Page 116 of Fighting a Riot

Volt poured another drink. “You gonna make it official? Put a cut on her at some point?”

“Yeah, probably. If she wants that. Right now, it’s one day at a time.”

“Why probably?” Volt asked.

“He’s worried about kids. Too focused on the bad shit to see all the good in front of him,” Cal muttered.

Yak chugged his water. “I didn’t say that.”

Cal scoffed. “You didn’t have to since you’re the one who asked me to meet you here for some mysterious reason, and that turned out to be kids.”

Volt’s chin turned a fraction to the side. “I get that. Never thought I’d see myself with a daughter.” His eyes slid to Yak’s. “But it’s the best fuckin’ decision I ever made, man. Don’t cheat yourself out of the best that life has to offer because you got such a raw deal when you were young.”

Yak ran a hand through his hair and groaned. “Fuck.”

“What?” Cal asked.

Yak’s eyes cut to Cal and then to Volt. “Leave it to Volt to hit close to home. First night I met Nora, I told her she’d been dealt a raw deal. Hard to ignore something that kind of echoes what I said to her.”

Nora

Chemo had a lot of strange side effects nobody mentioned. How could I feel so exhausted, yet suddenly find myself with insomnia? It was the most bizarre thing, yet it had hit me last night. I hated keeping Yak awake, so I forced myself to skip an afternoon nap today.

Lounging on the couch reading wasn’t doing the trick, my eyes were closing every other line. I had opened up a mahjong app, and since that worked my brain to some extent, I wasn’t nodding off.

I heard Yak’s bike roar up the driveway. Part of me wanted to greet him at the door, but he’d told me to take a nap before he left for the clubhouse. Needless to say, I hadn’t obeyed.

He spied me in the living room and joined me. “Did you nap at all?”

“Not really. It’s okay, I’d rather sleep through the night.”

He kept quiet, but he did shake his head. I kept playing my game and felt his gaze drift from me to the tablet.

“Is this like dominoes?” he asked, while slinging his arm along the back of the couch.

I tilted my head as I thought about it. “Not really. Each piece has to be accessible before you can match them up to remove them from the board. And each tile has a name.”

“That’s cool. What’s that one?” he asked, pointing to a piece with three blue dots in a diagonal line.

“Three dots.”

I felt his stare on me. I glanced up, his dry look made me fight a smile. “Original.” He pointed again. “What about that one.”

My lips quirked. “Four bamboo, because they’re—”

He nodded. “Yeah, four sticks shaped like bamboo. And that one? It looks like a pitch fork but isn’t.”

“That’s dragon one,” I said, fighting a chuckle.

His tone became slightly outraged. “How do you get dragon from that? I can see it with that green one.”

‘That green one’ had a drawing of a dragon in green.

“Yeah because that’s dragon two, like the number.”

He slouched further down into the sofa next to me. “I’ll take your word for it, darlin’. You want anything to eat? Though I use that term loosely since all you’ve been eating lately is broth.”

I smiled at him. “Nah. I’m not hungry.”

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