Tangled Up In You (Fleur de Lis Book 1)

by A. L. Vincent

  Tangled Up In You

  By A.L. Vincent

  Tangled Up in You

  Copyright © 2015 by A.L. Vincent.

  All rights reserved.

  First Print Edition: October 2015

  Limitless Publishing, LLC

  Kailua, HI 96734

  www.limitlesspublishing.com

  Formatting: Limitless Publishing

  ISBN-13: 978-1-68058-330-4

  ISBN-10: 1-68058-330-1

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to locales, events, business establishments, or actual persons—living or dead—is entirely coincidental.

  Dedication

  For Cowboy:

  You have always been one of the great loves of my life. You taught me to never give up. Because of you, I learned to always get back up and try again. I always said the first book would be for you.

  And for all the soldiers whose battles didn’t end when they came home.

  Semper Fi.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Epilogue

  Chapter One

  Emily

  ‘Run Away to the Gulf Coast!’ the billboard urged Emily Breaux as she rolled to a stop at the busy Lafayette intersection. She had just finished the morning shift at the diner where she worked as a waitress and fill in cook. The noon traffic was heavy as it always was at that time of day.

  “I wish,” she said, sighing. Having grown up on the Gulf Coast, it would be more like running home. Brushing tears away, she glanced at the notice lying in the passenger seat. The rent was going up. Emily was already taking double shifts at the diner to make ends meet. What was she going to do? Eddie was going to flip out when he found out. Of course, her husband would just get drunk and forget about it soon after. She could use the savings from her grandparents’ estate, but then Eddie may find out about it. And she had enough trouble keeping him out of their account. He’d cleaned out their joint account more than once to fuel his addiction.

  She blinked as the stop light changed from red to green. Two more turns and she’d be home. Ten more minutes at the most. What was she going to do? It wouldn’t matter really. It would all be her fault anyway. Eddie would blame her as he always had. It was her fault business had slowed down at the diner where she worked the night shift. It was her fault the prices on everything had gone up, yet her income had not. Everything was always her fault.

  One turn, five more minutes and she’d be there. She didn’t want to go home. What was home? Not where her heart was anymore.

  At the last stoplight, she brushed a tear away from bloodshot eyes. She was tired. Bone tired, Grams would say.

  “I miss you, Grams.”

  Emily could use a cup of that special cure-all tea with a side of wisdom. She thought of the hours spent on the porch swing on that wrap-around porch simply daydreaming of the future. Never did she imagine her life would’ve turned out this way.

  Emily glanced into the rearview mirror. Her limp brown hair framed brown eyes that were red and bloodshot from double shifts at the diner and from crying. Her face was drawn and pale. All the extra hours in the last few months had one advantage. She’d lost a few pounds, and it showed. Her face was more angular, her cheekbones pronounced.

  Emily pulled into the driveway and turned the car off. Oscar, the black-and-white mixed-breed dog, barked as she pulled up. Emily gave a tired smile as she saw his big eye poking through a knothole in the wooden privacy fence. One of Emily’s strays; she had taken the dog in when no one else wanted him. She would need to feed and walk him later; to work off some exuberance. Then she’d scratch behind those big black ears until he tapped his paws.

  Unwilling to go in, Emily sat in the car. She thought again of Grams, of the safety and security of her family’s home. Of the good times she’d had with Daniel and Glinda. Her friends. ‘Run Away to the Gulf Coast!’ The billboard flashed again in her mind.

  Emily’s phone rang. What now? she thought. She looked down at the caller ID. She smiled, seeing the name Noah Devereaux, one of her best friends from childhood.

  “Noah,” she said. “How are you?”

  “I’m good,” he said, and Emily smiled again, hearing his deep, familiar voice. “And how are you?”

  How was she? Wasn’t that a loaded question? “I’m hanging in there,” she said.

  “Listen, I’m calling because we’re having a memorial for Ben next month. Carly, Joey, and I are opening the old bait shop and we’re doing a grand opening slash spaghetti cook-off. We’re going to open the bait shop as Snapper’s Bar and Grill. We really want you to be there. All the others are coming too.”

  Carly and Noah’s younger brother, Benjamin, was killed in an oilfield accident the year before. Emily’s eyes watered, remembering the funeral. His nickname had been Snapper, he always had witty comebacks. Such a tragedy to lose him so young. Noah had been so stoic in his dress blues, just getting back from his last tour of duty in Iraq. Her heart had ached for him, his family, and for the rest of the group that had grown up together.

  “Of course I’m coming,” she said. Maybe she’d be running away to the Gulf Coast after all. She thought of the tips she had stowed away in her bra to keep Eddie from taking them. Eddie would have to touch her to do that, and heaven only knew how long it had been since he had.

  “Good. Glinda’s already said that she has a place for you to stay since Grams and Pops’ place needs some work. By the way, while you’re here, let’s do a walk-through of Gram and Pops’ and see what needs to be fixed.”

  Emily closed her eyes and leaned her head against the headrest. “That would be wonderful,” she said. A month would give her time to plan and save.

  “That’s great, Em,” Noah said. Emily’s lip quivered as he shortened her name just as he had in high school. “I’m looking forward to seeing you. We all are.”

  “Me too,” she said.

  “Bye, Em.”

  “Bye, Noah,” she said, hoping he hadn’t heard her voice quiver.

  It was time to go in. One could delay the inevitable for only so long. Opening the door to the house, she could hear Eddie snoring. The notice was in her hand. The house was dark, darker than it should be. She flicked the light switch. Nothing happened. The appliances were silent. The clock on the microwave was blank.

  “What the hell?” She knew she had paid the bill. Her stomach rolled as she looked up the number for the electric company.

  On hold, Emily looked over the living room. Eddie was passed out on the sofa. Empty beer bottles were scattered around like bowling pins. Some up, some dow
n. Eddie had never been good at bowling. She snorted. He wasn’t good at anything these days unless it involved drinking, sleeping, or self-pity. Emily thought of her plan to open a restaurant one day. Cooking was her passion. Eddie’s was drinking. And his passion was slowly drowning her.

  Emily glanced into the kitchen at the dishes piled in the sink. The trash was overflowing and littering the cracked linoleum around it. Empty takeout boxes littered the counters and spilled onto the floor. Emily ate most of her meals at the diner. This mess was all Eddie’s, and Eddie always left others to clean up his messes.

  Her nose twitched. She liked things clean. Her co-workers teased her at the diner because she was always cleaning, wiping things down, mopping. This kitchen, the entire house, was anything but. It would take more than a day and a gallon of cleaner to make this house clean. When had it gotten so bad?

  Eddie was snoring peacefully on the sofa, not a care in the world. A not-so-pretty sleeping beauty surrounded by twelve brown, drunken dwarves. He belched, and she thought of Shrek, the big green ogre in the swamp. A jackass for a friend. She was living a twisted fairy tale. Was she the jackass or the princess?

  “I’m sorry, Ms. Breaux, the check you wrote for the bill was returned to us for insufficient funds. If you want to reconnect, you will need to pay the past due balance plus a reconnect fee.”

  “Thank you,” Emily said, hanging up.

  What was she going to do?

  Rescue them again? Use the tips to pay the light bill? If she hurried, she could make it to the utility company before the office closed.

  Emily walked down the hall to the bedroom. She grabbed a suitcase and a few changes of clothes and toiletries. She pulled Grams’ Bible off the bookshelf and opened it. Flipping through the pages, she turned to her Grandma’s favorite verse.

  Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.

  Joshua 1:9

  Glancing at the series of numbers at the bottom of the page, she smiled for the first time. It was Grams’ savings account number. Emily had never told Eddie of the money she hid away in the small bank in Bon Chance, knowing what he would do with it. Tips would take her home and this money would be a cushion until she figured out what to do.

  Emily looked around the room for what she knew would be the last time. What would she take? Two pictures sat on the nightstand. One was a wedding picture, a moment of happiness captured in black and white. They were happy then. That was before he’d been passed up for that promotion. He’d worked for five years for that company, and they’d given that job to someone younger, a woman, in an attempt to make the company more politically balanced. He’d self-medicated his depression and anger with alcohol. After too many call-ins, too many drunken mornings, and showing up with liquor on his breath, management had demanded he go to rehab or resign. He resigned that day, refusing to admit he had a problem.

  Emily crossed the room, stepping over mounds of dirty laundry. She picked up the wedding picture. That smile, her youth, mocked her. She was twenty-one then. Now, she looked fifty-one and felt it too. Amazing what a difference a few years could make. She looked at the picture and then looked at the suitcase. Should she take the picture? No, leave that for Eddie. Let him be reminded. She was too exhausted to look back.

  Instead, she grabbed the second picture, the picture of that last summer in Bon Chance. The last time everyone was together. She smiled at the picture, at the “rabbit ears” the guys had made behind the girls’ heads. She wanted to be that person again, with that smile and those bright brown eyes. Not the tired eyes she had now, with the smudges underneath, a testament to sleepless nights from worry and long hours at work. She wanted, more than anything, to simply rest for a while. She wanted a second chance, a do over.

  She placed the second picture among the few clothes she tossed in the suitcase. Then carefully placed Grams’ Bible on top. She stubbornly pushed away the tears that welled up, taking one last look around. Knowing that what was left would never be seen again.

  She carried the suitcase quietly down the hall, not wanting to wake up “Sleeping Beast.”

  “I am no jackass.” She threw the notice on his round belly and walked out the door.

  Chapter Two

  “Are you scared, Noah?” eighteen-year-old Emily asked.

  “Nah,” he said. “It’s just boot camp.”

  “But after that? Where will you go?”

  “Wherever they send me I guess.”

  Emily looked down at her bare feet that were dangling above the murky, gulf water. Noah had been her best friend since she’d moved to Bon Chance. Now, her hero was leaving soon to join the Marines. Emily would also be leaving, going to the University of Lafayette to earn a degree in hospitality.

  Both were going to see the world. Get out of the small town. They wanted something different from the oilfield and office jobs that everyone else had.

  Emily would be leaving later in the month. She already had an apartment in campus housing, and she and Grams had been busy getting the necessary items to help her settle in. Grams and her best friend, Glinda, had already made her a gorgeous quilt in the college’s colors, red and white, for the room.

  Cajun music playing on the beach mingled with the sound of the waves hitting the pier the two were sitting on. Tonight was their going away party. Noah was leaving in two weeks.

  “What about you, Em? Are you scared?” Noah asked, shaking her from her thoughts.

  “A little,” she said. “It’s all going to be so new. New people, a new place. I’ll be on my own.”

  “You’ll be okay,” Noah said.

  “I hope so.”

  “Noah! Emily!” Both turned toward the beach as they heard their names called. It was Benjamin, Noah’s younger brother, followed by Gabriel, Ryder, and Grace.

  “Over here!” Noah called back.

  Benjamin walked down the pier toward them. “Grams and our parents are looking for all of us. They want to get a picture of the group together. We need to find Carly and Joey.”

  Carly was Noah’s younger sister and Joey was her best friend. The two of them rounded out their circle of friends. The Boonies, they called themselves, after Bon Chance and living in what they considered the boonies. Carly had given them the name after watching an ’80s movie about a group of kids who had gone treasure hunting. They had done their own fair share of treasure hunting, spending hours of their summer looking for Jean Lafitte’s treasure, reported to be hidden somewhere in their area of the Gulf of Mexico.

  “There’s not much telling where those two snuck off to,” Noah said.

  “We know,” Benjamin said.

  Noah hefted his skinny body up, then extended a hand to Emily.

  “Did you look behind the bait shop?” he asked. Carly and Joey often snuck back there with bottles of cheap wine and cigarettes.

  As they approached, they could hear Carly coughing. As Noah had predicted, Carly and Joey had snuck behind the bait shop, away from the eyes of the adults.

  “Carly, I don’t even know why you still try to smoke. You cough like you’re dying every time,” Joey was saying to her as they walked up.

  “Shut up, Joey,” Carly said. She tried another puff on the cigarette and bent over in a coughing jag.

  “Hey guys,” Joey said as they walked up.

  “The parental units want us for pictures. Our last summer together. Yada, yada, yada,” Benjamin said.

  Joey took a drink of the bottle of wine he was holding. Carly tossed the unfinished cigarette into the water and grabbed the bottle from Joey. She took a big gulp.

  “Come on,” Carly said. “Let’s get this over with and get back to really celebrating.” She smiled.

  “Some celebrating when you sound like you’re going to cough up a lung,” Noah said.

  Carly punched him in the arm. “Shut up, big brother.”

  He slung an arm across Carly’
s shoulder. “Let’s go, sis.”

  When the group arrived at the makeshift stage that had been set up for the festivities, the grown-ups had already cleared the stage and were waiting on them. Carly, Emily, and Grace sat on the edge of the stage, their skinny legs dangling. The guys found spaces behind them.

  “One, two, three,” Emily’s grandfather, Pops, said as he held up his camera. “Say cheese!”

  “Cheese!” they all said in unison.

  The camera flashed brightly in the night sky.

  ***

  Noah

  Noah hung up the phone. He took a sip of coffee and absently patted his dog, Sadie, on the head. Emily was coming home. He wondered how much she had changed. She had been a skinny little thing back then, all angles and no curves. But then again, he hadn’t been big either.

  Noah checked the time and drained the cup. Emily had been the last call he needed to make. Responsibilities completed for now, he needed another run. Running was the only thing that seemed to keep the anxiety attacks at bay. Maybe the endorphins cancelled out the panic.

  The fall morning was cooler than usual, so he went to the closet to grab a hooded jacket. His stomach heaved when he saw the dress blues in the back. He took a deep breath and bent over, his gaze falling on the foot locker. He’d buried it in the back corner of the closet, like he’d tried to bury the memories of a war that still haunted his dreams.

  He pulled out the locker and carried it to the bed. Sitting down beside it, he opened it up and pulled a packet of letters out. He ran his fingers over his younger brother’s familiar scrawl. Benjamin and Carly had written letters every week while Noah was in Iraq. Benjamin’s short letters were all about fishing and football, Ben’s two loves. Carly’s were pages long, full of local gossip, and who she was in love with that week. They sent the occasional picture, and care packages from home full of baked goodies from Glinda and Grams. Daniel, Pops’ best friend and fishing buddy, sent smokes and playing cards.