In case you didn’t catch Part I, be sure to check it out.
Otherwise, here’s the conclusion to Pawn.
He didn’t feel his fist clench into a ball. He didn’t feel the veins in his neck fill with fire. He didn’t even feel his legs start to move. The only thing he felt was her hand in the passenger seat of the crumpled car. And the only thing he saw was Gordie look away for a second to chuckle.
Stori was on his feet in a flash, his mouth still bleeding and mixing with saliva on his tongue. As Gordie turned, Stori spit venom into his eyes. Blood and salt. Gordie tried to lift the gun but he was stumbling backward, blinking, rubbing at his eyes with his free hand.
“You motherfu–” Gordie’s nose snapped before he could finish.
The gun didn’t last long in Gordie’s right hand as Stori went to work. He brought his knee up into Gordie’s crotch, grabbed Gordie’s right arm as he doubled over and slammed it into the shelf behind them. The gun bounced across the shelf into the next aisle. Stori brought another fist down on Gordie’s head. Then an elbow. Another knee.
And he was back in the car.
“It’s just community college, Stori,” she’d said with a grin. “Even you can manage that.”
They’d just finished dinner at the Outback on the west side of town. Stori would never take her to the south side, even though the food was better and he would have killed for a taco from one of the taquerias near his apartment. When they went out, he wanted her to see the sunset, not tire shops and drug deals. He wanted her to see the Catalina mountains painted in streaks of orange and purple, to see the way the shadows of the saguaro grew long, stretching out east, almost like they were begging to be set free.
“School’s your thing, girl,” Stori had said, even though he’d been planning to surprise her with his class schedule when they got back to her mom’s house.
She turned to him and shook her head as she smiled. “You worried you’ll be the old kid in class?”
“22 is old.” Stori watched every light, every speed limit sign. He’d had a few drinks, but he felt fine. Still, he didn’t want to give any cop a chance to ask him to step out and say the alphabet backward. “I’d be a grandpa in there with a bunch of babies.”
“You calling me a baby?” She’d only been a year younger than him, but she had a good reason for starting school late. She’d called it a gap year. Stori had never heard of such a thing, but in her gap year, she’d volunteered at the St. Anne’s near her mom’s house, helping the church sort through mountains of immigration paperwork. That was something else he’d never heard of, a church helping people like his Dad get across legally.
Stori slowed at the next intersection, and when the light turned green, he eased back onto the gas pedal and turned toward her to say she was his baby, but he didn’t get the chance. Instead, he saw the headlights. He heard the metal folding in on itself, the car screaming like it felt the impact in its soul. That was the sound he would never be able to shake.
And that was the sound he heard in his ears when he came back to Gordie. Only it wasn’t the sound of the car. It was the sound of a wrench shattering Stori’s orbital bone on the right side of his face.