“Hey you!” I shout, walking toward him. “Do your damn eyes not work or something?”
He looks up at me from his phone and stops, near his car just feet from me.
“Excuse me?” he asks, scanning me over.
“You fucking heard me, dickwad, you hit that puddle and messed up my face. You might want to get your eyes checked and watch where the hell you’re driving that piece of shit.”
The fucker looks baffled and insulted as he takes a few steps toward me and crosses his arms.
“Nice language, kid. Does your daddy know you talk that way?”
I scoff as Pax pulls up; his bike is loud, so I gesture at him to kill the engine as I climb on.
“My daddy,” I laugh, “wouldn’t you like to know, loser. Why don’t you head on inside and ask my mommy instead, but you might have to peel her drunk ass off the washroom floor first, so good luck getting any money out of her, ass wipe.”
I slip my helmet on as Pax starts the bike and revs the engine, unable to hear anything the asshole has to say back to me.
Patting Pax on the arm, I motion at him to go, flip my visor down, and give Wallstreet the finger.
There is literally nothing more exhilarating than flying through the Hill doing eighty on the back of Pax’s beast. Pax doesn’t talk much; he tends to let me handle my own shit the way I see fit. After all, I’m kind of like his Sugar Momma, bought him the Kawasaki a couple years ago and I let him live rent-free at the Club.
The guy’s a drifter; a traveling soul he likes to call himself. He takes off for days sometimes, and it bothers me, but so far, he’s always come back. We met a few summers ago when I was seventeen. I was walking home from the Club half-cut at like 2 a.m., because the Marron brothers hid my car keys. I don’t know which one either because the jerks are identical twins, Jimmy and Jack. But when they host a Club bash, they either make you crash there or cab, and since I drank until I vomited that night, I decided to take in some air and walk.
I’d barely made it halfway up the Hill before I needed to pee, so I stopped in some bushes in Dellwood Park and hiked up my skirt until I heard Pax clear his throat. He was living in a tent nearby and apparently I interrupted his shuteye with my drunken mumbling.
Even with it being pitch black out and me being drunk as shit, I could see him clear as day; it was an instant attraction I’ve always referred to as the temptation of sin. The damn guy was walking sex and depravity, with his bad-boy demeanor, low unruly ponytail, steel blue eyes as dark as death, and a five o’clock shadow surrounded smile that’ll make a girl wet in a second.
I could tell the guy had a decent body too, even a few tattoos in a bunch of twisted places like his neck. I studied it the entire way as he carried my intoxicated ass the rest of the way up the Hill that night.
After that, shit just sort of happened between us.
He’s older than me by eight years, not a huge deal, but he was my first. It seems so long ago when I think about it. Sometimes I miss the way we used to be. But I fucked all of that up in so many ways because of my fear of commitment. Now we see other people and screw when we’re bored in between, because Pax is the only guy who seems to understand the way I like it. We have a certain connection when we fuck, an unspoken ritual of sorts. It’s a dark connection and it’s who we are.
I can’t complain… our arrangement has its benefits, and besides, when it comes to having my back whether it’s to get away from Satan, or I need a ride to the Club, or he thinks he needs to stop me from doing something completely insane, he never lets me down. I consider him to be my best friend.
Pax is my genie… in a bottle of whiskey.
***
PULLING INTO THE BACK OF THE CLUB, I hop off the bike and head inside. The place is dead and will be until at least nine when the freaks start to come out. And by freaks, I mean my friends. Nine o’clock is happy hour down here, and until then I spend my time checking the alcohol volume in the bar and mostly shoot the shit with Pax, unless I need to send him on a liquor run.
“So, who was the suit in the driveway when I pulled up?” he mutters in his naturally gruff tone.
“Nobody cool.”
“No shit,” Pax gripes. “Pass me a rag and tell me what the prick did to make you lay into him.”
I toss a rag at him, bothered how the glasses never come clean in the dishwasher, so I always end up hand polishing the damn things.
“The douche hit a puddle and soaked me. It was no big deal, I told him off and I’m pretty sure he’ll pay more attention to the road next time.”
“I doubt it,” he says, stacking the glasses. “Assholes who drive expensive cars are either givers or takers, they don’t learn from mistakes.”
“Givers or takers?” I ask, confused.
“Yeah, you know, assholes who take what
