CAN'T WAIT Box Set

by Wyatt, Dani

“Fuck, man.” Charlie’s voice cuts through my thoughts. “Of course. Who the hell would I be if I didn’t come pick you up today of all days, for fuck’s sake?” Charlie sighs then blows out a long uneven breath as he merges his Mercedes onto the freeway and we make our way west from the Federal Penitentiary that’s been my home for five years.

  “Shit, gratitude is one of the only things I have left.,” I say, turning to face him. “You never know. Doing time friends become scarce. I’m not questioning you, man, I’m just saying...” The silver scar on his right-hand flashes as he palms the wheel, and I remember when we were seventeen, the day we overturned my 1973 Mach II running from the police. At the time, it seemed a logical course of action trying not to get caught running a trunk full of white lightning back to Michigan from Kentucky.

  The back of Charlie’s hands show some new ink. He’s in a suit as well but he’s a few inches shorter than me. More scrappy to my bulk but he can kick some ass in a fight. We’ve been there together and have the scars to prove it. Chicks always were drawn to his charisma and even with the ink that covers most of his upper body he was always less ominous than me. His hair is a lighter shade of brown that matches his eyes but under all that boy-next-door goodness is a man that takes no shit and is not afraid of anything.

  He grins with a shrug. “It’s not like you killed someone, man. Fucking bad business deal, just on an epic level. People are fucking hypocrites. Every one of them cheats on their taxes and is that not a federal offense? You taking the fall for this shit—”

  “It’s over I don’t want to fucking talk about it ever again,” I grunt out, unwilling to look backward at that part of my life. You can’t live in the past. If life’s taught me one thing, it’s that. Even if you want to, not an option.

  “No problem.” My sharp words don’t give him pause. Same old Charlie. “Well, you look good, man. You spent some time hitting the iron.”

  I shrug my shoulders. He’s right. Working out and thinking of her are the only two things that kept me alive.

  “Hey.” He reaches inside his jacket pocket. “I got you this.”

  He hands me a gleaming silver 1947 Seydel harmonica.

  “Where the hell did you get this?”

  “An antique shop a few weeks ago. You still play?”

  “Haven’t for five years.” There’s a warmth in my chest gathering. Stupid little things, but playing the harmonica has been something I missed. Won my first one when I was ten on a dare with Lucius Bennington when he said I couldn’t climb the watertower in town all the way to the top. No one should ever tell me I can’t do something, they will lose. I’ve been playing that stupid little thing ever since. I used to play for Mia and that memory snaps sadness into the moment. “Thanks man.”

  “You’re welcome. Least I could do.” Charlie eases the car around a truck and accelerates. “So, what’s the plan? Where you gonna stay? Since you so politely refused my offer of an accommodation at my place, I guess you’ve got something lined up.”

  I rub my palms down the tops of each thigh. The prison released me with a pair of jeans and a t-shirt, but Charlie brought me a new suit, shirt and tie to put on which I did immediately when we stopped at the first place with a john. No way was I going back out into the world dressed like a thug. I’m still me, I’m back and I intend to pick up where I left off. First thing on my agenda is pulling out any resources I have to find her.

  Charlie would give his left nut for me, I know that. He’d bury a body for me with no questions asked. But I got myself into this and I’m going to get myself out. I’m not going to take any handouts.

  I check out the floor mat for a long second before answering, unable to keep my thoughts from her. Where she is. If she’s okay. How fucking much I miss her.

  How many times I’ve fantasized about bending her over that day and taking what was mine right there. Maybe it would have changed the course of events. Life is weird, one small change and everything could have been different. Thoughts of flipping up her skirt, pulling aside those drenched white panties, gripping her black hair in one hand and sinking every inch of my hard-on home, right where it belongs. All the while listening to her moan as she creams all over my throbbing cock. What difference would a day make, right?

  It made all the difference.

  Even now, the catch in my chest is the same. The rise in my dick at the flash of her smile in my memory. I clear my throat and focus on answering his question. “I rented a place. A house over on Wisconsin. It’s plenty for now.”

  Charlie squints one eye and screws up his face. “That so? Fucking nice digs over on Wisconsin. How the fuck did you rent a place like that right out of federal prison?”

  “Cash. That’s how. There are still those in the world that will forgo a credit score, a clean record and a background check in lieu of three times the going rate for rent. Quick bank transfer in cash. Pre-paid for a year. I may have lost almost everything, but I still have a couple Benjamins to rub together that the Feds didn’t take. Enough to try to get something new started. Nothing compared to what...” I let that last bit go. I don’t care anymore. “I also picked up a nice 1969 Camaro. The realtor happened to have one for sale and we negotiated that as part of the package. It’s waiting at the house so you won’t have to drag my ass around after today.”

  Charlie chuckles. “That’s cool. But I would, you know.”

  “I know you would. But I need to stand on my own.”

  What funds I had after the federal court took my plea agreement would still be considered living better than ninety percent of the people in this country. I know because I was one of them. Growing up in a place where a can of corn and a loaf of bread had to make do for a week gives you a certain resilience. So even though I lost almost everything, I’ve got more than most.

  Charlie is nodding. “True that.” He accelerates down the interstate. “There’s something else I need to tell you.” He clears his throat and shifts his grip on the wheel, his knuckles turning white. My gut starts to turn. Charlie could stare down ten mothers-in-law armed with Uzi’s and not look nervous, so whatever’s got him spooked can’t be good.

  “What’s wrong?”

  He rolls his head around on his neck and my impatience escalates.

  “Charlie, fucking spill, man.”

  “Okay, just don’t freak out. Okay?” He glances over, but when he sees the look in my eye his focus returns to the road and he keeps talking. “So, okay, look, on a whim I... Well, look, I drove by the house this morning...on my way to get you, I just thought I’d swing by the house.”

  “The house?” My voice thickens as a heaviness blankets me.

  “Yeah. I mean, I’ve kept up on my drive-bys for you, you know? Hell, of course, you know.” He laughs nervously at his own stupidity. “Almost five years, dude, just like you said. Drive past her house, update you whenever you get another fucking phone call. I must have driven past that place every fucking week, yeah? Always the same. Nothing. Nada. They disappeared off the face of the earth that day the feds came for you. Gone with the fucking breeze. The house stayed empty, looking more and more haunted every time I swung by.”

  He stalls on a breath, his fingers stretching out, then curling tightly around the steering wheel again.

  “Fucking spit it out!” There is a pressure building in my ears. A choking sensation nestles around my throat.

  “Okay, man, Jesus. Look, today....” He sighs, looks over at me then thinks better of it and stares down the road, shaking his head. “Okay, so the gate was open. So, I pulled in just beyond the gate to see. And there’s a car up by the front door. A taxi. Well, a van sort of taxi thing. And...” Another breath. Another pause.

  “Charlie, I fucking swear to Christ if you take one more dramatic pause I’m going to hurt you.”

  “Fuck, okay. Look, I saw her. Mia. She came out of the house, can’t mistake her, man. Went to the van and the side doors opened. Then, she pushed someone in a wheelchair into the house. That was
it. She’s back man. Mia’s back.”

  2

  Mia

  THE FIRST HOUR BACK here, I had this overwhelming urge to break down in floods of tears every thirty seconds. Good memories and bad linger in every corner but it’s still home. I can breathe again back behind the iron fences and locked gates.

  Memories of Walker. I swear I saw a shadow of him as I first stepped inside Tensfield. Like his spirit is still here and it felt like someone had punched me in the gut.

  “Thank you for bringing us home.” Nana’s voice trembles as I help move her from her wheelchair into her bed. Dark wood and shades of pink with a slight covering of dust greeted us to a room frozen in time.

  “Of course.” I push a smile to my lips.

  “Are you okay?” Her crooked fingers rest on my wrist as I pull the rose-colored quilt upward.

  “Yes.” I lie. My heart is only now returning to a normal rhythm. “We made it didn’t we?”

  “Yes. I’m proud of you. I know how hard it was.”

  “Not hard to leave there.”

  “You know what I mean. Being out in the world. I know how hard that is for you just to be outside the gates and walls. It will get better now. You may need some help. You know that don’t you? Like a professional. Even some medication, maybe, just until it gets better.” Nana’s milky blue eyes focus on me as I fuss with the covers.

  My overall fear of the outside world has grown into a full-blown phobia in the last few years.

  “Maybe. We will see how it goes. Maybe this was my breakthrough. Getting us from Mexico back to Michigan without one panic attack. That’s pretty good.” I lie. I just had to fight off the panic, it took all of my power, a couple Xanax I stole from my father’s stash and a few of those little bottles of wine on the plane but I don’t need her to know.

  “Better than good. Amazing. Your father keeping you trapped here and then there your whole life...it’s no wonder. Now that we’re back, you should really think about what I said on the plane. About being an editor. Find something you love to do and do it.”

  “I don’t know. I know I need to figure something out. We’ll be okay for a while, so don’t worry.”

  “I’m not worried, I just want you to do something for you for a change. Even that book you were reading on the plane, you had your highlighter and pen scribbling notes. You’re an editor already, just not getting paid.”

  “I’ve read enough books. But you need a degree I think. Or some training, classes.”

  Books have been my window to the world. Even back when we were at Tensfield, father would have the staff bring me stacks of books of all kinds to read. Kept me out of his hair. As I grew older, it was a romance that I devoured the most. And I would beg the staff to keep me in all the sweet, swoony goodness.

  Walker would sneak books to me as well. He spent so much time at the house, he knew one of my only pleasures was reading and every week he would put a box of books by my bedroom door. As I got older, the books he brought would be steamier and he was always the hero for me in every one.

  Not much has changed. Even in Mexico, my father indulged my reading. He allowed me to choose twenty books a month from Amazon on his computer and he would order them. The characters became my friends. The authors as well. I would have conversations with them late at night wondering why they did this or that, marking up the books and altering the text in ways I thought it would be improved.

  Nana sighs. “Now leave me be. Go check your blood sugar and get a bite to eat. I believe in you. You will find your way back to who you were meant to be now.”

  “I hope so.” I kiss her forehead. “You’ll be okay? If you need me to help you out of the bed—”

  “Stop.” She chastises with a flap of her hand. “I use that damn wheelchair only when absolutely necessary. It was just a long day. I’ll be up dancing before you know it.”

  She dismisses me with an air kiss and make my way back downstairs.

  I do hope she is right. My phobic fear of being anywhere outside of the walls and locks has kept me in my own sort of prison long enough.

  She’s barely spoken as many words in the last six months as she has since we pulled in through the wrought iron gates of Tensfield my family’s estate. It was as though after five years in Mexico she’d given up. I did too,

  My great-great grandfather built Tensfield here in Leonard, Michigan, back when this family still understood love and loyalty. The town wasn’t much more than a post office and a train station back then. When I was a little girl, I always pretended I was somewhere in the French countryside and a handsome prince was going to ride down the driveway on a black stallion, scoop me up and take me away.

  But alongside those little girl fantasies, I also developed a fierce independence. I looked after myself except for what my father allowed Nana to do for me which wasn’t much. But she was my friend, my companion and she taught me that even in a world such as Tensfield, love was alive.

  My diabetes came on when I was just ten, and my father never considered it anything more than a nuisance. I have been testing myself and giving my own injections since I was diagnosed.

  Tensfield employed a staff, but they were under strict orders not to tend to me only to my father, his parties and whatever his other whims and wishes may have been.

  I made my own meals as that was another of his mandates. But I still can’t cook. Once a year a new school uniform and pair of black and white loafers appeared in my closet.

  Money is on my mind but the bit father had left will keep us supported here with food, necessities, and utilities for a few months. I need to come up with a plan.

  Descending the stairs from her bedroom and down a long hall brings me to my old room where my suitcase is outside the door. I drag it inside, looking to see the vase of pink roses is still right where Walker set it that day. The blooms fallen over on dried stems, sitting on my dresser taunting me with memories of the day before I turned eighteen.

  I still remember the moment Walker Evans stomped into my life. I had been crying because my father took away my books for getting a ‘B’ on a test at school as well as wearing socks that didn’t match to school and embarrassing him. Fourteen years old, all legs, braces, and wishing for something different. I just wasn’t sure what that something was.

  Until he walked in.

  Sitting on the floor in my father’s office I’d looked up to see a man that at the time looked to me as big as the Hulk, only much better dressed. His black hair was swept back from a jutting forehead. I remember every one of the deep lines drawn into it, lines of fury, rage, that felt barely contained but I felt no fear.

  His grey eyes nearly stopped my heart. They were rimmed in a black circle and shimmered like a full moon.

  Tight biceps under the black fabric of his suit looked as though they would tear through the fabric. A crimson red tie perfectly knotted under the white shirt collar finished him off. I was used to these types of men, of course, all suits and stern countenance. They would wander in and out of our home so often over the years that I barely paid any attention to their comings and goings. Business knew no office hours with my father, as money was his family and what brought him anything close to joy.

  But on that day, this suited man bore no resemblance to the others that came before. It wasn’t just his sheer size. Of course, that was a part of it. He seemed massive to me, nearly blocking out all the light that streamed from behind him as he came through the doorway. His stride was long but slightly uneven as though he carried more weight on his right side than his left.

  It was more than that, though. He was different because he noticed me. And not in the way that some of the men that came through the house noticed me, a way that made me feel uncomfortable. This enormous man flushed my skin and made me feel safe.

  Walker Evan’s face was that of a real man, and sure, for a fourteen-year-old me, the attraction was an innocent romantic one. At that moment, my body lit up with a warmth and comfort I’d long forg
otten. A kind of belonging. Flashes of memories of my mother who I’d lost at just five years old were the closest thing that I could remember to the sensation Walker gave me.

  Now, standing here in my bedroom, remembering the first time we met, the day when Walker—who would become my friend and eventually the source of my night time fantasies—first walked into my life, it’s heartbreaking. All I can do is stare at the ruins of those pink roses, my heart in my throat as I remember everything, as I remember the moment he came into my room holding the vase and I’d hoped everything was about to change.

  I had been counting the seconds, perched on my bed, book in my hands as I prayed to hear the turn of my door knob, the creak of the floorboard outside my door. I knew Walker was in the house; I’d seen his car pull up an hour earlier and already knew whatever reason he’d given for coming to see my father was no more than an excuse.

  The timing was no coincidence: just hours before my father was due to leave for the airport. Walker had told me the day before that I should be ready for his visit. That had made me laugh; as if I wasn’t always ready. But this time, the tone of his voice told me it would be different.

  Time seemed to dilate as I waited, each second on the clock more like an hour until I finally heard the rumble of an engine starting up on the drive. I hopped to the window to see my father’s Lincoln pulling away, my stomach twirling in eight kinds of polka steps as the luxury car passed Walker’s black Suburban, still parked and empty.

  My head felt like it might float off my shoulders as I waited for what I knew was coming.

  My heart fluttered and skipped beats at the faint footsteps seeping into my room from the hallway. I’d hopped off my bed turning on the spot next to the window and watched the back of the dark oak door from my place by the window. I remember thinking I should change out of my school uniform but there was no time.

  I stared a hole in the door until the door latch clicked sharply, the knob turned, and I pressed my legs together as I fought to draw a breath.