I frowned.
“What?”
“The woman,” she gestured to Hennessey’s office. “Knew you always had a thing for her.”
I inwardly winced.
I had, yet I’d been able to curb that ‘thing.’
Yet today, I’d lost control. Today, I’d finally given in to the one thing I’d wanted for a really long time, and I was glad that I did.
I was glad.
“Ariya,” I paused. “We’re not talking about this,” I said. “I’m there for my mandatory anger management classes that were assigned to me from the judge that was in charge of my release.”
Ariya didn’t take the hint.
“Was our relationship always a lie?” She looked back into the office, let the door close, and crossed her arms over her chest.
She was still turned slightly to the side, keeping an eye on whatever—or whoever—was in there. Maybe her sister’s kids. Though, Ariya worked somewhere. Maybe it was there.
“Ariya,” I sighed and took off my ballcap, running my fingers along my short hair, then resituated the cap on my head.
My fingers still smelled like Hennessy. God, so fucking good. Even thinking about her—tasting my fingers with the slick of her still on them—was making me hard all over again.
I needed to focus.
“It was, wasn’t it?”
I gritted my teeth and returned my focus to her.
“We weren’t a lie. I loved you once, but we were never good together,” I admitted. “We fought like crazy, you hated where I worked, and that I didn’t make enough money for us to do anything. You disliked how I dressed, and the way I shaved my hair. You seriously had something to complain about over everything I did, and that’s not including the fact that we broke up at least once every six months.”
That was no lie.
Out of the years that we’d been on again, off again, lovers, we were ‘together’ for a short year at most.
Most of the time we were off again, which was no exaggeration.
She’d broken it off three times while I’d been deployed. Then, I’d get leave, come back home, confront her, and we were back together.
That happened two more times before I finally decided that enough was enough. I didn’t contact her at all while I was away the rest of the time, but the minute I got out and came back home again, we were back together.
Well, together being a loose term for what we had. It was more like we were fuck buddies, and that was all there was to it. Then I’d gone to prison not long after that, and I’d not seen her, or spoken to her, again until I got home.
I didn’t get one single letter from her.
Not one.
So where was her accountability in all of this?
She’d been the one not to follow through with her promise to talk to me after I’d been sentenced—even though she’d told me repeatedly that she would.
I couldn’t tell you a time that we were happy together.
We’d gotten together in high school. It’d been fun.
However, nowhere in my memory could I remember a time when I said ‘She’s it for me.’
It hadn’t happened. I knew that Ariya wasn’t mine, and would never be.
We honestly didn’t like each other enough for that to happen.
“That makes this better,” she muttered.
Before I could question anything else, a little girl came out of the door, her eyes downcast. The little girl, about three or so, had deep bags underneath her eyes, and hair the color of the deepest red that I’d ever seen.
“M…”
At hearing the first sound, Ariya spun on her heels, scooped the little girl up in her arms, and took her inside.
Confused at her words, and sudden departure, I walked to the truck and got in, thinking for the life of me that I wished I knew that particular back story.
Ariya had always been an odd girl to me, and always would be.
That’d been partially why I couldn’t find any common ground with her.
Everything that I liked, she loathed.
Slamming the door to the truck, I belted my buckle in place and headed off to my second appointment for the day—my parole officer.
***
Four hours later, I was knee deep in mud that felt like I was stepping in warm shit.
It smelled like shit, too.
“Why the hell would you drive in here?” I muttered. “Sometimes it’s good to use common sense.”
Baylor looked at me like I had a screw loose.
“It wasn’t mud when I drove on it, dumbass,” he shot back. “And that fucking man over there is the dumb one. Who the hell would think that they can drive on fucking water?”
I didn’t have an answer to that. Not a single one.
Hooking the last of the chains in place, I slugged through the knee-deep mud to the back of the truck, pressed the button for the winch to start pulling forward, and hoped that this would work.
We were in luck. It did.
Ten minutes later, I was calling in to dispatch and relaying my location.
“I’m not going to be back until I can get a shower,” I told dispatch. “And lunch.”
“10-4.”
Instead of driving all the way home, I drove to the gas station to get some chicken, and nearly ran straight into Hennessey the moment I opened the door.
“Jesus, you scared the shit out of me,” she declared, placing one hand over her heart.
I grinned. “Just openin’ the door, darlin’.”
She rolled her eyes and stepped to the side, but instead of taking her order, I made one of my own.
“You might as well come out so I don’t accidentally brush up against you.” I gestured to my clothes.
She blinked. “How the hell…”
I snorted. “Baylor tried to pull someone out, and in the process, got his own truck stuck. I had to go get him out, and this was the result.”
“I hope you got paid enough for towing them,” she mentioned.
I nodded. “He got charged for two tows.”
She snorted out a laugh and stepped outside.
“Wow, it’s even worse from the back,” she mentioned once she was behind me.
I laughed and walked inside without another word.
When I came back out, it was to find her leaning against her car, watching me.
She was snacking on a chicken taquito, a lovely fried morsel that I would forever love due to its deliciousness, and obviously waiting for me to come out.
“You mind?” I gestured to the hood where she was leaning.
She shook her head and gestured with her taquito.
“Help yourself,” she said. “Car’s already pretty dirty.”
It was.
“You should wash it,” I teased.
She snorted.
“I would if we weren’t supposed to get two weeks of rain,” she explained. “Starting tomorrow, we’re supposed to have at least a fifty percent chance of rain every single day.”
I grimaced.
Rain meant work. Work meant I’d never get to work on the house.
Wonderful.
The house would never get done at this point.
“Why the long face?” she asked, taking a drink from her cup.
The way she hovered over the straw had my dick stirring in my pants.
It was the familiar voice calling my name; however, that had that deflating in seconds.
“Tate!”
I looked toward the sound of the voice, and found my smile growing.
“Rosemary!” I grinned and stood up from my lean against Hennessy’s car, fully facing the woman.
Rosemary was Ariya’s sister. She was the one good thing that Ariya had, yet continued to treat like utter shit.
“I didn’t know you were back!” she cried out. “How the hell are you?”
I shrugged. “Doing good I guess. Workin
g. Seeing Ms. Hanes here.”
Rosemary’s eyes went from me to Hennessy, who was still leaning against her car, munching on her lunch.
“Hennessy!”
Hennessy grinned at Rosemary.
“I didn’t know if you’d recognize me,” Hennessy offered a huge smile. “You’re looking well.”
Rosemary looked down at her body.
She was in tight black yoga pants, a black t-shirt that had a suspicious white stain on it that resembled baby puke, and tennis shoes.
“I had to run to the store for chocolate milk,” she held up the bag. “My daughter doesn’t function well without her daily dose of chocolate.”
“If I remember correctly, neither does her mother,” I teased.
Rosemary grinned for a few seconds, then that grin faded. “Have you spoken with Ariya yet?”
I nodded. “Had dinner with her a few days ago. Saw her at the pediatrician’s office this morning. That your little girl with all that red hair?”
Rosemary’s face went ashen.
“Uhhh, no.” She smiled. “I gotta go. It was good seeing you, though.”
With that, she practically ran toward her car that was parked behind Hennessy’s.
She jumped in, slammed the door, and backed out all within a few short seconds.
“Well, that wasn’t weird at all,” Hennessy drawled. “One mention of her sister and she’s out.”
I shrugged. “Rosemary and Ariya go together like a vagina and herpes.”
Hennessy gagged on her taquito—her third if my count was right—and stared at me in horror. “That’s just wrong.”
I shrugged.
“The two of them have hated each other since they were old enough to realize that they had the same mom but different dads. Seriously the two of them couldn’t hate each other more if they tried,” I expounded. “It’s amazing what good genes will do for a person.”
“You’re saying that Ariya has bad genes?” she questioned, licking her fingers.
One at a time.
Slowly.
Shit!
I shifted my stance, trying to alleviate the bulge that I knew I wasn’t hiding very well, and nodded.
“Not bad genes…” I hesitated. “Ariya and Rosemary’s mother was a good woman. She died of cancer when both of them were still teenagers. Each of them went to live with their respective fathers after that. One was good—Rosemary’s. The other was indifferent—Ariya’s.”
Hennessy brought her drink back up to her lips. “What happened?”
I shrugged. “The usual. He treated her like utter shit. Never any new clothes to wear. Forced her to work, and then took the money that she worked for.”
“And Rosemary?”
I smiled. “Rosemary has always been a sweet girl. Her dad had always been in the picture. Ariya, though? Rosemary’s father didn’t like Ariya. She was a bad influence on his child, and he disliked that. The moment that he got a chance to change it, Rosemary’s father took her away and made sure that Rosemary kept her nose clean. Which in turn pissed Ariya off because it was as if Rosemary was too good for her.” I sighed. “Instead of the two of them talking, Ariya just sniped at her sister, and Rosemary sniped back because Ariya was so vicious.”
Hennessy snorted.
“I could’ve deduced that.” She laughed.
There was no humor in it, though.
“What do you mean?”
“Ariya was a bully,” Hennessy explained, taking another sip of her drink before she continued. “She made my high school life a living hell. And God forbid she be in my Sunday school class at church. That sucked worse than anything.”
“What did she do to you?” I frowned.
Hennessy’s mouth quirked. “What did she not do?”
My stomach burned, and I shifted from foot to foot as I tried to figure out what I wanted to say.
“You need to calm down,” she laughed. “High school was a long time ago, and the things that she did are long over.”
Just because they’d happened a long time ago, didn’t mean that it should carry any less significance than it did.
I stopped pacing and took a seat on the bench that was underneath the awning of the gas station, and then patted the seat.
She got up from her lean against her car and walked toward me, taking a seat at my side.
“Tell me about it.”
I hadn’t realized that Ariya had been that way. Now I was curious to know what she’d done.
“Tell me.”
Hennessy lifted the drink back up to her mouth, sucked on it until there was nothing left, and then set it on the ground by our feet before she dove in.
Head first, might I add.
“When I was in middle school, the day at the party where I got dressed up and my dad told me to wait in his office?”
I nodded, remembering that vividly.
“Later that night, I was in my room—grounded mind you, and Ariya came to the door.”
I frowned.
I’d been with Ariya that day. I remembered it vaguely.
“She left to go get some dinner that day,” I said. “Brought it back almost an hour later.”
Hennessy started to laugh, but her laughter wasn’t one of an amused woman. No, this was darker, more sinister.
“She came over and told my father that I stole her clothes,” she admitted. “My father came back into my room after she’d left, and proceeded to let me know that if I ever did that again, I’d find myself kicked out of the house on my ass.”
“I thought you said that Krisney let you borrow them?” I leaned forward, resting my elbows on my knees.
“She did.”
I frowned. “Then why would she say that you stole them?”
“Because she walked by while my father was ripping me a new one in his church office, and I saw her outside. She had a smile on her face that clearly said, ‘Sucks to be you.’”
I gritted my teeth.
“Give me the rest.”
She shrugged and flipped her hair out of her eyes.
“Little things. Went out of her way to buy the last roll at school knowing that I got to lunch late my senior year since I had to have surgery. Or complaining to teachers that I was getting preferential treatment since I was on crutches. It got to the point where they no longer argued with her and stopped letting me go early. Meaning that it took me forever to get to the lunchroom, and by the time I arrived, all the pizza would be gone. When I was forced to go in the main line, she’d purposefully go up there and get another tray. Taking her time, talking to the lunch ladies, and forcing me to wait for her. Then when the bell would ring for me to return to class, I’d only have half my lunch eaten.”
That sounded like her. She was always petty when it came to fighting.
One time when we were just starting out, I’d decided to go hang out with my friends instead of her one Friday night after a baseball game.
Thinking that I hadn’t gotten to visit with Baylor in quite some time, I’d decided to do the friend thing, but Ariya had called halfway through the night saying that something was wrong with her car, and she was stranded in the middle of nowhere.
When I got there, it was to find out that there wasn’t anything wrong with her car as much as the woman driving it.
When I’d pulled in, it was to find that Ariya had ‘sprained’ her ankle, and she couldn’t press the gas to get home.
After taking her home, leaving my car on the side of the road, Ariya’s ankle had suddenly, miraculously healed. Then I’d had to walk back three miles to my car, and she’d cried when I left, making me feel like utter shit.
“Sounds like something she’d do,” I admitted. “But that doesn’t really explain why you’d hate her. Or she’d hate you, for that matter.”
“I found her sleeping with my father.”
I blinked at the sudden outburst, and turned to study her seriousness.
“When?”
She started to squirm in her seat.
“Hennessy.”
She looked down at her hands and started fiddling with her fingers. “When you were deployed that first time.”
The time that she’d broken up with me while I was a month into deployment. I guess at least she hadn’t cheated on me, precisely.
“Gross.”
At that, she burst out laughing.
“That about sums it up. Walked in to find the two of them on our couch. That was the day I decided that college out of town was going to be good for me.” She shrugged.
“And it was,” I told her. “You were a scared little mouse when I used to watch you when you were younger. When I first found out that I was going to have to see you for my anger management, I gotta admit…I was a little worried. But it turns out that you’ve really grown into your skin. It makes me happy that you’ve not fallen into that same ol’ same ol’ once you got back.”
“My father was…my father.” She shrugged.
I could also tell that she was uncomfortable with the subject, but then she surprised me.
She grinned, and was about to say something more when a truck pulled into the parking lot.
It as a familiar truck.
Bright red, flashy, with polished chrome wheels that screamed ‘clean.’
Speaking of the devil.
Reverend Hanes stepped out of the truck, his eyes locked on his daughter…and me.
He missed nothing.
Our closeness, nor our smiling faces—at least until he’d pulled in.
His eyes were on my arm that was running along the back of the bench, my fingers playing with a small strand of her hair that was near my hand.
“You’ve not been stupid, have you Henny?” the pastor asked carefully.
I wanted to smack him as I let the strand of hair I was playing with go.
I hated this man. I’d always hated him.
I hated the way he looked at my mother like she was a lowly piece of trash, and then used her when he needed something to fill the void his wife had left.
I hated when he looked at me like I was no good for his daughter, as if he knew my inner thoughts and didn’t agree with them.
Mostly, though, I hated the way he’d treated his daughter.
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