by Cora Kenborn
A tear fell from the corner of my eye, further pissing me off. “How’d you know?”
A slurping sound preceded Babs’ teeth sliding back into her mouth, or so I assumed. “I may be old, child, but I not dead. Men do two things—leave pee on seat and leave shit on heart. We wipe pee off seat. Shit on heart? Not so easy to clean off.”
Somehow, after the confusing morning with Zep, even Babs’ logic started to make sense.
“Shit Stain mess with my Addie again?” Babs demanded while clanging bottles together. “I make new doll.”
“No!” I protested, still wondering what the hell Zep planned to do with Babs’ previous Roodoo doll. “It’s not Roland this time.”
Babs wheezed through the line and burped after drinking what I assumed to be more vodka. “Ah, this is bearded clam digger, yes?”
The tears rolled harder, and I couldn’t decide if I was crying or laughing from the image in my head. “Close. He’s a fisherman, but yes. It’s Zep.” Turning my head, I closed my eyes and inhaled his pillow deeply. “But he’s just a business partner, Babs. We’re not even friends.”
“And I am nun. I know booty call when I hear one. Listen, Addie; heart want what it want. You call me from this man’s house, yes?”
“Well, yeah, but, Babs—”
“Cow shit, Adelaide!” she yelled, evidently tired of my dancing around the subject. “The cocksipper kick you out, so you free. Be free and stop acting like stick in swamp. Act young, and find right man before right man get tired of waiting.”
Her argument held no validity. I’d called her to talk me down from a ledge, not nudge me off one. “He’s not the right man, Babs. He’s a destroyer of lives.”
Gurgling filled the line, followed by something very wet. With shock, I realized my own grandmother had just spit on the floor.
At me.
That was some serious shit.
“Adelaide Rose, I say this one time, so best listen. ’Dis man, I know him since he was young boy. I watch him. I watch him watch you. You think your old grandma is just senile old drunk, but I see through you and your bitch-face. The cocksipper treat you like shit, and you take. For years, you take. Zephirin look at you with eye of a man who lost greatly, and you sit on his face.”
“Um, you mean, shit on his face?”
“Whatever,” she growled. “You decide today. Are you Mrs. Cocksipper or Adelaide Dubois? Can’t be both and not—poof—blow up like grenade.”
After enduring a few more insults hurled by my increasingly drunk grandmother, I thanked her for the advice and sat in the middle of my nemesis’s bed, holding my phone as if it were Babs’ prophesied grenade.
Who was I?
I’d come back to Terrebonne, determined to leave Adelaide Bordeaux behind, and rebuild my broken relationship with my family. Did that promise involve Zephirin LeBlanc, or had he just been a casualty of adolescence that needed to stay there?
With a heavy sigh, I pushed to the edge of the bed and swallowed the lump that settled heavy in my throat. Regardless of what was broken or severed with Zep, for my own sanity, the air between us needed to be cleared once and for all, if only for the sake of DuBlanc Fishery and our families’ futures.
There was only one thing left to do. Pull the pin, and throw the grenade.
He was sitting on the couch staring at a darkened TV screen when I emerged from the bedroom. Still shirtless, every defined ab muscle rolled into the next causing me to slur the speech I’d practiced in the ten paces from the bedroom to the living room. Pausing next to the couch, I shuffled from side to side, antsy and timid at the same time. Before I could open my mouth, he dropped the remote and leaned forward, his elbows balanced on his jean covered knees.
“Addie, look, don’t interrupt Savannah. It’s not fair to ruin her date because I was a dick.”
“Huh?”
I'd prepared for a speech. I'd prepared to fight. I was even prepared to storm out alone again. But I was so unprepared for a declaration of defeat.
He turned to look at me, his expression both blank and remorseful. “You asked what happened last night. Nothing happened. You puked for hours and passed out.” Running a hand across his beard, he shook his head apologetically. “You didn’t do anything inappropriate. I just tried...” He threw his head against the back of the couch and sighed. “Shit, Addie, I just wanted to get some emotion out of you for once that wasn’t fake.”
My knees felt weak. “Why…” I swallowed hard. “Why would you do that?”
He nodded to the vacant space beside him on the couch, and against my better judgment, I sank onto the black leather cushion with my hands folded properly in my lap. After a moment of silence, Zep ran his palms against his jeans and turned to face me.
“Have you ever thought you wanted something, but once you finally got it, you realized it wasn’t right?”
I’d never heard a room so quiet in my life.
“Roland,” I confessed. “It took a while, but yeah, you pretty much described my whole marriage.”
Zep just nodded, as if he knew making a big deal out of it would send me back into defensive mode. “I guess I wanted to knock you off that pedestal you’d climbed on before you left Terrebonne.” He paused, inching closer. “It’s like one minute you were one of us and the next, we were beneath you—all of us. That wasn’t the Addie I knew.”
I bit my lip and glanced down. His stare became too powerful. Everything about him became too intense. “You don’t know me, Zep. You never did.”
Before I could stop him, he reached for my hand. “Last night, you asked me why I hated you so much. The real question is, why do you hate me so much? Why do you hate your roots? They’re who you are.”
The minute his hand touched mine again, a series of flashbacks ran through my head. Memories I’d long buried came rushing back in a flood of anger that poked a jagged stick at the hole left by betrayal.
Jerking my hand away, I batted the tear that threatened to fall again. “My roots were just fine until you dug them up, hacked them to pieces, and forced me to replant them.”
He pulled out Babs' Roodoo doll from underneath the couch and held it up. “To be someone’s trophy wife, Addie? Come on. You’re better than that.”
Grabbing it out of his hands, I chucked it across the room, feeling a sense of satisfaction as it crashed into his entertainment center. “Oh? Tell me, Zep, how is being Roland’s trophy wife any worse than being your plaything? At least Roland married me and made me respectable. You made me a fucking joke.”
Silence.
His lips tightened as he stared at the broken glass scattered all over his wooden floor. “We were kids, Addie. People change.”
“Fair enough,” I said, spreading my hands dramatically. “Then tell me this; did you knew I existed before we were paired up for that English project.”
There. Grenade launched. Pin pulled.
The muscles in Zep’s neck corded, working desperately to control the anger I knew bubbled up his throat. I hadn’t seen the man in over thirteen years, yet I knew him. I knew the way he operated and the way he held in rage. He wanted to hit something. Hard.
Instead, he gripped the couch cushions with a force of nature. “Don’t ask stupid questions, Adelaide. That was a million years ago. And it’s a small town, of course I knew you existed. Our grandfathers ran a business together for fuck’s sake.”
It was true that Zep, Savannah, and I had grown up together. Given the fact that Pappy’s business tossed our two families together for dinners, meetings, and the occasional pooling of funds to bail Babs out of jail for drunk and disorderly conduct, being strangers was impossible. However, we’d run in different circles in high school. Zep was a jock, captain of the football team, and the biggest pothead I’d ever seen. Only in Terrebonne, if you played football, did you pretty much get away with everything but skipping church and murder.
I’d watched him parade around with every flavor of the month from the book worms to the da
nce team to the goth girls. No one was immune to Zep LeBlanc’s charms. Either you wanted to be him, or be with him; everyone except for me, of course. I knew even then that his type of bad boy was a one-way ticket to juvenile hall and a record.
No thank you.
But he evaded my question, and I wouldn’t stand for it. Not anymore.
“No, I mean did you look at me like those other girls? The ones you were with every week? Did you see me like that before the project?”
Again, he just looked down and said nothing. My blood boiled, and I was ready to super glue his head to the wall.
“Then why?” I demanded, tired of his bullshit. “Was it a bet? Did your stupid football team bet you that you couldn’t bag the smart girl?” The more I yelled, the more I climbed—first onto one knee, then onto both knees. “Did you care that I considered staying in Terrebonne for you? Did it even matter to you I’d planned on saving myself for marriage and ended up giving handing my virginity to someone who it meant nothing to?” I smacked him across the chest. “Do you? Answer me!”
Silence.
By now, my chest was heaving, my face was hot as hellfire, and if I had something sharp, I'd have probably stabbed him with it. I wanted him to yell back. I wanted him to fight. Fuck, I wanted something out of him other than full-on muteness.
Waving my hands like a madwoman, I laughed in his face. “Well, congratulations, Zep. Congratulations for fucking the valedictorian. Congratulations for bragging to your douchebag friends, and congrats for making me hate everything about Terrebonne, you asshole!”
Fire danced in my eyes as he came to life, grabbing both of my hands to deflect the slap that barreled toward his face. “Calm down!” he yelled, finally showing some emotion. “I tried to apologize. I was fucking eighteen, Addie. Eighteen! You refused to talk to me.”
“Yeah? And when I decided to let you explain at the bonfire, what did I find? Lindsay Lovell on your fucking lap! Fuck!” Jerking my wrist away, I screamed again as he held it tight. “I was so hard to get over, huh?”
“You got your revenge though, didn’t you, Snow White? Getting back at me by making out seven of my teammates was one hell of a statement.” His face flushed with rage.
“Well,” I smiled with all the Sugarbirch decorum I could muster. “You did tell them I was good, didn’t you? I might as well have proven it.”
Releasing his hold on me, he jerked at both sides of his dark hair, pulling it until it stood up in jagged peaks. “Fuck, Addie! Do you know what the hell that did to me?”
I felt no remorse. As far as I was concerned, we weren’t close to even. “Good. I hope every minute of it burned into your memory.”
“You humiliated me in front of my friends, Adelaide!”
“You drove me away from my home, Zephirin!”
“I hate you.”
“I hate you more.”
We stared at each other half a second before lunging. His hands wound around my hair, and my fingers dove into his disheveled mess. Mouths crashed together, and tongues tangled in an impatient war of dominance. It was frantic. It was angry. It was wet. It was wrong.
It was hot.
I barely blinked before one strong forearm lifted my legs out from under me and Zep had me on my back. With the other hand cradling my face, he groaned in between consuming kisses, and I took each one while pulling him closer. His legs straddled my hips, and the more he ground into me, the more the flimsy t-shirt rode up, exposing my lacy pink panties.
I’m married. I’m married. I’m married.
“More.” The words slipped out as he grabbed my ass and bit my lip, diving his tongue inside my mouth for a kiss that deprived me of air I didn’t care to ever breathe again.
“Fuck, Addie,” he growled again, grinding into me just enough to let me know how much he wanted me.
I felt like a starving woman denied affection and intimacy most of her adult life. He smelled incredible and touched me like I wasn’t second best—like I wasn’t a consolation prize. I whimpered incoherently as he grazed his teeth down my chin and licked down to the hollow of my neck. I tried to form words to tell him to stop, but somewhere between my brain and my mouth, stop became, “yes.”
I lost my mind. The more we kissed, the more I pushed that little voice in my head that told me I was making a huge mistake away and told it to get its own dick. Closing my eyes, I ran my hands across his cheeks, letting the soft hairs of his beard tickle my palms. My mind wandered to another time and place—to secret meetings and pretend relationships.
I hadn't kissed many men. Nine in total, if you counted Zep, the seven football players he’d given me the nickname over, and Roland. Nine men and I’d only had sex with two. That didn’t make me a whore.
But this? What I was about to do?
That would make me a whore.
Just as Zep’s hands reached for the bottom of my t-shirt, I stopped him, shaking my head even though I knew he couldn’t see it. “Zep, stop. We can’t do this.”
At those words, his head popped up from my neck, his blue eyes hooded with lust and lips swollen from our kisses. “And why the hell not?”
It freaking hurt to move, but I pushed him off me and balled myself up in the corner of the couch, pulling the t-shirt as far over my knees as I could. “I’m still married.” I held up a hand at his impending objection. “Yes, I know, I’m separated, but legally, I’m still married. I might be a lot of things, but I’m not like him, Zep. We’re not divorced, and until we are, I won’t be an adulterer.”
Adjusting his jeans and wincing, Zep nodded, putting more than a few inches of distance between us. “Fair enough.”
“You’re not mad at me, are you?” With tears welling again, I motioned between us. “I didn’t mean for this to happen.”
A smile lifted one corner of his mouth. “No, Addie, I’m not mad. As long as you promise me one thing.”
Feeling exposed, I tightened my hold on the t-shirt, pinning a stare on him and waiting for the anvil to drop. “Yeah?”
“Just no more angry Addie, all right? After all this, can we at least be civil?”
Letting out the breath I’d been holding, I nodded, quirking up one corner of my mouth. "It’s a good thing, Zep, this just being business partners thing.” I motioned between us. “This would’ve been all wrong. Last night, it’s good that you were smart, and we didn’t do anything we would’ve regretted.”
He leaned forward with a smirk, flipping the remote in his hands, and trailing his eyes up my legs again. “First of all, Adelaide, you wouldn’t have regretted anything, and you know it. Secondly? You puked for three hours and passed out. I’m all for adventure in bed, baby, but I don’t do necrophilia.”
Slightly miffed at his comment, I glanced away. “So, you just left me in the tub all night to rot?”
A strong hand pulled my chin back toward his serious stare. “You didn’t notice the extra pillow next to the tub?”
“You slept next to me?”
“Trust me. No one slept with those snores rattling the house.”
Something inside me stilled. Images flashed back to waking up inside the pristine white bathtub, covered up with a blanket. I thought hard and remembered a black pillow sitting next to the toilet. I’d just assumed it was there for me to kneel on when I was hugging it.
He’d cared that much?
Throwing the remote down, Zep walked silently toward his bedroom, leaving me sitting dumbfounded on the couch. Before disappearing down the hallway, he wrapped his fingers around the white molding, a rawness overtaking his face.
“You got a lot of things wrong back then, Addie. Terrebonne, your family, and me.” With that, he slammed his bedroom door, and I heard the shower run. I sat through five episodes of Pretty Little Liars before calling Savannah to come and get me.
16
A Change in Latitude
Savannah
New Orleans, Louisiana
“Is it bad that I don’t want to leave?” I whisper
ed as I buried my face deeper into Pope’s neck.
Strong arms encircled my waist and pulled me closer, his hot breath tickling my ear. “Is it bad that I want to ask you to stay?”
I huffed out a halfhearted chuckle, desperately trying not to cry. We were standing on the sidewalk outside Zep’s apartment, struggling through our goodbyes. He loosened his grip on me and leaned back against his Jeep parked at the curb. He’d followed me from his place, explaining he had to see for himself that Zep and Addie hadn’t killed each other. They hadn’t of course, but we both knew it was just an excuse to postpone the inevitable.
He reached out, his fingers brushing an errant strand of hair from my cheek and trailing down my jaw before coming to rest over my mouth. My eyes grew heavy, and I lost myself in the hypnotic way he caressed my lips with his thumb. Back and forth, back and forth, like he was trying to persuade me of something. I watched through my lashes as his eyes grew anxious. His thumb pressed down ever so slightly on my bottom lip. I kissed it, my tongue darting out to flick over the tip. Pope’s reaction was immediate as he swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat.
“When can I see you again?” he burst out with suddenly. Before I could respond, he took my face in his hands and pressed on, his words coming out so fast it was hard to follow. “Look, I know it’s not cool or whatever, and I guess I’m supposed to act disinterested, but fuck that. I can’t wait another two months to see you. I don’t give a shit if I sound desperate because I am. I’m desperate to see you again, and I haven’t even let you go yet.”
Tears pricked at my eyes, but I refused to let them fall. This strong man stood in front of me, letting me see the real him and telling me that he wanted me. Every part of my being screamed at me to say, “screw it” to responsibility and just stay because, of course, that’s what I’d always done. However, my sister was waiting patiently in the van, I had work to do back home, and I’d made a commitment to myself to grow the hell up. It wasn’t as if Terrebonne was hundreds of miles away. Although, I couldn’t deny that it felt like we’d created this little bubble, and if I left, it would pop, and everything we’d shared would disintegrate as if it had never existed.
