by Lym Cruz
“Go play somewhere else brats,” Christina shouted at the kids. They sprinted a couple of times around the garden, laughing, and then disappeared back inside the house.
This was the reason I enjoyed spending time at Christina’s place. They were family-oriented and being here reminded me of how lucky I was to have found these girls who had quickly become my family.
Erica set a new batch of burgers on the grill, removed the apron that covered her orange summer-dress and sat back down.
“Tina,” Mrs. Brown called.
“Ma,” Christina answered and went into the kitchen and returned with a tray carrying lettuce, cheese, sliced tomatoes, and a plastic bag with fresh buns. She dropped the tray in front of me. “Your responsibility.” I shifted forward and split the bread preparing them for the burgers.
Another of Christina’s siblings—she had a lot of them—came out with plates and set them on the table.
“Hi Erica,” James crooned with dreamy eyes. “How are you?”
“Oh, for the love of God,” Christina spat, rolling her eyes. “Get lost, imp.” She had a crude nickname for all four of her siblings.
“Leave him alone,” Erica said sweetly, patting his back. “It’s not his fault he can’t resist me, these things happen.” She cocked her head and smiled. “I’m awesome like that.”
I bubbled out a laugh. Erica was just too lovable and sweet.
Mr. Brown, Christina’s stepfather who raised her, appeared by the glass door with an enormous white rose arrangement and announced, “Delivery for Melissa.”
I couldn’t contain my grin. They had to be from him, and the thought sent a little thrill through me. The roses were gorgeous and spotless; the whitest I’d ever seen.
Mr. Brown handed me the roses saying, “He sure knows how to make an impression.” Then left.
Before my brain kicked into action, Christina snatched the card and read it, “Talk to me.” She grimaced. “That’s the best he can do? Talk to me.”
“They are lovely.” Erica smelled them. “Talk to him, maybe you guys got off on the wrong foot. He’s obviously sorry for whatever he did that you’re not telling us.”
I stared at the flowers grinning from ear to ear. Andrew was getting to me. How could he not? Every day it was a different delivery, each one cuter than the last and I couldn’t deny that his attempts to get me to talk to him were mellowing my heart.
I checked my phone knowing it would be swamped by missed calls and texts, and I was right. I skimmed through some of the texts.
Andrew: Give me one chance to explain my self. I’m sorry.
Andrew: I’m not good with apologies. Sorry. Let’s talk face to face!
Andrew: I’m an ass at times but I can be civil too, let me show you.
Andrew: You understand mistakes. Give me a chance to explain mine.
Andrew was right, I understood mistakes, but I was scared of being next to him. I wasn’t sure I’d be strong enough to resist him.
“You know you’ll talk to him eventually,” Christina said. “Might as well get it over and done with. The sooner, the better.”
“Exactly.” Erica rushed to the grill before the burgers burned again. “If he hurts you let me know and I’ll stab him.” She waved the tongs around in the air.
I chuckled. Erica was saccharine, incapable of hurting anyone. She never got into any trouble, only had one boyfriend all her life. If the statement had come from Christina who was the opposite of Erica, wild and adventurous and didn’t do the boyfriend thing. She does the: fuck ‘em and leave ‘em thing, then it would have been much more believable.
“Reply,” Christina commanded, “or I’ll do it for you.”
“This will lead to nothing good.”
I was distracted talking to Christina when I felt my phone slip through my fingers. Erica snatched it and ran inside the house. I leaped out of my seat following her but not quick enough. She closed the glass door and locked it behind her. I watched her through the glass messing with my phone.
“I will kill you if you text him, I swear.” I slapped my hand on the glass but she continued typing with a grin. She was proud of what she was doing.
“Erica!” I banged on the door harder. “Don’t!”
She placed the phone screen flat against the glass so I could see what she’d written.
My jaw dropped. She actually did it.
Melissa: Let’s talk.
Andrew: I’ll pick you up once I’m done with work. Around seven?
Melissa: Where are you taking me?
Andrew: My place.
Melissa: I’d prefer somewhere public.
Andrew: I don’t think what we have to talk about should be done in public. I can come to you if you wish.
Melissa: I’ll be ready by seven.
I was not happy with what she’d done, yet I wasn’t truly upset either. I was torn between wanting to see him and wanting to stay away from him. I was mad at him; however, I couldn’t deny the intensity that was constant whenever we met. I’d taught myself to be strong and never depend on a man and with Andrew, I was afraid to lose that. He affected me too much.
“Erica,” I growled. “I will murder you.”
Christina laughed then said, “Go around the front. But you have to admit that’s what you wanted.”
“No, it wasn’t,” I shouted, stomping my feet like a bratty child. “I can’t see him.”
“Now you’ll have to,” Erica laughed through the glass and wiggled the phone in her hand.
“I won’t!”
I ran around the house to the front door. It was open and I marched in. Mr. Brown was watching cartoons with the kids in the seating room. They paid no attention to us. Erica made a run to Christina’s room; the lock was broken. I pushed the door open and she stood there giggling with her hands in the air.
“Don’t hurt me. Just hear me out.” I took a step forward and she moved back. “Melissa if you come any closer, I will …” She looked around the room then back at me. “Okay. So … I won’t do anything but it won’t hurt to talk to him. He’s been trying to apologize and in the sweetest ways. I know he, like, screwed up but cut the guy some slack.”
She was wrong. It could hurt and deeply if I were to be disappointed again. I couldn’t afford to be hurt by Andrew once more.
Christina walked in and threw herself on her bed. “You’re still alive.”
“Not for long,” I murmured.
“Chill, Melissa. Go out with him and if he sucks then we’ll never touch the subject ever again.”
“Like never, ever again,” Erica added. “He’ll be dead to us.”
I thought, and maybe they were right. I should hear him out, we never actually talked. “Fine! I’ll talk to him.”
Erica sighed, bringing down her hands. “Are we good?”
“We’re good. Now give me back my phone.”
She took a few cautious steps and extended her hand and I took the phone. “If you ever do anything like this again, I will shave all of your hair and that’s a promise.”
“Where are the burgers?” Christina’s mother’s faint voice came from outside. “Erica… you burned the meat again.”
Erica cursed and dashed back outside.
“Andrew’s sweet and all, but he’s also kind of creepy,” Christina said, rolling on her side. “How does he always know where you are?”
I’d asked myself the same question countless times.
Chapter 7
Andrew
I parked my car outside the house Melissa was in, waiting for her to appear. All I thought about these past weeks was seeing her. Melissa snatched my mind completely. I couldn’t forget her teary eyes. Tears that I’d brought about. I’d tried my best to get a chance to talk to her, and finally, she’d accepted. I wasn’t sure what I was going to say, however, I knew that an apology was needed.
As I loosened my tie, she appeared by the front door with her two friends behind her. Erica waved with a kind expression whil
e Christina grimaced and curled a hand into a fist with her middle finger sticking up and thrust it in my direction. Smiling, I waved back then focused my attention on Melissa. She was awe-inspiring.
Melissa glanced to the right then left before crossing the road in dark blue Denim shorts, rolled up at the hem, a plain white, loose-fit shirt tucked in at the front, and white Converse. The long chain around her neck swayed as she moved towards my car. I leaned over and pulled on the lever, pushing the door open for her.
Melissa placed a red handbag on the floorboard and climbed in. Her lemon-crisp scent automatically filled the air and I inhaled the aroma. She turned to me with a faint smile, her lips barely curved up. I knew it was my fault and the dissatisfaction I saw in her eyes punched a sharp shot of disappointment through my chest. I gripped firm on the steering wheel, put the car into gear and drove. Throughout the drive, neither of us talked much and the atmosphere grew uncomfortable.
∞∞∞
Alleviated to have had finally arrived, I opened my apartment door for Melissa and switched on the light, giving life to the room.
“This is nice,” Melissa purred, stepping in.
My apartment was relatively vast, with a large living area separated from the kitchen by a long breakfast bar. The floor-to-ceiling living room windows on two walls offered a generous view of the ocean and surroundings, while the remaining walls were covered in light clay-color where canvases hung. A silver bookshelf was fixed by the sitting room adjacent to an oversized gray couch, and a transparent coffee table atop a silver and black carpet.
Melissa skipped across the room, dropped her bag on the dining table that sat six, and continued towards the windows to peer through the glass. I had an engaging view and as night fell, little white, red and blue lights twinkled from a distance.
I followed and stood by her side with my hands tucked into my pockets, watching her and contemplated what to say.
“Melissa, I’m sorry.” The word sorry, however, was not enough to express how I felt, but it had to be said. “I honestly didn’t mean to hurt you, but I did, and I sincerely apologize. I shouldn’t have kissed you at the restaurant without permission.”
Melissa spun and leaned her shoulder on the window. “Are you genuinely sorry or is this the speech you rehearsed?”
I mimicked her position looking straight at her. “Yes, I am, and this is not a rehearsed speech. I didn’t have the intentions you insinuated.”
Her lips formed a challenging smile. “What were your intentions then?”
Oh shit. “Okay, I did want you, and I still do. Very much. But not in the way you implied. There is something about you that captivated me from the minute I laid eyes on you. After all these years I couldn’t forget you. I kept wondering what happened to you or how your life turned out.” With a bit of remorse, I dropped an octave. “I imagined how it’d feel to be inside you, to have you close.” Merely thinking about it made my muscles spasm. “I replayed our only kiss constantly, and when I saw you all that surfaced a hundred times stronger. I couldn’t control myself. I am truly sorry. I never intended on hurting you.” I moved in closer.
“Is that it?” She knitted her brows. Even while she attempted to express vexation, I couldn’t help but notice her face. She was simply one of the most beautiful if not the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen. Everything from her heart-shaped face to her knitted eyebrows was proportional, ideally placed, crafting the masterpiece before me.
“For now, yes. I have a lot of work to do; I rushed home to see you.”
“And I’m supposed to be impressed with that?” She didn’t hold back the sarcasm in her tone.
“I hope so.” I offered a cheeky grin and raised my hand, striving to touch her face, but she moved away.
“Since we’ve talked and you have work pending, I guess I should leave.”
Sighing, I ran a hand through my hair. “Melissa, please don’t be difficult.”
“So … I’m difficult?” She laughed flatly. “You’ve been harassing me nonstop and now that I finally decided to hear you out, you tell me that you’re too busy.”
“No.” I sighed again, regretting my choice of words. She was right. “Please stay. We can continue to talk while I work.”
Melissa turned her back to me and sashayed further into the room, running the tips of her fingers over the furniture as she went—almost as if checking for dust.
“Why did you abandon me in the hotel?” Her whisper was barely audible.
“I didn’t abandon you, Melissa. When we got to the hotel and I got a better look at you, I could clearly tell that you were young. Maybe even a minor so I put you to bed and got myself another room. In the morning, I went to check on you and I even tried to wake you, but you were out cold, so I let you sleep. I waited as long as I could but I had a plane to catch. I had to leave.”
She rotated and leaned on the couch. “You could have left a note or something.”
I had thought about it but, I never expected to see her again. I hoped I would, but I never thought that it would happen. Entering the kitchen, I grabbed a bottle of red wine from the cooler and two glasses from the cabinet before returning to the living room.
Melissa was comfortably seated on the couch, barefoot, with her legs tucked beneath her. I sat next to her and placed the bottle and glasses on the coffee table. Then I poured a glass for her and another for myself. Melissa took a sip and looked up at me from her lashes, waiting for an answer.
“I thought that we would never meet again,” I said, before polishing off my glass and set it on the table.
“Neither did I,” she said and drank from her wine. “I couldn’t clearly remember your face. I have flashes of that night, but I’m not entirely sure what happened.”
Gently I placed a hand on her knee, hoping to reassure her and also because I wanted –needed– to touch her. Melissa didn’t object but mentally, I kicked myself for touching her. My only objective was to show her that I wanted to make amends.
“Nothing happened. You asked me to help you get out and I did. You were incredibly scared of those men, so scared that you snuck out the bathroom window and then I hid you in the trunk of my car to pass security. I wanted to take you home but you said you couldn’t go in that state, as an alternative, I took you to my hotel. You threw up on me.” She giggled. “Many times. I got you cleaned up, and then you passed out.” I cringed. “That’s basically it. How old are you?”
Melissa raised her glass but didn’t drink from it, instead, she twirled her tongue around the border of the glass, once, twice, three times, and then drank. My dick pulsed with every twirl. I wondered if she was doing it on purpose.
“Are you trying to figure out how old I was?” I nodded. “Seventeen.”
My expression was unchanged, however, a part of me flustered knowing that I had made out with a seventeen-year-old. Yes, it was at a strip club and when she was dancing with all the props and makeup, she seemed older but now that I knew for sure, it felt … wrong. It was also disturbing to think she’d been exposed to that sort of life at such a young age. I was curious to know how old Melissa was when she started or why she got into that life in the first place. There was plenty I wanted to ask, but I didn’t want to press for more too quickly.
“How old are you, Andrew?”
“Twenty-seven in July.” I paused. “What were you doing at a lecture for Law students?”
She smiled. “Darnel was trying to persuade me to change programs. He said I’d do great as a lawyer but he was wrong. But I did learn a thing or two about DUI, which is ironic since I don’t drive. Never have and doubt that I ever will drive a car myself.”
“Why not?”
“Never needed to and probably never will.”
Her comment made no sense. I let it slip because I had a lot more questions for her.
Melissa finished her wine and then set the glass on the table. The movement forced my hand away from her knee which made me a little disappointed.
> My stomach rumbled loudly as a reminder that I hadn’t eaten all day. “You hungry?” I asked.
“Not really, but I’ll keep you company.”
I beamed on the inside. Melissa accompanied me to the kitchen, sat on a barstool and swung her legs from side to side. I noticed that she was a comfortable person and I didn’t mind that she made herself feel at home.
Inside the fridge, I searched for what the housekeeper prepared, finding a container with pasta and another with Bolognese sauce. I set both containers in the microwave and then arranged plates on the breakfast bar.
The smell of the sauce became thick as it heated and my stomach rumbled once more. The microwave beeped, and I carried the food out to the bar. Melissa placed a pea-sized amount on her plate. I wanted to tell her to eat more but decided against it.
Rounding the pasta on her fork she said, “Aren’t you a little young to already be practicing law?”
I drank from a fresh glass of wine I’d poured us. “Not really.” At the age of twenty-six, I was exactly where my father expected me to be. At seventeen, I graduated from High School, got into university for pre-law education. Seven years later I became a lawyer. Failure was not a word part of a Malcolm’s lexicon. “If you start at the right age.” And, of course, having a father push it down your throat as soon as you could read.
With an appreciative grin, she went back to her food, and I ate like I’d never eaten before. I was starved but was interrupted by an alert of incoming email on my phone.
“Work,” I garbled as means of explanation.
“What are you working on?”
“It’s a custody case,” I answered, typing out a response to the email with one hand.
“It must be hard to have your parents fighting over you.”
“Are your parents still married?” I spoke, but my eyes were glued to the phone.
