“Iris,” Blake called out from across the booth we were in.
I tilted my head up at him, smiling. We’d only been there about thirty minutes and I’d been awfully quiet, more so than normal, soaking in their familiar conversations. “Yes?”
He smoothed a hand over his bare head, holding his beer close to his mouth with the other. “You old enough to drink?”
My mouth flattened. "Yes."
“When did you turn twenty-one? This year?"
I rolled my eyes at him. “Three years ago. I'm twenty-four going on fifty.”
Blake made a face. "You're a damn baby."
"Maybe compared to your old butt." I laughed. Just last week he'd turned thirty-six. No one had bought him a cake or anything, but he'd mentioned it to me in passing. Obligation had me going to the deli next door to buy him a cookie in celebration.
"Where'd you live at before?”
It was Dex who'd asked the question. Dex who suddenly looked very intent across the table, an unlit cigarette nestled between his fingers mindlessly. And Dex who hadn't paid any attention to the paperwork I'd filled out when he'd given me the job. Of course.
“Fort Lauderdale.”
“And you drove all the way over here by yourself?” he asked in that low drawl.
Oh God. “Yes.”
“Babe, that’s fuckin’ stupid. Why?”
I thought for a moment about giving them some vague reason, but what was the point? "I couldn't find another job after I got laid off and my lease had ended."
“Your other family?” Dex asked, leaning forward in his seat as he planted his elbows on the table.
My non-WMC family, he meant. I guess. A certain part of me wasn’t surprised he didn’t know the answer though he was friends with Sonny.
“My little brother’s in the Army. He's stationed in Japan.”
My boss did that slow blink again, those eyes sucking me forward like a vortex. He looked from one side to the other, as if he was thinking about whether or not to ask the next question. “Your ma?”
The iceberg that lived permanently in my chest moved an inch. Shouldn't he know that by now? There were times when I went to Mayhem with Sonny that made me feel like everyone in the club knew all of my history. Then again, why would Dex care enough to wonder and ask? Or heck, even listen if someone mentioned it. Half the time he was wrapped up in his own lonesome world.
My voice was lower than usual, tender tissue paper in a wind storm. "She passed away a few years ago."
Slim, who had talked to me and asked me things, didn’t know that specifically, so I wasn’t surprised when he reached over and patted my hand. “Sorry, Iris.”
Dex did this gradual nod in agreement. There was something about his face that looked stricken. Maybe I was imagining it though. “Sorry to hear about your ma, babe.”
I did what I always did when someone found out about her, I shrugged. Not that I told very many people because I didn’t. Over the years, I’d only met a handful that I had any reason to share that information with. Most never asked because so many people took their families for granted, but these guys had. “It happened a while ago but thank you.”
The silence that followed was a little too thick. A little too long. It made me a little too uncomfortable.
“So…” I forced a smile onto my face. “Who really spilled the mayonnaise in Seattle?”
~ * ~ *
“I did not!”
Slim had his forehead to the table. “Yeah, yeah, you did.”
“You’re such a liar.”
Dex was sitting directly across from me and on his fourth or fifth beer, I’d lost count after the awkward second one, and he was laughing. Laughing from deep within his chest, the richness of it vibrating from every pore in a way that had me swinging my eyes to him each chance I got. This Dex, the one who had been joking around with our group, messing with the guys was just… a completely different person from the one I’d seen at Pins night after night.
The good mood in the booth was so contagious, I couldn't find it in me to be the quiet vibe kill. They'd pulled me out of the normally reserved nature I had around them, and had me relaxed. I felt like normal Iris—the Iris I was around Sonny, Will, and Lanie—for once while in Pins' shadowy hands.
“You were, Ritz,” he agreed with Slim. “I thought you were gonna pass out.”
I guffawed, tossing back the Shirley Temple he’d ordered for me on the waitress’ last trip. “My face turned red, but I didn’t friggin’ gasp when I saw it.” We were referring to the penis piercing incident earlier. The incident that pulled us through the last topic the guys had been laughing at: the customers who cried or screamed when they got something pierced.