Grape Juice from Lemons

CHAPTER XX

Him...

" Why would you, in the first place, throw the damn keys away? Why didn't you just hold on to them while you run? You dibshit." I gnaw in my apple as I search the tall and yellow grass for the damn keys to my Porsche.

" Because I was preoccupied with running. Do you really think I had time to check if I didn't lose the keys midrun? What if I did? We would have been in deeper crap."

" Deeper trouble than that?" I point towards something Nicola's dog had left behind. I can't help, but curl my toes at the thought of being this close to her. A few steps, feet, no longer miles apart as we shouldn't. We belong together. To think, her sleeping soft silky body is engulfed in a sheet and her naked frame hugged by a mattress. Her hips sinking lower into the bed with every breath that she-

" The hell does Nicola feed her dog?" He dusts himself off of the grass and soil on his knees. I folded my fingers into a fist. The slightest syllable of her name in someone else's mouth engulfs me in rage. They have no right to talk about her. To think about my Nicola.

" It would have been ten times more convenient for me if the cop would have caught up to you, and you were deported. Would have been less hassle for me. I would have been waking up right about now, talked to Smith about his lost chain, but no. I had to take you out for a walk." He rolls his eyes kicking a few rocks away. It was a mistake racing against him yesterday. I thought it would satisfy him, but it only made matters worse.

" Yeah? Well if you hate me that much? Why don't you just kick me out yourself big guy?" He dances on my nerves like a ballerina with the weight of a sumo wrestler. He knows what buttons to push because he has seen me mad. Enraged. 

" Oh, you think I haven't thought about that countless times? Listen here, when I get the order to kick you out, I will. With not as much as a blink of an eye." He tries to hold back a laugh.

" You just can't admit that you hate the fact that I'm not in your barbie cult with the rest of you low lived pricks-" I pulled out my FN Five-Seven pistol in seconds. Pulling a gun on him has become a norm for us. I do it every day.

" You're just asking for it at this point. You like the thrill of getting a gun pulled on you, is that it? Do you want me to beat you senseless? "

" No, I just enjoy getting on your nerves. It shows how weak the Mafia really is. It show's how weak you really are."

" You don't know a thing, you're not even in and you never will be. Keep talking with that big ass mouth of yours and I swear I'll send you out to thug mansion as I did with Tokyo. Do you think you're God? Ain't nothing keeping you here but me."

" That's not what the other's say." He dares to gloat.

" The other's can jump off a bridge for all I care! I run this show and I don't need any one of them by my side to win this fight against West! Against this murder case. You hide behind this slim wall of people who actually give a crap, but I swear you're getting what's coming for you." He rolls his honey eyes.

" Yeah, and what's that? A 100lbs blonde dude who drinks beers and talks crap and can't even take a shot without his hand starting to shake like a chihuahua?"

" How about a bullet somewhere where it won't come out?"

" You can't. Your morals won't let you kill me. Your quilt for what you did to me." My eyes glazed over. " You should see the wimp that would stare back at you when you look at a mirror. "

" Watch your mouth. " I get in his face before he pushes me away, skimming the ground for the keys.

" Go calm down." He kicks rocks as he takes a few steps back. We all get out of line sometimes, sure. But the way he flames up while talking to me leaves me to believe he'll stab me in my sleep one day.