Rowdy

CHAPTER 1

Rowdy

THE POOL BALLS CRACKED together with a loud smack and rolled aimlessly across the table. Not a single one, solid or stripe, found its way into a pocket. I leaned heavily on the pool cue I planted on the floor and glared at the table.

“Man, you are off your game.”

In more ways than one. I snorted and looked across the pool table at my best friend, Jet Keller. He wasn’t in town much anymore. He was usually off making up-and-coming bands into stars or busy playing rock star himself. It was a rare night when he was actually home and not attached to his very pretty wife. Normally I would be all over some bro time with Jet, but like he said, I was off.

I reached behind me and grabbed the bottle of Coors Light I had left on the high-top table. Beer normally was the answer to all of life’s problems, but the things that were running around in my mind, the things keeping me up at night, no amount of beer could quiet. I shifted my weight on my feet and watched as Jet sank almost every single one of his shots. I had no idea how he managed to lean over the table and take the shots he did without his pants ripping in half. I kept telling him if he ever wanted to have kids he’d better buy some regular Levi’s; it was a long-running joke between the two of us. I felt bad for the guy’s balls.

I had known Jet for years and was used to his hard-rock style. It fit who he was. It fit his personality. He rocked it onstage and off. It didn’t, however, fit in at the run-down dive bar well off the beaten path I’d dragged him to. I was avoiding the bar closest to the tattoo shop because I had no intention of running into my newest coworker.

It was hard enough seeing her day in and day out at the shop. It was a struggle hour by hour to keep the nine million questions I had from flying out of my mouth. I wanted to know everything, wanted all the answers, but knew even if she had them it wouldn’t make up for the fact she had let me down all those years ago. So I just remained quiet. I kept my trap shut and went out of my way not to look at her, not to talk directly to her, and I sure as shit made sure not to be where I thought she might be outside of work. My avoidance tactics meant the watering hole by the shop was currently off-limits and so was the Bar, the run-down dive owned and operated by a close friend. Those were the only two places that I frequented with my friends and the rest of the gang from the tattoo shop, so it made sense that those would be the places Salem might pop up. Ergo, I dragged Jet’s ass to a place that looked like it hadn’t been cleaned since Colorado experienced the gold rush and where every pair of suspicious eyes were on us.

“It’s been a strange few weeks.”

Jet arched a black eyebrow at me and motioned for me to rerack the balls.

“That have anything to do with the babe from Vegas?”

I felt my shoulders tighten involuntarily. “Maybe.”

I took my time getting the colored balls back in the triangle, and when I was done, I stood and leaned on the table with my hands braced on the edge. My tattooed knuckles almost turned white under the pressure. That was the thing with having a tight-knit group of friends that substituted as family. No one’s business was off-limits and everyone wanted to stick their fingers in the mess and try and help.

I narrowed my eyes at him slightly as he ordered us another round of beers from the cocktail waitress that looked like she had been doing this since the womb. “Haggard” didn’t even begin to cover her worn appearance, and it annoyed me. If I wasn’t being such a nut case we could’ve been at the Bar, where Dixie was the cocktail waitress. She was a doll. A redhead with and easygoing attitude and a bright smile. She was also down for spending quality time with me naked and not expecting anything the next morning, so that made the fact I was getting snarled at by Betty, the Devil’s very own cocktail waitress, even more aggravating.

I snapped at Jet, “What have you heard?”

He grinned at me in the way he had that let me know I was being a dumb-ass. I didn’t get riled up easily. I never saw the point. Things always had a way of figuring themselves out and it was the harder people worked at trying to change the outcome that really made everything a clusterfuck. I firmly believed whatever was meant to happen would happen and there was no way to control the outcome.

He tipped the waitress and took the beers and handed me one.

“Just that she is something else. I heard she can give Cora as good as she gets, that she’s awesome with the customers, that she knows her shit when it comes to managing a tattoo shop and that she’s not just a ten, she’s a ten times ten, and that you’re avoiding her like she came from a leper colony not Sin City.”