

After chewing his last bite, he put his tanned forearms on the table and leaned in, nodding with an arched brow. “I wouldn’t worry about them. Just a couple of college kids with a bong, some kind of black light, and all these posters and shit of Led Zeppelin and—”

I burst out laughing and when a snort escaped, I covered my face. The laughter couldn’t be contained any longer. On top of this crazy day of getting chased by a dog, sitting in a tree in a cemetery, having my best friend hit on my old flame—who by the way was in town to tell me he was a bounty hunter and shapeshifter—there sat Austin, pointing out how weird my downstairs neighbors were.

“God, I love her laugh,” he said to Naya, licking the prongs of his fork. “When she really gets going, she sounds like Beaker from The Muppet Show.”

Which made an embarrassing sound escape my throat. I waved my arm to get up and knocked over his glass of wine. Naya flew out of her seat and covered her mouth.

That sucked all the humor out of the moment. So much for sophistication at twenty-seven. I stood up and sighed.

“I’m sorry, Naya. It’s been a long day and I’ve had more to drink than eat. Let me get something to clean up the mess.”

“How about the shirt in your trash can?” Austin suggested.

The next day, I felt sick as a dog. It was probably a combination of the alcohol from the night before and everything else going on that made my head spin and stomach churn.

Thankfully the shop wasn’t busy, and April kept the customers happy while I worked in the back, wrapping up gift orders. During the downtime, I’d sit outside in the sunshine on the wooden bench, listening to music until a customer wandered into the shop. It was slow on weekdays, which is why we desperately needed new ways to attract customers.

Truthfully, it only took one of us to run the shop during certain hours, but our boss wanted two workers on site during peak hours. We had two other girls who worked part time and rotated shifts as needed.

Charlie, our boss, frequently stopped in to see how things were going, but not so much lately. He spent a lot of his spare time reading if not telling stories about Greek mythology or the truth behind ancient Egyptian culture. It was riveting to hear his spin on things and it was too bad he never pursued a career in teaching.

Charlie wasn’t just the owner, but also the manager on call. He’d never hired anyone to fill that role because it would have meant paying out a higher salary, so I had become the designated lead. Whenever someone had a complaint and asked to speak to the manager, it was me they saw.

Luckily, we didn’t get many complaints. We sold sugar. That made most people pretty damn happy.

“You feeling okay, Alexia?” April came into the back room and sat on the bench beside me, patting my shoulder.

“Not really.”

“Want me to call Beth to come fill in for you today?”

Guilt crawled up and took a seat in my lap. I hated doing that to someone on their day off. In fact, I was notorious for taking other people’s shifts and Charlie made it a point to reprimand me for it. Not in a way that jeopardized my career in the candy field, but he didn’t want me to get burned out on work at a young age.

When my relationship with Beckett got serious, my private life had become more of a priority than work. Now that I was single again, work was starting to fill that void, and not in a good way.

“Oh, I almost forgot.” April dashed to the register, reached in one of the drawers, and returned with a slip of paper. “I got a call this morning from someone; he was trying to get a hold of you about your car. Did you advertise our work number in your ad?”

“Guilty. And don’t tell Charlie. I didn’t want my home number splashed in the paper for all to see, and I’m up here most of the time anyhow.”

April twisted her hair between her fingers. “I won’t say anything, but you could get us in trouble if someone calls when he’s up here.”

I took the paper from her hand and stared at a name and number. “What did he say?”

“To call him?” She laughed quietly. “Go see if he’s interested. I’ll cover for you if he wants to take a look at it today.”

“You’re a godsend,” I said in a miserable voice.

I sat in a very unladylike position in my white skirt, hugging my stomach, my legs spread wide. We were in a private back room with our very own vending machine and luxurious water fountain. April didn’t mind the enclosed space, but I preferred sitting on the benches outside during my breaks. She handed me her phone and I called the number.

* * *

Lorenzo (the potential buyer or hapless victim, depending on how you looked at it) didn’t converse much over the phone, but he did want to hear the specs. Manual transmission, new tires, ninety thousand miles, and semen in the back seat.

I left out the last part.

We agreed to meet at a mall I’d been to once before when I was twelve to have my ears pierced. Lorenzo stood next to a big black truck like he’d described to me. He wasn’t what I expected. He wore a pair of pale green khakis and a black tank top with writing on it. Something just didn’t feel right as I pulled into the parking space and looked at his expensive truck. But those moments are when you convince yourself that you’re overreacting and maybe he was purchasing the car for his girlfriend.

Lorenzo towered beside his sharp, heavy-duty truck with chrome wheels and tinted windows. His straight hair was as black as the truck and fell past his shoulders. He looked Native American with his tanned skin and high cheekbones.

I wiped my brow with my clammy hands, still feeling sick. When I turned off the engine, he slowly paced around the car and began appraising it. I stepped out and felt the scorch of heat from the asphalt.

“Hi, I’m Alexia Knight. You must be Lorenzo.”

“How does she run?” he asked.

“Like a dream.”

His eyes briefly darted to mine. I stepped back with my keys in hand so he could sit in the driver’s seat and check out the interior.

Lorenzo looked at every detail and then glanced at the back seat. I wondered if there was a sex aura back there that psychics could see.

“Has anyone ever worked on the transmission?”

“Nope. But the alternator was repaired, or replaced. Don’t ask me which; I didn’t handle that.”

“Let me see the keys,” he said eagerly.

I hesitated, looking around.

Lorenzo’s hands slid down his pants and stopped at his knees. “If I drive off in your car, feel free to take my truck,” he offered, tossing me his own keys. “Is this in your name or do you have a boyfriend on the papers?”

Was he asking me about my situation?

“It’s my car.”

“How are you going to get around without it?” He laced his fingers together and watched me carefully. “Is someone going to drive you, or do you have another car lined up?”

Had I been sitting, I would have squirmed in my seat. “Do you have an offer?”

Lorenzo pinched his chin, tassels swinging from the leather bracelet on his wrist. “Your asking price and dinner. You didn’t mention a boyfriend, so I’m going to take a chance and guess that you’re just as available as this car.”