Page 26 of Lies He Told Me (Bratva Crime Syndicate 1)

He nods. “Later.”

The fire flickers and spits. I move my hands in closer, pushing up my sleeves so the heat can get to my forearms.

A wolf whistle sounds from the darkness beyond the edge of the firelight. “That’s right, babyyy. Take it off!” More whistles chorus in agreement with the catcaller. They’re talking about me.

Don’t say a word, Joy.

Even after all this time, it eats at me. Not being able to tell assholes to fuck off when I want to.

But I’ve learned. You get mouthy out here as a lone female, you get nothing but trouble. Safer to just ignore it.

“Yo! Get the fuck outta here!” Teddy yells, chucking a stick at the group of assholes in the shadows.

“Watch it, old man!” one of them protests.

I dare to look their way. Newcomers. They’re young, still got baby dreads and relatively alert faces. Probably playing at the whole homeless thing. Runaways too haughty to go home to their rich mommies and daddies, or something along those lines. It’s always slight riffs on the same old stories.

“Got a problem?” barks Wanda, striding out of her tie-dyed tent clutching her most prized possession—a gleaming sword.

Wanda looks like what would happen if you wrestled an albino gorilla into a tutu and gave it a machete. She wears the tutu 24/7, but she only unsheathes the blade on special occasions. Apparently, this sunrise catcalling qualifies as special enough.

Grumbling amongst themselves, the newcomers spit on the dirt and beat it.

When they’re gone, she shifts her attention to me. “You need anything, honey,” Wanda nods to me, twirling her machete in a figure-eight over her head, “anything at all, you tell me, a’right?”

Wanda likes me because I drew a portrait of her, tutu and all. I didn’t mean to give it to her, or even to do it. I just doodled on some napkin one day by the fire without thinking about it, and luckily for me, Wanda wandered by, spotted it, and liked it.

“You both broke, too?” Wanda comes over to stand by us, hand on her hip.

Teddy lifts his head back high and laughs, sad and sweet. “Nah, actually I won the lottery, but was keeping it to myself.”

I giggle and chime in, “Me? I inherited a few mil, nothing major.”

Wanda snorts. “You two. Aren’t you just a bunch of comedians? Anyway, you going to the soup kitchen later?”

“Either that or the Ritz.” Teddy draws his bow lips into a stoic expression. “Though their cuisine hasn’t been up to my standards lately, I’m afraid.”

“Soup kitchen, it is,” I agree.

Chowder plops himself in my lap.

I don’t know how long I sit there, enjoying the flames, the silence. That’s another nice thing about Teddy—he really has a knack for silences. He’s so comfortable with them, he makes you comfortable with them, too.

I don’t really feel safe just sitting around outside of my tent when he’s not near. Not with how this place has been lately. Those aggressive newcomers aren’t the first group of rowdies to roll through in the last few weeks, and I doubt they’ll be the last. Something in the city is stirring people, and not in a good way.

With no warning, Teddy rustles upright. “The corner calls.” Chowder breaks free of me and does his little leaping tail-wagging happy dance.

“You coming?” Teddy asks as usual.

“Not this time,” I answer, as usual.

It’s the little game we play with each other. The little game I play with myself, pretending that not begging makes me not homeless. That not begging means I can stop this anytime I want to.

Get a job. Get back into the rat race.

The first few weeks, I really tried. Gave myself sponge baths in the public library bathroom, kept my hair in a tight bun to hide the grease. Trudged over to job interview after job interview after three-hours-away job interview. None panned out. Not even close.

And somewhere along the way, I stopped being able to do it. To lie to the potential managers-to-be about how I was a happy, functioning human full of potential who would take it in the butt if they asked me nice and paid me a few shekels.

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