Page 31 of Thunder

“Well, find an expert. If you’re sick, you go to a doctor. Car won’t start, a mechanic. And if you need to bag a biker, you ask youuuuurrrrr…”

Lexi held the sound for way too long. Andy could barely keep a straight face. “Ugh, please, Fairy Godstripper. Help me call down the Thunder.”

“High five, hooker. You just circled back to my wild west analogy with aTombstonereference and wove it in with the fairy tale one seamlessly. Nice.”

“We should discuss you sticking to one at a time. This mixing shit up is confusing. Cowboys, fairy tales, cavemen. Speaking of which, how are we going to flip this caveman switch bikers supposedly have?”

Andy had her doubts about if this plan of Lexi’s would work, but she literally had nothing to lose, and possibly everything to gain.

“Easy.” Lexi grinned as she stood to walk out of the kitchen. She didn’t speak until she was out of the door. “You’re going to join me tonight at Tails for amateur hour.”

Shocked didn’t begin to cover it. “What?” she asked an empty room, but Lexi’s laughter carried all through their house.

The sound of her phone ringing had her scrambling, looking for it. It was by the door. She turned to Fern. “Can you believe that tramp?” Shaking her head, she grabbed her phone. “Bitches be crazy.”

“Hello?” she answered after hitting the green button. It wasn’t a number she recognized, but she answered it, anyway. Deep down, a piece of her hoped it might be Thunder.

“Andy?”

“Yeah, who’s this?”

“Oh thank god, it’s Tracey.”

The bottom fell out of Andy’s stomach. Why, why now? Was this a cruel joke the universe was playing on her? It took her years to get over the mind fuck Justin did on her. Then in one night, Thunder brought all that to the surface with cruel words he had no way of knowing would trigger a cascade of emotional trauma. Now, just as she was packing that baggage up again because Lexi had just given her hope, cue Justin’s fucking sister.

The only reason she didn’t end the call and change her number was she owed Tracey. She was the one there to comfort her when Justin’s words beat her down. It was Tracey who showed her proof of Justin’s cheating. It was Tracey who convinced her to go. But she’d felt she’d more than repaid her.

“Why are you calling me now? What do you want?”

“I just wanted to let you know, Justin is gone. He died in an accident about ten months ago. I tried looking for you then, but you changed your number. Made it hella difficult to find you.”

“People usually change their numbers because they don’t want to be found. What do you want?”

“I just want to grab a cup of coffee, catch up. See that you’re doing okay.”

“That’s bullshit, Tracey. Tell me what you want so I can say no and we can go another five years without contact.”

“Fine, I noticed your roommate is friends with the Angels and the Phantoms. I want an introduction. That’s all.”

Andy was suddenly speechless.

“Come on, Andrea, we are practically family. If it weren’t for me, we would be. And you’d be raising all Justin’s little bastards while you sat around like the meek, perfect wife he molded you to be. I freed you from that. I freed myself from that, we were in the same boat. After all we went through, I’m just asking for a simple meet and greet with Ripley or Granite, or better yet, both.”

Her voice was still AWOL, so Tracey filled in the blanks. “Don’t answer now. Take your time and think about it. Toodles,sister.”

When Tracey ended the call, Andy slid down the wall. And with just a few words, her newfound hope was shattered into a million tiny pieces.

She sat there wishing Fern could crawl into her lap or that Lexi would come down the hall with a hug and a plan, but those things didn’t happen. Instead, she sat there with her tears.

When they were dry, she did what she always did. She built a wall and shoved everything she wasn’t emotionally prepared to deal behind it and got ready to go strip for a bunch of bikers.

15

THUNDER

The ride over to Tails was failing to clear Thunder’s mind.

He would kill and die for his brothers if need be, but that didn’t mean extracting information from some low life dealer sat well with him.

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