by SM Reine
“What are you doing here? Why do you keep showing up out of the blue at the worst times?”
“I’m back for good, Lexi. I want to set things straight and there’s a lot I need to tell you, but this isn’t the place. You tell me when’s a good time and we’ll get together.”
I sniffed and gave a barely perceptible nod.
Austin let go of my knees and reached forward, sliding his hands down my hair with a short grin.
“It’s Pretty Pigtail Day,” I said in a small voice. “I do this with Maizy a couple of times a month.” I didn’t even bother explaining who Maizy was.
Austin didn’t laugh. “It reminds me a little bit of you at that age. I remember you wearing your hair like this, or sometimes braided in the back. Come on, let’s get up.” He hooked his hands beneath my arms and lifted me to my feet. “You sure you’re okay?”
Before I could answer, his thumb slid across my cheek, wiping away a tear. All those stupid rehearsals I’d played out in my head of telling him off were stuck in pause, and I felt ashamed I’d later be rewinding this moment, wishing I had tossed him into the bin of plastic balls.
He reached in his back pocket and pulled out a business card, placing it in my hand. “Call me when you’re ready to talk, Ladybug.”
I lifted my hand and admired a plain off-white card. Austin’s name was on the front with a phone number beneath. A symbol of a bow and arrow filled in the right-hand corner, but nothing indicated what he did for a living. Did that mean he was Robin Hood?
When I looked up, Austin was gone.
The card went into my purse and I decided to take Maizy home. Austin had left the ball in my court, and while it felt good to know the mystery of his disappearance would be solved, it also irritated me. Now in order to get any answers, I’d have to go crawling back to him, and that didn’t leave me in a position of power. I didn’t know how to feel about it, but I knew one thing: panic flooded my veins like rocket fuel when I didn’t see Maizy in the play zone.
“Maizy?”
My heart raced and I whirled around, dizzy with fear. I frantically searched the tunnels, peering through the clear plastic domes just to make sure she wasn’t hiding.
“Maizy? Come out from hiding! It’s time to go!”
When she didn’t answer, I went into a complete state of panic, screaming her name and pacing around. Kids were turning to stare and a few moms lifted their chins and glanced around the room.
Oh God, I’ve lost her.
After I’d combed the room five times and scoured the bathrooms, I ran out of the restaurant to the brightly lit entrance in front of the parking lot.
“Lexi! Lexi!” a bright little voice yelled out.
My head swung to the right. Beckett stood motionless beside my little sister, holding her hand.
“Maizy,” I gasped, my arms flying out. She let go of his hand and ran into my outstretched arms. “Don’t you ever leave me like that, do you understand?”
“Uncle Beck gave me a ring,” she said, holding up a plastic toy affixed to her finger.
I glared at him and he shrugged, walking away.
But something else made me uneasy—Maizy would have never left that room by herself. Beckett lured her out of there on purpose just to scare me.
It worked.
He’d resorted to a low tactic by taking advantage of my sister’s trust in order to threaten me. At least, that’s what it felt like. Beckett wasn’t aggressive, nor did I take him for the kind of guy who would kidnap a child. He had a mouth on him when he drank, but I’d never seen him do anything like this before, and what gave me chills was how smooth he was when I caught him in the act, and how casually he walked away.
“Let’s go, Maizy.”
I tossed her ring in the trash and she started to cry, so I picked her up. “Sweetie, don’t be mad at me.”
Tears streamed down her ruddy cheeks and her mouth was agape. “But that was my ring,” she whined.
“Maze, can I tell you something? It’s a secret.”
She nodded and wiped her nose.
“Never take a ring from a boy unless he’s your prince.”
Something sparked in her teary eyes.
“Remember how you said you wanted to marry a prince? Well, if you take a ring from another boy before you meet the prince, then he won’t marry you.”
Panic flooded her eyes. “But I took that one!”
“No, it doesn’t count because I threw it away. That’s the rule. Your big sis has to take it off and then the spell is undone.”
She smiled and hugged my neck. Maizy loved stories about magic and spells. In her eyes, the world was nothing but a fairytale. Adults were blind to the magic that existed and only little kids could see it.
“Come on, little girl. Time for us to go home. You know, you’re getting way too heavy for me to carry,” I grunted out dramatically. “Are you sure you’re not hiding a moose in your pocket?” She giggled and rested her head on my shoulder.
That did the trick, and Maizy hummed one of her favorite songs for the rest of the ride home.
~ ~ ~
After a grueling day at work on Saturday, I threw my keys on the bar and collapsed on my sofa. The neighbor downstairs decided to have a party and the music thumped against the floor, rattling one of the pictures on my wall.
All these months, I’d managed to successfully avoid telling my mom about my breakup with Beckett. She liked him, and that made it more difficult. After the other night, I decided to let the cat out of the bag because I was afraid of him showing up at her house. When I finally confessed, I left out the part with Maizy because I still didn’t know what to make of it myself. It wasn’t a deliberate threat, but it just left me with a sick feeling. Mom didn’t say anything and it was probably for the best. If she had defended him and gone on about forgiveness, I might have sped out of there at ninety miles per hour in “angry mode.”
A woman screamed downstairs and laughter followed. I wondered what Wes would have thought about my life. I still saw him as the cool guy and he might have gone downstairs to join them. But he would be thirty and who knows… maybe married. It was hard to imagine him as anything but the young man I once knew.
I could still remember the last time I saw him, two nights before the accident. I was living at home and he stopped by to have a talk with Dad. He walked me into my bedroom and told me I needed to get a full-time job and move out. I’d been slacking off at my job because I hated flipping burgers. Wes shared his concern with me and wanted to know if Dad had been giving me a hard time. He told me about a job at Sweet Treats and suggested I could move in with him until I found a place. “Call me tomorrow and we’ll go to a movie,” he said.
God, why didn’t I call him? I ended up blowing him off and it had become one of the biggest regrets of my life. A last chance to see him, or maybe that could have changed his fate and he would never have gone out on the night he died.
Suddenly, a knock sounded at my front door. I catapulted off the sofa and grabbed the fireplace poker—my weapon of choice.
Through the peephole, I watched Naya impatiently pacing in circles with her arms folded.
I opened the door.
“This is the last straw. I called the police this time,” she announced, rushing past me and going straight for the can of Spanish peanuts in the kitchen.
“The party girl called the cops?” I smirked.
Naya strutted into the living room and plopped down on the floor, leaning against one of my chairs with her long legs crossed.
“Lexi, on more than one occasion I’ve invited them to my parties, but they’ve never once returned the courtesy.”
I flopped onto the couch and grabbed a magazine from the coffee table. “Do you really want to party with a bunch of college kids?” My gaze flicked up. “Wait, don’t answer that.”
She popped a peanut into her mouth and brushed the salt from her fingers onto her tight shorts.
“Crash it,” I suggested.
Naya rolled her eyes. The root of her irritation wasn’t the noise but that she wasn’t a part of it. Naya hated exclusion. “I have more class than that, chickypoo. So are you going to tell me what’s been bothering you?”
I slowly turned the page, glancing at an article about the top twenty ways to turn on your man. “Nope.”
She set the peanuts down and hopped on the sofa beside me, lifting my legs onto her lap. “Ooo, it’s a man, isn’t it?”
“Naya, it’s—”
“A man.”
I snorted. “Drop it.”
“Dish, Lexi. I can tell it’s not about Beckett because you have a totally different look on your face when you’re stewing over him. So who has your feathers all ruffled up?”
I hurled the fashion magazine to the floor. “A ghost from my past. Just someone who took off years ago and never once contacted me.” Now I was irritated all over again and sat up with my knees against my chest. “He just showed up out of the blue and now he wants to talk.”
“Someone you dated?”
“No. Just an old family friend.”
“Hmm,” she pondered, setting her feet on the coffee table. A silver anklet slithered down to her foot and a tiny heart dangled from her toe ring. “Maybe he was in trouble.”
Something I’d considered. “Maybe he was in prison.”
“That’s kind of sexy.”
“That’s kind of not,” I said. “I have no desire to graduate from a cheating bastard to an ex-convict.”
“So talk to him. Either that or sit here night after night, wondering what happened while wearing your bitchy face.”
“I don’t have a bitchy face,” I argued, trying to conceal my smile.
An unexpected knock at the door startled the both of us. I glanced around but forgot where I’d set down the fireplace poker.
“Shhh.” Naya tiptoed over to the door and peered through the peephole with her index finger pointing up.
“Who is it?” I whispered over her shoulder.
“I can’t tell. Oh, shit.”
“What?”
Naya looked at me and winked. “It’s a cop. He flipped a badge.”
After using her pinky finger to pick a peanut skin from her teeth, she casually opened the door. “It’s about time!”
The man raked his gaze up and down Naya before looking in my direction. He wasn’t wearing a uniform, but his stature was tall and he had a short buzz cut many of the cops sported. When he held up his badge and folded it back into his pocket, Naya leaned comfortably against the doorframe.
“That’s been going on for two hours,” she pointed out.
Cops turned Naya on. Period. If there was a reason she could call them, she would. Even at her own parties. I tried not to laugh when her right leg rubbed against the other, as if she were scratching her left thigh with her right knee and beckoning her panties to drop.
“I’m Officer McNeal, responding to a report of a noise disturbance. Are you the one who made the call?” he asked.
“Guilty,” she purred.
“I’ll need your names for my report.” He took out a tiny notebook and I backed up, folding my arms. I didn’t want to get involved in this shit.
“Naya.” She spelled it out. “Naya James.”
“And?” he said, locking eyes with mine. It made me nervous. More nervous than it should have since he was the good guy.
“Um, is this necessary? I didn’t call.”
The tip of his pen remained firmly pressed against his little notepad. “Name?”
My stomach knotted. “Alexia.”
He didn’t move his pen. “Alexia what?”
Why was he making me so nervous? “Alexia Knight.”
“Do you live alone?” he asked.
I glanced at Naya.
“Ma’am, if there’s anyone else on the premises, I need it for my report. If we come back for more information, we’ll need to know the names of all residents within the building.”
“I’m alone, she’s alone,” Naya quickly said, smiling with her ruby lips. She stepped a little closer to him. “Were you on your way home? Sorry if we pulled you back on duty, officer. Can I make it up to you?”
She batted her lashes and I gave her the look. Not that she noticed since her eyes were eating up Mr. Undercover Cop.
Without writing down my name or any additional information, he tucked his little notepad in his back pocket. “I’ll go down and have a talk with them. If they bother you again, give us a call and you can come down to the station and file a formal complaint. Have a good evening.” He tipped his head and walked off.
“Damn,” Naya said, slamming the door. “He was kind of hot, and so not into me.” She put her arm around me. “But he sure had his eyes all over you.”
“Yeah. In a creepy way.”
“I’m going to have to put in a personal request for Officer McNeal next time,” she said with a giggle. “I’d love to rub my hands all over his head.”
“Which one?”
She slapped my arm and feigned a shocked expression. “A little seasoned by the look of salt and pepper in his hair, but I bet I could crack a smile on that stern face of his. Try to get some sleep, and don’t forget about my party on Tuesday.”
Naya shut the front door behind her. “Lock it!”
I turned the bolt and wondered how I could possibly forget about the party she reminded me of at every opportunity. That night, I slept with a pillow over my head.
The music downstairs went on until four in the morning.
Chapter Six
The next day, I found Naya’s cell phone on the floor by the sofa. I decided to swing by the strip club and drop it off since she had tiny conniptions whenever she misplaced it. I never understood how a man could walk into a strip club on a Sunday and not turn into a puff of smoke as soon as he crossed the threshold of the establishment.
Club Sin was on the far end of town and I had a few other errands to run, one of which included laundry. I stuffed two large bags of clothes into the trunk of my car. We had a laundry room in the apartment building, but it was dark and had only one door. The Laundromat I frequented had televisions, ample seating, and a few classic arcade games in the back. I felt safe in there and it gave me time to read my magazines or paint my toenails.
Her phone was tucked in the back pocket of my shorts along with Austin’s card, because I planned to call him on a phone that wasn’t mine so he wouldn’t have my number.
And wasn’t that childish?
Before going to a strip club on a Sunday, I made a detour over to the cemetery because something had been bothering me, and that was the possibility of having left a whiskey bottle on top of my brother’s grave. I parked the car on the little pathway and walked across the stretch of high grass until I reached his marker. There were a few blades of grass on the plaque, so I dusted them away, but no signs of a whiskey bottle or vomit.
Thank God.
That’s when every muscle in my body froze.
A merciless snarl stirred the balmy air behind me. A prickling sensation touched the back of my neck and I slowly stood up and turned around.
A menacing dog with matted brown fur bared its sharp canines at me. Dog? Who was I kidding? It was too big to be a dog. With cautious steps, I backed away.
My throat dried up as it paced in my direction with stiff shoulders, malicious eyes, and a drip of slobber dangling from one side of its mouth. Could I take down a dog? Maybe kick it or punch it? Shit. What if I got rabies? Wasn’t that a bunch of shots to your stomach?
Then I remembered all the stories about people attacked by dogs who ended up with their faces torn off.
Without batting an eyelash, I spun on my heel and leapt for a branch on the tree beside me. I swung my legs up just in time as he snapped his massive jaws, then climbed as high as I could, as if Mr. Big Bad Wolf could grow arms and come up after me.
It felt like thirty minutes had crawled by, and the dog continued to circle res
tlessly around the tree like a soldier. The unrelenting heat planted frightening thoughts in my head that I might die of thirst in a cemetery. Could I live off leaves and bark? My fingers clawed at the trunk and I shifted my hip uncomfortably on the angled branch where I squatted.
Then I remembered the phone.
Very carefully, I reached around and pulled Naya’s phone out of my back pocket. I dialed her work but no one answered. The thought crossed my mind to call the police, but I had reservations about calling 911 over a dog. The city was full of crime and car accidents, and after Wes’s crash, the last thing I wanted to do was take a cop away from helping out someone in serious need.
Although, being stared at like a T-bone steak felt pretty serious.
I put the phone in my mouth and pulled Austin’s card out of my pocket. Maybe now was a good time to talk and by then, the dog would be gone.
He immediately answered, which took me off guard.
“This is Cole.”
I mentally wrestled with the thirteen-year-old inside me who wanted to hang up on him.
“Austin?”
After a brief pause, I heard the sound of rustling sheets. “I wondered if you’d call.”
“So, talk. Now’s your chance.”
His voice was kind of soft and growly, like he’d just woken up. I could hear his skin rubbing around, as if he were stroking his face with a tired hand. “I don’t want to do this on the phone. You pick a place and I’ll meet you there.”
I snorted. “I’m a little tied up at the moment.”
My foot suddenly slipped and I lost my balance. A piece of bark tore off the tree and the dog barked ferociously. I pulled my leg up and resumed my squatting position.
“What’s going on?” he asked in an alert voice. “Where are you?”
“I called so we can talk, Austin. I don’t know if we should continue accidentally running into each other before I finally want to kill you. Was it that easy to cut ties with us? We’ve moved on with our lives, but I think I’m entitled to an answer. Losing my brother was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to go through, but you were like family to us. You didn’t think we’d care that you just took off without a word?” I licked my salty lip and waited for an answer.
