“Tomorrow,” Buck says. “I don’t want you staying there tonight, and it’s getting late.”
I sigh. My gaze falls on Clyde, next to Buck, or at least what I can see of him. Standing straight, his face is above the car, but not his tattoo. “Thanks,” I say absently, studying the initials USN beneath his short-sleeve shirt.
“Not a bother,” Buck says. “But I do need a drink. How ’bout you, Clyde? Fancy joinin’ us at the apartment?”
“All right,” I hear, in that same captivating voice I remember from the alleyway. “But she’s hot.” He takes a hand out of his pocket and points toward the other car. “Got to take her back first.”
I tense, Blanche shakes her head, and Buck laughs.
He laughs, at his brother stealing a car. As if he does it every day. Maybe he does. It’s a feeling I can’t shake, even after we get to Buck’s apartment. The stifling heat doesn’t help matters much. I take one sip after another of my beer, trying to cool my body and my nerves. ’Cause, sure, Clyde stole that car to come help me, but it’s not like I asked it of him. He did it on his own accord, and fast. Within minutes of getting that call from Buck, there he was, so easily and readily breaking the law.
The Barrow boys are nothin’ but trouble. Though I reckon I’m the reason why they put themselves in a precarious situation this time. I’m the reason Clyde stole a car.
Perhaps I’m nothin’ but trouble, too.
I take a big gulp of my drink.
A knock sounds on the door and my stomach flutters. I swallow my beer. Blanche skips toward the door, grins at me over her shoulder. She yanks it open, and there stands a boy ’bout six inches taller than Clyde Barrow.
Roy’s back.
24
There’s an old newspaper on the coffee table. Before I know it, I have it rolled into a weapon. I race ’cross the room and whack Roy repeatedly, between sobs, each smack fueled by warring emotions.
He stands there, lets me.
Eventually, I stop. I drop my paper, rest my head against his chest, and will air back into my lungs. “Are you hurt?”
He wraps his arms ’round me. “From your spaghetti arms? I’ll survive.”
I push him away, look him over. Besides the gash on his lip, he looks fine. “I mean from the past ten days you’ve been gone, you ass.”
“I’m fine, Bonn.”
“Where on earth have you been?”
He sighs. “Can I come in? This hallway is suffocating.”
“I’m going to suffocate you,” Blanche says, back on the couch, “if you don’t start answering her questions. You should be on your knees, groveling, right now.”
“Pipe down,” he says to her.
“No,” I say to him. “You won’t talk to her that way. Who do you think helped me look for you every day? Who do you think kept my spirits up while you were God knows where?”
Roy runs his hand through his hair. “Okay, okay, I’m sorry. I’ve just been on edge the past few days.”
I stretch out my arm, blocking his way into the apartment. “You’ve been on edge? You run away, leave me holding the bag. You’re lucky I wasn’t home when Jenkins came by. He broke in, Roy. Made a mess of our house.”
Roy’s nostrils flare. “When?”
“I don’t know. Today.”
“That bastard.” His jaw tenses. “I just paid him. If I ever see his face again—”
“You ain’t gambling ever again, so there won’t be a need to see his face ever again.”
Roy licks his lips, looks like he’s ’bout to say something, but then thinks wiser of it.
“Say”—Buck comes up beside me—“things are heated out here.” He laughs at his joke. No one else does. “Come in, sit down. We’ll all have a drink and get to the bottom of this.”
“Bonn?” Roy says.
I roll my eyes and drop my arm from the doorframe. “Fine.”
Buck is the true saint and makes small talk while he gets everyone something cold. Roy sits on a chair opposite the couch. He finishes his first drink in a matter of gulps. Buck, Blanche, and I line up on the sofa, ready to interrogate him. I start by pinning Roy with a glare, waiting for him to spill where the hell he’s been. Now that I know he’s okay, anger is all that’s left.
Roy’s knee bounces as he takes one sip after another of his new drink. “At first, I didn’t know where to go,” he begins. “I just knew I had to get out of Cement City. Town’s too small. Wandered a bit in Dallas. Walked all night, actually, racking my brain on where I was going to get that kind of money.” He takes another gulp of his drink.
“And?” I prod.
“I ended up with nothin’ but cobwebs up here”—he taps his head—“sitting on the steps by the promenade.”
“At school?”
He nods.
“We checked there,” I say to myself.
“I wasn’t outside long. I had a stroke of luck and Hazel came by—”
“Hazel Griffin?” I ask, as if there’s another Hazel he’d be referring to. Blanche reaches out, pins my hand to my knee. It may stop me from slapping him ’cross the face, but it doesn’t stop my tongue. “You were with Hazel—the manipulating, conniving Hazel Griffin who wants nothin’ better than to steal you from me?”
He won’t meet my eyes, but he says, “Relax, Bonnelyn.”
I grit my teeth at his response and at the idea of him alone with Hazel, her cooing and dabbing his bloody lip. Blanche pushes down harder on my hand, her fingers just as tense.
“Hazel’s working on a summer project for the newspaper, so she has a key to the school. She let me in and I hid out there.”
“And that’s it? She simply let you in?”
“I mean, no, she came by from time to time, brought me food, a change of clothes. She has an older bro—”
“I know.” I don’t want to hear ’bout her brother.
Thus far, Buck’s kept his mouth shut, one leg crossed over the other. Now he leans forward, narrows his eyes at Roy. “How’d you get the money, lad?”
The money. The name Hazel Griffin was a whack to the face, and I didn’t even think ’bout that part. “If you borrowed money from Hazel Griffin, I will never forgive you.”
Roy freezes, his near-empty drink halfway to his scabbed lip. “I had a man who wanted nothin’ more than to rearrange my face, and you’re worried ’bout your ego?”
His words came out a touch slurred. Blanche’s voice comes out dangerously low and slow. “Watch yourself, Roy.”
Buck wraps his arm ’round my best friend. “I think you best explain, lad. Or I won’t stop Blanche and Bonn when they rearrange your face. In fact, I’ll hold you down myself.”
Roy swallows. “All right, all right. Hazel’s brother knows ’bout stocks from his classes at the university. He had a few ideas ’bout how to get rich quick thataway. I took a li’l from our bank account.”
I narrow my eyes but don’t say anything, once again warring with myself. I’m angry as a busted beehive, but I’m also relieved that money was there for him to use. This is Roy. Roy, my husband. I made a vow to him, and now that I’m in this mess, I got to keep this marriage together and honor that.
At my lack of verbal response, Roy shrugs. “It worked out. I didn’t need much. I borrowed most of it from a, um, broker, on margin.”
“That um—what’d that mean, Roy?” I ask.