Authors: Josie Kerr
Ashley whistled through her teeth. “I’ll bet it was. My God. So what are you going to do, Em?”
“I’m not going to do anything. I told him that when he got his shit sorted to come see me.”
“I hope, for both of your sakes, that he gets his head out of his ass soon, Em. I like you with him, and I think
you
like you with him as well.”
“I do, Ashley, and I hope he does, too.”
Mick was trying his damnedest to not throttle the man in front of him. All he wanted was a pack of cigarettes and this guy was intent on looking at and touching every single type of lottery ticket on the counter at the gas station.
In the end, the guy got a simple scratch off and, son of a bitch if he didn’t win $1000, which of course he tried to redeem at the gas station. Mick pinched the bridge of his nose and debated giving the guy a grand of his own money just to get him the fuck away from the counter.
The clerk finally convinced the guy that he couldn’t redeem the ticket and he moved on, allowing Mick to buy his precious tobacco and nicotine fix.
“Those things’ll kill you,” a familiar voice said. Mick closed his eyes and sighed.
“Hello, Ashley,” Mick said.
Janey Mac, can this day get any more frustrating?
He ripped off the cellophane from the pack, took out a cigarette, and lit it.
“You’re an asshole, you know,” Ashley said, stepping around to face him.
“Never said I wasn’t,” Mick said, taking a deep drag. He blew out the smoke, but turned his head so he wouldn’t blow it in Ashley’s face.
“Finish up your cancer stick, asshole, and meet me at the Waffle House. We’ve gotta talk.”
Mick huffed a laugh as he watched Ashley stalk through the parking lot and go into the Waffle House across from the gas station. He finished his cigarette and went to face the wrath of Em’s best friend.
Ashley was silent as Mick slid into the booth. Her eyes wandered over his face, coolly appraising him. She cocked her head at Mick, considering him. There was something about his quiet intensity. She could see why he had gotten under Em’s skin.
Mick turned his coffee mug over and Ashley poured him some coffee from the carafe.
“What the actual fuck, Mick?” was the first thing out of her mouth.
Mick had to laugh. “Did you get that from Em or did she get that from you?”
“What do you think?” Ashley groused. “That’s 100 percent Em.”
Mick chuckled but didn’t say anything else and didn’t meet Ashley’s eyes.
“How is she?” he asked quietly after a long moment.
“How do you think she is, dipwad? She’s fucking miserable.”
Mick cringed.
“Are you always this much of a chickenshit, big man? Because if you are, I’m surprised that Rory hasn’t kicked your ass.”
“Rory’s kicked my ass plenty of times, both literally and figuratively,” Mick said with a chuckle.
“Good. I think he needs to do it again.”
Mick cleared his throat. “Rory’s not speaking to me.”
“What?” gasped Ashley. “Y’all have been friends forever.”
“Apparently he agrees with your ‘Mick’s an asshole’ assessment. I haven’t talked to him since the day after we ran into Tripp.”
It was Ashley’s turn to not know what to say.
“Tell me about Tripp, Ashley. Em won’t talk about him.”
“What’s there to say? He’s a privileged jackass who took advantage of Em’s good nature for way too long. You know Em by now, Mick. She’s sweet and caring. I mean, she can bust some balls if she needs to, but that seems to only apply in her professional world. When she started dating Tripp, the professional and personal lines blurred and that’s where the problem started. She wanted him to succeed and unfortunately, it came at her expense. She let him take credit for her ideas and solved a lot of problems that he created.” Ashley shook her head. “And that’s not to mention how shittily he treated her when she needed him most. He showed a total lack of compassion during that whole thing.”
At Mick’s look of confusion, Ashley realized that Em hadn’t told Mick about The Surgery.
Fuck
.
“Look, Mick, I’m gonna lay it on the line. Em is a nurturer. She’s going to try to ‘fix’ you and she probably doesn’t even realize that she’s doing it. She’s told me about some of your...challenges.” Ashley placed a hand on Mick’s wrist. “Honey, I am so, so sorry. I can’t imagine what that was like for you. But you need to either let Em go or go all in. She deserves to have someone that’s going to be there for her as much as she’s there for him.”
“You’re absolutely right, Ashley. I know this. I just don’t know if I can ever be that man.”
Ashley gave him a hard look. “I’m calling ‘bullshit’ on that, Mick. You know you can. As a matter of fact, I will go so far as to say that you
need
to be that man. You just have to realize that you’re actually brave enough to rise to the occasion.”
Mick continued to sit silently in the booth, his hands splayed on the tabletop. Ashley sighed and shook her head.
“Okay, I’ve said my piece, now it’s up to you. I hope I don’t have to kick your ass.”
And Ashley got up and walked out.
*****
“I don’t give a good goddamn what you think! I’m the expert and you need to make sure that I can do my job easily. I am tired of your bullshit, so cut it out! So yeah, you go tattle to Rory. He’ll agree with me!” Em slammed down the phone with such force that she was sure she had broken it. “Jackass.”
“Please tell me that wasn’t Lawson,” pleaded Rory, stepping into Em’s office.
“No, that was that asshat Billy in Accounting. He was giving me a hard time about a $200 fare difference between a direct flight and one that had three connections.”
“Yeah, he’s an idiot, but you don’t need to shriek at him like that.”
Em took a deep breath. She knew she was out of line.
“Em, I’m going to not talk to as your boss right now, but as a friend.” Rory shut the door firmly behind him. “Okay, what the hell happened between you two? You’ve billed 80 hours this week alone. This can’t go on, love. You’re exhausted and miserable and even more foul-mouthed than usual. Mick is a moody bastard on a good day but he’s been unbearable lately. He won’t talk to me about this and we have way too many years of sorting through bullshit together for him to shut me out. I don’t know what’s going on, but I do know that he can’t handle another broken heart.”
“You think
I
broke
his
heart?” she said softly. Em’s lip quivered. “I don’t really know what happened, Rory. One minute we’re having dessert and then next minute he’s like some sort of seething caveman and is all up in Tripp’s face. He scared the shit out of me.”
“Wait, Tripp? Fucking Tripp Holbrook? Where’d you run into him?”
“So you
do
know Tripp.” Em stared at Rory. “Rory, what’s going on? That night, Tripp called you a criminal and accused Mick of being a criminal as well. I’m working very closely with you. Don’t you think that I deserve to know what I’m getting into?”
Rory scrubbed his hands over his face and let out a stream of expletives that shocked even Em. “It was a long time ago and has absolutely nothing to do with our lives now, okay?”
“That’s almost exactly word for word what Mick said, which means to me that it has everything to do with your lives now.”
Rory looked long and hard at Em. “I’m telling you, it has nothing to do with our lives now. It has everything to do with the men that we’ve become, yes, but nothing to do with our current lives. What has Mick told you about his life growing up? Probably not much, right, but what he has, it isn’t pretty, yeah?”
Em nodded.
“He had a shite life growing up. Absolutely shite. I had my own issues but I at least didn’t have to worry about getting beaten or having to steal to feed my little brother. My Da had a boxing studio, right, and when he figured out what was going on with Mick, he took him under his wing. Mick didn’t want to fight, but he wanted like hell to defend the people he loved, so he learned.”
“Mick’s the gentlest man I’ve ever met,” interrupted Em.
“That’s where you’re wrong, love. Mick’s possibly the most dangerous man I’ve ever encountered. You can’t imagine the amount of rage that’s bottled up inside him. He has a monster that’s eating him from the inside out. Grace was the only person who could really tame that beast, and for two years, it
was
tamed. Then she died, and that beast roared to life again. Mick keeps it on a short leash, but it’s there. It’s always there. And by attacking you, and me, and even his fiancée, that arsehole Tripp cracked Mick’s control.”
“But what’s this business about you being a criminal?” Em pushed.
“It’s something I should regret, but I really don’t. So with my Da being involved with boxers, there were always friendly wagers and whatnot going on, unofficial matches, etcetera. I was removed because I was dancing, not fighting, but I was also compiling statistics on fighters with my Da’s club. I developed a program that determined odds for fights...”
“I see where this is going – you got caught up in bookmaking, gambling, odds.”
“Exactly. When I came down here, Da connected me with a fellow he knew back in Dublin. That guy wasn’t as up and up with the bookmaking as Da, and I ended up involved in a racketeering case. I was able to cut a deal for the bigger organizers, I didn’t go to prison, and I was able to continue working with computers, so it all worked out. So that’s me. My criminal life started and finished before I finished grad school.”
“So what does all this have to do with Mick?”
“It has absolutely nothing to do with Mick. All the shite that went down with him was back in Boston and when we were still in early high school. We couldn’t even drive.” Em looked at Rory’s worried face, deep in bad memories. “Mick was always around the fight club, yeah? He got a reputation he didn’t deserve, but come on, look at him. When he was actively training with Da, he was a hell of a lot bigger, if you can imagine. He looked mean, and hell, he
was
mean if anyone tried to hassle me or Grace or anyone he loved. A few times some idiot would try to pressure me through Grace and well, that wasn’t good at all. The one time Mick put a beating to someone, the guy got handsy with Grace and Mick just went berserk, absolutely crazy. He would have killed that guy if three of us hadn’t pulled him off. He maintains to this day that he doesn’t remember anything about attacking that eejit, that all he sees when he tries to remember is red. I believe him. The look in his eyes? He was nowhere near in his right mind. Scariest fucking thing I’ve ever seen. He was 16 then, and that was two years after the bottom dropped out of his life.”
“I’m still not getting where Tripp comes into all of this.”
“Tripp’s dad was my lawyer during the whole racketeering fiasco. Tripp’s always been a weasel. During the whole time I was on trial, Tripp was trying to get me to hand over the spread software so he could make money on high school games. When I wouldn’t, he tried to get his father to stop representing me, saying that I was still running stats for criminals. Of course, he was the one was trying to get me to do that crap. His father didn’t believe him, thank God, so everything worked out. But I steer clear when I hear mention of Tripp’s name.”
“But you hired me, and you knew that I was involved with Tripp and used to work at that firm. Why?”
Rory looked sheepish then. “Um. I knew you would be good, because the Holbrook Firm only employs the best. I also asked around and learned that Tripp was shitty to you. So I figured if I could poach that jackass’s best analyst AND his girl, hell, two birds with one stone!”
“I should probably be pissed. But I’m not.” Em shook her head. “And you said that Mick was the asshole.”
“Oh, I never said I wasn’t an asshole, love.”
Em bleated with laughter at that, and Rory chuckled.
“So Tripp knows Mick, too? I got the impression that Mick didn’t know Tripp at all.”
“I don’t doubt that Mick doesn’t know Tripp from Adam, but I’m also equally certain that Tripp
does
know Mick because of his association with me. During that whole racketeering thing, Mick had his own shite to sort, and it was heavy shite on its own. I’m ashamed to say that we weren’t the best of friends to each other during that time, but when it was over and done with, we were able to get through it all, stronger.”
“‘His own shite to sort’ being getting over his wife and children dying in a car accident, right?”
“So he told you that, at least. Good.”
“Rory, I didn’t realize she was your sister. I’m so, so sorry.”
Rory was quiet for a moment. “She was my twin, actually; not just my sister. And thank you, Em. It’s been over 20 years and sometimes I think ‘Oh, I’ve got to tell Grace’ something or other, and I’ll completely forget that she’s not around. It’s very...strange.
“So it’s too late to say long story short, because that was a hell of a long story, but don’t write Mick off. He completely and certainly knows what he wants, and that’s YOU, Em, but he’s terrified, and at this point, instead of you being taken away by circumstance or stupidity, he’d just rather not have you at all.”
“I told him exactly that the last time we spoke, that he knew what he wanted but he was too scared to admit it.”
“And that’s why he needs you. You call him a chickenshit when he’s acting like one. You’re breaking down those brick walls, and let’s face it, between that crap mother of his and Grace’s death, he’s got plenty, both emotional and physical. Mick’s told you about Grace, so you’ve gotten through some of the emotional barriers, but you’ve got to break through those physical barriers, too, because, come on, an adult man needs to get off with someone other than his left hand.”