He does that thing again where he shows me two people taller than him and two shorter than him. He lives with his brothers. Shoot. I’m not going to an apartment filled with men I don’t know. “I can’t,” I say, but he rolls his eyes at me. Then he bends at the waist and drives his shoulder very gently into my midsection. He hefts me over his back like I’m a sack of potatoes. I’m still holding on to my guitar, and I knock him against the backs of his legs with it, because I know I could be screaming at him right now and he would have no idea. I can’t talk to him. I can’t tell him to put me down.
He carries me like that up four flights of stairs, and he’s huffing a little when we get to the fourth floor. I expect him to keep climbing, but he doesn’t. He stops and opens a door, and we’re suddenly in a hallway.
My struggling has ceased, because it’s no good. He can’t hear me. He can’t respond. So, I brush my hair out of my face with one hand and hold on tightly to my guitar with the other. He opens a door and steps inside, closing it behind him.
Four men turn to look at me, flopped there like a sack of potatoes over his shoulder. I’m turned to face them as he closes the door, so I wave. What else can I do? The one I met at the tattoo parlor gets to his feet. “Who’s that?” he asks.
The tattoo guy bends over to look in my face. “Shit, Logan, that’s the girl who clocked you.”
The other men get up and walk over, too.
One of them says, “Dude, she’s got Betty Boop on her panties.” I can’t even reach back to cover my ass.
Logan lowers me to my feet. I stumble as he sets me upright, when all the blood rushes back to my head. He reaches out to steady me, and he smiles. I realize that they could all see my panties when he had me upside down, not just the one of them. The rest were just nice enough that they pretended not to look.
Logan points to each of his brothers in turn,
and motions for them to talk. “Paul,” the biggest one says, as he extends his hand.
“I remember you,” I say.
“I’ll never forget you,” he says, with a laugh as he smacks Logan on the shoulder. “And neither will his nose.” He feints as Logan makes like he’s going to punch him. But he doesn’t. He stops right before he gets to his face.
The second to largest one, and they’re all big boys, sticks out his hand and says, “Matthew.” Matthew looks tired and a little green. I look at Logan and he nods subtly. This is the one who has cancer and is going through chemo. Paul slaps Matthew’s hand away and says, “You’re not supposed to be sharing any germs right now.”
“Fuck you,” Matthew says, and then he walks toward the hallway and goes in his bedroom and closes the door. He doesn’t look back at me, but I don’t mind.
The last two brothers have to be twins. They’re younger than Logan, and they look identical. “Sam and Pete,” Paul says.
They huddle around me, and I end up sandwiched between them, which they think is hilarious. They jiggle me around for a minute, until Paul barks at them. “Let her go,” he says. He pops them both on the backs of their heads and says, “They don’t know how to act when company comes over.”
Company? That’s what I am? “Nice to meet you,” I say. I’m a bit overwhelmed. This is a lot of testosterone in one room. There’s shooting and fighting blasting from the television and I look over at it. I know Logan can’t hear it, but there are subtitles playing at the bottom of the screen. I don’t know why, but that makes me smile.
Logan motions for me to follow him and I do, presumably toward his bedroom.
One of the twins (I can’t tell them apart) calls out for us to wait. But Logan can’t hear him. I follow him down the hallway, and the other of the twins is standing at the end of the corridor laughing like hell. Something is up, but I don’t know what. Logan opens his bedroom door, and steps inside. I follow him. And that’s when I see a form move in the bed.
“Who the fuck is that?” a female voice shrieks. Logan turns around and slaps at the light switch, and the room goes bright. A book flies across the room and hits his shoulder just as the light comes on. I step back out of the room, because whoever that is in his room is throwing shit like crazy. She’s blonde. And she’s naked. Completely and starkly naked. Shoot.
She jumps out of bed and starts grabbing for her clothes. Logan swipes a hand down his face and sticks his head out of the room. He motions toward Paul, who is leaning casually against the wall, a grin on his face. Paul walks down the hallway, his stride full of swagger, and he removes me from the doorway and goes in himself. The door closes with a thud.