Page 3 of Other Woman Drama (Content Advisory #4)

Two

Do you have any fucks?

Go Fish.

— Text from Aella to Silver

SILVER

I was in heaven.

My thirst for knowledge was unending, and I’d never been to a junkyard-type place before.

I’d certainly never been to one with Webber.

Webber.

Holy hell, I was in an enclosed space with Webber.

Or I was.

He’d exited the vehicle rather fast, and I followed right along with him, my curiosity getting the best of me.

I wanted to know everything there was to know about the place, and then some.

I also wanted to mind meld myself into Webber’s brain and learn all of his secrets, wants, and desires, too.

Though that was purely for selfish reasons.

Webber was my endgame.

I only had to wait for him to realize I was meant for him, too.

Every hard, scary, and mean piece of him.

“Get back in the truck,” he said. “You don’t have the right shoes to be out here.”

I reached for the boots that were on the back of the truck wedged between a toolbox and the cab of the tow truck, and stepped into them one by one.

He looked at me incredulously and said, “You’ll walk right out of those. They’re size fifteens.”

Fifteens? No wonder they were so big.

“They’ll work for now. I want to watch you get this car off,” I said.

“I’ve been dying to know how it’s done. I started watching a show on Hulu that follows The Hail Raisers—also known as Hail Auto Recovery—and they don’t really focus on the getting the car on the flatbed part.

But they do have a lot of excitement when they repo cars.

Did you know that they opened a few branches in Dallas recently? The owner’s name is…”

“Dante. Dante Hail,” Webber grunted as he lifted a lever on the chain, and the chain loosened.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“It’s a boom,” he grunted again when he followed suit with the second chain. “It’s a mechanism that forces the chain taut.”

I nodded and continued to watch him.

He didn’t talk anymore until the car was on the ground. “Now you saw, get in the cab.”

Seeing the seriousness in his eyes, I reluctantly got back into the truck.

Just as I did, a man came from the shadows and walked up to Webber.

I reached over and pressed a button that had a microphone on it and was gratified to hear that it was a radio of some sort that allow me to hear what was going on at the back of the truck.

“Well isn’t that fancy,” I said giddily.

“Mr. Webb,” the man said to Webber over the loud rumble of the tow truck’s motor. “Nice to see you again.”

Webber grunted and pulled out a card and handed it to the man in black.

I couldn’t see his face, but I did see a small tattoo on the inside of one of his fingers as he took the card.

“Who’s your guest?” the man asked.

“Ol’ lady,” he lied, even though his words sent a thrill through my blood, thick like molasses, coating everything it touched. “Brought the car in for you to see if you wanted to buy it. Let me know if it’s too much work?”

They moved behind the car completely, so I could no longer see them through the side mirror, making me strain hard to hear even though the speakers were perfectly fine.

I did keep a lookout at both mirrors, however, in case I needed to turn off the speaker in a hurry.

“It’s not too bad,” the man said. “I’ll handle it.”

“Thanks,” he said.

“Why?” the man asked.

I frowned, wondering why he was asking why.

Why would you ask why you wanted to buy a car?

“Prospect that didn’t make it into the club. When he was asked to leave, he started threatening my family. Club members. Calling the cops on the parents for abuse. Pulled CPS in,” Webber continued. “There was more, but that’s the short story.”

“Unpleasant,” the man replied. “Will he be missed?”

Will he be missed?

What kind of question was that?

Or did he mean would the car be missed?

“No,” he answered. “Cops were already tired of dealing with him. CPS cases were closed already. It’s been a month. But Apollo started to follow his financials and his internet presence. Found out that he hired a guy.”

There was more said, but I saw them appear at the back of the truck and start moving toward the front of the truck, so I swiftly hit the mic switch again.

I then turned the radio on so it looked like I was reaching forward quickly on purpose.

I then got caught up in the song on the oldies station.

“MMMBop?”

“What the fuck?” I grumbled.

That wasn’t old enough to be on the oldies station!

At least not in my opinion.

It was a little before my time, but not enough that I thought it should make the jump from ’90s to oldies.

When the song ended , “I’ll Be” by Edwin McCain came on next, and I quickly changed the station again.

Not that I didn’t like that song either, but it made me want to cry.

Though, a lot of songs did that.

And they didn’t have to be sad to do it.

It was weird, but as soon as I heard the song, my tear glands started acting up. It was like the music had an effect on my brain that signaled my tear ducts to leak.

The door opened and I glanced over.

“What are you doing?” he asked as he glared at the radio.

“Pairing my phone with your Bluetooth so I can play my own music,” I lied.

His scowl darkened. “This isn’t your truck, Silver.”

I blinked at him. “So?”

He grumbled under his breath, reached for something underneath the seat, then closed the truck door again.

And to make myself not a liar, I went ahead and paired my phone up with his Bluetooth speaker.

It was surprisingly easy, and a modern commodity that I wished I had in my old Grand Am.

One day, I might very well get a new car that had Bluetooth capabilities.

A vehicle that I didn’t have to kick the dash on the passenger side to get it started up.

When my mom had taken out all the loans in my and Aella’s names, she’d ruined our credit to the point that even seven years wouldn’t clear the history from our names.

I’d had to scrape together cash from a summertime job, and save for years, before I was able to outright buy my car.

Lucky for me, my grandfather was a mechanic, and he’d taught me how to keep the ol’ girl running.

Unlucky for me, those times were few and far between because my dad hated his dad, and I only got to see Grampa when Dad had done his disappearing act for a couple of weeks—he did that a lot over the years.

Not that it bothered me.

It actually kind of worked in my favor because then my grandma and grandpa would get me. They’d also been willing to take Aella, too, and had done so a lot and treated her like their own. At least until Dad got back, found out, and threw a fit.

Dad hated Aella because Mom threw a fucking fit when Dad didn’t take both Aella and me for the weekend. She even went to court, and a judge saw fit to force Dad to take her.

I loved having Aella there. It meant that I didn’t have to suffer alone.

But over the years, I finally saw that for the selfish act that it was, and didn’t complain when she was old enough to stay home and make her own decisions not to go.

By the time we were thirteen, she’d stopped coming along with me, and I started suffering in silence.

I didn’t want her to know how awful it was when I went to my dad’s.

If she knew, then she’d come with me again, and I didn’t want her to have to suffer, too.

By then, I’d made the decision to put on a smiling face whether I was happy or not, and I’d kept that persona since I was thirteen and hated the world.

The door to the tow truck opened again and something was shoved back under the seat before Webber got back into the vehicle.

“Ready?” he asked.

I blinked. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“I guess that’s a good question,” he murmured as he buckled himself in. “Buckle your seat belt.”