by Lucy Score
There was a scar there that he hadn’t noticed before. An old one, silvered with age. Without thinking, he took her elbow and gently turned it to get a better look. Thin and jagged, it raced up the inside of her arm for three inches, and he wondered what had caused it. Already knowing who had caused it.
“I wanted a permanent mark that I chose,” she said softly.
Aldo’s chest swelled with pride and repressed rage. He brushed his thumb over the scar.
“I wanted to take something ugly and make it beautiful,” she said.
“There isn’t anything on or about you that’s ugly, Gloria.”
She let out a breath. “So, how bad is it going to hurt, Mr. Tattoos All Over My Body?”
“Not all over,” he teased. “With everything you’ve been through? Walk in the park,” he promised her.
She nodded, looking slightly less nervous. “Good. Okay. I can totally do this.”
Aldo plopped down on the second rolling stool and wheeled it over to her chair. “I’ll hold your hand,” he offered.
She laced her fingers with his. “This is the weirdest first date.”
“I’ll take you out to dinner after,” he offered.
“Let’s see if I barf all over this poor guy first.”
“Are you nervous?” He gave her hand a reassuring squeeze.
“Terrified. I’ve never chosen pain before.”
He brought her hand to his mouth and laid his lips on her knuckles. “It’s different when you choose it.”
“So, I’m not crazy for doing this?” Her eyes, wide and amber, pleaded.
“Not even close.” He nodded to the exposed ink on his forearm where his shirt sleeve was rolled up. “Of course, I might be biased.”
“I like your tattoos,” Gloria confessed.
“And you’re going to like yours, too.”
“Okay, Gloria,” Curtis said stepping into the room. “I’ve got your stencil here. Let’s get started.”
She held his hand in a tight grip but kept her eyes on the ink going on her skin. A tiny flock of birds in flight.
Simple. Classy. Meaningful.
She didn’t have to tell Aldo what it represented. He knew. Freedom. Soaring. As Curtis worked his way up the sliver of scar, Gloria’s smile got wider. As predicted, the pain was minimal compared to what she’d already endured.
Pride rose up in his chest, swift and fierce.
Aldo couldn’t help it. He leaned in and pressed a kiss to her cheek. She dragged her gaze away from the work and focused on him. “Do you like it?” she asked shyly.
“Do you?” he countered.
She glanced back down at where the needle pressed into her skin. “Yeah. I love it.”
“It’s perfect,” he told her. “I kind of want it.”
Gloria laughed.
“I’ve got time,” Curtis said without lifting his head from the subtle shading he was adding to a bird wing.
“You’re not serious,” Gloria said.
“Would it be weird for you? I’ve got the space…”
“We could do a variation on the design,” Curtis suggested, reloading the tip in the ink cap. “If Gloria’s okay with that.”
She glanced back down at her arm and then up again at him. The connection he felt between them was solid, real.
“As long as he’s not doing something stupid and putting my name on his body,” she decided.
Little did she know how much of her was already indelibly etched into his skin.
48
“I can’t believe we got matching tattoos on our first date,” Gloria marveled, looking out the truck window. He’d gotten two of her birds tattooed on his chest, soaring above an existing piece that said Serenity, Courage, Wisdom.
“Think of how much fun it will be to tell our grandkids that story,” Aldo suggested, reaching across the console and squeezing her hand.
She snorted and fought back a yawn. After their tattoos, Aldo had taken her out to dinner at a burger joint one town over to celebrate. She’d devoured the burger, fries, and chocolate shake like a woman starved while he plowed his way through a burger bowl—all the burger fun without those pesky extra carbs.
“You’re sure you’re okay with it?” Aldo asked, turning the truck toward Benevolence.
“Yeah, I mean, if I picked a design that’s so amazing a tattoo veteran—pun intended—wanted it, that means I’ve got great taste, right?”
“Exactly. And now that we’ve got a memorable first date in the books, I need to confess something.”
“Oh, God. What? You’re seeing someone else? You don’t think we should see each other anymore? You’re going to dump me now because you’ve re-thought this entire thing and you don’t like women with tattoos? Dammit, Aldo! You promised me tacos next week,” she pretended to wail.
“All of that makes my confession a lot less weird.”
“Let’s get this over with,” Gloria decided. “I want to make sure the liquor store is still open if I need a jug of wine to soothe my wounded soul.”
“The tattoo below the birds?” he began.
“Yeah?”
“That one was my first. It was inspired by you, too.”
“What?” She would have been less surprised if he’d announced he was really into wearing women’s underwear on the weekends.
He sighed, checking the mirror before changing lanes. “Let me start at the beginning. You want to know the exact moment that I decided you were going to be my girl?” he asked, playful now.
“Uh, yeah. I would really like to know that.” Gloria freed her hand and poked him in the ribs. Touching him, being physically affectionate was easy with Aldo. It felt natural.
“I was walking down the hall to the locker room to change for practice. The auditorium doors were open down by the stage, and there was this beautiful girl on stage under a pink spotlight.”
Gloria covered her face with her hands. “Oh, God. I don’t think I can handle this.”
“Shut up, I’m telling a story,” Aldo said, steamrolling her in a most charming fashion. It was funny. Glenn had probably said those very words to her at some point over the course of their relationship, and Gloria’s reaction to them would have been totally different. She would have clammed up, tensing at the warning that she’d gone too far. She’d pushed him too far.
Those same words from Aldo meant something entirely different. Because he was different.
“Anyway, there’s this girl in a little denim skirt and a red-and-white striped t-shirt—”
“You remember what I was wearing?” This, right here, was officially the most romantic moment of Gloria Parker’s life to date.
“Quit interrupting. I’m reminiscing here.”
She giggled, an echo of the carefree sophomore she’d been. “Sorry. Please continue.”
“This girl, in this sexy skirt, standing there in the spotlight. Then you opened your mouth.”
His gaze was far away through the windshield as if he were remembering every detail of the moment.
“I sang… Oh my God! “Hopelessly Devoted to You.” I was auditioning for the musical.”
“I walked face-first into a set of lockers listening to you. It was like a fist to the heart. I was a goner.”
She gasped. “Why didn’t you say anything?”
“I was shy.”
“Aldo Moretta doesn’t have a shy bone in his body,” Gloria pointed out.
“All right, I had to decide if you were too young. A senior and a sophomore? It mattered then. By the time I decided it didn’t matter, I figured I’d play the game, show off for you a little, and then make my move.”
“Make your move?” She twisted in the passenger seat. “Tell me.”
“Well, you were always at the football games. I noticed, of course.” Aldo stretched his arm across the back of the seat to toy with the ends of her hair. “I was going to wait until we had a really good game, one where I was clearly the hero.”
Gloria snickered.
“And then I’d come up to you in the end zone where you and your friends would be celebrating.”
Gloria held her breath, listening to this alternate ending for her teenage self. “And?”
“And I’d stroll up to you all confident and sweaty. And I’d give you the nod.” Aldo glanced her way and jerked his chin at her, arching an eyebrow in the perfect imitation of a cocky high school jock. “Then I’d ask you if you were going to the bonfire or the diner or whatever that night. You would, of course, say yes all breathlessly and excited.”
“Of course,” Gloria said dryly.
“Then I’d show up with the thrill of victory still all over me and I’d say, ‘Gloria Parker, I think it’s about time I kissed you.’”
Gloria swooned on the inside. On the outside, she collapsed back against his arm. “Damn, that would have made my life.”
“Mine, too.”
“Why didn’t you?” she asked.
The fun went out of him. She could see it in the tensing of his shoulders, the single clench of his jaw as he stared straight ahead.
“You were already with Glenn.”
“Oh.” A short word in a tiny voice. A reminder of all that could have been but wasn’t. And in its place, ten years of agony. She wanted to cry for them both.
“Gloria,” his voice was rough, his eyes stormy. “I was the reason he hit you that first time,” Aldo confessed.
The weight of the blame he’d carried for a decade opened up and bled like a fresh wound between them.
“What are you talking about?”
“The summer I graduated. The summer he graduated,” Aldo added. “You were at a bonfire, and I talked to you. Glenn didn’t like it. He pulled me aside, tried to be a big man and threaten me for talking to ‘his woman.’”
Gloria swallowed hard. She remembered the bonfire. She hadn’t known what had set him off. But she remembered talking to Aldo. A quick “Hey, how’s it going?”
“It was innocent,” she said quietly.
“Not for me, Gloria. It was never innocent for me. I wanted you, and he could see it.”
“Aldo—”
“He told me he didn’t like me talking to his woman. I told him I didn’t like the way he was treating you. We got into a shoving match. Luke and Linc broke it up fast.”
“I had no idea.”
“He dragged you out of there by your arm.” Aldo’s voice was dangerous. “I made a point to run into you the next day, and you had a black eye. You said you fell at the bonfire.”
Gloria couldn’t look him in the eye. She stared down at her hands resting in her lap. It had been the first of many, many lies she’d told.
“You swore you were fine, laughed it off. But I could see that part of that sparkle, part of that shine from the spotlight, was already gone. He was already taking pieces of you.”
She closed her eyes. “You tried to get me to break up with him. Told me he was trouble. Then I pretended like it was a joke, and I laughed.”
“He hit you because of me. You got hurt because of me.”
The words poured out of him like water over Niagara Falls. They couldn’t stop, even if Gloria wasn’t ready to hear them. “I enlisted the next day.”
“Oh my God, Aldo!”
“Luke had been talking about it, and I hadn’t decided. But I knew if I didn’t get away, I’d be the reason you got hurt again, and I couldn’t live with that, Glo. So I enlisted, and I walked into the first tattoo parlor I could find in the phone book.”
“It’s the serenity prayer, isn’t it?” Gloria asked. “Grant me the serenity to accept the things I can’t change?”
He nodded.
“You had to accept that you couldn’t change me.” The man had marked his skin and enlisted in the military because of feelings he had for her that she’d never known about. He’d carried the burden of blame for something he had no responsibility in.
Had she left Glenn that first time, their story could have been completely different. The Gloria that Left Glenn could have still been the Gloria that Ended Up with Aldo.
“I took every training, every assignment. I went to college. All just to get away from here. But I kept coming home. And I kept hoping.”
She reached for him. Put her hand on his strong arm. “Aldo. He was always going to hit me. You were an excuse, not the reason.”
He didn’t move away from her touch, but he didn’t try to hold her either. “When you didn’t leave him… I didn’t understand.”
Her heart hurt. Another person she had disappointed, devastated.
“I hate this. I hate knowing that I let you down, Aldo.”
“You didn’t let me down. I didn’t understand. I didn’t get it. But I do now. I don’t blame you for staying.”
“I do. I blame myself every day. Aldo, what if I left him the first time it happened? What if you and I had that shot? My entire life would be different. I would have gone to college. I would have made something of myself. We might have kids and pets and soccer practice and lasagna for dinner.”
Staring into the darkness beyond the windshield, she mourned the loss of things she’d never had.
“Or we would have been too young to know what a good thing we had and screwed it all up,” Aldo pointed out. “I was eighteen. All I knew was football. The Guard, college, all of that turned me into who I am today. I wouldn’t be here now, if it had gone down differently. I believe that, Gloria. I really do.”
Maybe he had a point. But not enough to get her to unwallow. “I hate that I was a textbook battered woman.”
“There are reasons why women don’t leave,” Aldo argued.
“And there are women who would never let themselves be put in that situation. Do you think Sophie would have ever let Ty hit her? Even once? No! She would put his balls in a pickle jar. But I didn’t have that spine at sixteen. I didn’t have that confidence. I was so hungry for attention I was willing to accept abuse and humiliation and isolation as the price to pay for it.” Her voice was raised, and she didn’t care. The words had been trapped inside her for too long.
“I can’t forgive myself any more than I can forgive him,” she admitted. Her eyes were dry, but her heart was pounding in her head.
Aldo brought his fingers to the back of her neck where he stroked gently.
“This is a second chance for both of us. I’m going to try real hard not to blow it. But isn’t the important thing not what you did or didn’t do at sixteen but what you choose now as an adult? Isn’t the point of all of this that now you’ll have that pickle jar, and you’ll be ready to use it?”
“It terrifies me that I might not be ready. It shakes me to the bone to think that I might be exactly the same girl I was at sixteen, ready to make the same mistakes again. Still too hungry for attention. Too eager to please.”
There. She’d said it. She’d voiced her greatest fear.
“I’m pretty sure you know that’s bullshit, Glo,” Aldo said, gently rubbing her neck.
Somedays she was sure. Other days, all she had to do was see Mrs. Diller and her carefully crafted confidence crumbled.
49
They rode like that for long minutes of silence as streetlights shone intermittently through the windshield. Neither of them inclined to speak. Their wounds were open, confessions made, and they were both still here. Aldo was here. Not running away from her baggage. Not blaming her for her choices. Not trying to control her reactions. Just letting her be.
She’d never felt more vulnerable, her truths all spilled and served up for someone else’s consumption. In turn, she knew the weight he’d carried. He’d blamed himself for her being hurt.
“Did you know we had the same study hall together the year before?” she asked him quietly.
“We did not.”
“We did. In Mr. Fink’s biology classroom. You sat at one of the lab tables in the back with your jock buddies. I was the good girl up front shooting you looks of longing.”
“I would
have noticed you.”
“You didn’t. I was flat-chested and had braces.”
He gave a gruff laugh and gave her neck another gentle squeeze.
Aldo pulled into the parking lot at Blooms and eased to a stop next to Gloria’s car. He unclipped his seatbelt, and Gloria sighed.
“You don’t have to get out and walk me to my car that is barely three feet away.”
“I’m a gentleman,” he insisted, flashing her a wolfish look. “Besides, I like kissing you without a console between us.”
Swoon.
It was official. Tonight was going down in Gloria’s book as the best night of her life.
She stepped out of the truck, and Aldo met her in the space between their vehicles, his broad chest and shoulders blocking out the night. She brought her hands to his pecs, mindful of his fresh ink.
“Thank you for the flowers,” she said, pressing a kiss to the corner of his mouth. “Thank you for dinner.” She kissed the other side. “And thank you for being honest.”
She was moving in to capture his mouth full-on when he stopped her. Big, careful hands on her upper arms.
“Gloria. I need you to get in the truck.” His eyes were hard and fixed on something behind her.
“What? Why?”
She turned and saw the scratches in the side of her car.
Whore.
“We’ll go ahead and take some pictures that you can send to your insurance company, Gloria. In the meantime, is there anyone you can think of who isn’t feeling particularly friendly toward you?” Sheriff Bodett asked.
“You know exactly who’s responsible for this,” Aldo growled. “Gloria’s got two enemies in this entire town, and one of them is behind bars.”
“Be that as it may,” the sheriff said, unaffected by Aldo’s temper, “there’s still a procedure we have to follow.”
Fuck the procedure. Aldo wanted Sheriff Bodett to pull up in front of Linda Diller’s house with lights and sirens.
“I really don’t want to make a big deal out of this,” Gloria cut in. She rubbed her arms with her hands despite the fact that there was no chill in the July night air. Aldo tucked her into his side, wishing he could spirit her away and take care of this for her.
