Lungs

“I know that you needed to bolt yesterday, but if that shit happens again, I can’t help you.”

I looked over at Keith in surprise. “It was dead here; we didn’t have a single customer.” It was late afternoon, and he had just come in. His hours were generally erratic, but it was strange that he hadn’t even been in this morning. Since this was the first time I’d seen him all day, I probably should have been expecting the scolding that I was getting.

He shook his head, tendons straining against his cheeks as he clenched his jaw. “I gave you a shot, Lexi. You swore when I hired you that the club wouldn’t affect your work. Up until now, you’ve kept your word. But if yesterday was a sign of things to come, I’ll have to let you go. It just looks bad when the first shift you have after they come home ends with you tearing out of here without a word of warning.”

“That wasn’t a normal situation-” I began.

“I don’t care,” he cut me off. “I don’t give a shit what you do or who you hang out with outside of work. But you can’t bring it in here. I like the guys well enough, and they’ve been good business for us, but they have a nasty habit of scaring off other potential clients. Bringing you in hasn’t made that a bigger issue yet, but I promise you that if it does I won’t hesitate to toss you out on your ass.”

“Alright,” I grumbled. “I got it. It won’t happen again.”

I watched as he turned and stalked away. I curled my fingers into tight fists, then flexed them. There was finally something in my life that had nothing to do with SAMCRO, and I was about to lose it because of the club. Maybe Mom had been right when she’d told me that the clubhouse was the best place for me.

Marla strolled up to the front counter casually. “You’re in trouble, huh?”

“Yeah, looks that way.”

“Don’t mind him. He just has to show who’s boss every now and again. Everything will be business as usual by the end of the day.”

I looked over at her uncertainly. “I’m not so sure it will be. If there’s one thing I’ve learned growing up with the club, it’s that it keeps sucking me in. I was out, Marla,” I put my face in my hands. “It happened once before. I took off, but I came back. And I’m glad I did, because if I hadn’t, they wouldn’t have known to come help me when I needed it. But now I found one thing that I’m actually good at, and it’s going to get ruined.”

“So…” she sat down next to me, tilting her head from side to side as if she were weighing the options to two sides of an argument. “What are you going to do about it?”

“I can’t just pick one or the other. They’re my family. I have nothing without them. But if something goes seriously wrong, I need a way out.”

“And that’s what you think this is?”

I shrugged. “It’s the best chance I’ve got. It’s a somewhat marketable skill. And it beats being a bartender.”

Marla nodded, taking a deep breath. “I wish I could at least say that your troubles were over for the day,” she said. She looked toward the front of the shop, and I followed her gaze.

I winced as I saw Juice walking up to the door. The bell chimed pleasantly as he entered. The look on his face told me that this wasn’t a social call.

“Hey, man,” Marla greeted him. “How’s freedom?”

He grimaced. “Not quite as great as I remember it.”

“What happened?” I asked. I knew that I should have told him to leave, but I found that I couldn’t do that. He looked upset, and all I wanted to do was to make him feel better.

“It’s fine,” he replied quickly. “I got caught with some weed outside of Clear Passages and they brought me in.”

“You’ve got a card though,” I argued. It had come in handy in the past. I usually got my weed through Mom, but sometimes it had been just as easy to get Juice to pick me up some at the colonic shop. When he’d bought in to the place, they had hooked him up with a way of legally possessing pot.

“Yeah, they tried to argue for federal law instead of state.”

I felt like I was missing something important. He was on parole; if they wanted to put him away again, it wouldn’t have been all that difficult. “But you’re out now?”

“They let me off with a warning. It’s no big deal. Listen, I just wanted to remind you that there’s a vote tonight. When I come home kind of depends on how it goes.” He finally approached the counter, leaning over it as if that would give us more privacy in the open area.

“Should I come by after work?”

His brown eyes fell, and he pretended to focus on the wood grain finish of the counter top. “Something tells me that might be a bad idea. Honestly, I’ll probably be home right after. I’ll call if anything changes.”

Something was wrong, but I didn’t know what it was. I got up from my stool and walked around to the waiting area. Juice turned to me. His eyes were oddly vacant as he looked at me, telling me that his thoughts were elsewhere.

“Are you okay?” I asked softly, slipping my hands inside of his.

Juice nodded. “Yeah, fine.”

I gave his hands a gentle squeeze. “Remember what we talked about last night. We’ll figure it out.”

“I know.” He pressed a kiss between my eyes. “I’ll see you in a few hours.”

I watched him go, feeling more confused than I had in a long time. He was acting strangely, though between the arrest and the upcoming vote I supposed that he had every right to. Still, I worried about him. If he’d gotten picked up for whatever weed he’d had on him at the time, I couldn’t imagine what would happen if he was involved with a drug cartel.

“Isn’t he usually the cheerful one?” Marla commented after a moment of silence.

I nodded, slowly returning to my place behind the counter. “Yeah, generally.”

“Prison really changed him, huh?”

“No, I don’t think it was prison,” I said quietly.

“Does this have anything to do with your need for an escape plan?” Marla’s voice dropped, preventing anyone in the back of the shop from listening in.

“I’m not sure yet,” I admitted. “I really hope not.”

Keith strode in from the back, whistling merrily as he did. He stopped short when he caught sight of Marla and I. “Jesus, Lexi, I didn’t mean to make you this upset. It’s okay. I’m not going to fire you.”

“She’s not-”

“Good,” I forced a smile. Marla seemed to sense that I had interrupted her to save my own ass. The last thing I needed was for her to say that I had just been dealt a whole new set of problems with the club, especially when Keith was trying to be nice to me. “I can go back to being my usual self, then.”

“Well, I wouldn’t go that far,” Keith grinned.

The phone on the counter rang, but Marla and Keith had started up a conversation and they didn’t seem to notice the sound. I picked up the receiver.

“Dragon’s Ink, this is Lexi, how can I help you?”

There was a pause, then a sigh on the other end of the phone line. “Baby, we might have trouble.”

I tensed at the tone that my mother used. “What’s up?” I hoped that I could make my voice sound light. I didn’t want Keith to know that I was taking a personal call. He wouldn’t have cared most days, but I wanted to avoid pissing him off any more than I had to today.

The low growl of Harley engines echoed in the background. Mom must have been at the garage. “The guys are all showing up. They’re going to take a vote tonight. Piney told me that they might start muling for a drug cartel.”

I chewed on my lip. She was no doubt expecting some earth-shattering reaction. How could I tell her that I’d already known for almost an entire day?

“You’re kidding,” I said slowly.

“No, I’m not. And when I asked Clay about it, he almost took my goddamn head off. Said I was just an old lady and had nothing to do with it.”

I could feel my eyes widen at the thought. Nobody pushed Mom around. She was the most formidable woman in Charming. I stared at a skull that David had painted on the grey wall a few months back, hoping that Keith wouldn’t be able to see the shock in my face.

“So, um, what now?”

“Well there’s not much we can do. Piney’s against it, and I think Bobby is, too. Do you think Juice would vote for something like this?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

She sounded like she blew a breath out through her teeth. “Even he’s not dumb enough to do that, I guess.”

I ignored the cheap shot she took at Juice’s intelligence. This wasn’t the time or place to get defensive and start a fight. “I’ll look into that for you,” I said, hoping that I could play this off as a conversation with a distributor or interested customer.

“You can’t talk right now, can you?” Mom sounded disappointed.

“Not at the moment, no. But I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”

“Alright, baby. Tara’s stopping by when she’s finished work. You should, too.”

“I’ll see what I can come up with. Thanks.”

She hung up. I snuck a glance over at Marla and Keith as I hung up, but they were deep in conversation about some upcoming convention that David and Keith were both going to get to work. Marla and I were going to have the weekend off, but now it seemed that she was trying to convince Keith to let her open the shop in case we got some walk-ins who wanted a piercing.

“It’s only two days,” she pressed. “And you know you can trust me.”

“You can’t trust me,” I jumped in. “I don’t intend to be here those days.”

Keith laughed. “Unfortunately, I do trust you. But I still won’t make you work. Who was on the phone?”

“Oh,” I hopped off of the stool, pretending to look through the jewelry case. “My friend Madison just wanted to know what sizes of belly button rings we had in stock. She’s working late so she can’t come down and check them out. Apparently she needs some new variety for whatever new movie she has to do.”

“The porn star?” Keith grinned. “She can come in anytime and check them out. I’d probably open up after hours, just for her.”

“You know she’s like twenty years old, right?”

He shrugged. “She’s legal.”

“Gross.”

Keith looked over at the clock on the wall. “Oh, look at the time. You should go. And you should leave that porn star’s phone number here. Someone really ought to call her about those belly rings.”

“You’re terrible,” I chided. “But yeah, I should get going. I’ve got more important things to do than hang out here when I’m not even on the clock anymore.”

Marla waved me off. “Yeah, yeah. Go take care of your convict.”

I winked at her as I pulled my keys from the pocket of my jeans and headed for the door. “Oh, I intend to.”

I pulled onto the TM lot right behind Tara. Before I’d even killed the engine, I knew something was off. Mom was standing in the doorway of the garage office, staring over at the clubhouse and smoking a cigarette. I hurried from the car, following Tara over to where Mom was waiting. Before I reached them, I heard a bang. I spun around to see what had happened.

The door of the clubhouse was had crashed open and Bobby was stomping across the lot in a fury. I could practically see the smoke billowing from his ears. I’d never seen him this angry before. The rest of the guys milled out onto the pavement, quiet and slow. I tried to swallow, but found that nothing happened. I stood frozen as Bobby started his bike and peeled out of the parking lot.

I looked over at Mom and Tara. Mom had an air of resignation about her, and Tara looked confused. Maybe Jax hadn’t told her everything just yet. I turned back, catching Juice’s eye as I did. His shoulders slumped at the sight of me. I hadn’t listened to him when he’d asked me to stay away. But his body language told me everything that I needed to know about the vote. He ran a hand over his scalp, his head hanging low.

I didn’t wait for anyone to say anything. I jogged over to the clubhouse, pushing past the other club members. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Clay giving me a harsh glare. If he hadn’t wanted Mom to know about the cartel, he was probably incredibly pissed off when I wasn’t even bothering with the façade of not being in on the news.

“Tell me it didn’t pass,” I whispered, putting my palms flat against the leather of Juice’s cut. He avoided my eyes. “Come on, let’s go home,” I urged.

I didn’t look at anyone as I headed back to my car. I didn’t know who had voted this in, and quite frankly I didn’t want to. It would only make me look at them differently. It was bad enough that I knew that Clay and Jax had spearheaded the whole thing. I trusted my brother, but I couldn’t figure out why he would want to do something this stupid.

“Lexi!” Mom called out, still standing in the office doorway. Tara was no longer with her, but the cigarette was still burning in her long fingers. She waved me over, and reluctantly I went to meet her. “Something’s going on here,” she murmured as soon as I was within earshot. “Find out what you can and let me know.”

“I will,” I told her. I knew that I would tell her if I had anything worth passing on, but if Juice told me to hold my tongue I was going to listen to him. Mom could potentially ruin a lot of things, especially if she and Clay weren’t getting along.

Juice led the way home on his bike. The way that he was speeding made it seem like he needed a few minutes alone before I got home. Either that, or he was in a hurry to talk to me in private. In either case, I took my time getting home. The last thing I wanted to do was to come barging in when he needed space.

When I came in through the front door, he was sitting at the kitchen table in silence. I dropped my keys on the table and wordlessly crossed over to him. I stood behind him and bent down, wrapping my arms around his shoulders and kissing his cheek.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

Wordlessly, he shook his head. His silence stung just a little bit, but I knew that he probably just had too much going on inside of his head to properly sort it into coherent thoughts. I kissed him again and let him go, heading into the kitchen.

“I’ll make you something to eat,” I said as I opened the fridge and pulled out a couple of bottles of beer. I twisted off the caps and brought one to Juice before I took a drink of the other. “Piney told Mom,” I continued. “And apparently Clay didn’t like that very much. If he’s keeping Mom out, it seems like a pretty bad idea.”

Juice nodded slowly, staring at the beer bottle on the table. “Six-five,” he muttered. “We lost by one vote.”

“So what now? When does this come into effect?”

“I don’t know. Tomorrow we have to do a run to the Arizona chapter. It’s just guns, but we’ll be gone a couple of days. We’re meeting the guy from the cartel down there.”

I slid into the chair across from him, momentarily forgetting that I had promised to get him some food. “A couple days? Babe, you’re on parole. What if the cops call you in for a piss test and you’re across state lines?”

“Relax, it’ll be fine. Our PO signed off on it already; we’re going to a bike show while we’re there. There’ll be a paper trail and a solid alibi. We just have to set up our route for transporting the guns and cocaine,” he scratched at the side of his face, still not looking at me.

I sighed. “But you’re not dealing, right? You’re just transporting it?”

He looked up, and met my stare. His eyes were weary. “I promise you, Lex, we’re not dealing.”

“Do you think it’ll progress to it, though?”

Juice frowned, letting his hands fall flat against the table top as he slumped down in his chair. “Honestly? I don’t know. There was a time when I would have said we would never have anything to do with drugs. And clearly I would have been wrong about that.”

I chewed thoughtfully on my lip. “How much is too much, Juice?” I asked quietly.

His eyebrows knitted together over his eyes. “What do you mean?”

“I’m not suggesting anything, I’m just asking: where is the line? You’ve done so much for them. You’ve served a lot of time.”

Juice looked affronted, as if my words had been intentionally offensive. “I can’t bail on my club, Lex. You of all people should know that.”

“I do,” I assured him. “I just wanted to know where your head was at. And I want you to know that no matter what, I’m here. I’m with you. I might be your old lady, but I’m still your baby girl.”

His mouth flickered in a tiny smile. “You’ll always be my baby girl.”