by L. B. Dunbar
Her eyes opened wide. Those bright red lips glistened for kissing.
“Your what?” she asked quietly.
“Never mind,” I said pushing off the desk. “Get dressed.”
I was pissed off at Abel for forcing me to leave Carrie’s. It was a hard gig, but a good way to make money as an undergrad. Fighting off the advances of old guys exhausted me, as well as creeped me out, but it wasn’t awful. I didn’t have any other skills. Dancing was what I knew. I’d volunteered at a dance studio near campus, hoping to secure a position a year ago, but it wouldn’t have paid a third of what I made at Carrie’s. She ran a respectable place, so to speak, and most of the girls were from the university. It wasn’t unheard of that female college students earned money as dancers.
I didn’t need Abel to take me home. I had my own car. I didn’t let my mother drive it. After the second DUI, and the fear of her ending her life in a car crash, I refused to let her have it. It was mine anyway. I needed it for escape. My work had been a means of escape, too, until Abel had to ruin it. He dragged me out the door, despite Jared’s interceding. Some man named Kursch seemed to throw his weight around, and Jared let Abel remove me.
In the parking lot, I shoved Abel hard off of me. I don’t think it was my strength as much as I caught him off guard, which made him stumble back.
“Get your hands off me,” I growled. “I needed that job.”
“Find another one,” he said, following me. The crunch of gravel echoed in the silence of the night. The steady drumming of a muffled beat came from Carrie’s behind us. It was my song someone else was dancing to now. My mental cash register was losing money as we argued.
“I could have made hundreds of dollars tonight, and you ruined it.” I spun to face him, without realizing he was literally behind me. I collided with his firm chest and bounced backward. Strong hands gripped my upper arms to hold me steady.
“Here,” Abel demanded, releasing me and pulling a roll of hundreds out of his pocket, waving it at me.
“I don’t want your damn money,” I yelled.
“Well, you took it before,” he huffed back at me, pulling me close to him.
We puffed at each other in the cool mountain air. Our breath mingled as the heat of our anger rolled between us. Abel gave in first. His shoulders relaxed and his grip lightened.
“You can find another job,” he said softer.
“I can’t just find another job.”
“Where do you want to work? I’ll help you get a different job.”
“It’s not that simple,” I sighed, exaggeratedly.
“Do you need something immediately? I’ll get it for you.”
“Look, quit using your gold card to save me.”
Abel released me and stepped back. His mouth opened then shut. His lips twisted as he thought.
“I’m not saying I’d pay…”
“You already did pay, as you just reminded me,” I snapped. “Why don’t we just get this over with, and you can call it what it is?”
“And what is it?” Abel demanded, anger growing again to match mine.
“Slumming it. You sleep with the poor stripper girl, who has a reputation, and you get what you paid for.”
“I…” His hands fisted at this sides. I could see a vein ripple up his long forearm. He had on one of those damn button downs again, but at least it was rolled to the elbow and untucked from his jeans. It looked kind of hot, actually. His hair stood up as he’d obviously run his fingers through it several times, as I’d seen him do often in class this week. I’d snuck looks at him, feeling his eyes drilling into me while I sat next to Thor.
“Are you taking off your clothes in there?” He choked then shook his head. “Don’t tell me. I’m not slumming it with you; so quit the shit. And I told you before, I’m not sleeping with you,” he huffed. We stood for a moment breathing fire.
“Why did you help me, Abel? Why?”
“Because you needed it,” he snapped. Anger was still present in his tone as his hand swept through his hair again. It stood up straight in the night’s air.
“And I need you,” he softened. I blinked. It shouldn’t have had any effect on me, what he said, but it rippled through my body like the mountain breeze.
“Abel, you don’t really need me,” I sighed.
“I do,” he replied, looking away from me for a moment. The night suddenly seemed very quiet.
“I’m not good with girls, and you promised to help me.”
“You did just fine the other night,” I said quietly, afraid to disrupt the silence too loudly. Abel stepped toward me. I stepped back and my back hit the side of my car. His hand reached out to brace on the roof and his body leaned in.
“Really?” he asked. “I did okay, huh?”
“Well, maybe,” I swallowed. He was in my space like he’d been on Friday. He was so close to me, I could feel his breath mixing with mine. I had the strangest thirst to kiss him. Abel had soft looking lips, and I wondered briefly what they would feel like on mine. For someone claiming innocence, he knew how to work a girl up. I’d been turned on enough Friday that I felt it between my thighs. I intended to work off the energy with Thor, after he interrupted us. Unfortunately, Thor had passed out after a failed attempt to kiss me. I gently shoved him back when he missed my lips, and the second he hit the bed, he was out.
“Maybe?” Abel teased. “Were you attracted to me?”
His innocent question startled me. I couldn’t be honest with him.
“No,” I laughed, nervously. The hurt in his eyes was instantaneous. My heart ached that I caused him pain. He had been a decent guy. He wasn’t forcing himself on me. He wasn’t taking advantage of me. I didn’t feel threatened by him. Ironically, I felt safe without really knowing him.
“Well, maybe,” I changed my answer. It was closer to the truth without being a commitment.
“And if I kissed you, would you be attracted to me then?”
I bit my lip. My mouth watered. I was attracted to Abel, when I shouldn’t be. Despite the reputation, I didn’t sleep around. I knew what I had. It was the reason I danced at Carrie’s, but I didn’t let my body be taken advantage of. I would only use it for what I wanted, and what I wanted was to avenge my brother’s death. That meant I had to stay focused. I needed Thor.
“No,” I lied. Abel’s eyes proved I’d crushed him. The blue was lighter than normal and glowed in the one light that lit the parking lot. He pressed off the car roof. Air swirled between us, and I released a breath I didn’t know I was holding after the fib.
“Go home, Elma.”
His voice had changed. His tone was hard. Something told me that my plan to reenter the bar after he left me wasn’t going to work. He was going to wait until I entered my car, left the lot, and drove away. I did just that, giving myself ten minutes, before I U-turned and returned to Carrie’s. I parked in the space I’d vacated, as it hadn’t been filled, and was marching across the dark lot when a large man blocked my way.
“Ms. Montgomery?” the man said. He was bald, with huge biceps that bulged as he crossed his arms.
“Who are you?” I asked, trying to display confidence I didn’t feel.
“I believe Mr. Callahan asked you to leave.”
“Mr. Callahan?” I questioned.
“Yes, the young man who escorted you out of the building.”
Callahan. The name was familiar. Too familiar. He couldn’t possibly be related to Cain Callahan. Cobra. It would have been ironic. Abel was too meek compared to what I’d seen of Cain. It struck me that I hadn’t caught Abel’s last name before. Surely, I must have heard it when attendance was called on the first day of class, or when he paid for my tuition, except I left before he finalized the payment. I couldn’t recall learning his last name.
“Callahan,” I said, playing coy. It was a common enough name. “Abel Callahan,” I said the name again, letting it roll over my tongue.
“Yes. He asked you to leave. I’m not about to let
you reenter. Carrie knows you’ve quit. She’ll send you two weeks’ worth of pay.”
It wasn’t going to be enough. What I counted on was the tips. What I needed was the cash. Damn Abel Callahan, and his soft looking lips, with his demands.
“Fine,” I said, stomping my foot and turning away from the door. I trudged down the wooden ramp, back to the gravel drive, to find a dark truck parked in the back of the lot, with Abel sitting in the driver’s seat.
I didn’t want to believe Cain, but he warned me she’d come back. He said a girl like her needed this gig and wouldn’t take lightly to giving it up. He gave Kursch some cash and told him to handle things. I learned that Carrie, the owner, would be sending Elma a check for two weeks’ pay, which wasn’t her customary policy. Cain had taken care of me again.
I had just gotten into my car when I saw her return to the lot. I stewed in the front seat as I watched her cross the graveled space and then return moments later equally angered. She was a tough girl. I didn’t know how to respond to her question.
“Why do you want to help me, Abel?”
If I told her the truth, she’d run. I needed her, and so far, she’d taught me a valuable lesson: harden my heart. I could get close to a girl. I could be excited by a girl, but it was better to not want her emotionally. I felt like I was learning moves. It was obvious that Elma was turned on. Something in my presence, my stance, left her breathing heavy, even if she wasn’t attracted to me directly. It had to be a physical reaction: Human Anatomy 101. That’s what I needed to learn. How could I get girls to be physically attracted to me?
The weekend passed and the rumors circulated on another Monday. There had been another underground fight and Betta had won in the second round. Gossip stirred as people wondered who Betta was. Where did he come from? Why hadn’t anyone heard of him before? Stories included that he was from an Ivy League school out East, kicked out for fighting, and now trying to make a name on the West Coast. Other rumors said he’d done some juvie time. My favorite was the one that said he was a computer enhanced human, an experiment in the Valley. Whoever he was, his name was only a murmur still.
That week in anatomy, we were assigned a lab that included dissection. Our partners were our choice for this first assignment, and I was stuck with two guys who sat in the back of class as I did. Elma wasn’t talking to me again. I took a purely scientific approach to slitting the organism and labeling the parts, while girls gagged around us at other tables. Elma looked sheet white when I stole a glance in her direction. To my surprise, she looked up at me at the same time. Her eyes almost pleaded with me to help her, but then it passed. She seemed very uncomfortable with slicing an inanimate object with her partners, which included Thor, who was making a mockery of the specimen. She looked away as quickly as she looked up, and I realized for the millionth time I couldn’t really rescue Elma. She didn’t want to be saved.
I ran into her after class when I saw her exiting the ladies room. While her partners didn’t wait for her, I stalled in the hallway when I saw her.
“Hey,” she said, still looking pale.
“Are you alright?” I asked, concerned.
“Yeah. That was a bit intense for me, but I’m over it now. I know it will only get worse.” She smiled weakly. “But I can’t drop the class, just because it makes me queasy.”
“Did you get sick?”
“No,” she said, brushing a hand through her blonde streaks. “Just dry heaves.”
“Do you have a class next?”
She shook her head.
“Let me get you some lunch.”
“Oh, I couldn’t do that,” she said, looking over my shoulder, down the empty hall. Silence stretched between us.
“He didn’t wait for you,” I bit, then twisted my lips to hold in the anger.
“I…” Her eyes shifted to mine then looked down at the floor. “I didn’t expect him to wait.”
“Come have lunch with me, friend,” I tried to tease.
She smiled weakly up at me. I bent my knees to get a better look into her blue eyes. She appeared tired.
“I can’t have lunch with you. I need to go find a new job.” Her words stung.
“It’s only lunch. Think of it as a peace offering,” I said, ignoring her jabbing tone.
“Peace offering?” she questioned, her face softening.
“An apology for the other night.”
“Oh right, for forcing me to quit my job?” she said teasingly. “Well, you do owe me for once. The least you can do is buy me lunch.”
“Want me to take you to dinner, too?” I teased in return.
“Don’t get ahead of yourself, Killer,” she laughed. “Lunch is plenty.”
La Cantina was crowded, and the weight of eyes was heavy upon us as I followed Elma with a tray of food to a back table. I could almost read people’s minds as they wondered: who was that guy with Elma Montgomery? Most of them didn’t even know my name. I was prepared to be that guy, until I heard someone question if it was Abel Callahan with her. The surprise in their tone proved their disbelief. Who would ever believe that Elma Montgomery was with Abel Callahan? Of course, we weren’t together. We were eating lunch together; as friends.
“So I’d like to apologize again about Carrie’s,” I started.
“You should,” she said, in a tone I wasn’t certain was playful.
“It’s just that seeing you up there, and knowing that creepy men were lusting after you, building fantasies of what they could do to you, wanting to touch you…”
“Okay, I got it,” she laughed, holding up a hand.
“I just couldn’t stand it,” I mumbled, running a hand through my hair.
“Abel?” she questioned, her voice low.
“Any way…” I sighed. “You said you needed the job. Why? What’s going on?”
“Well, my brother used to take care of us: my mom and I. I guess I took it for granted. When he died suddenly, we weren’t as secure as we were before. I had to be the one to take over.” She paused looking at me in question. “And that was too much shared information.”
“What happened to your brother?” I asked, ignoring her embarrassment and recalling what she’d told me in Hawaii last month. Her brother had been killed.
When she didn’t answer, I asked another question. “What about your mom?”
Elma looked nervously around us as I dipped a fry in her ketchup. She seemed hesitant to answer, and in many ways, I could relate. I didn’t like to talk about my brother or mother either.
“It’s okay. You don’t have to tell me,” I said, pushing the fry into my mouth. Elma stared at me and then a smile grew. She started to giggle.
“What?” I asked, pinching my eyebrows.
“You have ketchup…” She motioned with her fingers over her lips. I wiped at my own roughly.
“Got it?”
“Nope. Here.” She stood partially, leaned over the table and brushed at the corner of my mouth with her thumb. Instinctively, I turned into the pressure and captured her thumb with my teeth. Elma froze. Her eyes widened. I opened my jaw immediately.
“Sorry,” I mumbled. Her eyes remained on me as she lowered back into her seat. I had the strangest sensation of the cafeteria growing slowly silent, then roaring to life again with the chatter of conversations and the clatter of silverware. I coughed to cover my mistake.
“I’ve gotta go,” Elma muttered. She stood abruptly and gathered her bag. “Thanks for lunch, Abel.”
When Abel bit my thumb, I thought I’d lose it right there at the table. He was annoying, always trying to save me, and yet the sensation of my finger in his warm mouth caught me off guard. Hooked and lured, something unfamiliar rippled through me, so intensely, I couldn’t move. If he had asked me to get naked on the table, I would have ripped off my own clothes. He had a strange effect on me.
I noticed it that night at Thor’s apartment, and then again, at Carrie’s. Despite my anger at losing my job, I was convinced he was going to
kiss me when he pressed me against my car. My heart hammered in anticipation, and my brain reasoned it was going to happen. He wouldn’t be the first guy to kiss me in a parking lot, but he was the first guy who had me excited and left me hanging. I was caught then released, like a boy playing with his first catch.
I didn’t have time to further contemplate Abel when I arrived home to find my mother crying. Again. I heard her sobs as I opened the front door. The space was so small; we could hear the neighbors on occasion.
“Momma,” I called softly, as I entered her room to find her seated on the floor next to her bed. Her head was hung; her blonde hair limp and dirty.
“Momma?” I questioned softly, kneeling before her. When I placed a hand on her knees, she flinched. Her head shot up. The tender welt beneath her eye was the reason for her tears.
“Momma!” I shrieked. She stared at me, as the tears fell harder. Her hands came up to cover her face.
“Momma,” I repeated, as if it was the only word I knew. I gently tugged back her hands. “What happened?” I breathed.
“It was my fault. I said something I shouldn’t have said.” Her voice was ragged and she hiccupped as she tried to calm the sobbing.
“That’s no excuse,” I commanded. “Who was it?”
“No one you know,” she sighed, looking away ashamed. I had to give her credit. At least she was embarrassed by her behavior, but I didn’t understand her. When we had it all, she was so selective. She flirted, but was more of a tease. I’d watch her saunter in tight dresses and sidle up to men with a laugh, but I’d never seen her follow through. She was rather against men except for Montana. Bitter over my father’s exit when we were young, she seemed to swear off the opposite gender. It baffled me that she appeared to be attracted to the same type of man as my father had been. It was still no excuse.
“I need to get you some ice,” I said, standing, but her cool hand wrapped around my wrist.
“No,” she whispered. “Don’t leave me, yet.”
My heart broke. My mother and I had been close once. She wasn’t much of a parent. We were more like friends. At times, I needed her to be the adult, but then again, we had Montana. He was in charge. He provided for us. The responsibility fell to me once he was gone. I didn’t intend to be cold toward her, but if I had to be in charge that included setting limits on my attentiveness.