For You(23)

I felt winded at his words, the honesty at the same time him still sticking to his fucking lie. He’d never admitted it, he’d never copped to it, he’d acted like it was all me, like he’d done nothing wrong, he made me out to be the bad guy. I never accused him of it but he knew what he did and he never gave the barest hint of guilt or remorse. Now, even after all these years when I should have been over it, way over it, his words hit me on the fly and knocked the breath right out of me.

I still got out a whispered, “Alec –”

But I said no more, not that I had more to say, because he interrupted me.

“And for the last fuckin’ time, stop calling me Alec.” He got close, too close, and his head tipped down so he could stare at me. “You said you called me Alec because that’s who I was to you. I’m not that anymore, whoever that was, I haven’t been in a long time, so fuckin’ stop calling me Alec.”

He didn’t give me the chance to reply. He turned and walked away. I stood in the bathroom, in my tank top and jeans, holding my cell phone in my hand, staring at the door, feeling suddenly bone cold and thinking maybe he was right.

It was time to talk to Doc about what was bothering me.

And it was time to quit calling him Alec because, just then, what was left of my Alec was lost to me.

I’d been hanging onto it for a long time, with my jaw tilts, me calling him Alec.

But I knew it at that moment, I couldn’t hang on anymore.

He hadn’t been Alec in a long time and I had to let him go.

* * * * *

Colt walked into J&J’s late and saw Joe-Bob sitting at his stool, a couple bikers in the back. Colt had never seen them before, they were probably drifting through. The bikers were pulling on beers, playing pool. Angie’s usual table was vacant which it would be this time of night if she got lucky, now seeing it empty made his fists clench.

Jack and Morrie were behind the bar. They were both looking at him after he completed his scan. They were also both moving down to the end of the bar where Colt always sat, around the curve so his back was to the door to the office, his vantage giving him a full view of the bar.

Colt slid onto a stool and Morrie asked, “Off duty?”

“Yeah.”

Morrie twisted, bent then pulled three beer bottles out of a glass-fronted fridge. Jack moved to the shelves, grabbing the bourbon and three glasses. Colt found his mind wandering to what he’d learned yesterday, the insignificant but unknown fact that Feb did yoga. That piece of information had slid into his brain half a dozen times in the last two days, pissing him off because he didn’t know that about her. And it bothered him he didn’t know. What bothered him more was that it bothered him at all.

Morrie uncapped the bottles, placing them on the bar with a dull thud. Jack put ice in the glasses then poured the bourbon, using the beverage gun to shoot a blast of Coke in Colt’s before sliding the glasses around. The one that was cut went to Colt, the two straight shots, one went toward Morrie, Jack picked up the last and downed it in a gulp.

This was unusual. Jack liked his bourbon and was smart enough to sip it. He was also smart enough to play his cards close to his chest and almost always did. This act exposed his mood to anyone who knew him and it made that weight in Colt’s gut shift disturbingly.

Colt nabbed the beer by its neck using two fingers and took a healthy pull.

“We good?” Morrie asked.

Colt’s eyes moved around the bottle to his friend. He dropped the beer to the bar.

“Not really but Feb’s over it and Feb doesn’t have much to do with me so I got no call to be pissed at you.”

Morrie’s lips thinned but he remained silent.

“We’ll talk about that shit later. Tell us about Pete,” Jack demanded and Colt turned to him.

Colt would have paid money, big money, not to be having this conversation. But he respected these men and they needed to know so he did what was right even though it felt shit and, when he was done, he knew he’d feel even more shit.

Still, he let go of the beer and took a sip of bourbon before he started.

“Pete was done three days ago. Why no one told his mother, I don’t know. He was the first that we know of.”

Jack took a sharp breath into his nostrils.

Colt kept talking, “We’re exchanging information with St. Louis. Murder was mostly the same, ‘cept Pete was awake when it happened and the killer did him at home and left him at home. He fought his attacker but the guy got a swipe to the back of Pete’s neck, probably when he was running away. It incapacitated him but didn’t kill him. He dragged Pete back to his bed and did the same as he did to Angie. Took off the clothes he was wearing, all of ‘em, unlike Angie, and delivered blows to the groin, up through to the abdomen, near to the heart. The bed, the floor, the walls, covered in blood.”