Wicked Thing

by Angeline Kace

  “Happiness is making someone you care about smile.”

  —Dallas Brown

  I’M on my way to pick up Carmyn from her first dance class. She was going to have Ava pick her up, but I’m not willing to miss her facial expression as she leaves the studio. I’m a little early so I park the bike and go inside to wait for her.

  The class looks like it’s wrapping up and some of the women are gathering their things from off to the side of the room. Carmyn’s talking to the instructor. The lady’s showing her some steps. Carmyn repeats them, and I’m surprised by the amount of air she gets when she jumps. She notices me when she lands and smiles as she pushes the loose hair out of her sweaty face.

  The instructor praises Carmyn and releases her.

  I expect her to run to the side like everyone else and gather her stuff, but she sprints toward me, her toes pointing as she does, and throws her arms around my neck.

  I hug her tight and regain my balance.

  “Thank you! I never would’ve taken dance again if it weren’t for you. I love it so much, and it makes my heart so happy to be doing it again. I’m a little rusty, but I’ll pick it up fast.”

  “Rusty, my ass. From the one move I witnessed, you’re amazing.”

  Her smile is timid, but proud.

  “You wanna grab your things and we’ll get out of here?”

  She rolls up on her toes and kisses my cheek, slowly removing her lips. “Thank you.” She spins around and hustles to gather her bag and boots.

  I take the bag from her and wait while she slips her boots on. She reaches out to grab it back from me.

  “I got it.”

  “How are we supposed to take this on the bike?”

  I throw my arm over her shoulder and tuck her into me. “Like a backpack.”

  “But it’s a duffel.”

  I grin at her. “This ain’t my first rodeo, Rafferty.” When we get to the bike, I put the large strap behind her neck with the bulk of the bag resting on her back, and then have her tuck the straps around her arms under her armpits to keep it there. I straddle the bike and help her get on. “Comfortable?”

  “Surprisingly, yeah.”

  I drive a ways before I pull us into a shopping complex near campus and up to a movie rental store.

  “What are we doing here?” Carmyn asks.

  “Change of plans. We’re getting some movies and going back to my place.” I’m not ready to take her home yet.

  She blinks. “Dallas, I’m all sweaty and gross.”

  “No, you’re not. Live a little.” I grab her hand and lead her into the store.

  “Only on one condition,” she says with a wicked smile.

  “And what’s that?”

  “I get to pick out the movie.”

  “Ah, come on! Look at all these movies. I’m sure we can find something we’ll both agree on.”

  A grin spreads her lips wide. “That’s my condition.”

  I concede. “Fine, but next time is all my pick.”

  “You stay here,” she says pushing me toward the check out registers, her hands splayed across my chest. She smiles and prances over to the romance section.

  “Shit.” I had a feeling she was going to do that.

  She comes bounding back with a video tucked behind her back.

  “What is it?”

  “You’ll like it,” she says, still not showing it to me.

  “Well, then let me see it.” I reach behind her back to pull it out of her hands, but she spins and rushes to the front. She’s not doing much to instill confidence that I will like her pick.

  “And I want some Sour Patches,” she says.

  “Oh, is that all?” I ask grabbing a bag for her and a Snickers for me.

  “Yes,” she says playfully and puts the generic movie rental case on top of the counter, face down. “Don’t let him see what it is when you scan it,” she tells the guy manning the register.

  He looks at me. I shrug. “Whatever she wants.” I should be upset she has me by the balls like this, but seeing her smile is more than worth it.

  She grins while the guy checks us out and I pay for our movie-night goods.

  When we get outside, Carmyn tucks the movie into her bag and pulls it on again.

  I cruise toward my apartment, savoring Carmyn’s arms around me, her chest tight against my back. This is the way my bike is meant to be ridden; with Carmyn on the back of it.

  Once parked, I help Carmyn off, slide the bag from her shoulder, and wrap my arm around her again. She grabs my wrist draping over her as we stroll up the walkway. She’s laughing at something I said when Becker comes down the stairs from his apartment and walks our way. Her laugh is cut short as she stiffens.

  “Keep walking,” I say and pull her along until her step matches mine. “You have as much right to be here as he does.” The asshole better keep his mouth shut too, or I’ll clock him again.

  He passes us without a word but glares at me with tight eyes when he turns over his shoulder to look at us. I know because I looked back at the same time. No way am I turning my back on the shit without making sure he really keeps walking away.

  He reaches the parking lot, and we reach the stairs. I lead Carmyn up to my door, and only after we’re inside does she speak. “He’s going to think I’m staying the night.”

  “So what if he does?” I toss her bag on the couch and pull her Sour Patches out of my back pocket, throwing those over there too.

  “I don’t know. It just looks bad. I’m under your arm, we have my duffel bag, and I’m coming up to your apartment already looking like a sweaty mess.”

  “Carmyn,” I cup her face in my hands, “you have to stop worrying about what other people think. Why do you care anymore what he thinks?” He obviously didn’t care enough of what she thought when he was fucking Amber behind her back.

  “It’s just … people are talking.”

  “People are always talking. You have to live your life according to how you want it and nobody else, because you’re the only one living it.”

  She nods. “I know you’re right. It’s just hard. I’ve never not cared what other people think of me.”

  “You’ll get there.” I kiss her mouth. “Grab your top-secret movie and let’s get this show on the road, shall we?”

  She smiles with the same spirit she had at the movie store, and I’m torn between excitement and trepidation over her movie choice. She mutes the TV. “Close your eyes until I get through the menu stuff and tell you to open.”

  I look at her, rebelling against her demands.

  “Close them!” She runs her fingers over my eyelids. “No peeking.”

  I chuckle but keep them closed.

  “Okay, open.” She unmutes the TV. The sound quality and opening song are a dead giveaway that this is an older movie. Slow-motion shots of people jumping. No idea what movie it is yet.

  The title flashes onto the screen in big pink letters. “Dirty Dancing,” I say and laugh.

  She giggles next to me.

  “Just because we did the lift doesn’t mean I want to watch the movie.”

  “Oh, come on! It’s a classic.”

  The dance moves are sexy and the amount of skin from one girl’s leg is pretty risqué. “And you used to watch this when you were a little girl? How old were you?”

  “Oh, I loved it! I couldn’t have been more than eight or nine the first time I saw it.”

  I look at her with wide eyes, a grin on my face. “Patrick Swayze and this girl introduced you to sex?” This is amusing. No wonder she found the water lift so arousing. This stuff was what awoke her libido.

  She chuckles. “I guess you could say that. I never really thought anything was sexy or had that giddy feeling in my stomach until I watched this.”

  My first time really watching Dirty Dancing is with Carmyn Rafferty—the woman I pulled a Patrick Swayze on before I even knew what it really was.

  While we watch, curled up together on the couch, I o
nly ask questions to tease her. When it gets to the water-lifting part, I’m surprised by how well we did. “See? They don’t get it on their first time, either. And he even knows what the hell he’s doing.”

  “Yes, you did a great job,” Carmyn says and kisses my chin.

  “Were we that hot when we did it?”

  “Hotter,” she says with hooded eyes.

  I lean down and mold my lips to hers, efficiently distracting her from the rest of the movie, engaging our own dirty dancing right here on the couch.

  “I’ve never met anyone who can see through me

  better than Dallas Brown can.”

  —Carmyn Rafferty

  TEXAS heat and the morning sun stream in through the ruffled curtain across the room and wake me. I’m in Dallas’s bed, in his arms. The scent of his body wash lingers on his skin, mingled with my perfume from when we … yeah, that.

  His room is so strangely not what I expected it to be, but so perfectly him. He designed and created the bed himself. It’s a metal headboard and matching footboard on a smaller scale, with a square base and a metal pattern within it that looks honeycomb in its pattern. The repetition in the design is perfect and looks more machine made than handmade. Although, I have no doubt he made it. I am witness to how skillfully his hands can work.

  What really threw me off was the bookcase, again made by him, and the amount and quantity of books on the shelves. A collection of Henry David Thoreau and Shakespeare and Ernest Hemingway and Edgar Allen Poe. And even the Hunger Games from Suzanne Collins.

  I glance up at him as I stroke his face, catching his dark stubble under my nails, just as I imagined it that day in the library. It’s relaxing and comforting.

  “That feels good,” Dallas says with a groggy, husky voice.

  “Um-huh.”

  He caresses my bare back with his broad hand and kisses my hair. “Carmyn?”

  “Yeah?”

  “What are we doing?”

  My fingers freeze in their down stroke. I don’t know how to answer that. We’ve gone much further than I ever planned to go with him. Than I ever wanted to go with him. But it wasn’t something I really controlled. It just kind of happened. Like we fell into each other. “I’m not sure, but whatever it is, I like it because you can’t cheat on me.” I say it with a nonchalant air, but Dallas reads my tell like a practiced poker player.

  He rolls me onto my shoulder so our eyes meet, and I pull the white, cotton sheet to my chest and take it with me. His eyes lock with mine. “What was it about Becker that made you think he was the one?”

  I pause for a second because that type of question deserves an honest answer. “He was sweet to me. He came from a good family. I thought we had the same values. And he was someone I could see fitting perfectly into my plan of how I saw my life.”

  He tucks a wavy strand behind my ear, and then runs his finger down my neck and along my shoulder. “Do my tattoos scare you?”

  They threw me off at first, but they never scared me. “No.” I caress my palm across the shark on his chest. “Why the shark?” It fits him, but I want to know the importance, why he got it embedded onto his body forever.

  He ignores my question and asks another. “What about my bike?”

  “It did at first, but I feel safe with you on it now.”

  “So you trust me with your life?”

  Where’s he going with this? I don’t think I’m ready for this conversation. “Well, yes, or I wouldn’t get on it.”

  “Do you trust me with your heart?”

  I stare at him. I don’t. I don’t think I truly trusted Becker, either. I mean, I did with Becker more than anyone else, but not completely. I planned everything to build up padded walls around it. “I don’t ever think I’ll trust anyone with my heart.”

  His face turns sad and he moves his focus up to the ceiling. “I got the shark because people are afraid of sharks. They think they’re mean and evil, when really they’re just animals acting on their instincts. Plenty of people have swum with sharks and not been attacked. People are afraid of the animal’s nature, of what the animal is capable of. And people are the same way with other people. All of us are capable of perpetrating horrors on others, but something else within us decides that fear rather than the person’s true nature.”

  He’s talking about me. How I don’t see him in my plans because of the way he looks, or because of the way he’s acted in the past, and not necessarily how he’s acted toward me. And he’s right. Wherever this fear stems from, it’s not him. It’s within me.

  I drop my head to the mattress, and whisper, “I’m afraid, Dallas.”

  He rolls onto his side and peers down at me, searching my eyes. “Why’d your parents get divorced in the first place?”

  I take a deep breath. This topic isn’t much easier. “My mom cheated on my dad. I don’t know if it was an ongoing thing or just that once, but once I caught her, there was no way I could keep something like that from Dad.”

  Dallas’s brows furrow. “You caught her? Or you caught her?”

  “I walked in on her.”

  Dallas sits up and puts the pillow in his lap. “Damn.”

  I mirror him. “I came home from school early because I was sick. The nurse called my mom, but she wasn’t answering, so I convinced the nurse to let me walk the couple of blocks home. She released me, and I puked on the way home in Mrs. Rita’s daisies.

  “When I got in the door and passed by the kitchen, a man had his pants down with his back to me, and Mom was lying across the kitchen island. I remember thinking it looked like it hurt, but the grunts didn’t sound like they were in pain. And the man’s hair had more gray in it than Dad’s.

  “So I called out to my mom. They scrambled, and she yelled at me to go to my room in the same tone as if I’d done something wrong. I went and then once he was gone, she came up to my room. I was disgusted with her. I was already sick, but she made it worse.”

  “What’d she say to you?” he asks.

  “She told me it was the only time, and that she and Dad hadn’t been happy in a long time. Which was total bullshit. Dad kissed her every morning when he left for work and every night when he came home. I mean, he used to write poetry for her all the time. He looked at her like she was his whole world.”

  “Wow.”

  “It gets worse. She told me that if we said anything it would only hurt him, and she didn’t want that, and then she asked if I did. Like if we told him and he got hurt, it would be because that’s what I wanted and nothing to do with her actions.”

  I shake my head, disgusted with her all over again.

  “It wasn’t your fault,” Dallas says. “That they split up.”

  I bite my lip. “I know.”

  “Do you, though? I blamed myself for a long time too. And no one even tried to make it sound like any of it was my fault.”

  For some reason as he says that, heat courses through my stomach. In stress.

  “It’s not your fault.”

  “I know,” I say again trying to reassure myself as much as I am him.

  “It’s not your fault.”

  My heart hurts. Pain I haven’t felt in a long time pricks at places it’s long left alone. “Dallas, don’t push me.”

  “It’s not your fault.”

  Heat and moisture fill my eyes. I wipe at them. I don’t cry. I haven’t cried in years.

  “It’s not your fault your mom cheated on your dad. It’s not your fault your dad was hurt by it. It’s not your fault they couldn’t work it out. It’s not your fault your mom turned to drugs. And it’s certainly not your fault she started using sex to get more of them.”

  “Dallas,” I say as he blurs in front of me.

  He wraps his arms around me and pulls me into his lap, and I cry. I cry like I haven’t cried in years. Because I haven’t. Dallas has managed to break down walls that I expertly constructed, and I can’t stop crying.

  He holds me and repeats over and over again that
it’s not my fault. He holds me long after the tears stop and the sniffles abate. He kisses my temple. “And you won’t turn out like her.”

  I look at him with a crooked smile of gratitude. I’m not sure how he knows all these things about me, but the words he’s spoken are words I have desperately needed to hear for more than half my life, and no one’s ever gotten close enough to get a glimpse that I needed them.

  A loud knock on the front door startles us.

  Dallas jumps out of bed and throws on a pair of pants and a T-shirt.

  I pull my clothes on a second behind him and wait by the bedroom as he walks to the door.

  The knocking sounds again, followed by, “Police. Open up, Dallas Brown.”

  The police? What the …?

  Dallas opens the door to two men in uniform. “Dallas Brown?” one of them asks.

  “Yes?”

  “You are under arrest. Please put your hands behind your back.”

  “For what?” Dallas asks as they cuff him.

  I march to the door. “Officers, please, there must be a mistake.”

  “For assault and battery,” the cuffing officer says and begins reading Dallas his rights.

  “Call Randall,” Dallas yells over his shoulder. “It’ll be okay.”

  I step outside and watch the cops lead Dallas down the stairs. He keeps looking over his shoulder at me, as if he’s more worried about me than he is himself.

  I don’t know what to do. I’m frozen to the cool spot on the concrete that the sun has not yet contaminated with its scorching heat.

  What just happened?

  What are they going to do to him?

  Assault and battery? As in he hurt someone?

  Holy shit.

  I’m shaking as I turn around and go back into the apartment. I run to the bedroom for my phone and dial Ava. She answers and she is not happy about the ungodly hour this morning. “What?”

  “Ava, Dallas got arrested. I need a ride to the Fiji house to get Randall.”

  “What?” Ava asks, sounding a lot more coherent now. “Dallas and Randall what?”

  “Dallas got arrested, and I need to go tell Randall.”

  “Shit. Where are you?”