I end the call and slump back against the couch. It hasn’t been that long since I saw her, has it? I know we were pretty drunk on New Year’s but I spent the night with her down in Rook’s old garden apartment. What more does she want? She knows I’m busy and I’ve got shit going on. I can’t have her hanging around too much or people will think we’re together.
I can’t have people thinking we’re together.
My phone buzzes in my hand again and I look at the screen with some hope. “Arrrgh. Fucking Ford.” I press his ugly mug to answer the call. “Yeah?”
“Meet me tonight at midnight so we can take the van back over to Fonzie’s and reposition.”
“I don’t wanna go out at midnight. Can’t you just do it?”
“Spencer,” Ford says in that new parenting voice he has. “You’re worse than Kate. You’re the driver in this scheme, so drop your balls and do your job. Pick me up at my place at midnight.”
I get triple beeps again.
“God!” I slam my fist down on the coffee table. I’m just the guy everyone gets to shit on tonight. And I’m starving. I pocket Carson’s ID and get back up, grab my keys, and head outside to my Shrike Bikes truck. Might as well go into town and get something to eat. Then I can stop by Ronnie’s and sweeten her up with some love. She’s so damn excitable. She’s always been like that, from the first moment I saw her.
Not met her. Saw her. Because I saw her weeks before I finally made my move.
I had just started up fall semester at Colorado State after transferring from University of Denver to get away from Ronin senior year. This was after all that shit went down with Mardee and the Boulder ass**le ended up dead. Our team was in desperate need of a break. And I was walking by the CSU bookstore heading into Engineering for my mandatory science class, and there she was.
Throwing a fit.
“Who the hell died and made you king?” the bombshell blonde screams at a huge mother all tatted up with dragons down his arms. She pushes him in the chest, straining to make the mountain of a man move. He folds his arms and yawns.
I figure this is her boyfriend so I stop dead in my tracks to see if the guy makes a move to hit her back. She’s irate, he’s calm. No one’s paying any attention to them whatsoever. In fact, even though it’s between classes and there are probably more than a hundred people walking the path with me, these two have a nice big circle of space around them.
And being the smart motherfucker that I am, I deduce that’s because these two have a reputation.
So I cop a seat on a cement planter and pull out a smoke. She pushes him at least a half dozen more times, she yells at him. Some professor comes over and tries to intervene and the bombshell whirls around so fast the poor nerd has to step back from her fury.
The campus police show up after that and break it up, but then Bomb and Tat guy walk away—together, how ridiculous is that after all her stomping—and I notice they have the same logo on the backs of their shirts.
Sick Boyz Inc.
A tattoo shop on College in downtown Fort Collins.
I had one tattoo back then. And it was f**ked up. I told Bobby Choo down at Choo’s Tattoos in Capitol Hill in Denver I wanted a raven on my back. He gave me a hula girl.
I beat the everliving shit out of Bobby Choo. I tattooed his eyes up black and blue.
Hey, I rhymed.
So I was looking for an artist and I figured that if this bombshell worked at Sick Boyz, I needed to check that out because I could certainly enjoy her hands all over my back a helluva lot more than f**king Bobby Black and Blue Eyes. I stalked her good. I’m an accomplished stalker. Recon is part of my team job. Ford does the virtual things, but I’m the guy on the ground.
So I reconned Bombshell. She was an art major, senior year like me. She had four brothers, all of whom worked at Sick Boyz, and she had just started out there as well. I learned that from the website. They have a bio on all the artists online and a fifty-year history of the shop from the time her gramps started it in the sixties.
And the website gave me another vital piece of information. That guy she was yelling at was her brother.
Game on.
I liked the Bombshell immediately. Her hair was long, so blonde it was almost golden, and her eyes were big and blue. She did wear a lot of make-up, but I’m not one of those guys who thinks that’s a bad thing. I like f**k-me eyes and her lips could be green for all I cared back then. And the Spencer Shrike of today knows damn well those lips are magical.
And from the second I walked into Sick Boyz to check her out in person, I knew.
I wanted her. Bad.
Chapter Three
Sick Boys Inc., Three years ago
The Stray Cats blares out of hidden speakers as I push through the entrance to Sick Boyz and the sounds of downtown Fort Collins are muffled once the door swings closed behind me. Bombshell is at the register, ringing up some guy who has a small square of red-speckled white gauze covering the top of his left wrist. He’s got full sleeves, so this is acceptable in my opinion. The wrist is not something you do alone if you’re a guy.
The guy pays, tips, flirts, and leaves as I peruse the art on the wall. There’s a lot of pictures of Bombshell in here too. Starting with her in bouncy blonde pigtails looking to be about six. I laugh a little just as the music is turned off.
“Something funny?” Bombshell asks from behind the register.
I turn and watch her shuffle though the day’s receipts. It’s late, just about closing time, so I’m not here for a tattoo. I’m here for a date. Otherwise known as an appointment.