Trouble Comes Knocking

by Mary Malcolm

  I laughed with her. It was corny but funny. More funny that she felt a need to explain it.

  I leaned down to John, then froze; I didn’t know what to do. For a moment I’d nearly kissed him. Then I remembered that morning and instead gave him a half hug. I’d never shied away from a confrontation, but I didn’t know how to face this. Aloof bastard. I swallowed past a lump in my throat. “Talk to you later?”

  “Cool.”

  ****

  It’s strange how fast things change in just a few days. John acted so into me, then not so much. Like I’d done something, but he wasn’t going to tell me what it was. Kind of an emotional hide-and-seek.

  Hot and cold. I didn’t need it.

  Rather than spending one more night grousing about John-the-jerkwad, I called Ana.

  The phone only rang twice before she answered. “Finally! Ana Watson, have you been hiding from me? What have you been up to? Are you back in town?” I asked my barrage of questions on my way out of the building.

  She laughed. “Just thinking how nice it would be to have a friend whose aunt is a great cook invite me to dinner,” she hinted with absolutely no self-consciousness.

  My stomach warmed. I’d missed her so much and needed her more than I could admit out loud. “Consider yourself invited. I’m sure Dee wants to see you, anyway. She hasn’t had anyone but me to be mean to lately.”

  Dee treated Ana like her own kid, or maybe like a little sister. They argued, Ana whined, everyone became a little pouty, then we’d finish out the night with a bottle of wine and some pecan laceys. Ana usually spent the night, or a few weeks. We’d share a room. She snored. Not that she believed me; in fact, most nights I ended moving to the couch. Every morning, we’d share breakfast, and then I’d go to work and she’d usually catch up on whatever she’d missed out on during her time away.

  Ana was the closest thing I had to a sister, though we looked, thought, and generally behaved nothing alike. For one thing, she’s a bona fide up-and-coming model. Gorgeous to the bone, inside and out. For another, she comes from a close-knit family, and for the most part doesn’t want anything to do with them, something I would never understand.

  Still, her family troubles were my gain, and if their dysfunction meant I had her more, there would be no arguments coming from me.

  I had an ulterior motive for wanting to see her. I needed a voice of reason. She’d always been a great mirror, and I couldn’t think of a time recently where I’d needed one more.

  Aunt Dolores dabbed the finishing touches on a pan of homemade lasagna when Ana walked into the kitchen.

  “Never heard of a doorbell?” Dee asked.

  “Never felt a need to use it,” Ana answered, eyes glinting. The two women I loved most in this world laughed as they rushed together and squeezed in a brutal, competitive bear hug.

  “It’s been too long,” Dee scolded.

  “Not long enough, if you ask me,” Ana retorted.

  I rolled my eyes and I munched on a cooked lasagna noodle. “When y’all are done with your love fest, maybe you could come say hi to me.”

  With a squeal, Ana lunged, nearly knocking me off the barstool. “I’ve missed you,” she said too loud in my ear before stealing my stolen pasta.

  “I’ve missed you, too, brat.” I’d last seen her over two months ago. Since she’s an up-and-coming big-shot model she’d been traveling all over the US doing photoshoots and various other things I didn’t understand. Even though she rents an apartment here, most of the time when she’s back home she stays with us. It had been that way for as long as I could remember, and I could only hope it would stay that way for a long time to come.

  The gabbing that took place over the next hour could rival that of any clique of thirteen-year-old girls. We had so much to catch up on that we scarcely had time for one of us to speak before someone interrupted.

  Aunt Dolores was just as gabby. She had so much she hadn’t even shared with me lately. Like that she thought about taking classes in the spring—she’d always loved to paint—and she’d recently started talking to guys online. It was as if she’d been holding back for some reason, and it pricked at the back of my mind. I knew I’d been dealing with a lot at work, but that had been within the past week. This stuff went as far back as the last time she saw Ana.

  I’d have to ask what was going on more often.

  While Aunt Dolores finished preparing the three-cheese garlic bread, Ana and I cut veggies for a salad. “So. You have a guy, huh?” She popped a cherry tomato into her mouth. Her cheek bulged for a moment before she pressed her finger to the side and squirted the juice toward Dee.

  Aunt Dolores wiped it with a towel and shot her a glare.

  Dee told her about finding John and me together over the weekend, but I hadn’t had a chance to tell Dee things weren’t quite what they appeared. Or, perhaps, I hadn’t wanted to tell her I wasn’t as liked by someone as I’d hoped. “He’s not my guy, or anything. More a guy friend I’m getting to know,” I said, easing them both in.

  They exchanged knowing looks. “So you super-duper like him,” Ana said, in a singsong voice.

  I sighed, my lips puckered outward in a pout. “It’s complicated. Like ice cream sandwich complicated. Is it a cookie; is it ice cream? Who knows.”

  Dee stole a slice of cucumber. “How complicated can it be?” She munched as she disinfected the counter, glaring at Ana once more. Ana grinned back. “You like him, he likes you. You’re at an age where you should be lookin’ toward your future anyway, and since you don’t keep jobs for long, you’re gonna need someone to take care of you.”

  “First,” I interrupted, “I have a college degree, and while that’s not exactly getting me through any doors yet, it will eventually make things easier.”

  Dee and Ana rolled their eyes simultaneously.

  “Second, this is not the Middle Ages, Aunt Dolores. Women do not need to be taken care of these days. We take care of ourselves just fine.” I said all this with the complete ironic knowledge that if I didn’t live with my aunt Dolores, I would be homeless. And since I have a phobia about eating off dirty dishes, I’d probably starve to death within a couple of weeks. No way could I survive on dumpster du jour.

  It wasn’t lost on me how hopeless things were at times. Starting over constantly left me at the deep end of the financial pool, and I’d yet to find a way to swim toward the shallow.

  Ana held up her hands. “Whoa, you two. We’re not here to argue. I just thought it was nice you’d found someone.”

  I opened my mouth to say something, but she kept one hand in the air and shook it a little as a signal for me to keep it zipped.

  “And if he’s not the one you want, that’s cool too. You don’t have to get married tomorrow.” She shot Dee a look. “We both have your back and want you to be happy with whomever you choose, whenever you choose him.”

  Suspicious. That had never been Ana’s stance about the men I met. She’d always insisted on veto rights on any relationship at any time. Which she had used. More than once. I narrowed my eyes on her and saw a faint sheen of pink in her cheeks.

  “Something you want to tell us?” I asked pointedly, certain my new detective career skills would shake the truth right out of her.

  The pink turned to red, and she stuffed some green bell peppers into her mouth, crunching them before turning back to chopping.

  “Oh, do tell.” Dolores leaned in on her elbows so Ana couldn’t ignore her.

  With nowhere to hide, Ana fessed up. “I’m seeing someone.”

  “Yes?” I’m not going to say Ana is a slut, but she definitely isn’t shy about “seeing” guys. So if she wanted to act all nervous and girly that meant she was more than “seeing” someone.

  “Okay, so here’s the thing.” Her words came out in a rush, and she fiddled with her hair the way she did when she thought she was about to get into trouble for something. “He’s someone you know. And it isn’t like I meant for this to happen. We bumped
into each other at the movies one night and we were alone, so we sat together, shared the popcorn, and we had a good time, and then we went for an ice cream after and—”

  “Wait!” I held up my hands this time. “You need to slow down. Someone I know? And since when do you go to the movies by yourself?”

  A knock sounded at the door.

  “Hold that thought.” I ran to answer.

  I pulled the door open and heat raced through my blood, my fingertips went numb, and white spots blurred my vision. “What the hell are you doing here?”

  Chapter Five

  “Your ex-boyfriend?” Len sat back in his chair and let out a low whistle. “That had to hurt.”

  ****

  “Hello, Lucy.”

  “Don’t hello me, you sonovabitch. You have no right to be here after what you—”

  Ana rushed up behind me. “Bobby. Hey.”

  It took a second for me to register the sound of her voice. Girly, sweet. I looked between the two of them.

  He leaned in and kissed her cheek. “You forgot your wallet on the table, and I didn’t want you to get pulled over and not have it. I tried to call, but…”

  “My cell battery’s dead.”

  I turned to Ana, feeling my blood pressure rise with every second the door remained open. “This? This…thing, this douche is the person you ran into at the movies? Do you remember what he did to me?”

  “Lucy, wait, you have to listen.”

  With my stomach churning, I looked away from her. It took every ounce of energy not to lose it any more in front of him, and to say in as calm a voice as possible, “No, I don’t have to do anything.” With that I shifted past Ana and walked up the stairs, my back held ramrod straight. I shut my bedroom door and locked it with a satisfying click.

  Finally able to make a scene, I threw myself onto the bed and screamed into the pillow before flipping over and trying to take a few deep breaths.

  Bobby and I dated all through college. My first virtually everything.

  We met in a sociology class my sophomore year, where we’d been assigned to write a paper together about reality and why it might be different for different people. Working together to not only write the paper but also present it to the class gave us plenty of late nights spent huddled over books and brownies.

  I gained ten pounds during that time, but by spring our relationship was in full bloom, and someone merely saying his name put a goofy-grin on my face.

  A knock broke through my memories. “Lucy, open the door. We have to talk.” It was Ana.

  “Go away.”

  “Lucy, I didn’t mean for this to happen. I’m sorry.”

  “You should have thought about that before you started seeing him.”

  Bobby was a blond JFK Jr. who wore confidence like a sword, and arrogance like a shield. A jock—though I’d never gone for those—and brainiac all rolled into one straight A-earning package. Once upon a time I’d imagined him as my Prince Charming, the one and only guy I’d want to spend the rest of my life with. I’d loved him so much.

  Not wanting to be the strange one in our relationship, I never told him about Arkansas, or my family, or ability. I’d never brought him home to meet my aunt or told him anything about me. And it worked. We had fun. I pretended to be normal. No one knew about me or my sideshow freak capabilities.

  Then he asked me to move in with him, which, of course, I did.

  Ana shuffling on the other side of the door caught my attention. “I did. I swear. I didn’t even ask for his phone number or to see him again after the movie. But then I saw him at the grocery store. Then the dry cleaners.”

  “Sounds like he stalked you.”

  “Lucy, I gave into fate when I realized we live in the same apartment complex in the same apartment number one building over from each other. You have to admit that’s a lot.”

  Knowing Ana, it was. She’d always believed in fate, always said she didn’t need to settle down until the universe told her to. So if she ran into Bobby in all those places, saw all those things in common with him, she would see that as fate nudging. But knowing Bobby, it was probably also calculated.

  Not telling him the truth from the beginning had been the biggest mistake I ever made. Only how was I supposed to know how to tell him? I’d worked hard up until that point to keep my secrets. I bit my lip so often trying to hold back what I do that I had permanent teeth marks. It was exhausting.

  I suppose I wanted to have a confidante. And since I loved Bobby, I wanted him to be the one who knew.

  “You know what he did,” I said through the door.

  “And he says he’s sorry,” she answered.

  “I loved him and he destroyed me, Ana.”

  “I know. I’m sorry too. I’m so sorry, Lucy.”

  It was the Christmas before my last semester in college, and I had no idea what I wanted to do after school, except become Mrs. Bobby Moriarty.

  “Bobby, it’s so nice to meet you,” my aunt Dee greeted when we arrived at the house. “Lucy tells me so much about you.”

  He kissed her cheek, and she ushered us into a winter wonderland of decorations. By this point I’d finally started telling him little bits. Trying to ease him in, feel him out. He knew my parents were gone, though I didn’t elaborate. He knew I’d lived with my aunt since I was sixteen.

  We laughed through dinner and dessert, protesting when Aunt Dolores tried to foist extra pieces of pie at us. When we went upstairs for bed, Bobby and I said good night to Aunt Dee, who vowed to spend the next day, Christmas, getting better acquainted with “my beau.”

  I spilled everything on him that night. The entire truth about my family. My ability.

  “I can’t believe you would keep all this from me,” he said, the light disappearing from his eyes. He paced back and forth in my teenage bedroom surrounded by posters of boy bands and hand-painted flowers.

  “It’s not like I chose this life. I didn’t know how to tell you all of this.” Every part of me ached to make him understand, my skin tingled to feel him gather me close and tell me it would be okay.

  Frowning, he faced me. “You know who my father is. You know as the son of a senator I can’t have any sort of drama in my life, not like this. Not someone who lied to me through our entire relationship and might be holding who knows what else back from me. Not with my own goals in mind.”

  I knew what he wanted. The life of his father, a political career, power, influence.

  “I’m sorry, Bobby. I…I love you. I didn’t want to keep anything from you.”

  The stony set of his jaw and the way he held his shoulders razor-straight should have given me a clue I wouldn’t see him again.

  I didn’t truly believe it until I left Dee’s a couple of days later and found myself locked out of the apartment we’d shared, a key to a storage facility and a note telling me where to find my things, and that he couldn’t be in a relationship with a liar.

  It had been less than a year since that happened. I couldn’t imagine Bobby changing all that much, least of all enough for me to trust him with Ana, my best friend, my sister.

  But knowing Ana, if I told her not to date him, she wouldn’t. And she would resent me. We’d drift apart, we had before—and I couldn’t let that happen again. Like it or not, my loyalty was to my friend, and my job was to protect her, even if it was from herself.

  Standing, I brushed lint from my pant legs. “I’m coming out.”

  I could tell from the relief in her sigh that she’d been just about ready to walk away. Ana would go a long way toward getting me to forgive her once we were talking, I didn’t need her to plead for forgiveness now.

  After opening the door, I helped her up from where she’d been sitting on the floor. “I’ll break it off if you want me to,” she said, her eyelashes glistening.

  “Absolutely not. You’re one of the toughest, meanest women I know—he’s getting exactly what he deserves.”

  She laughed. “He is a little whi
pped.”

  “He brought you your wallet.”

  “He brought me my wallet.”

  We laughed together, though this time more a chuckle and less something we would spend a lot of time rehashing later. I closed my eyes and took another breath, my chest aching from the pain I knew she’d one day feel. When he hurt her, I’d be there. “I wish you could have fallen for someone I didn’t have a past with, but you’re right—the heart wants what the heart wants. I know you would have my back, and I have yours.”

  We headed downstairs to find Aunt Dolores pulling the lasagna out of the oven. She popped in the bread and set the pasta on the stove to cool. “So you girls are done kissing and making up?”

  I rolled my eyes and stole a tomato from the salad. “Bobby gone?”

  “He came long enough to drop off my wallet,” Ana responded, lips thin and cheeks sucked in.

  I smiled, hoping it was enough to reassure her. “We’re done. But I don’t think I’m quite ready for a sit-down dinner with him yet.” Probably not in this millennium. Or the next.

  Dolores grumbled as she sliced into the lasagna. “Well, my niece might be the forgivin’ sort, but you just let his boy bits get anywhere near me with a knife…” She made a wild swipe in the air before letting the knife land on an uncut carrot, cleaving it in half. “That boy don’t deserve neither of you. He’s no good, mark my words.”

  I agreed but would not say so in front of Ana. I’d have to talk to Dee later. “No castrations tonight, please. And what in the world did that carrot ever do to you?”

  ****

  “Still nothing?”

  I hated giving Eli such boring news, but really, what was I supposed to say? I was suspicious of a woman who didn’t work there anymore, and a guy who was probably fine but happened to be dating my work friend? Oh, and by the way, I don’t have time to spy anymore because my possible but probably not relationship with John was confusing and awkward, and because now I suddenly also had the task of protecting my best friend from my jerk ex-boyfriend whom she believed she fell in love with? Plus, there’s a sale this weekend at the vintage store I frequent and I just couldn’t miss it?