Page 58 of Puck
“You got yourself out of it, clearly,” Kyrie said.
“Sure did,” I said. “Got a real job and everything, and I do okay at it, too. But having been homeless, having begged for handouts, I appreciate every damn cent I earn, because there was a time when having even two dollar bills to rub together meant not going hungry another night.”
It was so weird to talk about this stuff so openly; Inevertalked about my homeless years, and yet these women just seemed toget it. They didn’t look at me weird, or pity me, or whatever. They accepted me for who I was. I wasn’t ready to share as much as I had with Puck, but I could see myself sitting down with a bottle of wine and spilling with these women. Even more oddly . . . Iwantedthat. I didn’t tend to form close friendships. I was friendly with some of the people at work, but they were coworkers; I never truly trusted them, never spent meaningful time with them outside work. For one thing, the women seemed like they were from a different planet. Like, they were what I might have become had Mom and Dad and Danielle lived—normal, a little spoiled, a little vapid, nice, stable, boring. Yeah, maybe we shared interests in terms of enjoying shopping for nice clothes and getting manicures once or twice a month, and talking about how guys were assholes, but you could do that over lunch or in the bathroom. That wasn’t friendship stuff, that was acquaintance stuff. These women, though—Layla, Temple, Kyrie, and Lola—they seemed to understand me. They’d understand the damage I had from the various traumatic experiences of my life, and getting kidnapped off the street in the middle of the day wasn’t the worst. If I’d actually gone on to be sold into sexual slavery that might have been a different story. But so far, it wasn’t so bad. Scary, nerve-wracking, gross, and I’d probably have nightmares about this stuff at some point, but it wasn’t a life-altering traumatic experience.
Which was fucked up, when you thought about it. But there it was.
I had no idea what was going to happen when this was finally all over . . . maybe I’d end up back in New York, taking the occasional trip to Moscow or Beijing or St. Petersburg or Shanghai, playing poker with the guys on Friday nights, eating dinner alone, watching cartoons alone . . . but I didn’t want that anymore. Seeing the bond Layla and Kyrie had, the easy camaraderie of Lola and Temple . . . it made me jealous. Made me want to be part of their group.
Layla was eyeing me, watching me. “You look like you’re thinking deep thoughts over there, missy.”
I shrugged. “Just wondering what’s going to happen when this is finally all over.”
She didn’t respond immediately, still searching me. “Well, if you think you’re going to just vamoose back to Manhattan or wherever you live and pretend none of this ever happened, you better have another think.”
“Why?” I asked.
She just frowned at me like I was stupid, or missing something glaringly obvious. “I told you, bitch, you’re part of the posse, now. You don’t get to crawl back into your little hole and ignore us.” She jammed her elbow into my ribs. “You’re stuck with us now, ho.”
I eyed her carefully. “You know, if anybody else called me bitch or ho, we’d be throwing down, earrings off and everything.”
Layla laughed, unfazed. “Anybody else, I’d tell ’em to bring it, but something tells me you’re as tough as I am. I’ll give you a little primer on being my friend: if Idon’tcall you insulting names, I don’t like you. And if I’m polite to you, I flat-out hate your ass. So the worse names I call you, the more I like you. Just ask Kyrie.”
I glanced at Kyrie, who gave a shrug and a nod. “Layla has turned vulgarity and insult-driven affection into an art form. She only knows how to show affection in two ways: fucking and insults, and since we’re all straight as far as I’m aware, she’s only left with insults. She tosses out words like ‘bitch’ and ‘ho’ and ‘hooker’ like she drops F-bombs and references to sucking dick.”
I figured since everyone pretty much already knew Puck and I had gotten down to a little business on the plane, I might as well sally forth with more honesty. “But what if—”
Layla cut in over me. “Doesn’t matter. You’ve known Puck since this morning. Granted, we’ve packed a lot into today, and when you’re tossed into high-stress situations like this, bonds form pretty quickly. Shit, Harris and I would probably still be dicking around with our feelings for each other had Vitaly not kidnapped me. That situation forced us to hit the afterburner on our feelings, and we never looked back.” She gestured with her chin at Puck and me. “That may be the case for you two, and maybe not. Nobody’s got a stake in that except you guys. AllI’msaying is, I like you, and I really hope you decide to stick around regardless of what does or doesn’t happen with you and Puck.”
“Who’s Vitaly?” I asked.
She waved the question away. “Someone who is now dead. He was kind of like Cain—a rich asshole criminal with a vengeful streak a mile wide.”
“And he kidnapped you?”
She nodded. “Hauled my jiggly ass all the way down to Brazil. But that’s a story for another day.” She poked me. “Stop avoiding the subject.”
I sighed. “I’m not, I just don’t know what to say. I don’t know what’s going to happen. I don’t make friends easily, or at all, really, but . . . I like you guys. I could see us being a posse.”
“Hey, I’m down to be in the badass boss chick posse,” Lola said.
“Me too,” Temple added.
“I’m in, obviously,” Kyrie said.
“Can I be in the posse?” Puck asked.
Layla reached over and patted him on the shoulder. “Sorry, Puck, girls only.”
“Besides, you already have your big guns and big muscles club with Thresh and Duke,” Temple said.
“Guns and muscles aren’t the only big things about them,” Lola stage-whispered.
Which caused a lot of howling in the van, from me included. I caught the tail end of a look between Ivar and Puck, the kind of look guys exchange when women do the whole laughing and shrieking thing guys don’t understand, the look that sayswhy are they screaming, and how do we make them shut up?Everyone else caught the look, which only made the rest of us laugh all the harder.
“I apologize for breaking up the levity,” Ivar interrupted, “but we are arriving at the airfield. I do not have security here like I did on our arrival, so if Cain has people here, it will be down to us to deal with them.”
“What he means is look sharp, ladies,” Puck said. “It’s go time.”