Summer Song

"Gabby..."

"No, look at me." Gabby said as Fin's eyes met hers, the anger still inside her and finding powerful source of strength, "It has nothing to do with her. This, what you're being like? That's not us. That's not me. That's not something I want to be a part of. I'm not your possession and you don't yell at me. You're not my boyfriend and, honestly, right now I don't even feel like you're my friend. I don't want to go anywhere with you."

Gabby's words hung in the air for a few seconds, the entire shop still dead silent. Fin's eyes seemingly went through a range of emotions. Confusion and pain and finally anger. Gabby couldn't help but feel a little sympathy for him. She stood by what she said but after it all, she didn't like hurting anyone. Still, she knew it needed to be said. The chapter she'd thought of the day before, where it was her and Fin? She knew that was over.

The silence was only broken by the shout of one of the shop's mechanics who, apparently, were now paying a lot of attention to what was going on.

"Damn! You got told son,"

Dex, Fin and Gabby all looked towards the source of the voice.

"Shut up Jimmy," Dex said although it was clear she shared the sentiment from her admiring smile, "But seriously, Gabby, yay."

"Fine," Fin said eventually, "Stay here, fuck her, I don't give a shit. We had an expiration date anyway."

Gabby shrugged. That was probably true. She watched as Fin turned her back on her and marched out towards the brown vehicle. Gabby thought about the year and a half she'd spent "with" him and, while she knew there was a bit of a sadness there, it would still be mainly happy memories.

"Memories," Gabby thought.

"Shit, Fin, wait," Gabby said as Fin opened the car door. He paused and looked at her and Gabby could see that there was a hope in his eye that she'd come to undo what she'd done. Gabby immediately regretted that she'd called out to him like that.

"You coming?" he asked,

"No," Gabby shook her head, "But my bag is still in the back and I have that locket from my grandfather in there and like, my money and stuff."

"I'll mail it to you." Fin said angrily as he got into the car and slammed the door. Gabby thought about running after him but the engine roared to life and watched helplessly as the tires squealed and the old car tore out of the lot like a bat out of hell.

Against herself, Gabby smiled. She did like Fritz. She was glad he wasn't dead. After all, Gabby thought as she turned back to look at Dex smiling at her, she'd been right about the vibe from him. He was the right car. He'd brought her here.

9.

Part of Gabby very much wanted to run from the lot back into the shop. Wrap herself in Dex's arms and kiss her. But there was time for that and, truthfully, Gabby felt a little upset at what had just happened. The locket was one of the few possessions she'd brought with her. One of the few things she felt a real attachment to.

"Hey," Dex said as Gabby walked back into the garage doors, "You OK?"

"Yeah, it's just," Gabby started, "I don't know, my bag."

"I thought it was just clothes?" Dex said, taking Gabby's hand and giving it a reassuring squeeze.

"It had some stuff. A locket my grandfather gave me on my last birthday before he died and my money. Not much but a couple hundred bucks."

Dex opened her arms and wrapped them around the shorter blonde in a hug.

"He did say he'd mail it to you," Dex said,

"I don't really have an address anywhere." Gabby said, feeling a tear run down her cheek. She couldn't help think about her Grandfather and that stupid locket. She missed him every day and now she'd lost the one piece of him she still had.

"You can crash with me," Dex said, wiping a stray lock of hair from Gabby's face. Gabby smiled. With no money and no Fin her adventure was over. Having Dex was a lovely fallback even if she genuinely had no idea what to do with herself next.

"Thanks." Gabby said, "But I'm guessing if I ask him to mail stuff back to your house...it'll be on fire."

"Well, I'm glad you're staying anyway." Dex said.

"Yeah, me too," Gabby said, tenderly kissing Dex's cheek.

"Hey, what was all the commotion about?"

Gabby and Dex turned to see Dougie looking down at them, his huge hands wiping grease onto his jeans. He clearly looked confused at what he'd just seen.

"Oh, that asshole just drove off with her bag with all her stuff in it." Dex said

"Oh," Dougie said, thinking for a second, "Was it like a big red suitcase kind of from the 70's?"

Gabby looked up at him hopefully and nodded.

"Oh yeah, that's in my office. We took the shit out of the back before we put it up on the rack."

"Didn't Fin tell you to tell them not to though?" Gabby asked, clearly remembering how firm Fin had said that the night before.

"Shit yeah, he did" Dex said, genuinely remembering that moment before smiling, "I guess I just forgot."

Gabby felt her heart skip a beat. She felt like she wanted to jump into the big man's arms and give him a huge kiss. Still, she didn't want to until she was sure she had it back in her possession. She watched as he walked back into the small office before coming out pulling what was, indeed, her suitcase. Gabby almost burst into tears when she recognized it as he put in her hands. She put it down in front of her and unzipped the small front pocket and reached inside and found her locket.

"Dougie," Gabby said, looking up at the big man with happy tears, "I really want to kiss you."

Dougie nodded, seemingly pleased at his actions even if he didn't understand their significance.

"Yeah, but don't" he said firmly, "My wife is like super-jealous and pregnant and crazy and you're pretty hot..so, buy me a beer sometime and we can call it even."

Gabby nodded, still smiling.

"To be totally honest, it's really just luck." Dougie said, "I might have even left in the car but it was a little heavy, felt like it had stuff that could get damaged."

Gabby nodded. She hadn't made note of it because she'd been thinking about her locket but her bag had been notably heavy. It didn't make sense. All she had were clothes. Lying the suitcase flat on the ground she unzipped the main pouch and opened it up.

"Jesus, fuck," Dex exclaimed when it was opened. Gabby had to echo the sentiment. All of the drugs that Fin had bought were in there and, Gabby had been right, there were an incredible amount. Three big, tightly packed bricks of pot that felt like at least a couple pounds each, a huge bag of hundreds of MDMA pills and, most surprisingly, a large amount of white powder in triple Ziploc bag.

"I guess he figured that if you got busted, it would be easier for Daddy to bail him out if the drugs were in your bag?" Dex surmised before looking out at the road, "What a fucking dick!"

Gabby just sat on the ground in a stunned silence. Not so much at the quantity of it all, she knew Fin had sold his car to invest in the drugs, but just at how certain things from the past two days that had confused her at the time started to make sense. He didn't want to take the drugs with him to the motel, Gabby figured, because to do so would have meant taking her bag and telling her he'd hidden them there. Likewise, he'd driven off in such a hurry because he knew that if he'd given her the bag he'd have to ask to take the drugs out first. It explained why he'd been so insistent that nobody take the bag out in the shop and why he hadn't just wanted to ditch the car and...

"Holy shit," Dougie said as he finally walked over to the bag, "Was that in the shop all night? Dex, I'm trying to run a business here. I can't have this shit around."

"Doug, you saw those two," Dex said, throwing her hands up so as to absolve herself, "I figured they had like an ounce of pot on them. I didn't realize I was hanging out with the second coming of Griselda Blanco."

"Hey, you went to college, right?" Doug said to Gabby who nodded at the question, "Do you understand the references she makes?"

"No," Gabby shook her head, "I don't know who that is. I assume a drug lady?"

There was a shared silence after that. Gabby knew she should close the suit case and take it out of the garage bay door but she simply sat there. She didn't feel lucky with her find. She felt concerned. She wasn't a drug dealer. She didn't know what to do with it all. There was a very real part of her that sort of hoped Fin would come back, both so she could kick him in the balls for hiding it in her bag in the first place and then letting him just take it.

Dex, however, had taken the bag of powder and dipped a finger inside, taking a lick before snorting some and rubbing it over her gums.

"Shit that is coke," Dex said incredulously before waiting a few seconds, "Good coke."

"He never sold hard drugs before," Gabby shrugged. Not that she minded terribly. She'd done coke once or twice. It just wasn't her thing.

Dex looked at the drugs, then to Gabby, then to Dougie and then back to Gabby. Her eyes lit up and a huge smiled crossed her face. If it were a cartoon, Gabby thought, then it was pretty clear that a light bulb would have been burning above her head.

"Ok, bear with me a second," she said, "Dougie, do you still want to buy the house?"

"Yeah?" Doug said, looking skeptically at his cousin

"Ok, and you still know that asshole who rides with those moron bikers, right?" she continued

"Yeah," he nodded, "Pueblo Eddy. In fact I saw him just last week and he said if I came across anything that...oh, I see where you're going with this."

"Ok, but hold on," Dex continued, "So there's got to be six pounds of pot in there, right? And if memory serves from my misspent youth, I can get fifteen hundred a pound for good stuff, right, so that's...."

"Nine thousand," Gabby said quickly.

"Ok, and that looked to be like at least three hundred hits of Molly, right? And we can get, like, thirty five a pop for those? So three hundred times times thirty five is..."

"There's a calculator in the office," Doug said,

"Ten thousand, five hundred." Gabby said quickly,

"Ok," Dex said, looking strangely at Gabby for a second before turning back to Doug, "So that's almost twenty grand, and then there's got to be about a pound of coke here. And there's, I don't know, how many grams in a pound?"

This time both Doug and Dex looked at Gabby

"Four hundred and fifty three point..." Gabby said, trying to remember back to the last time she did anything that wasn't metric. "Uh, four five two?"

"Ok," Dex said, clearly still weirded out, "And last time I checked you could get at least 115 a gram for good stuff so that's..."

"Fifty-two thousand and...ninety five?" Gabby said, "I didn't include the stuff after the decimal to make it easier."

"Ok, seriously, what's going on here?" Dougie asked, "Like, is she some cute blonde robot sent back in time to kill us all?"

Gabby shrugged her shoulders. Truth was, this was actually a reaction to her that she was fairly used to. She actually liked it when they underestimated her in that regard. She smiled and tried to look nonchalant.

"Yeah, people see the hair and boobs and the clothes and think I studied, like, rainbows and flowers at college. It was actually physics, specializing in Aeronautic Propulsion dynamics. Orbital Mechanics and stuff. You remember the math teacher I told you about in high school?"

Dex scanned her memory for a second before blanking.

"Yeah, I think that's why I was so into her. I was always super good at math. You know how people always say 'that's not rocket science' when they're saying something's not that hard? Well, I kind of do know rocket science."

Doug and Dex looked at each other for a second before Dex turned back to Gabby.

"O....k" Dex said, moving on but still clearly impressed by the new dimension she was seeing in Gabby. "So anyways, that's more than seventy grand you should be able to move to Eddy, right?"

"Yeah," Doug nodded, "He definitely handles weight like that."

"So make me an offer on the house." Dex said

"What, now?" Doug asked,

"Yeah," Dex said, "Just say what you think it's worth."

"Uh, I don't know, a hundred thirty thousand?" Doug said, "Around there?"

"Ok, so here's what we do," Dex said, nodding and talking faster and faster, ""You take the drugs to Eddy, get what you can for them. Say seventy thousand. Then you go to the bank and agree to pay me that one hundred and thirty plus the seventy minus, say, ten percent of each so..."

Gabby rolled her eyes.

"You can't need me to do that math for you."

"A hundred and eighty thousand," Dougie said

"Right, so the bank gives me a hundred and eighty thousand, I write Blondie a check for her seventy, for, say, services rendered..."

"Or, better still, something else that doesn't makes me sound like the world's most expensive prostitute." Gabby interjected helpfully.

"And everyone's happy." Dex said, ignoring her, "Right? Doug? What do you think? Am I right?"

Doug took a long, hard look at his Cousin who seemed to be practically buzzing with excited energy.

"Well, I think you shouldn't do any more coke, to start with" Doug said, "But I don't get the plan, why not just give her the drug money?"

Dex rolled her eyes and pointed at Gabby.

"You want her walking around with a suitcase full of drug money? Or trying to go to the bank and explaining where she got it? You keep the drug money and make that big offer, we both know you can clean that money pretty easy so it doesn't look suspicious."

"True," Doug nodded, "And what's in it for me?"

"Come on Doug," Dex said, "You want the house bad. You know if I wanted to put the screws in, I could get one fifty, one sixty for it on the market but, since you're my cousin and I love you, I'm taking your offer of one thirty and knocking a further ten percent off it for being the one who deals with Eddy and then you also get ten percent of the drug money to clean it. I get a nice chunk of change for the house and Blondie gets more than sixty thousand in clean money in a bank account "

Doug thought about it for a second.

"Oh, yeah, alright, I'm in." he nodded, "Put the shit in the office, I'll go see Eddy tonight."

Gabby finally stood up from the floor as Doug turned and went back into the shop. Gabby had to shake her head to wrap it around what she'd just seen. Somehow, in the span of five minutes, she'd become party to a drug deal and money laundering cooked up by the girl she'd slept with the night before. Dozens of questions all came to mind at once, a lot of them being how and where Dex had developed this sense for criminal behavior, but there was another one that came to mind. One that, as Dex reached over and pulled her close, won out.

"You're selling your house?" Gabby asked

Dex shrugged.

"Look, I don't even like the place. Doug does though. Lots of room for a growing family. You didn't see it but there's a nice yard out back."

"But where will you go?" Gabby asked,

"With you, stupid," Dex said, kissing her on the forehead "Ever since last night when you were talking about the open road and adventure, I realized I'd been stuck here for, like, five years and I didn't really have anything keeping me here. I want to go on that adventure with you. Hit the road, go wherever."

Gabby smiled broadly.

"You know, if you'll have me." Dex said, looking deeply into Gabby's eyes.

Gabby kissed her. Hungrily. There was nothing she wanted more. An adventure. With Dex. It sounded incredible. The two kissed passionately for a solid minute before the finally broke.

"You should know, though," Dex said,

"Yeah?" Gabby said softly.

"I know your whole thing about labels and possessiveness and everything and I know we just met but I feel like I should be honest with you and tell you, I am into labels. I don't like sharing. If we're going to be together, you know, it's going to have some definition to it."

Gabby nodded. Standing there, in Dex's arms, she didn't mind the sound of that. The truth was, she didn't want to be with anyone else. She couldn't even think of it. If bending a little on that was what Dex needed. Gabby could live with it.

"So, then," Dex said, "You don't have to be my girlfriend cause that is a word with baggage but, well, I will need to know that you'll at least be my girl."

Gabby rested her hands on Dex's arms, feeling them holding her tightly against her. She couldn't deny the little thrill that passed through her at the thought of being Dex's. Of belonging to her. Of Dex being hers. She gasped a little as Dex's hands grabbed at her ass through her cut-offs. It was a possessive move but, Gabby admitted, she loved it.

"Yeah, I'm your girl." Gabby said, hoping to seem cool, "For now, anyway."

Epilogue

Gabby couldn't believe it. She'd never seen that much money.

Although, if she thought about it, she still hadn't. It was just a bank statement. But it was her bank statement and while she'd had a bank account before, she'd never had one that read that she had almost seventy thousand dollars in it. They'd gotten more for the drugs than they'd thought, even after Dex convinced Gabby to hold on to half a brick of the weed.

"What's up babe?" Dex asked, a large brown box in her arms.

"I've just never been this rich." Gabby said, "It's weird."

"Really?" Dex said, putting the box down in a stack of them in what was once her garage.

"Yeah, I mean when my scholarship would come in every semester I'd have four thousand dollars in it for, like, a second, but this..."

"Yeah," Dex nodded, "I mean that's almost twenty times that, right."

Gabby thought for a second.

"Sixteen point eight seven five times that, yeah" she said.

Dex looked at her strangely still. Gabby looked up from her bank statement.

"Or seventeen if you want, you know," Gabby said, she forgot sometimes that not everyone appreciated numbers the way she did.

"I don't know why, I should find that annoying, but I find it powerfully sexy." Dex said before going back into the house. Gabby leaned back on the car. A gorgeous black Cadillac convertible. It had cost her almost five thousand dollars. Still nothing like a new car, no, and there was definitely signs of wear and tear on it but it was hers. She'd bought it and had Dougie fix it up for her. Dex had tried to suggest something else but Gabby had insisted. She'd already named it Delroy.

She got that same right vibe from it. Not like Fritz exactly. Delroy seemed like it would run for a long time. Like it would be reliable. Not fast, no, but it would work and have a radio and had a big enough back seat so that she and Dex could pull over at times and...

"Hey," Dex said, again coming out of the house with a box, "That's it. Last box. Time to pack."

"Isn't Doug coming to say goodbye?" Gabby asked, she wanted to say goodbye to the big man she'd come to really like over the last few weeks.

"Nah," Dex said, "I said goodbye at the shop. It was embarrassing. He cried like a little bitch."

Gabby rolled her eyes. She knew Dex well enough by this point to know she had cried too, even if she'd never admit it.

Gabby still hesitated to go into the house though. Truth was, she would have a hard time saying goodbye to the house. True, she'd only been there a few weeks but it had been an incredible few weeks. Filled with the earliest days of her and Dex's relationship. Filled with a lot of conversations and getting to know each other and movies and one very mild fight that had ended in incredible make-up sex and, well, a lot of other sex.

"Hey, I was thinking," Gabby said, "What if we didn't pack anything?"

"What?" Dex said, wiping her forehead. It was another hot day. Gabby was sad to leave the house behind but couldn't wait until they were back at a beach or just somewhere that wasn't so damned hot every day.