Page 7 of Alfie: Part One

“Cheers.” I nodded with a dip of my chin.

Kellan held out a pack of smokes, and I furrowed my brow.

He smoked in here?

He grinned faintly. “Don’t worry about it. Someone complains, we pay the fine. End’a story.”

I chuckled and accepted a smoke. “How many fines have you paid?”

He scratched his nose. “Been a month or two now. But every now and then, some motherfucker comes in and coughs loudly and tells the staff. Asthmatic fuckin’ tourists—they don’t know Mick’s AC unit is better than the ones in the casinos in Vegas.”

I barked out a laugh and shook my head.

Oh man, I needed that laugh.

Screw it. I wasn’t gonna try to be the good guy anymore. I lit up my smoke and went with it.

Sorry, Ma. Identity crisis inbound.

“What did you mean by ambitions?” I asked.

He shrugged. “You got any goals? You wanna climb ranks or what? You wanna run a crew one day, become an adviser, network with people?”

Oh.

Fuck no.

“I like my sidelines position,” I told him. “I like my tasks too. I’m just sayin’, you don’t gotta come by my house or meet up with me anymore. I can come to you and…I don’t know. Show my face more. Be here—or wherever you’d want me.”

He turned pensive and blew out smoke from his nose.

Unlike me, he dressed sharply because that was his comfort level. He was a man of many suspenders. Expensive brands, tailored pants and shirts, shined shoes, the whole nine yards. Shannon O’Shea was similar. They always dressed up.

I was a jeans and T-shirt kind of guy, and Kellan knew that. He was an excellent people reader. He’d studied human behavior and psychology, and it was what made him great at his job. He knew how to handle people from all walks of life. Including me. He wouldn’t hire me to do something that made me miserable, because he knew I would quit.

I took a swig of my beer and flicked some ashes into a basket that’d once held fries. I hoped nobody wanted the last two.

“What prompted this?” he asked next.

I could be honest with him.

“West met someone.”

Fuck, that tasted bitter.

Deep breaths.

“I’m sorry to hear that.” He sat forward a little and furrowed his brow. “Did you genuinely believe you’d work shit out?”

The question I’d been volleying back and forth all afternoon.

I sighed. “Part of me did, part of me didn’t. I guess it was mostly hope. We’ve done it once before.”

We’d been on the verge of breaking up around the time we’d left LA to return to Philly, but we’d managed to work things out. Although, in retrospect, we’d been so focused on making Trip feel at home with us at the time, that…maybe the relationship had been fixed temporarily solely because we’d aced the parent gig together. After that, it’d been a slow descent into misery.

To this day, West claimed I’d lost myself in the move. Actually, we’d started fighting about this before we’d left LA. He said I’d changed too much. I’d been like, excuse me for growing up…? What did he expect, that I was gonna be a part-time bartender my whole life? Or that I was gonna book modeling gigs to pay rent? No thanks. Especially not when my husband came from some fancy family that judged me whenever we visited.

They’d never liked me. West’s dad had his own reasons too. Most of them just thought I was a hood rat. So be it. I wasn’t ashamed of my upbringing. My folks had done everything they could. But that fucking guy… West’s old man was a retired FBI agent, and he’d already looked me up before our first visit.

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