Chapter Ten: Old Haunts

The neon over the diner's door fizzed like a tired firefly as we stepped back into the night. Heat had been hoarded inside—coffee, fryer oil, bodies pressed into vinyl—so the air outside felt cleaner than it had any right to be. The bike sat where we'd left it, chrome catching a sickle of light from the sign, the rest swallowed by the kind of dark that belonged to small towns after ten.

We walked without saying much. Gravel made a dry sound under our boots. He reached the bike first and put his palm flat to the saddle like you'd quiet a horse. Then he glanced at me, waiting.

"What about that dive in Lodi?" I asked, chin tipping toward the road. "The one we used to sneak into."

His mouth moved before his answer did, a quick flex and relax at the corners. "Still there."

"Then that's where we're going," I said, because deciding things was easier than letting decisions make you. "Drinks on you. We should celebrate me being back."

He didn't answer right away. His head angled, weighing it. That old careful streak lived right alongside the reckless one; it always had. I nudged the balance.

"Come on," I said, not pushing hard, just enough. "Opie would want us to."

That put a hairline crack in whatever resistance he was building. It always did. The smirk he gave me had a private shape to it, like we'd set a weight down between us and agreed to carry it together.

"You're probably right," he said. "But I'm driving."

I gave him a salute I knew would get a reaction. "Yes sir, Mr. Vice President, sir."

He laughed, quick and bright and low, shaking his head as if trying to get rid of it and failing. He swung a leg over, settled like the machine had been built around him, then slapped the seat behind.

I hesitated long enough to make a point to myself and no one else, then climbed on. My hands hovered a second, the old argument with pride that never won anything for anybody.

"I don't bite," he said over his shoulder, not looking, voice turned down to something close to affectionate mockery.

"I'm fine," I said. "I can do this."

"Fine," he echoed, and twisted the throttle just enough to jolt the bike forward and snub it back. The quick jerk stole a small sound out of me before I could stop it. He didn't try not to laugh.

"Still think you're fine?" he asked, amusement dragging at the words.

I rolled my eyes where he couldn't see it and laid my arms around him, not tight, not claiming, just enough to stay where I was meant to stay. He shook his head once, approving or exasperated or both, and took us out.

The road toward Lodi unwound like old tape—familiar bends, the quiet lowlands, a ditch that still wore the memory of a fence long gone. The engine did the talking for both of us. He leaned us through the first big curve smooth as if the air itself had banked, and something in my grip relaxed that wasn't muscle.

"Only reason I'm doin' this," he called back without turning, "is 'cause Opie would've whooped my ass if I didn't take you."

"I'd pay to see that," I said, and felt his shoulders shift with a laugh that didn't need sound to prove it existed.

We passed a pair of headlights going the other way, far enough not to make us ghosts for a second. A coyote crossed ahead, a neat shadow with its own business. Lodi's outskirts showed up the way a bruise blooms—faint color, then the throb of it: signs, a gas station spilling light out to the pump island, a car wash shuttered and sleeping behind chain link. The bar sat where it always had, not hiding, not apologizing. Jax took us around back where the asphalt broke into hard-packed dirt.

He killed the engine, and the night settled back over the hole we'd made in it. He got off first, adjusting his cut until it lay right, a small ritual that made the noise of his movements seem quieter, not louder. I swung down. The earth was steady. You notice when it is.

Inside, the smell hit in layers, the way walls hold stories: beer that had been spilled and never wiped properly, smoke exhaled through teeth that had bitten glass, cologne that tried too hard and sweat that didn't try at all. Someone laughed in a way that didn't ask permission. Someone else missed and swore at the pool table. The music had no interest in being agreed on by anyone.

I saw the Mayans before anything else, not because they wanted to be seen but because you learn to clock what wants to be left alone. A few leaned along the bar as if the wood had been cut to fit their elbows. A couple more were scissored around a two-top, bottles ringed by water, eyes that didn't look until they did.

"Forgot this place doubled as their territory," I said under my breath, which made it louder.

"We'll be fine," he said, not looking where I was looking. He took in the room differently, by angles and exits and loud things that could get louder.

We caught a booth near the back. The vinyl had a split someone had taped badly and then worse. He took the seat with eyes on the door, automatic, like how you reach for a light switch in a dark room you know by heart.

"You always sit that way now?" I asked, half to be light, half because I wanted to know how much had changed I hadn't earned the right to ask about.

He flicked me a look that said it wasn't personal. "Comes with the cut," he said. "Habit."

A waitress came by, hair teased into a weather pattern and eyeliner that looked permanent. He ordered two beers with the kind of easy that keeps you from noticing the edge. She nodded, left. The table held our attention for a beat like it had something to say.

"So," he said, voice just above the room. "You gonna tell me what's really goin' on, or am I just here to babysit?"

"Damn," I said, taking the challenge and not the bait. "You must really want to know."

He lifted one shoulder. "Gonna keep asking till you give me something that sounds like the truth."

The waitress dropped the bottles, wet rings already blooming under them. I took a mouthful out of mine—cold, bitter, honest—and set it down slow, the glass scuffing sugar off the tabletop.

"All right," I said. "I'll give you a name. Hunter Moretti. That's all I'm giving right now."

He didn't move for a second. You could see him go through the drawers. Recognition didn't land, but the possibility of it did. He didn't push. That was the tell.

"I'll take it," he said. "For now."

He let silence sit between us like a third thing we both knew. The jukebox coughed up a guitar line that remembered when it was sharper. A cue ball clacked a little angrily. Three stools down a man told a story with his hands and his eyes and not much else.

"You remember the first time we came here?" he asked, tipping his bottle to his mouth and pulling it away again without having done anything.

I did. The memory arrived complete and uninvited. "Fake IDs," I said. "Bad ones. We thought we could rule the world."

His laugh was low and unwilling to be anything else. "Damn right. I was Rick Anderson, Arizona." He said it like it was still in his back pocket.

"Jenny..." I fished. "Jenny Price. Nevada." The state came back with the feeling of a cheap laminate heating under a bartender's thumb.

"You spelled it wrong," he said, a small triumph. "Still got in."

"You got so drunk Opie had to drag you out by your ear," I said, allowing the truth to sit down with us, too.

"And you fell off the curb like it had moved," he said. "Skinned your palms. Wouldn't let anyone see you cry about it."

I took another drink, smiled without needing to show it. The history took up space without pressing against the walls. It made room for itself and us.

"I'm gonna use the bathroom," I said. "Don't go learning any magic tricks while I'm gone."

"No promises," he said, and slid the bottle around its own wet circle.

In the mirror, the bathroom had a different shape than it used to have. Fluorescent lit the tile like it owed the tile money. Two women shared a compact like it was strategy, not makeup. One had a run beginning at her heel; she tried to stop it with clear polish and will. The other laughed at something with no joy in it and then did it again on purpose. They drifted out in an echo of perfume and hairspray and something sweet and medicinal.

I washed my hands. The water went hot slower than it should. The mirror gave me what I asked and nothing extra. I straightened my shirt and then undid it, deciding that had been wrong. My face was my face. There are worse things to have.

Back in the bar the music had decided on country with bruises. The Mayans were still leaned, not pretending to be interested in anything but succeeding at it. I found the booth by muscle memory and habit and was surprised to find it needed neither: when I looked, he was already looking.

A woman had filled the space beside him while I was gone. She had the rain-slick eyes that come with attention and work done to get it. Her hand sat on his shoulder like a claim and a question. He didn't move away, which is not the same as staying. He caught my glance and let a small smile into his mouth that had nothing to do with her.

"All right, sweetheart," he said to the air next to him, not unkind, not untrue. "Move along."

She did it the way people do when they want to tell a story later about how they didn't care. She brushed me with a look as she passed that was supposed to be a cut and wasn't sharp enough.

I sat. Lifted my bottle and set it down again. "Didn't know you were still such a draw," I said, plain amusement.

He slid me a look. "What can I say," he said. "I'm charming."

"You're something," I said, and watched satisfaction try to be smug and fail out of decency.

It was the sound next that put the first crack in the noise of the room. Not loud, not obvious. A pitch changes when people stop laughing and start listening. I glanced toward the bar just as the girl who'd left us tilted herself at a Mayan, talking quick with her whole mouth. He didn't move much; the face he gave her was the kind a coin gives after you flip it. Then his eyes began to move. A slow pan across tables and stools and the door without seeming to. They wrote us down when they got to us. His mouth curved with no humor at all; not a smile, not a frown, just decision.

"Uh oh," I said because small words sometimes hold the right size for what's about to happen.

Jax stood without scraping the bench. He put his hand on the table, flat, not for balance. His eyes went to me and said everything he chose not to say out loud, then to the men at the bar with none of the same.

"Get up," he said, and because it was him, and because the way he said it made it the only reasonable thing to do, I did.

The Mayans weren't in a hurry. They didn't need to be. Boots scuffed, weight shifted. A shoulder took a barstool with it without looking behind to see whose it was. Hands didn't go into pockets and they didn't not, either. A bouncer near the door straightened in a way that looked like a yawn if you were generous.

I felt the bar change temperature without the air changing at all. Some conversations learned how to keep themselves to themselves. The song bled into the next one without deciding whether it liked the key.

They were coming, and not because a girl had decided to be a match, and not because we had decided to be gasoline. They were coming because nights like this ask to be what they are.

Jax shifted a half-step so I was behind him without it looking like that's what he'd done. His head turned a little so I could see the line of his jaw and the way his mouth had put away its easier shapes for the kind that keep blood inside the body. The door behind his shoulder sighed as someone went out and then thought better of coming in.

He lifted his hand just enough for me to see his fingers open and close once like a signal. Stay behind me, it said, but not with fear, and not with pride. With the practical truth of how you get home from a place like this.

The nearest Mayan's kutte bore a name that would come back to me later. He didn't speak first; the one to his right did, younger by a decade and trying not to look it. His eyebrows had their own ideas; his mouth was made for deciding what other people deserved. He stopped at the edge of what counted as our table and let his hand land on the wood with a quiet thud.

The girl who'd started the dominoes stood behind him, shoulder up, mouth bent in the shape of someone waiting to be proven right.

The room gathered itself, not to help, not to stop, just to hold. Owning a pause is a kind of power.

Jax looked at me once, quick. Just enough to count. Then he turned back and lifted his chin the way men do when they want you to know they're not going to be what you think they will and might be worse.

He didn't reach for anything except the space between his feet and mine.

And they kept walking toward us.