Read Tango with a Twist (Smashwords edition.) Page 53

  #scenebreak

   

  Twist, aka Pal, wasn’t home. Hard to say where he was. Halfway to Mexico most likely. Farmer-C and K-pop met Tango and me there in case he showed up. He was a little guy. How much trouble could he be?

  The front drapes were open and the four of us peered inside. Twist’s living room was boring. A bit tidy for a nineteen-year-old dude’s place, but harmless enough. Not a lot of furniture. K-pop “let us in” far more easily than I’d have expected.

  Then Tango found Twist’s bedroom. “Oh, my God.”

  Farmer-C, K-pop and I poked around the corner and peeked in. “Holy fucking shit,” we chorused.

  Photos of her stared at us from every inch of the room. Mobiles hung from the ceiling, along with what looked like trash and junk. Clothes she’d thrown out were pinned to the walls with photos of her face poking out of the necks of the blouses. In one corner, he’d made a bouquet of what looked, at first glance, like a bunch of little inflated balloons on sticks.

  Tango gasped. “Holy fuck!” She pushed the three of us forcefully out of the room.

  “What’s the big deal about a bunch of balloons?” K-pop asked.

  “Those aren’t balloons.” Farmer-C’s face turned bright crimson.

  “What the?” Realization dawned and K-pop’s eyes grew as big as those annoying pet photos. “No. . .” He punched Farmer-C in the arm. “Dude!”

  “Bro.” Farmer-C flicked his gaze my way far too obviously.

  Seriously? Could this day get any worse?

  “Don’t touch anything,” I called out to Tango. “Come here first, please.”

  “What?”

  “Please?”

  She appeared. I held out a sack of rubber gloves I’d bought on a quick stop at Walgreens. She took it. “Thanks.” She retreated into the room.

  “I was wondering why we stopped,” K-pop said. “I figured. . . You know. . .” He glanced in Tango’s direction and nudged me. “Hai?”

  I glanced at Farmer-C and then gave K-pop my expression of absolute blankness.

  He looked from Farmer-C to me. “Okay guys, tough love time.” He grabbed each of us by the front of our shirt and pushed us together down the hall.

  “I’m not going to spend the rest of my life walking on eggshells for you two.” He glared at me. “Foxtrot, Farmer-C did the Macarena with Tango and you need to deal with it.” He punched Farmer-C in the arm. “If Foxtrot and Tango haven’t done the hokey pokey, yet, it’s only a matter of time.” He opened his arms to us both. “Either you’re friends and you deal with it and let the rest of us get back to worrying about whether we’ll ever have sex, or just stop speaking to each other now and make life simpler for us all.”

  “K-pop?” Tango called from the bedroom.

  “Yes?”

  “Can you pull a hard drive out of his computer?”

  “As if I was playing with Legos.” He moved closer to Farmer-C and me with his arms open again. Group hug? When he was close enough, he smacked us both upside the head. “Deal with it.”

  He turned on his heel and strode away.

  Farmer-C and I avoided eye contact. This was not a conversation for which I had experience. Deep breath. “I really care about her, Farmer-C, but you’re, like, my new best friend all of a sudden.” New? More like first ever. “I’ve never really had friends before,” I told him. “I kind of like it.”

  He stared at his feet.

  “Is there any way I can have both?” I asked.

  “There’s a saying about this,” he said quietly. “For bros.”

  “Yeah.” I chuckled. “One of the reasons I respect you so much is you’d never say it.”

  He smirked, and believe it or not, it worked on him. “Now, you just know that’s not true.” He grabbed me in a head lock and gave me a friendly noogie.

  Why does spell check claim “noogie” isn’t a word? It’s in the Urban Dictionary.

  “Oh, dear God,” Tango said, passing us, “would you lesbians just find a room and get it over with?”

  “Tango.” I pushed Farmer-C away and hugged her. “You get what you need?” Before she could be snarky, I kissed her.

  Farmer-C would have to deal with it.

  She sighed. “Yeah.”

  I kissed her forehead. “Any chance you’ll tell us what we might do time for destroying?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “Y’all deserve that much.”

  There was video.

  Lots of it.

  Nothing she ever wanted on the net.

  There was a list of places cameras needed to be killed.

  Doctor’s offices.

  Locker rooms.

  Bathrooms.

  Sick Little Twist wasn’t even close to strong enough. As a cop, he’d had access to the entire city. And it wasn’t just Tango. There were other girls, too.

  We exited the house and gathered behind the car.

  “Tampering with evidence is a felony.” I held up the hard drive. “Which is fine by me, I just want to make sure we all know what we’re doing.”

  “Those girls don’t want this shit paraded in front of the entire planet.” Tango crossed her arms. “Us girls.” She looked down. “Me.”

  “Can you send him to jail without it?” K-pop asked.

  I shrugged. “Saundra will just have to find a way.”

  “Someone had to ask.”

  Katie nodded.

  I threw the hard drive on the ground as hard as I could. Metal and plastic sprayed the concrete. “And that’s just the start.”

  Tango took a tire iron to it next. When she was done with it, it was dead. She loaded a garbage bag full of stuff into the trunk of Auntie Mac’s car. When I reached her side, she was shaking. I wrapped her in my arms and held her tight.

  “I’m pissed off,” she told me.

  “I know.”

  “Okay, good,” she said. “I just want to make sure y’all know I’m pissed off, and I’m not going to cry like a little girl or anything like that.”

  “Pissed off. Got it. What do you want to do?”

  “Blow something up. . . or pound the shit out of someone.” Everything about her energy was direct out of a chicks-kick-ass movie. “Seriously, guys. Don’t you want to beat the shit out of someone?” She regarded us one at a time. “Farmer-C: Monika practically raped you and screwed up things between us. Foxtrot: those bastards made you their personal punching bag, not to mention everything else that’s happened to you in the past few months.” She hit herself in the chest. “My shit’s obvious.” She looked at K-pop. “You have anything to make you want to beat on someone?”

  “If I answer that question, bad things will happen to me.” He waved the attention away. “I’m here to support my friends. You tell me who to smack down, I’m here for you.”

  I instantly loved the guy.

  Tango shouted at the sky. “What the fuck is it with this town all of a sudden?” Pacing seemed to help. “For eighteen years, it’s the most boring place on the planet, then out of nowhere we get stalkers and violence and whores.”

  “Oh m-y-y,” K-pop added.

  I was really glad he said it, because I’d wanted to, but was way too afraid of what Tango would do to me if I did.

  She shouted again.

  “We need a lock-in,” K-pop said.

  “A what?”

  “A lock-in,” he repeated. “It’s something we do when shit just sucks.”