by Sally Thorne
Valeska badly wants me back behind the picket fence where nothing bad can happen to me. I can see it in him—the strain of his body, the hands folded at his sides. Guard and drag, that’s what he wants to do.
“I have to start early. Darce, please stay in tonight.”
No way am I going to indulge myself in his overprotective Princess Mode. It’s too succulent, too lovely. I can’t be under the same roof as him alone. “Nope.”
“I promised everyone I’d look after you,” he tries again, before realizing what he’s done. Saying that will only make me walk faster.
“I can’t,” I call back to him. “I don’t trust myself anymore.”
I turn as his jaw drops, and now it’s just the sound of my boots. I don’t have to look back to know he watches until I’m out of sight.
It’s what he does.
* * *
TOM IS WRITING JAMIE SPORTS onto a box of my brother’s sports gear. We are attempting the impossible: emptying his room. “So, how was your night? You must have come in pretty late.”
“Barely midnight. I guess that’s pretty late for an early bird like you.”
“Did you have a good time?” He’s quite formal.
“Sure.” Not even for a second did I have a good time. I didn’t see Vince, or anyone I knew. I travel alone overseas, so I’m used to my own company. But something has changed.
I was desperate to get back home. I wanted to lie on the couch with a movie on, listening to Patty’s claws clicking and Tom padding around. His fingers tousling my hair and the clink of a teaspoon in a mug. To quash this weird domestic fantasy, I sat in McDonald’s and ate hot-fudge sundaes, then I got a cab home when I felt confident he was asleep. I’m a McCoward.
I need a new place to sleep tonight, Tom said as I was brushing my teeth this morning, and I’m glad my mouth was full of toothpaste. I might have reflexively replied, No you don’t.
He has charitably erased that weird moment last night. He’s good like that.
I try to do the same. “Jamie’s sitting at his desk, poking away at a calculator. Witness me, officially working harder than him. He sure does like books about dudes being framed by the government.” I’m stacking them into a box.
“Books with short chapters and briefcases of cash,” Tom says, dragging crap out from under the bed. He’s read plenty of Jamie’s discarded books in his time.
“Women with glossy red lips. Speedboats in Monte Carlo.” I pick up one with a revolver on the cover, and it flips open a little too easily to a dirty bit. I read it, leaning against the bed frame.
Tom looks up from stacking some dumbbells together. “Your hard work didn’t last long.”
I hold my finger up. There’s a foaming, grunting climax and I wrinkle my nose. “And now Jamie and I have read the same sex scene. It’s in both of our brains.” I have a full-body shiver. “Why can’t I stop disturbing myself?”
“No idea,” Tom laughs. He takes the book, and to my surprise he reads the entire scene too, flipping over the page with a crease on his brow like he’s studying for an exam.
I watch his eyes move side to side, sweaty words in his head.
My heart wrings itself out, gives me a new flush of blood, and I think I have pink cheeks. If I’m this scandalized just watching Tom read a sex scene, I’d better not let my brain take the logical next step.
Too late. Look at those big hands. Knuckles like walnuts and nice clean nails. They’re the kind of hands that you want all over. And now I’m picturing the huge upward push of his body, locking himself into me, 100 percent deep—
He snaps the book shut and snaps me out of my reverie.
“Well, that was remarkably straightforward.” He tosses the book in the box, his eyes giving me no clues. Is that scene a reasonable proposition to him?
“The guys in these books are drilling for iron ore.”
Tom laughs. “And the ones written in the seventies always mention a brassiere. I was at least seventeen when I realized that was just a bra.”
“You were quite a naïve boy. There are always puckered peaks and nests of curls,” I grunt, lifting a second half-empty box up. “And the women all orgasm after eight hard thrusts. Oh, Richard! Give me a break.” I write on the box: JAMIE’S FUCK BOOKS.
Tom takes the marker and crosses out the middle word. “I seem to recall that Loretta liked her books on the spicy side.”
I snort. “While you guys were off being wholesome and skiing, I was here, warping my brain on her soft-core porn novels. Explains a lot, huh. I’m the person most likely to have a thousand dollars’ worth of sex toys in her dining room.”
“I peeked in her books occasionally,” Tom confesses, the corner of his mouth curling.
“You didn’t.” I laugh in delight. “Well, good for you, Tom Valeska, you dirty kid.”
“When Jamie was in the bathroom or Loretta was making sandwiches, I’d just read a paragraph. I got my sex education right in this house.” He’s stacking junk into a new box. “A bit disjointed, but I eventually pieced it all together. It did give me some . . . unrealistic expectations.”
I want to know what he means very badly, but I just say, “You and me both, buddy.”
I write a lot of checks that my body cannot cash. A heart like mine doesn’t let me get too vigorous, and the guys I choose have no idea. I write on the second box of books: JAMIE’S TWISTED FANTASIES. I hoist the box onto my hip and the edge of the box snags my nipple piercing. I grab my boob and howl.
“Are you okay?” Oh dear, he thinks I’m having a heart attack.
“It’s the piercing. No matter how much time passes, it likes to remind me that it’s there. I’m pretty sure it’s hot-wired straight to my brain.” I watch Tom process this information. I can’t tell if he’s repulsed. “It’s a pain you feel in the roots of your teeth.”
Faint, he says, “Why get it?”
“It’s pretty.”
Tom plucks the box out of my grip with uncharacteristic violence. He walks out to the garage with me trailing him. “There’s no point in wrecking yourself. You’ve packed most of these. Not even Jamie could accuse you of not putting in effort today.”
I walk back into the house for the other box.
“I’m taking it. I’m-taking-it.” I do a quick systems check. Heart’s rock-solid. Everything’s fine. Except Tom’s parked his muscles in the doorway. “Move it.”
He takes the box. “Yeah, yeah. I’d rather you be mad than unconscious.” Off he goes.
In defeat, I fill a box with Jamie’s shoes. “Maybe I can handle a box of fucking shoes,” I say to Diana, who has jumped up on the windowsill. I bet she has big plans to sleep on Tom’s bed. “Live the dream, girl.”
I don’t bother packing these carefully; Jamie would have a whole new wardrobe of shoes by now. When he left, it was with one suitcase. That’s how fast he had to leave before he committed homicide.
Tom returns. “Thanks for letting me use your room. I don’t think I’ve slept so well in years. Your mattress is . . .” He can’t even think of a word. I know what he means.
“If I marry anyone, it will be that bed. It’s why I sleep so much.” I’m getting more wiped out by life. When I travel, I have to lie down in the afternoons. Together, we flip the generic mattress on Jamie’s old bed, and we make the bed with fresh flowered sheets. “When I travel, I miss my bed more than most people I know.”
“You must love traveling to leave a bed like that.”
“As hard as it is for you to believe, yeah. I do. I swear, if Jamie took my passport I am never going to forgive him.”
“Sure you would,” Tom says tentatively. He’s got a rawness in his expression. “You’re exaggerating, aren’t you?”
“Anyone who knows me, knows that that would be the worst thing to do to me. I hate being forced to stay.” I wish my brother would stop intruding on my limited time with Tom. “Are you even going to fit on this little bed?” Jamie didn’t get a lot of action when living h
ere; hence the books.
“I’m sure I will. Don’t forget, I’ll be out in my tent when the renovation starts,” Tom says after a beat. “Hey, what’s this?” He’s pulling out a large canvas from under the bed, and we lean it against the wall. It’s my Rosburgh Portrait Prize–winning portrait. Of who else but my brother.
“He really worked the room like a celebrity that night,” I say as we stare at Jamie. He stares back at us.
Objectively, it’s a phenomenal image. I clicked the camera, but I didn’t do it alone. That’s just the way Jamie’s face interacts with light. That night of the award, he was drunk on his own beauty and cleverness. And champagne, naturally. I felt like he’d won the prize, not me. I had to give short interviews as the youngest award winner and watch Tom fading into the sidelines, Megan hooked onto his arm.
“He slept with two different cocktail waitresses that night. Two.” Tom is dumbfounded, like it is scientifically impossible. It occurs to me that Megan is his one and only. The combine harvester keys are in my hand, so I begin to babble.
“Well, if you insist on carrying the boxes, you could move those five, and the room’s basically done. Jamie won’t believe I helped, probably. Maybe I should soak a handkerchief in sweat and he can get it verified by a lab.”
“You’re obsessed with proving you can work harder than him. It’s just a permanent battle with no ending.” Tom regards the portrait with an expression I cannot read. “You two are so tough on each other. Why don’t you try being friends? When you are, it’s amazing.” He grins at a memory.
“I have to prove myself. Every time I call someone out of the blue, they’ve got this tremor in their voice. Hello? Like they’re imagining me making an emergency call with my blue half-dead hand. That’s why I like guys like Vince. They don’t treat me like an invalid.”
“Vince,” Tom says, seizing on a name at last. He turns it over in his mind like one of Loretta’s tarot cards. “Vince. Not Vince Haberfield from high school.”
“Yeah, Vince Haberfield. He either doesn’t know about my heart, or he forgot, so when we hang it’s not this huge deal.” I don’t really care for Tom’s expression so I go into the kitchen and unearth a takeout menu. “Should I order a pizza for you before I go over to Truly’s? Silly question. Of course I should.”
He’s now sitting on his new bed. “You’re with Vince Haberfield? How’d that little piece of shit turn out?”
“He’s still a piece of shit. And I’m not with him.” I hold out my hand until he realizes what I want; he gives me his phone. I order a pizza I know he’ll like and hand the phone back. “Say something.”
He’s just sitting there. I don’t know what he’s processing, but it seems like a lot. I pat him on the shoulder. “I can see you’re not exactly overjoyed. Bad news to report to Jamie, huh?”
“I’m not reporting anything.” He says that with a tight jaw. But he’s still himself. I don’t get that hint of wolf that I thought I might when we look into each other’s eyes.
“Hey, don’t judge. Dating is an absolute nightmare. Be glad you don’t have to worry about it.”
“I thought you weren’t dating him.” He’s got me there. “Well, I have to worry about it now.” He rubs his hand on his face.
“You are not looking after me,” I tell him in my most firm voice. “No matter how much you want to, I’m not yours to look after.”
I watch as something like a wordless protest twists up out of him, and he’s groaning and putting his face in his hands. He’s miserable. I’m breaking his brain just being in this house.
Time for me to get out of here. One wrong move and he’ll be jamming his stuff back into his suitcase like Jamie did.
“I’m going to Truly’s now for a while. Save me some pizza.” I don’t need to change my dusty clothes. Keys, wallet, shoes, I’m out the door. I am the queen of the instant exit. I’m practically jumping out a dog door. “Bye.”
“Wait,” Tom calls from back in the house, surprise in his tone.
Patty slips out behind me. “Hey, come back!” I chase her up to the pavement and scoop her up. “Naughty.”
There’s a car approaching, and it’s not a pizza delivery car. That’d be one instant miracle pizza. It’s a noisy, black car. I know this car. I set a sprint record running back to the front door, my blood whooshing in my ears, and stuff Patty into Tom’s open hands. “Bye.”
The black car stops at the top of the drive, blocking my car in, and the ignition is turned off. The driver’s door opens.
Vince has either perfect timing, or the worst timing of all time.
Chapter 9
Moments like these make me certain that Loretta is lying facedown on a cloud, stuffing popcorn into her mouth, nudging Vince’s car a little faster down Marlin Street. Two minutes later, I’d be gone, and Vince would be just cruising past.
Vince rounds the hood of the car, sees me and Tom, and stumbles a little in surprise before recovering. He sits on the hood of his car. Speak of the devil.
“You still have no phone.” That’s Vince’s way of saying: I haven’t seen you for a while, I wanted to see you, and this is tough on my ego.
I’ve got new eyes now, looking at him. Tom’s straightforward gorgeousness has spoiled me for my usual type. Vince is whipcord lean, pale and dark haired, dressed in head-to-toe black. Tattoos galore. Dark circles and an air of tortured artist. He cups his hands around a cigarette, there’s a flick, and now he’s exhaling plumes of gray.
“Thought I’d drop by.” Vince clearly hates these sorts of moments where he’s got to justify his actions or give a shit. I’ve never required it from him. Another drag, and his blue eyes look anywhere but at me. “But you’ve still got company. Tom Valeska, right? Haven’t seen you for years, man. How’s it going? Cute dog.”
“Just great,” Tom says on a half laugh, Patty straddling his forearm. She’s got a toadlike expression. Cigarettes make her sneeze. “I’m fantastic.”
“And I’m fine,” I aim sarcastically at Vince. He just grins at me, looking at my body in my clothes.
“No argument here.” Vince narrows his eyes at Tom’s face, assessing him. “Are you here to start on the house?”
“Yep,” Tom says.
“About time. What a dump. And you’re staying here?” Vince is looking at the truck, and thinking about what opportunities may be impacted by this.
Tom would cross his arms if he weren’t holding a Chihuahua. “I’ll be here. Every day for the next three months. She’s working on it with me.”
Vince mulls this over. “Heard you were out looking for me last night. Lenny sent me a text, said he saw you at Sully’s.” He jingles his key ring at me. “Let’s go out.”
“I wasn’t looking for you. I’ve got other plans tonight. Beat it, shithead.” I point at the road.
“Wow. Way to make me feel used and abused.” Vince adds with a sly smile to Tom, “She only wants me for one thing.” He’s technically correct. Tom raises his eyes to the sky like he’s praying for strength. At this rate, I’m going to have to dig a small, thin grave.
For the last few years, Vince and I have used each other repeatedly in the little gaps of time when I arrive back in town. I don’t even bother telling him when I leave, because who cares? Not him.
Sex with Vince is like going to the gym; I feel slightly better after having done it as the sweat cools on my body, but I make a lot of excuses to myself as to why I shouldn’t go.
Tom’s dealt with enough of my boys to know that the best response is to be infuriatingly polite. “Where are you working these days, Vince?” You’d never guess he called him a little piece of shit two minutes ago. Butter wouldn’t melt in that perfect mouth.
Vince looks sideways at the decal on Tom’s truck. “I’m between gigs at the moment. I’m trying to get Darcy to hook me up with a job at the bar, but she’s holding out on me. I could get into construction, though.” A lingering, job-offer-sized pause is left here.
I s
hake my head. “Like I’m going to babysit your ass at the bar. You can work there when I leave.”
Tom stares at Vince. “And what do you think of the fact she’s come home with a bruise from working there? From a guy?”
Vince looks me all over but can’t see anything amiss. “She handles herself. I bet she fucked him up.” He falters under Tom’s eyes and adds awkwardly, “Are you okay though, Darce?”
“Fine. And you’re correct. I can handle myself.” I like how Vince sees me. Unquestionably tough and with no need of saving.
“Who did it?” Vince is more curious than outraged.
I huff. “Keith. The big dumb dipshit.”
“Shiiiit.” Vince whistles. “He’s got a thing for you, you know. Pretty obvious. The boys all laugh about it.”
“Well, you could have given me a heads-up. Did a barrel of Viagra roll into the water supply? Because last time I checked, I wasn’t irresistible.”
I scuff my boot around in the gravel. I’m still embarrassed every time I think about how I’d joke around with no thought of keeping my guard up.
“He was trying to tell me something I didn’t want to hear. He grabbed my arm to make me listen. That’s all it was. It wasn’t some violent thing. It was an annoying thing.” I’m telling all of this to Tom.
“It was a grabbing-someone-at-work thing. A bruise thing. Absolutely not okay.” Tom’s eyes are Valeska orange. In my black and white world, it’s the only color. For one deep throbbing instant, I want to be in his arms, those big hands cradling my head. No one could put a bruise on me.
“You don’t want to take him on, man,” Vince advises Tom. “That guy is huge.” He’s noticed Tom’s expression and looks away with a grin, half obscured by smoke. “Well, you might do all right. You’ve been hitting the gym.”
“Nope.”
“This here is a hard-work body,” I tell Vince. I’m starting to get annoyed at him and his light, snarky, sexy banter. A conversation with Vince is like trying to thread a live worm onto a hook.
Then I realize something, and it’s enough to stop my heart. Vince is the same as me. How does Tom even deal with me? Oh shit. I’ve got a type all right: It’s me. His tongue stud winks in the dusk light. My variation winks back from the dark cup of my bra. We’re so similar we could be twins.
