by Lena Black
“Yes, I did. However, the other girls have lived here their whole lives. They’ve experienced the best of Mardi Gras. You may never get the chance again depending if you stay or not.” He pauses, as if letting the words settle on his tongue. From the solemn expression on his face, he doesn’t like the way they taste. “I’ll switch a few shifts with the other girls, so you can attend some parades and street parties. I’m sure Izzie’ll show you around town.”
“She is,” I confirm, taking a draw of my coffee. “Maybe you could show me, too.”
His eyes stick on mine.
“Happy to.” He looks out over the courtyard and gives me some reprieve from his steely gaze, finishing off his coffee. “At the end of the season, there’s a series of masked balls. The Magnolia Masquerade is the most anticipated. If you’re here then, would you be my plus one?”
“Love to,” I reply. “If I’m still here.”
He nods his head in understanding.
I nod mine.
Neither one of us speaks after that.
What’s left to say?
Greier went out again.
It’s the third time in over a week. I understand people go out. He is a thirty-something single man with needs. But it’s the hour he goes out. Staying out from two ‘till the gray hours of morning, creeping up the stairs and across the living room like I can’t hear his hefty mass gracelessly bumping into furniture or his clodhopping footsteps.
What could he possibly be doing during those hours? Where does he always sneak off to? Somewhere seedy? To another woman? Gambling? Or maybe he’s an underground cage fighter. That’s my favorite theory. I’m not normally the nosy, green-eyed type with men, wondering where they are and who they’re with. I certainly wasn’t that way with Shaw. Deep down, I welcomed the space from him and my other suitors. But none of them were Greier. He’s different.
This particular night, after a trying shift, I pass out on the couch sometime around midnight. But my eyelids shoot open when I’m woken by noises from the restaurant. It’s four in the morning—when everyone should be long gone. Still in a haze, I assume Greier’s back from wherever he spends most nights. But the sounds become increasingly more aggressive and louder. Without hesitation, I grab the phone and make a beeline for the drawer with the gun. I search the usual hiding spot, but it isn’t here, my hand shakily rummaging for it without success.
Goddammit Greier.
The dumbest idea crosses my half-awake brain. I need to check if it’s a burglary or just him. If I call the cops unnecessarily, it could bring their attention on to me. Knowing what I know, I’m not sure Shaw or his father would go to the cops, even though Lou has them in his back pocket. But you can never be too careful. If they recognize me, my cover’s blown. They’d drag me back to my former life in chains. The idea scares me more than the person destroying the Magnolia.
I tiptoe down the stairs with footsteps lighter than helium and carefully open the door at the bottom. Left without a gun, I clench my hands around the phone, slinking down the hall until I’m able to poke my head around the corner. Behind the bar, a man with a baseball cap and jacket has his back turned to me. He’s handling the bottles, dropping one on the ground with a crash.
This clearly isn’t Greier.
Before I think about my actions, I jump out from my hiding place, pointing the phone at the burglar with my outstretched arms, and shout in my most authoritative voice, “Put your hands in the air and get down on the ground.”
His hands soar toward the ceiling. Same as Greier the night I accidentally aimed the gun at him.
“Wait,” he says with a wobbly stance. “Don’t shoot.”
“Get down on the ground!” I repeat loudly.
“I can explain,” the vandal insists.
“Reagan?” Greier questions from the entrance, his bluer than blue eyes directed at the pretend gun in my extended hands. Following them, they skate to the man cowering at the bar, and he rumbles out an aggravated groan. “Dad, put your hands down.”
“Dad?” My arms flop to my sides, my right hand barely gripping the phone. “As in—Dad?”
“Can’t hide it, anymore, I guess.” He sets his hand against his forehead, partly obscuring his eyes, and releases a drawn-out breath. “Reagan, this is my drunk of a father, Tobias. You’ll have to excuse his stupidity. It gets the better of him sometimes.”
The clearly intoxicated man turns around, his hands still occupying the space above his head. “Nice to meet ya,” he slurs before toppling over and out of sight behind the bar.
“I didn’t know,” I state.
“How could you?” Greier walks over to his father, picking him up from the floor. He rests his father’s arm around his neck to prevent him from falling again and guides him toward the back, to the apartment door. I follow closely, my blood pumping from the weird encounter. After struggling with the stairs, he practically drags his father across the living room and into the makeshift guestroom, Tobias’ feet unable to sync with his son’s. When he gets him to the bed, Tobias collapses face forward onto the mattress, bouncing from the dead weight. Greier sits on the edge of the bed, unlacing his father’s bootlaces. I kneel bedside and start on the other foot. He stops working at the knot, smiling tiredly down at me. I smile back. We continue to work the laces until they give and yank the boots off and toss them on the floor. I tuck them under the bed in case Tobias wakes and gets out of bed. Wouldn’t want him to trip on them in his inebriated state.
“I’ve got the rest, Reagan. You should go back to sleep.”
“Not a chance.” I rise from my knees and walk toward the door. “We should get something in his stomach. I’ll make him soup.”
I’m stepping across the threshold when he stops me.
“Rae.”
“Yeah, Grey?”
“Thanks,” he mutters, visibly ashamed by the situation, by his father. I get the impression this isn’t the first time this has happened. I’m sure it won’t be the last.
“Consider this me paying it forward.”
I walk out of the room and let him finish helping his father into bed. Once I’ve warmed some soup, and we’ve poured it down his throat, I leave a glass of water on the nightstand and a trashcan on the floor near his head. I join Greier out in the living room. He drops onto the couch and rests his arm over his eyes. I sit beside him, wondering if he senses my gaze beating into the side of his face. If he does, he doesn’t mention it. He doesn’t speak. Neither do I. For fifteen minutes, the room is silent. He sits with his face partially hidden. I watch him, study him, his sullen face, his slumped body. I want to smash the silence like the glass bottle shattered on the ground in the bar, but Greier beats me to it.
“He promised he wouldn’t do this anymore,” he confesses.
“This isn’t the first time,” I confirm.
“This week or my whole life? Because the answer to both is no.”
I realize something right then. He vanishes around the time bars close. Could he be dealing with his father? One way to find out.
“You’re with him when you disappear, aren’t you?”
“Mm-hm.”
“You don’t owe me an explanation.” I shake my head and stare down at my lap, my legs tucked against my body on the cushion.
“You are correct.”
Ouch.
Why does the truth sting so much?
He slaps his thighs and then rises from the sofa. “Want to drink?”
“Call me nuts,” I utter, “but after that, I’m not in the mood for alcohol.”
He serves himself a stiff one and then walks over to the hi-fi to flip it on, returning to his place next to me. The unmistakable vocals of Louis Armstrong soothe us through the warm crackles of vinyl. Lifting the rim of his glass to his lips, the amber liquor passes over them and into the perfection of his mouth. I know. I’ve had it all over my body.
“He’s always been like this one way or another,” he opens up. “And I always take care of him
even though I swear I’ll never do it again. He fucks up, and I clean his mess.”
I quietly study his impeccable apartment, arriving to the conclusion that his past is the reason for his orderliness. It makes sense.
“That’s why your apartment is so tidy, isn’t it?”
He glimpses around the room, as if to corroborate what I’m saying is true. He releases a quiet hmm. “Don’t know,” he mumbles with a shrug, so it sounds like a single jumbled word. “I suppose when you’re raised in anarchy, you seek order. I would’ve given anything to have a father capable of controlling himself, so I could’ve been a kid a bit longer. But life isn’t like that.”
“No,” I agree, “it’s not.”
It’s funny. We’re completely opposite, even in the way we were raised, and yet I understand him. I would’ve given anything to have parents who permitted me the slightest control over my own life, to be surprised by what came next. And Greier desired order and parents who would protect him from the world.
“My dad’s the opposite,” I admit without thinking before I open my mouth. “He demands control, obedience, and order. Most of my life has been simplified into an organizer, planned down to the minute. I’ve never been able to make a choice for myself or simply be until I came here.”
There’s a fleeting moment of thoughtful pause. I swear I almost hear the gears in his head turning as he sips on his drink. His eyes have that blank, not-really-here glaze to them. I watch him, spotting the instant he comes back to me from the depths of his brain.
“Reagan, did you want to marry your fiancé?”
My lips tighten and pucker.
This is volatile territory. If I’m not cautious, I’ll give too much away. Only problem, I’m beginning to want to give him everything. Since that would be a terrible idea—“I wanted to make my parents happy.”
“Oh, I see.” The uncomfortable grimace on his face tells me he does. “Is that why you ran?”
My stomach drops to my feet.
We couldn’t avoid this conversation forever. I knew it was coming. Hoped I’d be long gone by the time it did though.
“Part of the reason.” Without asking, I reach over and take the drink from his hands. If I’m going to do this, I need a nip of liquid courage. “I might’ve even accepted the fact I didn’t love him if he hadn’t done what he did.”
“What did he do?”
“Broke my trust, spit on the sacrifice I made.” I chuckle lightly, and he peers at me with a brow twisted in confusion. “I can’t blame him. How could he respect me when I had none for myself? I was blindly and submissively ready to spend the rest of my days with a man I barely knew and didn’t care for.”
“But you didn’t,” he reminds me.
“Yeah,” I murmur, staring down at the drink in my hands. “Maybe I owe him for giving me the strength to leave.”
“When you first came here, you said you didn’t have anyone to call. That wasn’t entirely true, was it?”
“Yes and no,” I vaguely answer. “I’m not exactly drowning in friends. And my parents…they wouldn’t understand. They’d probably convince me…no, force me to take him back,” I correct myself, “to live a life of misery and emptiness. But they have no idea who he is, what he’s capable of. They have no idea what my coming back would really mean.”
“So,” he mutters, “you really had no one to call.”
“No,” I whisper with a strangled voice. I’m not a crier. But I’m battling back the tears, my loneliness truly sinking in for the first time.
“But they must be looking for you.”
“I’m sure they are. You wouldn’t let a prized horse get away,” I turn my focus from the drink in my hands to his eyes, “would you?”
He cringes at the coldness in my tone, at the bluntness of my pain. “You think that’s all they see you as?”
“I know they do.”
“Well, you’re welcome to hide here as long as you want, Rae. I like the company, and you’ve really saved me at the bar.”
“Thank you.”
I hand him the emptied glass. He takes it and sets it on the table.
“I should probably get to sleep,” he says.
“Yeah, it’s been a long, weird night.”
His upper body falls back on the couch, one leg hanging over the edge, the other bent and tucked beneath it. His large frame overtakes the width. He can’t be comfortable out here.
Hope I won’t regret what I’m about to offer.
“Would you rather sleep in your bed—with me?”
He looks at me, uncertainty in his eyes.
“You’re asking me to sleep with you?”
“Not you below me or me below you, next to each other and actually sleeping. But yes.”
His brow jumps halfway up his forehead.
“Alright,” he says, failing to hide the pleased surprise in his voice.
It makes my stomach flutter.
“Alright,” I repeat, failing to hide the excited uncertainty in mine.
When we enter, the outside light is faint but bright enough to locate the bed without turning on a lamp. No more than a shadow, his large silhouette moves to the other side. We crawl into the softness and settle. It isn’t long before I’m asleep, soothed by the comfort of his warm mass next to mine.
The day begins like every day since I renounced my former life, brimming with possibility. I ate a carb-loaded breakfast, took an extra-long shower, and then dressed for work in a pair of jeans and a cute t-shirt. I never owned jeans before coming here. Another thing I was deprived of under my parents’ rules and expectations. Simple yet monumental.
I’m scheduled for the mid-day shift. The tips aren’t as hefty as the later shifts, but it’s not nearly as hectic either. Usually older couples, families, business types, tourists. When the alcohol begins to cascade freely, so does the money.
The first part of my shift goes smoothly. I’m getting the customers fed and out the door to make room for the constant flow since Carnival started. As I maneuver between the tables and people, I catch a glimpse of Greier behind the bar, talking to Kate, the hostess, about some issue. When he spots me, a shadow of a smile twitches his lips. I return the sentiment, the corners of my mouth growing further apart until I’m genuinely smiling. It’s easy to do when you’re happy. Even doing something as mundane as working. And that’s due to him.
Maybe I should be worried or stressed considering the reality of my situation. But I’m not. I might be in hiding, but I’ve never been more free.
I’m working the sidewalk-patio tables when Kate informs me she’s seated people at table six inside and Rachel, the waitress assigned to it, is swamped with a large party.
“Can you cover for her?” she asks.
“I’m on it.”
She thanks me, and I head inside.
By chance, I glance from my order slips to gauge the clientele. It’s easier to identify the parties willing to leave a decent tip. I stop in my tracks when I spy the two women sitting at the table.
Blanche LeBlanc and my mother.
Fuck me.
Fortunately, they’re chatting about some meaningless topic and staring into their menus with snotty expressions, as if they can’t understand why they came to such an establishment.
What’s wrong with this place, Mother? Not good enough for your impossible tastes? Not good enough for your perfect daughter?
This place is Greier. He poured himself into it. It’s a part of him, and she’s judging it. Judging him. My mother has always been an expert nitpicker. It was almost an art. Usually, it was directed at me. I could handle that. But when her judgements are targeted at him, something inside me boils. With one disgusted snarl of her lip, white-hot fire flares in my belly—until my brain begins to function again, and I realize if they simply look up, I’m fucked.
I duck behind a plant and out the patio doors, speed-walking down the sidewalk to the courtyard gate in the back. I rest a hand on the brick wall and bend over
, holding my stomach with the other. I’m shaking. And I feel like I might get sick.
“What the hell was that about?” Izzie probes me with a concerned edginess in her voice. I hadn’t heard her approach through my hyperventilating.
“I,” I straighten myself out, “I’m not feeling well. Could someone take my tables while I go on an early break?”
“You do look pale,” she agrees. “Paler than usual I mean.” She glances me over with a crease in her brow. “Alright, I’ll cover ya. Take an hour. Eat, rest, cool off, whateva.”
That should be more than enough time for them to eat and leave. But the idea of Izzie overhearing anything they may be talking about makes my stomach turn even more. I have no choice though. If I approach that table, this is all over. And I’m not ready for that—not yet anyway.
“Thanks.”
“Of course.” She turns to walk inside but looks back at me over her shoulder, a ruby smirk contorting her face. “But ya owe me.”
She leaves me to panic in solitude. I enter the courtyard and take a seat at the wrought iron table, leaning forward and placing my head in my hands. I rock back and forth. It helps to calm me down.
Once I stop hyperventilating, I head up the courtyard stairs to the apartment. In the kitchen, I splash some cold water on my face and neck and dab off with a towel before relocating to the couch in the living room. I hear the restaurant door open and then Greier’s big footsteps ascending the stairs. He walks over to the couch and sits beside me.
“You alright? Izzie told me you’re feeling sick.” He raises the back of his hand to my forehead and then places the palm over my cheek. “You’re pale.”
You would be too if you saw a ghost.
He leaves his hand on the side of my face.
“I’m not sick like that.” I remove it but don’t give it back to him, holding it in mine, which are now resting in my lap. “I think it was the heat.”
