by L. D. Davis
“How old were you? What did she give you?” he asked with interest.
“I was still eleven. It happened about three or four months after we first met. I was getting more and more rebellious. Maybe it was the burgeoning preteen hormones that aided in my descent into degradation.”
“Maybe it was your burgeoning natural asshole personality traits,” Kyle suggested innocently.
I gave him a flat look. “Do you want to know the details or not, douche puddle?”
He gestured for me to carry on, hiding the hint of a smile behind a fist.
“Anyway, to answer your question, it was pot. It was only pot for a long time. Then it was a line of coke here and there. That was Emmy’s drug of choice, you know, for the short period that she was into drugs. I was fourteen the first time Sharice and I tried heroin.” I smiled dreamily. Feeling wistful, I said, “That first time, God, there’s nothing in the world like that first time.”
“I’m amazed that you remember meeting Sharice so clearly,” Kyle said, deviating from my comment about getting high the first time. He knew better than to allow me to linger on that.
“I remember almost everything before the age of fourteen. There are a few things that are a little cloudy, but I remember most of it. It’s after that things begin to get muddy.”
I pushed my cup of coffee away. If I kept drinking it, I’d never get to sleep and I would have a late start in the morning and have another screwy day.
“So you and Grant,” Kyle said, nodding and tapping his fingers on the table. “How serious was that?”
“About as serious as you can get between a heroin addict and a guy that loathed drug abuse.”
He cringed. “How the hell did that happen?”
Watching a large family as they noisily entered the diner, I gave a small shrug, indicating that I didn’t know. I did know, but those words that Grant had whispered to me a lifetime ago seemed too private to say aloud. Kyle and I were very blunt with each other, and he knew a lot about my life as an addict, but he didn’t know very much about me as Just Mayson. Just Mayson was another person altogether, and there was only one person in the world that knew her. Grant Alexander was the only person in the world who ever knew that girl…
Understanding that I didn’t want to divulge anything further on that account, Kyle moved on.
“You said that Grant saved the wrong girl. What does that mean?”
I flattened my napkin on the table and began to smooth away the wrinkles.
“I remember laughter as Shari and I set up,” I whispered as I started to fold the napkin very carefully. “Laughing like we were getting ready to sit down and play a game or something. Then I remember feeling weightless, like I was floating away, and that’s because I was. I was dying.” I met his eyes again and continued to speak in that soft whisper. “I said there is nothing like that first high, and there isn’t, but there is nothing like that other high, either. There is nothing like that high right before death claims you.”
I waved the waitress away when she held the coffee pot over my cup, but Kyle accepted more. I waited for her to bring back more cream for him before continuing. He watched me with a straight face, but I could see the tension in his jaw after he sipped his coffee.
“I remember darkness and shouting, but the shouting sounded really far away at first. I remember a lot of voices and hands touching me, and people saying my name. It’s all…rather vague. I felt paralyzed. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t talk. I was barely breathing. I was able to open my eyelids just a crack and that’s when I saw him. I saw Grant holding Shari’s dead body and crying.” I sighed heavily. “I don’t know all the details. I just know that Grant saved me and he didn’t save his sister. I don’t want to remember that.”
“Well, you can’t make the memory go away,” Kyle said after a few moments of silence. “So, how are you going to handle it?”
“Can I get high?” I asked hopefully with a small sardonic smile.
I was only half kidding.
Kyle didn’t smile.
“Are you going to be okay tonight? Do you want to come home with me?”
“I know that you really think I’m hot and that you want me bad, but I must decline.”
He slapped a few bills onto the table. “You do have a very nice ass, but unfortunately for you, I will not be taking you to my bed. My wife doesn’t like to share.”
“She needn’t worry,” I said, getting up. “I wouldn’t want you if you were the last man on Earth.”
“Thinking about putting my cock inside you does make my skin crawl,” he said conversationally as we walked toward the exit.
Just before we stepped out, I stopped and turned around and narrowed my eyes at Kyle.
“Do you really think I have a nice ass?” I asked.
He nodded solemnly. “Nice tits, too. Still wouldn’t touch them or your ass with a ten-foot pole, though.”
I smiled widely. “Cool.”
With my dog, Dusky’s, head in my lap, and the television tuned to the History Channel, I made my seventh origami masterpiece of the night. The other six flowers sat on the end table beside my phone.
I was tired and my fingers were beginning to ache, but I kept folding and folding. One corner of paper, and then another. I could make flowers and stars without looking. Some of my more complicated pieces took more care, but it was the flowers I made the most of when I was strung too tightly. Making anything more complicated would get me frustrated. Then I would give up and my hands would be idle. Can’t have idle hands on a too-tightly-strung night.
Fold. Crease. Tuck.
I finished the flower and placed it with the others on the table. Then I did what I did the other six times. I picked up my phone. I held it. Stared at it. Traced the same ten numbers again and again.
I put the phone down.
I picked the phone up.
I put the phone down.
I picked the phone up.
Chapter Four
Grant fucking Alexander had the power to screw up not just one day, but two consecutive days in one shot.
I barely slept. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw Sharice’s dead face and Grant’s grief.
Lying awake wasn’t much better. Vapory, jagged fragments of memories of that night poked at the edges of my mind. I would try to grasp them, but then they just slipped through my fingers, returning to the thick, churning gray fog that clouded parts of my past.
Then there was Grant himself. There were memories of him that had nothing to do with Sharice. His body wrapping protectively around mine. His lips. The taste of his mouth. His words…especially the last ones he had said to me before exiting my life.
I picked up my phone often during the night, poised to make the call that could make the unease in my heart cease, at least for a while. I always put it back down without dialing.
I didn’t fall asleep until near dawn, and that short sleep had been restless. I dreamed of jeering laughter, rough hands on my body, and the smell of the breaths on my face from people I could not see. The voices were recognizable, only because they had been with me for so many years.
When I left for work in the morning, I wasn’t in danger of being late, but my schedule was thrown off. I would definitely run into The Mommies again and I didn’t think that I’d be able to just smile and coo about their alien life form children.
Running into them wasn’t the worst thing that could happen in my day, but I hated having my routine interrupted. It was one of the very few things I had some control over and I hated for that power to be taken away. If I ever saw Grant Alexander again—which I hoped I didn’t—I’d throttle him.
Off my routine or not, I still planned to get my coffee and pastry. I couldn’t let things get completely out of hand.
I didn’t live too far from the office, so I always walked to work. The city streets were busy at my usual departure time, but not too bad. Twenty minutes made a world of difference. There were three times the amount of peo
ple mindlessly buzzing to their hives. I was bumped more often than I cared for, and when crossing the street, I felt like a sheep. I half expected a dog to nip at my heels to keep me inside the crosswalk.
I was almost at the coffee shop when I saw him standing against the building, holding a coffee and a paper bag. I probably would have spotted him sooner if the sidewalk hadn’t been so crowded, but I was too close, because he saw me, too. It was possible he saw me long before I saw him.
He was dressed in a dark blue, fitted suit. His white shirt was free of a tie, however, and unbuttoned a few buttons. He looked like a damn magazine ad.
I intended to ignore him. Totally ignore him. I was already off track; I couldn’t allow for any further distractions. Ignore. Ignore, ignore, ignore.
As I approached, Grant stepped away from the wall and wordlessly extended his arm, offering me the cup and paper bag he held in his right hand. Unintentionally, I halted. I looked confusedly at the cup and bag and then at his dark eyes.
“What the hell is that?”
“An extra-large coffee, light and sweet, and a chocolate croissant,” his velvety voice announced.
I took a step back, surprised, and a little freaked out. That was my exact order, day in and day out. I never deviated from it, but how did he know that?
“Are you stalking me, Grant Alexander?” I asked accusingly.
He gave me a small smile. “I was a few people behind you in line yesterday.”
I looked at him skeptically. “I didn’t see you.”
His smile widened. “No, but it’s okay. I forgive you. Come on, take the coffee, beautiful. You’re hurting my feelings.”
I didn’t take the coffee or the croissant. Instead, I gave him attitude. “Don’t call me that.”
“Why not? It’s what you are.”
“It’s not my name,” I said icily. “You’re a big black guy. You don’t hear me calling you Big Black.”
My comment didn’t have the desired effect because Grant raised his eyebrows in amusement. “That’s different.”
“It’s not different. Besides, you don’t even know if I have a boyfriend or a husband, and you’re calling me pet names and following me around like a little puppy.”
He nodded his head once as his amusement faded some. “I would have called you beautiful and waited here for you regardless as a friendly gesture. However, I concede to your point.”
“Thank you,” I said haughtily.
“Do you?”
“Do I what?”
“Do you have a man?” He leaned toward me a little. “Or a woman.”
“Single and hetero.”
He nodded again. “Good. Then there’s no issue with me buying you a coffee and a croissant.”
Once again, he tried to hand me the coffee and bag.
Indignant, I said, “I can purchase my own coffee and croissant.”
“Of course you can, but you’ll be waiting in line forever, and this was the last chocolate croissant.”
I glanced past him into the coffee shop. The line was very long, practically out the door, and I had no reason to doubt him on the croissant. Who would lie about pastries?
“I saw you coming a block and a half away,” Grant said, confirming my earlier thoughts. “I went inside and ordered and got out here just in time. The coffee is still piping hot.”
He carefully shook the cup at me. I still didn’t take it. I looked up at him.
“Why are you doing this?”
“You seemed like you were in a hurry yesterday morning.”
“I wasn’t just in a hurry, but I think I was pretty clear about not wanting to see your face.”
He continued on, patiently, pretending that I hadn’t spoken.
“I don’t want to slow you down, but I want to talk to you. I thought I would shave off the extra minutes it takes for you to stop here and take them for myself.”
I felt my heart slow for a few beats before picking up at a faster tempo. It was rather startling because I had not felt anything like it in a long time, at least not while I was sober.
“What if I don’t want to give you those minutes?”
He took one step and closed the distance between us. He looked down at me speculatively for a few seconds.
“It doesn’t really matter. I’ve already taken them.” In a low, commanding voice that could probably melt icecaps, he said, “Now, Mayson. Take the coffee and bag. It’s obvious you’re running late today, and now so am I.”
To be perfectly honest, I usually didn’t care about the feelings of others. Unless they were a friend or family, I just didn’t give a shit. I always said what I meant and I meant what I said. The only time it was necessary to bite my tongue was at work so that I could keep my job.
I shouldn’t have cared about Grant’s stupid pride or the money he’d spent trying to be a nice guy. No one told him to be a nice guy. That was all his idea. But the bottom line was…he had purchased the last chocolate croissant. Most likely, if he hadn’t, it would have been sold to someone else, and then where would I be? In the office, surrounded by The Mommies, with nothing to look forward to.
Grudgingly, I reached for the cup and bag. As my fingers grazed his, I had the sudden sense of déjà vu. Grant’s fingers from another place and time lightly touching mine appeared in my mind, cracked and fragmented. It was like trying to make out images on the other side of shattered glass.
“Mayson?” His voice was filled with concern as he took a step closer to me.
“Um…thank you,” I said abstractedly.
“Are you okay?”
I scowled as I fully arrived back at my senses. My sense of smell also returned to me. I smelled the coffee and fumes from the cars and that grimy yet delicious city smell, but I also smelled him. It was a clean, soft, but masculine scent. Too many men douse themselves in aftershaves and colognes that you can smell two city blocks away, but I didn’t smell Grant until he stood in my personal space. Literally. He was toe to toe with me.
Damn he smelled good, and familiar…but damn he needed to get the hell out of my personal space!
Still scowling, I backed up a few steps. “I said thank you,” I snapped at him.
His laughter had a deep timber that reverberated through my body.
“You’re very welcome,” he said as his eyes moved over me.
My god, I felt a bead of sweat on my neck that had nothing to do with the weather.
Grant gave me another smile and walked away in the opposite direction without another word. I stupidly watched his back for a few moments, until his form was swallowed up by a group of businessmen.
I continued on to my own destination, all thoughts of throttling the man forgotten.
I sat in my car, in the driveway of the house I grew up in, gathering the strength and patience I would need to go inside and sit through another meal.
After my sleepless night and my strange morning with Grant that further bollixed my day by leading to a series of mistakes, mishaps, and unwanted communications, the very last person on Earth—in the universe—that I wanted to see was my mother and her family. I would have rather thrown myself in front of a SEPTA bus.
I had considered it, a matter of fact, but the chances of getting paralyzed and then being in her care for the rest of my life was a frightening and disheartening prospect. That and my burden of guilt that I had been carrying for eighteen years were the only reasons I showed up to the monthly dinners.
With resignation, I got out of my car and walked to the door. Twenty years ago, it had been my own home and I would have just let myself in, but it had not been my home for a very long time.
I rang the doorbell and waited.
A few seconds later, there were quick, light footsteps in the hall and then the door swung open.
My mother was in her late fifties, but could pass for my slightly older sister. The old adage that black don’t crack was very true in her case. There wasn’t a wrinkle to be found on her face. Her skin was firm
and smooth, her hair was still thick and healthy, and her boobs weren’t hanging to her knees. She was a little thicker in the waist than she had been when I was a child, but it only proved to enhance her beauty.
I wished that there was just one thing, one little thing wrong with her body to make me feel better. A few hammer toes, wobbly knees, or ashy elbows, but no. Not my mother. She was disgustingly perfect.
“You could have let yourself in,” Mom said as she stepped back to let me pass.
I tried to keep the contempt out of my voice. “It’s not my house.”
“It’s as much your home as it is Taylor’s.”
“Except that it is Taylor’s home and not mine,” I pointed out.
She didn’t respond before extending her slender arms for an awkward embrace.
“Dinner is already on the table.” She eyed me with some speculation. “You’re late today. Are you okay?”
Translation: “You’re late today. Are you late because you’re doing drugs again?”
“I worked late,” I lied.
I didn’t actually work late. I had been at the office, but I hadn’t been working. I’d pretended to work, doing tasks that didn’t really need to be done, but my procrastination could only carry me so far.
My stepfather, Aaron, greeted me with a kiss on the cheek when we entered the dining room. My sister, Taylor, hugged me, only a little less awkwardly than my mother had.
My dad had died when I was sixteen. My mom married Aaron two years later and had Taylor a year after that. I wasn’t invited to the wedding—I had not even known there’d be a wedding until after it had already occurred. By that time, I wasn’t welcomed in the house. I didn’t see Taylor much in the first several years of her life and didn’t spend much time with her after that.
