1985: Careless Whisper (Love in the 80s #6)

by Misty Provencher

  Eve’s face goes flat.

  Omg, it’s true. From Eve’s reaction, the open and closing of her mouth without any sound, I’m sure it’s true. My jaw hangs open and my tongue goes dry.

  “Well, that’s special,” Paul chirps.

  “Shut up, Paul,” James growls as Emilio walks into the kitchen, heading for the bathroom. He’s got a pile of impeccably folded clothing stacked in his hands.

  Emilio shoots me a look, half way between hey there and what did I miss? I close my mouth and shake my head that it’s nothing. Despite the fact that James has a raging case of clinging Sheri stuck to the left side of his body, I don’t want Emilio lumbering over to show his support with an awkward kiss. Or launching into another therapy session. I wave him off to the bathroom and he goes with a shrug that says, fine, if you don’t want my help…

  “You’re all fucking idiots if you think I made the tape,” Eve says. She slips her fingers into the front pocket of her jeans and the pocket bulges as she makes a fist. She takes a deep breath that slowly flattens out the bulge. “You know what? I said I was here to clear the air, and I’m going to do that right now.” Her gaze finds me. “It’s true—I was in love with you, Grace. Not at first, but as we got to know each other more and more, I did end up looking at you that way. I mean, I knew you were with James, but you like who you like, you know? That’s why I never did anything about it. But,” Eve swings her glare to Lisa, “to insinuate that I made that tape—you’re off your fucking rocker. One of you left it in my mailbox and that’s why I never got in touch with Grace again. Until just yesterday, I figured it was you, Jones, but then I realized, why would you rat on yourself? So, I was thinking it could be you, James, because maybe you were mad that I was giving Grace too much attention and saw through me somehow. But then, I realized it would make a lot of sense if it was Lisa because she would’ve been around the most to make a tape like that. Or, it could’ve even been Paul, because—”

  “You guys have to quit your witch hunt,” Paul says. From my peripheral, I notice James’s eyebrow quirk up sharply, as if he’s not buying it.

  “Because…” James rolls his hand in front of him, for Paul to continue. Sheri’s smiling off into space like a fucktard, her arms locked blissfully around James’s waist. She’s got no stake in any of this. I almost envy her.

  Emilio finally turns on the shower and the pipes bang inside the walls.

  “Because,” Paul says, glaring first at James and then at Lisa, “I wasn’t ever really part of the almighty Band, was I? I never knew anything, so why would I have been trusted to keep anybody’s secrets when I was just a dumbass tag-a-long anyway?”

  Huh. What the fuck is that all about? Commentary on what James and Lisa did to me? It doesn’t seem like that…

  “The point is,” Eve says, “it doesn’t matter to me who did what anymore. Sure, I’d like to know who and why, but if none of you want to ‘fess up, I want you all to know, it’s okay. I’m fine with it. Living with a secret sucks, but coming clean in front of an audience sucks worse, so whoever did it, if you want to talk, you can always come hang with me in private. Just know,” her gaze circles the room, “you’re already forgiven. Totally—and I mean that. No holds barred. I’ve moved on and I hope whoever did it can move on too.”

  Nobody speaks for what seems like hours, as we all shoot suspicious glances at one another, as if someone’s going to break down, raise their hand, and confess.

  The shower turns off with another bang, even more violent than before, and all I want is for Emilio to get dressed fast and get out here beside me. Where I didn’t want him before, now I could use him standing beside me. I’m not a weak woman anymore—I’m not—but sometimes, the best force field to ward off the cold vibes of an old best friend, an ex and his jealous, desperate girlfriend is a smoking-hot boyfriend who will take my side.

  “That’s fine, if you don’t need answers anymore, Eve,” James says as he reaches into the breast pocket of his flannel shirt. He extracts another tape and throws it on the kitchen counter. “But I found this tape last night too, and I’d like to know what’s going on.”

  “What’s on this one?” Lisa’s fingers stroke the nape of her neck as she speaks to him. I wonder if she still thinks of him and what they did. Or maybe the flame has been rekindled to a roaring fire simply because, yet again, James is taken. She seems to like that best.

  Paul scoops it up, flipping it over in his palm as he inspects the red tape across the top, no writing.

  “It’s a confession,” James says, his tone icy as tips his head to Paul. “Yours, in fact.”

  Paul exhales a tiny laugh. “Mine?”

  James tries to quirk up a smile, as if whatever is on the tape isn’t bothering him, but the effort behind that smirk tells me otherwise.

  “It’s about you and Grace,” James says without looking at me.

  “What about Grace?” Emilio stands in the hallway outside the bathroom door, fully dressed, hair combed down, but he’s still dripping wet.

  Paul has turned a nasty shade of gray. My insides skitter like a squirrel in the path of a honking Mac truck. I know what’s going to be on the tape.

  “Don’t bother playing it,” Lisa says. She plants her fist on her hip, her gaze stapled to James. “This isn’t anything new, is it? You already knew about the kiss.”

  “The kiss?” Emilio asks. “What kiss? And when?”

  Paul lifts his head in Lisa’s direction. “What do you mean he knew?”

  I narrow my eyes on her too. She told James. Of course she did. Why did I ever trust Lisa with anything? Pieces of the disgusting puzzle fall into place. Lisa probably ran off and told James what happened the second after I confided in her, and then, as retaliation, he banged her brains out. James would’ve been crushed, just like I was when I found out about them, even though sex is way worse than a stupid kiss.

  Lisa always did say I was lucky that she hadn’t gotten to James first.

  “It happened when we were kids,” I say and I have to swallow hard. The only secret I’d ever kept from James feels just as fresh and boulder-large in my throat as it had from the moment I realized it had happened.

  “She cheated on you?” Sheri asks James in a poor-baby tone.

  I would love to get my hands on her, not just for asking, but for inserting herself into our past as if she has a right or belongs there. Somehow, this is the girl James has chosen to be his girlfriend. I grind my molars at his crappy choice.

  But he doesn’t answer her. His gaze runs across the counter. “I didn’t know how it started between you two. Now I do.”

  Eve crosses the floor to Paul, taking the tape from him. “It’s got red tape on the top, just like the fake tape did. I don’t know what all is on here, James, but did you consider that this one could be fake too?”

  “I know it’s not.” James’s voice is stringy, distant.

  “Oh yeah?” Lisa says. “Let’s hear it.”

  Fuck. I don’t know how the tape could be any worse than the truth. I deceived James. If the tape embellishes on that, it still won’t take away what I did.

  Eve pushes the tape into the player and hits play. Emilio comes to stand beside me, but we remain motionless and untouching, waiting while the tape winds around and Paul’s voice finally streams through the speakers.

  Phil Collin’s One More Night plays and then—

  James is going to kill me for kissing Grace, Paul sniffles in the background. That’s his girl. He’s gonna kill me—

  Eve says in a whisper, Maybe, maybe not.

  Oh my God—Eve’s on there. She knew too? Before I told Lisa? Or did this happen after?

  There are no clues from either of them. Paul has a hand on his back, staring at the floor and Eve is transfixed on the recorder.

  Paul clued me on what we did the morning after, but he swore up, down, and sideways that he’d never tell another soul—he knew I was drunk and he knew what it would do to me and to his brother. The bee
r goggles made me mistake Paul for James, because I never would have kissed Paul otherwise, but we both knew that in James’s eyes, it wouldn’t matter. And I wouldn’t have blamed James for that kind of reaction. What we had was something miraculous and sacred, and I had gotten shitfaced and dishonored it.

  You guys were drunk, right? Lisa’s voice asks from the speakers.

  It sounds like they were making a mix tape and the confession is like a ghost, floating in the background. It’s hard to get a read on her tone, whether she’s curious or just after the dirty details.

  Paul sniffles. She was. I was just going to give her a ride home, but then…it all just happened. James is going to kill me.

  The tape winds along, the song still playing, but then it cuts off and there is only the scratchy sound of the tape going through the rollers. Nothing more.

  “Is that all true?” James asks from behind me. I turn slowly, terrified to meet his gaze—James always had an intensity that petrified everyone who ever crossed him—but his focus is aimed entirely at Paul. “Is it true or not? Is the tape fake?”

  “No,” Paul says, hanging his head. “I didn’t mean for it to happen.”

  “You were only sixteen then, you little snot-nosed bastard,” James snaps.

  “It’s over, baby, it’s over now.” Sheri has one hand on his chest and the other rubbing circles on his back. James ignores her, his eyes glued on his baby brother. Paul squirms, James’s gaze as intense as ever.

  “What did you want me to do?” Paul throws up his hands. “You were working when I found out that Grace was at the Nichol’s party. I knew you wouldn’t have wanted her there, so I went to get her, like you would have wanted. Grace was bombed when I got there and scared that you’d flip out if you found out she went without you—”

  “Of course I would have! Stacy’s brothers were gang bangers!” James’s glare swings to me. “What the hell were you thinking?”

  Emilio pulls his head back, giving him a weird double chin.

  “You had a gang bang?” he asks me. I’m almost grateful for the accusation because at least I can take my attention off James.

  “No,” I say. “Of course not.”

  “Like you’d even know, if you were wasted drunk,” James growls. He knows me—knew me—so well. I never get drunk anymore and for good reason. Alcohol always made something go weird in my wiring and I would blank out. Not black out—I’d still be functioning, but I wouldn’t remember a damn thing once I got sober.

  I could never ask Gada about it. She would’ve killed me for getting drunk to begin with. The Band all thought it was bullshit, but after it happened a couple of times, James knew I wasn’t faking and forbade me to get drunk anymore. The night of Stacy’s party was one of those nights I chose to remind him that I wasn’t about to take orders from anybody but myself.

  And look what happened.

  “It was nothing,” Paul says, but he doesn’t lift his head and his voice is only a notch above a groveling whisper.

  “Nothing?” James fires back. “You think it was nothing? You think I haven’t spoken to you in seven years because it was nothing?”

  The rasp in James’s voice is so raw, it deposits me right back into the horrible moment when Paul showed up the next day to tell me I kissed him the night before. Stacy’s grad party was in June. If only I could have known that the secret would surface again so quickly and result in Lisa taking a trip to the clinic to erase it all at the end of summer.

  I’m torn again, like I was years ago, over whose fault the trip to the clinic really was, when Paul and I were the ones that started the whole, awful chain of events. James had to have found out sometime in July…when I thought we were still so happy. I can’t justify James fucking Lisa, or how he stayed with me until the end of summer.

  I only kissed Paul, never said a word about it, and planned that I never would. The punishment doesn’t fit the crime.

  “You told me I stole from you,” Paul howls at James. “You never said a damn thing about Grace! You got drunk, broke my fucking nose, and tried to run me over with your goddam car! I figured we weren’t talking because you went to jail for it! And I didn’t even press charges, for Christ’s sake!”

  “I wasn’t talking to you because you stole from me,” James grits. “I don’t know what else you stole from me, but you stopped being my brother the second you went after my girlfriend.”

  Emilio lifts both hands, palms up, at his waist. “All of this happened over a kiss?”

  James lets out a hiss from between his teeth and shakes his head, looking away. He’s not going to answer Emilio. This is The Band’s business and Emilio is an outsider.

  “I didn’t steal anything.” Paul’s voice cracks. “You still had her, you always did. Jones was never in love with anybody but you. It was a one-time thing. It was a mistake and it got fixed! We’re not even together, are we?”

  James pushes away from the counter, plucking off his Sheri-fungus and discarding her to the side. He squares his shoulders as he stalks toward Paul. “I should kick your ass for even saying that.”

  “Saying what?” Paul shrieks.

  “Wait, hold up. Hold up!” Emilio jumps in between them. Although I know that Emilio thinks his Bronx upbringing will be of some use here, what he doesn’t realize is that these are Stryker boys he’s getting between. And everybody from around here knows if you’re in the way of a Stryker, you get the hell out of the way.

  Emilio never saw the punch coming.

  James winds up for Paul, but Emilio turns just in time to catch the hook on his jaw. It would’ve been easier if James had knocked him out, but Emilio is only thrown backward, into Paul. The two stumble off balance and hit the counter near the boom box, making everything in the cupboards rattle and jump.

  “You’re gonna swing on me?” Emilio roars, swiping a finger across his mouth and checking for blood. When he doesn’t see anything, he launches at James without waiting for an answer.

  Sheri squeals, running for cover, as I throw myself between them. Emilio tries to shove me to the side by my shoulder, while James grabs me around the waist and turns us both, curling around me, with his back to Emilio.

  “Let go of her!” Emilio shouts. I think he’s beating James’s back—I can hear the puffs of James breath in my ear and then we’re jerked sideways together.

  “Fuck, no!” Lisa shrieks and even though James still has me bent over beneath him, I watch Lisa’s foot land a solid kick to Emilio’s shin.

  Paul joins in, “Get off him!”

  We’re pushed forward, James grunting in my ear, and then I’m hit with a splatter of cold water.

  Everybody stops. James lets go of me, and as I uncurl from his seashell-type of embrace, I see Eve holding up Gada’s kitchen sprayer, aimed at all of us. The floor is already soaked and the water gushes out of the faucet, at the ready. Paul, Lisa, and Emilio are drenched.

  “We’re supposed to be adults now!” Eve yells at us. “The shit you’re fighting about is from seven years ago! Besides, that tape has a red sticker on it! We already know there was a fake tape with the same sticker, so I don’t know what the hell this is all about!”

  “Oh, baby!” Sheri scurries back into the mix, pushing me aside to get at James. “Are you alright? Did he hurt you?”

  Big surprise—James pushes her away. You don’t ask a Stryker boy if he’s hurt after a fight. His adrenaline’s got to burn off first. A Stryker’s arms could be ripped off and lying beside him and he’d say he’s fine and doesn’t want to be touched.

  “I’m so over this!” Eve shouts as she points James off to the den with a flick of her finger. “You go cool off,” she says, “and Paul? Go for a walk around the backyard. Get out of here for a while.”

  James rolls his shoulders back, but in a surprise move, he steps away from me and drops an arm around Sheri. James Stryker, who always warned me not to touch him when he was angry, is now snuggling up to this girl. I’m not sure what universe I’m in
any longer.

  Sheri lays her head on James’s shoulder and starts chattering in baby talk about how strong he is and how she’s going to take care of anything that hurts. I’m going to gag. He saunters out of the kitchen with Sheri adhered to his left side like a human suture.

  He never would’ve let me get that close.

  Paul goes out the back door, slamming it behind him. To hell with leaving the house, I guess.

  Lisa snaps the dribble of water from her cheek with a flick of her fingers and smoothes down her hair with a heavy palm. How gallant she was to jump in and defend James. I grind my teeth at the thought.

  “Good thinking, Evie,” she says with a high and mighty sniff. She turns away. “I’m going to go call my kids.”

  She disappears down the basement stairs without a glance in my direction. That means she blames me for this whole thing. I could say the same about her.

  “We’re only a few days in and somebody just about died,” Eve says, snaking the sprayer hose back down into the hole in the sink top. “It can’t be this hard to get along. We’ve got to find out if there are more tapes. Especially a green tape to go with this red one, just like the other pair.”

  I gape at her. “You want to find more tapes? I’ll be fine if I never see or hear another one for the rest of my life.”

  “Grace,” Emilio interrupts. “Would you come upstairs with me?” His soggy shirt is still glued to him and he’s got a bruise curling up his jaw line.

  “Oh no, you need something on that,” I say. I go to the freezer and root around until I find a bag of frozen corn kernels. I pull them out and present them to Emilio. He slaps the bag against his jaw and stalks up the stairs to Gada’s bedroom with me following behind.