The Funeral of a Good Girl

By – TempestRaces

Chapter Twelve – Of Alley Cats and Getting Ugly

"Shit, we got trouble," Leon said to Jesse when he saw the group of three attracting attention.

"What's wrong?" Jesse and Dom asked in unison.

"I'd say Tempest met someone new and Vince is taking exception to it."

Dom looked in that direction. "And you guys wondered why I was against this thing between them from the get go."

"In her defence, he asked her to come with him tonight and then started talking to the regulars the second he was out of the car," Jesse stood up for his cousin.

"I'm not blaming her. I'm just sayin' that's just why I didn't like the idea. I knew something like this would happen." Dom rubbed a hand over his head. "Let's go break it up before it gets ugly."

The three started toward where Craig and Vince were going toe to toe with Tempest beside them, trying not to start throwing punches of her own.

"If you know it's none of your business, stay the fuck out of it."

"Guys don't grab girls around me if the girl doesn't want it. That's just how it is. She told you to leave her alone, so take her advice and leave her alone. I'll make sure she's ok until she finds her cousin." He had swiftly realized that Vince thought he had a claim on Tempest. Obviously when she'd decided she was finished with him, she hadn't let Vince in on it. But she was doing quite of job of it now, if Craig did say so himself. And dragging him right out into the middle with her. He wasn't happy about it, but he doubted very much she'd done it on purpose. After all, at first she had seemed totally wrapped up in his car, and its rare engine. In the end, it all came down to one thing. He wasn't letting Vince hurt the girl and he was hoping that it wouldn't come down to a fist fight in such a public place.

"The point here is that I can take care of myself. Have been for years and will be for some time into the future. But thank you for at least standing up for my right to chose instead of being dragged around the place as if by a caveman." She looked at Vince as she emphasized caveman.

"I didn't mean to imply you can't make up your own mind," Craig was quick to clarify.

"I know you didn't," Tempest reassured. "I appreciate finally finding someone who knows I'm able to make up my mind about what I want."

"So, how is everyone this evening?" Dom asked as he joined the group, slapping Vince on the back to make his presence known.

"I've been better, but that's starting to change," Tempest answered. "Dominic, this is Craig Everett. Craig, Dominic Toretto, Leon Strong, and Jesse Adams."

Everyone exchanged their 'nice to meet you's' as they tried to pretend Vince wasn't about to blow a gasket. It was hard to miss the fact that she hadn't introduced Vince to the newcomer. Tempest turned to Craig. "It was very nice to meet you Craig, and I'll likely see you around again on Saturday."

"Same to you, Tempest. I can't wait to see this Skyline."

Craig went back to his car. Tempest walked up to Jesse and leaned into him, suddenly disgusted with herself and feeling like she just might cry. She had finally met a nice guy, one who actually might want to keep her around for the long haul, treat her right, and accept the fact she had an intellect to match his own, and instead of putting the appropriate period to her 'thing' with Vince and seeing where things with this Craig guy could go, she still found herself bemoaning the lack of Vince's attention, pissed about the fact she had to use Craig Everett to snag his attention back from those sluts he was catting after. You are such a stupid bitch! Jesse wrapped an arm around her shoulders and gave her a squeeze.

"You ok?" he asked under his breath.

"Yeah, or I will be. Let's go over by your car. I gotta get away from this for awhile."

She and Jesse headed for the Jetta.

"What the fuck, V? What were you thinkin'?"

"She tried to pick up that Craig guy! What do you mean what was I thinking, Dom?"

"If you cared who she talked to Dawg, you shouldn't have let those three chicks hang off you in front of her."

Vince growled wordlessly at Leon when he was rebuked by his friend. "I forgot she was here."

"Yeah, I'm sure that's just what you want to say to her about the situation too," Dom said sarcastically. "You see why I was so against you'n her in the first place? You don't have the manners to treat one girl good for two whole weeks V."

"Shit, she should'a took it up with me in the first place, not wandered off to talk to a stranger."

"He seemed nice enough," Leon said. "His car'd be right up her alley."

Vince sighed after giving Leon a dirty look for having nice things to say about the blonde man it looked like Tempest had been trying to pick up right in front of him. "I told her that if she kept throwing this new asshole in my face I'd make life hard for him. She told me if I ever threatened her friends to try and make her tow my line again she'd ice me and find a place to bury the evidence."

Dom laughed. "That's kinda funny." Trouble indeed.

"Not when you consider the girl has better aim than I do and's been handling firearms since she was a kid."

"She's not likely to shoot you V. Ignore you for the rest of your life maybe," Leon grinned. "You're gonna be in the doghouse good. You pissed off T and made Mia right."

Vince groaned. "I did, didn't I?"

"Yeah," Dom answered, smirking. "Let's rejoin the ladies, who have congregated in a group with Tempest and Jesse and have been sending looks to kill us all ever since."

The three men dragged back over to the females of the team, where they stood with Jesse. Dom finally got called to a race, glad to go and get a break from watching everyone try to act normal and ignore the tension between Vince and Tempest.

"You wanna come listen to the scanners with me?" Leon asked Tempest as they started to move toward blocking off the street for the race.

"Sure," she answered and slid into the Skyline.

They drove to a street about half way down the race strip and blocked the mouth of it off on an angle. Leon kicked back in his seat and turned up the scanner. "So, you threatened to ice old Coyote, huh?" He watched a small smile lift the corners of her mouth.

"Yeah," she chuckled, finally breaking out of the depression she'd been in ever since it had dawned on her she'd allowed herself to be used just like a race skank. "The look on his face was worth all the shit up to and after."

"He likes you, you know? But he doesn't like it."

"That's a sentence that didn't make a hell of a lot of sense."

"Sure it does, just follow along. He likes you but it bugs him because he's not supposed to like you for you. He's supposed to like Mia that way. He's supposed to just sleep with other girls until she realizes what she's missing. He'd like to see you as Letty, but a version he's allowed to be friends with and take to bed at night. But he can't slap you into that mould. He cares what you think and do, but he won't let himself admit it's because he just plain likes you. He took you to a fair and won you a stuffed panda. That's more than a little out of character for V."

"It's more than a little out of character for me to be some guy's 'for a good time, call'. I will not let him get his jollies with those bimbos here and then be his easy conquest for tonight so he doesn't have to work for it. Fuck, I'm better than that and I use to know it."

"Don't be too hard on yourself. We all felt the sparks from the second you started fighting with him in the garage."

"Much as it pains me to admit it, I should have listened to Dom in the first place. Getting involved with any of Jesse's friends wasn't a good idea. It's just gonna be awkward for the rest of the time I'm around now."

"How do you know you won't make up with him?"

"'Cause in his opinion I was in the wrong just because I went to talk to a guy who wanted to talk to me about things that we're both interested in? I missed being talked to, not talked at. That Craig guy cared what I had to say and what I thought. He engaged me in a conversation at my level. He didn't keep tryin' to dumb it down so little ol me could understand."

"He wouldn't be jealous of you talkin' to Craig if he didn't care."

"Sure he would. He's just like an Alley tom cat, marking his territory whether he really wants it or not. Not to mention what he said about hurting Craig because I dragged him into the situation. No one's gonna blackmail me by threatening other people in my life. Fuck that shit. I don't need it, and I damn well am equipped to make the issue go away if it comes to that."

"You ever take care of a problem that way before?"

"By shooting someone and finding a nice, outta the way place to bury the body? No. But I think I could if I had to, if I felt threatened enough."

The voice of the female police dispatcher came across the scanner before Leon could have a retort. Both occupants of the Skyline looked at the blinking red lights on the front and listened. "All available units called to Lakewood, robbery in progress, hostage situation." A chorus of officers answering the call came back. Leon picked his Nextel off the dash.

"Got a hot one in Lakewood, we're good."

"We're on?" Hector's voice came back.

"Yeah, it's on. Let's race."

"Alright," Hector answered. He raised his arms and started the race. The cars flashed by where Tempest and Leon sat before streaking on to the finish line. It wasn't long before word came back that Dom had won. They all headed back to the alley. They stood around and shot the breeze for awhile before some other people decided to race. None of the team was involved so they decided to stay around the alley and hang out with the other people who weren't going to line the strip. Tempest drifted off with Letty to talk to some people. She slowly found herself drifting off alone.

She didn't know anyone around and wasn't sure if she even wanted to anymore. The whole place felt so superficial to her now, she didn't even want to stick around. Alone in a crowd. Just as she was about to get into her thoughts even deeper, a cry came across the alley. "Cops! Cops!"

"Shit," she muttered. Just what she wanted to deal with. She watched everyone scramble for their cars, watched Dom, Letty, Mia, Jesse and Leon reach their cars and take off. She threw up her hands with a sigh. What was she, invisible? No one could remember they took her someplace tonight? The only car that hadn't left was the Maxima, which Vince was rapidly running towards. No way, no how, not enough money in this world, she told herself. I'd rather get picked up and go to jail for the night than get back in his car.

Since the fight they'd shared, Tempest hadn't been far from his mind. So he wasn't really surprised to see Leon's tail lights end the line of the team's cars racing away, and see Tempest walking away from the alley, hands gesturing wildly as she talked to herself. It was like someone had asked 'what can I do to make his night even worse' and the answer had been 'make him her only avenue to get home without getting arrested.' He was sure it was going to go over real well when he tossed her in the car. There was no way he was going home without her. He'd be shot and she'd be in jail. Pissed at each other or no, she was getting in the car. He pulled up beside her. "Get in."

"There isn't anything on earth that could get me in your car," she snapped back, not even looking at him.

Since she kept on walking he kept on driving, coasting his car along beside her. "Goin' to jail over night isn't enough of an incentive for you to get in this car?"

"Rather do the time, thanks all the same."

He winced. "You'll worry Jesse. If I come home without you, and just lie and say I thought you were with one of them, Jesse'll just have to come looking for you. Get in the damn car."

Reminding her Jesse would worry, and feel guilty for abandoning her weakened her resolve. She was willing to go to jail without any ID on her person if it would just affect her. She wasn't willing to put Jesse through the guilt. And like the coyote his friends had nicknamed him after, he found her weak spot and went in for the kill. She stopped walking and he stopped the car. Once he had, she opened one of the back doors and slid in. If she had to be in his car, she didn't have to ride with him. Once the door was closed behind her, he took off like a shot, taking several quick turns to get them away from the area with the most heat. She looked out the side window as the scenery sped by.

"You gonna talk to me, or sit in the back seat and sulk?"

"Oh, I'm not sulking. I'm wallowing in self pity. There's a difference," she muttered.

"I don't follow you."

"Sulking would imply you had done something to put me in my place and I didn't like it. Wallowing in self pity implies that I hate what I've allowed myself to become and am busy wallowing in how it makes me feel so I'll know better for next time."

"What did you allow yourself to become?" he asked, against his better judgement.

"A whore," she answered, never taking her eyes off the view out the window.

He shook his head. "Where did you get that from?"

"Well, were we even friends, which I had assumed was what we were, you would not have asked me to come to an event with you, and proceeded to flaunt three other women in my face, all the while assuming I would still be going home with you. A woman who gives it up repeatedly just because it's there, and doesn't care if she's sharing the guy with umpteen-million other women is a whore. I never would have thought I would become one before meeting you. I seem to have been mistaken. But let me assure you I only make each mistake in my life once."

"It wasn't like that." He watched in the rearview as she leaned her forehead against the glass and closed her eyes.

"No? How was it like then? Come on now! I'm still waiting to have the big strong man tell poor little, stupid, female me how it was. 'Cause clearly I can't trust my own eyes to tell me how it is. I guess I just need a man to fill it all in for me."

"It was an accident! It wasn't like I was trying to pick up any of those girls. They're just race skanks. They hang off guys T, it's what they do. By the time I got away from them, I couldn't find you."

"I see," she answered, never opening her eyes or lifting her forehead off of the cool glass. "It took you twenty minutes to shake off three chicks who never saw the inside of a gym in their lives and come find me? You, who will participate in a fist fight with your best friend over an argument about why you blew off work for a day, put up with three girls holding you somewhere against your will for over twenty minutes? Because I was talking to Craig for at least that long before you came to make an asshole of yourself. Not to mention that you mustn't have been trying too hard to get clear of them if it took you twenty minutes to get away from the level of intelligence they'd be playing with. I mean, wouldn't simply telling them to go piss in the corner of a round room entertain them for days?"

If he hadn't been so angry as it was over the whole situation, he would have had to laugh at her question. She was likely right. But he was in no mood to joke about it with her at the moment. "Ok, shit! What'd you want? Blood? I got caught up in the routine. That's just same shit, different race for me. Those girls are always around and normally I chat them up. What'd you want me to say? They started talkin', I pretended to listen, and I lost track of time."

When he would have to swear he saw a tear roll down her cheek he knew that no matter what she wanted him to say, what he had said had been the wrong thing.

"I'm glad to know I'm so important and memorable that my own cousin left me for the cops to pick up and the guy I was sleeping with several times a day for the last four days forgot I was with him the second I was outta his direct line of sight."

"Fuck me," he growled under his breath. He couldn't find the right thing to say to her to save his life. "I didn't mean it like that."

"You don't seem to know exactly what you mean tonight. I think it has something to do with not knowing what to say to magically make the situation all better." She opened her eyes to look out the window. "Where the fuck are we? We should be home by now."

"We should but we're not. We're not going home until we work some of this shit out."

"There's nothing to work out. I was easy tail for you and you helped me see it for what it was and now I'm not willing to have any of it. Take me home. I'm sure at least one of the three hos you're so used to will be around Dom's."

He shook his head but fell silent. He wasn't trying to reason with her any further while driving with her in the back seat when no one was in the front. No one was where she belonged. He turned the car toward the coast.

When everyone arrived home it was to the realization they had all assumed Tempest was with one of the others. Dom looked around at everyone. "What do you mean no one knows where she is?"

"I thought she was with Leon," Jesse answered, looking frightened. "The last time I saw her she was off with Leon."

"I thought she was with Jesse," Leon admitted.

"We thought she was with Leon or Jesse," Mia said, indicating her statement included Letty.

"I thought she was with the two of you," Dom told the girls. "Where's Vince?"

"Never made it home," Leon said.

"Well, we can hope she's with him, I guess," Dom said, rubbing his head in agitation at the same time. "And that they're not killing each other someplace."

"I don't think she'd go with Vince. I honestly think she'd rather go with the cops at this point," Jesse said. "I better go try to find her."

"I'll go," Dom said. He felt responsible. He was supposed to look out for his team, and while she was staying in his house, that included Tempest. Like her or not, want her there or not.

"Why don't we call Vince and see if he has her before we go searching all over town?" Leon asked.

"Finally, one good idea in a night of horrible ones," Dom said, trying to lighten the mood. It didn't work. He picked up the phone and dialled Vince's cell.

Vince heard his phone ringing and pulled it out of his pocket. He checked the call ID and saw the house number. "Fuck it," he snarled. He knew he'd have to answer it. He took a deep breath to try and calm down a notch before answering. "What?" he roared. Clearly his relaxation technique left something to be desired.

"Where the fuck are you?"

When Dom's question came across the line, tinged with genuine worry, he sighed. Of course the team was worried because he hadn't gone straight home to check in. "I'm in the car, getting away from the cops."

"She with you?"

"Yeah," Vince answered. He wanted to add a tirade about everyone else forgetting her when they knew she wasn't speaking to him, but he didn't think it would go over so well when he'd basically forgotten her too.

"When you comin' back here?"

"Dunno. When I do. Later." He didn't wait for Dom's answer. He just hit end, powered the phone off and chucked it in the empty passenger seat.

"She's with him. He sounded pissed, but at least the cops didn't get them."

"So what now?"

"We have our party. She's a big girl as she's always tellin' us. She can handle herself around Vince. She already proved that."

The team joined their guests. Only Jesse felt really bad about basically throwing Tempest to the wolves, or to the Coyote, as the case was. But as he sucked back Corona he slowly started to relax past it. She could take care of herself, he just knew that in this case she wouldn't want to.