Page 5 of Tanner (Dirty Misfits MC 5)
I blinked. “Actually, I didn’t know that.”
“Well, that’s a thing now.”
I pulled into my parking space. “So, you’re like a regular Sherlock or some shit like that.”
She snorted. “Or some shit like that, yeah. Anyway, I took on this one case—I traded my detective skills for a new couch, by the way—and—”
“Wait, wait, wait, you can do that?”
“You’re not going to let me finish, are you?”
I turned off the car but kept the air running. “Sorry, sorry. Okay, hit me with it. What’s going on with this case? Oh! And I want pictures of the new couch.”
“I’ll shoot you some pictures over. Anyway, yes, I took on this case and you’ll never guess what I’ve found.”
“What did you find? What’s the case about?”
She started talking a million miles a second. “Well, this woman came to me—her husband owns a furniture store—and she wanted me to do some looking into some things because she thought her husband was cheating on her. So, I took the job, did some simple surveillance in my off-time, and you’ll never guess what I found.”
I smiled brightly. “You’re like one of those television shows.”
“Ask me what I found, Summer!”
I mocked her tone of voice. “What did you find, Sloane!?”
She cackled with laughter. “This man isn’t cheating on his wife. He’s going after work and eating at all of the places she hates to go eat.”
I blinked. “Wait, what?”
She howled in my ear. “The fucking woman is a picky-ass eater, and her husband is eating dinner without her so he can have good food for once!”
I roared with laughter as I sat in the car, grateful to be talking with my sister. We didn’t always get to have conversations like this, so I always took them to heart when we did. I wiped at my tears before I gathered my things and started toward my apartment.
And this was one of those moments where I was thankful I didn’t have to stumble my ass up some steps in heels.
“Oh, oh my God. Thank you. I had to tell someone, this shit’s been a riot,” Sloane said through her breathless giggles.
I finally got myself into my apartment. “Oh, fuck. My stomach. It actually physically hurts.”
“Ask me what he was eating the other night.”
I paused. “Oh, God. I’m gonna die from laughter, aren’t I?”
She snickered. “Just ask me.”
I drew in a deep breath and rolled my shoulders back. “What was he eating?”
“FUCKING. ALFREDO. PASTA!”
I collapsed to the floor and clutched my heart as we laughed again. I mean, the woman thought her man was cheating. Cheating, of all things! And all he’s doing is trying to escape her bland eating habits?
By eating regular alfredo pasta!?
“They’re white, aren’t they?” I asked through my bellowing laughter.
“The whitest!” she said through her wheezing.
For the first time in my life, I honestly thought I was going to pass out. I couldn’t catch my breath and I actually had to start howling just to force my lungs to take in air. I wiped at the tears streaming down my cheeks. I straightened my back, giving my lungs space to blossom open as breathing came easier.
“Oh, holy shit. I needed that laugh so bad,” I said as I wiped the last of my tears away.
“Girl, I figured it out a couple of days ago and I knew the first phone call I had to place was to you. I knew you were the only one who’d get why I was so tickled by it.”
I laid down on the cool linoleum floor of my kitchen while Sloane rattled off more about these cases she took on in her spare time, and I found myself entranced by the sound of her voice. My little sister was the only family member I talked to anymore, and when Sloane stopped talking to them as well, it bonded us even more. I had beef with our parents after I figured out I was pregnant just before my seventeenth birthday. They kicked me out of their house, and I had to do my last year of high school without them, without Tanner, and without my dignity.
But I managed to get my GED after I gave birth to Cheyenne.
As soon as I graduated, though, I left. I packed up my one-year-old little girl, piled everything I could into a beat-up rust bucket I managed to purchase with money I snuck in and stole from my parents one night, and I never looked back.
I drove out to Santa Barbara to try and make a life for myself. And when my sister graduated, she came out to be with me for a little while.
Until I got the job with The Body Shop and moved back.
“Summer?”
I drew in a deep breath. “Yeah, I’m still here. Just listening to you talk. I like it when you talk.”
She sighed. “You know there’s always space for you and Cheyenne if you choose to come back to Santa Barbara, right?”
