Page 57 of Double Bucked

Someone smacks me on the back. My buddy—Rafe—stands beside me. “Hey, how’s it going?”

My voice trembles. “I’m so mad I think I’m having a stroke.”

He twists, propping his elbows on the bar. Rafe has golden skin, jet-black hair cut in a clean fade, and a smart tongue. He also wears a single golden stud in his left ear, which started some kind of trend because now a lot of the workhands wear the same single-ear piercing. But that’s just Rafe. He’s got this magnetic energy about him that makes people warm to him. They wanna be him. Wanna be like him. Wanna be with him.

I should know. We grew up together. Got into the sort of innocent trouble boys get into and then never mention again. Now, we work together, drink together, and spend most of our free time complaining about life, money, and women. I watch his dark eyes scan the booth I just came from.

“Is that Claire? And Miss Jade?” He squints. “Who’s the guy?”

“James. Claire’s fiancé.”

Rafe whistles low. “Kinda stiff, isn’t he?”

“Kinda? He’s a tin man.”

Rafe clicks his tongue. “Got that lone coyote rizz. You think he’d recognize his mother tongue?”

“Don’t—”

Rafe lets out a couple of loud animal yips.

A couple of barflies give us curious looks. James looks our way, eyebrows furrowed.

Rafe laughs. I can’t help it. I drop my head and chuckle into my arms.

“You dumbass.”

“Takes one to know one, amigo.” Rafe lapses into thought and then asks, “You think they fuck, or do they just assemble like IKEA furniture?”

I don’t want to think about that. I change the topic.

“You didn’t see them. Any of them. Especially Jade, you got that?”

Rafe drags his eyes over me. “I’ve never met a man who’s so incredibly good at getting himself into hot water the way you are.”

I sigh. “Yeah, I’m a regular lobster.”

Finally, Maeby appears. Her story is nothing but a fall from grace. Once a Belleflower Queen, she now owns her own tavern and spends her nights slinging beers. She’s still elegant as all hell if you ask me, but she wears her roughness on her sleeves now. She’s got a chipped tooth, leathery skin, and when she wears a strappy shirt like tonight, you can see hints of deep scars that peek out from around her shoulders.

This is a woman who, literally, took life’s licks and lived to tell the tale.

No one knows why Maeby left her life of Belleflower privilege to slum it with the Sooters down here. Sooters—that’s what they call us. South of the Railroad kids. At this point, I think everyone’s too afraid of Maeby to ask.

Even I wouldn’t dare ask, and she’s practically family to me. When my folks were alive, they spent so much time at this bar it was my school, my afterschool, and my higher education. Maeby, my whip-smart and wiseass professor, helping me with homework between pitchers.

Which is why I know she’s got nothing but love for me, even when she rolls her eyes at me and Rafe. “What do you two want, then?”

Rafe nudges his empty glass forward. I give my order. “A couple baskets of fries, four shots of whiskey, a pitcher of Yellow Canary Pils, and a cosmo.” Even I wince hearing it back. I’m probably the first man to ever order a cosmo here. “Please don’t spit in it.”

Maeby sets four shot glasses on the table. She fills them up, then looks me dead in the eyes as she gathers a glob of spit and drops it into the fourth glass.

“That’s for you,” she says. “For insinuating that I’d do such a thing.”

Without hesitation, Rafe takes the spit-shot and knocks it back. He holds his hands up in prayer.

“Another, please. Heavy on the spit, Miss Maeby.”

She narrows her eyes at him. She fixes our drinks, setting them on a tray. She tells me, “No animals allowed in here. Tie your stud to the post out back, Ransom, or I will.”

---