Tito

by Hildreth, Scott

  I slowed my pace and watched a wave encompass our feet. “Not a bad way to spend a Sunday morning.”

  When the wave receded, Reggie tugged against my hand, prompting me to continue our leisurely stroll.

  “We should make this a ritual,” she said.

  I couldn’t agree more. Holding hands while we walked along the water’s edge was oddly more comforting than I expected anything could be. I wondered if it was the atmosphere, or if it was nothing more than my sheer satisfaction with Reggie’s existence. Convinced it was the latter, I continued leading the way up the beach.

  Satisfied with each other’s presence completely, we didn’t speak for some time. Half a mile—and two dozen waves—later, she broke the silence.

  She gestured toward my legs with her eyes. “You look cute with your pants rolled up like that.”

  I paused and scowled at her. “Cute?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “Cute.”

  “Thanks, I guess.”

  “It’s a compliment, if that’s what you’re wondering.”

  Although there had been no formal announcement, I’d all but moved in with Reggie. Since our first official night together, I’d slept in her bed nearly every night. Waking up next to her allowed me to realize what my life would be like with her in it. Furthermore, it gave me a good means of comparison to my former life.

  The one without her in it.

  Now that I had a taste of life with Reggie in it, returning to the way things were before I met her wasn’t an option. Not one I was interested in, at least. I couldn’t imagine waking up without her beside me. Every morning, as soon as I woke, I rolled to my side and confirmed her presence. Simply seeing her brought a huge smile to my face. One that lasted long enough to get me through the day.

  “I never thought of myself as cute,” I admitted. “I can’t decide if I like it.”

  “Well,” she said. “If you’re going to walk around barefoot with your jeans rolled up to your knees, get used to me saying it. You’re cute.”

  “But not when I wear my boots?”

  “When you wear your boots, you look like a badass.”

  I laughed. “From badass to cute just like that?”

  “Yeah.” She tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “Pretty much.”

  “What about when I get out of the shower?” I asked. “Cute, or badass?”

  “Out of the shower?” She smiled. “You’re irresistibly handsome.”

  “But not cute?”

  “Not at all. The only other time I can think of that I’d describe you as cute is when you shave.”

  “When I shave?”

  “Yeah. Like the way you look so serious when you’re doing it. You’re uber-focused.”

  “Shaving is serious stuff,” I said with a smile.

  “Try shaving your shin,” she said. “Or your ankles. That’s serious stuff.”

  “You’re cute when you cook,” I said. “You always sing when you’re doing it.”

  She laughed. “I don’t know why, either. I’ve always done it.”

  I was fascinated by Reggie and was embarrassed to admit it. Everything about her brought a smile to my face. The way she squinted when was trying to make a decision. Watching her rifle through her clothes in the morning, incapable of deciding what she would wear. How she sang every time she prepared a meal or fixed her hair.

  “You sing when you fix your hair, too,” I said.

  “Yeah. Maybe it’s a focus thing. You know, some people hum when they’re focused. Maybe I sing.”

  “Well,” I said. “It’s cute.”

  “I don’t want this to sound like some cheesy line from a book, but I look around now, and I can’t believe this is my life. It’s almost like I can’t fathom that I deserve you.”

  “You wonder if you deserve me?” I coughed out the words. “I feel the same way about you. I was just thinking how every morning when I wake up that I roll over and look at you just to make sure you’re still there. Waking up beside you is so much better than waking up alone. It’s going to take some getting used to, though.”

  “You’re not used to it yet?”

  I couldn’t get used to holding her hand when we walked wherever we were walking, but not holding it seemed like a crime. Sleeping with her was going to take some serious time to get accustomed to.

  “I’ve been sleeping alone my entire life,” I responded. “It’s going to take a while.”

  “Haven’t you had a live-in girlfriend, or anything?”

  I squeezed her hand. “Nope.”

  “Never had a girl sleep over from time to time?”

  “Not once.”

  She gave me a look of disbelief. “You never had a girl fall asleep in your bed?”

  As hard as it was to believe, I hadn’t. I shook my head. “No, I haven’t.”

  “Wow.” With my hands held in hers, she spread her arms wide, pulling me close to her chest in the process. “I’m flattered.”

  I kissed her. “So am I.”

  She pushed me away and gave me a puzzled look. “What have I done that flatters you?”

  “It’s sad to admit that a man’s world is this way, but it is. A beautiful woman has doors of opportunity open for her that an average woman will never have the chance to walk through. Those opportunities are apportioned by men. A beautiful woman with a shitty personality can get a date with any man she wants, because the primary concern of most men is satisfying the desires of their eyes.”

  “So, men are superficial pigs?”

  “Yes, they are,” I replied. “In fact, most men are blind to what a woman really has to offer. I’m with you because of your values, your wit, your intelligence, your willingness to stand up for yourself, and how you make me feel when we’re intimate, not because of what you look like. That doesn’t diminish the fact that you’re beautiful. Because of that beauty, you could have had any man you want. Of the countless option before you, I’m the man you chose.” I grinned a guilty smile. “I’m flattered.”

  “I don’t even know what to say,” she said.

  “Don’t say anything,” I responded. “Just keep on doing what you’re doing.”

  “Which is what?”

  I kissed her. “Allowing me to wake up beside you.”

  “I really do love you,” she said.

  I laughed. “Opposed to not really loving me?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Yes,” I said. “I do. I really do love you, too.”

  She kissed me. “Speaking of rituals.” She broke our embrace. “It’s time for another.”

  * * *

  “I don’t buy into all that shit,” Hap growled. “I think they lie to us about a hell of a lot more than we know. I’ve been eating pork fat since I was a kid. Contrary to what they’d like you to believe, there’s not a damned thing wrong with my heart. I’m not fat. My cholesterol is good. My blood pressure is good. The fruit farmers get politicians to manipulate the media to say pork is the devil’s work. That way, they can sell more fruit to the tree hugging hippies.”

  “Exactly!” Reggie said excitedly. “Finally, someone who agrees with me.”

  “Pork fat’s good stuff, isn’t it?” Hap asked.

  Reggie winced. “I don’t know if I’ll agree to that, but I’ll agree to your theory. The food people lie to us. Organic cream, for instance. It’s nothing but cream out of a cow. That’s it. No additives. No preservatives. It had a date on it that says it’s no good after May 5th. Well I have personally used such cream well into June, and it isn’t spoiled. They put that date on there to get us to buy more cream. Before we actually need it.”

  “We could choose not to listen to what it is they have to say,” I said. “Then, we wouldn’t be disappointed by their lies.”

  Hap scowled in disagreement to my statement. “There’s no escaping them,” he complained. “They’re on the news, in the newspapers, plastered all over the magazines at the checkout aisle, and on the news ticker on
my computer. There are far too many entities in our government. They’ve got their fingers in everything. I look at is this way, if it makes you happy, you should be able to do it. Too many laws, too many hands kneading the bread dough, and too goddamned many people with power that damned sure don’t deserve it.”

  “What about our president?” Reggie asked.

  I braced for the imminent explosion. Hap’s opinion of the president wasn’t a favorable one. Personally, I preferred not to talk politics with anyone. It seemed to be the one subject that would cause friends to promptly become enemies.

  “That dumb son-of-a-bitch,” Hap snarled, leaning forward in his seat. He locked eyes with Reggie. “Did you know that he met a top-secret Navy SEAL team last year while they were deployed? The dumb prick wanted a picture with them, so he could brag to his underlings about where he’d been and who he’d met. So, some lieutenant snapped a picture of everyone, with POTUS standing in the middle of the clandestine team with his pearly whites glowin’ and his hair piece a blowin’. When dipshit got back to the White House, he tweeted that picture, just to let everyone know he was buddies with a team of Navy SEALs. There’s one problem. Leaking out that photo made the team’s identity known to the entire world. So much for secrecy. Now, every angry villager, ISIS member, enemy combatant, and wannabe thirteen-year-old sniper has a clear digital picture of the members of SEAL team Five.” He shook his head in clear disgust. “Our POTUS is dumber than a bag of hammers.”

  “That’s enough about the POTUS,” Braxton demanded. “Your good blood pressure is going to be bad blood pressure if you keep it up.”

  “I can talk about what or whoever I want,” Hap snapped back. “It’s my God-given right.”

  “Every time you talk about him, you get wound up,” Braxton argued. “One of these days you’re going to have a heart attack.”

  With his empty beer bottle dangling loosely from his fingertips, Hap stood. He gave Braxton a cold stare. “And, one of these days, you’re going to wake up and be a single, miserable, controlling prick.” He nonchalantly tossed his beer bottle across the porch. As always, Braxton plucked it from the air in mid-flight, set it aside, and blindly reached into the cooler for another.

  Still glaring, Hap sauntered across the porch. He plucked the full bottle from Braxton’s grasp. “Oh, wait,” he said in a sarcastic tone. “You already are all of those things.”

  In a clear display of defiance, he twisted off the lid and threw it into Braxton’s lap. Wearing a prideful smirk, he turned away.

  “Fuck you, Old Man,” Braxton said, not meaning one word of what he said.

  Hap sipped his beer while he meandered past Reggie and me, and then took his seat. “Back to the matter at hand. The POTUS is a POS.”

  “I’ll agree, wholeheartedly,” Reggie said.

  Hap leaned forward and looked at me. He raised one of his wiry brows. “Well?”

  “No comment.”

  His eyes narrowed. “We all know what that means.”

  “It means no comment,” I said.

  He gave me a flippant look. “It means you don’t have the guts to speak your mind.”

  “It means no comment.”

  “If you agreed with Reggie and me, you’d chime in,” he argued. “You don’t, therefore you’re preserving your status with the group by keeping your POTUS-loving mouth shut.”

  I shook my head in frustration. “I don’t love the POTUS.”

  He gave me a quick once-over. “From my vantage point, it sure looks like it.”

  “Knowing when not to speak is the mark of an intelligent man.” I quipped.

  “The Old Man must be a damned fool,” Braxton interjected. “Because he never shuts his mouth.”

  “I’m going to suggest a change to our seating arrangement,” Hap said in a flat tone. “You move over by Braxton and Reggie moves where you are, beside me.”

  “I like that idea,” Reggie said.

  Our seating arrangement wasn’t etched in stone, and I realized it. Nevertheless, making changes would irritate me to no end. Had Reggie originally been seated between Hap and me, I would have been fine with it.

  Because she sat between Braxton and me, that’s where I expected her to stay.

  I glanced at each of them. “I don’t.”

  “Why not?” Hap asked. “I have a hell of a lot more in common with her than I do with you. if you swap spots, I won’t have to look around you every time I’m trying to talk to her. It’s annoying, to be honest.”

  I gave Hap a cross look. “I annoy you?”

  “When I’ve got to try and look through you to talk to the only living soul on this porch that has a reasonable head on upon her shoulders, yes.”

  “Reggie’s the only one on this porch worth talking to?”

  Hap gave a nod. “Until someone else arrives that’s more intelligent or entertaining, yes.”

  “Fine.” I stood. “Swap seats with me, Reggie.”

  Giddy with Hap’s suggested seating arrangement, Reggie took my seat. She faced Hap. “How’s the weather over here?” she asked with a laugh.

  “Much better than it is at the other end of the porch, I can tell you that much,” Hap said. “Kind of stuffy down there, if you ask me.”

  “I like it down here, too,” Reggie said. “Age trumps beauty.”

  “What?” Hap leaned away and gave her a look. “You think he’s better looking than me?”

  Reggie flashed her award-winning smile. “I like the way he looks, but I like your way of thinking.”

  Hap leaned forward. “Another reason to have her down here is that I get along with women more than men. It’s effortless. It comes naturally. Always has.”

  “It doesn’t bother you to look around her to talk to me?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “Not in the least.”

  “Getting along with women comes naturally?” Braxton laughed out loud. “You and mom bickered all day, every day,”

  “Nothing but playful antics,” Hap replied. “That’s one of the problems with today’s society. Everyone is far too goddamned serious. People need to learn how to let loose. We need to bring back the 1970’s. Hell, everyone was happy back then.”

  “Tell that to all the protestors that were on the news every night,” Braxton chided.

  “That was fake news,” Hap said dryly. “More propaganda.”

  “Sounds like you and the POTUS agree on one thing,” Braxton said with a laugh. “Neither of you like the news.”

  Hap flipped Braxton the bird.

  Braxton returned the gesture.

  Still holding his weathered finger sky-high, Hap appeared to have an epiphany. He shot from his seat and faced the group. “Speaking of the news, did you see where that guy from channel five drove his car off the edge of the cliff on Mulholland?”

  I hadn’t heard a word from Braxton about the matter since we last spoke in Mel’s home. At that point in time, the guy from channel five didn’t look like he could have driven a car anywhere, let alone down the winding lanes of the infamous Mulholland Drive.

  “I didn’t hear anything about it,” I said straight-faced.

  “Don’t get much San Diego news up where I live,” Braxton said. “What happened?”

  “Rick McNown from channel five. Fucker was drunker’n a monkey, flying down Mulholland Drive in his Mercedes. The dumb bastard missed a curve. Drove off the edge of a cliff and landed nose-down against a house-sized rock. Had a known meth dealer in the car with him and a bunch of meth-making supplies. His goddamned car hit the rock, exploded, and blew body parts from LA to the Santa Monica Bridge.”

  Braxton acted surprised. “Maybe he was interviewing the meth dealer for his show.”

  Hap’s brows raised. “Maybe he wasn’t.”

  Braxton relaxed into his seat. “We may never know.”

  Hap rolled his eyes. “Trusting what they tell us on the news is like believing the expressed length of a man’s schlong or the claimed size of a woman’s shoe. What we
’re told us is always fractionally different than the truth.”

  Normally, I didn’t buy the fake news propaganda. In this circumstance, however, I hoped Hap was right. As long as the truth was never known, I’d be free to live my life without fear of one day being torn away from Reggie’s loving arms for a crime I didn’t commit—but would undoubtedly be found guilty of by association.

  29

  Reggie

  I was halfway done shaving my left leg when Tito shouted. The unexpected question startled me so much I nearly sliced myself open.

  “Where’s the good razor?” he bellowed.

  I opened the fogged over shower door. Wearing only his boxer shorts, Tito was standing in front of the mirror, rubbing his slight growth of beard.

  “You scared me to death,” I said. “I thought you were asleep.”

  “I was. I woke up.” He glanced in my direction. “Where’s the good razor?”

  “Which one’s the good one?”

  “The one that’s good. One has a crappy blade and one has a good blade. I want the one with the good blade.”

  I held up the razor I was using. “Which one is this?”

  “The good one.”

  “I like this one,” I said. “The other one rips the hairs out. It’s awful.”

  He laughed. “Toss is to me. I’ll replace the blade.”

  I hated throwing things. Knowing the odds of succeeding were minimal, I threw the razor the best I was able. It crashed in the right side of the vanity, six feet from where Tito stood, knocking over a bottle of lotion and a tube of tanning lotion in the process.

  Obviously disappointed by my lack of accuracy in throwing razors, he looked at the shook his head. “You throw like a girl.”

  I gave him a view of my backside. “I am a girl.” I pulled the shower door closed and commenced with shaving my legs. “Are you busy today?”

  He laughed. “Not at all.”

  “No car wash emergencies?”

  “None that I know of. Why?”

  “I was wondering if you wanted to try and meet me for lunch, or something.”

  No matter how much time I spent with Tito, I wanted more. Unlike the men in my past, where I often wanted time away from them, I didn’t get tired of being with Tito. He never put me down, didn’t fill the house with odd furniture, wore normal clothes, and only stayed out late on Thursday nights.