Quills and Daggers - A Second Chance at Love Romance: The Collective - Season 1, Episode 5

by Chris Genovese

“So, I can’t help but feel like an outsider here,” she said. “What’s the deal with the pumpkin pie?”

  “It’s one of the things we all have in common,” I said. “One of the few things.”

  I would have left it at that but James took it upon himself to share more of our story.

  “We all had the same foster mom for a while,” he started. “Mrs. Rebecca…”

  Kevin fidgeted in his seat and my eyes were drawn to him. No one else was paying attention to him but I saw how his gaze fixed on the table and it looked like he was writing the name, Mrs. Rebecca, over and over again with the tip of his finger. If his finger nail were any longer, he would’ve scratched the name permanently into the tabletop.

  “…and she loved pumpkin pie. We were all right around the same age. I was…thirteen? I think. Nikki must’ve been about fourteen, Kevin maybe fifteen. Something like that. We were all young teenagers anyway. None of us could concentrate much on the small things life had to offer. We were all too busy being melodramatic, typical teenagers.”

  “You were too focused on your hard on,” I joked.

  “Very true,” James agreed.

  Kevin laughed.

  “One Sunday morning, after I’d gotten in trouble at school and Nikki had stayed out too late…” James returned to his story before I interrupted him.

  “I liked to stay out and look at the stars,” I defended myself. “Just wanted to clear that up. Don’t want you to think I was out hooking up with all the guys in the neighborhood or anything. In fact, I’d like to state, for the record, that I was a virgin.”

  “You were?” James asked.

  “Fuck off,” I said.

  He knew I was. It was one of the many things we talked about often. Sex is a constant in teenage conversation. We were no different from the rest.

  “So, as I was saying,” James said. “Mrs. Rebecca wanted to come up with a way to keep us all busy with something other than our raging hormones and our disgruntled attitudes. She started involving us in her weekend pie baking ritual. We’d hang out with her and help roll out the dough and mix in all the ingredients and all that. Pumpkin was her favorite.”

  “Just you three and Mrs. Rebecca,” Jane said. “Sounds sweet.”

  “For the most part it was just us,” I said. “Sometimes there were others passing through but we were there the longest I guess. At one point she had like six foster kids including us.”

  “And her real son, Neal,” James said. “But Neal hated baking pies.”

  I’d nearly forgotten about Neal. It had always seemed more like just the three of us. He seemed to spend most of his time locked in his room playing video games or hanging out with friends.

  “Remember that time,” I said, “when he took four of the pies Mrs. Rebecca had baked? She couldn’t find them. He stole them…”

  “Oh yeah,” James jumped in, slapping the table as he laughed out loud. “And he put one behind each tire of her car? That was so fucked up.”

  “She found them when she went to back up to go to the store,” I said. “Four flattened pies. We were all so pissed. All that time spent on absolutely nothing.”

  “It’s pretty funny now though,” James said. “Neal was a funny guy.”

  “So you left her house and moved on to another family?” Jane asked. “I’m sorry if that’s a stupid question. I don’t really know how the whole foster thing works.”

  “Not stupid at all,” James said.

  “Something like that,” I said. “Moved on.”

  James and I looked at each other for a moment and I swear his eyes were moist. Surely he wasn’t still sad about the way things had turned out. It would be foolish, right? I mean we’d all made it out okay. I’d left earlier than they did and they eventually left too.

  “Have any of you kept in touch with your old foster mom?” Jane asked.

  “Mrs. Rebecca?” I replied.

  “Mrs. R…R…Rebecca,” Kevin repeated, still penning her name in invisible ink.

  “I was just thinking she’d probably love to see you again,” Jane said. “Maybe she’d even make Kevin some pumpkin pie.”

  Kevin’s head jolted upright and he smiled at Jane.

  “No,” I said. “She’s a distant memory. I’ve never gotten in touch with her. She and I parted on not so great terms.”

  “I haven’t either,” James said.

  Kevin didn’t answer.

  “Kev?” James said. “Have you ever tried to get in touch with Mrs. Rebecca?”

  His focus was on his finger and it appeared he’d switched to drawing a heart over and over again.

  “Kev,” James said again.

  “Huh?” Kevin said, snapping back to attention and looking over at his younger brother.

  “You with us, bro?” James asked.

  “Of c…c…course,” he said. “Wha…wha…what’s up?”

  “Never mind,” James said.

  James might have acted as if he was ready to forget it and brush it under the table, but the way he stared over at his brother told me he’d be revisiting that question later on. Something had rubbed him the wrong way and I wondered if he’d noticed Kevin’s odd behavior like I had.

  Chapter 6 – Ivory

  Kevin was keeping something from me and I didn’t like it. Up until this year I’d been sure his life was an open book. Even while I was locked up, his letters always explained everything about his life in great detail. Suddenly, he was spending nights away, at a girlfriend’s house—when he seemed to be quite smitten with this Jane girl—and had played Little Mr. Dazed and Confused when asked about Mrs. Rebecca. I knew my brother well enough to know when he was full of shit. Kevin was hiding something.

  Had he reached out to Mrs. Rebecca? If he had, it wouldn’t be a big deal now that we were adults, but I didn’t like that he might have been keeping it from me. We’d both agreed to stay far away from her, to try and forget that part of our life. The part of our life that almost ended with our separation from each other.

  Outside the diner, I offered to walk Nikki to her apartment while Kevin offered to do the same with Jane. Nikki seemed worried about leaving her friend alone with my brother, which I have to admit bothered me as I truly believed Kevin to be one of the kindest creatures to walk the earth. There had never been any issues between my brother and her as far as I knew, so I thought it odd that she’d be concerned about her friend.

  Kevin and Jane walked in the opposite direction of us with Kevin’s promise to meet me at our apartment as soon as he was finished. Nikki dazzled me with her perceptive abilities all the way home.

  “I’ve moved around a lot,” she said. “Been here and there. Same as you I suppose. There’s so much noise in this city. It’s easy to get lost in it. Sometimes though, when it’s quiet like right now, I look up at all these windows…”

  She pointed up at the building to our right.

  “…and I wonder how many parents inside these apartments know how much their kids need them. Of course they know they need to feed them and give ‘em clothes and stuff, but you know, do these parents know how much it means when they talk to ‘em? God, what I wouldn’t give to talk to my mom one more time.”

  I took her hand in mine and she didn’t pull away. It wasn’t meant to be a romantic gesture. Not at all. I just wanted her to know that I was there and I was listening.

  “How many of these kids are getting hugs and playing board games and having Sunday night spaghetti dinners like you always see on TV? But then I start wondering how many of these apartments are full of kids tucked into bed with blankets pulled up over their heads, fearing the moment when dad might come home with whiskey on his breath or when mom might allow her boyfriend to touch them in inappropriate ways. I think my real dad was a good man, before he lost his job and started drinking. The guys who came after him? I think they were always bad.”

  She didn’t say anything else about her own childhood but I’d heard the stories before. She’d been an unwilling p
articipant in both dark scenarios. I remembered the first time she told me about her time with her real parents and then alone on the road with her mom. I remembered Nikki saying she never could quite decide whether she was better off dealing with all the abuse, or feeling alone when they were all dead and she was taken by the state. Her dad died in a car accident. Her mom overdosed.

  “Do you think you’d be a good dad?” she asked.

  I’d asked myself that same question many times and in the end had always decided I’d be better off without kids. Or I should say, kids would be better off without me. They’d be better off without most of what this world has to offer.

  “I think maybe I’d make an okay uncle, but I don’t think I’m cut out to be a dad.”

  “You’re full of shit,” she said. “The way you take care of Kevin? You’d be a great father. I think I’d be a good mom.”

  “What if I told you I am a dad?” I said.

  She stopped pulled her hand away from mine.

  “Are you serious?” she said. “When?”

  “When I was with Megan,” I said. “Before I was locked up. Doesn’t matter. She took him and I haven’t seen him since. I don’t even know where they are.”

  “James,” she said with her hands at her hips, looking pissed off. “If someone stole your car, you’d fucking find it. If someone robbed your house, you’d fucking find him. So how are you going to stand there and tell me you don’t know where she is?”

  She had a point. The truth was, I could have tracked her down. My buddy Reid would have done it for me if I’d asked him to. He was a private investigator and was a genius at the job. Yet, I’d never asked him for help. Somehow I knew the kid would be better off without me in the picture. He had his mom which is much more than I had growing up. I was only static, something to make the picture fuzzy, to confuse his life more.

  “You don’t want to find him,” Nikki said.

  When I looked down at the sidewalk, she moved in close and wrapped her arms around my waist.

  “Oh, James, you can’t do that,” she said. “Baby, you can’t. We always said…”

  “I know what we always said.”

  I didn’t mean for it to come out so harsh, but I was doing my best not to get choked up, and she wasn’t helping. The only constant in my life had been Kevin. I didn’t know how to be there for anyone else.

  Nikki didn’t pull away from me and as I put my hand to the back of her head, a tear fell from each of my eyes. I blinked hard and one more fell from each. That’s all I’d allow.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to snap at you. He’s gone though. He’s with his mom. She wanted it that way. She didn’t even give me the chance to say goodbye. I was mad at first and then I was sad, but I never considered going after them. I’d be a shit father. He’s better off like this.”

  We walked on in silence for a while. I’d never really paid attention to the apartments around me, but since she’d mentioned it, I couldn’t stop. My son’s name is Brandon, and as I peered up at the sporadically lit up balconies and windows, I wondered how many kids like Brandon were up there with single moms hiding them away from their dads.

  “Can I ask you a question?” I said as we reached the front of her apartment.

  “Sure,” she said.

  “Where did you go? After you left Mrs. Rebecca’s?” I asked.

  “Here and there,” she said.

  “Not the rehearsed answer,” I said. “Not the one you’ve told since then. Tell me the truth.”

  “I danced,” she said.

  For the first time, in a long time, I saw a light in her eyes. Dancing was the only thing, aside from her artwork, that made her smile. God, could she dance. One of my favorite memories from our youth was when I wanted to be a rapper. I thought I could be Oreo the white rapper with a touch of blackness in my blood. In reality I had no blackness in my blood, but I’d slap someone for saying that back then. Anyway, Nikki was going to be one of my fly girls. She had a routine planned out perfectly to go with my first hit, Lick the Cream. Thinking back, most of that dance consisted of cartwheels and shaking her ass, but watching her dance was one of my favorite things to do.

  “You danced,” I said, hoping she’d follow up some more.

  “I danced.”

  It didn’t surprise me that she wasn’t going to give me more information. As kids, she told me everything but it all changed in one night. It’s a night I can never forget.

  Mrs. Rebecca had been taking Nikki to the doctor a lot. Something was going on with her but I didn’t know what it was. This secret was hers and Mrs. Rebecca’s. She wouldn’t tell me anything about it.

  Then, one night while everyone was watching TV and Mrs. Rebecca was in her bedroom with Nikki, I was called into the room with them. Mrs. Rebecca locked the door. It was strange being in the locked room with the two of them. Mrs. Rebecca, I should add, was a beautiful woman. She was an older woman, maybe in her mid-fifties, but she was definitely crush-worthy. Her long brown hair always hung in wild tangles down her back and her face was always made-up to perfection, like she rolled out of bed looking fabulous.

  Nikki, on the other hand, was the blonde Barbie every Ken wishes he could be with. So, my teenage heart was racing when Mrs. Rebecca patted the bed and asked me to sit next to Nikki.

  I was excited. Nikki wasn’t. In fact, she looked terrified.

  “I don’t know if I can,” Nikki said.

  “James will help you,” Mrs. Rebecca replied. “Those things are not working the same way he can.”

  As she said “those things” she pointed at a little black plastic case sitting on top of the dresser.

  “It will hurt,” Nikki said.

  “It might…a little,” Mrs. Rebecca agreed. “But I’m sure James will be gentle, won’t you?”

  I had no idea what they were talking about but I nodded. I’d never be anything but gentle with either of them. No matter what.

  “Now, I can stay here with you two or I can leave the room,” Mrs. Rebecca said, “But I think I can help better if I’m here with you.”

  Nikki’s eyes watered and I’d never, from that point on, be able to forget the look of fear she had on her face. Her bottom lip trembled. I reached out and wrapped my arms around her neck, hugging her tightly, but she didn’t like hugs very much. She pulled away quickly and held a hand up to stop me from trying again.

  “Take off your pants, James,” Mrs. Rebecca said.

  If I thought my heart had been racing before, it was now doing laps around a racecar speedway.

  “My pants?” I asked.

  “Trust me,” she said. “Take them off.”

  So I did. I wore tight white underwear back then and I was embarrassed sitting in them but I was good at following directions and so there I sat with my teenage boner, waiting for further instructions.

  “Your underwear too,” she said.

  “No,” Nikki interrupted. “Don’t. You don’t have to.”

  “It’s okay,” I said.

  “Take your pants off too, Nikki,” Mrs. Rebecca said.

  Nikki shook her head, her tears finally spilling over her eyelids and flowing down her cheeks.

  “Do you want to be normal?” Mrs. Rebecca asked.

  “I do,” Nikki said.

  “Then trust me,” she said.

  Nikki unbuttoned her jeans and was about to pull her pants down when she suddenly shoved Mrs. Rebecca off the bed. The older woman fell and smacked her head on the dresser, stunning her long enough to allow Nikki to snatch the black case off the top of the dresser and run from the bedroom.

  That was the night she left. The next time I saw Nikki, she was an adult.

  Standing there outside Nikki’s apartment, I felt the need to take her hands in mine. I reached out and found her fingertips, squeezing both of her index fingers in my hands. She was shorter than me and looked up into my eyes with a look that I think was hope. She was hoping, wishing for something, something that
I feared we’d never find between us. Even our friendship had been tarnished the night Mrs. Rebecca wanted us to strip naked in front of each other. I’d always wondered why. Had she wanted us to have sex? Had she wanted me to take Nikki’s virginity? Had she wanted her to take mine?

  I shook my head, trying to loosen the memory of Mrs. Rebecca and her fucked up, twisted little world so it could plummet back down to the depths of my mind where it belonged.

  “Nikki,” I said as I held those fingers tightly as if relaxing even the slightest bit might mean losing her. “I’m sorry.”

  She forced a smile.

  “Sorry for what?”

  “For the way things turned out. For…you know…that night.”

  “James,” she said. “That wasn’t your fault. You’re not the reason I left.”

  “But I’m the reason you never came back. Even after. After we were older and we could have given US a try…”

  “Us?”

  She looked down at her feet and smiled.

  “I didn’t know you ever considered there might be an US,” she said.

  “How could I not?” I said. “You’re the only thing I considered for many years. I wrote you a lot when I was locked up. But I threw each letter away. I had no place to send them. You were a ghost.”

  She looked up at me again. Her eyes were damp. It was the same look I’d seen so many times when we were kids. She was sad and I never wanted to be the reason she was sad.

  “Boo,” she said.

  She laughed and I did too. It was cute. Everything inside me told me to kiss her, but I remembered Valerie too, a woman I hadn’t promised anything to or done anything with or even vowed to see again. I owed Valerie nothing and owed Nikki everything, but I still found myself torn between the two. I knew how things would go with Nikki. If I pushed too hard or moved too quickly, she’d leave. She’d run away. She’d break my heart again and leave me alone to sweep up the jagged edges. Jagged edges hurt.

  “I’m glad I came back here,” Nikki said. “Seeing you again is great. But we’re not good for each other, James. You’re not Ivory to me. This guy, this one that you’re pretending to be. This hardened tough guy thing you’ve got going on. That’s not you. You’re James and you’re tender and you’re kind. Ivory is more like the guys I usually date, the guys that never work out. I want my James back.”