I jog back up to grab the phone, glance down to see there’s been no response, and shove it in my pocket.
“Where’d you go today, Gabe? Q told me I was on Roux duty and not to bother you. He gave me a ride home too, but he was in a shitty mood.”
I remember the look Q gave me when he saw me bring Roux back to the club with Scarlett beside me. It was one of thoseI sure as fuck hope you know what you’re doing, but I’m pretty fucking sure you don’texpressions that also promised we’d be talking about it later.
I was in no hurry to have the conversation, but now I’m walking right into it. Maybe it’s for the best. Maybe Q can talk some sense into me, because I sure as fuck don’t know what I’m doing breaking every one of my goddamned rules.
Bump and I walk the stretch of grass, bordered on one side by a long green fence that blocks the scrapyard from the road, and head up the stairs of the big white house on the other side.
Q’s granddad started the scrapyard when he first came up from Puerto Rico. He passed away a few years back, six months after his wife, but Big Mike has kept running it in his father’s tradition—sometimes shady, but mostly straight, because no one wants to go to prison.
Still, Q grew up chopping cars when cash was tight and the mortgage needed to get paid to keep the bank from taking the yard. When Bump and I ran from Biloxi, we had nowhere else to go. I knew about the scrapyard from Jorie. She’d met a girl at a music camp she got a scholarship to one summer. Q’s cousin, Anita. She’d told Jorie to come visit anytime she made it up to Jersey, and they traded cards at least once a year, keeping in touch until Jorie died.
I took a chance. I didn’t know what else to do. I wasn’t even sure Bump was going to make it. The drunk of a doctor I paid to patch him up in Mississippi told me I’d be better off letting him die, because his quality of life would never be the same.
But I couldn’t let that happen.
I showed up on the Quinterros’ doorstep, homeless, bloodstained, and on the run with Bump. They would have been justified in calling the cops, but instead, they took one look at us and invited us in. That’s how we ended up living above the service station Big Mike used to run for his dad, and I’ve never had a reason to leave. The Quinterros are the closest thing Bump and I have ever had to a family. They know everything, because I wasn’t going to keep secrets from the people who gave us a home. A second chance.
I knock on the door, although it’s unnecessary, and Joanie yells, “Come on in! Soup’s on!” Just like always.
“Is that Bump?” Big Mike hollers from his ancient La-Z-Boy.
My sidekick answers, “And Gabe and Roux.”
“No shit. Come on in, boys! Game’s getting ready to start, and you do not want to miss this fucking seven-layer dip. Actually, forget I said anything. I don’t want to share.”
Bump and Roux bound inside, and I close the door carefully behind me. When I look up, Q looms like an all-knowing gargoyle.
“Hope you knew what the fuck you were doing today, man. Because this is a dangerous road to walk.” Even though he keeps his voice down, Joanie overhears him.
“You better not be doing anything dangerous, Gabriel. I’m not sure my heart can handle it.”
“What’s Gabriel doing?” Q’s second oldest sister asks.
“Nothing,” I tell her with a chin lift. “Good to see you, Carrie.”
“It’s not nothing if Q’s worked up about it. You fighting again?” Carrie pops a carrot stick in her mouth and chews while she waits for me to answer.
Both Q and I are silent for a long moment, and I wonder if he’s going to tell his whole family what’s going on.
“He’s not fighting. Don’t worry about it, Carrie.”
Joanie comes out of the kitchen holding a massive pan of dip. “Thank God. Now, come get some of this before Mike eats it all. He doesn’t need two pounds of seven-layer dip, despite what he thinks.”
I take a step to follow her and Carrie down the hallway to the living room, but Q blocks me.
“Seriously, man, what the fuck are you doing? You know this can’t go anywhere. She’s so fucking far out of your league, it isn’t even worth thinking about.”
Q’s not telling me anything I don’t already know, but I don’t want to hear it.
“She’s coming back to the club Saturday. If everything goes right, we’ll be making our payments to the investors with no problems.”
“And then you’re done with her.” It’s not a question.
“I haven’t decided yet.”
He shakes his head, and those black eyes of his drill into me. “We have a plan, and the plan doesn’t include her. Unless you’ve decided that everything you’ve worked for in the last fifteen years doesn’t matter anymore.”