Wind Therapy - A.J. Downey Page 0,2
body, either. Today it was a pair of form-fitting jeans. A crop top Mexican peasant blouse showed off her flat stomach, the elastic hugging her ribs, the ruffle of material off her slender shoulders making her collarbones kissable and visible begging for my lips. The white of the blouse made her dusky-tanned skin glow, and the rich red embroidery along the ruffle from shoulder to shoulder added just that little something.
The girl always watched us keenly, something moving just behind her beautiful brown eyes framed in thick, dark lashes. The irises kissed with a honey-golden hue in their depths when the sunlight hit them just right. I loved the glimpse of gold and was always vaguely disappointed when she put up her hand to shade them and that special golden light was snuffed out by shadow.
She was beautiful and there were more than a few times I ended up kicking myself because she was also so fresh faced and young – as in probably close to if not just barely eighteen.
Of course, I was still just barely away from the ripe old age of thirty, so it wasn’t like I was in ‘dirty old pervert’ territory by lusting after a barely legal teen. Although, if she were legal and as interested as her divine stare told me she was, all bets were off. Still, it didn’t do to mix business with pleasure so as I always did on arrival, I put a stranglehold on my fantasies by picturing the fat old bitch that was her grandmother buck-ass naked.
That was enough, usually, to curb my dick’s enthusiasm.
“Marisol,” Abuela said permissively and her granddaughter smiled at me and came down with a glazed earthenware pitcher and a stack of red Solo cups in her other hand.
Lemonade. Marisol had started the tradition our second time out, and it’d become almost a ritual by now. Every time we showed up, we were served lemonade, a short exchange was made, and we took our cash and rode off into the proverbial sunset.
“Many thanks, Abuela,” I said, taking a drink of the cool, sweet but tart and totally refreshing beverage. It seriously hit the spot in the summertime.
Abuela tapped her cane twice on the plywood stoop and one of the men down here on ground level scurried forward with an envelope full of cash, handing it over to me. I tossed back the rest of my lemonade while he tracked across the dusty packed earth and handed him the cup in exchange for the cash.
I sat and counted it while my boys behind me started working the month’s order out of their saddlebags and packs with the good doctor.
“Whoa, hold up boys!” I called and looked up. “You’re short.”
Abuela pursed her lips and her shoulders sank slightly. She looked like an angry toad sitting up there and I raised my eyebrows. We’d worked things out, the price had dropped significantly from what Rebel had been charging, we’d even given over a month and half’s share of the scripts for fuckin’ free to earn back trust but trust went both fuckin’ ways here.
“My grandson, he had to go to the hospital,” she said, and I nodded sagely.
“That’s not my problem,” I answered, and it wasn’t. If I let it slide for every fuckin’ sob story we’d come across, all our asses would be on the line right quick. We had bills to pay back home, too. Our coffers were still suffering from helping Dump Truck and his ol’ lady, Little Bird, last September. This run was supposed to be the run to put us flush again.
“So, unless you plan on comin’ with us and washin’ some dishes or some shit – you’d best make some calls and find that cash.” I was only half joking, but Marisol who was going back up the steps paused and turned halfway, a desperate look in those honey-kissed brown eyes of hers as she said.
“I’ll go, if that’s what you want.”
Chapter Two
Marisol…
The words were out of my mouth before I even knew I had uttered them. Silence rang out as everyone looked at me and I tried to do the opposite of what I wanted to do which was shrink. I straightened my back and lifted my chin.
“I can do whatever you want me to do,” I said. “Work off the debt. Just please, my brother needs that medicine.”
My little brother was seven, going on eight, and he was on an insulin pump. He needed that medicine. He would die without