“You know I thought the same about you. When you ran into that coffee shop I about lost my mind. I had stared at your picture every day on my way to work on that billboard. Honestly, I just thought you were a pretty face and that we would just have this little fling for a while… and yes, you’re beautiful, but you’re so much more than that to me.” I lean down and kiss her lips, and we stay embraced like that for a while, still swaying to the music. “I love you,” I say, and I say it with actual intent unlike the enthusiastic and spontaneous words I had said to Éclair.
She smiles. “James, I love you too.”
“I want to be with you, Sylvia,” I say. “And I’m sorry it took me so long to figure that out. No more dating around. I just want you.”
Sylvia raises an eyebrow at me. “What about your friend Éclair?” she says the name like it leaves a bad taste on her mouth.
“Next time I see her I’m telling her that we’re through. That I can’t see her anymore –at all. She’s too toxic for me.” I grab Sylvia’s hands and hold them up, kissing her fingers as I look her in the eye. “I just want you, Sylvia.”
Her face turns bright red, and she just smiles at me. Without saying a word, we head below deck to one of the luxury rooms and find a bed. We’re both so quiet as we remove our clothes and lay down next to one another, gently kissing one another’s lips. I tell her I love her probably five more times –excited to say those words to someone. A part of me has this feeling of guilt because I know I’m not just going to be breaking off sex with Éclair. I literally cannot see her anymore –the friendship has to end too if I’m ever going to make things work with Syliva. Éclair has always been my favorite little temptress –there is something about her that just draws me back to her time and time again. And it’s not like I’ll just be breaking up with some side chick. I really meant it when I told her she was my best friend. Things with Sylvia are just so much easier. We never fight. We actually talk about our feelings, and it’s like they always line up with one another. Not to mention I’ve been fantasizing about her ever since that billboard went up almost two years ago.
I put my mouth around one of her nipples, giving it a gentle suck –she giggles. “James, stop that, it tickles…”
I kiss her perfectly toned stomach and run my hands all over her, giving her a nice massage before we get going. She’s incredibly receptive of the gesture. I plunge into her, and I have got to say that there are some serious sparks flying tonight. “God, I love you!” I say, and she takes my face into her hands as I hover over her, our pelvises tightly intact.
She strokes my eyebrows and the side of my face with her thumbs. She just looks so happy. Honestly, truly happy. It’s hard to believe that a man like me could make someone smile like that.
68
I told Sylvia that I was going to break things off with Éclair, but that did not necessarily mean that I was going to seek her out to do it. I haven’t spoken to Éclair in over a week after our uncomfortable incident in the bedroom, and I’m glad. I don’t exactly know how to tell someone I care about that I don’t want to ever see them again –especially not after slipping up and uttering, “I love you,” in bed. Especially someone I’ve considered to be a friend for so long.
Today I decided to visit Eddie’s grave, and it’s not easy. The grass hasn’t grown over the grave yet, so it’s this mucky pile of moist dirt in front of his tombstone, although there are flowers everywhere so it kind of hides the mess. He’s buried beside our parents… beside my parents, I suppose. I took care to have Eddie buried beside our mom instead of beside Dad. He wouldn’t have wanted to be beside Dad, I’m sure –not after getting screwed out of the inheritance and finding out about not really being his kid through a coldly written letter. A small part of me wants to piss on my old man’s grave for that one. I sigh, reminding myself that even Eddie had once said, “at least he took care of me.”
Dad did. He took care of Eddie. He was always more favorable towards me, sure, but he did a lot for Eddie. He did all the dad stuff even if he was just going through the motions with him. Taught him to ride a bike, bought him his first car, sat through all the stupid ball games (even though Eddie sucked at sports), and paid his way through college. Yes, on paper, he did what he was supposed to. He took care of Eddie, but looking back I can’t believe I did not notice the difference. Eddie, the good older son, would always come to Shattered INC. to learn about the family business while I was off goofing around, but Eddie was still never good enough. I had always assumed the ridiculously high expectations our father –my father –had for Eddie was because he had wanted Eddie to take over the company. No, he was just harsher on him because he was this constant reminder that Mom had had an affair early on in their marriage. Dad wanted to keep things under wraps to keep from tarnishing his reputation, so he played nice. He was always nicer to Eddie in public than behind closed doors –that much I remember. He wouldn’t hit him or anything like that, but he was distance. I can recall a number of times being invited on father-son outings and wondering why Eddie had not been invited. Going fishing? Great! Why isn’t Eddie coming? Oh, he’s spending time with Mom –gotcha! Going to the ballgame? Awesome! What about Eddie? Oh, he’s grounded again –weird that I never get grounded for doing ten times worse shit, but whatever –go Angels! How did I not notice?
I feel kind of lonesome now. Both of my parents died fairly young. Mom didn’t even make it into her sixties. They lived a high-stressed lifestyle, so that will do it. I wonder if I’ll be in an early grave too. I shake the thought away. I’ve always been pretty good at relieving stress. Come to think of it, I probably won’t have a heart attack or cancer or a stroke –if I don’t settle down, I’ll probably be taken out by AIDS or some shit like that.
I reach out and put my hand on Eddie’s tombstone. I wish I could talk to him. I’m thankful I did have a chance to apologize and to sort of make amends for my asinine behavior, but that just wasn’t enough for me. After he was hurt and he started waking up and talking to me, I thought maybe –just maybe –we could work on rebuilding our obviously broken relationship. Whoever killed him is going to pay for this. A shiver slightly at the thought that the culprit might not ever be found. The police have precisely zero leads. I think of this random Suzette character –who is she? Why all the secrecy? Could she be the one behind all of this? Is she working with Éclair? Is Éclair even involved at all?
Éclair. Geeze, I don’t want to think about her right now. This weird, sinking feeling of lonesomeness will only be made worse by thoughts of her. I don’t know how I’m going to tell her that I no longer want anything to do with her.
I should really get going, but I can’t bring myself to remove my hand from the top of my brother’s tombstone. My big brother. My brother who, despite our differences, always had my back. My brother who came to work at my company –who pretty much ran the entire place –despite the big middle finger he received from my father beyond the grave. My brother who grew up with me, joked around with me as kids, and my brother who deserved so much better than the shit the world threw at him.
“Hey-” a voice behind me jolts me from my trance, and I lower my hand from the tombstone and turn around.
Awe fuck. It’s fucking Ricardo Smith –Eddie’s biological father. I hate this fucking asshole. He’s worse than my own father. He’s standing behind me with his hands in his pockets, his big black leather jacket over his shoulders, and that stupid-ass swastika tattoo on the side of his bald head. Fuck this guy. I grit my teeth. “Missed you at the funeral,” I say.
“I don’t do well in crowds,” he says, “Besides, you really think Eddie would have wanted me showing my face up there for everyone to see?” He laughs when he says it.
I look over his shoulder, and a good ways back is Tommy –one of Eddies’ half-brothers –the unlucky son of a bitch who wound up being stuck with Ricardo. Tommy is standing by a beat up, old pickup truck smoking a cigarette. I draw my eyes back on Ricardo and take a breath, kno
wing I should try to make nice, but my last interaction with the fucker had not been a pleasant one. “Probably not,” I say angrily. “But regardless, you’re still his father.”
“Why do you think I’m here?” he grumbles and holds up a single rose. He just tosses it over to the grave, not daring to come too close.
I take another breath. At least the old man came to visit the grave. “You’re right,” I say. “I’m sorry.”
“You really don’t like me, huh?” he asks.
“Not particularly, if we’re being honest,” I say.
“Well,” he says, “at least the feeling’s mutual.” He prances past me and stares down at the grave covered in flowers. He pats the top of the tombstone. “I do feel bad, you know?” he says, not bothering to turn around to look at me when he says it.
“I would hope so,” I say. I notice him turn his head; he’s looking at my mother’s grave, and there is something about him doing that that makes me sick to my stomach. “I’m sure I’m going to regret asking you this,” I say, “but how did you and my mother meet exactly?”
“It’s not really that special of a story,” he says as he turns around to look at me, “she was a newlywed wife of a billionaire asshole who just wanted to leave the house for a night. My guess is the sudden change in lifestyle had her on edge. I saw her at a bar. I saw the wedding ring, but that shit never really mattered much to me. Believe it or not, I wasn’t sore on the eyes back then. Neither was your mother. She was drunk, and the two of us hooked up in the bathroom at some nasty bar. That was it. We parted ways. I saw her one other time out in public with Eddie once. The boy couldn’t have been but five years old. She had a little guy on her hip too. My guess is that was you. I came up to her because it didn’t take a genius to figure out that boy was mine; he looked just like me. We talked around it, you know, since the kid was listening, but she confirmed it for me. She actually told me to fuck off. I remember Eddie looking at her and going ‘Mom, that’s a bad word.’ And she just patted his head and walked off with you both. I didn’t really care. I just remember thinking that was a close one.”
“Yeah, a close one,” I grumble, “can’t risk having too much responsibility and having to take care of your own kids, right?”
“You asked me, so I told you,” Ricardo hisses. “You know, you’re a little asshole, right? I ought to-”
“What?” I snap at him. “What are you going to do, you old fuck? You going to push me again? Look, I appreciate you coming here and paying your respects, but just stay the hell away from me from now on.”
Ricardo just laughs. “Fine, kid, whatever. I did want to ask you, though, before we part ways, whether or not Eddie thought of his old man in his will?”
“Go to hell,” I say, “and no, he didn’t. You didn’t mean shit to him anymore than he meant to you.”
The man looks pissed. His shoulders tense up, and he has the audacity to turn and spit on my brothers grave right in front of me. I react, reaching out and grabbing him by his arm. “You fucking asshole!” I shout, my other hand forming a fist at my side.
I see Tommy from the corner of my eye darting towards us. I assume I’m about to have to tussle with these two, and Tommy I know from experience carries. Turns out, Tommy’s not running to his father’s aid. I feel this horrible, piercing sensation in my side, and I look down to see my own blood trickling out of me. Tommy grabs his old man by his shoulders, throwing him back onto the ground. “What the fuck did you just do?” Tommy screams, but I can hardly hear him. “Get out of here! Get the fuck out of here!”
Ricardo gets up and starts rushing out of the cemetery, still walking –but walking fast.
I take a few steps back, grabbing hold of Eddie’s tombstone to keep myself balance. My other hand grips my side, and I realize the damn knife is still in me. Holy fucking shit. I feel Tommy’s hands on my shoulders. “Relax, I got you, man,” I hear him say before I drop to my knees. Yeah, I’m going to black out. I feel it coming. I go to pull the knife out of me, but he stops me. “Don’t. Trust me, don’t.”
Maybe I will be going to an early grave after all.
69
I slowly blink my eyes open and realize I’m staring up at a ceiling fan. Of all people, Bobby –Eddie’s nephew, is staring back at me. “Well what do you know,” Bobby says, grinning, “He’s not dead.” I’m at Bobby’s home –his mom, Kate’s home. Why am I here lying on her couch?
I see Tommy approaching me from the corner of my eye. “What’s up?” he says with this awkward grin.
“You dumbass,” I groan, “Why didn’t you take me to a fucking hospital?”
I’m shirtless, and I can see that I’m well wrapped up around my waist with bandages. “Don’t worry,” Tommy says reassuringly, “my wife patched you up.”
The fucking egg woman! The crazy woman who broke into my house with Tommy and made eggs in my kitchen? Is he insane? “What?” I snap –what did she do, slap a Band Aid on it? There was a fucking knife lodged in my side!
“Relax,” I hear the woman’s voice coming from the kitchen. I hold my head up and through the hall I can see a plethora of bloody paper towels piled up around the kitchen sink as she washes her hands.
“Relax?” I snap, starting to sit up, but this pain shoots through my side. “Ahk!”
Both Bobby and Tommy put their hands on my shoulders, demanding that I stay down and not move. “Easy, man,” Tommy says, “Becky is a nurse. She knows what she’s doing. It was faster to have you meet us here than to try to get to the hospital in all the traffic.”
Becky, crazy egg lady, enters into the den. She’s not wearing her motorcycle jacket, but she still looks like white trash in her white tank top, black bra showing through, and her biker bedazzled jeans and black boots. She’s wearing blue hospital gloves and has a syringe in her hand. I flinch as she comes near me. “You’re going to want this, trust me,” she says, not giving me any time to debate as she pulls my bandages back, revealing a clean stitching, and injects me. “Ooh, I probably should have asked if you’re allergic to anything,” she says.
“Yeah, probably!” I snap as she removes the old bandages and puts on clean ones.
“You’re going to be fine, and that medicine should kick in soon.” She smiles at me.
“You’re really a nurse?” I ask.
“I’m really a nurse,” she says. “Worked in Ricardo’s gang’s hangout bar to put myself through college. That’s how I met Tommy.”
“Well I’ll be damned,” I say. I definitely did not expect that.
The front door busts open suddenly, and Kate comes zooming into her own house. “What the hell? What the hell? There is blood all in my driveway! Tommy, what the hell?”
Tommy stands upright, “I’m sorry, Kate! Dad got Eddie in the side with a knife.”
Kate glances over at me and then back at her half-brother. She marches up to him and slaps him right across the face. “Next time you bring someone into my house who’s bleeding to death, give me a call, why don’t you? Fuck, Tommy! I thought one of my kids had gotten run over in the driveway or something!”
“Thanks for the concern there, Kate,” I say.
“Sorry to sound relieved, James,” she says, blushing. She looks at Bobby, “Where are your brothers and sisters?”
“I made them all go upstairs while Becky was stitching James up,” Bobby says, “I didn’t want them to get in the way.”
She nods approvingly at her son’s decision. “You know everyone is coming over in just a couple of hours, right?” she says to Bobby, “Go unload the car for me.” she looks at Tommy and just shoots him this death glare until he gets up and follows Bobby outside to help with bringing in groceries.
“You need help in the kitchen?” Becky asks.
“I would really appreciate it,” Kate says and then looks at me, “I might have some clothes for you upstairs. In my room there is a large Chester drawer –check the middle drawer, some of my late husband’s clothes should still be in
there. “
“Thanks,” I say, rising slowly. “You guys have some guests coming over or something?”
“First Saturday ever month,” Kate says, “We all do a cookout.”
“We who?” I ask.
“We the bastard children of Ricardo Smith,” Tommy says as he enters the home with arms full of groceries. “Eddie used to come too. Call it a family reunion minus the dipshit dad who ties us all together.”
I have to admit I’m slightly enthused by this idea. “You’re welcome to stay,” Kate says, “A lot of them want to meet you, but they did not want to bother you too much at the funeral.”
“I’d love to,” I say and go upstairs to locate the clothes Kate had mentioned. As I am getting dressed, I note that my side is already feeling numb from the shot Becky gave me. Thank God. Well, I guess I can say I’ve got battle scars now. I finish getting dressed, donning a pair of blue jeans and a size-too-small gray t-shirt.
The house is already swarming with people as I make it downstairs. Max, Eddie’s vocally impaired half-brother, meets me at the bottom of the stairs and proceeds to introduce me to everyone as they arrive. Stacey and Sandra –identical twin sisters near Eddie’s age tell me all about Eddie helping Stacey to get clean, bringing the two women back together after years of drifting apart. Donnie, a local mechanic, tells me about Eddie buying his kids Christmas gifts so that there would be something under the tree that year. Troy is a single dad of three girls –Eddie had helped pay for his wife’s funeral after she had died from leukemia. Arthur is the oldest of the bunch, and Eddie helped him to start up his own barber shop, and he’s doing really well now. Jonathan is a flight attendant –a job that Eddie helped to set him up with. DJ is a cancer survivor, and Eddie had been helping him pay for his medical bills that had been piling up relentlessly; he and his wife are expecting their first baby in less than a month.
Filthy Desires: A Romantic Suspense Collection Page 75
