Page 76 of Apex of the Curve

I gave her leg another squeeze, reassuring like, under the table and told her, “A lot of booze, a lot of laughs, and even a lot of pussy – but just a good time. That’s all, baby.”

She laughed a bit, a mix of incredulous and nervous and I winked at her. That settled her into a smile, and I knew she had questions. She could ask me all the questions she wanted when we were alone and I would do my level best to answer them.

“Can I ask what sent your friend to prison?” she asked softly.

“I like the way you phrased that,” Dump Truck said.

“Why?” she asked.

“Non-judgmental,” Little Bird answered her. “Usually, when someone has spent time in jail or prison it’s automatically assumed, they deserved it.”

“Exactly,” Dump Truck said. “Look like one of us, it’s automatically assumed we’re all criminals, too.” He took a sip of his coffee. “I don’t have a record.”

“Me either,” I declared. Not that I’d never done anything wrong by citizen standards, mind you. I’d just never been fuckin’ caught.

I flashed on holding the de-fleshed skull of one of my sister’s rapists between my hands, slick with blood as I yanked his fuckin’ teeth out with the needle nose pliers, the smell of the gore, like wet copper stuffing my damn nose.

I shook my head a little more forcefully than the denial required to clear the image from my mind and kick it back down the dark hole of memory where it’d crawled out of.

“So, what happened?” Aspen asked. “In your friend’s case.”

“Assault Two,” Dump Truck answered. “Some fuckin’ asshole in a cage nearly ran him off the road. Mace got a little hyped up on his adrenaline, got pissed off – rightfully so – and took off after him. Ripped him out of his car at a stoplight and beat the brakes off of him with a set of brass knuckles.”

“Jesus!” Aspen cried.

“Guy could have killed him,” I said unhappily.

“Nearly did,” Dump Truck said. “Can’t let that type of shit stand.”

“Anyway, Mace plead out, got sent up for three years, has only been locked up for half of it. Would have been out sooner but there was a prison yard fight. Ended up getting caught up in it trying to defend a homeboy of his so they tacked on six months,” I told her.

She nodded carefully and was clearly trying to process it all.

The topic changed again, thanks to Little Bird, and I could kiss my best friend’s girl for saving the day and from distracting Aspen from thinking about the bad things for too long. I’d meant for today to be about showing her the good things and I felt like I was fucking that up.

I mean, reality dictated that at some point, Aspen’s indoctrination into the life would become a bit of a baptism by fire. That was sort of always the way these kinds of things went.

I just needed to make sure she was as prepared as possible for it but seeing was believing and there was really only so much I could do on that front. I would be lying if I said I wasn’t worried. Still, only time would fuckin’ tell. All I could do was keep this longship on an even keel and hope that the gods smiled upon me.

---