by Cassia Leo
Ryker’s voice was muffled from his shirt. “Yeah. At the Watering Hole. Supposedly Dane picked a fight, and Bobby Ray finished it.”
“That’s not exactly how it went,” Dane said.
Ryker sat up. His black hair stuck up in every direction. He ended up positioned the same way as Dane, arms on his knees, and Stella was struck by how similar they looked.
“I know that,” Ryker said. “Any asshole knows what Bobby Ray’s like. But he’s got cause. You were a dickhead.” He shoved at Dane again, but good-naturedly this time.
“Not like you haven’t been dipping your stick all over Holly,” Dane said.
“But one at a time,” Ryker said. “You can’t go around like this with hometown girls.”
“I’m not,” Dane said. “On Tuesday I was dating Darlene.” He reached for Stella. “And today it’s Stella.”
Stella clasped both of her hands around his arm. “If you two are done roughing each other up, we should probably look at Dane’s cut.” She stood and brought Dane with her, leading him into the kitchen.
The place was a wreck, boxes and beer bottles and cheap plastic dishes everywhere. “If you boys had been raised in a barn, you’d be better off,” she said.
Dane dropped into a rickety metal chair by a beat-up Formica table. Ryker cleared a space, and Stella eased Dane’s elbow onto it, carefully removing the gauze.
The butterfly bandages had peeled off at the edges. Most of the cut was fine still, but the bottom, the deepest part, oozed blood. “I don’t suppose you guys have any sort of Band-Aids in this bachelor pad,” she said.
Ryker put his hand on his heart. “I’m offended by the suggestion.” He trundled off down the hallway.
Dane pulled Stella close to him. “I need to kiss you.”
Finally. All that time in the car, on the sofa, and nothing. His lips were warm, a little swollen. He kept it gentle, simple.
“Break it up,” Ryker said. “The man is injured.”
Stella shook her head. They were joking around now. You’d never know that five minutes earlier he’d stormed into the room and struck his brother with a killer blow.
“You boys always run hot and cold like this?”
Dane grinned. “Drove our mom crazy.”
Ryker handed her a rusting metal box of kiddie bandages with Smurfs on them.
“What is this?” She forced open the top, extracting one.
“Dated a chick with a kid for a while,” Ryker shrugged.
Stella peeled the backing away. “This will make him look tougher.”
Ryker laughed, turning to open the fridge. “Beer?”
“All around,” Dane said.
“Beer after liquor, never been sicker,” Stella said, wrapping the bloody gauze back around his arm. They’d have to buy a fresh roll in the morning.
“Beer BEFORE liquor,” Ryker said. “Get it straight.”
“I’m quite sure it’s beer after liquor,” Dane said.
Ryker popped the tops of the bottles. “I guess we’ll find out by who pukes.”
He passed the beer around as Stella used one last Smurf Band-Aid to lock down the gauze. “You’ll want to wear a shirt with sleeves, I think,” she said. “Unless you aim to show off your Smurfette.”
“I’ve been meaning to get a tattoo of her,” Dane said. “She’s hot.”
“Lots of men to service,” Ryker said. “No wonder she doesn’t have a job.”
They clinked their beers together.
“Seriously,” Dane said. “This will blow over.”
Ryker shook his head. “It ought to, but I’m not sure. Apparently Bobby Ray’s still got a thing for Stella here.”
Stella stared into her beer. “Done a long time ago.”
“Still, on top of throwing over his sister, you’ve got a perfect reason for him to hate Dane.” Ryker stared up at the ceiling. “Gonna be trouble.”
His statement was punctuated with the crash of smashing glass outside.
“What the hell?” Dane jumped up, running for the door.
“Dane, wait,” Stella said. “Let them pass.”
Ryker followed them into the living room, peering out the window as tires squealed away. “They got your car, Stell.”
Stella flung open the door and ran outside. The car seemed fine from the front, but as she rounded the back bumper, the fractured window glittered in the light from the streetlamp.
She banged her hand on the trunk, causing chunks of shatterproof glass to sprinkle down into the backseat. “Sons of bitches,” she said. “Grandma’s poor Mustang.”
“I’m going after those assholes,” Dane said. “This is enough.”
Ryker grabbed his shoulder. “This part is Stella’s battle. She’s the hometown girl.”
“Sure,” Stella said. “They’ll file a report, note that there were no witnesses, and move on.” She picked up a bit of glass and flung it into the street.
Stella didn’t think she could take one more minute of Holly. All the incidents, the gossip, the incestuous combinations of men and women screwing around or getting married or divorced, pair after pair. Too much. She wanted somewhere else, where the outsiders and the long-timers blended, where nobody knew what everybody had for breakfast, and with whom.
She turned to Dane. “Let’s leave this town.” She kicked the car, sending more glass cascading from the window. “I’ve got money to do it. Been saving for years. Let’s just get the hell out. You and me.”
Ryker whistled. “Sounds like quite a proposition, bro. You find a woman with money, I say GO.”
But Dane wouldn’t look at her. He stared at the moon, obscured behind a cloud, strange and eerie. Stella shivered. She’d probably just embarrassed herself completely.
***
13: Dane Calms Stella
A werewolf moon, his mother used to call it.
Dane kicked at the gravel. His arm was screaming. Stella watched him, and he could feel pricks of anxiety sparking from her. He’d known this girl, what, three days? Now she wanted him to leave town with her.
“Never mind,” she said. She yanked on the car door and discovered it was locked. She reached for her purse and realized it wasn’t there.
Dane tried to come to her, but she walked away in mincing pained steps of bare feet on gravel.
“Stella,” he said, but she ignored him, moving fast once she hit the porch.
He sped up himself. He pulled the door closed behind him and locked it to keep Ryker out, at least for a moment.
She shoved her pink shoes on, trying to snatch up her purse in the same movement. Instead, the bag tipped over, spilling lipsticks and little pouches and pens and paper all over the floor.
“Damn it,” she said, dropping to her knees, and now he could see she was crying.
He knelt beside her, putting his hands over hers, stilling them, trying to make her stop. “Wait. Please.”
She did, her hair hanging down to hide her face. “I hate crying,” she said. “Stupidest thing to do, ever.”
He wrapped his arms around her shoulders and pulled her to the sofa again. “Let’s think this through.”
She flung his arms away. “I don’t want to think this through. It’s fine. I can head out of town without you. Let you fix the mess you’re in on your own. If nobody kills you.”
“Nobody’s going to kill me.”
“This town is killing me,” she said.
She bent over, snatching up the contents of her purse like Darlene had at her desk. Two women picking up in his wake. He was like a tornado, tearing through everything.
He flung his head back on the sofa, the coolness of the sheet a relief. His arm throbbed, and his stomach grumbled. Fucked up. All of it.
Stella stood up and shoved her purse on her shoulder. He reached for her again. She couldn’t walk away. He wouldn’t let her just yet.
“Let’s drive somewhere,” he said. “Work this out.”
“There’s apparently nothing to work out.” Sh
e swiped her hand under her nose. “It was silly and impulsive. Not a big deal.”
“It is.”
She tried to move forward, but he held her at the waist, his arm screaming. He flinched, and she held still. “Your arm?”
“Please, sit.”
She plunked back down. “Don’t make it bleed again.”
He gathered her against him, smelling the perfume lingering in her hair from the shop. “Which is your favorite?” he asked.
“My favorite what?”
“Perfume.”
“We can’t talk about this now.”
“We can. Let’s do,” he said. “It’ll help.”
She relaxed a little and settled against him. “It’s silly.”
“Which one?”
“An old one. The cliché.”
“Charlie?”
She sat up and smacked his chest. “Good God, no.” She leaned back against him. “Chanel No. 5.”
“A classic.”
“Chanel found the number five to be intoxicating. She’d been surrounded by it since she was a girl in a convent.”
She was calming down. He had to keep her talking. “So it took five chances to get it right?”
“I think she got all five at once, but legend says that she would have had none other than the fifth one.”
“Good thing it didn’t suck.”
Stella shook her head.
“Is this what you want to do? Sell perfume?” He stroked her lightly on the arm.
“Beatrice is great. But it’s not a life.” She drew small circles on his thigh. “I can hardly stand it when people come in smelling cheap and buying more of it.”
He nodded. His mother had never worn any scents. She’d always smelled of Pledge and Palmolive. Or, if she’d been cooking, like sweet onions and bacon, the only two things she used for flavor.
“I should go,” Stella said. “Ryker will want his place back.”
“Ryker can wait.”
She sat up. “No, I’ve made a decision. I’ll get Joe to put in a new windshield, and then I’m taking off. Out of here. Someplace big enough to swallow me up, let me disappear into the crowd.”
“That’s no picnic either.” Dane knew that drill. No money for college, working menial jobs. Never getting anywhere. Spinning wheels. “At least here you have family.”
Stella snorted. “Right. Dish-mop dad. Whoremonger mother turned Jesus freak. MIA sister. The only person who ever cared for me is going to die any day.” Her voice broke.
Dane pulled her back down. “I understand. My dad took off when I was three. Didn’t bother me none, more time with mom. But Ryker was eight. He took it real hard.”
“Where is your mom now?”
“Died. A month ago. That’s why I moved up here. Didn’t have nobody in Texas worth staying around for.”
“Ever hear from your dad?”
“Sometimes, on Father’s Day. He calls up, jokes about where’s his gift. Like he remembered our birthdays or Christmas. Don’t think he ever sent my mom a dime.”
“I hate men like that. So many of them.”
“He married some other gal. She had a boy about our age. I always imagined him playing ball with him instead of us. Wasn’t sure why he picked some strange kid over his own.”
“So it did bother you some.”
Dane squeezed her tighter. “Okay, maybe some.”
“Grandma taught me all about making jewelry. Gems. Beads. Design. We made a whole world out of the character of glass and wood and crystal.”
He fingered her necklace, brushing her collarbone. “This one of yours?”
“Yes. Everything I wear always is.”
“You know, you can’t leave right now, not with your grandmother like she is.” He hated to say it, to bring her back down.
She dropped her chin to her chest. “Yes, I will wait. Of course.”
He had her back. He’d work hard to fix his mistake, his hesitation that upset her too much. They needed time, and taking off right now would be a disaster. He’d buy that time, see if they had something that might work, and hopefully the town would let them be.
***
14: Grandma Falters
“LOOK what the cat drug in,” Stella’s mother yelled. She was vacuuming the rug around Grandma Angie’s hospital bed.
Stella dropped her bag on a chair. “You have to do that now? It’s so loud.”
“She can’t hear anything.”
“You don’t know that.” Stella clasped her grandmother’s limp, dry hand. She hadn’t been awake at all since they’d made the bracelet. Might not again.
Vivian killed the motor on the fat canister. “Hate this old thing. She never would buy a new one.”
“How is she?”
“Slow decline. Opens her eyes now and then, but I’m not sure anything registers.” She rolled up the cord. “You shacking up with that boy now? You didn’t come home, your dad said.”
“I’m twenty-two.”
“Going on sixteen. If you don’t got the sense by now to stay away from trouble, I can’t get it in your head at this late date.”
Stella smoothed the wrinkled skin over her grandmother’s brow. “I’m here, Grandma.” The triple-strand bracelet slid up and down her arm.
Her mother snorted. “A bracelet already?”
Stella ignored her. Grandma’s face seemed weighted down, heavy, like it was already reaching for her spot in the ground. Stella hoped she would awaken one more time. Just for a bit. She’d been so good on the beads day. Like her old self.
Vivian loomed over the head of the bed like a vulture. “Nurse’ll be back by in an hour or so to check on her. There’s signs, she said, that tell you about when it’ll be.” Vivian walked to the end of the bed and threw back the blanket. Grandma Angie’s ankles and feet were purple, almost black.
Stella held back her gasp. “That’s a sign?”
Vivian nodded, settling the blanket back into place. “Next she’ll start breathing irregularly, so she said. Her blood pressure has already started to drop.”
“But she was just awake and sitting up!”
“I told you it might be her last good day. They turned the morphine back up yesterday.”
“Why are they keeping her asleep?”
“She’s in pain, Stella. It hurts.”
Lots of things hurt. She could use a little morphine herself right now, straight to the chest.
“We need to start thinking about closing up this house. I’ll need your help cleaning things out, figuring out what you want to keep and what we should sell off.” Vivian turned to a china cabinet, assessing the dishes and serving pieces.
“Not now,” Stella said. “I can’t now. Let her house stay in one piece until she’s not in it.”
“It’s not going to make her any difference.”
“It makes ME a difference.”
Vivian’s hand on the cabinet door handle stilled. “All right. We’ll wait.”
Stella had never felt this level of pain before without being sick. How did people manage it, the heaviness inside, the feeling that you were going to throw up at any minute? She watched her mother leave the room and suddenly wondered what sort of black heart she must have. Grandma Angie was her mother! But then, of course, Stella wasn’t sure what she’d feel when Vivian’s time came. Love seemed to have skipped a generation.
Stella fingered the drip going into Grandma’s fragile hand. She had hidden her pain so they could jewel together one more time. “Thank you,” Stella whispered. Her heart broke all over again that Dane’s bracelet would be the last they’d do together. They should have fixed the one Stella had broken on the water tower. Then her last piece would be something that held no meaning with someone who might be temporary. She could never smash Dane’s bracelet like the others.
It had to work out with him, it just had to. He’d been so good last night, so careful after the mess by the car. Something long-lasting with him seemed possible, like no one else ever had.
They’d slept wound together on his sofa. If Ryker returned, they didn’t hear him, nor had they seen him this morning. Dane dropped her off with the promise to take the car to Joe’s for a new windshield. He would meet her at the perfume shop in a couple of hours to get his motorcycle out.
She imagined what it would have been like if they had just gone off last night. Driven away without a care, heading to God-knows-where, laughing.
But there were things in the way, she realized. His bike in the perfume store. Grandma’s car to fix. And, of course, Grandma herself. There’d be a funeral soon. Her breath caught in her chest, so tight it couldn’t come out. She wouldn’t think about it yet. Not yet. Not till she had to.
But definitely when all this was over, when Grandma was truly gone, she’d leave. With or without Dane.
*
Stella entered Good Scents a few hours later, still heavyhearted.
The curtains zipped open with the flourish of a theater production. Beatrice stepped through, arms high. “And presenting…” She swirled her hands through the air. “Mr. Right!”
Dane passed through the entrance with a sheepish grin, a flannel shirt loose over a black T-shirt. Hiding the Smurfs, no doubt, as it was too warm for long sleeves. “Not sure ’bout that.”
“Okay, we’ll go with Mr. Right Now.” Beatrice repeated her gestures. “Applause!”
Stella clapped slowly. “Not sure I’m cheering-up material.”
Dane kissed her with simple familiarity, as if they’d greeted each other this way a thousand times. “What’s wrong, Stell?”
He didn’t wait for an answer but pressed her close to him. She lifted an arm to his neck, the slide-lock bracelet sliding down from her wrist. “Grandma. She’s not going to wake up again, they said.”
“Awww, Stell.” Dane rubbed the back of her neck.
“It’s really going to happen. She’s going to leave me.” His shoulder smelled of detergent and dust.
Beatrice came up from behind and entered the hug. “Wasn’t any Grandma any better than Angie.” She patted Stella’s back. “I was pleased to have known her.”
