Page 22 of Tate: Gemini King
But that doesn’t happen. I wake up and I’m entirely alone. It hurts like hell.
I feel terrible. Sleeping on the couch didn’t even make me feel better. She’s not coming back.
I sit up and I want to drop dead, honestly. It’s not just that I’m fucking miserable about Natasha disappearing on me. My body hurts from the hard job I worked last night. By now, it must have hit the news. I glance at my phone reluctantly. None of the texts I have are from Natasha, so I barely give a fuck, but I can tell from the previews that they are all about the goddamn fire.
Cormac: Kinda fucked up if you think about it. What they’re teaching these kids.
I have no idea what Cormac is talking about. But his text hits my phone like a sign from God. If there’s someone I need for shady as fuck activities, it’s Cormac. He owes me about ten thousand favors – even more than Dylan. And he’s willing to play dirty.
Tate: Extremely fucked up. Hey, man. Did you get my text last night? Natasha didn’t come home.
Just typing it out and acknowledging that it’s real makes me feel sick to my fucking stomach. She should be here with me.
Cormac: Damn. She fucking someone?
I hate that Cormac would even allow himself to think of the idea. He gets me fucking furious. It’s too bad I need him.
Tate: Shut the fuck up and help me find her.
Cormac: How?
Tate: Use your connections. I’m coming over.
I don’t wait for a response before I get ready. I throw on a pair of grey sweatpants, a black t-shirt, my gold chain and a big grey hoodie over that from my high school football days. I can’t believe it still fits… I am way more muscular than I was back then.
I don’t know why it would be necessary, but just in case, I load up a pistol and a couple bullets in the truck. I don’t care what it takes to bring Natasha back. She’s coming home with me. Cormac lives in a small ranch-style house a half mile down from Duke’s place. I text him that I’m outside and the stupid bastard doesn’t even come to the door. Whatever.
He at least left the front door unlocked. When I shove it open, Cormac calls out to me from the back room, “I’m back here!”
Following the sound of Cormac’s voice, I find him hunched over his laptop wearing a pair of glasses. Since when does that dumb motherfucker wear glasses? He doesn’t look up when I walk in.
“What the fuck are you doing?” I grumble, already itching to get the fuck out of here and take our hunt for Natasha out on the town. Where did she sleep last night?
“Helping you,” he says, like it’s obvious. “Just researching a little bit of baseball, first.”
He minimizes two screens that appear to be gigantic spreadsheets filled with random numbers and colors representing teams or maybe player names. He’s up to some gambling bullshit.
“How are you helping me?”
“She hasn’t blocked my secret profile that I use for research.”
Cormac pulls up his “secret profile”. Hey, that Indian guy follows me…and he’s not a damn Indian guy. I want to confront him about catfishing, but he pulls up Natasha’s social media page and I stop giving a fuck about the creepy shit this gambling addict does on the internet. It’s incredible how little effort it takes him.
“I turned on notifications the second you texted me. She just updated her story this morning with three posts. Can you figure it out?”
He clicks on Natasha’s story. The first picture is a selfie she took with Terrorist. Written over the selfie, she has some stupid girlie caption.
Just me and my new baby, Timmy.
Did she fucking change our dog’s name to Timmy? Terrorist has his paws on her boobs and his bug eyes about to fall out of his apple head. I wonder if he misses me. Why are her tits out? I wish I could see who liked that fucking story, so I could put them in the ground. This is a worst case scenario.
Natasha looks like she has no goddamn remorse about running off with our dog and giving him some lame ass new name.
Cormac moves to the next story. Natasha and Terrorist at the park. I know that park.
“How do you not recognize that?” I ask Cormac.
“Recognize what?” He asks stupidly, opening up his phone and scrolling through the latest ESPN news stories. He should pay more attention to his surroundings.