Conner pulled into his shabby apartment complex and spotted Fat Otis’s banana yellow 1979 Lincoln Continental parked outside of his building. He turned around quick and left. Fat Otis was a four-hundred-pound, six-five black man with a shaved head and a talent for turning strong, healthy men into little, mashed-up heaps of bone and flesh.

Otis wouldn’t do that to me. Not yet anyway. He was a collector for Rocky Big, Pensacola ’s premier bookie, fence, badass, and superpimp. The fact that Otis had parked in plain sight meant Conner was still within the grace period. Otis had come to collect but not to bust kneecaps. Conner wasn’t too worried. He and Otis went back a long way, but Conner wasn’t really in the mood to explain himself or fork over the money James had given him.

Note to self: The Atlanta Braves suck.

So Conner headed up Scenic Highway with the idea he’d stop in to see Tyranny. It had been a few days, and he conjured her image in his head. It was early afternoon. Maybe he’d catch her out by the pool-taut, thin body stretched in a lounge chair, string bikini. She’d smile that crooked smile at him from behind her starlet sunglasses. Conner was never sure what to expect from Tyranny. She was a mystery. But he wanted to see her, and maybe today would be the day something good happened.

But only if her husband wasn’t home.

Tyranny Jones didn’t answer the door in a bikini. She wore jeans, sneakers, one of her husband’s oversized T-shirts smeared with paint. She had another very picturesque smudge of bright red across the bridge of her nose. Conner took her face in his hands, drew a thumb down the length of her slightly too-pointed nose, and showed her the paint.

She pulled away, laughing gently. “I’ve been in the studio.”

“Working again?”

“Trying.”

“Show me.”

She smiled, took him by the hand, and led him through the house and into the breakfast nook just off the kitchen. She called it her studio, and Conner indulged her by not pointing out it was really just a little patch of tile floor surrounded by big bay windows. She had a huge canvas on the easel, a palette of paints to the side.

Tyranny’s current project was a black-red swirl of heavily textured paint with flecks of dark green. It looked more like a diaper load than art. Conner didn’t tell her this.

What he said was “nice.”

She snorted. “You’re a terrible liar, but I love you.”

It was the most natural thing in the world to say. I love you. Maybe that’s why the room turned real quiet all of a sudden. Her hand was still on his. He squeezed, and she squeezed back. The afternoon sun drifted in through the bay windows, washed them in dusty warmth. She leaned into him, bodies touching at the hips. Conner’s breath came quick and shallow, heart fluttering.

Tyranny and Conner had taken a long, strange ride together to get to this point. He’d met her during his four-semester attempt at college before he’d blown his baseball scholarship. They’d met in an introductory art class. She was the star pupil. He just wanted to kill an elective. They’d liked each other immediately, but she’d had a boyfriend, some long-haired kid who splashed artistic angst all over himself like it was cheap aftershave. By the time she’d ditched him, Conner was involved with an uncomplicated cover-girl blonde whose sole mission in life seemed to be climbing on top of him. Tyranny and he remained friends.

As a matter of fact, they were such good friends that they couldn’t un-friend themselves when they were finally single at the same time. They looked at each other with a mysterious gleam in their eyes, but maybe nobody was brave enough to take that next step.

And maybe another reason they never got together was the fact that they were so obviously wrong for each other, at least that was the way it seemed on the surface. He was a jock. She hung with the art crowd. But it was that difference that kept Conner interested. Tyranny wasn’t like the sorority bubbleheads that seemed to find their way so easily into Conner’s bed. Tyranny could talk for hours without ever resorting to the subject of her hair or nails or shoes. She intrigued him, and maybe the feeling was mutual, and it wasn’t anything he could quite put his finger on, but there was a strange and powerful chemistry whenever they were together. The fact that she was somehow attracted to him, and that it had nothing to do with his tan or his muscles or his straight white teeth, simultaneously excited and worried him.

Tyranny had been accepted to the grad program, and he’d long flunked out to pursue half-assed, get-rich-quick schemes full-time when Professor Dan proposed marriage. Conner hadn’t even realized Tyranny was seeing anyone. I guess it isn’t good policy to advertise you’re humping one of your teachers. If it had been a movie, he’d have walked out.

Their friendship cooled after that. Conner got a wedding invitation in the mail and conveniently misplaced it. He supposed it was unreasonable to feel hurt. Being reasonable wasn’t one of his hobbies.

Then one long bourbon night, Tyranny called and said it had been a long time, and how had he been, and what had he been doing with himself, and wasn’t it silly that they hadn’t stayed in touch, and Professor Dan was at a conference in Baltimore, and why didn’t he drop in for a visit to catch up on old times?

So Conner had gunned the Plymouth through the pouring rain and three red lights to see her again. She let him in, offered a towel and a drink, and spilled her story. Professor Dan had been good to her, but she’d been getting the itchy, crowded, uncomfortable feeling that the whole thing had been a mistake. Her schoolgirl crush on the older, worldly teacher was perhaps a novelty that wasn’t novel anymore.

And so she sat closer, played with Conner’s hair. Their lips met, hands found one another. Shirt buttons somehow got themselves unbuttoned. And then suddenly Tyranny panicked or freaked out or God knows what. She said it was all wrong and that he was too important for such a stupid fling.

Conner had insisted he wasn’t very important at all, and look, he already had his pants down. No no no no, it was all wrong and Tyranny insisted he leave and she was so sorry but he’d surely understand that this was the right thing to do in the long run.

He’d gone back the next day to talk it out. Something had changed. Of course she wanted Conner, but it just wasn’t right. From there, things proceeded in the most frustrating manner. She found excuses to call or drop by his apartment. She insisted they could only be friends. Close and special friends, but no more. Conner was confused, sick at his stomach. Was this a love affair or not?

Now, in the warm glow of her breakfast nook, she melted into him. Her arms slipped around his waist. She tilted her head up, offered her lips. Conner bent and accepted. She undid two of his shirt buttons, her hands darting inside, roaming his chest and belly. He kissed her hard.

She unzipped his pants, pulled him out of his boxers, and pumped. Conner moaned and kissed. His hands found the curve of her butt. She pulled away, looked him in the eyes. A wicked smile.

She reached for the paint palette, scooped an oily handful of bright blue paint, and grabbed Conner’s length with it. He started to object, but the gliding friction dissuaded him. Then he took a glob of paint in each hand, found passage beneath Tyranny’s T-shirt. He ran oily hands over her small, pert breasts. The nipples hardened, the paint oozing between his fingers. Conner closed his eyes, leaned his head back as Tyranny’s fist did its work.

“Oh, my God.” She let go of him, grabbed a roll of paper towels.

“What’s wrong?” Conner was shamefully aware of the urgency in his voice.