by A. L. Woods
Trust me, no convincing necessary.
The lies were coming to me more easily with each salacious text I composed. I hit the back button of the phone. God finally opened the sky for me, the screen skipped back, and I thumbed on Penelope’s message, punching in a frantic reply to her. The darkened display sketched with each push of the keypad, my message to her revealing itself to me in short spurts.
He asked me if I thought about sleeping with him! SOS! I am going to kill you!
Have you?
I stared at the screen. That was all she could offer me?
Raquel? the message prompted.
I would return to lambasting her in a minute; first I needed to answer her question before she blew up my phone. My screen sputtered again. My fingers quaked as I worked out a revelation that had only just come to me definitively, and I wasn’t entirely sure I wanted to admit.
Yes. Maybe. I don’t know.
Well, that’s a start. I can work with that. Sounds like you just need a little inspiration.
If there was a hell, I was dead smack in the middle of it, patiently waiting for a fiery chasm to split the ground in two and swallow me whole.
I had done it again.
I could feel my cheeks growing ruddy, a frisson hot enough to sweep down from the crook of my neck, burning the flesh right down to my core as another unwelcome thought infiltrated my mind, scrambling my sensibilities like eggs in a skillet. I couldn’t move; my arm was suspended out in front of me, clutching the phone as if doing so would prevent it from bursting into flames at any moment, my jaw hanging open at what had just occurred.
There would be no coming back from this. I was immobilized by the horror of my actions and the reality that Sean now knew his ‘feelings’ (if that’s what they can be called) were not only one-sided…
…they were reciprocated.
The phone vibrating elicited a gasp of surprise from me, my brain coming to after being momentarily whisked away from my rightful place in hell.
Night, Hemingway. See you in dreamland.
I was fucked. So utterly fucked.
CHAPTER TWELVE
“I’m not giving you three hundred dollars.” The idling Camry that rattled my body almost tricked me into believing that it wasn’t me who was shaking as I clutched the phone in my hand, my knuckles straining. “I don’t have it.”
“Bullshit,” my mother hissed. “Ask your little friend.”
I slouched in my seat. “I am not asking Penelope for money to give to you, of all people.”
“Raquel, please,” she pleaded, the tone of her voice softening, as if that was supposed to alter my stance. “I’m short on rent money. I need it.”
That was a fucking laugh, and we both knew it. “We both know you don’t want that three hundred dollars for your rent. Half of Southie knows you’re fucking your landlord and live there for free.” My heart quickened its pace, taking off in my chest as I straightened in my seat, my free hand draped in my lap, fingers sinking into my thighs to bolster myself.
The sound that came out of my mother’s mouth was an animalistic and indignant war cry, followed by an insult. “You insufferable fucking little bitch.”
Insufferable? A big word for my no-brains mother.
I considered that I could have kept that remark to myself, but I was tired of being fed the same bullshit sob story every month. I gave her enough money as it was; I wasn’t giving her any more until the beginning of next month.
Besides, the truth hurt.
“I should have aborted you,”
“Probably,” I offered noncommittally. I smoothed my hands against the stretch of the steering wheel until the shaking subsided and the trance of my fingers grazing the cool leather coaxed me into a sort of calm.
“I mean it. I wish you were never born, Raquel.”
All I could manage was a snort as the thought percolated in my mind. The line wasn’t particularly original, but it was one she slung at me every couple of months when she deemed I was being unreasonable.
I was sure that the exchange between Pauline—as I tended to think of my mother—and I might have given Freud himself a hard-on, but she was about as interested in therapy as she was in financially supporting herself through legal means.
“Shoulda kept your legs closed then, Pauline.”
“You are an ungrateful little shit.”
What was I supposed to be grateful for, exactly? Enough mommy issues to last all my days? An inferiority complex? My life?
Right. Gratitude.
“I almost did go through with aborting you, y’know,” she hissed viciously, “Your good-for-nothing father wouldn’t let me.”
“Better luck next time.”
My mother went off on another tangent that I only half listened to. If standing tall and mighty on her soapbox of superiority was something that made her feel marginally better about herself, who was I to stop her?
Ensconcing myself in the driver’s seat, I moved the phone away from the shell of my ear to give my eardrum a break from the grating, high-pitched shrieking my mother was unleashing. I was convinced that even the pedestrians with whom I made eye contact as they walked past my car could hear Pauline’s venomous meltdown that would have earned her an Oscar if this had been a Hollywood movie.
My free hand pinched the bridge of my nose while I drew in a tight breath.
She was giving me a fucking headache.
After twenty-eight years of this, I was nearly entirely immune to the effects of her vitriolic nature. It was as consistent as the weather, and no one balked when it rained. My mother only stopped to collect her next breath the same way the wind paused before unleashing another strong gust. I could hear the rapidness in her heavy breathing, her nicotine-filled lungs straining to keep up. She was noiseless, but her silent appraisal was deafening, as though waiting to see if her harangue had worn me down into submission.
It hadn’t.
I couldn’t give her what I didn’t have, and there was no fucking universe in which I would ask Penelope for shit for her benefit.
“Bye, Ma.”
As I moved to close the phone, I caught the tail end of her final enraged barb, “—shoulda been you in that fucking car!” I clamped the phone shut in my hand.
I sat with that thought lingering longer than I should have, considering the merit in her words.
She wasn’t wrong.
I picked the pack of Pall Malls out from the cup holder and stuck one between my lips. Shaking the lighter out of habit before working the spark wheel, a small flame sprouted up that I held against the tip of the cigarette.
Slouching back against my seat, tobacco smoke filled up the car while I watched people pour in and out of O’Malley’s in groups of two to five while I puffed on the cigarette. The nicotine acted like a medicated ointment on whatever superficial wounds my mother’s scathing remarks might have caused that I was too numb to notice.
The red neon light of the sign flashed above the door awning, beckoning patrons inside. I kept the cigarette dangling precariously between my lips, pulled my keys from the ignition, and reached for my leather crossbody bag.
I had kept Penelope waiting long enough. Admittedly, I had been plagued by an unexplainable looming feeling that I had never had experienced before toward my friend. Somehow, I felt she was about to drop something in my lap that I was neither prepared for nor equipped to handle.
Speculating seemed like a gratuitous waste of time, so I thought better of it when I called her earlier to confirm our meeting time. She was her usual self, albeit a little more chipper than normal.
There hadn’t been anything out of the ordinary in her asking to meet, but it was unlike her to call me to have drinks so far in advance, especially when she could have settled for a text message.
Ugh…text message.
My cheeks grew flush despite the frosty early November air that bit at my exposed skin when I flung open the car door, closing it with my hip before locking it.
I had spent the better half of my night yesterday rereading the text message exchange between Sean and I before I removed the battery from my phone and remedied the frozen window and any other electronic possession it might have been under. My skin still felt prickly when I recalled just how much of my private thoughts I’d shared with him. If there was a God, Sean wouldn’t contact me again, and I could go through the rest of my life pretending that I’d never said anything incriminating.
Penelope owed me a beer for giving him my number, or three. When I had pressed her over the ‘why’ this morning, she retorted she had done it for “reasons which you are well aware of.”
She was delusional, but I was too anxious about our impending meeting to press her any further about Sean Tavares. He was the last thought on my mind at this very moment—although thinking that made me realize it was completely untrue. Sean was the basis of ironic process theory. The more I tried not to think of him, the more persistent and intrusive the thoughts of him became. His constant presence in my thoughts plowed through every other contemplation or musing my brain tried to conjure in an effort to replace him. And even the mental version of him looked incredible.
It was hopeless, but I’d be damned if I didn’t continue to at least try.
O’Malley’s was an out-of-place local Irish pub in the North End that attracted an eclectic crew of people that varied from stockbrokers, to farmer’s market workers. The one thing everyone who set foot in this dump could align with was their need to drink their troubles away before they dragged their sorry asses back home and made the same mistakes all over again. It also had the advantage of being one of the few Irish taverns ballsy enough to open up in Little Italy.
Taking another long, meditative drag on my cigarette, I paused in front of the bar door, suddenly too frozen to move. My fight-or-flight instincts were in overdrive, my breathing hitching in my chest as I stared at the door, resisting my mind’s demands to go inside. It was as if my feet had been cemented to the ground and I couldn’t move.
Open the door, Raquel. You’ve done this a hundred times before. Just do it.
“Hemingway.”
I turned my head to look over my shoulder, the cigarette still pinched between my lips, a flummoxed feeling sending my eyes wide.
This really was going to be a bad night.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
I wanted to pluck the cigarette from her pretty lips and crush it under the heel of my boot. Its presence was the confirmation that there was, in fact, one thing about her that I couldn’t stand.
Her eyes seemed to glow under the offensive red neon light of the bar, a shiver rolling through her as she appraised me with a look that was a hybrid of derision and curiosity. She stared at me like I was both the last and the only person she wanted to see. I thought I saw something that looked like a blush hit her cheeks when she looked away from me, but decided it could have been the flush of red from the signage.
“This night really is just going from bad to worse,” she mumbled around the cancer stick, a plume of smoke wafting up from its lighted end.
I stepped toward her, and acting on my first impulse, pulled it from her mouth, getting caught in the fog of tobacco that left her mouth and, I suspected, she deliberately targeted in my direction.
“What the hell!” she protested, watching as I dropped what was left of the cigarette to the ground. My eyes held her gaze while I crushed it under my boot. When I was satisfied that it was out, I bent down, plucked it from the ground and tossed it into the ashtray that was parked near the bar door.
“That shit isn’t good for you.”
She rolled her eyes, then turned away from me to open the door. I had watched her stand deathly still in front of the bar door only moments before, a breath of wind tickling the ends of her hair, revealing the soft curve of her profile. And all it had taken was my presence in her space and she took off like I was coming for the rest of her Pall Malls.
I followed after her, catching the door that she swung back in my direction as if to slow me down. My ears were greeted by a loud cacophony, a mix of patrons talking over each other and the music of the live band that played on a small stage in the corner.
I knew I wasn’t imagining Raquel’s intent to lose me in the bar, as if she could—it was a neighborhood bar, not an airport terminal—but I had the advantage of the length of my legs on my side, my strides catching up to her until I was flanking her like I was her shadow.
“Don’t you want to know why I’m here?” I said to her. I had considered her reaction to what was coming, though my thoughts were mostly inconclusive. Particularly after what clearly had been a technological malfunction on her part, one that made me realize I didn’t really know her as well as I thought I did.
But hell if I didn’t want to.
She shook her head vehemently. “That would require me to be interested, which I am not.” She cast me a dismissive glare before storming through a throng of people. I was hot on her heels again, so close that I could see the highlights of her dark hair reflected from the halogen bulbs overhead.
“Wait up, Hemingway.” I reached for her hand. Her skin was soft to the touch, but felt cold. Her footsteps stalled, and I took my opportunity to spin her around to face me, our palms pressed together, fingers involuntarily entwining. Raquel’s eyes, shrouded by long, dark lashes, fell to where I clutched her hand in my own, as if she couldn’t believe I had the audacity to touch her, confusion and awe filling her small features.
I didn’t care what her smart mouth said, her stare said different. The frenetic energy that coursed through me—and her as well, I suspected—said different. The ever-present current of electricity that shot through our joint palms like a live wire threatening to ignite a fire said different as well.
It felt like time had stopped. Suddenly the tinny commotion of the bar wasn’t as loud, and the people surrounding us no longer existed. It was just Raquel and I, suspended in this moment, our breathing timed and even, eyes searching each other’s faces for something that had words escaping us.
Seconds passed, and then, nostrils flaring, she jerked her hand free, the warmth of her hand leaving mine, releasing time from its hold.
“Don’t touch me.” The control was back in her voice, her eyes tapering.
We were back to where we’d started, Raquel fighting our attraction, but I was ready. I would play whatever game she wanted until she was either too tired to continue or rendered herself exhausted by her own resolve. I leaned forward, pressing my mouth against the shell of her ear.
“That didn’t sound like what you wanted yesterday,” I murmured, my bottom lip against her earlobe.
She exhaled a breath it sounded like she had been holding, and I thought I saw a tremble roll through her. I felt the brief buckle of her knees when I crowded her, before she quickly straightened. The scent of her vanilla and citrus cologne mixed with tobacco intoxicated me, filling my sinus cavities and kicking my cock to life in the flex chinos I wore.
“You,” she said, her voice quavering, unease bouncing in her smoldering brown-eyed stare, “don’t know what I want.”
I took a step away from her, watching as she stared me down in a daze that told me she hadn’t realized she had imbibed on my presence alone. An impish simper played with my lips, my shoulders rising in a half-hearted shrug as my hands stuffed themselves inside the pockets of my peacoat. “Neither do you,” I replied. Then I breezed by her, training the triumph that sang within me at the ease of my jest. I glanced back over my shoulder as I ambulated deeper into the over capacity bar. She was still standing there, rooted in her spot, eyes tracking me like I was the hunter and she was the prey.
I wasn’t, though. Not really.
Unless you considered my unwavering pursuit of her an imminent threat, then I was lethal.
Raquel behaved with propriety, I would give her that. But I was committed to showing her that what was considered morally correct or proper wasn’t always right. Including
whatever opinion she held of me.
I easily picked Dougie and Penelope out from the back of the bar, my height giving me the advantage to see over the heads of other patrons. Whether Raquel liked it or not, she would follow after me. I was a long way from home, and I knew the writer in her wouldn’t allow her to rest until she knew why I was here.
She would know soon enough.
Dougie’s head was bent inward, whispering something in Penelope’s ear that elicited a laugh from her and produced a shit-eating grin from him that was wide enough to nearly split his face open.
I had never seen them side-by-side like this before, looking at each other like they were the only two people who mattered on this planet. Dougie’s green eyes were filled with so much deference and affection it almost nauseated me.
Almost.
He was happy with her. The pain-in-the-ass-turned-saint interior decorator who worked because she wanted to, not because she had to, who had turned her back on societal conventions and her parents’ blue-blooded wishes to date a commoner, a high school graduate nobody from Fall River.
And a by-product of their love was growing inside of her.
I thought I heard the exact moment Raquel’s footsteps tapered off behind me like she had forgotten how to move, like she had seen something that rendered her immobile while she was still surrounded by too many people to be noticed by the inhabitants of our soon-to-be shared table.
Penelope’s gaze met mine, and she straightened in the booth, a smile sweeping across her face. Raising a hand in the air, she flitted her fingers in a wave.
“Hey!” she chirped, her expression alight with something eager, voice a notch too high-pitched. She cleared the drink menu and the pitcher of beer from the middle of the table so nothing blocked her view of my face. I settled on the edge of the banquette, waiting for Raquel to appear so she could sit on the inside.
Dougie held a hand out to me that I took in a clap.
“Thanks for coming,” Penelope chirped, though her voice came out more like a stammer that produced a reddened tint to her cheeks. Her hand shook when she sipped her bubbly clear carbonated drink, which I guessed was seltzer, that made me feel a little bad for her.
