Yet the notion of Pearl living there hadn’t bothered me enough to keep it from coming out of my mouth. I hadn’t even hesitated before offering it. If anything, I was ready to talk her into the idea. Sort of like signing up for voluntary torture.
I left the keys hanging in the lock when I got home and walked straight to the closed-off master bedroom. After wasting two evenings and half a weekend searching for the documents Mr. Amos had asked me to find, I’d rid the room of cans and bottles, bagged up an ass-ton of odds and ends and pointless documents, and pulled the door shut on the rest. The old man had amassed piles of statements, bills, and junk mail mixed with mildewing stacks of Field & Stream, Car and Driver, and the Hustler mags I’d stolen and stuck beneath my mattress until I discovered the Internet and real girls. His closet and dresser were crammed full of clothes that should all be trashed. Ditto the bedding. Shit—and the soiled mattress. No fucking way I was allowing Pearl Frank to lie down on that.
Pissed at myself for putting off this chore, I wished I could set fire to the whole room like I had that damned recliner. But that chair had been worthless, and this room meant freedom to Pearl. I pulled the keys from the door, grabbed a box of heavy-duty trash bags from the garage, and started separating useful from useless.
Four hours later and an ass-ton of black bags stacked at the end of the driveway—where they’d sit until garbage pickup Tuesday—I heard back from Pearl. We’d agreed that she should have dinner with her parents and hope her mom did an about-face, but where parents were concerned, I never held my breath.
Pearl: No change. Thomas seems opposed to her ultimatum, but he won’t contradict it. Boyce - that car doesn’t belong to me. Neither does my phone. I’ve never felt so stupid and naïve.
Me: You didn’t see this coming. Stop blaming yourself. Do they know you’re leaving? Will they take your car away?
Pearl: I’ll tell them tomorrow. I’ve packed my clothes and plan to ask them to leave my phone on long enough for me to get my own, but if I’m determined to be self-sufficient, I can’t justify taking the car. I can walk the few blocks to class from your place, and I’ll have to find a job nearby. Guess I’ll be doing lots of walking.
Me: We’ll work something out.
Pearl: Are you sure about this? I’ll pay you rent once I have a paycheck.
Me: The hell you will. Like I told you earlier, I would do this for Maxfield or any of my close friends. It’s less than three months and you’re a tiny thing. You won’t bother me none.
With those lying words, I pictured her shampoo and bodywash and razor in my shower, bras and panties hanging over the rod, her in a towel, blow-drying that mass of dark hair in my bathroom… Goddammit. She would bother the hell out of me. Just not how she was thinking.
Pearl: Okay. I’ll come over after class tomorrow. What time do you finish up? I’ll need a ride back to your place after I leave my car at home. At *their* place, I mean.
Pearl: I didn’t think I’d graduate college and be immediately homeless, haha. ☹
Me: You’re not homeless. Just a little transient. ☺
Pearl: I don’t know how to thank you.
Me: No need. Just take it and go do your thing.
Pearl: See you tomorrow. Goodnight.
Me: Yep. Nite.
I texted Thompson about using his truck to haul the disgusting mattress to the dump tomorrow and he responded: NP I’ll git er done without asking why. Shouldn’t take more than a week to get a new one in there. In the meantime, Pearl would sleep in my bed, and I’d lie wide-awake on the sofa, struggling not to visualize her sweet little body curled up in my sheets, her soft mouth falling open with an eager sigh when I stroked a hand over her hip to pull her closer, her sleepy eyes blinking slowly as I woke her to a need that I would fill.
I was fucked. I was so, so fucked.
• • • • • • • • • •
I was up until two a.m. cleaning the bathroom after battling that goddamned mattress out the front door in the middle of the night. My neighbor, Mrs. Echols, eighty if she was a day, flipped on the floodlight at the corner of her place—blinding me momentarily—and glared out her bedroom window, clutching her robe to her chin. I propped the mattress against the side of the trailer and saluted, and she snatched the curtain closed.
After a quick shower, I fell into bed and slept like the dead until the alarm went off at six. Not the best day to face on four hours of sleep, because I’d forgotten all about my surly probationary employee until she wheeled into the bay where I was testing fluid levels as part of a tune-up. Her father walked up behind her, sizing me up with all the friendliness of a rabid dog. Jesus Christ.
Despite the fact that I felt like I was hungover and wished they’d just turn around and leave, I wiped my hand on a rag and stuck it out. “Mr. Adams? Boyce Wynn.”
He shook as firmly as his kid had last week. “Philip Adams. I understand you’ve offered Samantha a job.”
“Dad,” she growled and he grimaced.
“Sam, I mean.”
I nodded toward the scowling kid in the chair. “We’ve agreed on a one-week trial to see how we get on before I extend an actual job offer.”
“And she’ll be paid for the trial week?”
“Dad.”
I ignored her and nodded once. “Of course.”
He pursed his lips, looking around the shop as if inspecting it for safety hazards—which he probably was. “She’s brought her lunch. When should I be back to pick her up?”
“Oh my God, Dad. I said I’d call you.”
Philip Adams had to be the most even-tempered guy in town. His daughter wasn’t going to find that kind of patience here. I’d park her at the end of the drive in two shakes and call him myself if she mouthed off to me like that.
“Two or so should be fine today, if that’s convenient.” That was when Pearl’s class ended, though at the moment I doubted Sam and I would make it to two.
“I’ll be back at two, Sam.” He patted her rigid shoulder and glanced around once more. “Unless you need me sooner.”
She sighed like she was barely surviving the embarrassment he was causing her, and he nodded once and walked back to his truck, probably used to her shit because he had to be.
When he was gone, I said, “Hope you don’t mean to treat my customers to a helping of that attitude or this job’ll be over right quick.”
Her short, spiky hair looked lethal, but it underscored how small her head was and made her almost appear vulnerable. “What attitude?” Until she opened her mouth.
“Really?”
She stared at the hands fisted in her lap for a long moment. “He doesn’t want me working. He doesn’t think I’m capable of doing anything on my own. Like at all.”
“So he’s protective.”
“Overprotective, you mean.”
“There’re worse things.” When her lips parted—no doubt to argue the point, I held up a hand, thinking about Pearl. “But it’s good to learn to do for yourself. Otherwise they’ll keep doing for you. And you don’t seem to want that.”
“I don’t.”
“Good.”
She glanced around the shop, her silence dialing her back to vulnerable. “So I’m here,” she said. “What do you have for me to do? I’ve been working on cars since I was ten. I’m real good at diagnostics and replacing fuel lines and—”
“Keep your shorts on. If you’re lucky, I might let you help replace a battery by the end of the week. For now, I need the tools along the back wall organized.”
She gasped as if I’d insulted her ancestry. “Seriously?”
I cocked an eyebrow at her and said nothing, and after a minute or two she harrumphed like she was a Mrs. Echols clone and wheeled to the back wall. Good freaking Christ. Between waiting for Samantha Adams to vamoose and waiting for Pearl to show, six hours felt like a hundred.
Pearl
Boyce’s place was so close to campus that it took me less than three minutes to get there
. If I hadn’t gotten stuck behind a golf cart, the trip would have been even quicker.
I parked at the curb but remained in the car. A pickup truck sat in the driveway of the garage, where a man lifted a girl into the passenger side. As he went to buckle her in, she swiped the seat belt from his hands and fastened it herself, then leaned out to pull the door shut. He shook his head, folded a wheelchair into the truck bed and strapped it down. Boyce exited the right-side bay wearing the same resigned expression Thomas got when Tux tore through the house like a dust devil for no conceivable reason, knocking things askew as he went. Thinking about my stepfather and cat made my chest ache right down the center.
One eye squeezed shut against the afternoon glare, Boyce lifted his hand in farewell to the people in the truck as he scanned the street and then spotted my car. His mouth, halfway to a smile from the squint, lifted into his familiar grin as he sauntered toward me. “Right on time,” he drawled as I opened the door and popped the trunk.
“I’m nothing if not prompt. That’s one of my distinguishing characteristics.” I slung my backpack over my shoulder and we lifted three suitcases from the trunk.
He grabbed the two largest and led the way to the trailer I would call home for the next ten weeks. “I hadn’t noticed that one.”
I faked a gasp. “Really? I’m appalled at your inattention, Boyce Wynn! I’m known everywhere for my punctuality.”
He turned at the bottom step, his eyes sweeping over me, and I shivered despite a heat index that topped a hundred. “Guess I’ve always been distracted by your more… visible features.”
Oh God. I had no chance of remaining sane for seventy days if he was going to toy with me like that the whole time. Nothing turned me on like his flirtatious banter, no matter how preposterous it got, even if I knew full well he’d never restricted it to just me. I pinned my lips together and stared down at my pink Sperrys—which probably made me look like a prude who was disconcerted by a little flirting. I had to let him think it. If he knew how the sound of his voice made my mouth water and those teasing remarks melted my insides, I’d be in so much trouble.
I raised my eyes to his when he said, “Hey.” He stood just inside the open doorway, watching me closely. His grin was gone and his tone was cautious, as if he thought I might turn and run back to my car. “I’ve been handing you those harebrained lines forever just to provoke that little smirk of yours, but I’m just playing. You have nothing to fret over with me. I hope you know that.”
I nodded, unintentionally giving him the smirk he’d summoned, and walked up the steps and through the door.
He led the way across the living room, past a small bathroom that emitted the aroma of at least a gallon’s worth of bleach, and into a stark bedroom containing an old dresser and a bed frame.
“Had to ditch the mattress,” he said, turning to me. “Got a new one ordered this morning. It’ll be here in a week.”
I swallowed. “Okay.” Of all the possible scenarios I’d imagined for this summer, living in a trailer with Boyce Wynn hadn’t been one of them. A trailer that at the moment contained one bed. “I guess I’ll just sleep—”
“In my bed.”
My hand, gesturing toward the living room, froze midair. I’ve heard people say My heart stopped—which of course isn’t possible unless you’ve just died—but I now understood where the perception might originate. “Uh.”
“I’ll take the sofa,” he said.
Embarrassment washed over me. He wasn’t propositioning me. He was being courteous. I lowered my hand, half-convinced I’d fallen into an alternate universe where my mother kicked me out of the house and Boyce Wynn was proper. “You don’t have to do that.”
He arched a brow, his eyes glowing with mischief. “You want me to sleep with you?”
Or not.
“I… I meant I’ll take the sofa.”
He shook his head once. “That wouldn’t be very gentlemanly of me, Pearl.”
“I’m moving into your home and not even able to pay you rent. Or repay you for buying a mattress. Also I’m shorter than you, so I’ll fit better. On the sofa, I mean. And it’s only for a week. I’m not forcing you out of your own bed—”
“All right, all right.” He held up a hand. “But if you get uncomfortable, or lonely…” He winked. “My offer stands.”
With that proposition, the world righted itself.
• • • • • • • • • •
The cowardly side of me wished Mama would be out when I got home. I could leave a note and my car keys on the kitchen counter, park my car in its garage spot, and climb into Boyce’s car, avoiding the confrontation altogether.
But it was Monday afternoon—she’d be home planning the week’s meals and supervising the weekly housekeeping service, and Thomas would be at the surgery center seeing new and prospective patients. If I’d wanted to avoid them both, I’d have waited until Friday, when she did volunteer work and he took the boat out all day. And I couldn’t leave without a face-to-face explanation, as much as I dreaded it.
I’d focused on how she would respond to my failure to fall in line with her stipulations for continuing to receive their financial support. I hadn’t given much thought to what her reaction might be to where and to whom I was turning—to Boyce. She had no more idea of our relationship than anyone else did. But seeing his Trans Am in the driveway—watching me leave with him after I let her know I couldn’t yield to her ultimatum? It wasn’t hard to imagine exactly what she would think.
Freshman year of college, she’d been none too thrilled when I told her I needed an appointment to get birth control. Thomas talked her off the ledge by pointing out the maturity and responsibility it had taken to make that request. Even so, when Mitchell visited last summer, she’d put him in a guest bedroom downstairs, though we’d been exclusive since the beginning of junior year. Mama and I didn’t really discuss sex. I knew she’d rather I wasn’t sexually active, though I think she was glad I was sensible about it. She’d known me all my life, though—what else would I be?
I knew where her need to disregard that I had a sex life originated—my unplanned existence. She’d never once made me feel unwanted, but I knew the story and connected the dots. If it weren’t for me, she and my father would have had time to plan a safer passage from Mexico. He might have lived.
I pulled into the wide driveway at the edge of the cul-de-sac, and Boyce pulled in behind me. “I don’t think this will take long,” I said, walking up to his open window.
“I’ll come in with you.”
“It’s better if I go in alone. I want her to concentrate on what I’m saying, not who’s with me. If you come in…” I shook my head. “I just need her to know it’s my decision.”
His jaw tensed. “Okay. But if you need me, call or text or yell and I’m there.”
I nodded. “I’ll be fine.” My stomach lurched when I glanced toward the house. “If you’re one of those guys who freaks out around tears, though, you might wanna get prepared. I hate disappointing people I love. I might cry.” My eyes filled just verbalizing the possibility, and he looked like I’d just told him he might need a big injection in a highly unpleasant location.
As I turned, he caught my wrist. “Pearl—I can’t imagine anyone ever being disappointed in you.”
When I walked into the kitchen, Mama had finished putting away the fresh food and was organizing pantry items and fussing at Tux, who issued piteous meows while circling her ankles, begging for a snack. I picked up an empty grocery bag and folded it, gathering my courage.
“Did you process the withdrawal?” she asked when she saw me.
“I’m not withdrawing, Mama. I’m not going to Michigan.” She froze and I pressed on. “I understand your requirements for living here, and I just… can’t. I’m sorry to disappoint you and Thomas, but this is my life. I have to do what’s right for me. So I’m moving in with a friend for the rest of the summer—Boyce Wynn? He has an extra room and he’s close to campus
.”
I hadn’t ever known my mother to be speechless. Without waiting for her to emerge from her stupor, I left my house and car keys and my credit card on the counter next to a package of brown rice and a small bag of cat treats. I hugged her stiff shoulders and walked back outside as quickly as I could manage while blinded by tears. Boyce didn’t say a word when I curled into the seat, sobbing, but he reached over and took my hand as we pulled onto the road.
chapter
Fifteen
Boyce
Damn. I’d only seen Pearl cry once—right after I took her virginity like some ignorant assclown who didn’t know jackshit about how to make sex satisfying for a girl. I was mad at her for not telling me—until she said she’d thought maybe I wouldn’t have gone through with it if I’d known. She couldn’t have been more off target with that assumption. I’d all but wanted to plant a flag that said FIRST on one side and MINE on the other.
I was a goddamn idiot at eighteen.
“You gonna be okay?” I asked her once we were back home. “I was planning go out to the garage and get some work done. I’ve got a brake job to finish up and a transmission that’s— Well, I reckon you don’t need the particulars…”
“I’m okay.” The words scratched their way out of her throat.
I pulled the extra key off my carabiner and let her into the trailer before putting it into her hand, but didn’t follow. Two hours later, I scrubbed the grease off my hands and arms and went inside, unsure of my strategy if she was still crying. The only weepy girls I was familiar with were depressed drunks, which I took pains to avoid.
Pearl was sitting at the kitchen table, which looked like a backpack full of textbooks had exploded on top of it. No tears, thank Christ. Her legs folded up in the chair, she was tapping away at a small laptop. Her hair, wound and piled on top of her head in a knot, was too stubborn to be contained. Long, wavy chunks of it fell down her back and over her ears. I knew how soft and thick it would feel between my fingertips.
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