by Lena North
“But –”
“Dupree is right,” Lippy said calmly. “You have family here. You’re also safe here.”
Shit. I’d forgotten about Sebastian. And they were right. I had family in Croxier which was something I’d never had before, and I wasn’t going to give that up.
“Okay,” I whispered.
Then Dupree sent me inside to take a shower, and when I was done, he’d made breakfast. I thought I’d throw up, but he made me eat surprisingly good scrambled eggs and some toast. We spent the day on his small boat, sailing around the main island. He kept me busy by sleeping, so I had to handle the boat, which was something I had no clue how to do. He smiled, showed me how to use the rudder to steer, and told me I’d figure it out.
It wasn’t hard, and I relaxed after a while. He’d dug out a pillow and was snoring softly. He’d been awake all night, for me so I could do this, for him. I wondered how I would have managed to get through the night if he hadn’t taken care of me.
“Charlie…”
The first dolphin surprised me, and then I saw that an enormous pod was circling us.
“Hey,” I whispered.
“You’re sailing.”
“I’m trying,” I clarified because I was mostly holding the rudder, so we’d keep going straight ahead.
“Good. Swim with us later?”
“When Dupree wakes up,” I promised.
“He’s your father.”
“Yes.”
“You should call him Papi like the others do with their fathers.”
I swallowed and didn’t answer. Then I looked at the man sleeping in front of me. He looked younger when he slept. A couple of his dreadlocks had fallen over his shoulder, and he had a hand on his flat belly. He’d held me when I cried and made eggs.
“I will,” I said quietly.
***
I spent the next evening alone in Dupree’s house. I’d told him I was okay, and that he needed to be at the bar, so he went but didn’t look happy about it. I wasn’t okay at all, and when they’d closed up, he came home to find me on the back deck, crying my eyes out on Pauline’s shoulder. The next day he told me to get ready because I was working my first shift that night.
“Um,” I mumbled.
How the hell was I supposed to get through a whole evening in front of everyone?
“It isn’t going to get easier, Charlie. They’ll stare and ask how you’re doing. Everyone feels sorry for you, so you’ll get buckets full of pity, and you’ll have to smile your way through all of it. Either you do it now, or you do it later, but you’ll have to get through it.”
His eyes were calm, but a muscle moved in his jaw.
“Okay,” I said quietly.
“I know this sucks for you. I hate what happened and if there were anything I could do to fix the whole shitstorm which was unleashed on you with no warning, I would. But I can’t, and that sucks too.”
“I’m not sure I would have made it without you,” I said quietly. “You’re right, it does suck, but you made it bearable.”
His face softened, and he gave my cheek a quick, soft caress with the back of his hand.
“Go and put whatever you put on your face. If shit gets too bad, just let me know. Ban would be happy for some company in the kitchen.”
“Why do you call him Bananas? He doesn’t seem crazy to me.”
Dupree snorted out something and shook his head. “Oh, he’s crazy alright, but not in an insane way.”
We’d talked about my mother, so he knew that I knew the difference.
“In a do stupid shit for no good reason at all way?” I guessed.
“Exactly,” he confirmed. “Although… We mostly call him Ban because his mama was crazy too. The name she gave him is hilarious, and not in a good way.”
“Really?”
“Yup.”
I stared at him, and he stared back at me, lips twitching slightly.
“You’re not going to tell me, are you?”
“Nope.”
I slapped his shoulder and went to my small room to get ready for an evening I didn’t look forward to. Then I walked the short distance to the bar where Lippy descended on me and shared where everything was and what I was supposed to do.
Tina and Thea came early, and I suspected Lippy had called his daughter which was kind of him.
“You okay?” Tina asked so casually I almost giggled.
“No,” I told her. “But I will be.”
“Hate her. Hand me a beer.”
“Me too,” Thea added.
They were my first customers, and I made the lines on their tab on the chalkboard behind the bar. White was for beer, red for any kind of hard liquor and blue for soft drinks. Food was a simple x. I avoided looking at Joao’s tab because some of the lines would be the beer I’d had. He’d fought with Dupree about that. My father had told Joao I didn’t pay for anything in his bar but after a lengthy and very growly discussion, Joao had simply walked in behind the bar, put a line on his tab and told Dupree to shut up. To my surprise, he did.
Tina and Thea stayed close to me until Lippy left the bar and motioned for them to sit down with him at a table. Dupree also kept close to me at first, but then we spread out and worked separate ends of the bar. It wasn’t difficult, mostly because it was a slow evening, but also because almost everyone ordered beer or rum and coke. A pimped-up lady who clearly didn’t live in Croxier ordered a Manhattan, but I sent her to Dupree, and she grinned at me before sauntering over to flirt with him. He winked at me and flirted right back with her.
Roark walked in halfway through the evening and came straight to the bar.
“Beer,” he grunted and sat down in front of me.
I swallowed and filled a cup from the tap.
“Here you go,” I said.
“This is so fucking wrong I don’t know what to say so I won’t say anything at all, Charlie.”
“Appreciate it,” I said. Then I leaned forward and murmured, “I’ll be okay, Roark. I don’t know how, but I’ll find a way. You need to take care of him.”
His face hardened, and then he nodded, looked away and drank half the beer in one go. Toby, another of the cousins on the d’Izia side, joined him. He told me he hated Mimi and asked for a beer. Then a couple more came, shared their sentiments about Mimi and asked for beer. This turned out to be the pattern for the evening, and I might not have Joao, but I had my cousins.
When we’d closed for the night, Dupree, Ban and I went swimming. They laughed at the way I moved around but kept pushing so when we got back I was exhausted, and I knew they’d done it so I’d fall asleep quickly.
I didn’t. I muffled my sobs with the pillow and wept until I couldn’t hold my eyes open anymore.
This became my life. I spent the days with Dupree or some of the cousins. I had dinner with Tina and Thea, visited an incredibly angry Pauline who apparently had tried to talk to Mimi several times, went out on Roark’s boat, and worked at the bar in the evenings. Then I came home, wiped the smile off my face, crawled into bed and wept until I thought my chest would explode. As the weeks passed by, I expected the pain to fade away, but it didn’t, and all I could do was smile even more than before, and pretend everything was fine.
No one seemed to suspect it was all an act, except the three men in my life.
Lippy seemed to sense whenever I reached the point where I wanted to scream if one more person told me they were sorry, or how brave I was, or how they hated Mimi and how was I doing by the way? Had I seen her? Or him? When I couldn’t handle more questions covered in well-meaning compassion, Lippy ordered me to take a break with Ban in the kitchen.
Ban usually made me slice pizza toppings or wash glasses. On my first break, I felt bad about being poor company and tried to smile. He immediately threw a very ripe mango at me and grunted that I should wipe that, “sorryassed fake-smile,” off my face because he couldn’t stand it and since he was ti
red and grumpy, I could be too. Then he told me to jump off the dock, although that was since I had mango running down my back. A couple of dolphins laughed while I tried to clean up, and told me I looked like a sea horse when I wiggled around like that, which made me giggle. After that, I had a sanctuary in the kitchen with Ban whenever I needed it. If I felt like being quiet, I was. If I felt like talking, I could. And if I felt like listening then Ban was always eager to share stupid things my father had done over the years. And there were many of those.
Ban also told me his name. I’d been on the verge of tears and had dropped a glass into the sink. It shattered and I pushed out a hoarse sob.
“Folke Hubertus,” Ban murmured in my ear.
I turned to stare at him.
“My mother was a Swedophile. Named me after the Swedish king.”
I blinked.
“The King of Sweden is called Folke Hubertus?”
“Carl Gustav Folke Hubertus. She could have gone with Carl,” he said laconically.
“Or Gustav,” I breathed.
“She didn’t.”
I giggled and saw his smile in return.
“Thank you,” I murmured.
“Tell anyone and I kill you,” muttered and went back to decorating a couple of pizzas with peanuts and small pieces of pepperoni.
The pizzas were laughing, and so was I.
Dupree did what he’d done since we drove away from Nicholas and Pauline’s house. He took care of me. When I didn’t want breakfast, he put a plate in front of me and since he’d made the effort, I ate. If I spent too long at the back deck staring out over the ocean, he took me swimming, or sailing, or into town for coffee. We talked a lot during those days, and I hadn’t lied that drunken night with Carrie; Dupree had a really, really nice smile. Sometimes it felt as if it was the only thing that kept me sane.
I hadn’t seen Joao since the day we broke up, and I dreaded it.
Then Mimi came to the bar.
She walked in with a group of friends wearing a wide, flowy tunic. She was laughing at something one of the girls said, but I saw her glance around the room until her eyes met mine, and I knew she was there to rub everything in. Slowly, she put a hand on her belly. I wondered if Joao had put his hand there, over their child, and tried not to look at her smug face.
“Fuck no,” Dupree thundered, flipped the hatch in the bar with such force it slammed down loudly and marched up to her.
I moved to get out of there, but Ban was suddenly in my way, and he put an arm around me.
“Stay.” I turned to look at him, and he glared at me. “Head high, Charlie-girl. Don’t let her do this to you.”
I nodded and leaned into his comforting strength.
“You need to leave,” Dupree said to Mimi.
His voice was calm, but his face was so hard it was scary.
“I just want to have something to drink with my –”
I felt my brows go up and stopped listening. She was seriously trying to argue with my father? What an idiot.
“You need to leave,” I heard Dupree repeat, and this time his voice was as hard as his face. She opened her mouth to protest again, and he added, “You are a piece of shit, Mimi. I don’t allow shit in my bar.”
Her angry wail echoed through the room and by then every goddamned customer was watching the spectacle. I felt Bananas reach for the phone and then his deep voice boomed.
“Joao, boy, get your ass down to the bar right now. Mimi’s here, and Dupree told her to leave, but she won’t. Either you’re here in five minutes, or we’re pressing charges for trespassing.”
Ban threw the phone back on the bar, looked at his watch and tightened the hold he had on me. I couldn’t take my eyes away from my father who was holding his arms out from his sides to herd Mimi toward the entrance. Her girlfriends were either looking at me or shrieking at Dupree that he was assaulting her, which was stupid on so many levels.
It took Joao three minutes to get there, and he walked in looking like a thundercloud. He went straight to Mimi, took hold of her arm and hauled her out of the bar. I watched them through the window, and we couldn’t hear what he was saying, but it was clear they weren’t happy words. Then he pointed up the road, and his mouth formed the word, “Go.”
She left, followed by her friends, and Joao turned slowly. Our eyes met through the window, and everything around me stilled. We were in that bubble of us again, and I knew it was wrong, but I felt my lips form a wobbly smile. Then he turned, got into his car, and drove off. I moved down the bar toward Tina who looked like her head would explode any second. Dupree joined us, and he was strung so tightly I thought his head would explode too.
“Go for a swim,” I murmured. “You’re right, she’s a piece of crap. Just go and wash off the stench. I’ll handle the bar.”
He wrapped his arms around me suddenly and held me close.
“Charlie,” he whispered into my hair. “God, I’m sorry.”
“I know,” I said. “But you handled her. Ban held me up. I’m good.”
His eyes met mine, and then he walked out without another word.
“She is such a godawful human being,” Tina growled.
“Yeah,” I said. “You want another beer?”
She blinked.
“You seem calm.”
“He looked tired,” I whispered and could have kicked myself.
She squeezed my hand.
“Hungover.”
Oh. Were they partying? I thought pregnant women would be puking their guts out and sleep a lot.
“Okay,” I said.
“It was awful,” Tina said. “We said we wouldn’t tell you, but you should know. We were at the beach last night. Joao, Roark, Toby, Thea and me. And he just sat there, drinking rum and coke which he hates. Glass after glass until he was so drunk he fell backward and passed out. Didn’t say a single word the whole time.”
Oh, God. No. I hadn’t wanted that for him. By now he should have calmed down and started to settle into the new reality we had to live in. I ignored the small voice in my head sharing with me that I cried myself to sleep every night, and sighed.
“You got him home?”
To my surprise, she grinned, although it wasn’t an entirely happy grin.
“Roark and Toby carried him all the way. Tobe told me they got him inside and she was waiting for him. Dressed in a slinky nightie and with full makeup on.”
I swallowed and tried to breathe slowly.
“She rushed up to them when they got through the door. He took one look at her and puked.”
“What?”
She grinned again, and this time it was mean as a snake.
“Cascades. Don’t think she’ll ever get the coke out of that nightie.”
I scoffed, mostly because it was expected of me.
“They got him into bed, and he opened his eyes, looked straight at Roark and told him to lock the bedroom door. Then he passed out.”
“Lock the door?”
I didn’t understand.
“She sleeps in the other room, Charlie.”
Oh.
“I’ll have that beer now,” she said.
I got her a beer, and then a group of tourists came in, so I got busy. Dupree came back after a while, and when I looked, Tina had left.
That night I cried myself to sleep, but I didn’t cry for me. I cried for him. My life wasn’t what it had been, but his must be awful.
***
Joao
“Go,” he snarled and pointed toward town.
Mimi turned around and walked away immediately. He should leave too, but he couldn’t help himself and turned slowly to look into the bar. Charlie was standing there, and he stopped breathing. Slowly, she smiled, and everything inside him settled. He wanted to smile back at her, but it would be cruel, so he didn’t. Instead, he drove off, knowing he’d have to go home and deal with Mimi.
“Couldn’t she have pi
cked a day when I don’t have a hangover from hell?” he muttered to his steering wheel as he parked the car.
It didn’t answer so he walked inside.
“What the hell were you thinking?” he asked, ignoring her tears and her friends as he walked into the kitchen to get a bottle of water.
“Joao,” she sobbed. “He was hurting me.”
He stared at her, wondering if she’d lost her mind. Dupree hadn’t even touched her as he tried to make her walk out of the bar.
“He did,” one of the women said angrily. “What if something had happened to the baby?”
“Everybody out,” he growled, and when there was a flutter of voices, he roared, “Leave my house!”
They left immediately, and he was left with Mimi.
“I told you not to go there, Mimi. Dupree didn’t hurt you, so don’t give me that shit. He asked you to leave, and you should be glad they’re not pressing charges.”
“What?”
“It’s her place of work. The disrespect you showed her is astonishing which means you made a fool of yourself, and everyone will hear about it within the next hour.”
Her crying increased, and he looked at the ceiling, wishing she’d stop. He hadn’t had to deal with her much in the weeks that had passed because they’d settled into a routine which wasn’t good, but it was working. And it was working because they barely saw each other. He left before she was even out of bed each morning and came home after dinner. The first couple of days, she’d cooked for him, and he’d felt like throwing up when he saw the food, so he’d just left it on the kitchen counter. He ate at his brother’s place, in the office, or not at all. The few days he didn’t work, he went out with his catamaran, speeding away and staying away.
“What were you thinking?” he asked, mostly to get her to stop crying.
“I was thirsty,” she sobbed.
“Plenty of places to go,” he countered. “I told you not to go there.”
“I thought it was only for a few days, Joao. By now, she’ll be over this whole misunderstanding.”
He blinked. What misunderstanding?
“I thought we would have found a way to reconnect by now,” she elaborated. “But you’re never here, and we don’t even sleep in the same bed.”
