Liquid Courage Read online

  Smiling in victory he hops off his stool with a loud, “Hell yeah!”

  Two hours and one sharp suit later, he still never explained himself. However, I was confident in time he would.

  Pita was well on his way to becoming a man and I knew this because he kept his word.

  By eight o’clock, Mercy’s channel was gone.

  Dion stopped in to reassure me he and Pita got along just fine and that his suit was top of the line. He promised me the kid was going to be one hell of man and that his guilt for how he spoke to me was heavy. Right then and there, I made my own promise not to put Pita through the ringer. Kissing me hard on the lips he whispers, “Love that kid too, Mercy.” For some reason, for just that moment, I needed to kiss him a little bit longer.

  That was an hour ago so while Dion was out having a drink and a cigar with Roger, I checked in on Tanya, paid my mom’s monthly bill, signed off on several insurance claim documents and about to take a bath when the phone rang.

  I didn’t even finish my hello when Pita slurs, “Mercy, I fucked up.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Home sippin’ on some slizzurp.”

  “Do not leave, I’m on my way.”

  “That sounded dumb, lemme try again. Vodka.”

  And then he hung up.

  For about a second I considered calling Dion, but decided against it. He was with Roger and I could handle Pita. There was no reason to ruin his night too. Especially after how happy he was to spend time with ‘the kid’.

  This time when I got to the door, his roommate opened it for me and got the hell out of my way because sitting with his head down looking defeated was my Pita. Sitting next to him, he registers my presence then throws himself around me.

  “Talk to me, please,” I urge him.

  “Superheroes have weaknesses,” he says softly.

  “Of course they do, Pita. If they didn’t have weaknesses they wouldn’t have challenges. It’s about balance. If they were all powerful, undefeatable then they would never know failure or humility. They wouldn’t be real, Pita.”

  “You have weaknesses.”

  “Many,” I agree. “Everyone does.”

  Wailing in my arms he cries out, “You can’t have weaknesses, Mercy!”

  “Pita –”

  “I need you to be invincible!” he yells pushing me away. “All powerful! Fuck the balance. You’re my superhero!”

  “Okay, slow down,” I try but then he pales and mumbles, “Gonna be sick.”

  Running him to the bathroom, I situate his body right as he empties the contents of his stomach. When the worst was over I asked, “What were you trying to tell me, Pita?”

  “Liquid courage,” he whispers. “Couldn’t even get that right.”

  I wasn’t going to get anywhere with him close to passing out so I went a different route asking, “Where did you get alcohol? Your old work?”

  “Lenny,” he says half asleep.

  “Lenny sold alcohol to you?”

  “Told him I belonged to you. Didn’t question it.”

  Standing up, I call his buddy over demanding he, “Get him cleaned up and into bed. Make sure he gets a glass of water and some aspirin. He leaves this house, it’s your ass. Understand?”

  “Yeah,” he gulps. “Where are you going?”

  “To the liquor store.”

  Blazing through the streets, I ignored every vehicular law known to man and when there were no spots out on the street? I parked on the fucking sidewalk. Throwing the door open, Lenny sees me and lights up with joy. Never breaking my stride, I stomped down the aisle to the front register. With open arms he greets me with, “Mercy, it’s good to see you!”

  Using my momentum, I met the counter and hefted myself up putting me eye to eye with Lenny.

  “Mercy what –” he didn’t finish because I’d already fisted his hair introducing his face to the hard surface.

  Once, twice, and a final third, I ram him as hard as I could. Releasing him, I dangle my legs off the counter and ask, “What in the fuck possessed you to sell to the kid?”

  “He said –”

  Holding up my hand for silence I remind him, “Lying to me isn’t smart. Given the mood I’m in, I catch you pulling shit I will kill you even if I’m crying while I do it.”

  “He said it was for you!”

  “He walked in here, a nineteen year without a fucking ID-because doesn’t drive yet-and proceeded to buy a gallon of cheap vodka in my name?”

  “Yes!”

  “And you believed him? That seems like my style, Lenny?”

  “I swear to you, Mercy. He was going on about superheroes and weaknesses. He said that you’d be disappointed in him. Fuck! The kid adores you, Mercy. He’s always with you and I didn’t question it.”

  Turning on my heel, I put Lenny out of my mind while I stood outside staring up at the stars. Before getting sick, Pita was trying to tell me something. To get that drunk, to drop my name, the kid was struggling with some serious shit. His talk of superheroes, fucking up, and liquid courage.

  The kid had something to say but, what?

  Turns out that would be a mystery for another day.

  Because the blunt force to the back of my head knocked me out before I ever hit the pavement.

  And I woke up tied to a chair with explosives strapped to my chest.

  Last night, I’d arrived home just before midnight to realize Mercy was still gone.

  With a half-filled bathtub, no messages on my phone, and an open bottle of wine, I knew something was wrong.

  Dialing her, my panic increased when it went straight to voicemail.

  Using the landline, I call downstairs asking if anyone saw her leave. Chaz relayed that she ran out of the front door in her pajamas yelling, “Be right back!”

  That was six hours ago.

  I called Roger wondering if maybe Diane needed her. I called the assisted living center wondering if there had been an emergency. In between those calls, I blew up Pita’s phone, only he wasn’t answering.

  Pacing, strung out, worried, and ready to kill someone, Pita blew through my front door yelling her name right as my phone lit up. It’s Mercy, thank-fucking-god.

  “Are you okay?”

  “You have less than thirty minutes before she detonates, leveling an entire city block.”

  “Who the fuck is this?”

  “Here’s your nosey bitch.”

  Sucking in a breath, I felt Pita behind me but didn’t spare him a look. “Dion?” God, her voice was so small.

  “Mercy, where are you?”

  “No,” she rushes out. “You can’t come here.”

  When Mercy grunts in pain, I nearly come out of my skin. Back on the phone, he rattles of an address then laughs as if he’s already won.

  Talking frantically, I realize immediately that Mercy can’t hear me. Because she wasn’t able to hold her phone. Yelling to the kid to find me this fucking address, when he hits me with it, I roar, “That’s twenty minutes away!” Fuck, there was no straight shot to get there either.

  Phone in by my ear, we both run to the door when Mercy whimpers, “Dion, if you can hear me—if you love me-you won’t come.”

  Gunning it, I was skimming a corner when I whispered, “I don’t love you, Mercy. I adore you. Hang on, beautiful, I’m coming.”

  “Dion? I—” the kid says tentatively.

  “Not now, Pita,” I warn. “Just tell me where the fuck I’m going.”

  With four and a half minutes to spare, I throw my door open threatening him with, “You’re a liability. You stay in this truck and wait while I get her. Do you understand me?”

  “Go,” was all he said.

  Without any thought to an ambush, traps, or capture, I searched until I found her.

  With her phone in her lap, arms and legs tied to the chair, was Mercy wearing a vest of C4 strapped to her chest.

  “It keeps ticking,” she says with red eyes. “How much time is left?”


  Running forward, I fall to my knees when I see there’s less than two minutes left. At my silence she whispers, “It’s bad, isn’t it?”

  “I’ll get you out –”

  “Dion,” she says so softly. “Run. I need you to run.”

  “Stay still,” I beg her while trying to figure out where all these God damn wires go. “Fuck, I don’t know what to do!”

  “Dion, please,” she begins to cry. “Go. Leave and promise me you’ll look out for Pita.”

  Ignoring her, I take the knife out of my pocket and start cutting the vest from her shoulders. Checking the time, I’ve got one minute and forty-six seconds left. Taking her face in my hands I memorize her features, those eyes and even her tears. “Adoring you has been a privilege, Mercy.”

  Before she can say a word, I go back to furiously cutting and when it was free from her body, I did run and I didn’t look back. Clearing the building, I scream warnings at Pita but instead of running away from me, he was running toward me. So, when the ticking stopped I did the only thing I could do. Held the vest to my chest and hit the ground covering it with my body.

  I was watching life pass before my closed eyes when I heard, “Dion? Why are you on the ground?”

  Looking up at the kid I roar, “Get back!” and watch him fall on his ass in fear instead.

  Why didn’t it blow? Was it a dud? Was I dreaming?

  Carefully flipping the vest over, I take a closer look and realize the bomb wasn’t a dud. Because the bomb was fake and so was the timer. My fear though, that had been completely real and was still riding me hard.

  “Mercy,” I exhale hard and found my bearings to run back inside with the kid right on my heels.

  She was soaked in tears, distraught and fighting to get free when I yell to her. Seeing me and the kid whole drained any fight she had left. Every ounce of energy was zapped and had she not been tied up, she’d have hit the floor. “Help me lift her, Pita.”

  Taking the opposite side, we lift Mercy, chair and all, carrying her out to the truck.

  I just finished cutting the last tie when she cupped my face and whispered, “I couldn’t do it.”

  “Do what?”

  “Live without you. I couldn’t do it.”

  “Baby –”

  “Even those few minutes…I couldn’t do it, Dion.”

  “It’s the same for me, Mercy.”

  “You saved my life,” she whimpers. “You were going to –”

  So, she wouldn’t lose it, I call the kid over and when he falls into her arms, I held them both until my own tremors passed. I held them a long fucking time.

  I was sitting on Dion’s tailgate listening to Mercy recap her hours of captivity.

  Every word she spoke had me retreating even further because this was my fault. Because I went to Lenny’s and lied so he’d sell to me. My fault because I drunk dialed Mercy wanting to come clean but punked out by puking instead. My fault she went to Lenny to set him straight and ended up unconscious and in danger.

  Needing a distraction, I go to my videos opening the most recent. I made Dion a promise to never post again. But he hadn’t said anything about filming.

  It begins with Dion clearing the door with something large in his hands. His eyes were wild as he ran full tilt in the opposite direction. Dion wasn’t the guy who ran from danger.

  I’d been so shook up, I hadn’t heard Dion screaming at me to run and take cover. I wanted to help him, find out if Mercy was okay. When he realized I was running to him and not away, I watched him clutch a vest and hit the ground prepared to spare me from the blast. He curled his body into a tight ball and at the time I couldn’t figure out why he was on the ground.

  I hadn’t known it was a bomb, I hadn’t known it was strapped to Mercy. He hadn’t known it was fake.

  But had it been real…

  I was hauled off the tailgate by Dion who was gripping my shirt literally putting us nose to nose.

  “Did you film her?” he yells in my face and since I’d never seen him like this before, it scared the shit out of me. But his question wasn’t what I was focused on.

  “You saved me,” I choke out.

  “Did you film her?” he asks again and even as pissed as he was, I knew Dion wouldn’t hurt me.

  “Why’d you save me?”

  “Did you fucking film her?”

  Obviously, he wasn’t going to answer me until I answered him so I say, “No. I promised I wouldn’t.”

  “Then what the fuck did you do? What’s on your phone, Pita! What did you film!”

  Seriously, I was luckiest pain in the ass walking the planet. Because I didn’t have one superhero, I had two.

  Meeting his eyes, I explain, “I filmed you.”

  Exhaling hard, Dion doesn’t let me go. Nope, just the opposite. Pulling me into his chest, he wraps his body around mine, mumbling, “Scared the fuck out of me, kid.”

  “Why would you save me?” I ask since I was having a really hard time understanding it.

  “Christ,” he shudders gripping me tighter. “Because you’re mine too. In case you missed it, I love you, kid.”

  Now it was my turn to shudder. I didn’t deserve Dion or Mercy but I’ll be damned if I was passing this up.

  Letting him know, “Love you too, Dion,” I glance up to see Mercy winking at me.

  Slapping me on the back, Dion looks me over before saying, “Let’s go home.”

  Home.

  Mercy and Dion gave that to me.

  Since opening the den, money had been one of two constants I could count on. The other had been loneliness.

  Having one didn’t make the other any easier to bear. Now, here I was sharing a table and a riverfront view with my woman and our kid. Kid, as in a nearly grown man who needed us as much as we needed him. Money couldn’t buy this. Money hadn’t cured it. Mercy had. Pita had. Dressed in his new suit, the kid beat me to showing Mercy her seat and was currently sporting more self-confidence than any nineteen-year-old I’ve ever seen. Mercy and I had played a role in giving him that.

  It was such a satisfying feeling that I couldn’t stop smiling. Placing her hand on my inner thigh, Mercy asks, “Penny for your thoughts?”

  Kissing her forehead and taking in the way Pita watches us, I explain, “I was admiring my own luck.”

  “What luck is that?”

  “You,” I say simply. “And Pita. Like I said, I’m lucky.”

  “So are we,” she says sweetly.

  “Dion,” Pita clears his throat. “I’ve got two questions.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “One, since I’m rocking this suit I should totally order the filet, right?”

  “Right.”

  “That’s what I thought,” he says nodding. “Two, how did you get so big? The gym?”

  “Afraid not, kid. I got my size the old-fashioned way.”

  “Steroids?”

  Laughing into her hand, Mercy gives me a look letting me know I walked right into that one.

  “Where do you come up with this shit?” I ask him.

  “Look,” he says seriously. “No one gets that big by drinking whiskey and wearing suits. Let’s be honest, you drink a lot of whiskey so what’s your secret?”

  “Manual labor and I prefer scotch.”

  “Huh?”

  “I like working with my hands,” I explain. “Building shit, carrying the material and busting my ass. That’s how I got to be this size and maintain it.”

  “What did you build?”

  “My house, pole barn, decks, and docks, for starters.”

  “Impressive,” he says glancing at Mercy who looked more than impressed. Right now, she looked lusty. “While I’m waiting on Ember to come to her senses, I’m thinking I should make our server’s day by giving her my name.”

  “You want to hit on the woman who is serving your meal?” Mercy asks. “In front of us?”

  “Well, I can’t score if I don’t take the shot, right?”

/>   On a sigh, Mercy says, “Order for me, I need to use the restroom.”

  Once she’s out of ear shot the kid asks, “What put that look on her face?”

  “You did.”

  “Me? What did I do?”

  Pinching the bridge of my nose, I take a moment to think on my words then explain, “Being male is a matter of birth. Being a man is a matter of age. Being a gentleman is a matter of choice. Do you understand?”

  “You’ve never used a line on a woman?”

  “I have,” I admit. “At your age, I did a lot of dumb shit. Which is why I’m sharing my wisdom with you. I’m trying to spare you unnecessary humiliation, kid.”

  And it was that exact moment our server introduced herself asking if we’ve made a decision. Before I could order for Mercy, the kid smirks and says to her, “If it’s true that we are what we eat then I could be you by morning.”

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Mercy says from behind me.

  Not missing a beat, the server pats Pita’s cheek and says, “I’m sorry but, I’m in a relationship.”

  “I’m in a boy band called Wrong Direction so let’s talk about how we can get you out of that relationship.”

  “I get off at ten,” she winks.

  “I’ll get you off in nine,” he winks back.

  “It’s a date,” she says biting her lip.

  “How?” Mercy asks the server. “How did that work on you?”

  “He’s cute,” she shrugs. “And I love the suit. I feel like I’m looking at my future ex-husband.”

  Giving the girl a fist bump Pita adds, “You know what the difference is between a Ferrari and an erection?”

  “You don’t have a Ferrari!” Mercy says through her teeth.

  Grinning at the girl he says, “I know,” and the server giggles.

  Closing my eyes, I pretended to pray for patience when I really wanted to give the kid a high five.

  From there, dinner was a success with tons of laughs and inappropriate jokes. And the kid? We left him behind.

  He had a date to look forward to and she’d also be his ride home.

  Now I was lying on my back fighting for air after Mercy gave me the ride of my life. She was satisfied beauty. My woman had been kissed, fucked, and loved hard.