“Christ, you are f**ked up. Still singin’ that song?” Tack asked.
“Still lyin’ to me that you didn’t f**k everything that moved when you had my gold band on your finger?” she retorted.
“Twisted, totally twisted,” Tack muttered and finished with, “We’re done.”
“We are so not done.”
“We’re done,” Tack stated and I knew he meant it because suddenly he was in the office, the door was closed behind him and he locked it. Then his long legs took him across the office to the door to the garage and he locked that one too, all the while Naomi pounded on the front door shouting, “Open this goddamn door, motherfucker! We’re not done!”
Tack ignored this and walked to the window that faced the forecourt and with a rough, angry jerk he closed the blinds.
Then he turned to me.
That scene was so nasty, so intense and so unlike anything I’d ever seen or heard before
I couldn’t fight it back so I stared up at his angry face while biting my lip.
“You all right?” he, for some reason, asked me.
“Uh…” I answered because I could say no more but the answer was, no. I was not all right. Tack’s ex-wife was a bitch, she wanted my job, he had two kids and he may or may not have f**ked around on his wife. None of this I wanted to know but all of it was bouncing around in my brain in a way that I knew, no matter how studiously I did it, I wasn’t going to be able to avoid thinking about it.
“My ex is a bitch,” he stated the obvious.
“Um…” I replied, still unable to utter more.
“Your job is safe,” he informed me.
“Uh… okay,” I whispered, uncertain if I was happy about this fact or not.
That was when Tack shared even more stuff I did not want to know.
“She’s got this in her head, she’ll probably be back and she’ll probably do other shit to f**k with your head,” he told me. I stared up at him as my heart started beating harder and he went on, “She does, you tell me immediately. I’m not here, you phone me. Got that?”
“Um… okay.” I was still whispering.
“Give me your cell,” he ordered and, not thinking, wondering how that crazy woman was going to “fuck with my head”, I grabbed my cell from the desk and stretched my arm out toward him. He took two steps to me, slid my phone from my fingers, flipped it open, his thumb started moving over the number pad and I heard beeping.
“Uh… Tack?” I called.
“Yeah?” he asked, head bent to my phone, my phone still beeping.
“How will she… erm, f**k with me?”
He flipped my phone shut, tossed it on the desk and then he was bent to me, his hand wrapped around the back of my neck, bunching my hair and his face was an inch from mine.
“Don’t matter. Whatever she does, I’ll deal with it. You won’t. Got that?”
“But –”
“She calls, you hang up. She shows, you walk the f**k outta here, take your phone, go to my room in the Compound, lock yourself in and call me. Yeah?”
None of that sounded good except for the part about me calling him and him dealing with it. Therefore, I whispered, “Yeah.”
“Don’t be scared, Red. She’s a bitch but she’s stupid and I got your back.”
“Uh… okay,” I said yet again, not liking him having to have my back and now seriously wondering if I wanted to continue with employment at Ride Custom Cars and Bikes but for different reasons. Then I stared into his eyes, decided to change the subject and whispered, “You know my name.”
His face softened in a way I’d never seen before but I liked a lot. Too much. Way too much to be conducive to healthy, functional employer/employee relations and he replied quietly, “Yeah, baby.”