Page 6 of Plum

I beat on him, tear at him, and the guy keeps coming back harder until fear drives away the numbness I’ve been carrying around since I can’t remember when.

I might die here.

My eyes search out a blond head with purple streaks. She’s at the edge of the crowd, arms wrapped tight around her middle. The beginning of a black eye is swelling her eye shut. That gives me a shot of adrenaline enough to free myself from a headlock and bury a fist in Nickel’s abs. There’s a crunch, but it’s not his ribs; it’s my finger bones.

A shout from the sidelines distracts me, and there’s a snap. This time it’s my ribs. I go down, hard. I should protect my head, but I can’t do anything but lie there, and then, suddenly, it all stops.

Three burly bikers have pulled Nickel off of me. A man has each of his arms, and the bald guy is hanging from his neck, choking him out. Nickel’s still fighting, though.

I stumble to my feet, propping my glasses on my nose. The frame’s broken. Eric’s still on the ground, curled into a ball, moaning.

I take a step to help him up, but before I can, the little dancer bolts for him, shoe raised.

“He owes me twenty!”

The latest arrival, a man with a soldier’s bearing who has Nickel’s left arm, grabs the girl before she can reach Eric.

“For what?” the bald man asks.

The girl blinks, indignant at the question. “He wanted me to swallow. I said twenty extra. He said fine.”

Eric whines, “Bullshit.” If he weren’t down, I’d kick him. The idiot does not know when to stop.

The bald guy must be the boss. He’s frowning at her. I have the strangest urge to step between them.

“You negotiate up front?”

“He asked during.” She’s sweetened her tone, and she’s doing her best to look innocent, but it doesn’t quite work. Her eyes betray her. They’re hard, calculating. Tough. Damn, she’s fascinating. Everything about her. Her hair looks as soft as cotton candy, and those freckles…if you don’t look too closely, she’s seems like an angel. And then you catch her eye, and the fight shines from them.

She’s been strutting around—and running and brawling—in nothing but a pink thong and silver sequined pasties, and it should seem sad. But the way she moves, naked and totally unconcerned—above it all—vulnerable and untouchable at the same time. She’s glorious.

It’s a fucking strange thought to have. I rub my head. Maybe I have a concussion.

Her boss has told her something she doesn’t want to hear. She gives up the sweet act and rolls her eyes.

“Fine,” she huffs. “You want me to eat the twenty along with his nasty jizz, then?”

Her words are salty, but there’s a bereft note to them. She’s shivering in the cold, and her eye is almost fully puffed shut. The little fighter is going to lose this round.

No one’s gotten her an ice pack. Everyone’s staring at Nickel as if he’s the main attraction, and Nickel is eyeing me. So are his buddies. What are they waiting for? Why are we frozen in place like the world’s most bizarre tableau? Bikers versus techies.

I suck down a deep breath while my brain starts working again, and it takes me a minute, but then I get it. In this moment, Eric and I are screwed, but these guys see our Maserati. They see our Brioni suits and my Breitling watch. They know that this could get complicated for them—and expensive—very quickly if I pick up my phone.

I need to end this.

I limp over to Eric and pluck his wallet from his back pocket.

“Hey,” he groans.

I pull out all his cash and hand it to the girl. She snatches it without a word, turns heel, and hauls ass back to the club.

And it’s so stupid, even more than getting into a fight with a biker in a parking lot, but I wish she’d looked at me. Said something. I wish I’d thought of something to say to her.

It doesn’t make sense until later on the drive home, after the bald guy bans Eric for life and sends us on our way.

Much later, after I sober up at a diner and set off speeding down the pitch-black back roads to Pyle, Eric passed out in the backseat, that’s when Renee came to mind. She was—is—the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen in real life, hands down. The perfect body, long legs and perky tits. She’s the C.O.O. for a national non-profit. She’s smart, funny, connected. Her father is a partner at Portney and Clay. Her mother chairs the Arts Council.

In the five years we were together, she never wormed as deep inside me as the little stripper with purple streaks in her hair. There was something in the way she carried herself, in the determination born of desperation lurking behind her eyes, her fearlessness when she went after Eric—it reminded me of Gilson Avenue.

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