“My momma drove me to school, but Jackson rode the bus. I remember him getting off the bus that first day of junior high looking like a badass motherfucker, and I didn’t like it. I was the baddest guy in school. So I went up and punched him in the gut.”
“He didn’t say anything to set you off?” She shot a glance around me at Noah, who shook his head.
“Nope, not a word,” Noah said.
“He looked at me wrong,” I explained. “But he punched me right back and pretty soon we were rolling around in the dirt, like two pigs fighting over an old corn cob, dirty and snorting like animals. We were separated and sent to detention. The teacher made us sit next to each other. Jackson was tapping his pencil against the desk and it was pissing me off, so I grabbed it and snapped it in half. He looked like he wanted to snap me in half. But he couldn’t, not with the teacher sitting right there. So he grabbed the pencil back and tucked the broken halves away and didn’t say another word to me.”
“It was my only pencil,” Noah offered.
“Right, so not only had I been a dick, but I’d broken this kid’s only pencil. I was lower than the pig I’d been acting like, so I apologized and Jackson nodded. When the teacher left for some errand, Jackson leaned closer and said, ‘You know who really needs a beatdown?’ ‘No,’ I said. ‘Ricky Cartwright.’ Ricky and Jackson had attended the same elementary school, and Ricky had a bad habit of trying to pull down girls’ skirts and shorts and expose their underwear.
“I told him, ‘Now you’re talking.’ So we got Ricky Cartwright, beat the living snot out of him, and told him if we ever caught him within five feet of a girl, he’d be singing tenor in the swing choir forever. He scuttled around for the next five years. Not sure what he’s doing now.”
“He’s still afraid of us, but now he’s working at the gas station,” Noah confirmed. “When I went home over Christmas with Grace, Cartwright nearly pissed his pants when we stopped to fill up the truck. I asked him if he was treating the girls right, and he nodded but couldn’t speak.”
“Good job.” I held out my fist to Noah for a dap of congratulations.
“Wow, avenging the ladies even during the precocious preteen years,” AM said, her tone light but mocking. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to guess that AM thought that guys standing up for girls was a thing rarer than an eclipse. “Who are you avenging now?”
“No one,” I told her. Noah started to interject, but my glare shut his mouth.
Throwing a ten-spot on the table, Noah stood. “I’m out of here. Glad to see you aren’t too battered.”
Noah had the right idea. The stray bits of wet paper from my makeshift clean up in the bathroom stuck to my back. I was desperate for a real shower, but I wanted to make sure that no one else in the bar would sweep in and convince AM they had a better offer than me. “Come on, Sunshine, I’ll drive you home.” I pulled AM to her feet. Noah looked at us for a moment, trying to read me, read my intentions. Feeling serious about a girl was foreign to me, so I wasn’t surprised Noah couldn’t figure it out. Neither could I. It was uncharted territory.
AM must have picked up on the unspoken words between Noah and me. She looked at me hesitantly and then, in a tiny motion, took a step closer to me as if declaring her allegiance. I gathered AM close to my side and over her head I saw Noah give me a nod of approval. This was a keeper, he was saying.
“I need to talk to Ellie,” AM protested as I tried to hustle her out the back door.
I held back a sigh and said, “I’ll get her. Stay here.” I took off before she could protest. I spotted Ellie hanging out with Phil and Finn at the pool table. “Finn, can you take Ellie home tonight? Make sure she’s okay?”
“No problem,” Finn said. “That okay with you, Ellie?”
Ellie took a moment to look me over, as if measuring my worth. I must have passed some internal barometer, because she nodded her agreement but cautioned, “Take care of my girl.”
“Always,” I replied. Her eyes flared wide at my use of the word, but I didn’t correct whatever assumptions she’d made. They might have been right. Something in me had shifted when I saw Finn talking to AM. They were just laughing and joking, but I realized that I wanted to be the one to make AM laugh and feel at ease.
Always. Maybe I wasn’t so uncertain. The question was whether I could overcome AM’s reservations.
Chapter Eleven
BO
I RETURNED WITH A MESSAGE. “Ellie says I should take care of you.”