Know Me (Truthful Lies Trilogy - Book One) (5 page)

I
raise my eyebrows, and I mouth,
WOW
!

“
Hot, eh? Hey, Xavier!”

Mr.
Curls seems to have permanently dropped the redhead—she
must’ve gotten what she wanted, and promised to see him “later.”
He’s standing next to Heaven-Leigh. Or, as I’m starting to think of
her,
The
Heavenliest Heaven There Is
. She looks so bad-ass, and yet, so tiny and
delicate...

Mr. Curls
comes over to the DJ Box. He puts a hand in his
tartans, then pulls it out, gives Randy some skin. And then runs
the hand around his greasy hair and looks around like he’s
expecting five-oh to jump him or something.

Uh-
huh. As I thought. Dealer.
And his name is Xavier. Mental
note.

“
Xavier, this is an old friend of mine,
Declan Cox.”

“
Cox?” Xavier Curls says to me. “Like the
DJ—”

“
Yeah, like Carl,” I say, already
anticipating the statement. It’s a regular one around this
crowd.

“
Alright,
esseh
! Cool, man!” Xavier fires an imaginary gun at me. Randy
flips some dials and changes the beat, sticks his hand up to let me
and Xavier know he’ll turn his attention to us in just a
sec.

“
So, where was I?” Randy says. “Oh, yeah,
Cox here. Best damn football player Brooklyn’s ever
seen.”

“
No, Randy, that’s Trev.”

“
Bullshit. It was both of
yooze
. That he
has the limelight now doesn’t change the facts. He threw, you
caught and ran. You guys were dynamite on the field. Beyond
increasing my cholesterol levels on Bowl Weekend, I don’t know shit
about the game—but what I do know is the two of
yooze
was chain lightning over at Lincoln.” In Randy’s
accent,
threw
comes out
as
true
. But he’s
straight Brooklyn when he says
yooze
. As in:
Da two-a-yooze was chain lightning.

“
How’s your pops?” he asks.

“
Still hating the world as far as I
know.”

Randy rolls his eyes, shrugs. Pops is a
slimeball. But compared to Randy’s own father, no truer angel has
ever walked the earth. “You still not talkin to him?”

I shuffle my feet, look around. I’m trying
to figure out how to change the subject when Randy puts his finger
up again to pause our conversation. He turns a few knobs on the
mixer. I stand there uncomfortably for a second. Waiting. Xavier
looks wired, eyes too jittery. It looks like he’s got more than a
little ice-cream habit going (that’s the same as being a chipper.)
Maybe he does a bit of dragon chasing on the side as well. But he
doesn’t look like an H addict. Big C? That’s likely. He’s sniffed
and run an arm over his noise more than once since I’ve been
standing here.

D
udes like him make me nervous. Time bombs.
Like pops’s
Catalina
.

Randy turns back to me
, forgetting his earlier question. “I put
on some premixed
Café del Mar
so
we can talk some more. Had a good roll, Deck-Man?”

“
Uh, no, didn’t roll tonight.”

“
Problem? Xavier here’s our in-house
thoroughbred, sells only pure-grade; but you can never turn away
the dudes who sell stepped-on shit. Not everyone can afford the
high-quality stuff. Hey I got some for you if—”

“
No, no, Randy. That’s not it.” I put my
hands up to say I definitely don’t want the drugs. I do too many of
them as it is. “No, actually, the sound was so good I outright
forgot to drop. By the time Skate was hitting his peak and wanted
more, he just took mine.”

“
No shit, eh?” Randy says this with all the
disbelief of a guy who’s been in the scene too long—and done too
many drugs—to have come to consider that music and drugs are not
separately discernible entities. “Well, Xavier here knows her.
First time I ever took anyone’s advice on picking a DJ for the
night. It was a gamble. But it worked out. She took the spot of two
other guys!”

“
What happened to them?”

“
Uncle trouble.”

“Cops?”

“
Yeah, we were expecting a raid any time
tonight because of it. But it seems they kept their mouths shut.
Seems one of them was so high he lit up a blunt right next to a
Johnny Law! Maybe was for the best. I’m all for a little Molly and
weed when doing a mix, but you can’t take that shit too far. You’re
working and providing a service for money at the end of the
day.”

“
I hear you.”

“
Hey, a bunch of us are gonna mow some
grass at a Chillout party at my loft after this. Wanna
come?”
Mow
some grass...

“
Nah, I’m cool. Trev is up here from Penn
for a few days, so I’ll be kickin it with him for a
bit.”

“
Trev’s in town? Shit! Where is that damned
QB?” Randy’s really taken to football—despite his comments to not
knowing anything about it. That and strip clubs. Real All-American
boy now.

“
Uh, he’s outside. Probably chatting up the
seventh chick for the night. But I’ll tell him you say hi. I think
he grabbed a few
House Market
shirts from the merch table on the way out as
well.”

“
Awesome. It pays the bills. These parties
don’t pay for themselves, you know. Although the record label
sales
do
pick up after
the shows anyway. Word of mouth. So maybe they do pay for
themselves at the end of the day.”

“
Good to hear. Good to hear. Hey”—I point
to the DJ—“I’m just gonna tell her what a kickin set she
played.”

Mr.
Curls scowls at me. What is he, her freaking big brother? I
ignore him.

Randy says, “You know she did her entire
set without so much as even a sip of
Absolut
to soothe the nerves? The girl is a musical
goddess, I tell you.”

I don’t comment.

Xavier Curls
is still eying me. In my imagination, I give him
the finger.

When I get to
Heaven-Leigh
, her head’s down on her arm, which is on her
knee. And it looks like she’s sleeping.

Fuck!
For a very brief moment, I consider waking her.
But that would be pushing it too far.

I turn away.

Back at the DJ box, I
say to Randy, “She’s asleep. Would you
tell her I thought her stuff was kickin when she wakes
up?”

“
Declan, Xavier was just telling me here
that she needs a ride home. She’s over on Bogart. By the Morgan
station. Xavier would do it, but he’s too loaded to get behind a
wheel.”

Xavier
—who is now a little unsteady on his feet—says, “I’m fine.
And how can we trust”—he waves a floppy hand at me—“this
random
guy!?”

“
Xavier, Declan is no
Random Guy
. And me and him go way back. Heck, he’s
also probably moved half the people who came to this party in and
out of their apartments when their leases were up—or when they got
evicted. How’s business, by the way, Deck-man?”

“
Good, very good. Got a new truck today.
Ford F one-fifty—” I remember that Randy’s not much into cars, so I
shut up.

“
See? And he’s successful. Not like half
these airheads around here complainin about rent and then thinking
the world owes them something because they’re ‘
artistes
.’ You see all those muscles?” He points
at me. “Football and furniture removals. Both of them from hard
work. And he’s trustworthy. More trustworthy than me, I tell you.
If I were your ages and I had
that
candy in my car”—he points at
Heaven-Leigh
—“I’d be much less of a gentleman than I’m sure
Deck here will be.”

I swallow. Because it’s true that I
wouldn’t take advantage of her. But it’s also true that I find her
so damned appealing that I can’t stop thinking about doing just
that!

Randy fixes an eye on me.
“
Right
, Deck-Man?”

That was a hint. And Randy is too well
connected for me to ignore it. Going “way back” has shit to do with
it. I swallow a dry lump. “Uhm, right, of course.”

Xavier sticks a hand in his
checkered pants’ pocket—eyes
glued to me—and eases out the butt of a small pistol, then slides
it back inside; smiles gently.
Another hint. OK, Point taken,
dudes.

What gun is he packing, you ask? It wasn’t
a Beretta Nano
. That’s
all I know.
Because I’m intimately familiar with that one.

I look over at
Xavier waking
Heaven-Leigh
up. She wipes her eyes—an entirely human gesture;
the goddess down from her pedestal—and I have to look away
because
Infatuation
has
taken on graffiti blockbuster dimensions in my head. But, just as
I’m doing it, just as my head is skimming left, I catch the
gentlest tug of a smile on her lips again as she looks me over.
Full, red lips in the shape of a gentle
O
.

Oh, damn, the game is on!

My own lip tugs into a smile
of its own. I keep facing the
dance floor because I can’t have her see me all embarrassed like
this.

I’m trying so hard to forget she’s behind
me—packing her bag or whatever she’s doing—that I’m a little
shocked when she instantly materializes on my left, shaved side of
her head—the right—facing me.

The smell of her rosy-perfume mixed in
with her all-night sweat makes me light-headed. She looks up at me
with eyes the color of glowing jade. Sweet, searching eyes set in a
porcelain face, eyelashes dark and long.

She’
s smiling. She steps in front of me, sticks out her
purple-nailed hand. “I’m Blaze Ryleigh. And you’re the guy who was
checking me out all night, right?”

Yeah, uhm, I have no mirror, but I
knows me cheeks is
swimmin in da redness
right about now.

“
Cat got your tongue?”

I grab her hand, shake it.

“
Dig your ink,” she says, looking at the
sleeve on my right arm.

My eyes move over to her own tats—left
arm, mirror image—shoulder to wrist. Colors wild and passionate.
Crazy red rose on the top, huge; but darker, much darker, images on
the bottom.
Fucking beautiful
.

I try and say something, but nothing comes
up.

So much for cool.

She laughs, grabs me by the upper arms,
then says,
“Let’s get
the fuck outta here. You might not be able to talk, but I sure hope
you can drive. ’Cause I’m freaking wiped, and I need to
sleep.”

Her hand on my skin is like a sheepskin
rug.

Did I mention the word
“infatuated”?

Well, it isn’t that. This is something else
entirely. And damned if I don’t like rolling on it.

Blaze
Ryleigh a.k.a DJ
Heaven-Leigh

I wasn’t oblivious to the sinewy
Ryan Gosling Dreamboy that had
been staring at me all night. He just wasn’t my priority. David
Beckham himself could’ve been standing dead center in that dance
floor with his cock screaming to the stars and I wouldn’t have
noticed.

The set was all there was. Win or lose, all
or nothing. That’s how I treated it in my mind. Because that’s how
it felt to me.

Melodramatic? Maybe. But after three years
of fighting, losing, and getting older, melodrama starts taking on
a whole new meaning: Life itself.

And I don’t agree with that.

But now
the set is over, and now I notice him. I notice
him good.

Golden hair
styled to look like a cocky, confident wave, now
ruffled from all night dancing and sweating. Eyes the color of
cloudless skies. Muscles tight,
hard
. Tall—over six feet for sure. My head only reaches to his
shoulders and that makes me all nice and warm thinking about it.
Not sure about his age, but looks about the same as mine. Twenty or
so. Twenty-three? I’ve never been good with figuring out dudes’
ages.

And then there’s the ink.
That didn’t make me hot at
first, not at all. Because I have my own ink. And I know what it
means to someone who decorates himself so completely they way this
guy has. It’s an expression of self.

At least that
was my first impression of it: Until I saw the
naked babe riding a tiger’s head on his forearm. Then I
did
get hot.

There’s just one problem:
I’m so
freaking
tired that whatever thoughts I have of hooking up
with him for a drink or something are gonna need to be relegated to
just getting his number and calling him up
later—
much
later. Not
to mention that I probably stink real good. (Then again, probably
so does he after pulling an all-nighter like this.)