Read Once You Break a Knuckle for Free Online

moment when you need everything to be the same. Then you find out it’s been different the whole time.
    Alex bobbed her head. She drew a strand of hair from her face with her pinky. The nail was groomed, curved perfectly around the fingertip. Ray smelled cinnamon, assumed it came from her; the scent of a clean body. She rolled one eye toward him, her face turned only a degree in his direction.
    â€”I knew about Tracey and Caine, before you found out.
    â€”Everybody did.
    â€”I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.
    Ray shrugged. —Nobody did.
    Alex went to the door.
    â€”Are you going to Flannerly’s party this weekend?
    â€”I promised Kelly and Paul that I would.
    â€”Paul looks up to you.
    â€”Only because I don’t rail on him like everyone else.
    â€”It’s more than that.
    Ray shrugged again. Alex cocked her head and the tie on her hair loosed, dropped that mane all the way to her biceps.
    â€”You regret coming back?
    â€”Not one bit. Other things, yeah. Part of being human.
    â€”Man from beast.
    â€”You regret me coming back?
    That got her out the door. Before she closed it, she peeked her head in.
    â€”What if Tracey’s there?
    He’d been mulling that over since he’d agreed to go. Worse than Tracey, he feared she’d be there with Caine and that he’d say something dumb and get in a fight. Caine was ten years younger and he went to the gym every second day. Ray couldn’t afford to get the shit kicked out of him. He’d lose everything, again. And he couldn’t blame everything on the two of them.
    â€”Hopefully I’ll be too drunk to realize it.
    â€”Have a gooder, Ray.
    She shut the door. He struggled to his feet and fished another beer from the fridge and nursed it on the couch, counted the hours. Ray’d mulled over other stuff, too: where to go when Mud eventually gave him the boot, how long he had until his body at last failed him, whether Kelly was actually giving him the eye. It wouldn’t be a stretch to say a certain kind of woman caught his attention, but it wouldn’t be a stretch to say that scared him cold. Kelly did things the way Tracey used to, a no-bullshit approach that he admired and made a show of admiring. But she had rough edges, too – he’d seen the way she scowled at Philippe – and a past Ray would one day have to ask after. He didn’t know her story but he bet he understood how she felt: everyone who falls off a roof usually lands the same way. And if she was attracted to him – if he didn’t, for instance, need someone to pull his head from the clouds – then Ray knew why: broken people are drawn to broken people. That’s the love life he had to look forward to with Kelly: a three-legged race.
    Not that it’d slow him, not that it’d sway him. Ray would persist. It’s just what he did.
    EVERY VEHICLE IN THE driveway of Flannerly’s shop was a truck. He spotted Paul’s Ranger and pulled the Silver Bullet – the only vehicle he had access to – in beside it. A group of guys smoked outside the shop. Ray recognized one as a lippy plumber named Ben, but the others he didn’t know. He stepped out and nodded. A black Lab bounded from among the trucks and put its nose in his hand.
    The plumber, Ben, waved his cigarette at him.
    â€”Hey, Sparky.
    Ray gave a deep nod. —You talking to me or the dog?
    â€”The dog’s not a goddamn electrician, is he?
    â€”He’d make a hell of a plumber, though.
    Ray winked and went inside. Flannerly’s shop was a giant shed, wired with heating and a television upstairs, unfinished walls, material piled in the corners. The walls were dressed with Playboy tear-outs and posters of girls in swimsuits. It felt like any other shop Ray had ever been in, except six times as big.
    Some thirty guys and a handful of women sat in a giant circle. They had two barrels of iced beer and a table with whiskey. Ray