Rachel Gibson - Crazy On You

“Okay.”

He shifted the ball from one arm to the other. “See ya later, Lily.”

No way could she call him Tucker. He might not be as young as she’d first thought, but he still was young and hot and an outrageous flirt. He was dangerous for a single mother in a small town. A big old hunk of hot flaming danger for a woman who’d finally lived down her wild reputation. “Deputy Matthews.”

Tucker stretched his arms upward and moved his head from side to side. It was 0800 in Amarillo and he was just finishing up the paperwork from the night before. He’d made two DUI arrests, issued three moving violations, and had responded to a 10-91b in Lovett. The noisy animal in question had been a fat Chihuahua named Hector. The dog’s elderly owner, Velma Patterson, had cried and promised to keep the ankle-biter quiet and Tucker had let her off with a verbal warning.

“It was that horrible Nelma Buttersford who called. Wasn’t it?” Ms. Patterson wept into a rumpled tissue. “She hates Hector.”

“I’m not sure who called,” he’d answered.

Tucker rose from the desk. That’s what he liked about working in Potter County. There wasn’t a lot happening on a Sunday night. Not like Harris County. He liked the slower pace that gave him time to plow through his paperwork.

No, not much happened, and he was fine with that. He’d seen a lot of action in Iraq and Afghanistan, and later after joining the department in Houston. Here, there was just enough going on to keep him interested, but not so much that it kept him up at night.

At least not yet. But it would. Bad things happened sometimes and he’d signed up for the job to deal with them. For as long as he could remember, he’d been dealing with bad things. He knew how to survive when shit went south.

He moved to the locker room and opened the locker with his name printed on cloth tape. He unbuttoned his beige and brown long-sleeved work shirt and pulled at the Velcro tabs at his shoulders and the sides of his waist. The vest weighed a little under ten pounds. Nothing compared to the body armor he’d worn in the military. He set it inside the locker and buttoned his shirt over his black tactical undershirt.

“Hey, Matthews,” Deputy Neal Flegel called out as he entered the locker room. “Did you hear about the 10-32 up at Lake Meredith?”

He’d heard the call over the radio. “Yeah. What kind of idiots are out on the lake that time of night?”

Flegel opened his locker and unbuttoned his shirt. “Two idiots fishing in a leaky ten-foot aluminum boat, no life jackets, and a cooler full of Lone Star.”

He knew from listening to the radio that they’d recovered one body close to shore. Another deputy, Marty Dingus, entered the locker room and he and Neal shot the shit like two old compadres. Brothers. Tucker had had a lot of compadres. Brothers in arms. Some of them he’d straight-up hated but would have died for. A sheriff’s department wasn’t unlike the military in that regard. They both played by big-boy rules. He was the new guy in Potter County. He’d been in this spot before, and he knew how to roll and adapt and get along for the sake of the job. He looked forward to getting to know the deputies here in his new home.

“How do you like Potter County so far?” Marty asked. “Not quite as hot as Harris County.”

Tucker reached for his jacket inside his locker. Marty wasn’t talking about the temperature. “That’s what I like about it.” He’d been in a enough “hot” places to last him a lifetime.

Neal peeled off his vest. “Did you find a place to live?”

Tucker nodded and shut his locker. “I took your advice and found a house in Lovett. On Winchester. Not far from the high school over there.”

“Winchester?” Neal frowned in thought. Both deputies had been born and raised in Lovett and still lived there with their families. “Do we know anyone who lives on Winchester?” he asked Marty.

“Now?” Marty shrugged and shook his head. “When we were in school, the Larkins… Cutters… and the Brooks girls.”

“That’s why it sounds familiar.” Neal set his vest inside his locker. “Lily Darlington lives on Winchester. She bought the house right next door to her mama.”

Marty laughed. “Crazy Lily?”

Crazy Lily?

“Some of my earliest wet dreams involved Crazy Lily.” Both men laughed and Tucker might have appreciated the humor if he hadn’t recently had his own sex dream about Lily Darlington.

“She’s my neighbor.” Tucker shoved his arms into his jacket. “Why do you call her crazy?” She hadn’t acted crazy around him. More like she’d driven him crazy in that white sweater yesterday. He’d taken one look at her tits in that sweater and all the blood in his head had drained to his pants.

“I don’t think she’s crazy these days,” Neal said. “Not like when she used to dance on tables.”

Lily danced on tables? “Professionally?”

“No. At parties in high school.” Marty laughed. “Those long legs in a pair of tiny shorts and Justin’s were something to see.”

Jesus.

“She’s not like that anymore,” Neal defended her. “I think that concussion she got driving her car into Ronnie’s front room back in ’04 knocked some sense into her.”

Jesus, Joseph, and Mary. “Who’s Ronnie?”

“Her ex.”

“And she drove her car into his front room? On purpose?”

“She always said her foot slipped on account of a migraine,” Neal answered. Both men laughed and Neal continued: “She was never charged with anything, but everyone knows Crazy Lily Darlington drove her car into that house on purpose. She came real close to being 5150’d.” Neal shrugged. “But she was already in the hospital for few days, so it didn’t make sense.”

5150? Tucker had picked up a 5150 last year in South Houston. The schizophrenic woman had locked herself in her bedroom for three days and had been eating her mattress.

“It was just a good thing Ronnie was off with his latest,” Marty added.

Holy Jesus. He was having crazy sex dreams and lusting after a crazy woman. A woman who’d possibly tried to kill her ex by running her car into his house and had almost been locked up on a 5150 hold. That piece of info should be enough to shrivel his nuts, but it didn’t. He thought of her and Pippen and her fierceness. He thought of her hands on his own chest, and his hands running up long legs, and he didn’t know who was crazier. Him or Crazy Lily Darlington.

Lily pulled the Jeep into her garage and left the door up. She’d dropped Pippen off at school and gone to Albertson’s for a few groceries. She had a lot to do before Pippen got home from school.

She got out of the car and walked toward the curb. Pippen had been so excited after talking to Ronnie yesterday. The thought of going to Odessa with his daddy kept him wired all day and night, and he’d had a hard time falling asleep.

A big beige garbage can sat at the curb and she grabbed the handle to pull it into the garage. The cold plastic chilled her palm and she glanced up as Tucker’s silver Tundra pulled into the drive next door. She quickly returned his wave and ducked her head as she tugged the big can into her garage. Pippen had gone on and on about Tucker too. Tucker was going to teach him to dunk and free throw, and juke. Whatever that meant.

She pushed the garbage can against the wall, moved to her Jeep, and opened the back. She’d listened to Pip until she hadn’t been able to take it another minute. She’d spread her arms and said, “What am I? A stump full of spiders?”

Pip had rolled his eyes. “You’re just my momma.”

Yeah, just his momma, and he thought the sun rose and set on Ronnie’s deadbeat ass. Lily grabbed the handles of two grocery bags and heard Tucker’s boot heels just before his shadow fell across the threshold of the garage.