Chapter One
She was the only nice looking thing about the place. The air was thick with smoke and grime, the floors were sticky and almost as slimy as the clientele, but the girl who worked the bar was a Midwest farmer's daughter type straight out of a wet dream. When I sat down at the bar inside of Benny's to wait for Tim Shepard after I got off work that Thursday afternoon, she came right over to me and raised her dark eyebrow from the backside of the bar. It was obvious that she wanted to know what I wanted to drink. I stared back at her stonily for a moment, wondering if she would tell me what I wanted to know willingly, or if I would spend my whole night sitting at the beat up bar that badly needed a new coat of varnish and never get to talk to Shepard. She glared back at me, tipping her chin up and squaring her shoulders, like she was sizing me up before a fight. Tough cookie, huh? I sighed and figured I might as well get comfortable. "Beer, please," I said quietly, tapping my callused fingers on the beaten bar top. She pulled a bottle out and fluidly popped the cap on a mounted churchkey before sliding it my way with a small, surprisingly kind smile. I took a sip of the cold, metallic brew as she scribbled something on a small notebook just out of sight behind the bar. "Tim been around yet tonight?"
She looked up at me, her eyebrows knit together. I could see the thoughts running through her head as clearly as if they were printed across her forehead. What does a nice guy like you want with that hood rat? I knew that look, it was the question that came up over and over again over the course of our friendship- no friendship was too strong of a word, partnership was more accurate, or alliance. She stared at me another minute before cocking her head from side to side, mulling over the faces she had seen that day, shrugging her shoulders and shaking her head. "You've got the better view of the door, if you see him before I do, will you give me a heads up?" For some reason, it didn't strike me as odd that she never said a word. Her face and body expressed so much that it was like she was speaking. None of the other patrons seemed bothered by her silence either. She offered quick service with a raise of her brows and a tilt of her chin, always keeping track of the tabs in that yellow notepad. I watched her move around, happy for the distraction from the business I came to Benny's to discuss.
Those brown eyes of hers left a hitch in my throat and an ache in my heart. They were the same warm chocolate brown as Soda's and my mother's and she had the same dark blonde hair as them too. Brown eyed blondes weren't the most common thing, and to see her when I was still missing Soda was cutting. My mother, I would always miss. The bartender was tall but strong, not willowy and waif like. For a moment my mind lapsed so far as to imagine her throwing bales of hay at the stables Soda used to ride at. In my daydream, she wasn't wearing jeans and an apron like she was behind Benny's bar, but a pair of cut off shorts so short that her pockets hung out the front and her shirt tied up around her midriff. Her hair, bleached to a shining gold by the sun falling in messy waves around her face…shit. What was I doing? This was not like me, drifting off and fantasizing about girls. I started to question my sanity, thinking I really was really losing it in Soda's absence. I was turning into Ponyboy, I groaned as I scrubbed my eyes with the heels of my hands and took a long draw off of my beer.
She paced the bar, serving everyone who needed it, but once a lull in business came, she parked herself in front of me, watching me carefully, her silent questions again written all over her pretty face. I wondered if everyone else could tell exactly what she was thinking, or if it was just me. I looked back, failing miserably at looking nonchalant. Her steady gaze made me uneasy, because I was pretty sure she was looking straight into my soul and figuring out exactly what made me tick.
An hour passed, with me waiting for Tim and her digging into the inner reaches of my soul with her eyes every time she had a spare moment, and no sign of Tim or Curly Shepard. Pony would be home from work soon and would be hungry and suspicious if I wasn't there. Normally, I would just shrug that off and say that they kid would be fine, but this errand made me nervous in every way. Between hanging out at this sleazy bar looking for the Shepards, the fact that I had to talk to them about their nutty kid sister, Ponyboy's express wishes that I keep my nose out of the whole situation and now this girl eyeballing me, I was ready to drink myself into a stupor and slink out the door. With every moment I felt less and less like the Darrel Curtis, Jr who was twenty-two by years, but much older by experience and grit, who was a football star and leader of the gang of neighborhood guys, who was Superman, and more like a fish out of water. Beads of sweat prickled on my brow, but as she moved away down the bar, it got slightly easier to breathe and regain my composure.
Fifteen minutes later, I was ready to give up and go home. Lord knew what Shepard was up to or when he would decide to show his face, and family business like this had to be taken care of directly. No middle men, no messengers. I tried to flag down the blond, but she had her back to me, so I stood on the foot rail of the barstool and leaned over the counter see how much I owed on his tab, stupidly assuming that was all she was recording on her notepad behind the counter. The list of names was a mixture of real names, regulars whose names she knew, and then various nicknames and clues to help her remember who owed what. Chin scar, Elvis Lookalike and Asshole in tight pants were a few that I managed to read upside down, chuckling, before she rushed over and pushed me back into my seat so hard that my teeth clicked together and I had to grip the sticky mahogany to keep from going head over stool legs down to the floor. Her face was flushed with embarrassment, her eyes cold and accusing. "I'm sorry," I laughed jovially, once I righted myself, "I just wanted to pay my tab." I couldn't help myself, seeing her so flustered, and winked, "But now you have me nervous that I might be the asshole in tight pants." She flushed even darker, but the warmth and sparkle flooded back into her dark eyes and a smile played with her lips. They weren't lush or full, but they weren't thin and rigid either and they were perfectly drawn on her face with a deep, shapely cupid's bow. Her smile was lopsided, but not in an intentional smirking way. I felt myself grin widely as her eyes scanned the room, pointing out the jerk whose pants were so far too small that they looked like they might spit him out into the ceiling tiles at any moment. I snorted out a laugh, trying to remain inconspicuous for her sake and looked back up at her. She had the notepad in hand and was struggling with whether or not to let me see it. Her mouth twisted up to the left, higher side of her mouth, eyes slipped down the day's list coming to rest on the right line. After a moment of thinking, she reluctantly set it in front of me and placed her finger next to my total, her face turning pink. My eyes eyes followed the line across and my ears grew hot as I read her delicate slanted handwriting, Hunk waiting for Tim.
I think we were both thankful when her attention was pulled back down to the other end of the bar by someone wanting a drink. It had been a long time since I felt that silly over a girl. For the longest time, grieving and keeping Pony and Soda out of the Boy's Home had consumed my every thought and waking moment. Girls weren't in the picture, there was no room for them. But, as things settled down after Ponyboy came back from Windrixville and Soda got over Sandy, I went on a few dates here and there, but nothing got beyond a second date. Not surprisingly, twenty-one year old girls were not all that keen to get serious with a guy who would spend the next three years as the legal guardian to a teenager. They wanted dates with dinner and dancing, parking and making out by the lake, romantic proposals and promises of secure lives in a house with a washer and dryer. My money went to feeding three bottomless pit guys and keeping the lights on. My time went to the roofing crew and checking over Ponyboy's math homework. All I had was a house with a washer that would be shared with a throng of loud teenage boys for the foreseeable future. No girl in her right mind would want that, and no girl I met had been brave enough to give it a try.
Another lull came, where everyone was content with the drinks they had in front of them for a minute. She restlessly paced, some part of her body moving at all times, whether she was walking, wiping the counters, flipping through her notepad or drumming her fingers anxiously against the bar top while she watched the dregs of what was once the Shepard gang play pool in the corner. The organized warfare between gangs might be old news, but hoods never changed. Watching them cuss, roughhouse and generally make assholes of themselves, I felt a sigh escape my lips. She cocked a beautifully arched brow at me and smiled her lopsided smile with a question in her eyes. I laughed, feeling heat rise up from the collar of my t-shirt towards my ears, "Watching them makes me feel old. I remember when I would have thought that bumming around a bar with my buddies, cussing and playing pool sounded like the picture of cool. Now, I just think they look like a bunch of jackasses."
They are, she mouthed with another smirk, though this one seemed intentional.
"Its not all their fault," I said, trailing my finger down the condensation on my beer bottle, "put a bunch of teenage guys in a group, and they'll somehow turn it into the Olympics of Stupidity. It don't matter where they come from, how much money they have or nothing else. If they don't have a purpose to focus on that they believe in, they'll find one and it usually will be the worst idea possible."
She pulled her notepad out from under the counter and began scribbling. Voice of experience? Her answers were clipped to keep pace, but her face, that teasing look made it like the words on the page were no different than hearing her.My hand subconsciously went to the back of my neck while I fought the guilty smile that was threatening to crack. She laughed, and it was a rasp, a whisper, a sweep of air through broken pipes. Shit-eating grin, she wrote in answer, underlining each word for emphasis.
"My brothers and I, we been on our own for a few years now. I know I was a dumbshit in high school, but I had football and good grades. I was focused, and mostly kept my nose clean." She raised that eyebrow in disbelief and that smirk pulled up her perfect lips. "Mostly!" I defended, chuckling. "But my kid brothers…between Soda being plain crazy and Pony being off in his own little world too much of the time, the two of them were jackass magnets. We always had some of the neighborhood guys in our house and they were usually getting ready to cause trouble or recovering from causing trouble."
Sounds fun! Not like this lot.
"It was." I answered quietly. "Loud, crazy, nerve wracking, but fun."
Just as we were getting our feet back underneath us, believing that a new normal was possible, the letter came that brought everything crashing down again, the letter that sent Sodapop to Fort Sill, Texas and then Vietnam. He made it through basic and overseas, and so far as we knew, he was ok, but he wasn't home. We were managing in his absence, but every letter he sent home sounded like he was expecting our next letter to contain the news that we had killed each other in a heated argument. I learned after Windrixville that I couldn't bully Pony into doing things my way; I mellowed some and learned to keep some of my more perfectionistic tendencies to myself in the name of household peace. Sure, we still argued plenty, and neither one of us had any clue where the other was coming form most of the time, but we were both too stubborn and too loyal to our brother to walk out on the other again. We forgave each other time and time again for Soda, to prove to him that his talented and charming mediation wasn't the only thing that held our little family together and that he needed to worry more about himself and less about the two of us. I almost lost Ponyboy to the Boy's Home twice now, I wasn't going to be the reason the kid got hauled away now, nor was I going to be the one to end him. But it was hard to remember sometimes, and when things were at their worst, I really missed Soda's ability to explain Ponyboy to me.
A cool hand on my forearm and the zing of electricity from where she touched me straight to my heart brought me out of my thoughts. H dark eyes looked into mine. Tim she mouthed, hooking her index finger and drawing it down her face from temple to chin in imitation of Shepard's trademark scar. Her eyes lifted and directed my attention to the door. I pulled seventy five cents out of the pocket of my jeans and set it down on the bar to settle my tab and gave her a tight smile before planting myself in Tim's path to the back room. "Curtis," Tim greeted cooly, extending a hand, which I took and shook with a firm grip. Even after knowing the guy since kindergarten, I always forgot how slight he was. Even those who knew him got fleeced by the persona, the rep, the legend, that was Tim Shepard. He was almost as tall as me, right around six foot, but thin and wiry with a permanent slouch and swagger to his stance. Pony once said that he reminded him of a jungle cat, and for the first time, I saw it. The sleek black hair, the fluid way he moved through the room and the sharp eyes were all predatory. "Been a long while. Things got quiet around here."
"I like quiet," I answered, drawing my mouth into a thin line. "Someone disturbing the peace and quiet in my neck of the woods is why I'm here. Is there somewhere more private we can talk?"
"Its a bar, Darrel. Privacy comes at a fucking premium." Tim's sneer started a slow smolder of contempt in the pit of my stomach.
I leaned in, my voice low, level and firm, the voice Dad used to use with Dallas, "You want me airing your sister's dirty laundry in front of the whole room, then we can talk here, but to my mind this is business between just you and I, Shepard. Your call."
Tim's eyes narrowed, his face stony as he searched mine for a hint of a joke. Finding none, he pushed past, ramming his narrow shoulder into mine. He cleared the back room with just a look, looking every bit like a panther in a cage at a zoo and once we were alone, Tim sunk into a chair and wove his slender fingers together, looking up quizzically. "What, or maybe I should ask who, has Angel done now?"
The only power I had over Tim was a slew of past alliances and physical size, so even though I was tired after a full day on the rooftops of Tulsa, I stayed standing, my muscular arms crossed over my broad chest. A front, I had to let him know that even though the old days were gone, I had no problem pounding him into a puddle of ink and hair grease if I didn't like his answers. "You know anything about a fight at the high school a few weeks ago, during a dance?"
"I don't make it my business to patrol school dances no more."
"So the dipshit that Angela roped into jumping Ponyboy wasn't one of your dipshits?" Tim's inky blue eyes widened. "Word has it that she didn't take kindly to him turning her down."
"Fucking bitch!" Tim muttered under his breath, giving me the answer that I was looking for. "Some days, this circus 'round here gets out of control and the fucking monkeys start thinking they can run shit. Especially that little crazy one with more hormones than she knows what to do with."
"I figured I should come make sure Angel was working on her own gumption and that you weren't being stupid enough to cross my little brother without so much as the courtesy to try and let me know first," I said. "You know the score, our score. You and I don't do shit that way." My voice remained low and even, but dangerous all the same and Tim knew exactly what I meant. Times changed, the gangs, the rumbles and all of that was done, but loyalty wasn't dead. Tim and I had a certain code when it came to our siblings.
"Kid get hurt?"
"Think we'd be talking all friendly like if he did?" I growled, setting my jaw and narrowing my blue eyes as I stared down at the panther turned house cat. "Luckily, another kid stepped in. Lucky for you, the other kid went to the hospital after getting his head busted with a bottle, not Ponyboy."
"Consider the matter taken care of," Tim answered, waving his hand passively. "I'll put Angel straight and let the boys know to check with me before they go off doing the Wicked Witch's bidding." He grinned up at me ruefully, "Truth be told, I'd already have a handle on her if I wasn't scared of her. She really is fucking crazy."
"She makes me glad I got stuck raising brothers instead of sisters," I agreed, pulling a sardonic chuckle out of Tim.
The howls and scuffle of a fight breaking out in the main bar drew the old allies to the door. One of Tim's boys, Ronny McCarthy had another guy by the throat over by the pool table. Quick as a flash, the blonde was over the bar, shoving McCarthy, pointing at the door and mouthing OUT! but he easily flung her aside. I, not being the type to see a woman, especially a pretty one I spent the better part of the last two hours flirting with, get hurt started forward, but was stopped by the lean arm of Tim Shepard. "Therese can hold her own and she wont thank you for getting in her way. Don't let the pretty face fool you, she's a beast." The pretty blonde leapt to her feet, rolling her neck a bit before palming the cue that was abandoned on the pool table when the fight broke out and slamming it down hard on the edge of the table, snapping it in half. She had their attention now, the sharp crack ringing through the room. Tim's eyes were wide, a leering smile on his face. "If the mute thing didn't creep me out, Ida been all over that ages ago when I hired her." She pushed herself between the two hoods, brandishing the jagged butt end of the cue like a knife, pressing the splinters up into McCarthy's chin, shoving him backwards. Outside, she mouthed and pointed to the door.
"Tim?" McCarthy called out quietly, his voice shaking with panic. She flipped the bird in Tim's direction and pulled a hooked finger down her face, obviously meaning Fuck Tim, which made the lean cat next to me chuckle with glee.
My bar, she mouthed.
"You heard the lady, loud and clear and you know the rules," Tim called loudly, "you take your fights outside. You don't shit where you eat. Fucking animals." The last two words he muttered under his breath. She stood, chest out, back straight, holding the splintered wood to McCarthy's throat until he let go of the other guy and backed away. She sauntered over to the two men in the doorway and stared at Tim for a long while, eyes narrowed, face pinched, gripping the pool cue like he might be the next one to get the dangerous end of it. I saw the long nagging tirade she wanted to throw at Shepard building in her eyes, knowing she could never deliver it. Instead, she grabbed the hood's hand and slapped the blunt end of the cue into his palm and curled his fingers around it. "Yeah, yeah, I got it, Therese, new pool cue." He looked up at me, "These dumbasses cost me a fortune in cues and chairs with their bullshit." She stalked back to the bar leaving the us, one with a smirk and one with his mouth hanging open. "Close your mouth, Curtis," Tim chided.
I shook off his shock and pulled myself together. "Did I catch her right? Her bar?"
Shepard chuckled and smoothed his hair back, "You caught her right, but it ain't her bar; its my bar. She just gets a little possessive of the place, being here more than me." I couldn't keep my mouth from falling open with shock again, reeling at the thought of Tim Shepard as a business owner. Tim openly guffawed and slapped me on the back, "Its a nice front, ain't it? Keeps attention off of some of my…extracurriculars." He winked an inky blue eye and slunk back into the back room, closing the door to keep my nose out of his…extracurriculars.
I checked my watch and swore under my breath, I'd be lucky if Pony hadn't gotten it in his head to go off on some wild goose hunt, looking for me. It was my own fault for being such a slave to my routines, never straying. Pony was always sure that something bad happened to me if I was late. I couldn't blame the kid for that, in our experience, something bad usually did happen when someone didn't come home when they were supposed to. Still, Ponyboy was sixteen years old and in his junior year of high school. If common sense didn't find him soon, it might never find him. I turned and gave a long look at the blonde behind the bar, wanting to go talk to her again, but sure that I should hustle on home. She was watching me too, and that was all the push that I needed. A raise of her eyebrows, all business, flick of her chin. "I'm done for tonight, thank you. Tim said your name is Therese." A nod and a squinted, scrutinizing gaze was the answer I got. "My name is Darrel, Darrel Curtis. It was real nice talking to you while I waited tonight." I offered her a smile and my hand, and she took both with a wary smile back before opening to a fresh page in her yellow notepad.
Therese Dawson, she wrote.
I smiled again, my ears heating up again. "Much as I don't want to come here ever again, I have a feeling I will. The company here is too good to pass up." She grinned mischievously and made her pantomime for Tim again and I laughed aloud. "Tim has never been good company, but we go way back watching each other's backs and slapping around each other's kids siblings." She whistled long and low and made and evil face and a pantomime of long curly hair around her head. "Yeah, Angel's who I was here about tonight. She's…something else."
She picked up her pen, Good thing you don't think he's good company. I would have had a hard time following my own rules if you two were good friends.
"Rules?" This girl was a mystery, a puzzle to solve. A puzzle was just what I needed in his sad, boring life.
.
Rule one: keep away from all friends and family of Tim Shepard.
"Would it make you feel better about your rules to know that I haven't seen him in nearly two years and it took me over a week to find him here?" Her face lit up with a smile that reminded me so much of a taller, wilder version of my mother that it almost made me tear up. God, she was breathtaking. She nodded and went back to scribbling and I watched her enthralled with my pulse thudding dully in my ears and my stomach doing wild backflips.
Off on Sunday, want to take a drive? I don't want you to have to come here either.She handed the pad up to me with a lopsided smile, the left side higher than the right and as I read her offer I felt like he was back in school, starting fullback on the field after a win. I didn't think; I didn't hesitate. The moment my eyes translated her scrawl, my answer was out.
"Where do I pick you up?"
Right here, she mouthed, patting the bar and giving him another dazzling smile.
-A/N: Hey all, Pixie here! Therese popped into my head early this morning insisting I tell her story instead of working on the writing I get paid for. She was very persistent, so I obliged. The Curtis boys and the Shepards are not mine, They belong exclusively to S.E. Hinton, and the title is credited to Van Morrison's song "Brown Eyed Girl.
Hey y'all, I just edited this, added a few little exchanges between Therese and Darry and changed POV from 3rd person to 1st person, but still Darry narrating, because that's how the rest of the chapters seem to be evolving. Nothing earth shattering was added, mostly just smoothing some rough edges. Happy reading!