He was also her best friend and the one she had to all but carry home on several occasions because he was too drunk to find his way. How many times had she taken off his shirt and shoes and tucked his grown ass in bed? Too many too count, but she would continue to do it because she was a fool in love with her best friend.
“How much do I owe ya, Kid?” Abe took his wallet out and pulled out a twenty before handing it over to Sophia. She hated when he called her Kid, a silly nickname he had given her when they were little. She supposed the nickname was inevitable since her name was Sophia Kidd, and she’d prefer Abe use it than some asshole trying to be witty. She was bound to have someone calling her that.
She took the twenty and handed him his change. He shook his head and stood. Abe always gave her the change as a tip even if the bill had been two bucks and he gave her a twenty. She’d learned early on that it would do no good to argue with him, so she smiled and tucked the money in her back pocket. Maybe he thought it was her small fee for putting up with his shit over and over again. She smiled at her thoughts.
The light hit Maxi’s—or whatever her name was—seriously bad dye job. The dark roots stood out on top of her head, and Sophia could see she was far older than she originally appeared.
Lines crinkled around her eyes and mouth, but the woman attempted to cover it up with a thick layer of foundation. The end result made her look like some kind of wax mannequin. It was so not attractive. Disgust and jealously slammed into Sophia at the thought of him taking Maxi home, whether she knew that was the truth or not.
“You good, Kid?” Abe looked over his shoulder at her, and she nodded. He always asked her this before he left the bar. Well, when he was sober enough to actually walk out.
Tiny’s was only a few blocks from his house, a small cottage-style home his parents left him when they both died in a car accident years ago. On the nights he knew he wasn’t going to be getting drunk, he took his Harley out, a beautiful FXDC Dyna Super Glide he customized himself. Sophia wasn’t into motorcycles like that, but there was something darkly sexy about seeing Abe ride up on that machine, his white T-shirt and tattoos, worn denim jeans, and black boots making him appear as dangerous as he really was.
He turned around and leaned over the counter to kiss Sophia on the cheek. He could be sweet when he wanted to. He stalked out, the tattoos covering his back visible through his shirt.
“Girl, when are you going to tell him?”
Sophia looked away and finished drying the glasses she just washed. Steph, the other bartender, wiped down the counter beside her. “I mean, it’s clear as day you got it bad for that boy, yet you don’t have the balls to tell him. Why?”
Sophia turned and stared at the other woman. Steph was in her late thirties, and the world had not been good to her. Weathered and rough, she looked like the kind of woman who’d ride on the back of a Chopper, her ‘80s-style hair blowing behind her and her tits practically hanging out. Steph lost her husband, a big guy named Zachariah, a year ago. Sophia didn’t know the details, but she knew he had been in some kind of motorcycle club.
There had been rumors floating around their small town about illegal shit happening with rival clubs and how Zachariah died as a result of that. For a long time, Steph had been in bad shape over it, and rightly so, but each day, she got better.
Sighing loudly, Sophia didn’t know how to respond. Everyone knew how close she and Abe were. Hell, she lived in this shitty little town her whole life. With a mother who cared more about her next fix than her daughter and a father who left before she was born, Sophia learned the hard way how to get through life. Abe had been there through it all. Sophia didn’t want to think where she would be right now if Abe hadn’t been in her life.
“Listen to me, honey.” Steph leaned in close, and the smell of stale cigarettes wafted over Sophia. Being so close to Steph showed her just how worn out the woman really was.
Her gray eyes were hard and spoke of a thousand different lives. She knew her way around the world and pushed away anyone who was in her way. She didn’t give a shit if people got hurt. Sophia sometimes wished she could be like that, so hard and unworried about what others thought. She wasn’t made that way though.