Everyone can see, and it makes me smile. They remind me of me and Saylor.
Bloodhound is at the end of the bar with Vanna, who found a sitter for Waylon and showed up in another get up that made Bloodhound’s eyes bug out of his head.
He's been holding her hand for an hour and I don't think he's aware he's doing it.
Daemon challenged Beats to a pool tournament that's devolved into an argument about whether a ball that bounced off the table and rolled under a booth still counts as a shot.
Bracken is officiating. He's making the rules up as he goes and both players are too drunk to notice.
Maddox is at the grill in the graduation cap.
He's flipped it backwards and is arguing with Ellie about the proper internal temperature of a burger.
Ellie keeps poking his burgers with a meat thermometer and announcing the numbers to the parking lot like a sports commentator.
"One-forty-two! That's a hockey puck, Maddox, not a hamburger!"
Maddox swats the thermometer away. "My burgers are perfect."
"Your burgers could be the sole of a shoe."
The argument has been going for forty minutes and neither of them is going to win.
Saylor’s mom is sitting down with Leah and Coin, eating potato salad and laughing at something Coin said.
She's wearing a sundress I've never seen before.
Something new, bought for this, which means she went shopping for an occasion instead of dressing for survival.
The difference between those two things is something only Saylor would notice, but I notice it too because I've learned to watch the women in this world the way they watch each other.
She's been to the compound once a week since March, for dinner.
She knows everyone's name. She brings a casserole every visit and Ellie pretends to critique it.
Her mom pretends to be offended and the whole routine has become a language between two women who understand each other without needing to explain why.
Last week, Saylor's mom and Ellie sat on the compound porch for two hours drinking sweet tea and talking about things I couldn't hear.
When they came inside, both of their eyes were red and neither of them mentioned it.
Some conversations between women who survived dangerous men don't need an audience.
They need a porch and enough privacy to say the things that have been sitting in their chests for years.
The door of Backroads opens and a man I haven't seen in person for nearly four years ducks through the frame.
Vulture fills a doorway differently than other men. Not with size—he's my height, maybe an inch shorter—but with presence.
The same way Ruger fills a room. The authority of a man who runs a table and doesn't apologize for the weight of it.
His cut says Chicago across the bottom rocker.
His beard is longer than I remember.
His eyes find me across the parking lot and the grin that splits his face is the same one he wore when he dropped me off at this compound four years ago and told me not to embarrass the family name.
"There he is." Vulture crosses the lot in long strides and pulls me into a hug that smells like leather and the cleaner they use at the Chicago shop. "College graduate. Full patch. Who the hell are you and what did you do with my little cousin?"