Chapter 37

thirty-seven

LOLA

Four times. We fucked four times, and I could barely move. Hendrix kissed me, rolled off the bed, then walked into the hall butt naked.

"Come on, man." Zepp groaned a few seconds after my door closed. "I don't want to see your used dick."

"Like you didn't see dicks in prison."

A door slammed somewhere, and I stared at the ceiling, catching my breath, lost in the emotion of everything that had happened in the past twenty-four hours. Could it really be that simple? Could Hendrix forgive me for what he thought was a betrayal?

A rendition of "A Whole New World" echoed through the house. "Now tell me, jailbait. When did you la-ast drop your soap and cry?" He cackled. "I could show you my dick. Take you prison from prison. Over so-ap and under. On a magic cocksucker ride… A whole new dick !"

He only sang Disney songs when he was really happy.

And I loved that he was happy, but I couldn't help the sick feeling churning in my stomach. I'd committed to him fully. The second he'd said those words—"I already have"—it was as though the past two years had disappeared. But now more than ever, I could never tell him the truth about Johan.

If he loved me enough to forgive me, he sure as hell loved me enough to go to prison over the man who had violated me and torn us apart.

It was a shadow looming over my happy little patch of sunshine.

Hendrix stepped back into the room, dressed in a tight black T-shirt and jeans. With his bruised face, he looked like a bad boy who'd just rolled out of a fight…and my bed.

He glanced back toward the stairs with a huge smile on his face as he sang out, "A new cocktastic point of view."

"Shut the hell up before I kill you," Zepp shouted from downstairs.

I heard Wolf cackle.

Hendrix closed my door, scooping my panties from the floor and tossing them at me. "He does not appreciate my sense of humor."

"Or your creativity."

He leaned over the bed, kissing me. "Want me to fuck you again?"

"God, no." I rolled away and pulled my underwear on. "Give me a couple of hours."

"Then do you want to go with me to get a margarita maker from Bullseye?" By get , he meant steal… a margarita mixer…

"Do I want to know?"

"There's a Trunk-or-Treat at that Pentecostal church Corpse Boy goes to on Monday." He grabbed my shorts and shirt, throwing both onto the crumpled sheets.

" And , you're gifting him a margarita mixer to apologize for making him practically shit on our porch?" I shimmied into my shorts.

"No. We're going to raffle it off at the church. Figured why wait for next week's game to start."

Of course. Why not raffle stolen goods in the parking lot of the Lord's house? "Fuck it. We've been stealing from the offering plates for years. We're already going to hell." I tugged on my shirt. "But how exactly are you going to steal a margarita mixer?"

He swept a finger over the footboard. "Let's not get caught up on the sumicks of it."

I stared at him for a solid three seconds, taking in the serious look on his face and his busted nose. "The what?"

"The sumicks. Details whatever—shopping. Stealing. It's all sumicks."

"Semantics?" I shoved my feet into my Converse and followed him to the door. "Are you really trying to say semantics?"

"Sure. Whatever."

"Even for you, that was bad."

"Even for you, that was bad," he mocked me, a smile pulling at his lips as we went downstairs to the living room.

Wolf and Zepp passed a joint back and forth, a cloud of marijuana smoke drifting through the air.

My gaze swung from Hendrix's bruised nose to Zepp's smug grin. "Heard you two fucking all afternoon." That grin deepened when he blew a stream of smoke through his lips. "What did you say about Monroe, Hendrix? She sounds like a hyena when she gets off." Gross. Zepp was like my brother. "Lola sure as hell wasn't howling."

Wolf snorted a laugh just before Hendrix swung at Zepp, and Zepp flinched.

"That's right, jailbait," Hendrix said. "You might punch me when I'm drunk, but you know I'll chase you with a knife just like I did that time you farted in my face."

Hendrix might rant and joke, but I'd been with him last night. I knew how much Zepp's punching him had hurt his feelings.

"Look," Zepp passed the joint back to Wolf, "I'm sorry I punched you and made you look like a little bitch with that busted nose."

Oh, that was it. I stormed over to Zepp, and he spared me a brief glance.

"What are you and your short ass about to do?" He and Wolf cackled before I punched Zepp. Right in the dick. He grabbed his crotch and rolled onto his side on the couch.

"How's that for fucking short? Hurt him again, and you better sleep with one eye open."

"Oh, shit, Voldemort!" Wolf choked on his weed. "You dick-punched him."

"Ding-dong, your dick is dead. Which old dick? The jailbait dick?" Hendrix cackled on the way to the kitchen. He came back with a bag of frozen pizza rolls and chucked them at his brother, who was still wheezing. Then he glanced at Wolf. "Let me borrow your truck, man."

Wolf's dark brows pulled together. "Hell to the fuck no!"

"Why the hell not?"

He took a puff of weed, and he held the smoke in his lungs, fighting a cough until his cheeks went red. A large cloud rolled out of his mouth on a loud exhale. "Because you're a human amoeba."

That seemed to cheer up Zepp. At least he laughed.

"You know what..." Hendrix wrapped his arm around my shoulder and dragged me toward the entranceway. "Fuck you, you sack-faced troll!"

"You don't even have a license."

"Semantics, you Quasimodo-looking ball sack. Go ring your fucking church bell." No one could come up with an insult quite like him.

Why was he smiling when Wolf refused to give him his truck and called him a human amoeba? "You stole his keys, didn't you?" I said after we'd made it onto the dark porch.

"Come on, Lola Cola…" He marched down the steps. "Give me some credit."

Then he walked right up to the driver's side of Wolf's Chevy and opened the unlocked door. Why the hell would Wolf leave his truck unlocked in Dayton? Then again, who the hell would have the balls to steal his truck? Outside of Hendrix…

By the time I rounded the back and got in the passenger side, Hendrix already had the steering column pulled apart. The door slammed behind me, and I smirked. "That's low, Hendrix."

"Human amoeba, my ass…" Oh, he was butt hurt.

A small spark ignited, and the old engine rumbled to life in record time. Headlights shined over the sagging porch, and I grinned.

My panties couldn't handle this bad-boy shit. "You're not a human amoeba, babe. You're a hot hustler."

"A hot hustler who's gonna get some road head?" He yanked it into reverse and floored it, backing out of the drive with a squeal of tires.

"Road head? You must be shooting dust by now."

"Only one way to find out." He went for his fly and ran a stop sign.

"If you steal something without getting caught, I'll fuck you in the back seat of this truck." Because I was nothing if not a basic creature when it came to him, and I liked to incentivize him into not going to jail.

"Human amoebas all over Quasimodo's upholstery." One of his dark eyebrows lifted like this was some kind of dare. "Motherfucking deal." Then he floored it and clipped a mailbox.

He'd never been a great driver, but damn… "Maybe I should drive."

"Like you're any better. I taught you how to drive, which means I'm your Mr. Miyagi."

This was the old Hendrix. Squirrely, high on life, and the easiest person to be around. He was unpredictable, chaotic, and fun, and I loved him for it.

"You are not my Mr. Miyagi. And I'm a girl, which instantly makes my sense of self-preservation far superior even to the average man. Your cracked-out ass sure as hell isn't average."

He glanced away from the road, and the truck drifted over the reflectors in the middle of the road. "You think crack is a laughing matter?"

Rolling my eyes, I yanked the steering wheel to move us back into an actual lane. "Shut up, Hendrix."

"It's not a laughing matter, Lola. It's an epidemic."

I narrowed my eyes at him. Of all the words he could say and use in the right context… "You can say epidemic, but not semantics?"

"I can say semantics. I just choose not to." He ran through a fresh red light. Horns blared as he continued to drive like a reckless asshole.

"Bullshit. You thought it was a chain- length fence for fifteen years."

"Easy misunderstanding. It has chains, and it has length."

"It also has links . And what about mahogany? You thought the lyrics in "Tiny Dancer" said ‘Hold me closer, Tony Danza'…Iceberg lettuce was grown on an actual iceberg…"

"You thought girls got pregnant from boys peeing in them until you were eleven."

"It's the same hole! You didn't even know girls had two separate holes."

He swerved into the Bullseye parking lot. "Like that's obvious. Never once have I watched porn and gone, shit man, look at the pee hole on that girl."

I snorted. It was like we'd never been apart. "You have issues."

The brakes screeched when he threw the truck into a space, then untwisted the dangling wires. Wolf was going to kill him.

We got out, and Hendrix stopped halfway across the parking lot, staring straight ahead at the supercenter. "I hate this red monstrosity with a vengeance."

"You're so weird." Not like I didn't know it, but sometimes I had a moment where it really slapped me. Like his hating an entire shopping franchise.

I still didn't know why he hated Bullseye so much. It couldn't just be the greeter thing—

"They don't even have the decency to have a greeter," he said. "How am I supposed to enjoy myself if no one welcomes me in?"

There you go. "You want someone to welcome you in so you can enjoy yourself stealing their shit?"

"Exactly."

The doors slid open. The cold air hit me just before the scent of week-old fish in the deli.

Hendrix grabbed a buggy before passing the old-as-dirt security guard with one cloudy eye.

We passed an aisle of Halloween decorations. I was at the end before I realized I'd lost Hendrix, who was shoving a pumpkin carving kit down the front of his jeans. Why? Not like he could steal a damn pumpkin, and he sure as hell wasn't going to buy one.

"Hendrix," I whisper-shouted.

His head snapped up like a prairie dog, and I pointed at the ground beside me. "Get over here."

He glared before cramming a flashlight down his pants and following me to the kitchen electronics section. We stopped in front of a four-foot-tall margarita maker box. There was no way he was getting past the security guard with that.

"I told you; you can't steal that."

The challenge rose in his eyes. "If I waltz my ass out of here with this box, I'll let you get on your knees and suck me off like the dirty little god of thievery I am. Then pound one out in the back of Quasimodo's truck."

"Wow, you are no Romeo."

"Maybe not. But tell me you wouldn't stab a sword in your chest if you woke up to my dead carcass on some tomb floor."

He knew the plot of Romeo and Juliet but couldn't say semantics or monogamy…

He grabbed the two-hundred-dollar Margaritaville Mixer—who the hell paid two hundred bucks for frozen drinks? No one in Dayton, that was for sure—and wedged it into the cart. "All right. Let's go." Then he whipped the buggy around and headed to the other end of the aisle.

I'd watched that boy get himself out of some crap; he'd even told me to take tampons out of the box. "You're just going to walk right out with that?" I hurried to catch up.

"Any thief knows that big ticket items aren't bagged." He produced a crumpled Bullseye receipt from his pocket. "You just wave the receipt with confidence on your way out."

I shook my head before we split up, the same way we always had. It was stupid for two of us to get caught. Unless it was me, then he'd always popped up and taken the blame, no matter how much I argued.

I took a shortcut through the school supply section, hoping he pulled this off. If not, he'd have Bullseye added to his list of banned stores, and if all he had left was the Piggly Wiggly…

I was almost to the exit when I heard Hendrix wailing at the top of his voice. "Some dickheads claim that there's a Lola to blame… Buh duh dum…" Don't get me wrong, I was thrilled he was clearly so happy, but he was making up lyrics to "Margaritaville" and screaming them at the top of his lungs as he rode a buggy filled with stolen goods toward the exit of the freaking Bullseye. "But I know—it's cocksucker's fault."

He waved the receipt for who knew what at the guard as he flew past. People bustled in and out of the doors, most looking, if not scowling, at him. That was one way to seem confident.

The alarm went off when the cart whizzed through the automatic doors into the dark night.

People around me stopped, heading to the guard with their receipts. And Hendrix? He was already halfway to Wolf's truck. He'd actually pulled it off.

I speed walked toward the car, my adrenaline going full force.

He already had the margarita maker and stolen Halloween goods in the back seat and the hotwired engine running.

I got into the passenger seat. "Seriously?"

"You expected me to get caught?" Smiling, he put it into reverse, then drove to the exit, running the red light and nearly getting us taken out by a cement truck.

"I'm still not sure how you got away with that. And I watched it happen."

"I'm a confident motherfucker with no conscience when it comes to anything outside of you."

And like the love-sick girl I'd always been for him, I swooned, then made him pull over a couple of miles up the road and screwed him on Wolf's seat. He wasn't blowing dust…