I hung up the phone and turned to face Tempest, who slid her arms around me. “What’s up?” she asked.
“That was one of the guys I trained with out in Vegas,” I said. “Did you know Coker hasn’t figured out that you’re scamming him yet? He’s looking for fighters for some international TV channel or something.”
Tempest grinned. “I told you we’re good at this,” she said. “We usually string them along for a while. Emir has something set up to auto-respond on email to the mark for a few weeks and blow him off. By the time they realize they’ve been conned, we’re somewhere else.”
“I’d say you’re a sneaky bitch, but I approve of you scamming Coker, so I won’t.”
“I am a sneaky bitch,” she said, looking up at me, her smile radiant. She slipped her hand down the waistband of my sweatpants. “Want to see how sneaky I am? Do you think we can do it before the cookies come out of the oven?”
“How long are they in the oven?”
“Twelve minutes,” she said.
“Race you,” I said.
***
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
TEMPEST
“Sorry about the cookies,” I said. But I wasn’t sorry in the least.
Silas laughed. “I’m not. It was worth a giant burnt cookie. And a house filled with smoke.”
“My Nana called me yesterday,” I blurted out. I hadn’t told Silas about her. We’d spent the last three weeks screwing and talking about things that had happened in our lives since we were teenagers. But we hadn’t talked about West Bend. Or about the shit that had happened with the sheriff. Or about how my grandmother had asked me to look into things. I didn’t want reality to intrude on us, to pierce this perfect little bubble we had going.
We were living in this little fantasy universe we’d created, and I found myself not wanting to leave. And yet, I wanted him to meet the person who was most important to me, my grandmother.
“Is she in West Bend?”
“She’s at the nursing home in town,” I said. “Excuse mean assisted living facility.”
“I’d heard she moved away,” Silas said. “After what happened with your parents and stuff…”
“She didn’t move far away,” I said. “But she’s here in town now. I want to take you to meet her.”
The smile that crossed Silas’ face couldn’t have gotten any fucking bigger if it tried. “All right.”
“It’s no big deal,” I said, holding my hand up. “I mean, it’s not some giant thing. Don’t make a giant thing about it.”
I was lying. It was the biggest of things. I couldn’t believe I’d just offered to have Silas meet my grandmother. She’d think I was marrying him.
Silas was still grinning. “Yeah,” he said. “No big deal. When?”
“Seriously,” I said. “You’re making it a thing. I can see it in your face. Don’t. You can meet her whenever. Maybe tomorrow or something.”
“No way,” he said. “How about now?”
“Now is sudden.”
“Exactly,” Silas said. “I don’t need to give you an opportunity to change your mind.”
***
Nana gasped audibly, her hand over her mouth, doing her best to be as dramatic as possible. “Oh my stars,” he said. “This is Silas, isn’t it? My, my, my, look at those eyes.”
Silas chuckled. “It’s nice to meet you, Mrs. Weston.”
“Oh, and he’s as polite as he is good-looking, isn’t he?” she asked, gesturing to the chairs in the room. “Call me Letty. Mrs. Weston makes me feel like my mother, and that makes me feel like I’m a hundred years old and I’m not quite there yet. Sit with me and visit, will you? I told you he was a young Paul Newman, didn’t I? Those eyes. Of course, I hadn’t seen you in person, just photos from your mother.”
“You were friends with my mother,” Silas said.
Letty sank into her armchair and smoothed the pant leg of her tracksuit, today’s choice a pink and purple rhinestone studded number. “I don’t know that I’d call us friends exactly,” she said. “You mother - God rest her soul - I don’t mean to speak ill of the dead, but your mother was a...complicated...person.”
Silas made a sound that sounded like a cross between a laugh and a cough. “Complicated is a good way of putting it.”
“Well, then you know, I don’t think your mother really had friends,” Letty said. “I’m not sure she was really that capable of something of that nature. But we were good acquaintances, I’d say, on account of us both being black sheep in the town. Your family and mine, we had that in common.”
“People didn’t take too kindly to my parents and me running out of town the way we did,” I said. I felt badly about the effect we’d had on so many people.