“That’s my roommate’s stuff.”
Her mouth tightened, lips a flattened line. Her eyes shifted toward me and away, and she cleared her throat. “I hadn’t really meant to do this right off, but I’ll be needing my bedroom, of course. Since it’s my house now.”
From the constricted feel of my jaw, I knew my face mirrored hers. “Well. That didn’t take long.”
She flinched. “I don’t intend to kick you out, Boyce—this place is yours too. I just didn’t think you might’ve rented a room out to some stranger so quickly.”
She didn’t understand that she was the stranger. How could she not see it?
I stole a glance at the clock on the microwave and shot Mateo a text to tell him I wouldn’t be over for supper. In three hours Pearl would be home from work, and I wanted this settled before then. “Let’s get this over with,” I said, reaching into the fridge to grab a beer. When I gestured to her, she nodded and I grabbed another one. “I know what you’re entitled to legally, but I’ve built a life here without being aware you were going to come back and take it from me.”
She lowered her bottle. “I told you I don’t mean to take anything—”
“Then why are you here? If that’s the truth, leave.”
We stared across the table until her eyes shifted away and she said, “I left here with a trash bag full of nothing. While he built that business, I lived in this trailer day in and day out, cleaning his clothes and cooking his meals and raising his babies and abiding his slaps and punches when everything I did wasn’t good enough. It was hell.”
I counted to three in my head, fist clenched so tight around the bottle in my hand I was surprised it hadn’t cracked. “I’m well aware of what it was. You left me and Brent here in it.”
Her eyes welled. “What else was I supposed to do? I had no education, no job, no money of my own—”
“Brent would’ve helped you.”
She dashed a tear away. “He couldn’t do anything to help me—he was just a boy.”
“Yeah. He was. But he stepped up and became both parents to me that night, just like you knew he would.”
“Whatever you think of me now, I tried. For years, I tried. I earned my due, putting up with that man for sixteen years—”
“Brent put up with his shit for longer. So did I. My brother’s due—your son’s due—was a hole in the ground after years of looking after a child he got saddled with raising while he was raising himself.”
She burst into tears and ran for the bathroom, and my head fell into my hands. I felt like an asshole. An asshole who’d kept that shit bottled up far too long. I’d never looked at my home or Wynn’s Garage as compensation for two-plus decades of taking shit from my father. Neither would have ever measured up. I saw these things as part of the life I’d built for myself. And now she was taking that, whether she admitted it or not.
Five minutes later, she returned to the kitchen. “As I said, you are welcome to stay.” She was holding some kind of hair apparatus that belonged to Pearl. It had been in the bathroom. “But your roommate”—she air-quoted—“has to go. Are you even charging her rent money?”
I learned a long time ago that feeling powerless made for rash decisions. The only way to reduce the risk of doing something asinine in such a situation was to take your power back before that moment when you reacted without weighing up your choices. Instead of answering her, I asked, “Am I expected to keep running the garage I thought was mine?”
Her chin jerked up at the change of subject. “Your father should have told you we were still married. That wasn’t my fault.”
I ran a hand over my jaw like I was mulling things over. “Maybe you’re right. But my ignorance is about to be your problem, because unless you know how to pull a transmission or change a spark plug, that garage’s income comes to a halt tomorrow, seeing as this is not only a community property state but an at-will employment state.” Thank you, Mr. Amos, for passing on that info. “And I’m about five seconds from I quit.”
It took her a moment to absorb what I’d just said. She exhaled heavily, her chin falling a notch. “What do you want?”
• • • • • • • • • •
Me: She’s here. She wants her room back, so I moved your stuff to my room and I’m taking the sofa. I’m sorry. I feel like shit about this.
Pearl: DON’T feel bad on my account. I’ll sleep on the sofa. I got used to it. I’ll be fine. Are you okay?? How is it? It must be weird.
Me: Weird, yeah. I don’t know her. She looks familiar but she left before I turned 8 for fuck’s sake. Brent was only 15. He was the age I am now when he died.
Pearl: Oh Boyce. ☹
Me: I told her you were my roommate and she’s fine with it. Also you’re sleeping in my bed and I’m taking the sofa. PERIOD.
Pearl: Okay.
Me: Okay then.
• • • • • • • • • •
I hadn’t seen Maxfield since spring break, when he came home with a girlfriend for the first time. I gave him shit about settling down to one girl, but he was so seriously fucking happy it made me realize just how unhappy he’d been before her. I’d hardly ever seen the dude smile in all the years I’d known him. From the beginning, I’d figured him as one of those unstable emo types. His mood was either grim and quiet or violent and homicidal—nothing in between.
We had never spoken about what had fucked him up so bad, but he’d come here in middle school carrying some heavy shit. I’d made it worse for a while, but I liked to think I’d atoned for the dick I’d been at first—in my own way, of course. Not like I gave him candy and flowers.
He’d introduced me to his girl, Jacqueline, as his best friend from high school.
“Ah, so you’re the one responsible for all those tattoos and this?” she’d asked, reaching up to tap a finger on the ring through his lip. That thing still made me shudder to look at it. I’d had to leave the room when he got it done because once Arianna pulled out that wicked curved needle, I knew I was either going to pass out or puke.
“Yeah, that’d all be my fault. Sorry.” I’d only suggested the tattoos on his wrists. The rest of that shit was all him, but I wasn’t gonna rat him out.
Then she threw her arms around me and said, “Thank you,” while he stood there with a smartass grin on his face.
I had no fucking idea what to make of any of it, so I hugged her back until he said, “All right, that’s enough appreciation,” and pulled her back to his side. I laughed because I’d never seen him get territorial over anything but that old truck of his. It was about damned time he got to feeling that way over a girl who felt the same way about him.
Even to Maxfield, I’d never confided anything about what was between Pearl and me, but he had come close to guessing when I asked him about her last fall. They went to the same college, and I hadn’t seen or heard from her since I’d told her I thought her boyfriend was a prick. I’d always told her the truth when she asked for it, but that didn’t mean I wanted to hurt her or push her away.
When Maxfield asked about our relationship, saying, “One of these days, you’re gonna have to tell me,” I’d changed the subject.
Now they’d both graduated and he was home for a spell, visiting his dad before heading to Ohio to work. Ohio. Right there was proof of why five-year plans are bullshit. If anyone had told me five years ago that Maxfield would move to Ohio and Pearl would move back home, I’d have said they were high.
We met at the Saloon. “Shit, man—no facial ornaments and I can see your ears,” I said. “Have I ever seen your damned ears? I’m not sure. You look almost respectable.”
“Says the guy who owns his own business.” He knew better than to express sympathy for my loss. He’d known my dad better than any of my friends except the Thompson kids, who’d lived across the street and got eyefuls of his drunk-ass shit on a regular basis.
“Yeah—about that…” I slammed my first shot.
He sat forward, frown
ing. “What’s up?”
“A buncha shit, so let me get it all out first.” When he nodded I said, “First, my parents weren’t divorced. Long story short—I own nothing. The trailer, the money and the garage—all hers.”
“Shit,” he said.
“Second, Pearl moved in with me.” His eyes popped wide and I could see the questions forming, but I held up a hand and he shifted in his seat, silent. “She decided not to go to med school. She’s staying here to study marine biology instead, and her mom was none too happy.”
“Jesus—they kicked her out?”
I nodded. “More or less.”
“So you gave her a place to live.”
“Everything was fine until my mom came back to town last week and moved into the trailer. Now I’m sleeping on the fucking sofa, Pearl and me are sharing my closet, and all three of us are sharing one bathroom and one thousand square feet of space.”
“What the hell, Wynn? You’ve been working there since I’ve known you and running the whole place for what, two years? All that time under the justified belief that you’d inherit it… and now you’re working for your mom?”
“Yes and no. I assumed the garage would be mine, and I was dead fucking wrong. It is what it is, and I can’t change it. That said, I don’t intend to stick around long-term to get dicked over by another parent. But Pearl needs a place to live, here, until mid-August. She has to spend the first two semesters in Austin, so she’s working at the inn to save for a deposit and rent on a nine-month lease there.”
“That I think I can help with. Hang on.” Maxfield pulled his phone out of his pocket and dialed. “Hey, Cindy … Yeah, everything’s great. Listen—a friend of mine from high school—my class valedictorian? She’s starting the graduate program in marine biology here, and they spend the first year on the main campus there. She needs somewhere safe and cheap to live. Do you think—”
He broke off and I held my breath.
“Yes. Exactly.” He nodded to me, one thumb up. “Great. Let me know and I’ll have her call you. Her name’s Pearl Frank … Thanks, Cindy. Bye.” He hung up and grinned. “She’s checking with Charles, but that’s a formality. I lived in the apartment over their garage for four years—just vacated it two days ago. It’s quiet, private, cheap, and close to campus. She’ll love it.”
“Goddamn, Maxfield. I don’t know what to say.”
“Pearl was my friend too—I wouldn’t have made it through high school without her help. So… how about you tell me what’s really going on? I know she was a challenge for you in high school—the one girl you wanted who wouldn’t give you the time of day—”
“That’s not exactly true.”
He lifted a brow.
So I spilled it. Not all of it, because some things are meant to be private. But I told him about the day I saved her life and how she saved mine by being the one perfect thing in my nearly twenty-three years, and I admitted that she’d ruined me for any other woman the summer before she left for college.
“Wynn—she’s living with you. Have you told her how you feel? What you want?”
Not unless taking her to my bed counts. “I’ve got nothing to offer her. Not now.”
He sat back and rolled the bottle back and forth in his hands, stabbing me with the icy look that’d scared people shitless in high school. Came in handy when the two of us were collecting overdue weed payments for Rick Thompson. I was grateful on more than one occasion that I’d made a friend of him because he’d had a side of crazy even I wouldn’t go to. People saw my wrath coming if I was gunning for ’em. Maxfield’s just fucking exploded out of nowhere.
“Whatever happened to I’m Boyce Fucking Wynn?” he asked. “That guy wouldn’t let anything get between him and something he wanted this bad.”
I barked a laugh. Ah, damn. Boyce Fucking Wynn. My high school motto. “I’m not that idiot anymore, man.”
Glancing around the overcrowded bar, he bit the spot where that lip ring used to be. I’d learned it to be his one tell—fucking with that thing with his teeth or tongue or a finger. I waited for whatever blunt truth he was about to shell out, set to be kicked in the gut by it, considering his hesitation to spit it out.
“Here’s what I’m hearing. Ownership of that garage made you feel worthy of her. For the first time, maybe.” He signaled Brit’s coworker for another round as my heart pounded slow and hard. He leaned up, eyes locked on mine. “I worship the ground Jacqueline walks on, and I’m not ashamed to say it. I love her, man. If that’s how you feel, all I can say is don’t give up. Don’t fucking give up.”
Pearl
Boyce’s kitchen wasn’t as welcoming since it had become Ruthanne Wynn’s kitchen. It felt off-limits to me unless he was there too. She didn’t say anything to that effect, but the hostile weight of her silence when we were alone in that small space said it all.
At first I attempted to study in Boyce’s bedroom, but the lighting wasn’t ideal. Two of the windows were inches from the brick wall of the garage, and the third was shaded by a crepe myrtle that hadn’t been pruned in years. He and his brother had grown up on an island just as I had, but no one would have ever have known that from their dimly lit, barely ventilated bedroom.
I began studying on campus after morning classes and lab research—either in the library or the glassed group-study area between the offices, labs and classrooms. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, when I had evening shifts at the inn, I didn’t bother to come home between school and work. Days I wasn’t scheduled to work at all, I came home after six when Boyce closed down the garage for the day.
Though Ruthanne and I didn’t have conversations—our exchanges were limited to the barest need for words—I got the feeling she thought I was working some angle to take what was hers and encouraging her son in that direction. Admittedly, if I could have conceived a strategy for him to regain what he’d worked so hard to build, I’d have suggested it to him. My motives would have surpassed her comprehension, though, as they had nothing to do with taking from her and everything to do with giving back to him. I’d always believed mothers sacrificed for their children to keep them safe and happy. Ruthanne’s mothering heart—if it beat in her chest at all—seemed to lack that impulse.
Those musings yielded anguished thoughts about Mama and how much our falling out hurt. My birthday was coming up—a day she’d always, always made a fuss over. I couldn’t think about her without my eyes stinging. She’d built a nice life for herself, yes, but only after she ascertained I would benefit as well. If Thomas hadn’t been prepared to love me too, she’d have kicked that door shut with no hesitation. I decided it was time I extended an olive branch. I wouldn’t alter my academic course. That was set. But I could open the door for her pride to forgive me for it someday.
Ruthanne’s sidelong looks extended to any time Boyce and I were together, especially when we came in from our new nightly routine—sitting out on the step where we talked about our days while he smoked and I sipped iced tea. I didn’t ask why he’d stopped going to bed before I got home, assuming it had to do with her tendency to watch television until almost midnight from the sofa he slept on.
“I feel bad that you can’t go to bed at your usual time,” I told him one night, stirring the granules of sugar in the bottom of my glass. I also missed watching him pad across the living room in the early dark, sweaty and pumped after a workout and heading for the shower. In the bedroom, I slept until my phone alarm told me to get up. By then he was at work in the garage. “If you’d take the bed, you wouldn’t have to rearrange your schedule. I go to sleep later than you anyway. I can bed down on the sofa after she goes to her room.”
He took a long drag and flicked the ash from the end of the cigarette before answering. “I offered you a room when I asked you to move in, not a sofa.” There was clearly no arguing with him on this point.
“You’re more obstinate than you used to be, Boyce Wynn.” But just as protective.
“Yep.”
Se
veral minutes of quiet followed. We waved to Randy when he pulled into his driveway across the street and watched June bugs hurtling and wheeling drunkenly, attracted to the porch light. Staring up at the sky, I felt as unmoored as the stars appeared to be, though internal nuclear explosions and gravity bound them. I wondered how Boyce figured into the way I’d always felt rooted to this place. Whether he was my internal combustion or my gravity. Or both.
Through the closed door behind us, the murmur of the television snapped off.
“She always gives us the weirdest look when we come in from sitting out here or when we’re making dinner,” I said. “Why do you think that is?”
He turned and stubbed the cigarette out. “I reckon she made assumptions about you and me that aren’t panning out.”
Oh. Oh. “Having to do with you sleeping on the sofa? As opposed to, uh, with me.”
He nodded. “That and the fact that you’re in graduate school and working to support yourself. You’re young and hot, but you aren’t using your looks to bait your hook, lure in some guy who’d take care of you. Pretty sure she thought you’d take off when I no longer owned the garage.”
I sighed. “So she thinks I’m using you.” Which spoke volumes to the worth she placed on her son for everything he’d become, apart from and so much more than what he did or didn’t own.
“I don’t give a shit what she thinks. You shouldn’t either.” He turned to take my chin between his fingers and tilted my face up. “You hear?”
“Yes,” whispered from my lips.
His touch—so unbearably soft—muted everything but the thump thump of my heartbeat. He examined my mouth from inches away, his fingers slipping down my throat, taking the measure of my pulse, his eyes dark, masked by the shadows from the dying day. I swallowed and his grip widened and caressed the margins of my neck, delicate as a warm breeze on damp skin. Goose bumps skittered down my arms and my mouth burned to be kissed.
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