Low Sided A.J. Downey (ebook reader macos TXT) 📖

and he didn’t push, but he still didn’t let me walk home alone at night from Shoreman’s. Someone was always there at the end of my shift and it wasn’t always Sauley. Sometimes it was Major. Sometimes it was Nine or Squatch. Once it was Tic-Tac who bitched the entire time about having to do a prospect’s job and fuck all to hurry my ass up so he could get back to his life. Tic, as they called him, was a real asshole. I was glad when he only showed up the once.

Tonight, it was the giant of a man leaning heavily on his cane. The one they called Dump Truck. He was ruggedly handsome, though his dark eyes tended to bore through yours uncomfortably, as though he was reading your soul like a book and he didn’t always find what he’d read pleasing. I felt two inches tall under his gaze and wondered how his little bird managed to do it. Be with him, I mean. They couldn’t have seemed more opposite but at the same time, they were thick as thieves. Anytime they were near each other it was like they inhabited their own parallel universe – one adjacent to ours where we could see in, but they couldn’t see anything but the other.

It was sweet watching them together at the party two weeks ago, and I wondered if Mace and I could have been like that given enough time.

“What’ll you have?” I asked as he settled his considerable bulk onto the barstool across from me, holding the thigh on his bad leg as he sighed out in almost relief. Now when I say bulk I didn’t mean fat. Dump Truck was certainly not fat, not in the slightest. He was all muscle, with fists like cinder blocks. I would hate to be on the receiving end of one.

His smile, hidden in his dark beard, transformed his face, everything settling into gentle smile lines as he said, “Just a Coke if you got it.”

“You got it,” I said. “On the house.”

“Thank you kindly,” he said with a wink and my apprehension at his domineering presence receded.

I got him his soda and moved on to do some general bar chores before I started to close up. No one was in here tonight. It was the middle of the week and quiet for a change.

“Mace ask you to come?” I called down the bar after a moment of quiet. The last song had played on the jukebox and the next hadn’t started yet. He nodded and his dark eyes roved over me.

“He misses you, you know,” he said.

I couldn’t look at him when I said, “I miss him, too.”

“Yeah?” he asked. After the next song started, I picked up the remote to the system and turned it down so we could carry on a conversation.

“Yeah,” I said.

“Then why haven’t you reached out?” he asked, and it was a good question.

“I don’t know,” I answered, honestly. I didn’t elaborate. I didn’t want to go too deep with anyone. I was scared, maybe, that if I let this thing slide that I would let other things go and before I knew it, I would be in over my head. I was afraid that maybe Mace was the right man for me, and that would get him hurt or killed.

I felt like a walking poison with Max still out there, felt like the entirety of Seattle PD was on his side. I didn’t know what the right thing to do was anymore. Should I run further? Harder? Was I just being stubborn staying here? I didn’t know. I didn’t have the answers.

All I knew is that I felt incredibly alone now more than ever. That I didn’t feel like I could even talk to Mace about it after he had gone behind my back like he had and everything hurt.

An emotional raw and grinding ache, like my soul was broken and every time I moved, those broken pieces ground and grated together in the most unnerving way. I honestly didn’t know what or how to sooth that hurt in any way.

“Want some unsolicited advice?” Dump Truck asked from down the bar, holding up his glass and looking at it, rattling the ice a bit and watching it swirl in the dark, syrupy liquid.

“Didn’t you just solicit said advice?” I asked with a smile. He glanced at me sideways and grinned.

“I do believe I just did. Want it anyway?”

I nodded. “Shoot.”

“Communication is key to any good relationship. You two aren’t doing yourselves any favors sitting and stewing in your feelings not talking to each other.”

I exhaled the breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding and nodded.

“You’re right,” I declared. “And I think I know that—”

“So, what are you scared of?” he asked.

I nodded slowly. “That’s the million-dollar question, isn’t it?” I asked.

“Isn’t it just?” he asked then left me to my own thoughts on the subject.

Rather than face them, like the coward I was, I threw myself into closing in record time.

Dump Truck, to his credit, didn’t push or pry. I think he’d achieved whatever goal he’d had just getting me to think things through on my own. He struck me as the wise beyond his years, Zen type. Patient, endlessly so… and I wish I was that way too, but alas I was me – a chaotic, anxiety riddled mess on the inside, and that was on a good day.

The walk home was slow, and we talked. I could tell he was asking questions without really asking; that he was prying apart the gordian knot of my feelings one strand at a time, trying to get to the heart of my problem. The thing I appreciated about Dump Truck’s way was that he was patient about it, and was doing it in such a way that I could see and follow his reasoning.

He should have been a therapist, not a mechanic.

“I thought this was supposed to be my side gig,” I joked as