Chapter Two

CHAPTER TWO

Levee

“I don’t know why you bother going,” Cato said as I packed up a baking tin with a bunch of the food Eddie had cooked for dinner.

The party was raging out in the back by the pool. The thumping bass of the music interrupted occasionally by a high-pitched laugh or squeal from one of the club girls who were already several drinks in and enjoying the fuck out of their time with Coast, York, Velle, and Kylo.

I was supposed to be out there with them, three drinks deep with some sweet honey laughing with her legs wrapped around my shoulders as I lifted her up so she could whack at another girl with an inflatable battle log, trying to knock her off one of the other guy’s shoulders.

It was just an hour , I reminded myself. Max. Usually, my uncle kicked me out before I even got a chance to try to clean up the moldy fruit I brought and he never ate, or get the dishes full of caked-on disgustingness cleaned and in the draining board.

“You know why,” I said, shrugging it off as I put the lid on the tin.

“I get it’s blood, man. But you put up with this abuse from your grandfather for like fifteen fucking years. And now you’re taking it from your uncle too?”

“He’s mostly in a chair these days,” I reminded him.

“And if he wanted your help, he could at least not bite your fucking head off when you are there for him.”

This was an old refrain.

Cato could never understand why I would go out of my way to help these men who had done nothing but make my life harder growing up. And spat bitter words and accusations at me as an adult while I scrubbed their toilets or gathered their stinking clothes to wash.

But no amount of discouragement from Cato changed anything. I still went every week. Sometimes two weeks if it was a particularly nasty visit the time before. But I never went longer than that.

For, as he said, fifteen years as my grandfather got smaller and more sickly, but no less ornery. Before he passed a few years back.

Just in time for my uncle to start needing care as well. Right in that same apartment. Where the walls were yellow with tobacco and the windows were caked in grime. Where the tub grout was hopelessly moldy, but neither men would let me hang around long enough to pull that toxic shit out and regrout it.

I’d naively thought when I started to care for my Uncle Will that he might be a nice break from my grandfather’s negativity. Growing up, he’d never really been around. He’d worked long shifts roofing, then spending his nights out drinking with friends. Most of my memories of him were just in passing where he would say something snide that, at the time, I’d taken as sarcastic.

Until, of course, I started to try to take care of him. And learned it wasn’t sarcasm; it was criticism, if not thinly veiled hatred.

Technically, the grouchy ass was more declined than he should have been for his age. But he was a solid twelve years older than my father. He’d lived a hard life. And he had chronic back and knee issues thanks to the years he spent on roofs.

That and, well, I was pretty sure anger aged your ass.

It was why I tried so fucking hard not to turn into them. Not to let my own feelings get in the way of doing what I knew was right.

Like showing up at least once a week with groceries. Then taking the time to do as many tasks around the apartment as I could before my uncle became borderline combative about my presence and I needed to get the hell out of there.

“He doesn’t deserve your care,” Cato said, shaking his head.

“No, probably not,” I agreed, grabbing some cleaning supplies, then the keys to Eddie’s car, since I couldn’t take my bike. “But I’m going to care regardless. I’ll be back in an hour or two. Tell the pretty girls to save a round for me,” I said, staring longingly out the back window before turning and making my way out of the clubhouse.

One perk to these visit days was being able to borrow one of the cars belonging to Eddie, Che, or Donovan. All of whom had been street racers back in their day. And who all had some nice-ass cars.

It wasn’t that I didn’t like my bike; I did. In my opinion, nothing was more freeing than taking a drive on a long, empty road by the water at night, and feeling the wind whip at you, smelling the salt air. That shit was practically narcotic.

But bikes were impractical for a lot of life shit. Hence why all the club brothers who eventually settled down with women all invested in some sort of other vehicle as well.

To combat the stress I felt working its way into my muscles, I rolled down the windows, and cranked up the music, drowning out any thoughts as I made the long drive back to my old stomping ground.

Back in the day, Seeley, Cato, and I all grew up in the same building in a neighborhood overrun with crime and violence. Not much had changed since then. Hell, if anything, shit seemed to have gotten worse. But it was still kind of surreal to go back, to walk into that same building I’d spent my whole life in before moving into the clubhouse.

It wasn’t exactly nostalgic as I pulled up to the street out front of the tall brick building. Too many floors. Too many people. Too much noise. Those were the first things that came to mind.

And, yeah, there was a lot of not good memories in the place. Namely… all of the memories involving my blood family.

But there were just as many good memories involving Seeley, Cato, and even Amarantha—the girl who would grow up to become Seeley’s wife—inside and in the immediate area around this building.

It had been an easy decision to leave the building when Seeley said he could get us patched in with the bikers. But it had also been shockingly hard to leave that final time.

I knew that, in walking away, I was leaving the part of myself that I’d been there. And while stepping into new shoes and walking into a brighter future had been the right choice, it was always strange to leave the old version of yourself behind.

I climbed out of the car and slipped out of my leather cut, folding it just so and slipping it under the windshield wiper, so anyone in the area who had ideas about boosting or stripping it would know that they were fucking with an arms-dealing club if they did it.

I grabbed the food and cleaning supplies, then made my way into the building.

It hit me all at once.

The same noises. Couples arguing. Kids laughing or screaming. Babies crying. TVs and music on way too loud, trying to drown all the other racket out.

The same smells. Weed and cigarette smoke in blatant disregard of the no-smoking rule. Warming spices—chili powder, paprika, and cumin—as someone made some sort of Spanish dish, and the sharper, tart scent of pasta sauce.

The same sights. Cracked linoleum floor in the hallways, worn nearly through down the center thanks to decades of people walking up and down the halls, the color completely faded from what had once been a fake parquet pattern but was now just a muddy brown. The walls were a similarly timeworn brown that had once been white.

Some of these tenants were trying to have some individuality. Their doors featured decorative wreaths and mats, making me think they were likely new to the building, because that shit would be swiped within a week or two. Hocked and used to secure a drug fix.

But, hey, you had to give them credit for trying to pretty up the place. I hoped for their sakes that they got out of this place before living here made them jaded and bitter. As it inevitably did to just about everyone given enough time.

I made my way down the hall toward my uncle’s apartment, finding that the apartment across the hall from him featured another of those optimistic people’s evidence of trying to make their apartment a home.

There was a multicolored frame around the peephole, a similarly colorful mat that declare the passerby Take it easy , and a whiteboard on the door itself with a teal dry-erase marker attached with a strand of pink and blue beads.

On the board itself someone had taken it upon themselves to take advantage of her invitation for notes from neighbors.

Nice tits.

I rolled my eyes, walking over, and using the cap’s eraser to remove the message, hoping it was done by some idiot kid who meant no harm and was just being a little shit, and not some creep the poor woman would have to try to avoid in the halls. Or, God forbid, the creepy, isolated cave that was the laundry room.

For good measure, I went ahead and drew a quick little riddle in the hopes that everyone else would leave the board alone.

Why are teddy bears never hungry?

I debated drawing a teddy bear with it, but figured the chance of someone drawing a dick or tits on it were too high, so I just left it as it was.

Turning toward my uncle’s apartment, I took a deep breath to calm my nerves that threatened to frazzle just at the proximity to it, then knocked.

“Don’t need no help, I told ya,” Uncle Will called from behind the door, breaking off into a fit of phlegmy coughs.

I guess he wasn’t heeding the advice from his doctor about starting to get a touch of emphysema.

No surprise there.

I reached for the knob, knowing I would find it unlocked. There was nothing worth stealing in this apartment, and all the local thieves seemed to intrinsically know that.

“Still gonna do it,” I said as I moved inside.

“Wasn’t talking to you. But same goes for you,” he said, not bothering to look away from the TV.

I’d bought him that TV. He’d insisted his old domed one worked just fine, despite a quarter of the screen going pixelated. Then had gone off on a tangent about how I thought I was so much better than him now that I was making money to blow.

I held my tongue so I didn’t tell him that that wasn’t the reason I was better than him. Always trying to take the higher road and all that.

“Who were you talking to then?” I asked, glad to find the fruit was gone for a change. The man seemed to solely exist on beer, soda, TV dinners, and cheese balls. I figured vegetables were probably pushing it, but who didn’t like some fruit now and again? Sure, it took a few years—and hundreds of dollars worth of spoiled fruit—but he finally tried some.

“That girl,” he said, and I heard the whooshing sound of his lighter igniting as he lit another cigarette.

“What girl?” I asked, going through the fridge and tossing the food from last week that hadn’t gotten eaten.

“The one across the hall. Stupid name,” he said.

“Yeah? What was it?” I asked, figuring this was as pleasant a conversation as we’d had in a while, and I wasn’t going to ruin it by asking him shit that pissed him off. Like if he took his meds. If he needed me to grocery shop for him.

“Jade,” he scoffed.

“I dunno. Kind of unique,” I said.

“Unique,” he snorted. “Just another word for stupid, if you ask me.”

I ignored that as I got to work on the dishes in the sink. “So she’s been checking in on you?” I asked.

“Gave me a push. Didn’t need it,” he said, lying through his teeth. Because the man could barely roll himself down the hall without his back screaming. And that wasn’t to mention the fact that his upper body strength had been deteriorating for over a year now. The skin that used to stretch tight around corded arms thanks to a lifetime of manual labor now hung loosely off of his meat like a man closer to one hundred instead of seventy.

“That was nice of her.”

“Yeah, whatever,” he said, then cursed at the rerun of last night’s football game for a minute.

“How long has she been living here?” I asked, not remembering the mat or whiteboard the last time I visited.

“Week, two, something like that. She’s quiet. That’s all I care about.”

William was the kind of man who used to hit the ceiling with a broomstick or the walls with his fists, screaming about the racket. Even if it was something as simple as a baby waking up at night for some milk.

“Glad to hear you have someone new around if you ever need anything,” I said, thinking about the last neighbor. A man who my uncle had pissed off so badly that I wasn’t sure he would so much as call the cops if he heard a scream. At least not until the smell of decomposition got too strong to ignore.

“Don’t need help,” he griped, flicking ash toward the ashtray instead of actually making it in. Not that he could have anyway with how full it was.

I rinsed the last coffee cup, then made my way over to grab the ashtray, dumping it in the trash before returning it.

It was killing me not to be able to run a vacuum, no idea how many skin cells, ashes, or dirt was crushed into the discolored carpet.

I’d actually been kind of a slob myself when I lived at home and a few of the years living at the clubhouse. Enough that the guys used to rib me about it. But when I started to care for my uncle who lived in his own filth—unlike my grandfather who tried to keep things at least somewhat tidy—you could say I saw the light and the error of my ways.

Now, I was a lot more conscious about shit like that. Not a neat freak by any stretch of the imagination. But bothered enough by mold and dust that I wanted to clean it when I saw it.

Each time I was in this apartment, though, I became aware of a new kind of filth to clean.

Suddenly, the dirt on the windows was driving me a bit nuts. Enough that I made my way back to the cleaning supplies, grabbing the glass cleaner and some paper towels, and getting to work on them.

My stomach felt a little sick at seeing the nearly black grime that coated several changes of paper towels before, suddenly, the sun was streaming in again.

“The fuck you do that for?” my uncle grumbled. “Now there’s a glare on the TV.”

Of course there was.

I drew down the grimy blinds to satisfy him before making my usual trip into the bathroom to clean up, then collect some clothes to wash.

When I made my way toward the laundry room, I glanced over at the whiteboard.

Under my riddle was the answer in a swirly, feminine script.

He’s already stuffed.

I didn’t know who this Jade woman was. But I prayed to hell that she didn’t get too close to my uncle. Because it would be a real shame for all her smart and kind to get ruined by all his cranky ingratitude.