“Well, son,” Hound picked up his beer and tipped it toward Jag, “you’re about to find out.”
Jag grabbed his beer and tapped necks with Hound.
And he was grinning again.
Because Hound was right.
He was.
Chapter Three
Luminous
Jagger
The next day, Jagger went out for a morning run, made sure to take his time stretching, then he had shit to do at the garage at Ride, the business Chaos ran that was half a big auto-supply store and half a garage that built custom cars and bikes.
Jagger was a certified mechanic, both cars and bikes, and he wasn’t skilled with design, but his Chaos brother Joker was (like, award-winning, get-magazine-articles-written-about-you and have-TV-producers-come-to-you-to-do-reality-shows skilled).
And they worked well together.
On the build they were doing, Joke needed Jagger that day, and with what had to get done, Jag couldn’t cut out until mid-afternoon.
And he couldn’t go straight to Archie after six hours at the garage without going home and having a shower first.
So he couldn’t get to S.I.L. on the Hill until late afternoon.
He was pissed at the delay.
Now that he knew where she was, and his decision had been made, he wanted to see Archie, talk to her, get some shit sorted, learn other shit and make it clear he was done dicking around, and whatever it was that connected them, they were going to explore.
But when he walked through the door to her shop, which was right on Colfax in the Capital Hill area, he learned his timing couldn’t have been better.
There was stuff all over the floor, the area close to the door and in front of the cash register, was a disaster, and Archie was standing between two kids who had their backs to Jagger, and Mal, who was on her other side, was facing Jag.
Her arms were up like the referee holding two opponents from each other in a ring.
Jag had a feeling he was about to meet the Harris brothers.
And with one look at the expression on Mal’s face—and the kid was openly freaked and upset—he knew how he was gonna play it.
He didn’t delay doing that.
“What the fuck is going on here!” he barked.
Archie’s attention shot to him, Mal jumped a foot, and the two little shits he knew were there for no reason but to cause trouble, whirled around on him.
He took them in.
Bullies.
Twins.
Twin fucking bullies.
Jesus.
They were Mal’s age. One needed to lay off full-sugar Coke and the other was skinny and weaselly.
But even if their bodies couldn’t be more different, they were the same height, had the same face, and the same beady eyes.
That said, only one pair of those eyes was mean.
However, the belligerence shifted when they got a load of a pissed-off biker standing between them and the door.
“You two do this?” he asked them, stabbing a finger at the mess.
The skinny one’s stance adjusted like he was going to make a break for it, so Jagger turned, walked the three strides that took him back to the door and flipped the lock.
He retraced his steps and announced, “Not gonna ask again.” He threw out a hand in a repeat of indicating the mess all over the floor. “You do this?”
No one said anything.
He looked to Archie. “Babe, these two fucks do this to your store?”
“Jagger, I’ve got this,” Archie replied.
But the Harris twins didn’t miss the “babe” part of what he said.
They were looking at each other with identical “oh fuck” expressions.
Jag crossed his arms on his chest, glanced between them and stated, “Yeah, motherfuckers, I’m in this mix, I do not like what I see, so what I see better change right fuckin’ now. Clean this shit up.”
The boys looked at each other again, then to Jag, and the skinny one, who Jag was tagging as the leader of their two-man crew, said, “You can’t lock us in here.”
“Choice one,” Jag retorted, ignoring what the kid said. “You clean this shit up. Choice two, you leave and me and my brothers will find something you care about and we’ll mess that up so you’ll get how it feels. You got five seconds to make that choice. One…”
The skinny one spoke up again.
“No Chaos bro is gonna mess with a twelve-year-old.”
“Two…”
“Let us out man.”
“Three…”
“Fuck you! Let us out!”
“Four…”
The heavy one nudged the skinny one and said low, “Aaron.”
“Shut up,” Aaron hissed back.
“Five.” Jag shook his head. “Wrong choice, boys,” he finished, turned on his boot, went back to the door and unlocked it.
But since he stood in front of it with his arms crossed, when both boys raced to him, they had to stop and skim by him to get out.
“I hear any word my boy Mal here has trouble with you two fucks, the shit you just bought escalates, do you get me?” he said as they slid by.
The heavy one looked away.
Aaron held his gaze before he took off.
Yeah, Aaron was trouble.
Shit.
Jag turned his head to watch them race down the sidewalk.
When he turned it back, Archie was in his space.
“Let me guess, the Harris brothers?” he asked.
Making a noise he liked a lot, because it was frustrated, but it was cute, she dug into the crook of his elbow to grab his hand, forced him to uncross his arms and then started dragging him.
“Dude, that was bad…ass,” Mal said as Archie pulled him abreast of Mal.
It was then, Jag saw others accumulating, all of them around the same age as Mal, boys and girls, different races, maybe a half dozen of them, all staring at him like an explosion happened in S.I.L. on the Hill and he’d formed like a god from the force of the blast.
“Help her out, bud, start pickin’ this shit up, yeah?” Jagger asked.
“Yeah!” Mal cried, like that was his most fervent wish, then he jumped to it.
“You know him?” one of the other boys asked Mal.
“Sure,” Mal replied casually.
Archie had no comment on any of this, mostly because she was fully involved in continuing to drag him.
Jagger let himself be dragged and he took the place in while he did.
It was not what he expected.
He expected a record store vibe with some kitschy shit thrown in, bargain basement-type décor that was cool because of some album cover posters tacked haphazardly to the walls with some vintage shit intermingled just to shake things up.
But mostly cool because Archie was cool, and it was hers.
It wasn’t that.
Oh, it was cool.
But it was a lot more.
First, it was big. Way bigger than he expected.
Second, the floors were covered in large, overlapping rugs and the overall feel was of a massive living room that was filled with a ton of dope stuff.
Helping this feel was the fact that there was some lounge lizard jazz playing not discreetly over the sound system, and if someone walked up to him and handed him a chilled martini he wouldn’t have been surprised.
There was a vinyl section with a sign over it that just had musical notes on it that hung cockeyed. Against the wall of that section was tailored shelving filled with old CDs.