“What about Samuel?”
“Mirna!” I said, “You want to hook me up with the guy who grows pot in your guest bedroom?”
Mirna shook her head. “No, my dear. But I wouldn’t mind if you considered the man who’s a lot more than he seems on the outside.”
“What exactly is your arrangement with him anyway?” I asked.
“That’s not my place to say, dear. That’s part of our arrangement. But I will say that you shouldn’t be so quick to judge. You only really know someone’s true heart when they really want to show it to you.” She squeezed my arm. “He reminds me a lot of your grandfather, you know. I just hope one day you find someone who takes as good care of you as he did of me.” She plucked another dress from the rack and held it up to me. I hooked my fingers into the top of the hanger so she could take a step back to appraise her selection.
“I’m sorry,” I said, Mirna waved off my apology. “I just want to make sure that you know what you’re getting into with him and that…”
“That’s not something you need to worry about. Samuel is a good man.”
Who killed Eric. “Are you sure about that?”
“Because he’s shown me his heart.” Mirna sighed. “Good people can do bad things, Andrea. You’ve told me yourself that you’ve done some bad things. That doesn’t make you a bad person, right?”
“I’m not entirely sure it doesn’t,” I admitted.
“Oh phooey, you’re not at all a bad person. You’ve got a big heart, and your grandmother’s eyes.” She opened her arms wide. “And with that you can conquer the world.” She added the dress, plus some high waisted shorts and some crop tops to the pile in my arms.
My hands started to shake, aftershocks is what Mirna had called them. I dropped the clothes, and when I bent over to pick them up, she shot me a concerned glance. “It’s getting better,” I reassured her. “I swear.”
“You need to go to a proper rehab facility so you can make sure this sticks. Professionals can get you through this better than I can. I’m a nurse, not a counselor. I know there’s more to this addiction thing than the physical part.”
“Proper rehabs cost a lot of money, and the government funded ones are more like jails or mental institutions,” I said, trying to gather the clothes back up. “And besides, I can’t go because you wouldn’t be there.”
“Then here is what we are going to do,” Mirna said, again clapping her hands together. She took the clothes from my hands and walked out of the closet, setting them gently on her bed. “We are going to get you all fixed up proper, and then we are going to go outside and meditate in the fresh air.”
“We’re gonna what?”
She put her hands on her hips. “Don’t tell me you’ve never meditated.”
“Not…recently?” I squeaked. “Meditation wasn’t really something I’d manage to squeeze in with all the shooting up and letting people down I had going on.”
She rolled her eyes and returned her attention to sorting the clothes. “Your sense of humor can be as off-colored as Samuel’s. I have a book you can read, and I will teach you. The world is a tricky place. Meditation is a vehicle that will help you navigate through it better, you know, avoid the potholes.”
“In my case that vehicle better be a tank,” I said, bumping her with my hip and dropping a precious shoe in the process.
“Don’t you sass me young lady. I may be losing my marbles, but I’m still your grandmother.”
“Yes, Ma’am,” I said, with a shoe salute.
“Meditation is like…stretching after a run, but instead of your muscles, you’re stretching your soul,” she said, pinching my cheek like I was a child, making me yelp. “Now, you’re going to take these clothes as my gift to you and you’re going wear them. For ME. For as long as you love them. And right now, we are going to play a little dress up,” she ordered. “Is that clear?”
“Yes, if that’s what you want. But…why?”
“Because, dear, I’ve been waiting what seems like a hundred years to see these dresses on a real person again, and what seems like even longer to see what they’d look like on you. These belong to you now.”
My heart squeezed in my chest. There was no arguing after she said that, even if I’d wanted to argue. Which I didn’t. Not even a little.
An hour later Mirna spun me around to look in the mirror, and I gasped at the reflection before me.
The green and white sundress Mirna had picked out for me had thick halter straps that snapped around my neck, and a squared neckline that pushed up my breasts and gave them a fuller, more rounded, look. The middle was corset-tight and accentuated my waist, while the bottom flared out slightly in an a-line, ending right above my knees.
And, of course, I was wearing THE platform, black pumps with bows. “Who says love at first sight doesn’t exist?” I whispered as I turned my foot from side to side, to better admire my new lovers.
Mirna set my long hair in a style I wasn’t sure I could ever duplicate myself. One side was tucked behind my ear, and the other side fell in cascading waves over my shoulder. Decadent Red was now on my lips as well, while black liner on my eyelids topped off the look. For an every day look, I’d prefer a more muted version of the pinup in the mirror. But, right then, I couldn’t even believe that girl was me.
For the exception of the scars on my arms, the junkie was nowhere to be seen.
“I look… I look like…” I stammered. A human being.
Mirna stood behind me. Her eyes glazed over. Pride filled her expression as she joined me at appraising my reflection. She rested her chin on my shoulder and smiled. “A woman,” she said. “You look like a beautiful young woman. Which is exactly what you are.”
I angled my head so I was resting against my grandmother. “I was going to say that I looked like you.” I turned around and held up my arms. But it had only been two weeks since Preppy brought me to Mirna’s, so even though most of the scabs were gone, the scars, both new and old remained. “Except for these.”
She cupped my cheek. “We all have scars, my dear.” She grabbed my wrists and lifted them to her lips, pressing a kiss to each of my forearms, patting them when she was done, as if the matter was now settled and Grandma’s kisses solved all. And in a way it did. “Some of us on our arms.” She pressed her palm over my chest. “Some of us in our hearts.”
Some of us on our face. I absently ran my hand down the jagged raised scar on the side of my face.
Mirna walked over to her dresser and grabbed a silver frame from one of the many crowding the surface. She looked from the picture to me. “Well, what do you know about that.” She handed me the frame.
The picture was of Mirna wearing a very similar style dress, except she topped hers off with gloves and a white floppy hat. She was arm and arm with my grandfather as they smiled for the camera. My mother was young, standing at her feet holding a lunch box. Her blond hair and light features favoring my grandpa, while I was a spitting image of Mirna. I held up the picture frame and looked again at the similarity between a younger version of my grandmother and myself. It was like nothing I’d ever seen before. “You do look like me.”
“It’s like we were twins separated by…decades,” I said as Mirna nodded and chuckled, taking the frame back from my hands and setting it back, exactly in the position it was before on the dresser, tweaking it left, then back right a few times before she was satisfied. “Mirna, exactly how old are you?” I asked, trying to do the math in my head.
Mirna sighed. “Four hundred and seventy seven,” she deadpanned. We both broke out into a fit of laughter so hard I thought I’d rip the seam of my dress. When we reined it in she looked me over again, a look of satisfaction on her face, her lips twisted up into a beautiful smile. “You look breathtaking, my dear. Your grandfather would have loved to see you in that dress. You know, it was the very first one he sent me,” she said, waving off the emotion that had her temporarily at a loss for words. Her eyes watered and reddened, but
she stood strong. Sniffling and straightening her back like she was daring the tears to come back.
“Mirna…” I started, reaching out to comfort her, but she stepped back and waved me off.
“Oh, don’t be silly. I’m just an old woman, which makes me just about as emotional as a pregnant woman,” she said with a sniffle, lightening the mood. “Samuel is going to love the way you look,” Mirna lamented.
“What does he have to do with anything?”
Mirna quirked up a white eyebrow. “Didn’t I tell you, dear? He’s the reason I remembered to give you the clothes I’d kept for you. They’re for your new job.”
“My new job?”
“Yes, your new job working for Samuel.” Mirna took one last look at my reflection and sighed with satisfaction. “It will be good for you. Give you a chance to clean your soul, start fresh.”
“Is that even possible?” I asked, but I wasn’t sure if I was directing the question at her or me. “What if the stains are too great?”
“No, you’ll see. It’s the stains that make us human,” she said, and with that I fell a little more in love with my grandmother. “I tell you what, you go water the plants while I go and find that meditation book for you. When you’re done, you can meet me in the backyard. We are going to have our first meditation session, and you are going to focus on the future and what you want out of life. We’re gonna clean that soul you think is so dirty.”
Mirna could try her damnedest, but I was pretty sure that a soul as dirty as mine would need a lot more than some new clothes and meditation to be cleaned. I pointed to the stranger in the mirror, a girl who looked like she ALMOST had it together, I muttered, “At this point, bleach might be a lot more useful than a book on meditation.”
Maybe I’d ask Preppy about how to clean a dirty soul, because although Mirna had enlightened me as to what he’d done for her, she hadn’t seen his eyes up on the tower.
None of it made sense. A guy who helps old ladies in their time of need couldn’t possibly be the monster I thought he was. Maybe he didn’t have a dirty soul, after all.
Maybe it was just me.
Later that day, Mirna gave me my first lesson in meditation. I was sans shoes in the grass, but every so often I’d open one eye and check to make sure they were still on the deck where I’d placed them, lovingly, in the shade.
We sat Indian style across from one another in front of her flower box, our hands on our knees, palms up. Oscar grunted around the backyard. Both Mirna and even Preppy seemed to care for the animal, so much that I’d yet to ask why the heck my grandma had an enormous pig as a pet, but when he nudged my shoulder with his dirty wet nose I shooed him away, pretending to be annoyed at his interruption. I placed my index finger across my lips and Oscar got the message, trotting back up to the fence and sniffing under the gate, like a dog smelling for other animals. Were all pigs that smart?
I took a deep breath and attempted to rein in my thoughts and concentrate on the meditation. Mirna’s chin was tipped up toward the warm sun, her famous cat eyes were simple perfection in the bright light that made her wrinkled, yet flawless skin, look as if it were glowing.
Unable to help myself, I snuck another peek toward the back deck to check on my new shoes for the hundredth time, and for a second my heart stopped beating. One was missing. I was about to bolt to the neighbors house to call 911, or the fire department, or poison control, or the president himself, when a shadow fell over me. I shrieked and tried to jump away, but he grabbed me by the arm and held me down. I fell sideways across the intruders lap, all the while Mirna remained in her meditative pose.
The intruder laughed. And I glanced up to find Preppy holding the missing heel over my head.
“Nice shoes, wanna fuck?”
Eleven
PREPPY
What in the the fuck was she wearing? Her dress was hugging her tiny waist and pushing out her tits, and suddenly it was as if I’d gone deaf because all I could hear was the blood rushing to my cock. Everything in me was shouting at me to bend this girl over and fuck her until we both fucking DIED.
I didn’t care that Mirna was sitting right there. I didn’t care if the Pope and the Dalai Lama were watching on the sidelines with Jesus himself. All I wanted was to see that glossy red lipstick smeared all over my motherfucking cock.
Rein it in shit-head. I scolded myself, you have more important things to be focusing on, other than her tits.
But those tits…
It looked like Mirna had roped in another one. I was glad too because as much as I liked her, when she’d insisted on teaching me to meditate I mostly played a recap of American Ninja Warrior in my head until she told me we were done. Her current pupil had been shocked and amazed by how good I fucking looked and had fainted across my lap, unable to get a grip on her swoon.
OR, I’d scared the shit out of her and she fell onto me.
It was definitely one of those two things.
Regardless of how it happened, what stood out most to me was where her hand had landed when she tried bracing her fall. I’m not gonna lie, it was actually kind of cute when she blushed after realizing it was right over my cock.
I admit that when I first saw her sitting there in that dress, with her hair all done up in shiny waves, and her lips painted bright red like the star in my favorite fifties porn, Rosie the Rectal Riveter, I didn’t even recognize her. My first thought was very caveman. Must put cock in pussy. But when I realized it was Dre behind that get up, it added a whole new layer of intrigue to the girl who already had me intrigued.
I had tasted that pussy, and I liked it.
No, I fucking loved it.
A fucking lot.
I wasn’t going to tell her that, but omitting information isn’t the same as lying. I wasn’t a liar. I would even go as far as to say that my strength had always been in my amazing ability to be completely and brutally honest. Of course, the gift of honesty was in addition to my sense of humor, wit, charm, character, striking good looks, phenomenal—yet classic—sense of style, and last but not least, the tribungus slab of man meat dangling between my legs.
But I motherfucking digress.
So when my phone vibrated, and I found myself listening wordlessly to some guy, who I quickly realized was Dre’s dad, launch right into an apology for turning his back on his only daughter, followed by a plea for me to tell him where she was so he could bring her home, my first instinct was to tell him the truth and take all the glory and credit for being the individual who successfully reunited the estranged father and daughter duo. After all, that’s what Dre had said she really wanted more than anything, to go home to her dad. And there I was—holding the capability to do just that in the palm of my hand.
Dre plucked the fuck-me heel I’d taken off the porch from my hands. I was about to tell her that it was her dad on the line when I remembered the reason I came over in the first place. I froze with my mouth open and the phone to my ear, like Zack Morris had paused time, Saved by the Bell style.
If Dre went home, then I’d lose my one last chance at getting Max back for King. I mean, it’s not like I hadn’t done anything for this chick, I reminded myself. I’d let her live and all.
Motherfucking generous is what I really was.
King had saved my life, several times over. Shit, he’s the one who gave me a life to begin with. And as far as heterosexual life-mate’s go, I’d won the fucking lottery when he showed up on the playground that day and knocked the fuck out of a bully, who I may or may not still have egged his mother’s house on a regular basis.
I walked off and waited until I was at the back gate, far enough away, where I was positive there was no chance of Mirna or Dre hearing me before I uttered a single word. “Who the fuck is this?” I asked, inserting as much annoyance as I could into the question, interrupting Dre’s dad, who hadn’t stopped talking, his fast speaking made it almost impossible to make out his frantic plea.
“This is Adnet Capulet. Who…who is th
is?” he echoed my question, anger and confusion replacing the desperation in his voice.
“Adnet, I’m the guy who picked up the ringing phone,” I sang, “And you’re the guy who called and made the phone ring. Go ahead, ask me another one. This is fun.” I bent over to pick a sand spur from the side of my boot. One of its unholy devil points stuck into the side of my finger. I shook my hand several times before it finally detached from my flesh, flicking it into the brush where it would undoubtedly find another unsuspecting victim to torment, with their ability to cause just enough of an injury to throb mildly in the middle of the night and wake you out of a deep sleep. Those little cunt-seeds were so annoying, they were like the plant version of Dancing with the Stars.
Again, I motherfucking digress.
I sucked the drop of blood that pooled on my fingertip. “My daughter,” Adnet started, “her name is Andrea. She called me a while ago from this number. I want to talk to her. Please, if you know where she is. I made a mistake. I just want her to come ho…”
“Let me stop you right there, man. You sound like a nice guy, maybe a little high strung, but nice. Unfortunately, I have no fucking clue who you’re talking about. The payphone I was about to use started ringing, so I answered it. Sorry, man. Might want to look into getting her on the side of a milk carton, STAT.”
I hit END and was about to shove my phone back into my pocket, when it vibrated again. “Listen,” I snapped, the irritation in my voice no longer fake. “I told you that this is a public phone and I don’t know where the fuck your daughter is but, I’m trying to make a call here…” Bears booming laughter interrupted me.
“Oh, it’s just you,” I said, and if a voice could snarl, that’s how I spoke to Bear. Snarly. I held the phone under my chin and picked at the tall grass that had grown over from the connecting field and wrapped its way around the gate latch.
“Whatever’s going on, you got it handled?” Bear asked. “Or is this gonna end with me finding half-burnt body parts in the fire pit?”
King Series Firsts Box Set: King, Lawless & Preppy Part One Page 54
