He shook his head, then winced. “You pulled a gun on him,” he repeated, and the look he shot her was full of such comical disbelief she had to bite back a smile.
“We live in Georgia, dude, everyone has a gun.”
“I know, but – ”
“Lunch?”
He closed his mouth, his half-smile guilty and sheepish. “Yeah. Lemme take a shower and I’ll be in.”
They were sitting at the table when he entered hesitantly through the screened-in porch, and their conversation ended as if the words coming from their mouths had been sliced off with a knife. They’d been talking about him he guessed, but didn’t much care because he was busy conducting a visual sweep of his new surroundings.
The porch had probably been separate from the house at one point because the frame for the doors was still in place; it looked like an addition. The floor had been laid with a tight-nap carpet that butted up to the kitchen’s open door and the furniture was white wicker stuffed with cushions. Potted ferns and flowers were nestled in beneath the wide bank of windows that could be opened to allow airflow through the screens and into the main part of the house.
Cheryl and Lisa were at a rectangular farm table that floated between two banks of cabinets, light from the window above the sink falling in a halo around them. It was a small space, and not newly renovated, but it was clean, a lamp and calendar and series of decorative jars along the countertop making it apparent this was a lived-in, worked-in kitchen and not a showpiece.
“Feeling better?” Cheryl asked, her smile warm.
He was in the clothes he’d been wearing the day before, barefoot because his shoes either needed to be washed or thrown away, and he was suddenly very aware of the picture he presented. “No one woke me up,” he said, kicking himself as soon as he’d said it.
Lisa rolled her eyes, but Cheryl kept smiling. “I’ve seen my share of concussions and nobody ever thanked me for waking them up every hour to make sure they were still alive.”
“Oh. Thanks.”
Lunch was thin-sliced roast beef and pepper jack cheese on a toasted bun. The curly lettuce and tomato slices were still beaded with moisture from a rinsing. And Cheryl had made her own chips from salted, shaved potatoes. Drew took the first bite and realized he was famished, and that it was going to be a struggle not to cram the whole sandwich into his mouth in one bite.
Cheryl asked him the most carefully constructed, benign questions she could: about boxing, his training regimen, diet, side sports and interests, all while never asking anything probing or awkward about his past or personal life. Halfway through his meal, he’d decided she might be the nicest woman alive, occasional resemblance to poisonous snakes notwithstanding.
Lisa, by contrast, picked at her food and said little, her eyes flitting around the room but never resting on him. She had dark, dark circles under her eyes this afternoon, but he didn’t find her any less attractive for it. If anything, he felt a pang of sympathy for a girl who worked herself into exhaustion in the hopes of keeping her family happy.
As Cheryl was clearing the plates, Lisa caught him scoping out the adjoining room via the glimpse through the doorway. “You want the grand tour?” she asked, which surprised him, but he nodded.
The first floor was carved into rooms that were small but comfortable. Some of the furniture was new, but most of it wasn’t, and some of it looked like stuff you might see in the backgrounds of old oil paintings. The floor was a symphony of groans and pops and creaks under their feet, and it had the unsteady look and feel of a living museum; an unlived-in plantation whose only guests were day trip tourists. In the foyer, floor-length windows flanked by white sheers opened up onto a wide, deep front porch full of rocking chairs. Through the glass, he could see a long tendril of vegetation curling up around one of the great white columns.
“The parlor’s a shrine to my grandparents and their great-great-grandparents.” Lisa indicated the sitting room across from the dining room with a wave as they reached the bottom of the staircase. Drew noted stodgy old uncomfortable-looking chairs and sofas and little oval-topped tables, an upright piano against the back wall. A painting of two women in gargantuan skirts hung above the mantle. “Mom wants to redo it but Dad won’t let her.”
The steps curved slowly up to a wide landing where he could tell a set of French doors led out onto a balcony. A seating area had been arranged with white chairs and a loveseat. The hall branched before them in two halves to the left and right, black-and-white family photos framed and hung in a collage on the stretch of wall ahead of them.
Lisa chatted as they went, telling him that Mark and his son lived with them, and that between all their combined incomes, they’d been able to keep the house from being foreclosed upon. She had complaints, but Drew was left with the impression that the extended family who lived here benefitted from one another’s company, and that whatever rich-person life they might have left behind, they were probably better off for being in this place now.
He knew they reached her room when she fell silent and gave the door they stood in front of a little push. It swung inward and he caught a glimpse of an oatmeal colored rug and a yellow quilt over a wrought iron bed frame. Even out in the hall, a touch of fabric softener and perfume touched his nose.
“My room,” she explained without necessity. “But we don’t need to go in there.”
They ended up on the porch, in white rocking chairs, Hektor stretched out on the floorboards at his mistress’s feet, a breeze rippling past them. Lisa’s brows were knitted together in a way that made him believe she wanted to say something; so he waited, and it came.
“I’m sorry,” she said after a long stretch of silence. Her hands were linked together in her lap and she stared at them while the wind played with the collar of her yellow, sleeveless camp shirt. “It’s not fair that you have to follow me around. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.”
Drew sighed, and, mindful of the massive, tender bruise on the back of it, let his head fall back until it touched the chair. He closed his eyes and winced. “You’ve seriously gotta stop with that.”
“With what?”
“You feel sorry for yourself.”
“What?” She bristled. “No I don’t!”
“You were just doing it.” He tried not to smile. “You wanna act all tough and bitch at me, and then you say ‘poor me, nobody likes me.’”
“I…”
He cracked one eye and saw that she was blushing furiously, her lower lip caught between her teeth as she stared across the lawn.
“Well, at least I’m honest,” she said at last. Her voice had lost some of its defensive conviction. “It’s better than pretending to be well-liked” Her eyes fell to her lap as he watched and she picked at her flaking fingernail polish. She looked embarrassed. Ashamed, maybe.
Drew had been told he was stupid since he was old enough to know what the word meant. And he wasn’t especially smart or clever, so he supposed it wasn’t unfair, but he knew all too well that if you heard something often enough, you quit fighting it. You shook it out like a cape and wore it. Owned it. Used it as an excuse for all the things you did. Lisa Russell had been told she was an awful bitch until she’d adopted the attitude for herself. Maybe, as he sat on this clean white porch with her and thought about all she had, he shouldn’t have felt sorry for her, but he did all the same.
“It’s probably smart,” he said, closing his eye when she glanced in his direction, “to keep people out.”
“Mock me all you want, but it’s true,” she fired back.
“I’m not mocking you.” And he wasn’t, because he’d learned the truth of the statement a long time ago.
She snorted. “Tristan’s convinced I’m still heartsick over him.”
“Are you?” And for some reason, the answer to that question mattered; he wanted to hear it.
When she didn’t respond, he opened his eyes and almost laughed at her comically serious expression that dared him to ask agai
n. “Take that as a ‘no.’”
“I’m smarter than I used to be,” she said, still earnest, “and more careful. Never again am I gonna be so stupid I let a man hurt me just for the fun of it.”
Drew stiffened in his chair. Never again. How many times had he whispered those words to himself? They were his driving force, the thing that pushed him to be faster, stronger, smarter, better. Never again, he’d thought to himself the very last time his father’s drunken hand had crashed against his face.
“What?” She frowned at him.
“Nothing. Just…good policy is all.”
Her mouth pulled to the side like she couldn’t tell if he meant what he said or not. She stared at him a long moment, then straightened, head turning toward the yard full of songbirds again. “No one ever agrees with me on that,” she said in a quiet voice. “’You’ll be lonely,’ ‘you’re missing out,’ ‘who’ll take care of you?’ It makes me sick. I don’t need anything. Getting married, having somebody, that’s all about want and not need.” Her head tilted a fraction and he could see green in the corners of her eyes as she searched for his opinion, like she dared him to disagree with her.
Drew had a feeling he knew the answer she expected, what she wanted to hear, and what she thought she wanted to hear. He shrugged. “You have your family. You need people, everyone needs people, but no, you don’t need a man that way.”
He thought either he wasn’t as dimwitted as he’d always been led to believe, or he had some strange ability to read her better than certain other losers who trolled bars looking to harass their exes, because he expected the small frown that turned the corners of her mouth. “Exactly,” she said, and sounded so unconvinced it would have been funny if it wasn’t sad.
21
“…we got the headlights in today. Found them for a song from a collector in Indiana and had them shipped down.”
Drew nodded, pretending he understood the significance of the find. He knew cars needed headlights, sure, but he wasn’t a mechanic and had little to no technical knowledge of anything like a ’76 Trans Am. Lisa’s cousin Johnny, home from work, didn’t seem to notice, though, and was happily prattling away about the car he and his dad were fixing up for themselves. Drew felt like a lingering intruder in their house and kept waiting for Ray to come into the family room where he was sitting with Johnny and Lisa, scowling, and order him out.
He’d fallen asleep on the front porch earlier, coming awake with a start to find that the rocking chair’s back was digging grooves into his spine and that the sun had made a lot of progress across the sky. Lisa had, surprisingly, been stretched flat on her stomach on the floor, a book cradled in her hands, her dog at her side. She hadn’t been aware that he was watching her and she’d smiled at something she read, tucking a stray lock of hair back that had escaped from her ponytail in an unconscious gesture.
“Now, the taillights,” Johnny continued, and Drew glanced to Lisa.
She met his glance and twitched a smile, rolled her eyes. “My cousin has his sweet moments,” she’d told him earlier, “but he does tend to bug the shit out of people.”
“…well, hold on, lemme grab the catalogue.” Johnny bolted up off the sofa and set out at a jog toward the front of the house, his socked feet sounding like they might punch right through the creaky old floors.
Lisa snorted in amusement when he was gone. “You’re fresh meat,” she explained with a surprisingly friendly and relaxed smile. Being at home did her good; he had seen her worries fade an inch at a time since lunch. The security of family and the solid, timeless house around her seemed to eat away at the hard candy shell she chose to wear when she was out in the world. “I think he always wanted a brother.”
Not that it was any of his business, but Drew lifted his brows in silent question.
“He’s got a sister.” She made a face as she said it. “Lives in LA with her bitch mom.” She’d picked almost all the polish from her nails by this point and put the end of one between her teeth. “What about you? Siblings?”
“No.” Did he, though? Had his mother, whoever she was, wherever she was, gone and had herself more children? He didn’t know, nor did he care to. “I’d ask you if I was missing out, but I don’t guess you know either.”
Her smile looked a little sad. “Johnny’s been like a little brother most of my life.” She shrugged. “I love the idiot, what can I say?”
“You really weren’t kidding, were you?”
“About…?”
“Not being sweet.”
She chuckled. “Whatever else I am, I ain’t a liar.”
Johnny’s running footsteps on the stairs heralded his return and Lisa smoothed her smile into a benign, pleasant expression. Drew couldn’t stop looking at her, even when her cousin came spilling into the room, a huge auto parts catalogue flapping in one hand, talking animatedly. He didn’t want to watch her, but he couldn’t control his eyes. He was fast becoming infatuated and knew it....and likewise couldn't do anything about it.
“Oh, Ray! Sweet! I was just telling them that – ”
Drew didn’t hear the rest of what Johnny said because he was too busy trying to keep his pulse to a normal rhythm while he whipped his head around toward the threshold. Ray stood with his shoulder propped in the doorjamb, arms folded over his chest, and though his nephew was the one talking to him, the man’s unforgiving green eyes were trained on Drew. Who was struck with the horrific knowledge that he was no doubt sitting in Ray’s favorite chair, staring at the guy’s only daughter.
Mark brought a woman to dinner. And because he hadn’t warned Cheryl in advance, she was furious and flustered and worried her house wasn’t clean enough for company. More specifically, female company, because she was convinced women paid much more attention to the cleanliness of one’s house than did men.
Her name was Ellen and she was surprisingly age appropriate. Fortyish, with a voluminous head of white blonde hair that fell nearly to the middle of her back and had been gelled and sprayed to a plastic consistency, she had the bone structure, posture, but extra poundage of a state fair beauty queen who’d packed on some weight since her pageant days. She dressed well for her frame, though, in a stiff, pink cotton dress that pulled her curves tight rather than clung to them, a wide, black belt cinched high on the narrowest part of her waist. Her finger and toenails were the same shade of bubblegum as her dress, as were the faux crystals that dripped from her silver pendant earrings.
Lisa had smiled and bitten her tongue and forced a polite greeting out around a chuckle when she’d been introduced, and wisely, Cheryl had instructed her daughter to sit down at the foot of the table next to Drew and across from Johnny. Lisa figured they were all wondering the same thing – seeing as how Mark had never mentioned a girlfriend, let alone one who merited a family dinner invite – and after the basket of rolls had been passed around, Cheryl finally posed the question.
“Ellen.” Her tone was carefully neutral. “Where did you meet Mark?”
The blonde smiled broadly and set her fork aside so she could lay her hand on Mark’s forearm. “I work at the salon next to Poolside.”
The not-at-all-creatively-named pool hall where Mark gambled away his paycheck. Which meant Mark had been in during the day because as far as Lisa knew, hairdressers didn’t work past nine p.m. She shot a glance to her father’s face and saw his poorly-hidden scowl; he was thinking the same thing.
“Oh.” Cheryl blinked, her silverware hovering mid-slice above her pork roast. “Well…that’s nice.”
“I hafta confess,” Ellen continued, “I watched him through the window for two weeks before I worked up the courage to step in fronta him on the sidewalk and ask him out.”
Two weeks? Ray’s glare asked as he stared a hole through his brother.
Lisa felt a pang of guilt, hoping Ellen didn’t think they were laughing at her, but was having trouble hiding the laughter that threatened as she watched her dad and uncle’s silent conversation of glares and shr
ugs. Clearly, all the “parts runs” Mark had been making had had nothing to do with the shop. In honor of a guest, they were having drinks with dinner, so she reached for her beer to cover an impending smile.
She met Johnny’s gaze across the table. Why didn’t you tell us? she mouthed.
I didn’t know he’d bring her tonight, he mouthed back.
Something touched her arm and she realized it was Drew’s elbow when he whispered in her ear: “She’s talking to you.”
For one moment that she found oddly horrifying, she was too startled by the rush of his breath across her earlobe to grasp what he’d said. She blinked and glanced around the table. “What?”
Ellen was leaning forward so she could see around Drew, her hair not moving in the slightest. “Lisa, honey, your uncle says such nice things about you. You’re working at that big bar off 75, right? Oh, what’s it called?”
She forced a tight smile. It was painful to know that her job as a bartender was an identifier: that to some people, she was a girl in a short skirt and tight top. Even worse was the knowledge that it was her choice to work there, so the stigma was of her own making. “The Double Vision,” she supplied. “Keeping the college students of Acworth drunk for five years now.” She took another swallow of beer to wash down the foul taste the words left in her mouth.
“I’ve never been!” Ellen seemed oblivious. “What nights do you work? We’ll have to come in and see you sometime.”
“Every night but Monday.” Ellen’s plucked and drawn-on eyebrows jumped in mild surprise. “Which, reminds me, I need to get ready to leave.” Sunlight still fell through the windows in happy shafts and the evening birds were twittering in the willows outside; the thought of putting on her slut outfit and leaving for work was so depressing Lisa could hardly bear it.
Made for Breaking (The Russells Book 1) Page 19
