Free Still Waters by Ash Parsons

low-level thug.
    “Whatever,” I said. Maybe
badass
and
kingpin
are relative propositions, especially to the ignorant.
    Cyndra walked out, a bag in her hand. Michael put his window down and took the bag. “Go ahead to school. I’ll be fine now.”
    Cyndra frowned, chewed on her lower lip, and shifted her weight. She stared at her boyfriend’s bruised face.
    “Go, I said.”
    He put the window back up.
    She went to her car and got in. Slammed the door and laid tire marks as she pulled out of the parking lot.
    “She doesn’t know all this,” Michael explained. “She knows I’m in trouble, not how much.”
    “She knows now.”
    Michael laughed, then groaned. He fumbled through the bag, fished out some painkillers, and took two.
    “How’d you meet this guy?” I asked.
    Michael pulled out a chemical cooling pack. Twisted and folded it until it got cold, leaned back, and put it over his swollen eye.
    “I went to a bar with my stepbrother. A dive. We’d just dropped off Cyndra and her mom for their trip to Paris last summer. Mark was on break from college. He said, ‘Let’s light this town up.’ This was a couple weeks before school started back.” He sighed, shifted in the bucket seat and hissed in pain. “Damnit. I’m not used to this.”
    He shifted again. “Mark and I, we drove to this dive he’d heard about. And there were these trashy girls there. We picked them up. And the next thing, we’re drinking, and there’s drugs. And this girl says, ‘Two high rollers like you, you should meet Alonzo.’ Just like in a movie.”
    A tiny blue car parked next to us. An old lady got out, glaring at the Mustang parked so close to the door.
    “So we say, ‘Who’s that?’ And of course she gets him. He says call him Cesare. And he’s got more drugs. And he’s getting the girls to come over. Then we go to the back, this private party room, like. Gambling there. Card games. Track bets on a big screen. And we start playing. We won. We won everything. It was like we were unbeatable.”
    His busted lip stretched into a smile at the memory. “And that was it. Mark went back to college, and I went back to the bar. Kept gambling. It seemed so easy. I was a dumbass.”
    He didn’t have to finish the story. I already knew how it ended.
    The house always wins—especially after they lure you in.
    So that was it. What put Michael, and now me, in danger. A spike of adrenaline dumped in my veins as I cut my eyes around the parking lot.
    “I thought I was smarter than him. I thought, you know, I could keep ahead of it. I could get it back. Instead I kept getting deeper and deeper in debt. More money. So much money.” Michael’s busted lip stretched in a tortured smile. He leaned forward and spit into the cup again. Shifted the cool pack from his eye to his lip.
    “This morning he was waiting for me. Said he wanted to talk. I didn’t think he’d get violent, though.” He sighed and repositioned the pack. “But it’s gonna be okay. I’ve got a week. And I’ve got you. And a plan.”
    “I won’t be able to protect you from him. Even if I wanted to. I’m not much of an insurance policy. And neither is my dad, especially when it’s not for him.”
    “That’s why we’re going to get a gun.”
    My eyes tightened and my mouth went flat. I reached for the door.
    Michael grabbed my arm with clawed fingers. “Wait!”
    “I won’t shoot anyone for you. And I don’t want to hear any more of your plan.” I wrenched my arm out of his desperate vise. Michael gasped at the jostling movement, hugged his arm across his stomach.
    “I don’t want you to kill anyone! The gun is for protection. It’s like me hiring you. A message. He thinks I’m a punk-ass kid he can just bully. He won’t stop until I show him I’m not. The gun will buy me safety for just a little while longer. Not one week, two. That’s all I’ll need.”
    “You shouldn’t even be paying me, then. You need every cent you can get,