5. The Hole

Riggs

Before opening time, Riggs pushed through the door of The Black Hole, one of the many bars in Misted Pines, or in The Hole's case, on the outskirts of it, but not one of the better ones.

He did this in search of his bud, Bubbles.

The place was dark, only the lights over the bar illuminated, but it was clear the staff at closing the night before hadn't bothered with clean up before they took off. There were empties everywhere, and as usual, the soles of his boots stuck to the floor with every step he took.

He headed to the door at the back, lifted a hand and rapped his knuckles on it, shouting, "Yo, Bubbles, it's Doc. You in there?"

Riggs had known Bubbles since high school, so he was prepared for the door to crash open with more enthusiasm than was needed.

And Bubbles stood there, balding, stout, not short but also not tall, looking like Riggs felt before he'd caffeinated and carbed up.

However rough Bubbles felt, very little broke Bubbles's good ole boy.

Bubbles wasn't called Bubbles for nothing.

"Yo, buddy!" he cried like Riggs was a football field away. "You're back in town."

"Yeah. Got back from a job yesterday."

Bubbles pulled a bogus frown. "Didn't see you here last night."

"Had a thing at my place."

The frown that bought wasn't bogus. "Didn't get the text."

Riggs shook his head. "Brother, Lucille told me if I invited you over one more time and you skipped looking after The Hole to get drunk at my pad, she'd kick your ass out."

"Well, Lucille is history, so no worries about that anymore," Bubbles returned, the expression on his face defiant, but hearing the words, Riggs saw the sadness it was hiding.

This was news, and not good news. They'd been together awhile, and Lucille was a kind woman. She cared for Bubbles, and Bubbles felt the same. She also had the patience of a saint, and the same capacity to forgive, something important for the woman in Bubbles's life. Riggs had thought this time for Bubbles, it was going to stick.

Though, truth told, it wasn't surprising news.

Even so, Riggs had been out of town for less than two weeks.

But when Bubbles was ready to make a trainwreck of his life, he didn't fuck around.

Riggs heaved a sigh.

"Where are you crashing?" he asked.

Bubbles suddenly couldn't meet his eyes.

That meant he was crashing on his mother's couch.

A forty-year-old man who was crashing on his mother's couch…again. All because he found it impossible to keep his shit tight.

At least he hadn't asked to crash at Riggs's, which would put Riggs in the position of telling him fuck no. Riggs had learned that lesson the hard way years ago when a "couple of nights" turned into three months, and by the time the man left, Riggs's cupboards were bare, there wasn't a drop of booze left in the place, he'd had to buy a new couch, and he'd nearly lost a good friend.

As messy as his bud was, he loved him, because Bubbles was impossible not to love.

That said, right now, Riggs didn't have the time or patience for this shit.

"Listen, need a bottle. A good one. I pissed off my neighbor, and I need to make amends."

Bubbles eyes got huge. "So, rumor is true? Someone's living at Weaver Cabin?"

"Yeah," Riggs confirmed.

"Holy shit!" Bubbles yelled.

"It's a rental house on a lake, Bubs, and it's good Dave and Brenda finally have someone in it."

It was like he didn't speak when Bubbles said, "I gotta start a pool about how long they're gonna last."

Even if the rumors were true (which they were not), Riggs almost wanted to see someone try to fuck with Nadia Antonov, even the type of "someone" they claimed messed with the people who stayed in that cabin.

The woman could deep-freeze Putin himself.

Hell, she could deep-freeze Stalin, and since that was her bloodline, Riggs had no questions about how her great-granddad bested an infamous despot.

But now knowing the shit she was wading through, he hoped like fuck she was left alone.

"Bubs, the bottle," Riggs reminded him.

He watched his friend's body jolt, then he nodded too fast and too much before he pushed through Riggs and led him to his storeroom.

Anyone else, Riggs would wonder if he was on something.

Bubbles had always had more energy than he could expend, case in point, how he was walking to the storeroom right now, freaking fast and every other step wasn't a step, but a half a skip.

Riggs followed a lot slower.

They hit the storeroom and Bubbles flipped the light switch, saying, "Couple of year ago, went with Candy…" He stopped and stared into space, "Or was it Barbie?" He shook his head and ignored the shelves haphazardly stacked with cases of beer, bottles of booze and rolls of inexpensive toilet paper and headed to a locked cabinet that held the back stock for his top shelf. "Doesn't matter, was in Sonoma, and, man, I musta entered a fugue state when I tasted it. But this shit was so good, I couldn't help myself."

He'd pulled out his keys and was opening the cabinet.

He was also still talking.

"Should have my head examined. A good shot of whisky, they're all over it. The occasional snifter of Hennessey, sure. But that stuff doesn't go bad. Someone orders a glass of this for twenty-five bucks in my joint, they won't be buyin' another one, and that bottle'll stay open since no one who comes here has the cabbage to drop on a twenty-five-dollar glass of wine unless they're celebrating a wedding, or a divorce. So I'd have to pour the rest of it down the drain."

"Or you could drink it before it went bad," Riggs suggested.

Bubbles looked at him, his face a picture of utter confusion, before it brightened, and he replied, "Fuck, shoulda thought of that."

Christ, how this guy kept The Hole running, Riggs had no clue. He was funny, and affable, but he was a funny, affable and loveable doofus.

Bubbles reached into the locker and grabbed an expensive-looking bottle of wine, one of about twelve identical ones piled in there.

Riggs narrowed his eyes on the bottles as Bubbles jerked the one he'd nabbed his way.

Riggs didn't take the bottle.

He asked, "When were you in Sonoma?"

"A couple years ago," Bubbles murmured.

And damn, that was one of his many tells, considering the man rarely murmured.

"Anyway," Bubbles went on. "Wine doesn't go bad that quick, unless it's opened. It's good. Real good." He shook the bottle at Riggs. "Here. Take it. Great apology."

Slowly, Riggs took it, saying, "You're not handing me a bottle of hot wine, are you?"

"'Course not." He was again murmuring.

Shit.

"Bubs—"

"Seriously, Doc. Your neighbor will be impressed."

"Not if I'm giving her a bottle of stolen wine. We got a deal. You do you, but I want no part of it when it's like that." He pushed the bottle Bubbles's way. "No shade. You know that. But I can go to a liquor store."

Bubbles held up both hands. "Doc. No. This is really good wine. And it isn't like that."

He wasn't murmuring anymore, but he also wasn't looking Riggs in the eye, which was often another tell.

Though, Bubbles sometimes simply didn't look you in the eye.

But when Bubbles caught his gaze and gave him a goofy smile, Riggs relaxed and stopped extending the bottle.

Bubbles reached in, grabbed another one and held it to Riggs. "You take both of those, then we're square."

"We're already square."

Bubbles shook his head. "You did me a solid. Now I'm doing the same."

He wasn't talking about overstaying his welcome and eating and drinking Riggs out of house and home.

He was talking about something else.

"I told you when I did it, I wasn't keeping a marker." Riggs set the bottle on the shelf and pulled out his wallet.

"Not gonna take your money, Doc," Bubbles declared.

"Twenty-five dollars a glass?" Riggs asked.

"Bud, seriously." Bubbles was getting agitated.

Riggs had no problem looking his friend in the eye, which was what he did.

"Lucille kick you out because you didn't pay your half of the rent, or because you did that and borrowed money off her to make payroll again?"

Bubbles's lower lip stuck out a beat before he stated, "Hassle don't come with paying my marker."

"I don't hold a marker on you," Riggs muttered, opening his wallet and counting four hundred-dollar bills, and two fifties.

He offered them to Bubbles.

Bubbles didn't take them.

"You know I'm not gonna walk out of here with that wine without paying for it," Riggs told him. "Take the money."

Riggs knew Bubbles would take it before he took it, just as he knew he wouldn't enter that income as a line item in his books against the expense of the wine, and not only because that wine might not have been from a visit to Sonoma, but there was a possibility it was bought out of the trunk of a car after some asshole stole it from another bar or someplace else.

Instead, the man would blow it at a poker game or a steak dinner at The Lodge.

Riggs just had to hope Bubbles wouldn't do him dirty that way.

A thought that prompted him to demand, "And don't start a pool about Weaver Cabin."

Bubbles was shoving the money in his back pocket when he asked, "Why?"

He wasn't about to mention Nadia Antonov. Not to Bubbles. The Vodka Princess's mere existence would set Bubbles to running his mouth. But if his friend caught sight of her or saw a picture of her, and he knew a piece that hot was living that close to Riggs, that shit would go viral.

"I didn't move up there to have aggravation, Bubs. If that cabin gets attention, it's gonna affect me one way or another. When I'm home, I wanna do what I wanna do. Not have folks sniffing around my lake or people harassing me about shit when I'm in town. It's all bullshit, you know it, everyone knows it."

"I don't know it."

Right, he forgot for a second.

His friend was a good guy, he'd give you the shirt off his back, and he was a good time.

But he was a doofus.

"Even if you don't, put a lid on it. You think you owe me a marker, you do that, consider us square."

That got to him.

Bubbles smiled so big, you could see the missing tooth deep in the left side of his mouth that he tried hard to hide.

Jesus, this guy.

Riggs grabbed the bottle from the shelf, the other that Bubbles still held, said, "Thanks, man. Later."

And then he was out of there.

He had someone else to visit that day, and he hoped that went a lot better than his breakfast with Harry and this deal with Bubbles.

He also had to get home and clean up his yard.

After that, he had to figure out how to smooth things over with Nadia Antonov.

He was only looking forward to one of those things.

So that was what he was going to do next.