Song of the Fireflies(27)
Author: J.A. Redmerski

Here I was thinking Johanna was Caleb’s girlfriend, not remembering Tate had called her Caleb’s “current lay” when we were out on the beach. But then Grace left Jen on the couch and walked over to Caleb, too. She sat down in between his legs when the joint was fully rolled, and he wrapped his arms around her from behind. Johanna leaned forward and rested her hands on his shoulders.

All kinds of sexual images began flitting around inside my head. And then, Caleb caught my eyes. I looked away quickly and turned sideways on Elias’s lap, laying my head down on his shoulder.

I heard the grinding snap of a lighter, and then the sweet aroma of what Tate called “grade-A shit” filled the air.

“Someone turn on that bathroom fan,” Tate said. “Fucking smoke alarm will go off.”

Everyone seemed to be either really comfortable or too far away from the restroom, so I got up from Elias’s lap and did the honors. Then just before I left the restroom doorway, I snatched a washcloth off the rack next to the mirror. I went over to where the smoke alarm was mounted on the ceiling, stepped up onto the side of the bed so I could reach it, and covered the round plastic nuisance with the cloth.

“Good thinking, baby doll,” Tate said, holding out the joint for Jen now.

Without giving Tate the luxury of a look, Jen reached around her shoulder and took the joint from his fingers.

“You said you all live in Miami?” Elias asked from the chair as I went back over and sat on his lap.

Tate let out a long, deep breath and stretched one arm above his head across the back of the couch. “Yeah, Caleb, me, and Jen live in Miami. Those two—” he motioned toward Johanna and Grace “—they wouldn’t survive in Miami.”

Grace’s head fell to one side and she propped her hands on top of Caleb’s bent knees.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” she said. It was the first time I’d actually heard her talk, and I thought her voice was sweet and soothing, much unlike her fire-breathing companion, Jen.

Jen still sat peering into her cell phone.

“You’re too damn white, girl,” Tate said and laughed.

“White? Like Caucasian?” Johanna said with an air of curiosity. Immediately, I got the dumb-girl vibe from that one.

“No,” Tate said and rolled his eyes. “White like a vampire. Don’t get me wrong, Grace, that milky-white skin will give any guy a hard-on in a second, but you know what I mean.”

Jen whirled around at him and punched him in the chest, hard. Tate’s body reacted by jerking forward, his feet raising from the carpet a few inches. He laughed and held one hand over the spot.

“Tha f**k you say that for?” Jen said. “I’m sitting right here.”

Tate was trying not to laugh, but the smile on his face pretty much gave it away.

“Damn, baby, chill the f**k out.” He reached out for her arm, but she snatched it away. “You keep that shit up and I’m going to f**k you up.”

Whoa… I wonder what he meant by that. He definitely didn’t seem the abusive type—Jen wore the championship belt in that category from what I’d seen—but his threat made me wonder.

Tate, with his smile still intact, turned back to us. “No, we just got back from a long drive to Norfolk to pick up my brother.” He motioned at Caleb. “It was just me and Jen on the way up. Didn’t know we’d have a car full on the way back.” Then he pointed at Grace and Johanna again. “These two bobbleheads are friends of Caleb’s. They wanted to get out of Virginia for a while. We had room in my Jeep. You can paint the rest of the picture.”

“Why didn’t you just fly?” I asked.

Tate and Caleb looked at each other and then Tate looked back at me.

But Elias was the one who answered, “Because they couldn’t carry their drugs on the plane.”

A smirk tugged the corners of Tate’s mouth.

Chapter Fourteen

Elias

Tate stopped midsmile and pointed at me from across the room, beer dangling from his hand, and said, “You’re not a cop, are you?” I think he knew I was as much a cop as he was.

“Hell no,” I said, shaking my head.

His smile returned and his arm dropped beside him again.

Grace, the brown-haired girl sitting between Caleb’s legs, pushed herself forward on her knees, raising her ass in front of Caleb, and she stretched out her arm toward us. Bray leaned forward on my lap and took the joint from her fingers and then put it to her lips.

Caleb saw an opportunity and smacked Grace before she sat back down. Grace looked back at him with an awry smile. I was having a hard time figuring the two out. I didn’t sense any real emotional attachments between them, but a sexual attachment was unmistakable.

We were all fairly high after the joint made its third pass around the room. Bray and I were warming up to our new friends quicker than either of us expected. Maybe it was the weed, but even Jen began to ease up on Bray some. Every now and then she’d make a nonsarcastic comment to something Bray said, and things were beginning to look up between the two. Though Jen wasn’t about to ease up even a little on Tate, who finally gave up trying to talk to her and zoned out on the couch.

I had no clue as to how much time had passed when I noticed how much Grace and Bray were hitting it off. Bray and I had moved from the chair to the floor at some point, sitting with our backs against the wall. Grace sat beside Bray, and they talked nonstop for a long time while I zoned out like Tate and stared across the room at the television. I wasn’t completely fried, but my mind wandered so much I couldn’t say what I was watching. I saw their lips moving on the screen, but I couldn’t hear a word.

Caleb snapped my mind back into reality when he called for Grace and looked at me with a familiar predatory gaze. Taken aback by it, I paid more attention to what was going on around me. Did I miss something? I had no f**king clue why Caleb looked at me like that, but when Grace got up and went over to sit with him, I got the feeling he was threatened by me when it came to Grace. It was odd. I had barely said two words to her. Bray was the one doing all the talking. I just shut my eyes and leaned the back of my head against the wall and ignored him. I stayed like that, Bray now lying on the floor with her head in my lap, until Jen and Tate arguing woke me up again.

“I’m going to bed,” Jen spat. She pushed Tate away when he tried to slip his arm around her waist. “You can sleep in here.”

Tate laughed and followed her toward the separate bedroom.