Interference Read Online Free Page A

draft beer, used liberally by the patrons. We had been coming here since before we were supposed to be here.
    Ally was at the bar, patiently waiting, as always. She turned and smiled and it was like the sun coming out. God I loved that girl.
    "You're here! I saved you a stool," she said, which was pretty much what she always said. "What will you have? I wasn't sure you'd be drinking tonight," she nodded at Bailey, the bartender who raised her head and listened for my order.
    "I'm just going to have an unsweet tea for now thanks," I said, and Bailey grabbed a glass and had it in front of me before I could blink twice. She had been here for as long as I could remember too, although she never aged, this bar was practically her home.
    "Man, this place never changes, does it?" I said, looking around. "Remember when I lost my license in the ladies’ room?"
    "Yeah. Except it wasn't your license, it was your permit and we definitely weren't supposed to be here."
    "I know," I said, sipping my iced tea, but everyone else was here, and they weren't serving us."
    "True, we could hang out but we had to have fake cocktails," she laughed.
    "Mocktails, right? They called them mocktails!" I laughed.
    "I hope that doesn't show up when they're vetting their next assistant magistrate up north."
    "I'm less worried about that than I am about Daire."
    "Why, that's old news, a youthful indiscretion, right?"
    "That's how I was spinning it, but there seems to be some trouble brewing now and I'm not sure what to make of it. Or how to stay out of it. "
    I explained the whole video of the bike thing, and my conversation with the sheriff.
    "And that's how we left it," I finished up, "that he would be talking to Raiin. Which he shouldn't do without a lawyer present."
    "And you?"
    "And I can't be that lawyer, I told him."
    "But you know the deal between him and Clay."
    "I do," I sighed.
    "He's just jealous, he feels like Raiin got his career."
    "Right, which is ridiculous, because Clay was never the skater Raiin was."
    "No, he was a fighter though."
    "The Punisher."
    "Oh, God, I forgot that. Yeah, that's what they used to call him."
    "And now he's top cop, the punisher in chief, right? Kismet."
    "So, wait, do you think it was Raiin?"
    "No," I said, " I know it wasn't Raiin. He's a fighter, sure, but pelting a tour bus with eggs, breaking windows, tipping it over? Nope. That's childish. Not his style. He fights with a purpose, it's for the game not for kicks. And using his bike? He's not stupid, he knows there are cameras everywhere. And he wouldn't put his beloved bike in the middle of a mess like that anyway. Nope, not him. Someone who looks like him maybe, but not him."
    "But the bike?"
    "I don't know, but he's," I waved my hands around looking for the right word, "well he's a celebrity. Maybe someone has a bike just like his? There are weirder forms of hero worship."
    "Well, let's hope you can slip away without getting tangled up in his mess, a toast to that!"
    Just as we clinked glasses, the door to the Tavern swung open and we spun on our stools at the same time. And there, outlined in the neon lights of the beer signs, was Raiin. He stood for a moment, framed in the orangish glow. His eyes sought me out, and locked on mine, and just like that, there went any hope of me avoiding him, his mess, and maybe even his bed.

Chapter 6
    " L adies , a drink?" Raiin approached the bar. I closed my eyes for a minute and pictured myself at sixteen, with Raiin approaching me and Ally at the bar for the first time, and asking the same thing. At that moment, I knew I had met my destiny. He was big even then, a few years out of school, playing for his college team and waiting for his big chance to play in the majors. He had been shocked to discover how young we were, but he and I had been drawn toward each other from the beginning.
    I opened my eyes and returned to the present, and there he was, larger than life, looming over us.
    "I bet you say that to all the