by A. L. Woods
“Yeah, ’cause she’s used to people cleaning up after her all the time.”
“I don’t know what you’re both talking about, but I’m starting to think that Raquel is the only ally I have in this room.”
“Don’t drag her into this,” Sean complained.
Trina’s smile was all mischief, and the room erupted into laughter.
And for some crazy, unexplainable reason, that tinny sound felt like fanfare to a homecoming that solidified my place in their world.
An hour later, Sean and I were on the MA-24 N making the pained commute back to South Boston. We had left the house at the same time Trina did, who departed with an overnight bag in tow and the promise to be back on Sunday night. She was going to stay in town with Lainey and Aidan for the weekend.
Traffic was bumper-to-bumper most of the stretch of the trip, but we passed the time in comfortable silence, the soft hum of the radio filling the cabin. Brush and barren trees lined the freeway, the low hanging sun sending strobes of sunlight through the limbs of trees that had a calming effect on me. From the passenger seat, I stole furtive glances at him. The sun’s rays illuminated his razor-sharp features, highlighting the warm pigments of his skin better than anything a cosmetics company manufacturer ever could. Every so often, the tip of his tongue would sneak out, sweeping the middle of his bottom lip before it would retract again. Or he would rub his palm across his chin when he was deep in thought, like the coarse hiss of scruff would help his addled brain. I could watch him all day.
The familiar landmarks of my hometown opened up to us like a clam. The symmetrical and distinguished familiarity of Federalist style architecture with its iconic redbrick and stonework replaced the trees and bushes I had looked at as we passed, the skyscrapers dimming out the brilliant potency of the sun.
The sun. I’d never given a shit about the sun. It was a burning star in the sky that made New England summers damn brutal and produced sweat in places where one should never sweat—like at the little dip where your ass and thigh met. The sun had never made a difference to me. I’d never seen a beach I liked and had grown up with a window air conditioning unit that was more decorative than it was functional. I couldn’t remember a single summer where the damn thing worked.
With the man next to me, though, the sun had suddenly become pretty. It emboldened me and scrambled all cognizant thought in my brain. That stupid concrete jungle I called home was cock blocking me from truly enjoying it, masking its beauty with the hard angles of towers that didn’t belong, built with reflective surfaces that just created false shade in the summer while projecting the hot rays of the sun to Bostonians, and in the winter created wind tunnel-like vortexes that left your teeth chattering and your extremities threatening to snap clean off. When had the city I loved become a hodgepodge of new and old? When had the new started to gnaw away at the charm and history of my hometown?
An unintentional ornery grunt left the back of my throat before I could catch it, drawing Sean’s attention my way.
“What’s wrong?”
Heat speckled my cheeks as I pressed my spine against the passenger seat, my breath trapping itself in my lungs until pain smarted there. God, what was wrong with me?
“Nothing,” I replied.
Why was I spending all this time mulling over shit like the sun and home? I had never given either one much thought before, so why now?
The set of Sean’s shoulders grew tense as we breached the boundary line that marked my childhood neighborhood. This stretch of South Boston had the capacity to be pretty in the same way a biddy could look classy if she laid off the lip liner and hoop earrings. The neighborhood itself sat on a peninsula that was kissed by the shoreline of Dorchester Bay and spilled into Boston Harbor—the smallest of the bays that locals dived into on New Year’s Day. I was convinced New England winters got a little worse every year those fuckers charged into the open body of water, as if the shock from the icy bath would be enough to ensure them good health for the year and not cause a case of pneumonia. I didn’t understand why they couldn’t have a Guinness and call out “Sláinte!” like the rest of us who found health at the bottom of a glass.
Under different circumstances, South Boston itself might have been a likeable place for me to be in—but it wasn’t, and as we rounded the bend and Sean steered onto my mother’s street, I was reminded of what a war zone this gentrifying neighborhood was for me.
“Do you have your keys?” His voice was a steely baritone as he brought the Wrangler to a stop behind my car.
“Yeah.” The shake in my own voice left me unnerved. I couldn’t explain my sudden bout of timidity, but it left my palms clammy and produced a noticeable shake in my wrists that had my hands gyrating like a pair of maracas. “I’ve got ’em.”
“I’ll follow you back to your apartment.”
“Yeah.”
“And then we’ll pack you a bag and go.”
“Yeah.”
“Raquel?” I lifted my eyes to meet his. Those dark pools were an intoxicating color of gilded wet earth that were practically a benzodiazepine to my nerves. He was a kill switch to the malfunctioning parts in my mind that had sounded the alarm. My throat worked as he lifted a hand to cup my cheek, then swept his thumb over my cheekbone in a welcome reprieve. “You’re gonna be okay.”
I unbuckled my seatbelt, sending him a quick smile and a nod before I broke our physical connection and got out of the car. I believed Sean, but I also believed that this exchange wasn’t a private moment. In this part of Southie, we had more than a dozen pair of eyes on us right now—most of which we couldn’t see. I wasn’t in the mood to tempt Cash into a tantrum or peel the two of them off each other like cling wrap that had gotten stuck together if one caught the other looking at him. As I rounded the hood of the car, I felt the burden of Cash’s bottle green stare from the upstairs bedroom window of the narrow Victorian home across the street. Every fiber in my being told me not to look up, but my eyes reluctantly met his. To the outside world, Cash appeared to be as indifferent as a teenager being coaxed into a board game night with his family, but to me, I saw the concealed violence in the stiff set of his shoulders and the slight tick of his jaw. He kept his arms folded over his chest, fingers opening and closing like he was working out his knuckles. He was a rangy beacon of anger and controlled annoyance that was simmering to a boil, but to my surprise, for once, I didn’t give a shit.
Cash could be mad. He could stay that way, too.
The Camry practically purred to life when I turned the ignition. I met Sean’s eyes in the rearview mirror as I stuck a cigarette from the packet in the cup holder. His jaw rocked from side to side, brow arching north. I hadn’t had a cigarette since yesterday with Maria and I had a hankering and the faint thrum of a brewing headache like you would not believe. That first drawl numbed the buzzing of my brain, that calm spreading through me as I shifted the gear shift from P into D with the cigarette dangling precariously from my lips, my foot finding the accelerator.
I didn’t even spare this shithole a goodbye.
’Cause this time I wasn’t coming back.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
If hell had a smell, the stairwell of Raquel’s apartment building was it–which was a damn shame, because the nineteenth century neoclassical structure deserved better. The stench was a retching combination of urine, marijuana and burnt food that had my gag reflex working faster than someone giving head for the first time. Raquel didn’t appear even marginally bothered by the scent that permeated throughout, as if her septum was deviated or she was just entirely immune to the emetic effect of the smell. This was the shit they based all those air freshener commercials on. Forget about the war crimes of a teenage boy’s bedroom—this stairwell was the real offender.
I was relieved when on the fourth floor, she reached for the handle of the door and pulled it open. The scent in the hallway wasn’t nearly as bad, the urine replaced by a thick brume of tobacco that was an almost welcome reprieve
that appeared to mask the scent of everything else. The carpet beneath our feet, however, was a sticky putrid mess that left a tacky film under the soles of our shoes as we moved down a lowly lit hallway, thanks to the wall sconces with the burnt bulbs.
My chest collided into her back when she unexpectedly stopped. Her hands settled themselves on the back of her head, the tips of her fingers raking against her scalp.
“Shit.”
The curse was a whisper that I almost lost to the hum of the building’s heating system that chose that exact moment to shudder to life.
I swung my stare to meet hers. The doorjamb of a unit on the left of the hallway—it had to be hers—had a sliver of a gap in it, so small that the average person might have missed it. Not her, though. Raquel’s survival instincts were built upon small nuances that would have been wasted on most but were the types of things she kept a watch for at all times. It was as innate to her as breathing.
My fingers worked across my chin as I flitted my gaze between her and the door. “Is that your apartment?”
Her nod was so slight that I barely caught it, but it was enough to propel me forward.
Who the fuck had infringed her space this way?
She caught me by the wrist just as I moved past her, her attempt at stopping me feeble at best.
“Don’t; let me. I’ll check.”
My heart sank at her listless expression. She still didn’t get it, did she?
“I am not throwing you into harm’s way.” I shook her hold off, wordlessly expressing the end of this conversation, and for once she didn’t fight me.
Plodding to the door, I paused to examine the frame. I could make out the faint outline of a well-placed footprint that had been booted into a weak spot where the door hardware and the lock jamb met. These things weren’t designed well, and they created a false sense of security. They were meant to slow the spread of fires but couldn’t keep people out. I used my shoulder to edge the door open just an inch, and sure enough, the strike plate hung to the jamb by a mere fiber.
Rage swept through my bloodstream at the violation. Someone had been here…someone who would have been a threat to her had she stayed here the night before. Someone could have hurt her. My mind went through a hundred ways to murder someone in cold blood and get away with it. I’d make sure it was painful to the offender. The unearthed parts of me that apparently belonged to a sick fuck who’d love nothing more than to remove all of the perpetrator’s teeth and fingernails, one by one, before marring the fuck out of his face and making it next to impossible to identify him. I’d bury the body in the foundation of the house in Heritage Park. No one would ever be the fucking wiser except me.
“Oh, fuck.” Her whisper was like a cold splash of water on my darkened trance. What the hell was happening to me? I rolled my lips together and drew in a fortifying breath.
I turned my head and spoke over my shoulder. “Just stay there a minute.”
Her pillowy lips compressed together in that familiar way they did when she was unimpressed. Heaven only knew if she was mad because I wouldn’t let her lead the charge or because her apartment had clearly been infiltrated, but she was about to get a hell of a lot more pissed when I told her to collect more than a weekend’s worth of shit, because I didn’t want her coming back here.
With my shoulder on the door, I gave it just enough force for it to creak open on its hinges without my having to touch the knob or mess with the footprint evidence on the door. Her muted gasp was an indelible mark on the brain, and before I could stop her, she was breezing by me and into the carnage of her space. I had no idea what her apartment looked like before, but somehow, I didn’t think her idea of interior design was couch cushions that looked like they had a night out with the villain of a horror movie that didn’t end well, or toppled-over furniture. Sheets upon sheets of paper littered the parquet floors, and feathers from pillows kissed every spare surface.
Her footsteps stopped in front of what looked like the husk of a desk. Two of the legs had been cracked clean, the splintered wood a tell-tale sign. My eyes worked the room, finding the two missing limbs near the foot of her bed. The wobble in her legs, though, had my stare snapping back to her, but before I could catch her, she was already on all fours, her fingers gripping the sheets of paper that were strewn all over the room.
I thought she was about to cry, but a ghost of something lethal passed over her face. Her fingers curled around the papers before she sent them spiraling in the air like a thick clump of snow. She tossed up the sheets in a manic state, her movements wild as she patted the floor around her. She was clearly looking for something, but hell if I knew what. I just wanted to get her out of there and wrap my fingers around her landlord’s throat for not being on top of their shit. Raquel hadn’t needed to come home and find her worldly possessions all topsy-turvy, or discover firsthand that her privacy and safety had been defiled this way.
My hand was gentle on her shoulder, but she all but threw it off her, her teeth baring at me like she had all but lost her mind.
I exhaled a tight breath, keeping my balled fists to my side. “You’re messing with the evidence, Raquel.”
Her brows shot north, confusion a nervous tick in her set jaw. “Evidence?” she snarled. “What fucking evidence?”
“This is a crime scene.”
The laugh that worked from the back of her throat sounded both haughty and tinny…and it left every hair on my body upright.
“No one’s calling the police, Sean.” She jerked her frame away from me, her hands sending those sheets of paper skyward again.
She had to be kidding, right? Her apartment had been broken into. Her couch had been eviscerated by what looked like a box cutter, her desk had been flipped over on its side, legs kicked inward. So many feathers had spilled to the floor that it looked like a pillow fight gone wrong at the Playboy Mansion. The door had been kicked in. Breaking and entering was a crime.
And she didn’t want to call the police?
“Help me find the photo,” she pleaded.
“What photo, Raquel?”
She didn’t reply, but her anxiety was palpable, it made my own chest tighten. She crawled on all fours, shoving paper, feathers, and couch cushions out of her way.
“Where is it?” she said to herself, her voice quivering. She got to her feet shakily, her eyes sweeping the room. “It can’t be gone…it just can’t be.”
“If you tell me what photo you’re looking for, I can help you, Hemingway.”
She pressed a hand to her chest, her face a blend of panic and rage, but still, she wouldn’t answer me. She turned away, giving me her back.
I wasn’t gambling on her safety; that was where I drew the line, and that line got even deeper when someone was trying to fuck with her. With her back turned to me, I pulled my cellphone out of my pocket. My thumb managed to get the first two digits of 911 punched in before she pounced on me like a deranged banshee, her movements faster than my brain could process. She ripped the phone from my hand, her chest rising and falling as fast as choppy lake waters.
“Are you out of your damn mind? Are you listening to me?” Her accent had somehow suddenly gotten thicker. The quiver in her voice earlier was gone.
Her fingers curled around my phone until her knuckles were nearly the same color as the sheets of paper that surrounded us.
“In this neighborhood, we do not call ‘the boys’,” she spat.
I shouldn’t have been relieved at the window of opportunity she had just presented me with, but it was the perfect segue for what I was about to tell her.
“Then pack all your shit, ’cause you’re not coming back here.”
Her head snapped back so fast, I thought she had given herself whiplash. Bewilderment drew her brows inward until that distinct wrinkle appeared in the middle and those lips of hers pursed.
“I am coming back here.” A dare glimmered in her eyes…she was challenging me. She probably saw this as a negotiation and thought
it was cute. It wasn’t, and I wasn’t in the fucking mood to indulge her.
“No, you’re not. And this isn’t open for discussion.”
She didn’t like that. It was a thing of beauty to watch the woman you were falling in love with becoming the very thing she hated about herself: a sarcastic, biting, Southie expatriate who saw everyone who wasn’t from her school of hard knocks as the enemy.
“Fuck you, Slim.” She thrusted the phone into my chest, but as she moved to step away, I caught her by the waist and drew her close to me. Her footsteps gave away easily, though I could hear her warring mind screaming with refusal to submit.
“You cannot tell me what to do.” She shoved against me, but it was pointless. I was built like a damn house, and unless she shanked me, this match was about as tipped in my favor as anything.
“It’s for your own good,” I murmured into her hair. I don’t know why I chose that exact moment to smell her hair, but the notes of my body wash she had used this morning tangled in with her natural scent served to slow my heart rate. She was safe with me. I was going to keep her safe. And if that meant packing her bags myself and carrying her out of here like a live bomb, I would. I’d tie her to a chair in my house if I had to. She wasn’t coming within a ten-mile radius of The Dot as long as I had anything to do with it.
“This is my home.”
Raquel squirmed against me, her hands pushing with all her might against the hard panes of my chest. To her credit, she was one hell of a fighter. What she lacked in strength, she made up for in finesse, and I knew if I gave her a fair shot, she would put up one hell of a battle. She was searching for my weak points without really trying to hurt me, and I could feel the quickening of her blood pressure, practically hear the cogs of her mind goading her on, that steady thrumming of anger and anxiety a pulse that vibrated inside her. Before she had time to make one more noble attempt at escape, I crushed my arms around her, firmly subduing her.
