“You’re some silly old woman who hasn’t realized she’s old!”
“Well maybe if you read some of those books you would’ve had more fun in bed!”
Josie slammed on the brakes and the girls screamed, throwing their arms out to stop from flying out of the captain’s chairs in the back. “Stop it! Now I’m driving away and we’re going to the movies.”
She stomped on the gas pedal, throwing them back into their seats. It was like she had the kids all over again, except these two sounded like a couple of cackling old hens.
“And if anyone should be giving advice it should be me,” she added breathlessly. “Between the three of us, which one has two married children and grandchildren on the way?”
Susan and Patty stiffened in their seats.
Eyeing them in the rearview mirror, “That’s right,” Josie said, her heart racing. “I didn’t think either one of you had anything to say.”
Alex was about to rap his knuckles on the door when Isa opened it.
He prepared himself to know once and for all if he was a father. He didn’t want the first thing Isa saw on his face to be disappointment.
“It’s pink,” she said simply, holding out the test.
His hand shook as he reached for it and took the plastic stick. Sure enough, two pink lines stared right back at him.
“What are you thinking?” she asked. “Say something.”
He didn’t know what to say. He didn’t know how to describe how he felt. It was like ice-cold water rushed through his veins and left a tingling wake. Alex had always imagined that if he’d ever become a father he’d feel a joy too large for his body. But he wasn’t even sure if what he felt was fear.
“Do you want to keep this?” he asked, holding up the plastic stick.
Her eyes were huge and she mutely shook her head. He tossed it aside and gathered her in his arms, holding her tight against him. Tears smarted his eyes and he felt her face crumpling against his chest and her eyes wet his shirt.
“Isa,” he whispered into her hair. “Isa, don’t be scared.” Even though he was cold with shock, he couldn’t bear that she was.
“Baby, here,” he pulled her away and tilted up her chin. “No, no more.” Gently he kissed her, taking his time as he soaked in her fear and her doubt until she began kissing him back.
“Unh,” he groaned, breaking the kiss and pressing her tight against him again. She left shy kisses against his neck and her hands traveled over his back and dipped into the waist of his pants.
He picked her up, hiking her legs around his waist and carried her into her bedroom. As if she were a delicate treasure he laid her on the bed and with his kisses pushed her onto her back, letting his hands explore the velvety skin of her waist.
“Are you sure?” he asked, unbuttoning her blouse.
He wanted to be warm again. He wanted to forget for just a moment that their lives had just changed forever and nothing would be the same again. He wanted to chase away the haunted, desperate gleam in her eyes.
But she still didn’t answer his question and he paused, wondering if he was doing the exact wrong thing to do. Her hands came up and she pulled her bra down for him, inviting him to take more. “You’re so beautiful,” he said against one breast before he licked it. Her legs spread open for him and he settled into the nest of heat radiating through her jeans.
Isa lifted her hips, teasing him. “Come inside me,” she said. “I want to feel you.”
His tongue stopped dancing over her nipple and he lifted up on his elbows. “We don’t have any—” he stopped himself.
She knew he slipped but it brought back all the darkness that suffocated her.
“Sorry,” he apologized, closing her blouse up. “We probably should talk about this and…”
Isa didn’t want to talk because that meant facing the reality that she’d made the same mistake she swore she’d never make again. She pushed her elbows back so she could sit up. “I want to see you going inside me,” she heard herself say.
Alex’s mouth dropped open. She cowered back, knowing he was going to pull away and pretend he hadn’t heard her. “The sun is setting so we better hurry,” he said thickly.
They didn’t speak as they whipped their clothes off, letting them fly off every which way. She crawled towards the center of the bed, touching herself without embarrassment as he drank in the sight of her.
On his knees, he stopped her hand and parted her for him. She watched his face as he entered her, alert and tense with purpose. When he rooted himself, she looked down and saw them joined together. Tears of a different sort stung her eyes.
“Do you like that?” he asked, nudging down for a kiss.
She linked her legs behind him, opening her mouth to receive his tongue, which he thrust in rhythm with her hips.
For the first time with Alex she made love to him with hope in her heart. Hope that he wouldn’t leave her. Hope that he wouldn’t stay for the wrong reasons. That was all she could do for now—hope.
28
When Alex pulled up to the giant Craftsman in Newport Beach, two men rolled sod on the ground. With the gray sky and the mist in the air, the tinted windows reflected Alex’s grim expression as he took the steps up the wide porch.
It would only be temporary. He needed something, anything to pay the bills until he found a permanent gig. One step at a time, he kept telling himself after he left Isa to go lie in his own bed and stare up at the ceiling all night.
He found Daryl barking into a cell phone in a kitchen that was the size of Isa’s apartment. Alex laid his hand on the cold, impenetrable granite counter and waited.
Daryl turned and then did a double take when he saw him standing on the other side of the island. “Get back to me no later than eleven-thirty,” Daryl demanded, and then flipped the phone shut in his meaty hand. “Hey, how’s it going, man?”
“All right. Have a minute?”
“Not really. Project in Laguna Beach got all screwed up by the frickin’ neighbors. So what’s up?”
Alex swallowed like he’d just taken a bite of moldy cheese. “Is that job still open?”
“Things didn’t work out, huh?”
“It’s been real slow.”
“I’ve got someone in there now. He’s doing an okay job.” He hefted his pants and then came around the island. “Sorry things didn’t work out.”
There had been a time when Alex could name his price. But that time was over. His parents raised him to believe that a father provided. “Do you have room for another guy?”
Daryl chomped on his gum, studying Alex through pale blue eyes that didn’t blink. “If you can take over the Laguna job and get those assholes back online, you have a job.”
“I might have another job for you,” Alex offered, hoping to up his pay. “Up near Montebello. A little four-plex needs new pipes, electrical, and some other work.”
“You offering to partner up?”
“You specialize in homes, I specialize in commercial. We could do pretty good.”
Daryl hacked his two-pack-a-day habit in his fist. “I only work independent.”
This wouldn’t last forever, Alex told himself. “You got a deal. What’s down in Laguna Beach?”
“Hey mom,” Andrew yelled. “Mom!”
Isa realized she’d been reading the same sentence in her novel for the duration of a sitcom bleating from the TV.
“Stop yelling,” she snapped.
Andrew pressed his lips together. “Dad is on the phone and wants to know if he can pick me up from school on Thursday.”
The phone rang? Isa sat back in her chair, her butt and back sore. The whole house could’ve been on fire but she wouldn’t have noticed, having replayed that night with Alex in her head.
Pulling herself together with a deep breath, she reminded Andrew, “You have soccer practice after school.”
“I know but…”
“What?”
“He wants me to see his radio show
in Hollywood.”
“Is he on the phone now?”
Andrew nodded. Isa heard the battle drums in her head.
“We’ve discussed how I feel about this.”
“I know, but he’s asking again,” he pleaded. “Don’t be mad.”
“I’m not mad.”
“You’re mad, I can tell,” he cried.
Her son was perilously close to tears and she would be too with all the uncertainty weighing on her shoulders. “Andrew, do you want to go?”
He shook his head no. But he didn’t want to admit it to his father. She couldn’t make him do it. Even though the last person she wanted to speak to was Carlos, she still braced her hands on the table to stand up and then hobble over on numb feet.
“Carlos?”
“Hey, I was waiting for Andrew.”
“I know. You wanted to take him to the station?”
“Yeah. I thought it’d be cool.”
“Carlos, I can’t imagine that you would think I would let him go.”
“It’s not your decision,” he sneered. “Put him on the phone!”
“As his mother, yes it is.”
“Put him on the fucking phone,” he shouted.
She looked over her shoulder. Andrew stood behind one of the chairs, clutching to the back with white fingers.
“God damn it, I’ll pick him up from the school whether you want to or not—”
“If you do—” She remembered Andrew was listening and switched to Spanish. “I’ll call the cops and then I’ll call the radio station and tell them you tried to kidnap your son to go with you.”
“What?” She heard the fear in Carlos’s voice. But he always had to save face. “Did I hear you right? Did you jus—”
She hung up the phone. For good measure, she switched the phone to silent so if Carlos called back, which he wouldn’t, it wouldn’t scare Andrew.
“What did he say?” Andrew asked.
“He’s just disappointed, honey,” she said, composing her face so Andrew wouldn’t see the fury burning through her. “Can I ask why you don’t want to go?”
“Because Danny played some of it on his computer. He said mean things about you.”
Her breath was coming out in dark snorts. “Did you understand what he said?”
“Kinda. You don’t say things like that about him.”
“Andrew, there are times when I want to say mean things about your father. But I want you to know that I never would.”
He mushed his lips together and relaxed his grip on the chair.
Since she had him, Isa ventured, “Andrew, I need to know something.”
His eyes flicked up warily. “Okay.”
“Are you mad at Alex?”
He shook his head.
“Then why have you been so quiet with him? You’re not in trouble,” she hastened to add. “It’s just that you guys used to be good friends.”
Andrew stared at the rungs in the chair. “He embarrassed me.”
“When?”
“With Dad. At the game that time.”
Isa should’ve done something rather than let Alex do her job for her. And she had no idea what to say to her son to erase the tortured look on his face.
“Baby, Alex was just trying to help. You have nothing to feel embarrassed about.”
“Can I play my X-box?”
If someone could invent a device that allowed mothers to look into the minds of their eight-year-old sons, there’d be a lot fewer terrified parents in this world.
“Not until you explain why you were embarrassed.”
“I don’t know,” he pleaded, his voice straining.
Let him go, she told herself. He’d had enough for one night, and frankly, she did too.
Alex walked up to the door with the plans for a seven-million-dollar mansion in one hand, and an agreement for a salary of eleven dollars an hour. The door opened and his dad held out a beer. “Here. Thought you could use this.”
“Sorry I’m late,” Alex said, taking the bottle that his dad uncapped for him. It went down ice cold and completely tasteless.
“Nothing like liquid courage, eh?”
Alex turned to shut the door behind him, about to ask where June was. What he had to say he wanted to do in private. He took another swig.
“Do you love her?” his dad cut to the quick.
Beer seared down the wrong tube.
“She’s real pretty. And nice too,” he continued pleasantly, easing down into his green chair.
“Thanks,” Alex wheezed.
“But you didn’t answer my question.”
Coughing until he could take in a full breath, Alex cleared his throat and fell into the sofa. “Can I ask where June is?”
“Movies.”
He digested that and tried to regain normal breathing. “I do—it’s complicated.”
His dad pursed his lips, shaking his head. “Well, sometimes love comes later. You getting married?”
“We haven’t talked about that yet. But yeah, it looks like we will.” Alex should’ve called her from the road. He’d spent the entire day in the Laguna Beach city hall getting one answer from one clerk and then a completely different one from another on permits and hearings with design review.
One step at a time, he told himself.
“I don’t feel ready,” he confessed. “I can’t really even believe it.”
His dad reared back his head, dismissing Alex’s fear. “In my day, no one was ready for babies. They just happened when they happened and God knows your mom and I weren’t ready for you. But we managed not to kill you, eh?”
“That’s good to hear.”
“You’ll do fine. You got a good job and a good head on your shoulders. And from what June says about your lady, she’s a smart woman and she’s a good mama to her boy. You’re much better off than your mother and I were.”
He slapped his knee, chuckling as he bent over and then pushed himself up. “Bring her over soon,” he asked as he lumbered into the kitchen.
A good job, huh? What Alex was getting from Daryl now he used to make in bonuses. How was he going to stretch the meager scraps of his savings to take care of his dad, his sister, June, and now Isa, the baby, and Andrew? They were his responsibility when he had the least to give.
29
ROCK HARD IN THE MORNING PART III—K-Y CAT FIGHT
“You have to see this,” June said when Isa checked in at the office. Isa took a deep breath against the unexpected shock of seeing June, who was now technically her baby’s aunt. The cold shakes grabbed hold and wouldn’t let go.
June took her by the hand and dragged her into the nurse’s office. It took a whole minute for Isa to realize they were watching a live Internet feed of Rock Hard in the Morning.
“Oh no—” she started. This she absolutely could not handle.
“Come on, we’ve got to see,” June insisted, gripping her hand harder.
“How could you do this—”
“Honey, look,” Lissi, the nurse said. “None of those twits got anything on you.”
Isa was curious to see what kind of women would compete for her ex-husband. She liked to think that he was so pathetic that the only way he could get a woman to talk to him was to use his credit card number over the phone.
She peered closer to the screen and the three faces had been set in giant red hearts along the screen. Big hair, lots of makeup, and skin that was so tanned that it would be leather by the time they hit thirty.
“You ever seen women fight in K-Y before?” June asked.
“No.”
“I saw it in a movie once,” Lissi offered.
“I really could do without this,” Isa said, rubbing her temple.
“We think it will do you some good,” June said, as Lissi agreed.
“How?”
“Well, you could see the competition.”
“I’m not competing for him.”
“You know what I mean. Confront this thing and then mo
ve on with Alex,” June said.
“Who’s Alex and since when did you have a thing goin’ on?” Lissi demanded.
Isa opened her mouth and then shut it. A thing going on? Honey, did she ever.
“So which one is he?” June asked.
The camera scanned the crowd and zeroed in on Carlos.
Lissi swore under her breath and June blurted, “Good God, Isa! Honey, what were you thinking?”
Carlos wore a green tracksuit, ball cap worn sideways, and three gold chains draped in varying lengths over his bulging stomach.
“He’s gained some weight,” Lissi commented. “Screwing him must be like doing pudding.”
“We were fifteen when we met,” Isa explained. “He was thinner and a lot better dressed then.”
“I hope so,” June threatened. “Or else I’m reassessing my friendship with you.”
When Rocco told his wife about this stunt, she’d said, “You’ll make our divorce inevitable.”
It was his freakin’ job! She sure as shit didn’t mind taking the damned money from his paycheck.
He pulled in a deep breath, bringing it all back into the moment. The director said through his earpiece, “We’re a go in four, three, two…”
Rocco looked out at the crowd and then at Carlos, who stood there holding his hands clasped in front of his balls. That fool looked like they’d jumped into his stomach.
On cue Rocco leapt out of the wings, clutching the mic in a fist and drawing screams from the kids crowded into the courtyard at Hollywood and Vine.
“Yo yo yo! This is Rock Hard in the Morning and two contestants remain for that weekend at the Hard Rock Hotel in Vegas. Before we begin the K-Y cat fight in our delightful little rubber pool, I gotta ask our man Carlos, dude?” He stomped on the word and Carlos shuffled out to join him on stage.
“Yo man,” Carlos said into the mic.
“Okay brother, do you see any resemblance to your ex-wife in these girls?”
“No man,” Carlos answered. “Well, except for the uh, you know…” He cupped his hands under his man breasts.
In Between Men Page 18