Mrs. H nodded in concern. “Your mama said. I’ve heard it’s hard out there for your generation. And then you and your young man didn’t work out either.”
My man. I swallowed and looked down into my coffee.
It was spring in Darlington. There was still a chill in the air and the smell of recent rain. Everything was so shockingly familiar even after having been gone almost five years. I expected it all to be so different, to feel like a foreign country after all the changes I’d been through, after how I’d evolved and grown and—
I huffed out a breath. And yet the second I stepped back in town, I felt like the same little girl who’d run away all those years ago, betrayed and hurt beyond belief by the one person who I thought would always have my back—
“No, it didn’t work out,” I said, setting my coffee back down on the table harder than I’d meant to, sloshing a little over the side. I bit back a curse just in time. Mama H hated swearing, and I doubted me being a grown woman would stop her from smacking my wrist for it.
You and your young man. Her words echoed in my head. No, we hadn’t worked out. We’d been close. I’d thought Jeoffrey was the one for me, for a time. He was a wonderful man. He was kind. He was stable. He’d tried to understand me. He’d asked me to marry him.
I’d been prepared to say yes. We’d talked about our future together.
We’d get a little place together in the Bay Area. He’d continue his law degree and I’d work on my studio art. It would be a beautiful life.
Except when he popped the question, what came out of my mouth?
NO.
No, I could not marry Jeoffrey Brown from San Francisco, California.
Because I was still stuck, my heart and my soul tangled in the heavy ivy and brambles of the deep South. I wasn’t free to move forwards until I’d gone back. God how I hated it, but it was true.
I never completely understood it, but I was drawn back to this place as surely as a yoyo tied to a string. I just knew I wouldn’t have any peace until I came back. A deep thorn had embedded itself in my heart here, and I’d never be free until I cut open the original wound and worked that shit out.
Then maybe I could heal. Then maybe I could finally be whole.
Dear God, please. Please, I want to be whole. I wanted more for my life than just walking around half-formed, being unable to really love anyone else, only half able to love myself. I was so tired of being angry at everyone, angry at my mother, angry at this town, at the world. Angry at God.
“You seem… unsettled, lassie.”
I jerked my eyes up to meet Mrs. H’s concerned ones. Shit. How could I have forgotten where I was and whom I was sitting with? She was always so attuned. Nothing ever got past her.
“I’m fine,” I lied. “Just back for awhile after college. I thought I’d spend some time with Mom while I look for work. Everything’s online these days so I figured I might as well hang out with her while I apply for jobs.”
Mrs. H just nodded but didn’t look at all convinced.
“Well, I know she’s happier than a fox in a henhouse to have you back. And you’re working for Mari’s catering?”
“Yeah.”
“I know she’s happy to have you, but I’ve heard that woman does not keep light hours and expects the same of her employees.”
That was putting it nicely. Mari was a slave driver. After every event, she expected the van cleaned out, all the dishes washed, the silverware sterilized, everything done just so. To be fair, she stayed until the very end, too. But it was exhausting work.
I’d thought coming home would mean some time off to think, reflect, and maybe do a little healing. When in fact, it turned out to be non-stop work-till-I-drop manual labor. Between working with Mari and helping Mom clean out her old place and move into a smaller apartment, I went to bed exhausted every night.
It was in a nicer apartment complex, but still, it was an apartment. Always an apartment. Even after all this time, she didn’t feel financially confident enough to afford a mortgage. A lifetime of cleaning people’s toilets and for what? For what?
Mom had shared walls with neighbors her entire life. She always hated having to step quietly so she wouldn’t make too much noise and have elderly Mrs. Toomey downstairs yell at her for it. Or being woken up by the neighbors we shared a wall with who couldn’t grasp the idea of “quiet hours,” blasting music and having parties at all hours when she was exhausted after her shift.
After a life of hard work, the woman deserved a little peace and quiet. But no, that wasn’t how the world worked, was it? The men of some stupid secret Order practically lived in the huge manor while their other residences sat empty, and my mom broke her back her whole life—
Ugh, it was so infuriating. While I was away, the fury could stay at a low boil, but seeing Mom’s delight at having an apartment with an in-unit laundry and thinking it was the height of luxury just pissed me off even more. She was excited about it being easier to do her own laundry after spending all day washing and folding other people’s clothes.
I hated the way the stupid fucking world worked. It was backwards and fucked and I hated it. Mom thought it was ridiculous I refused to stay with her unless she allowed me to pay rent, but I know how hard she worked just to get the nicer apartment.
I’d always imagined that one day my art would take off, and I’d be able to buy my mom any house she wanted.
Then maybe you shouldn’t have majored in Studio Art, idiot.
Yeah. I’d been regretting it lately. I of all people knew how frivolous it was to major in something so difficult to make real money at.
To be fair, I did minor in Accounting and almost did a double major. But my funding didn’t allow for that, and I’d always been a slave to other people’s whims as far as my education was concerned. So, fuck them, I was going to get the useless degree instead of the useful money-making one.
Uh, so yeah, I might not have the goth look anymore, but I never said I’d learned quite how to manage that annoying little rebellious streak in me.
“How’s your mom, by the way?” Mama H looked at me over her cup of tea, her too observant eyes probably taking in far more than I wanted them to.
At least I could give another genuine smile. “Good. She’s really good. She loves the new apartment. Though I swear she spends more time out on that tiny little back deck than she does in the house. She just sits out there and drinks coffee, swiping at the mosquitos, and reads on her eReader any time she’s not at work.”
I was still smiling as I lifted my coffee for a sip.
“You seen Rafe since you’ve been back?”
I choked on my coffee and set the cup down so roughly even more sloshed over the side onto the table than earlier. Jesus.
I swiped at the spill with my napkin and then glared at Mama H.
She knew the R subject was off-limits. He had been ever since I was driven out of this town in the middle of my senior year. I called to talk to both my mom and Mama H regularly but never, never, never did anyone involved bring up the accursed name of Rafe Jackson. Rafe, the boy who’d broken my heart and frankly, broken me.
I finished mopping up the coffee and mumbled, “I saw him the other day.”
Never one to beat around the bush, Mrs. H asked, “How’d it go.”
I glared up at her. “How do you think it went?”
She just raised an eyebrow slightly. “I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking.”
My nostrils flared. She was really going to push this? “Fine. It went fine. I didn’t throw the tray I was holding in his face or scream or cause a scene if that’s what you’re asking.”
“That’s not what I was asking,” she said mildly. “I was wondering how it made you feel seeing him again after these years away.”
I sagged back in my chair and threw my hands up in the air. “I don’t know! I don’t know how I felt!”
Except that wasn’t true. Dear God. When I ran into Rafe at that celebratory recept
ion for the girl getting back home from the hospital, I just froze for a second. Because even though he looked different—older, more filled out—he was still Rafe.
And I was still Fallon.
And we were just us.
He’d been my best friend since I was little. I wanted to run over and hug him. I wanted him to hug me back. I wanted to cling to him and beg him to never let me go.
And then I wanted to punch him in his stupid fucking face for what he did to me. And yes, I wanted to scream at him and break things.
I wanted everything at once, and to run away, and it all hurt, and it felt good too, because any time I was in the presence of Rafe Jackson it felt better than the cold loneliness of not being in his presence and I—
“You know he’s of age now.” Mama H, already sitting close, leaned over so that her voice was right in my ear as she whispered, “He’s about to go through his Initiation for the Order.”
She pulled back and I had no clue what was on my face.
The Order.
Dear God. Rafe? Rafe was never supposed to go through the—
And then it sank in. Oh shit. Tim was gone. What the fuck, so they just moved on to the next in line? I blinked hard. Talk about the heir and the spare.
My heart squeezed in pain for Rafe. He’d always been little more than an extra, an afterthought, if even that, to his mother. She didn’t give two shits about him when he was a kid, oh no, not when she had his Shining Golden Child older brother Timothy to fawn all over.
And now for Rafe to be pushed into taking Tim’s place in the Initiation...
One night, Rafe told me what his friends talked about and this weird Initiation his older brother would have to go through as the eldest son. It seemed freaky as fuck, and I remember Rafe seeming so relieved it was nothing he’d ever have to do.
My throat went dry as it hit me all over again. Timothy was gone. Now Rafe was the eldest son. Oh Rafe. How could I want to comfort him and still want to slug him in the face all at the same time?
I swallowed again. “Is… is he okay?”
Mama H’s face softened. “Aye, the lad will do all right. Montgomery’s there to watch over him.”
I nodded. Montgomery had always been a bit stuffy but a good enough guy. He’d never been anything but nice to me, and for a Darlington Prep student, that said a lot.
As a poor kid on scholarship, most of the guys treated me like I’d been put on their campus as free, no-consequence pussy. Then they got pissy when I wouldn’t put out. Small wonder I dyed my hair black, wore goth make-up and embraced a perpetual Come-Near-Me-and-I’ll-Fuck-You-Up vibe. I was in fucking survival mode.
Rafe’s friends were the rare exception to the rule, I do remember that. And really, I’d had no idea just how bad high school could be. Rafe and Montgomery and the rest of them had probably shielded me far more than I ever knew. Even just being associated with them at all had likely been protection.
“Lass, can we take our drinks to go? Maybe you’ll take an old woman for a walk? It’d be good for these stiff joints.”
I jolted from my thoughts and gave her a look. “You know you’re a spry one, Mama H. You can’t fool me.”
She laughed, her eyes glinting as she gave me a wink. “Shhh, don’t give away my secrets. People expect less of an old woman. They forget I can still scheme.”
I tugged my purse on my shoulder and grabbed my coffee, pushing out my chair. “Okay, but where are we going?”
Mama H looked around and I saw that there were a couple pairs of eyes on us after all. Mama H kept her head high but cut her eyes to me. “Somewhere we can talk without any prying eyes or ears. It’s time you learned the truth about how me and your mama met.”
I frowned at her. “You met when she moved here.”
“Baby girl, didn’t you ever ask yourself why she ended up in Darlington? Or me, for that matter?”
I opened my mouth, ready to give an answer, before I realized I didn’t have one. Wait a second, why the hell had Mom come here? How had I never really asked more about it? I mean, Mom just always said she grew up in a broken home and she never wanted to talk about it. She always said her life started when I was born. It was sweet, even if I’d always suspected it was a cop-out.
Other than that, all I knew was that she and Mama H had become best friends while Mom was pregnant with me. Mama H had helped her find work—work cleaning Rafe’s family house.
I was bitter about it but at the same time, those years were some of the best of my life. Because I’d had Rafe.
I was five years old and was supposed to be coloring in the laundry room while Mom went and washed the upstairs toilets. But I’d gotten bored. I didn’t like being cooped up. Hated it, in fact. But our neighbor Miss Reyes hadn’t been able to watch me that day—and I was glad to escape the old lady. She smelled funny and only wanted to watch Spanish soap operas all day.
I’d been excited to come with my mom. Until I realized it meant sitting in a laundry room all day being quiet as a mouse because there was a mean dragon lady who yelled at Mommy if either of us made too much noise. I’d only been there two times before.
Yes, the laundry room did smell nice, and it was fun when Mommy let me help her fold the clothes. She said I was the bestest helper and she promised that later she’d teach me how to fold the fluffy towels.
But she wasn’t coming back downstairs, and I was bored.
I knew it was naughty, but I was a very quiet mouse, and I was hungry. Mice snuck around to get food without anyone noticing, right? So, I wasn’t technically breaking the rules, because Mommy had told me to be like a mouse.
It seemed like foolproof logic at the time.
So, eveeeeeeeeeeer so slowly, I pushed the door to the laundry room open, wincing when it squeaked, and then, quick as I could, in just my socks so I would barely make a sound, I pranced down the little hallway to where the kitchen was.
I remembered because Mommy had let me be in there with her while she cooked dinner for the dragon lady and her family one time. Only because no one was home and she was making cookies for the dragon lady’s kids, and Mommy knew how much I loved making cookies.
I knew my way to the kitchen, and I scurried on my little mouse feet. I’d climbed onto the counter and was just reaching up into the cabinet where I knew the graham crackers were stored—the name-brand kind and not the kind Mommy had at home that tasted a little like cardboard. No, these were the good kind where you could almost taste the honey. I’d just reached my little hand in the box, just like a mouse, when—
“Who’re you?” a voice demanded.
I spun around on the counter so fast I almost fell. I was terrified and my heart beat so fast. Oh no! The dragon lady was going to catch me! Mama would be so mad!
But then I saw it was just a little boy.
He wasn’t any bigger than me, so I stuck my tongue out at him. “What do you care? I’m nobody.” And then I shoved a handful of graham cracker animals into my mouth.
“Hey!” he said. “Those are mine!”
I frowned, my hand already back in the box. “Yours?” I asked, mouth full of crumbs.
He puffed out his chest. “Yeah, they’re mine. I live here. You’re the thief. You better tell me who you are or I’ll call the cops on you.”
Oh no! Mommy would really be mad if this stupid boy called the cops on me. I hadn’t meant to steal, I was just hungry. And Mommy had let me eat a few of the crackers when we’d made cookies and—
I jumped down from the counter and hurled myself at the little boy. “Take it back! Take it back. You better not call anybody or I’ll— I’ll—”
“Get off me!” he screeched, wrestling underneath me but unable to throw me off. I wasn’t an idiot. If I let him go, he’d go tell on me.
Then again, his screeching and caterwauling were starting to get mighty loud.
“Stop it!” I hissed, trying to cover his mouth with my hand. “Shut up. Stop crying!”
That stopped him.
He looked offended like I’d just hit him. “I’m not crying. Boys don’t cry.”
Well, I knew that wasn’t true. There was a boy in the apartment building who cried all the time. I always heard him through the walls. And there was that other boy, stupid Matthew, who’d been mean to me, and then I’d hit him, and he’d cried.
“Boys do so cry. I can make you cry.”
He jutted out his chin. “Cannot.”
“Can too.”
“Cannot.”
“Can too.” Then I punched him in the stomach. Not very hard. Just enough that I thought it would make him cry.
But he was right. He just stayed there on the floor and blinked at me, chin still out, blinking at me and obviously determined not to give in even though a sheen of water covered his eyes.
I thought it’d be mean to hit him again, so I moved off him and held out my hand. I respected anyone who could take one of my punches and not cry. “I’m Fallon. Wanna be friends?”
It was like I’d just offered him a plate of chocolate chip peanut butter cookies, his face lit up so big and bright. “Sure. I’m Rafe Jackson.”
I frowned. Jackson. That was the same name as the dragon lady. She was Mrs. Jackson, that was what Mommy said I was supposed to call her if I ever saw her.
But my friend Renata, who was Miss Reyes’ granddaughter—she had a bad daddy who was in jail, and she was still nice. So maybe Rafe could still be nice and be my friend even if his mom was a mean dragon lady.
So, I shook his hand and decided right there and then, “Okay, we’ll be best friends.” Then I looked him over a little closer. Actually, I’d never had any friends who were boys. So, I nodded and added, “And when we grow up, we can get married.”
He shrugged. Then we took the box of graham cracker animals outside, and he showed me all the best spots for hide and seek, which his older brother was always too busy to play with him.
God, I blinked a few times, coming out of the memory. I hadn’t thought about how Rafe and I had met in years. I pushed some hair behind my ear, again feeling that strange sense of déjà vu I’d been having ever since I’d driven into town two months ago. I didn’t like it. No, I didn’t like it one bit.
Opulent Obsession: A Dark Secret Society Romance Page 2