by A. J. Downey
“So gimme the highlights and make me dinner tonight and fill me in on the rest.” She stuck out her tongue to one side biting it gently between the perfect, straight white teeth her parents had spent a small fortune on in high school, getting them straightened. She raised her eyebrows and looked strikingly like that blonde actress that played that female super-villain in that one movie.
Problem was, Linny could never be any kind of villain. She was both too vanilla and pure goodness. It was the only explanation I had as to why she was still my friend through the endless string of disasters that pretty much comprised my life until Stoker.
“One, you’re adorable, and two, I don’t even know where to begin,” I said.
We paused to order our food and paid for it, stepping aside to wait for them to make it up.
“Start at the beginning, and like I said, just gimme the highlights.”
“Okay, um, first day great, second day also great, second evening went to hell in a hand basket but Stoker fixed it – because he always does, and third day was awesome. Then, last night, Stoker said I should quit my job and move with him to Ft. Royal and that’s the part that gets me and the part I need your help on, because oh, my God – I really want to, Linny!”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa! Back it up! Did you just say what I think you said?”
“Uh-huh.”
She stared at me, stunned, for several moments, silently just searching my face as our order number was called out. We went up and got it and went to find seats, and she sank into hers like she wasn’t really all the way here. I knew the feeling. My brain had been in Ft. Royal, on Stoker, turning over and over what a life there would be like. Like a bit of sea glass, worn smooth and beautiful by the waves and the sand.
“So, are you going?” she asked, and I crumpled a little.
“I don’t know! I wanted to talk to you first!” I said.
She sank back in her seat and shook her head gently from side to side and I swear to God, if the wheels in her head turned any faster, they’d start to smoke.
“You’re right, there’s no way to process this in a half an hour,” she said finally.
I groaned. “I know, you totally hate the idea of me leaving,” I said and she shook her head spearing some of her salad on her plastic fork.
“Actually, from the few pro’s and con’s I’ve weighed out, it’s just the opposite. You know I love hanging at the beach, and here, the beach is getting too crowded and way too full of entitled male douchebags.”
I laughed and said, “Okay, so for just a second can we focus on the pros and cons for me?”
She gave me a flat ‘Bitch, please’ look. “Honey, Sugar, Sweetie Pie – there aren’t any real cons that I can see. You have needed out of this area for a while, and while, yeah, it seems like really soon after only knowing Stoker a few months, I see how he looks at you. The way he takes care of you. You two are practically fucking made for each other. It’s crazy how good you go together, and to be quite honest, I am more than a little jealous.”
“You, jealous of me? We really are in the up-side-down, aren’t we?”
“Not hardly,” she retorted. “This has been a long time coming for you, babe, and I really, really hope you throw a little caution to the wind here, and you go for it.”
“Really?” I asked, surprised. I’d fully expected Linny to be the voice of reason here. Unless... what Stoker had proposed was legitimately totally reasonable.
‘Is that you talking, or your insecurities?’ he’d asked me at one point over the weekend, or at least something akin to that, and I’d paused then and thought about it. Just as I paused now and thought about it again.
Why did I honestly do anything that I did?
In order to be safe. In order to feel safe.
It was my first thought, so it must be true, and what else was true is that I never in my whole life had ever felt safer than when I was in Stoker’s arms.
“Okay, I know that look,” Linny said, interrupting my thoughts.
“What look?”
“The one that says you’ve totally just made up your mind. Need me to scrounge my store’s backroom for some boxes?”
I looked at my best friend over our salads and sighed. “I think I should probably double-check with Stoker and make sure he’s sure, don’t you?”
She rolled her eyes.
“He’s sure. That boy is totally sprung where you’re concerned, and who could blame him? You’re a treasure, my love. I’ll bring you what I can find tonight. What’s for dinner, anyway?”
I laughed and shook my head and asked, “What do you want?”
Linny and I had dinner, talked in depth about our weekends, and spoke more about the idea of my moving, which became less of an idea and more of a plan, the more we talked.
Now that she’d gone, I wiped my sweating palms on my comfortable black cotton skirt and stared down at my phone charging on my bedside table.
I’d never been nervous about calling Stoker before, but I was now.
I had picked it up and poised my finger to unlock it when the screen lit up with his smiling face and it started buzzing in my hand.
“You have got to be kidding me,” I mumbled, and answered the phone.
“You have impeccable timing,” I told him.
“Oh, yeah? How’s that?”
“I literally had the phone in my hand and was about to call you when the screen lit up and it’s you.”
“It’s me, alright. You doing okay?”
“Yeah, why?”
“Haven’t heard from you all day, it’s not like you.”
“Oh, um, I just had a lot to think about, and Linny came over – she just left, actually.”
“Oh, yeah?” He sounded cautious.
“Yeah.” I sank into my reading chair.
“What’d you guys talk about?”
“Our weekends, and the move,” I said carefully.
“Wait, what’d you say?” he asked, sounding surprised.
“You know,” I said, my cheeks heating. “The move. My moving. In with you…”
“You serious?” he asked, and his voice held suspense, like he was expecting me to pull a Lucy and the football on him a la the old Charlie Brown specials that played on television when I was growing up around the holidays.
“If you still want me,” I said softly.
“Holy shit, you’re saying yes. Please tell me you’re saying yes right now.”
“I think I’m saying yes,” I said with a nervous laugh.
“Alright. Okay. Um, your job, have you quit your job?” he asked.
“I suppose I should put in a two weeks’ notice…” I trailed off.
“What? No. Fuck no. Fuck that fucking ho,” he said, and I smiled and rolled my eyes.
“She was on her best behavior today,” I said.
“She fuckin’ better be.”
“Look, as wretched as she’s been the last couple of months, I wouldn’t be turning in two weeks for her sake, the company –”
“You aren’t seriously going to tell me the company’s been good to you, paying you a sub-standard wage, refusing to pay you overtime when you worked overtime hours… come on, baby. You’re better than that place, and if you’re gonna be a rebel, you might as well start somewhere.”
He was teasing me now, gently. I laughed and said, “How’s it going to look on my resume, not giving notice and just ghosting like that? Doesn’t exactly inspire confidence with any future employers, now does it?”
He made a dismissive noise on the other end of the line. “You’re gonna be just fine, Orchid.”
“Well, be that as it may, I am still putting in my two weeks tomorrow, and then that will give me time to pack this place up and weed things out.”
“Sounds like a plan, baby. Want me to come that way Friday after band practice?”
“Would you?” I asked softly.
“I would do anything for you,” he said, and I closed my eyes and savored the notes of hi
s voice as he said it.
I believed him.
“Okay, well, it’s getting late. I know you need to be up early, and so I am going to let you go for now.”
“Shit, I hate it when you’re right,” he said softly and with feeling. “But when you’re right you’re right, so I guess it’s bye for now.”
“Just for now,” I murmured.
“Moment by moment, minute by minute, mile by mile, Orchid.”
I sighed and closed my eyes. “Thank you, that helps.”
“I know this is a big step for you.”
“I haven’t lived with anyone since my parents kicked me out, expecting I’d fall flat on my ass,” I confessed.
“That’s not a story that you’ve told me,” he said.
“Um, the Cliff’s Notes version of it is, I graduated, they kicked me out that night, but they didn’t know I’d been pretty much expecting it, so I had money saved up, enough to get me into a place. I was at a fleabag hotel for a week, and then I rented a basement room at this flop-house. It was a shared bathroom, no kitchen, and there were some, um, seriously questionable individuals living in the other rooms. I was stuck there for about a year, kept surfing Craigslist on my phone, Linny helped me where she could, and I eventually landed in Mrs. Sedgwick’s mother-in-law apartment, and I’ve been here ever since.”
“Wow,” he uttered.
“And on that thoroughly depressing note!”
“Alright, alright,” he groaned.
“I love you,” I uttered with a slightly seductive edge. I lived to drive him just a little bit crazy, loving the stories of how when he got off of some of these calls he had to pleasure himself before he could sleep.
“Hey now, knock that off,” he said, and I could hear the grin in his voice. “I love you, too. Goodnight.”
“Goodnight.”
He ended the call, and I sighed at the tones in my ear indicating the call was done. I turned my head and looked down at the empty rocker on Mrs. Sedgwick’s night-dark porch. The hardest part about all of this would be the one thing I hadn’t talked about. It always was. I was sincerely hoping she wouldn’t be horribly disappointed. Or that I wouldn’t be putting her in a tough spot by leaving.
I went to bed, and was surprised that I actually fell asleep pretty quickly. I had honestly expected to lay awake tortured by my decision, like I usually was by anything big like this.
I guess the fact that I wasn’t, in the slightest, meant that I was doing the right thing.
28
Serenity…
“Hey, beautiful,” he said and I startled and turned around, surprise coating my insides like splattered and dripping paint.
“What are you doing here?” I blurted. “I wasn’t expecting to see you until tomorrow!”
“I know, but the guys in the band aren’t getting along and rather than sit around with Gideon PMSing or whatever the fuck he’s doing, I bagged on band practice, told him to get his shit together, and let ‘em know I had better shit to do with my time.”
“Oh, and I suppose that shit would be me?” I asked with a wink.
“No, that shit would be me helping my woman pack up her shit.”
I laughed slightly, and he leaned his hands on the cash wrap of the department I was working today.
“Anything?” he asked, and I shook my head.
“She’s afraid for her job, I think.”
That conversation had been unexpected and completely empowering. I’d gone into Lydia’s office at the end of the day on Tuesday and had put in my two weeks.
She’d told me, “You can’t quit. They’ll think it was because of me.”
Instead of my usual route of not making waves or of being any kind of apologetic I’d made my first stand in, God, what felt like forever. I’d pretty much told her in no uncertain terms I didn’t give a shit, that I was putting in my two weeks, and she could either live with that or I could walk right then and there.
I was sort of bluffing on that last part. I mean, I really could use the last couple of paychecks to help facilitate the move.
I still hadn’t looked into the rental cost of a moving truck or any of that. Stoker had told me not to get ahead of myself, to not worry about that just yet, and so I hadn’t. I set that bit aside for the time being and let Linny commandeer some boxes from her place of work.
I’d already started packing, but honestly I couldn’t wait to unpack Stoker, with him standing there looking absolutely delicious in his jacket and cut, his faded jeans hugging his thighs.
“She should be. Maybe it’ll teach her a lesson in respect,” he said, and I smiled.
“A lot of those lessons could stand to be passed out,” I said, frowning at a woman who took something off the hanger to inspect it, but rather than hang it back up, just slung the top over the rack itself.
“I’ll meet you downstairs,” he said, and I smiled.
“Love you,” I said softly, and went around to ask the lady if she needed any help. Not that I actually wanted to help her, I just wanted to keep her from wrecking the department I’d spent all morning putting back to rights.
People, they were savages, I tell ya.
I finished up what I needed to do and waited for the clock to wind down so I could get out of here. I found Linny talking to Stoker out at the little lounge area outside my department store.
“Hey, you off?” I asked her.
“Nah, not yet, just on my last ten. Saw your man, here and decided it was time for ‘the talk,’” she said.
I rolled my eyes. “A little late for that, pretty sure he knows all about the birds and the bees,” I said, without missing a beat.
“Ew, God, no!” she cried. “The one about if he hurts my girl, I’m gonna have to get creative with body disposal.”
He laughed. “Pretty sure I could teach you a thing or two about that. Gators love ham,” he said with a cryptic little smile.
I shook my head and grinned ruefully at the both of them.
“Score any boxes?” I asked her, changing the subject.
“Why, yes. Yes, I did. Why don’t you guys come grab them?”
“Sounds like a plan,” Stoker said, and we followed her back to her store, through the back corridor, lest we upset the fine sensibilities of any shoppers. Stoker, unfortunately not being an employee of the mall, had to wait for us to come back out. He stood around on his phone while we ran and got the flattened cardboard, and took both mine and Linny’s load when we got back out to him.
“Lead the way, baby,” he told me, and with a quick hug and a bye-for-now to my best friend, we went out to my car to stow the empty boxes in my back seat for the drive home.
“I rode here,” Stoker said, giving me a quick kiss before I got into my car. “Bike’s over there, I’ll see you at your place.”
“Okay,” I got into my car and he shut the door for me.
I pulled on my seatbelt and headed for home, taking Sunrise to the I-95 on-ramp to get home. I pulled up onto the freeway, and a short time later, Stoker zipped past my driver’s side and pulled two car-lengths in front of me. I laughed a little, thinking at first that he was just fooling around, but a big, black, jacked-up pickup blared its horn at me and barreled past me on the passenger side of my car, using the shoulder of the highway to do it. I watched Stoker pour on the speed and my heart dropped into the pit of my stomach. I reached forward and tapped my phone screen, and thankfully, caught it before it completely went to sleep.
I dialed 9-1-1, but I knew they would never in a million years get here in time.
“9-1-1 What is your emergency?” a woman’s voice poured from the speaker on my phone set near my dash, and I hit the power button to shut off my radio.
“Yes, hi, I’m on the I-95 headed north, and my boyfriend is on his motorcycle ahead of me and I don’t know what’s –” I sucked in a sharp breath as the pickup swerved, trying to knock into Stoker, trying to knock him off his bike.
“Hello, ma’am?”
; “Oh, my God, please hurry, he’s going to kill him!” I cried. But I knew, they would never make it in time.
“Ma’am, I need to know where you are. Can you give me a description of the vehicles involved?”
I stammered and rattled off random information, the signs stating what exit was coming up, babbling out the truck’s make and model as I laid my foot into my own accelerator to try and catch up to them.
Stoker was keeping ahead of the guy who was leaning out his window, screaming at him, and my heart climbed into my throat.
“Oh, my God, this guy is crazy!” I cried, as he swerved at my beloved once again.
“Help is on the way. Can you give me the truck’s license plate number?”
“Yes, hang on, I’m trying to get closer.”
“Only do that if it is safe to do so, don’t speed.”
I fought not to roll my eyes and thought to myself, Fuck that. That’s my whole life up there.
I grimaced as the truck accelerated and Stoker dodged around a car, barely. I checked my speed and my mouth went dry. We were going too fast, way too fast, and traffic was growing thicker. I swallowed hard at another near-miss and said, “You know, what? Fuck it. Just get here already!”
I poured on the speed, and went around two cars, pulling up on the passenger side of the truck, which had switched lanes. My heart beat a frantic tattoo against the inside of my ribs as I gained ground and got ahead of them both. Stoker zipped past me in the lane on the other side of the truck and I took a deep breath, tensed, and made a stand.
I jerked the wheel, cut off the truck and stood on my brakes with both feet, gripping the steering wheel in a death grip with both hands, at ten and two, the tires of my little car screaming against the sunbaked interstate’s surface. I braced back against my seat and screamed as the grill of that truck rushed into view, filling up my rearview mirror, and then came the devastating crash as he collided with my little car’s back end.
I kept screaming as I was shoved forward even further along the freeway, Stoker still ahead of me and growing smaller as he kept going, and my car finally slowed, the truck growing smaller with the sound of tearing metal as it stopped under its own braking power.
