by Laura Beege
“I asked if you wanted to be alone and you said no.”
“Oh.” So that was that question I couldn’t remember correctly. “But you could have left the second I was asleep.”
“I thought you might wake up scared and alone. I could prevent the alone part.”
I pushed my hair back and saw him watching me. He didn’t look away when I caught him and it made the back of my neck tingle. How could he just say things like that and look at me like I was worth being taken good care of? I didn’t know how to reply. At least I had a clue how to handle Trace when he was angry and unfriendly.
“Stop looking at me like that,” he said through a crooked grin.
“How am I looking at you?” He was the one who should stop looking at me in ways that made the hairs on my arms rise.
“You won’t like my answer.”
“Tell me, please.”
Trace leaned over and played with one of my curls. I watched how he straightened it and how it bounced back into its natural form. “You look at me like that with your big eyes and I think of ripping those clothes off your body. That’s why you have to stop.” My mouth hung open. I was sure I had misheard. He tore his eyes from my hair and looked at me. “See? I told you, you wouldn’t like the truth.”
The problem was that there was a very stupid part of me that loved his answer. Said stupid part was also responsible for the heat rising in my body and the blood hammering in my ears. The stupid part wanted to grab Trace and make him a man of his word. The smart part, however, managed to gain control over my tongue. “But you don’t like me.” Okay, maybe that part wasn’t so smart after all.
He gave a husky laugh. “You irritate me. You confuse me. And you fascinate me.”
“You have to stop being interested in me.” My intelligence rose back to life. “I have to stop making mistakes and maybe I have to figure out how to date like a normal person but that’s not something I can focus on right now. I have to find my mother first. That’s what I came to England for.”
“Why do you have to find her? You’re an adult.”
“But I need somewhere I belong. I sure as hell don’t belong to my dad anymore and I don’t really belong here either.” I rubbed my fingers over my temples. A killer headache was starting to build behind them.
Sierra had been right: Trace was interested in me. I couldn’t run like she’d advised me to because I still needed this job and this room, plus I knew that I’d be lying to myself if I claimed that I wanted to run from Trace. Even after telling me he wanted to see me naked I felt safe here with him. He wouldn’t act on his words because he put my well-being first. Somewhere beneath that scratchy attitude and all the ‘fuck’s he tossed around, there was the guy who genuinely cared that I got home safely and that I wasn’t hurt.
“What about you and Wes?” He ripped me out of my thoughts.
“What about me and Wesley?”
Trace’s face transformed from confused to amused before deep laughter burst from his chest. He sat back, all tenseness fading from his body. “He’s going to pay for that. Little fuck. Letting me think you two were madly in love. It was you banging on my door.”
Oh, right. Trace hadn’t known about the fake part of the fake sex.
“Wesley and I never…”
“Thanks, I just figured that out.”
After Trace had left my room, I busied myself with the camera. I had taken fifty pictures of every piece of furniture in the room by the time the battery died on me and I had nothing left to distract myself with but my phone - which I would stare at for hours and contemplate whether enough time had passed since stealing Sabrina’s phone or if I shouldn’t call ‘Lawrence’ just yet, only to put the phone down eventually and be a crack closer to breaking apart completely.
Considering my limited resources I jumped under the shower and spent enough time scrubbing away the last 24 hours’ worth of grease to turn my fingertips into prunes. I had managed to keep my thoughts Trace-less until I was toweling down and someone knocked on the bathroom door. The idea of him being out there just three feet away from me and my nakedness squeezed the air out of my lungs.
“I still need a couple of minutes,” I gasped.
“Let me know when you’re done? I’ll be in my room,” Wesley yelled through the door. Not Trace. I hadn’t even realized how tense I was until my muscles slackened.
“Sure,” I answered and yanked my panties up my legs.
I slipped back into my leggings and the long T-shirt and twisted my hair into two thick braids before I went to knock on Wesley’s door.
“Come in!”
I entered to see him sitting on the bed with his laptop on his knees and his backpack lying next to him. It had to be amazing to get to study. You had something to do during the day and you could learn more about whatever interested you the most. You could meet people. Smart people. Normal people. And then, afterwards, if you were lucky you got a job you were passionate about. I hadn’t wanted all that until it hadn’t been an option anymore. “You can have the bathroom.”
“Thanks. Hey, how are you? Is everything alright?” He closed the laptop and placed it next to him before he wiggled himself to the end of his bed. “Last night was crazy.”
“You have no idea,” I sighed. “But Trace helped.”
“He broke that asshole’s nose. I’m happy you’re alright but guess who got to clean up all the blood?”
I wanted to insist that he had his facts mixed up but I snapped my mouth shut. Trace hadn’t only pulled me aside to take care of me. He had taken the blame. Maybe he was a knight in shining armor undercover as a tattooed bartender/singer/songwriter. Or maybe he just wanted to get into my pants very badly. No, I was actually sure that he wasn’t only being nice to lure me into his bed. Men who wanted to get laid were nice in the most obvious ways, always highlighting how very gentlemanly they were behaving in case you weren’t paying attention.
Wes scooped up a towel and a pair of jeans. “So you’re okay?” he asked and came to a stop before me.
I nodded and smiled up at him. “Yeah, I’m okay. Enjoy your shower, I still have to thank Trace for what he did.” I scurried out to the hall and stopped at Trace’s door where I waited for Wesley to disappear into the bathroom until I lifted my fist. Before I could knock, the door swung open and Trace fell a step back to avoid a collision. He had changed into a pair of dark blue jeans and my grey sweater.
“You want it back?” he asked.
“I…” I tilted my neck to forget the shirt and remember why I came here. “Yes, actually, I do. But that’s not why I’m here. I wanted to ask you something.”
“Walk with me? Vince is waiting downstairs.”
“Okay, sure.” We headed for the stairs and I twisted my body to look back at him. “Wesley just told me that you broke Reese’s nose but I know for a matter of fact that my knee did the damage.”
“Is that your question?” The staircase wasn’t wide enough to walk next to each other, so Trace pressed past me, then turned around and took the stairs backwards in order to face me.
“Did you tell everyone that you beat him up?”
He looked over his shoulder. Whether it was to check for eavesdroppers or to avoid plummeting down the stairs I didn’t know. “I didn’t tell them otherwise,” he said. “When a tiny girl and a big guy leave a man lying in a room, messed up like that, who would you assume is responsible?”
“The big guy, of course. But you still could have set things straight.”
“What good would that do? And for the record, my fist and his face had a date when I threw him out of here.”
“Trace! He was already hurt.”
“He deserved it,” he grunted and turned around on the last step.
Alex’s strained voice came from the office and Vincent, in all his blue hair and tight leather pants glory, was leaning against the bar, balancing a glass of water on two fingers. He quickly put it down on the counter when he saw Trace. Then his eyes fell
to my level. “The American!” His lips bowed into a wide smile. “Didn’t know you were coming with us. Otherwise I would have cleaned the car.”
“Uhm… I’m not. Where are you going?”
“We’re going to visit my mother,” Trace explained.
Wesley had never talked about their mother. “Why isn’t Wes coming with you?”
“The boy is not speaking to his own mother,” Vince chimed in. “Can we share stories of our screwed up families in the car? We’re going to get stuck in traffic.” He twirled around on the heels of his shoes and took a long, demonstrative stride towards the door. I bet this guy was some sort of actor or dancer. He had that sort of body control.
“You should come. Unless you prefer sitting in your room all day.”
I didn’t know how to politely tell him that I had no idea how to deal with mothers, so I should probably not meet his unless he was prepared for chaos. I settled on a reply that was easier to stomach than my family trauma. “It’s not Tuesday yet. I’ve got to work.”
Trace narrowed his eyes at me. “We’re staying closed tonight so everybody can cool down.”
“Your Dad knows about last night?” He had to. Unless Trace and Wesley had the power to keep the doors of the pub shut.
“Don’t look at me like that. I didn’t tell him.”
“Alright beautiful people, I am leaving,” Vincent sang and, in slow motion, moved his hand towards the door handle. “Whoever wants to come with me better get their ass moving.”
“Shut up Vince, the grown-ups are talking.” Vince flipped Trace off but sank down against the door with his chin propped up in his palm. Seeing him like that, the grown-ups thing made a lot more sense. Vincent was about Trace’s age, maybe 22 or 23, but with his knees pulled up and his bottom lip stuck out, he resembled a five-year-old boy. Trace cleared his throat and I realized he was watching me watching Vince. “Come with us.”
I drew my eyebrows together. “Is that a question?”
“No, actually it isn’t.” Trace grinned.
“There’s no way for me to get out of this, is there?” I sighed.
“No, there isn’t.”
With all that he’d done for me it seemed horribly wrong to turn him down on such a simple request. It wasn’t like I was about to rob a bank for him. I just had to meet his mother. I just had to spend a couple of hours with Trace without freaking out, or yelling at him, or looking at the muscles working under his skin until it made my toes tingle and my ears flame up.
No problem at all.
I threw my hands up in defeat. “Okay, let’s do this.”
Thirteen
Vincent was driving a bright yellow VW that was, according to him, ‘just the right kind of old to make it retro chic.’ To me, it simply looked outdated. I was stuck in the backseat next to a pile of size 12 high heels that came in all colors of the rainbow, including animal print and glittery silver. Since Vincent smoked like a chimney, I tried not to inhale too deeply to avoid nicotine poisoning. Taking short, shallow breaths also made sitting by the shoes easier.
“How do you guys know each other?” I asked after ten minutes of silence.
“Uni,” Vince answered. “Your loverboy beat the shit out of Harris Cooper for calling me a fucked up arse bandit. It was a Tuesday and I decided we should be best friends.”
“I’ve been regretting saving his ass every day since,” Trace grinned and earned himself a shove in the shoulder from Vincent. I made a mental note to tell Wesley that he shouldn’t be afraid to tell his brother he’s gay.
“He’s not my loverboy. Wait. You went to college?”
“Wow. You don’t have to sound so surprised.” Trace rolled down the window to let some fresh air in and I tucked my knees up because the air might have been clean but also cold.
“I’m sorry. I just… I mean, you’re a bartender in your father’s bar.” Dad had wanted me in the family business ever since I was born. He would have found a place for me even if I had dropped out of high school.
“A bachelor in performance and composition doesn’t exactly guarantee a golden future if you don’t want to sell your soul to a record label.”
“They didn’t want his soul, they wanted his songs,” Vince yelled with an insistence in his voice that made me wonder how many times he had lectured Trace on the topic.
“They wanted the lyrics, not the music,” Trace continued matter-of-factly, “I declined. I’d rather have fifty people listening to my songs the way they’re supposed to sound than have five million listen to a blonde teenager in country boots squeaking the lyrics to the wrong music.”
Vincent broke into a talk about the importance of being recognized for your work in order to leave an imprint in the world, but I didn’t really listen anymore. Trace was looking out the window but his mind was off somewhere else.
How had I not noticed that Trace was just like everybody else? He had hopes and goals and things he wished for. There was a future he dreamed of and one he feared.
After a few more minutes the houses on the side of the road grew sparse and after about an hour in the car we headed into a small town of grey stone houses mixed with modern buildings in bright colors. The VW groaned under us as Vince forced it up a steep slope before he steered into a driveway. We stopped in front of a small, white house with a small fountain in the front yard. I stepped out of the car and realized the silver glistening in the fountain wasn’t water but bottle caps.
“Is there anything I should know before we go in there?” I asked, watching Vince ring the door bell.
Trace turned to me and sighed. “Unless you want to get high, don’t eat the cake. Actually, don’t eat anything. It’s like bloody wonderland in there.”
“I love it,” Vince grinned just as the door swung open.
“My favorite boy!” A tall woman exclaimed and threw her arms around Vincent. Her blond hair was teased and stacked high on her head with all sorts of decoration sticking out of it. A plastic flower the size of my hand was fixed to her hair knot, as well as a string of colorful beads and several feathers. Her face was long and thin, just like the rest of her. “It was about time you visited me again. I thought you forgot all about me.”
“Wouldn’t dare to, Monica,” Vince laughed and pulled out of the hug.
“I hope so. Hello, handsome,” Monica turned to Trace and wrapped him into a short hug as well. Her entire right arm, just like Trace’s, was covered in ink but where Trace’s tattoo sleeve was made up of a couple of black swirls and Caribbean ornaments, hers was a mix of cartoon characters, pin-up girls and flowers.
“Hi Mum,” he said and returned her hug.
“You’ve got to stop growing, boy, or you won’t fit into my arms anymore.”
“I’ve stopped growing when I was eighteen, Mum.”
“You have to come by more often then, so I won’t forget how big you are. Who is this?” A well-known pair of green eyes landed on me, only that they looked at me from a different face than usual. “My son brought a girl over!” She pushed Trace off and within moments I found myself in a tight hug.
“Hi,” I pressed through squeezed lungs.
“Mum, this is Kitty. Kitty, my mother, Monica,” Trace introduced us and shuffled his feet.
“You’re tiny, Kitty. Isn’t that uncomfortable in bed? One of you probably always has to bend in the most awkward ways, don’t you?” Monica chippered.
“God, I’m going to need a lot of cake for this,” Trace mumbled and pressed past us into the house.
“I’m just a friend,” I explained. I hoped force of will could keep the blood from rushing into my cheeks. “There’s no bending and no bed sharing going on.”
“Let’s go inside and you can tell me all about that friendship you have.” She said friendship like it was the code word for secret affair.
Monica led Vincent and me into a crammed living room. There were all kinds of masks strapped to the red walls, paper figurines and toy airplanes dangled from the ceilin
g and two couches and about five antique-looking chairs were stuffed into the small room. To make it worse, the heavy smell of incense sticks hung in the air. If it weren’t for the wide floor-to-ceiling windows to the garden, one could get claustrophobic in here. “What are you drinking?”
Trace was nowhere to be found, and I wasn’t sure if drinking was as much of a risk as eating. “Do you have coffee?”
“Do we have coffee? Honey, I wouldn’t function without it.” Neither would I. The barista in Coffee Donna, the coffee shop around the corner from the pub, had my order memorized. I had already cut back to only two cups a day but it still gave me headaches to go without any for too long. “I’ll be right back. Make yourself comfortable.”
Vince was already sprawled out on one of the couches, a cupcake with pink icing in his hand. I sank down on the other couch and let my head fall back so I could look at all the small things above our heads. I would have loved to step on a ladder and take pictures of the miniature sky of paper cranes and airplanes and snowflakes.
“Someone should have told me we were having a pretty girl over. I would have changed.” A dark-haired guy stepped around a small end table and sank into one of the plush armchairs. His lips were split in a mischievous grin and he wore a muscle shirt two sizes too small, showing off something that could have resembled nice arms if you didn’t see a pair of well-toned ones every single day.
“Thanks, mate, but you’re still not my type,” Vince grinned and raised his cupcake towards the guy. I couldn’t help smiling at Vincent’s perception of himself as a pretty girl.
“Likewise, Vince. I was talking to your gorgeous friend over here.” He nodded in my direction and I wrapped my arms around myself, uncomfortable in the spotlight of his attention. I didn’t even wear make-up or nice clothes. How much did a girl have to do to become invisible to all men?
A large hand squeezed my shoulder and I cringed under the sudden touch. Trace leaned over the backrest of the couch, handing me a green apple. “Sorry, I couldn’t find anything else safe for you to eat,” he explained, keeping his eyes trained on the guy in the armchair.
