Lover At Last(4)

As Jonsey met the guy’s eyes, he didn’t particularly care what the outcome was. Shoot the bitch. Don’t shoot him. Whatever.

“Okay, okay, okay.” Mr. Chatty backed away and left the bus stop.

Thank. Fuck.

Jonesy put his gat away, crossed his arms, and stared in the direction the bus was going to come out of—like that might help.

Stupid fucking idiot.

He looked at his watch again. Man, enough with this shit. If a bus heading back into downtown got here first, he was just going to get on and fuck it all.

Shifting the backpack he’d been told to get, he felt the hard contour of the jar inside. The pack he understood. If he was going to transport product from the sticks into the ’hood, then yeah. But the jar? What the hell you need that for?

Unless it was loose powder?

The fact that he’d been chosen by C-Rider, the man himself, for this had been pretty fucking cool. Until he’d met White Boy—and then the idea he was special lost some juice. The boss man’s instructions had been clear: Hook up with the dude at the Fourth Street stop. Take the last bus out to the ’burbs and wait. Transfer to the rural line when service resumed near dawn. Get off at the Warren County stop. Hoof it one mile to a farm property.

C-Rider would meet them and a bunch of other dudes out there for the business. And after that? Jonsey would be part of a new crew set to dominate the scene in Caldie.

He liked that shit. And full respect to C-Rider—that motherfucker was tight: high up in the ’hood; strung.

But if the rest of them were like Vanilla—

The roar of an engine made him assume something, anything from the Caldwell Transit Authority had finally shown, and he got to his feet—

“No fuckin’ way,” he breathed.

The blacked-out Hummer had pulled up right in front of the bus stop, and as the window went down, White Boy was full-on insane-in-the-membrane behind the wheel—and not just because Cypress Hill was, in fact, blaring.

“Get in! Come on! Get in!”

“What the fuck you do, yo?” Jonsey stuttered, even as he shot around behind the SUV and jumped into the passenger seat.

Holy motherfucking shit—bitch ass was not a total fool, not pulling off something like this.

The guy floored the accelerator, the engine roared, and the teeth of the tires grabbed onto the snowpack and shot them forward at fifty miles an hour.

Jonsey held on to whatever he found as they went gunning through a red-light intersection and then rode up over the curb and across the parking lot of a Hannaford. As they shot out on the far side, the music buried the beeping sound that was going off because no one had put their seat belts on.

Jonsey started grinning. “Fuckin’ yes, motherfucker! You crazy bitch, you fucking crazy ass snowflake…!”



“I think that’s Justin Bieber.”

Standing in front of a lineup of Lay’s potato chips, Qhuinn looked overhead to the speaker inset into the ceiling tiles. “Yup. I’m right, and I hate that I know that.”

Next to him, John Matthew signed, How do you know?

“The little shit is everywhere.” To prove the point, he motioned to a greeting card display featuring Short, Cocky, and Fifteen-Minutes-Are-Up. “I swear, that kid is proof the Antichrist is coming.”

Maybe it’s already here.

“Would explain Miley Cyrus.”

Good point.

As John went back to contemplating his finger food of choice, Qhuinn double-checked the store. Four a.m. and the CVS was fully stocked and completely empty—except for the two of them and the guy up at the front counter, who was reading a National Enquirer and eating a Snickers bar.

No lessers. No Band of Bastards.

Nothing to shoot.

Unless that Bieber display counted.

What are you going to have? John signed.

Qhuinn shrugged and kept looking around. As John’s ahstrux nohtrum, he was responsible for making sure the guy came back to the Brotherhood’s mansion every night in one piece, and after well over a year, so far, so good….

God, he missed Blay.

Shaking his head, he randomly reached forward. When his arm came back at him, he’d snagged some sour cream and onion.

Looking at the Lay’s logo, and the close-up of a single chip, all he could think of was the way he and John and Blay used to hang out at Blay’s parents’ house, playing Xbox, drinking beers, dreaming of bigger and better posttrans lives.

Unfortunately, bigger and better had turned out to be only the size and strength of their bodies. Although maybe that was just his POV. John was, after all, happily mated. And Blay was with…

Shit, he couldn’t even say his cousin’s name in his head.

“You good, J-man?” he asked roughly.

John Matthew snagged a Doritos old-school original and nodded. Let’s get drinks.