“Thanks for the corn,” he says as soon as I close the door at the top of the stairs.
“It looks bad,” I tell him.
He puffs a breath. “I don’t know how you could notice, with your ex wrapped around you like that—”
“Wait a minute,” I say. “You’re trying to blame this on me? He grabbed me, not the other way around!”
Emilio’s eyes narrow. “Yeah, like I was some kind of threat! I didn’t see you struggling to get away from him, either. It looked to me like you were enjoying it. And he’s the one that slugged me, remember?”
My blood simmers. “What are you trying to say?”
“I’m saying, you didn’t fight too hard to get away from him.” Emilio tosses the bag of corn on the bed and peels off his shirt. Any other day, I would’ve enjoyed the view, but now it’s the last thing on my mind.
I stand at the edge of the bed, fuming. “What do you think was going on down there? That I was groping him? He was protecting me!”
“You need protection from me?” Emilio says and my heart sinks a little. Emilio grabs a new shirt from his bag and yanks it down over his head. “Besides, it’s not his job to protect you anymore.”
“It’s not like that, you don’t understand,” I say.
“Oh, I don’t?” He pulls down the edge of his shirt and sits on the edge of the bed, motionless as an enraptured student. “Explain it to me, then.”
“Okay,” I take a deep breath, hoping I can make him understand. “When I agreed to date James, he told me straight up that if I was his girl, it was his job to protect me from there on out.”
“Cocky bastard,” Emilio chuffs.
“We were kids, but it was romantic and chivalrous and he meant every word.” If only James had been so chivalrous and lived up to his code when it came to having sex with Lisa. “From that day forward, James stuck up for me no matter if I was right or wrong, and no matter who came up against me. He was always on my side. Once, when Lisa, James, Paul and I were out walking around at night, we almost got caught by our neighbor, Mrs. Riley. I jumped a hedge down the street, to hide from her headlights, and twisted my ankle.
“When the coast was clear, I couldn’t stand up. My ankle was throbbing so bad, I thought it would bust out of my shoe. James, Lisa, and Paul found me and Lisa started freaking out that we were going to get caught if I didn’t get up and move. But I couldn’t and I was trying not to cry when James touched my foot. Lisa flipped her shit and told me to get my ass up and quit acting like a baby.
“James turned on Lisa and let loose. He knew Lisa was just freaking out, but he wouldn’t let anyone talk to me like that, not even the girl we both considered to be like a sister. He roared in Lisa’s face that she needed to shut the fuck up, that she was a shit friend, and that she better never talk to his girl like that again.
“The Ruiz’s—the ones whose yard we were in—flipped on their lights. Lisa and Paul ran, but James picked me up and took off with me bouncing on his shoulder. He carried me all the way back home and got me back in the house without Gada finding out.”
Emilio leans back on his hands. “So he’s a tough guy for yelling at your girlfriend? Sounds like a pussy to me.”
“Don’t say that. He went to juvie for me,” I whisper. It’s something only James and I have ever known about, until this moment. Admitting it feels like a betrayal, since James told me I could never tell, but we’re adults now and I feel like I have to prove to Emilio what kind of man James has always been. “In tenth grade, Gada had given us all money for doing chores for her, so we went up to the drugstore to spend it. While we were in there, I saw a pair of sunglasses I wanted and I didn’t have enough, so I stuck them in my pocket. Outside, James took them from me. He was going to take them back in, but the store manager had followed us out.
“The manager knew James. He’d gotten in trouble there before, cursing out the pharmacist when the guy wouldn’t fill his mother’s prescription because he suspected she was abusing the meds. Anyway, the manager asked James if he’d stolen the glasses. James said yes, without even blinking, and he started cursing out the manager when I tried to speak up. The manager dragged him back into the store and called the cops. He went to juvie for that.”
“Okay, but it doesn’t change what happened downstairs. You’re not his girl anymore.” Emilio’s face is stony. He’s right, I’m not, but I don’t think he will ever understand—even with better examples—that once James Stryker pledges his loyalty to you, it’s forever.
“You know what? I’m sorry,” I say. This won’t get resolved if one of us doesn’t give in, from the bruise on Emilio’s jaw, I know it won’t be him. “It happened so fast, but you’re right. I’m not his to protect anymore.”
I go to Emilio, like I’m proving a point to a man who isn’t even in the room. I wrap my arms around Emilio and he drops his arms around me, finally satisfied.
“That’s my job now,” Emilio says, his tone turning husky as he presses against me. He turns up my chin to receive his kiss.
It tastes like old, wet eggs.
I wake the next morning to the sound of children.
Lisa’s kids take after her.
They come flooding into the house and from the moment I hear them, I know—they’re home wreckers. First, I hear a whomp whomp whomp across the floor, followed by a crash, and a feminine shriek from one of Lisa’s booger-eaters.
I come downstairs to see a surly little chub of a boy standing with a basketball tucked between his ribs and his meaty elbow. He’s got his mother’s sour glare, even though he looks nothing like her. He makes me think Lisa dove into the Italian pool for those genes.
The kid’s staring at what was my senior picture—with all seven inches of my skyscraper hair—fallen off the wall, the glass shattered out of the frame. Lisa’s holding back a sniffling little girl, who has one too many pigtails and grips a doll in a shiny, hot pink dress, from stepping on the glass. Lisa also balances on her hip a gurgling baby with wide blue eyes, who smiles at me and lets rip a glistening line of drool over his mother’s shoulder at the same time.
“I didn’t do it,” the kid with the basketball tells me as soon as I hit the bottom step. He’s trying to prove it by nailing me with his curdling glare. What a hoot.
I smirk at him. “Of course you did it.”
Actually, I know his sister did it because she’s sobbing her apology in stringy shrieks, but oh, my smirk really fires up her brother. He doubles and then triples the intensity in his down-turned brow until it nearly scrapes the color from his irises. I’m kind of getting a kick out of how feisty this kid is, but I’m not going to let him know it.
“I’m not an idiot,” I tell him. “I heard you dribbling that ball down here.”
“It was my sister,” the kids insists. He cranks his stare up to maximum glare-age as he swipes a finger roughly across his nostrils, as if that little gesture clears away any further debate.
“Whatever.” I shrug. “Your mom should teach you some manners.”
“I got manners,” he says with another hard swipe across his nose. I think that swipe might have been his declaration of war. I turn away so he doesn’t see me grin.
Paul, sprawled on the couch, watches the chaos continue to unfold without lifting a finger.
“Don’t worry, I’ll get the dust pan if you can just keep them back from the glass, Lisa,” I tell her. I kick the couch as I pass it, shooting Paul my most sour glare.
“Thanks,” Lisa grumbles, piling her glare on top of mine.
Paul lifts his hands as if he’s confused. “What?”
“Ma…I didn’t…mean it…ma…ma…momma!” the little girl sobs as I carry the broom and pan in from the kitchen.
Lisa responds by dragging her crying, little, jumper-clad girl further back from the scene of the crime.
“Here, do something useful,” Lisa says dumping the baby in Paul’s lap.
“Whoa!” Paul grunts, sitting up. The toddler looks as fr
eaked out as Paul does. Paul stares back at the baby, as if he’s unable to look away, as he questions Lisa, “What the hell am I supposed to do with this?”
“Just hold him and don’t swear in front of my kids,” Lisa growls. The baby starts to cry, which adds to the little girl’s sobbing, and then, the baby ups the game, escalating to a full-blown howl.
I start sweeping up the mess.
“Thanks,” Lisa says. “I can clean it up.”
“No, just save your baby from Paul,” I tell her.
Paul hasn’t moved a muscle since the kid hit his lap and even though the baby is howling, he hasn’t moved anything either, except his jaw. He lets out an ear-piercing siren of a wail. Lisa hefts the kid off Paul’s lap, the sniveling little girl clinging to her leg now.
“I’ll pay to have that picture re-framed,” Lisa tells me before turning to the little boy. I think she’s going to let him have it, Lisa-style, but instead, in a totally un-Lisa like tone, she says, “Alabama, go on outside with that ball and don’t bounce it in here at all, alright? I think there’s still a basketball hoop out back.”
Alabama?
“Cool!” the boy says. He forgets all about hating on me, or being a suspect to the crime, and follows his mother’s pointer finger through the kitchen to the back door. He’s out with a slam.
“Come on in the kitchen with me, Winter, and let’s wipe off your face,” Lisa says, pulling her daughter from her leg. “You didn’t get cut, did you?”
Winter. Who has Lisa become? Lisa, who was always saying she was going to have a Preston and a Regina, has plerped out an Alabama and a Winter? I wonder what the littlest gurgler is called. He’s staring at me again with his big, blue eyes, as he gnaws his fist. I can’t help but grin at him and when I do, he drops his glistening, porky digits to smile back. And it’s a whole smile, one that busts across his face, stretching joyfully between the little ringlet curls that stick out from behind his ears and…oh my God…I’m falling in love with the kid.
“Ohhh…can I hold him?” Sheri squeals as she comes into the kitchen behind me, arms out toward the kid who’s just stolen my heart. Lisa just hands her spawn off to James’s clingberry of a girlfriend with a sure, thanks.
Dammit, I should’ve asked first.
Sheri bounces the baby in her arms as James comes in. Sheri immediately goes through the paces of bouncing and baby talking, the little traitor giving her his wide smiles now, but she’s not really watching him. Sheri’s eyes are glued on James, as if she’s trying to prove to him that she’s the Baby Whisperer. Oh yuck.
I’m going to yark if this keeps up.
James stops beside me, probably stunned that Lisa let Sheri hold the baby and he smiles at his girlfriend, but it’s not genuine. When James really smiles, the corners of his eyes crinkle. What he’s doing now is more a cross between a grin and a grimace.
And there’s not one trace of crinkling.
“What’s going on down here? Sounded like the roof fell in,” Emilio says as he enters the kitchen. He catches how close James is standing to me and steers himself right between us. For good measure, Emilio plunks down a kiss on the top of my head as he passes, but continues on, maneuvering around Sheri and the baby, toward the coffee pot. Not even jealousy will stand between Emilio and his morning cup.
He gets down a mug, his joy disintegrating as he spots the half pot of cold, leftover coffee.
“A basketball just got away,” I finally answer, and even though my tone is playful, Winter’s bottom lip quivers again. Emilio uh huhs, transfixed on the coffee pot. He’s already moved on.
“Nobody made fresh coffee yet?” he asks. “Mind if I dump it and start one?”
He’s fully expecting that no one will object, the pot poised over the sink, but Lisa waves her arms in the air to stop him from pouring out the old stuff.
“There’s nothing wrong with what’s there. Don’t waste it. You can heat it up in the microwave,” Lisa reasons, crossing the kitchen to rinse the washcloth she used to wipe Winter’s face.
Emilio winces. “When coffee sits, it gets more acidic. And it doesn’t taste nearly as good as a fresh cup.”
From the corner of my eye, I catch James’s eye roll and it kind of pisses me off. I know James is judging Emilio for being high maintenance. It was my knee-jerk reaction too—Emilio’s insistence on fresh brewed, preferably Italian ground coffee…until I tasted it. Fresh is best, but fresh ground, Italian roast is utopian.
The trouble here is the audience. Everybody in this room comes from lower-middle class families that have lived by the unspoken commandment: stretch what you’ve got and don’t waste anything. I think it’s fair to say that in our pasts, we belonged to a socio-economic group that uniformly use our potato peelings to make soup instead of garbage disposal roughage, use a bobby pin to squeeze out the last bit of toothpaste, and glue the flapping soles of our thrift store sneakers so we can get another year’s use out of them.
The difference now is that although Emilio and I were raised up in the poorer ranks too, we’ve both been fortunate enough in our jobs to have gotten not just a taste of the upper crust, but a good slice of the pie. We have the luxury of brewing fresh, expensive coffee every morning.
God, that sounds stupid even as I think it.
“The coffee’s perfectly good,” Lisa continues to argue with Emilio. She takes the pot from him and pulls Gada’s carafe from under the sink. “If you’re too good to drink day-old coffee, at least the rest of us will put it to good use.”
“Oh, alright.” Emilio wince-smiles as he watches her transfer the old coffee into the carafe. I think it physically pains him on some level, not that he’s been reprimanded, but that he thinks everyone else here is okay with burning holes in their stomach linings with battery-acid java. And I think he also knows how much of a pud they think he is.
The tension is barely cut by Sheri, who has ignored the whole coffee debate in lieu of showing off her baby skills to James, as she chirps to Lisa, “What’s your baby’s name?”
“Keanu,” Lisa says.
Fuck. I try to cough-smother the laugh that gushes out of my mouth.
“You got a problem?” Lisa snaps at me. I point to James since he’s splitting a grin too, but, of course, James can do no wrong. Just me. Lisa won’t turn her glare away.
“No, none,” I finally manage in words. “It’s a very creative name.”
With Winter clinging to the tail of her shirt, Lisa goes to Sheri and detangles Baby Keanu from her grasp. Sheri frowns.
“Well,” Lisa says as she heads for the basement stairs, her daughter stumbling to keep hold of her, “when you have some puppies with Mr. Big Time there, you can name your own kids Stick-Up-the-Ass and Ramrod for all I care.”
James turns to me, eyebrows raised, lips clenched, nodding as if the suggestions are viable options. It sends a zip of the old James coursing through me and I laugh. It feels good, but then I notice Emilio, standing there staring at me with his empty coffee cup, a frown smeared across his lips.
His gaze flicks to James, who has moved away from me and toward Sheri. She opens her arms to wrap around him, but he’s not paying attention and opens a cupboard to retrieve a box of cereal. I almost laugh again, but stifle it. Sheri drops her arms and mashes her lips together, turning away.
“I think I’m going to go ask Lisa if I can play with the baby some more,” Sheri says.
James, oblivious to all of it, says, “Okay.” He reaches further up in the cupboard to get a bowl.
“Do you know where the coffee filters are?” Emilio asks and I shrug, but James pulls them from the cupboard with the bowls.
“Who would’ve thought they’d be way over here?” James says as he tosses the bag of them to Emilio.
He catches the filters against his gut.
“Yeah,” Emilio says with an acidic grin. “Who would’ve thought?”
I sit at the table, beside Emilio and across from James, while the coffee perks and James e
ats.
I have this crazy urge to ask James a million questions—just to catch up—but whatever I think to say sounds, in my head, as if I’m showing way too much interest in James’s life. I guess I had my shot at asking already, when Emilio was shopping and before Sheri showed up, but I blew it.
James doesn’t say anything either, but he doesn’t spare Emilio any anxiety by averting his eyes from the one thing that will infuriate Emilio most. James doesn’t look out at the backyard, or into the living room, or anywhere else, really, besides at me. Nope, James chews his shredded wheat and keeps his stare nailed right on me.
Emilio sits with his fist over his mouth, watching James. I can feel the anger radiating off Emilio, it’s nearly burning the hair off the side of my head.
James just keeps chewing, until Emilio says, “I’d appreciate it if you’d quit trying to eye-fuck my girlfriend.”
James sits back, still chewing, but turns his gaze to Emilio. He swallows the first mouthful and takes another spoonful.
The two of them sit, eyes locked, for what seems like an eternity. I’m fascinated with how quickly James has reduced my professional shrink of a boyfriend to a glaring five-year-old.
Emilio finally cracks.
“This is ridiculous,” he steams, shoving away from the table. He goes to the coffee maker and sloshes the scalding hot, fresh coffee into a mug, cursing when it spills over the side, burning his thumb. He grimaces, clenching his jaw.
“Are you okay?” I ask, standing and going to him.
Emilio brushes me off with a brusque, “I’m fine.”
“Okay, fine.”
He dumps the cup of coffee into the sink. “I’m going to the store,” he growls.
“I can’t go with you,” I remind him softly. “I can’t leave the house.”
“I didn’t ask you to come,” he says grimly. I stand there, gaping. He’s out the door in under thirty seconds, shooing Alabama off the driveway basketball court, and backing out Gada’s car.
James drops his spoon in his bowl with a clang. I won’t turn around. It’s too humiliating. Maybe I should be more understanding of Emilio’s viewpoint, but all I really want to do is throw his suitcases out on the curb and change the locks.
1985: Careless Whisper (Love in the 80s #6) Page 10
