by Mj Fields
“I’m not starting anything. I told you before that this doesn’t feel right, and it doesn’t. So, I’m done. It’s a freeing feeling actually. Feel free to stop playing the game and follow suit.”
“I’ve had a long day, Queenie; you done?”
Turning around, I grab my keys from the entry table where I dropped them on the way in. “Yeah, actually I am.” I turn and start to open the door when he slams his palms against it, one on each side of me, closing the door and caging me in.
“That money’s gonna need to pay the next two weeks wages to Tiggs and Tyler.”
“I don’t need them anymore than I need you.”
“They’re depending on it. And let’s not forget when I agreed to take this on, you were part of the package.”
“I faked it with him; don’t think I can’t pull it off with you too.”
“Told you no mention of that fuck.”
I duck under his arms. “You forfeited that right today. Now get out of my way.”
“I need that money to help out a friend. And when I say friend, I mean friend.”
“I’m aware of who this friend is. Do me a favor and stop the share of your location with me. How stupid do you think I am?”
“Not hiding a fucking thing, Queenie, or I would have—”
I bite back every rotten thing going on in my head and glare at him.
“I wouldn’t ask for the money, if it wasn’t important.”
“Any chance you want to tell me why?”
He shakes his head.
I unzip my crossbody clutch, pull out the four grand, and throw it at him. “You know I tried to believe her story for you, Justice, regardless of the fact she was sucking you off in my bedroom, proving the rumor was, in fact, the truth. It was literally happening right in front of me. I was so desperate to keep you close that I lied to myself and let the bitch work at my house because you were so damn convincing. And you know what, Justice? It just made me realize that all those things you’ve said to me have not been because I hurt you; it was in fact that you’re no longer him, and you want to ruin me. But again, the reality is staring me right in the face. She’s got her fucking claws in a seventeen-year-old man-child who was more a man at thirteen than he is now. So, instead of trying to start a fight with you, knowing it will end with your hands on me, I romanticized the hell out of that to cope. I’m done doing that. I’m going to play the part for a year; you do whatever you want. Game over, JT. You won, you hurt me. Just try not to rub her in my face to deepen that wound, because I am so sick of having to be someone I’m not for self-preservation or in a desperate attempt for someone to see me, the real me.”
One step, and his hands are on my face. “She needs help. We’re giving it to her. I’m not fucking her or anyone else. And Jesus, would you listen to yourself? Not once have you asked what happened. Are you really that fucking—” He snaps his mouth shut and shakes his head. “Turn off the waterworks, Queenie.”
I didn’t even realize I was crying.
I pull his hands off my face and step back. “And don’t you touch me again unless it’s to play this sick fucking game we’re caught up in like you do at school.”
The night starts much the same as always—a packed house, a fake smile exchanged between fake friends, all wrapped in couture and holding champagne in one hand while hiding a figurative knife behind their back in the other, ready to stab you for power or popularity.
When the door opens, and I see Truth, Tris, and Brisa walk in with some sort of rolled fabric under one arm and a backpack thrown over their opposite shoulders, I am taken aback. Then when I see Tris glare in Justice’s direction, Brisa winks at me, and Truth waves them all to follow behind her, up my stairs, taking a left, I look at Tiggs.
He shakes his head. “Having a slumber party?”
It hits me then that the fabric under their arms are sleeping bags, which I’ve never seen in their natural, or unnatural, I suppose, habitat, meaning off Pinterest, my virtual home away from home.
“Apparently.”
“Any of them have older sisters?” He winks.
“No, but Max does.”
“Well, shit, I’m cozying up with the wrong Seashore snob, huh?”
I elbow him. “Your favorite Seashore snob.”
“Can’t deny that.” He chuckles.
“Oh, I forgot; both are married and both have kids.”
“How close to the seven-year itch are they?”
“I’m not sure, but since they both just had babies recently, maybe—”
He lifts both hands in the air and begins backing away. “Say no more. I’m out.”
Laughing, I turn to go grab a drink of water and see Justice standing two steps away. I turn back and begin to walk in the other direction.
He grabs my elbow, stopping me. “Got a minute?”
“No,” I say, pulling my elbow away.
“Tough shit,” he says, plastering his hand across my lower back and ushering me through the lounge where I avoid eye contact with Quinn, smiling at everyone else, as we near the hall that leads to the butler pantry.
Once free from being overheard or any chance a picture could be taken, I push his hand off my back.
“Three steps to that door, Queenie; make them quick.”
“I don’t have the energy to deal with you right now.”
“Fine.” He shoves his hands in his pockets. “Then when?”
I cross my arms and shrug. “I don’t know. Maybe when school starts again.”
“It ends in two weeks,” he says, trying not to show he’s pissed, but he is. “I’m asking you to trust me.”
“And after last week, I thought we’d agreed not to hide things pertaining to exes.”
“She’s not my fucking ex, Queenie.”
“Right, she’s just some rando who likes to suck your dick in my bedroom. Maybe I’ll invite Harrison to your place and—”
He grabs me, spins me, and pushes me toward the door.
“I don’t want to be alone with you!”
He unlocks the door, pushes it open, and then picks me up and walks us inside before kicking the door shut behind us.
“Her place got condemned. Her landlord had some work done, and the contractor contacted the health department or some shit. She was given hours, Queenie, just hours, to get out. She’s got five kids, only one hers, and one is her brother who she’s raising alone.”
“I’m sure she gets a state check.”
“Jesus, do you hear yourself? Who the fuck are you to stand there and act as if you have any idea what her life is like? You live in a mansion, have parties weekly, and pull in over five grand a week now that I’ve changed shit with your liquor order. You wear dresses and shit even my mother would be embarrassed to wear because of the price tag.
“I have no idea what she gets from the state. I just know she has three kids she’s giving better than they got at home and doing it while going to college to finish her nursing degree, working at the hospital full-time, and here on Friday nights. If that doesn’t scream I need fucking help, then I don’t know what does.”
“I don’t remember asking for a full report, but—”
When his lips come down hard on mine, I use every ounce of strength I have to push him away.
“You denying me?” he asks.
“I am.”
“Got it,” he seethes, shock mixing with disdain in his tone.
“Good,” I say as I walk to the door, open it, and leave the room without a backward glance.
Hate
Justice
Her hating on me felt a fuck of a lot better than this shit, I think as I watch her smiling the kind of smile that never makes it to her eyes as she interacts with the guests here for Tobias’s graduation party. A party he didn’t want but let happen because Truth was hell-bent on doing it for him.
“You still in the doghouse?” Dad asks, resting his elbows on the deck railing.
“If she wants to be an entitle
d snob, then that’s on her.” I shrug.
He gives me a sideways glance and says, “You knew how she felt about her, so it’s not her fault alone.”
“Yeah, Dad, thanks for the support,” I mumble as I turn to walk away.
“Pretty sure I’ve been supportive, kid. Quinn is living in our old house, paying the same rent she was at that place she was calling home.”
I turn back and nod. “Pretty sure I’m aware of that, and also pretty sure I told you she could afford more.”
He stands up, pushes his sunglasses up onto his head, and narrows his eyes. “Gonna tell you I think your heart’s in the right place, and that your mom and I are proud of you for stepping up like a man should. Also gonna tell you that I know you’re fighting feels for that one down there and making decisions that you know are bound to push her away. I get that you’re afraid of them, and I get that this is usually a you and your mom talk, but you’ve got me right now, so you’ll deal.
“I picked up those old albums and flipped through them, put two and two together, and asked my wife if what I was piecing together was fact. She asked me to let you handle it, so I did.”
I feel my face heat up. “Then keep doing that, Dad, ’cause I got this.”
“You got a lot of things going on, and you keep piling them on your Styrofoam plate like a fat kid at a barbeque, and that plate’s gonna snap in half. I know the man I’m raising, so I’m still just standing back to see how this all plays out.”
“You nailed it with the Styrofoam analogy, Dad. If I was planning on keeping any of it, it would be on a silver platter.”
Jaw ticking, eyes narrowing more, he nods.
“You can be pissed. Fuck, I’m living in a perpetual state of it. But you also taught me one thing you’re dismissing all too easily—loyalty. Nothing goes on that platter until I know it’s giving me back what I need in here.” I hit my chest.
He turns back and resumes his position. “You see what’s going on down there?”
I look down over the crowd.
“You may think you’re protecting her by insisting on guards at her gate every night, but ask yourself this: are you really being protective or possessive?”
“Trust me, Dad; I know the difference, and I am avoiding the latter.”
“Good, because the minute you cross that line, you won’t be dealing with teenage boys in tights; you’ll be dealing with me.”
I keep my jaw tight so shit doesn’t fly out of it that I can’t take back.
“We get back from Italy, you better be woke to what you’re missing.”
“The hell is that supposed to mean?”
“A guard outside a door doesn’t take care of what’s inside.” He nods to the crowd. “See that Steel wall of women surrounding her? Crew or not, they’ll manage the matters of the heart when sometimes we can’t see past our armor.” He turns back and looks at me. “I’m not saying make a commitment at seventeen, Justice. I know your rules, and trust me when I say we all put them in place for reasons. I’m guessing something hurt enough to cause you to put it there, but don’t you dare get lost inside it, you feel me?”
I nod as I look down at the crowd, all the same faces I’ve seen every weekend for the past several weeks at Queenie’s place, all oblivious to the bullshit smoke screen we have in place. But who am I to judge? I laugh to myself. I didn’t even see what was going on with the girls.
When she looks up and sees me looking, she looks away.
I pull out my phone and scroll through my old messages to send her a quick text and realize how fucking cold I am with my one-word responses. And worse? She hasn’t sent me shit since all that went down a few weeks ago.
I hold up my phone and take a picture of her and all the girls, message it to her, and then type out, “You should come with us to Italy.” Before hitting send, though, I watch as she looks at her phone then holds hers up.
A second later, I get a picture of me standing here, alone.
I delete the text that I typed out and take a picture of the empty chaise lounge below instead. I send it to her and type out, “Meet me in the middle?”
She looks up and lifts a shoulder. Then she looks back at Brisa, who must have said something that has them all rolling, and she laughs, too.
I make my way down to the chaise and sit, trying to figure out what the hell I even want to say to her and fight like hell to stay here instead of saying fuck it.
It only takes fifteen excruciating minutes for her to make her way over to me, and she does it slowly, too.
I stand as she gets closer, noticing all eyes on her and me, like we’re part of a fucking circus act or some shit, and whatever it is I have to say, which I’m not even sure of what the hell that is, sure as hell isn’t going to be in front of my entire family and the fifty or so others hanging out right now.
I hold out my hand, and she takes it, even though her eyes say she’d rather do anything but. Then I walk her into my room, where she immediately drops my hand and crosses her arms.
While trying to figure out what I’m going to say, she says, “Do me and you both a solid and let this little sneak in my room for a quickie so everyone thinks things are good come without the narrative. My head hurts, and I don’t have the energy.” She sits on my bed, takes her sandals off, and digs her feet into the area rug beside it.
“Feet hurt, too?”
She rolls her eyes and doesn’t look at me. “No need for small talk, either. I got enough of that riding to and from school with you.”
“I’m trying here, Queenie,” I sigh.
“Trying what?” She scowls, and I shrug. “If you think I’m going to suck your—”
“Jesus, Gabrielle.” I kick the door shut. “Walls with ears.”
“Yeah, well, you should have kept your tasteless fucked-iversary gifts from showing up in my butler’s pantry when I stopped giving into your sick games after realizing they were just that. I’m pretty sure, two weeks ago, it was a ball gag.”
“Will you quiet the hell down? And don’t act like you didn’t get off on all of it. I saw physical evidence to the contrary.”
“I’m done here.” She bends down to grab her shoes.
“This isn’t what I wanted to talk about, so just chill and let me wrap my fucking head around it. I’ll be right back.”
“Are you kidding me right now?” she whisper-hisses as I walk out of my bedroom.
Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, I think as I run up the stairs and into Dad and Mom’s office where I grab the photo album that Mom had those damn pictures in. Then I run back down, avoiding the swarm of people in the house and straight back to my room.
I take a deep breath as I open the door to find her looking up quickly from her lap with an amused smile. I look down and see my blanket on it.
“I don’t know who it is who keeps the nearly two-hundred-year-old burn book you’re about to get, but please make sure this”—she holds up my blanket— “gets added of possible ways to blackmail you in the future.”
“No one fucks with my blanket, Queenie. Put it back under the pillow where you found it.”
“Well, you may want to hide it better than this.”
I sit on the floor. “Can I trust you?”
“I think we both know the answer to that question,” she says, pulling her legs up and away from where they are, tucking them beside her so they’re nowhere near me.
Pisses me off, but having her storm out of here days before I’m gone for a couple weeks is probably not the best time to school her.
“Haven’t gone back on my word; just withheld information, like you did when you opened your doors to him—”
“I didn’t—”
“Don’t get all defensive. You didn’t tell me because you didn’t want a fight. Same reason I didn’t tell you. But I also didn’t turn off my location. Should be obvious that I wasn’t hiding shit. I just didn’t want to piss you off.”
“Doesn’t piss me off so much as it makes me sick t
hat you of all people are getting sucked into her web, knowing—”
“Tyler called me, telling me she had some problems and asked for some help. My family’s house sits empty an hour away, because they don’t want to get rid of it, because it’s where they began, so—”
“She’s living in your house?” Her voice cracks.
“Again, can I trust you?”
“Clearly, you can, but I’ll never trust you again. And your sister and cousins, who have surrounded me, made me feel like I actually—”
“My sister is as honest as her name, Queenie. My cousins have been giving me the cold shoulder, so don’t you dare think they haven’t got your back. And, more importantly, as my father pointed out as we were looking down at all of you, they’ve surrounded you like a wall of Steel, protecting you against me. They see that I’m having a really hard time fighting—the demon inside of me—to figure out if I want to protect it or possess it. In case you don’t know what I’m talking about, that would be your fucking heart. Now, I’m asking you one more time: can I trust you?”
“And I’m telling you it’s obvious you can, but I have no idea how to give you back the same.”
“Swear on the sun?”
Her lower lip quivers as she tilts her head to the side.
“Say it, and I won’t question it.”
“Swear on the sun,” she whispers.
“Secret one: Mom’s parents died when she was five. She spent thirteen years in foster care and was homeless when she met my dad. So, when I asked them to help, Mom didn’t even think twice about it, because she didn’t want any one of those kids to get sucked into a system that isn’t regulated enough to care about what goes on in those homes, and because, at eighteen, you’re given nothing but a kick in the ass out the door. Secret two: Quinn’s brother goes to Seashore on a scholarship, much like Tobias did, and he’s asked for work already. He gets sucked into making bank and the pride he earns from helping his family, then he’s not gonna be the kid who might cure cancer; he’s gonna be Tyler or Tiggs with felonies and no way to use the smarts God gave him. And secret three: Tobias has never once accessed that burn book, as you call it, and I have no intention of doing so either. But unlike him, I will if necessary, and he knows that I’d use it to protect family if need be.”
