The Time in Between

by Kristen Ashley

  Once she’d landed all of that on me, she took her beer and weaved through the crowd.

  I lost sight of her only to feel the back of my neck tingling, so I looked again down the hall to see Tony’s eyes on me. When his caught mine, he lifted his chin and shot me a small grin before he returned his attention to Lars.

  My gaze drifted from him because my attention was on what Maria had said, and not just the fact that I’d missed Lonnie was into me and she was pointing out that maybe I was missing Tony was into me too, but mostly the other stuff she said.

  She warned me to start looking out for myself better but it wasn’t me who wanted to be here. I came with Tony. If he hadn’t said he was picking me up to bring me here, I would have found an excuse not to come at all. And she was there and it seemed she liked being there, more it seemed like she liked all of these people just as much as Lonnie did.

  But maybe she didn’t. Maybe she had worries and doubts about who Lonnie was hanging with too.

  And that catty, pained look? Did that mean she’d already noticed Lonnie had a thing for me and she was blaming me?

  I had no opportunity to sort through all of this or weave through the crowd to get to Maria to have a clearly much-needed chat with my friend.

  I was in a headlock, which made it fortunate I was sipping from a bottle of beer, because if I’d taken a cup from the keg in the kitchen rather than the beer Tony pointedly handed me from a case he’d pointedly brought and promptly hidden in the back of Lars’s fridge after he gave me one, with the headlock, I’d have beer all over my hand.

  “Where you been?” Lonnie asked, curling me around so I was forced into a full frontal headlock.

  I lifted my eyes to him. “Jeez, Lonnie. I might want to drink a full beer one day.”

  His arm tightened and I noticed he wasn’t being good-natured Lonnie, playful in a pretend-like-she’s-your-little-sister way to hide you dig her.

  His regard was serious and maybe even ticked.

  “I asked you a question, Cady. You’ve like, totally disappeared. You get that big job then you say you gotta work all the time but you show up here with Wilson? What’s up with that?”

  Assistant manager at Sip and Save was hardly a “big job.”

  Then again, Lonnie didn’t have a job that I knew of, how he and Maria got their money I had no clue, and in that very moment I realized I didn’t have a clue not because I was clueless.

  It was because I didn’t want to clue in.

  “Lonnie,” I pushed at his hold on me with my neck as well as with my hand in his chest, “loosen up.”

  He didn’t loosen, he tightened, and between my pushing and him tightening, I felt pain at my neck.

  “Cady, I asked you a fuckin’ question.”

  “You’re kinda hurting me,” I told him. “Please, loosen up.”

  “I will when you answer my fuckin’ question,” Lonnie returned.

  I opened my mouth but I didn’t have the chance to get anything out.

  “She said loosen up.”

  Oh boy.

  That came from Tony and I could see Lonnie wasn’t happy, but now I could hear Tony wasn’t.

  Shit!

  Lonnie’s gaze slid to the side right before mine did and we saw Tony standing close.

  Eyes locked on Lonnie and yes . . .

  Totally not happy.

  “You’re not in this,” Lonnie declared.

  “She said loosen up,” Tony repeated.

  “And, man, I said you’re not in this,” Lonnie reiterated, his hold on me getting tighter.

  He may have backed down in that backyard months ago, but me walking in holding hands with Tony, drinking the beer Tony brought, Lonnie wasn’t backing down now. Lonnie was making a statement it wasn’t his to make ever, but especially not at a party where Maria was.

  “Lonnie,” I whispered calmingly.

  “Let her go,” Tony demanded.

  “Take off, Wilson. Me and Cady are havin’ a chat.”

  “Won’t say it again,” Tony warned.

  “Don’t give a fuck what you wo—” Lonnie started.

  He didn’t finish because Tony moved and suddenly I wasn’t in Lonnie’s hold.

  Lonnie’s arm was ripped from around my neck, Tony was shoving me clear at the same time twisting Lonnie’s arm behind him and he didn’t stop there.

  Lonnie grunted with pain in a way I felt that pain before his knees buckled and he went down, flat on his belly, cheek in the carpet, arm thrust up his back. Tony was standing with a foot planted either side but bent over him and using his leverage to continue to put the hurt on Lonnie.

  And putting the hurt on Lonnie he was doing to the point I worried he’d dislocate Lonnie’s shoulder or actually break something.

  I didn’t get the chance to shake myself out of the shock all of this caused and tell Tony to back off because Tony was speaking.

  “I walk into the house holdin’ a woman’s hand, you don’t put your hands on her. You’re stupid enough to do that, I tell you to stop, you fuckin’ stop. But backin’ that shit up, she tells you to stop, you . . . fuckin’ . . . stop.”

  “Got it, man, fuck, got it. Now get off me!” Lonnie grunted, the pain he was feeling not hidden in his words.

  He’d gotten his other hand under him and was pushing up but with the contortions of his face, I didn’t think that was helping matters at all.

  “No,” Tony returned. “Since I got your attention I’ll share you got yourself some and it isn’t red. Mine’s red. Yours is dark. Advice, man, take care of what you got or you’re gonna lose it.”

  “Fuck off!” Lonnie bit out.

  “You gonna leave Cady alone?” Tony pushed.

  “Yeah, fuck! Now fuckin’ get off!”

  “Good,” Tony clipped, and it looked like he twisted Lonnie’s wrist for no other reason than to underline a point that was already boldface and italicized before he shoved him deeper into the floor and straightened from him.

  He walked over him, grabbed my hand but didn’t look at me.

  He was looking beyond me, and when I hazily followed his eyes, I saw Lars was watching him closely.

  “If this is your crew, bud, straight up, maybe it’s me who doesn’t want to move forward,” Tony declared, and with that he tugged my hand so I was closer to him.

  I tipped my head back to look up at him and saw his attention now focused on me.

  “Where’s your purse?” he asked.

  “I—”

  “Get it,” he ordered.

  It didn’t occur to me to do anything other than hightail it to the couch where I’d tucked my purse and jacket behind an end table.

  I nabbed them, shrugged on the jacket, returned to Tony, his fingers closed around mine again and he hauled me out the door, down the walk and to his truck. He unlocked and opened the passenger side door and I wouldn’t have been surprised if he lifted me up and dropped me in the seat.

  He fortunately didn’t do that but I could feel the impatience wafting off of him as I climbed in, even if I did it hurriedly.

  The door creaked loudly as he slammed it shut behind me and stalked around the hood.

  He got in, started up and we chugged out into the road.

  I sat silent and not because he was not hiding he was still pissed, and he was kinda scary when he was pissed.

  I sat silent because he’d dropped Lonnie, who was my friend. Perhaps not a smart choice on my part but that didn’t negate the fact he still was, and Tony hurt and humiliated him in front of a house full of people, who might not be good people but they were people Lonnie wanted to get tight with.

  Not to mention, with great skill and not a second thought, Tony had taken care of the two guys who were on me in The Trench.

  This said to me that Tony was not a stranger to violence. He not only didn’t shy away from it, with very little ado, he instigated it to make his point and get what he wanted.

  My mind was so taken up with all this, Tony was parking
outside the courtyard to the condo before I realized he had also not spoken the whole ride home.

  He got out, and I quickly did the same, but when I was out, he was right there, slamming my door shut with another loud shriek of the hinges.

  As we walked to the front door, he didn’t hold my hand.

  No.

  He lifted the hem of my jacket at the back and with a firm hand at its small, guided me to the door.

  That was not a brotherly thing to do. That wasn’t even a friendly thing to do.

  That was what a girl’s guy would do.

  I was fighting shaking for a variety of reasons while trying to get my keys out of my purse, but when I managed it, I didn’t even get the house key separated from the rest before Tony took them from my hand, found the right key and unlocked the door.

  He pushed it open, turned to me, pressed me in and came in after me before I could open my mouth to speak in order to say something like, maybe I might need a few days (or a year or forever) to think about where my life was heading and who I was spending it with so I might need a little bit of space.

  He slammed the door behind him and I jumped at the violence of the sound.

  Freaked out now because I was alone in the house with an angry Tony who was kinda scary, I stood immobile right inside the door and watched his shadow move to a lamp on a table by his friend’s couch.

  He switched it on, tossed my keys irately on the end table and turned on me.

  “A guy’s up in your shit, Cady, you don’t want him there, you never, not fuckin’ ever say please,” he ground out.

  I blinked up at his face, realizing he might be pissed at Lonnie.

  But he was also pissed at me.

  “To—” I didn’t quite start.

  “Twice, I’ve seen that guy’s hands on you. Twice, I’ve seen it clear you don’t like it. And twice, you didn’t do dick about it.”

  “I did.”

  “You didn’t.”

  “I said—”

  “You don’t say shit. A man’s got his hands on you, hands you don’t want on you, you punch him in the fuckin’ throat or knee him in the goddamned balls.”

  “He’s my friend,” I said quietly.

  “He’s not your friend,” he shot back. “He’s your girlfriend’s boyfriend who wants to tag your ass. That’s not a friend.”

  One could say he had a point with that.

  “He’s also a moron, and not just because of that,” Tony carried on. “You need to distance yourself from him. You don’t, when he fucks up . . . and he’s gonna fuck up, Cady, that’s the kind of guy he is, it’s just waiting to see how huge that fuckup is gonna be . . . he’s gonna drag everyone in his wake right down with him.”

  And here we were.

  The crux of the matter.

  So when I spoke again, I was whispering. “You hang with his people.”

  One could say I’d been more than a little bit clueless, maybe my whole life.

  But right then I didn’t miss the shutters slamming down over Tony’s eyes.

  “You do,” I pushed carefully.

  “I got my reasons,” he returned.

  “Okay, well . . . okay,” I said, still not quite able to explore that mostly because I didn’t want to, maybe not ever. “But that . . . that . . .” I looked to the door even as I threw my whole arm in that direction in a vague way before I looked again to him. “We haven’t known each other very long but I’ve been with you maybe five times, Tony, and twice in those times you’ve gone straight to violence in front of me.”

  His chin jerked back in his neck as his brows shot up and he bit out, “Are you being serious here?”

  I stood my ground. “You did.”

  “You wanted me to tap one of those guys who was grindin’ up on you in The Trench on the shoulder and say, ‘’Scuse me, you mind not bein’ a motherfuckin’ dick?’”

  Another valid point.

  “Okay, well, maybe the guys in The Trench don’t count,” I muttered.

  “Ya think?” he asked sarcastically.

  I decided to move us beyond that. “But you could have handled Lonnie differently, or you know, maybe let me handle him.”

  And, say, let me open the lock of my own front door.

  “You weren’t handling it.”

  “I’ve known Lonnie longer than you.”

  “And in that time you haven’t been handling it.”

  Shit.

  Yet another valid point.

  “Tony—”

  I got no further.

  He demanded to know, “Do you get what’s happening here?”

  I was beginning to.

  I just didn’t get where I was with all of that.

  That wasn’t true.

  What was true was that I didn’t want to go to the place that was smart and sensible and responsible, which would take me away from the place where Tony held my hand, handed me a beer, stating without words he didn’t trust the assholes we were with not to date rape drug me and that was not gonna happen on his watch, and he touched my cheek in that sweet way of his.

  I also didn’t want to be in a place without Lonnie and Maria and the history we had, the memories we shared, bringing an end to good times, lots of laughs, the freedom to be crazy and stupid because we were young and that was the only time you could do that.

  But I had to go to that place. The time was now to make that decision. And that time was now because if it wasn’t made now . . .

  “That can’t happen,” I told him quietly.

  He shook his head once. “It’s already happened, Cady.”

  I shook my head too, more than once. “I . . . this is me saying now, after what happened tonight, that I’m seeing the way things are and it can’t happen.”

  “Something like this starts, you can’t stop it,” he told me.

  That was exactly what it felt like.

  He was like . . . like . . . a magnet and I was metal and all the laws of nature said there was nothing for it. But it wasn’t like I was drawn to him. It was like I was connected to him and nothing could shake me loose unless all my molecules were jumbled up and I became a different me.

  But this was where I had to pull my shit together.

  This was where I had to decide I was going to be manager at the Sip and Save and who cared what my parents or anyone thought of that, it was good work, honest, and I could do it, and do it well and lay my head down on any pillow at night and know that.

  And I was going to find an apartment in a nice part of town, it could still be a studio, but I wasn’t going to slum it anymore, and even if I had to take babysitting jobs or whatever to make the extra I’d need, I was going to do it.

  And when I made manager and I made okay money, I was going to start taking classes at a community college in management and marketing and shit like that.

  I had no idea where that was going to take me. I just knew that was where I should go.

  And I was going to do all of this because I was going to be someone I liked, someone worthwhile. I was going to make my way on the right path no matter how hard it was.

  I was not in the right place. I was not around good people. It sucked to admit, but Mom had always been right. It wasn’t so simple as to say they weren’t good people, but Lonnie and Maria didn’t make good choices and I had to separate myself from that.

  And all that came with it.

  Which meant separate myself from a man who saved me from being raped, silently listened as I poured all my shit out then he helped me deal with it, found me a place to live, moved me, bought me pizza, beer, held my hand and could make it seem like the world turned on his crooked smile.

  “You scare me,” I whispered.

  The air in the room went heavy as his cheeks flushed and his eyes burned and he stood still and silent.

  But I could actually feel the inner battle he was waging.

  I just didn’t know what the fight was about.

  “People . . . they don’t . . . p
eople don’t do that, Tony,” I explained hesitantly. “They don’t nearly twist a man’s arm out of his shoulder for touching a girl they like. I can’t . . . they all . . .” I shook my head. “All of them, even you, the people with Lars, they scare me. It’s not right. They’re not right. And I just . . . I . . . I just can’t.”

  “Stick with me.”

  His words were so low, I almost didn’t hear them.

  But I heard them.

  “Please don’t ask me that,” I whispered.

  “Stick with me.”

  “Tony.”

  “Stick with me. Believe in me, Cady. Even if you don’t know what I’m asking, I’m still gonna ask it. Don’t give up no matter what.”

  He was asking something huge. Something I didn’t understand but I knew it was too much. Too much to ask of me, Cady Webster, as the girl I was. Hell, maybe too much to ask of anybody.

  “There’s nothing to give up on. There’s nothing at all,” I told him, maybe trying to make myself believe my own words.

  “There’s something,” he returned.

  “Pizza and beer, that’s all we had. And I’ll make you a pie, Tony. Five of them. Payback. You don’t get without giving. And then I’ll find a place and I’ll clean this one before I leave, and I’ll ask my mom and dad to help me move out and you and me are square and we’re done, and that’s where I need to be. That’s what’s safe for me. That’s what’s right.”

  I realized I was breathing heavily watching him do the same, his eyes never leaving mine, the battle within him still warring on and it seemed he had to force it out when he repeated, “It’s not pizza and beer. You know what it is. And no matter what, don’t give up on it.”

  I didn’t understand even though I totally did.

  But I held on to the not understanding part so I wouldn’t give in and race right over the start line of the very wrong path in the hopes of catching up with Tony.

  “Right now, there’s nothing to give up, Tony. We shouldn’t make it so there is.”

  I was just able to get that out before he wasn’t four feet away, he was right in front of me, his hands on either side of my face, his face bent to mine.

  “You get it already, you just don’t understand what you get,” he whispered.

  He made no sense at all and I understood him exactly.