by Jules Court
She straightened back up and began walking away from Danny’s apartment. Her phone chimed with an incoming text and her heart leaped in her chest. Calm down. It’s not him. But she was still disappointed when she fished it out to see it was from Priya.
She’d sent a picture. Priya and Brian were holding hands standing outside next to a giant pot. Brian’s brother Will, a firefighter, was holding an extinguisher pointed at it. Happy Thanksgiving, Priya’s text read. I’m on medical standby because the MacGregors are determined to blow themselves up deep frying a turkey.
In the picture, Priya and Brian were looking at each other and laughing, sharing a moment.
“That’s not what I want,” Erin said out loud. Who are you trying to convince?
Chapter Eight
When his door buzzer sounded, Danny wiped his hands on his apron and wondered again about what the hell he’d been thinking to offer the use of his place for, as Brian had starting calling it, Thanksgiving II: The Thanksgivinging—This Time It’s Personal. But he’d decided it was just better cooking everything in his own kitchen than trying to use Brian’s. He’d have had to bring all his knives, pots, pans and probably even plates and silverware. Brian existed on beer and takeout Chinese food, and his girlfriend wasn’t any better. From what he could tell, her body was made up of ninety-eight percent coffee.
What if it was Erin at the door? He hadn’t talked to her since she’d fled his apartment and he wasn’t sure if she was even going to show up. She was probably scared he’d try to grope her again. The worst part was he couldn’t promise that he wouldn’t. This morning he’d awoken from a dream of her so vivid, he’d been grinding his hard cock into his mattress. He couldn’t force the memory of her tongue in his mouth and her breast in his hand from his mind. It’d been so bad, he’d been forced to take matters into his own hands during his shower. He’d come so hard while imaging it was her hands on his body that his knees had buckled.
But she obviously wasn’t as attracted to him as he was to her. Otherwise, she never would have left. If it was Erin at the door, the chances of a quickie on the kitchen table while his sofrito burned were nil. It would just be awkward small talk over a bowl of mixed nuts.
He hit the button to unlock the vestibule door and then opened his front door. Moments later, Brian trooped down the hall with Priya, both of whom clutched foil-covered dishes.
“Happy Turkey and—” Brian paused and gave a pointed look at Priya’s dish. “Molded Soy Log with Stuffing Day.”
Priya gave him a teasing whack on the shoulder. “I told you it’s seitan with stuffing. It’s not even made from soy, it’s vital wheat gluten and it’s delicious.”
“Yum,” Brian said.
They exchanged a look that went on just long enough that Danny had to control the need to squirm. It was just a little too intimate for public.
“Will’s parking the car,” Brian said when he finally quit getting lost in Priya’s eyes.
Brian had invited his younger brother, Will, along with Danny’s ex-blind date, Elizabeth. Elizabeth hadn’t been able to make it, for which Danny was cowardly enough to be relieved. He already had one woman he had to apologize to today, that was if Erin actually came.
He must have pushed her too far. He’d thought she’d been feeling it with him, that overwhelming sexual need, but it was obvious he couldn’t trust his instincts. He’d spent far too many years as a bad guy. His instincts were morally questionable.
He ushered them in, took their coats, and got them settled in the living room. He then opened the wine, and put out the crudité with roasted garlic aioli and the cheese tray, which he’d made sure to balance an aged hard cheddar and a creamy Brie with a tangy herbed goat cheese, to be paired with slices of a crusty baguette. He’d already placed on the coffee table an assortment of olives and some prosciutto he’d picked up at one of the Italian markets in the North End.
“You expecting a football team, Martha Stewart?” Brian asked.
“I prefer Giada,” he said, naming his favorite Food Network host.
The door buzzed again. This time it was Will, but he wasn’t alone. “Look who I found on your steps,” he said, jerking a thumb at Erin. “She wouldn’t ring the bell.”
“I forgot which apartment was yours,” she said. She pointed her chin up like she was daring him to call her out on the lie. It was obvious she’d been suffering from second thoughts about coming here today.
Her hair was in loose waves down her back instead of yanked back in her usual bun. The memory of how that hair had felt wrapped around his fingers rose. “Come in,” Danny quickly said. “Let me take your coats.”
She handed her jacket over while avoiding eye contact.
“Wine?” he asked. “Red or white?”
“Oh, red,” she said, adding something in a low voice that sounded suspiciously like, “and keep it coming.”
“I brought beer,” Will said, brandishing the six-pack he carried. “You’re too fancy for me.”
What Will didn’t know was Danny’s fanciness was recent. Not even two years ago, he’d been drinking 40s with his “boys” and living on hot dogs and pork rinds. They’d crammed four, five, even six guys into a rat—and cockroach-infested apartment, lying on couches stained with beer and bodily fluids.
“I’ll put it in the fridge. You want a glass?”
Will plucked a bottle and handed the rest to him. “What do I look like? A Kennedy?” he asked with a smile, twisting the cap off his bottle. “I’m just looking forward to the spread. I still drool remembering that arroz con pollo you made for the firehouse last month. You definitely need to come back and make food for us again. Where’d you learn to cook like that?”
Danny shrugged. “Just picked it up along the way.”
He’d transformed into nothing but Carlos, loyal foot soldier of the Latin Kings who like to drink, get high, fuck and get in fights and then he discovered the Food Network. He’d watch show after show where the hosts waxed rhapsodically over fresh ingredients. When one of the guys would yell at him to change the fucking channel, he’d chucked a beer can at their head. Because he’d begun to remember.
He’d remembered the peppery smell of the annatto oil in the arroz con pollo his abuela made and how she’d smack his hand with her wooden spoon when he tried to snatch a bite. And the way the polvorones, those delicious buttery cookies, would crumble into powder in his mouth. How the pork she’d roast for days would fall apart on his fork when she finally deemed it ready.
The first thing he’d done when his life was his own again was buy a cookbook.
Erin clutched her wineglass and tried to nonchalantly scope out Cruz’s place. He didn’t have any personal pictures out, just some generic wall art that told her he wasn’t any better at home décor than she was. She’d been too focused on him both times she’d been here to note his decorating style.
She took a quick sip of wine as her face heated up at the memory of rushing from his place like an idiot. She’d done nothing but make an ass out of herself in front of him since the first time they’d crossed paths.
She nodded at whatever it was that Will was saying. She thought he might have been low-key flirting with her, or maybe he was just friendly. Either way, he was good-looking, with hair more auburn than aggressively red like his brother’s, and seemingly good natured and open. And he was a firefighter with the Boston Fire Department, and firefighters were hot. He was definitely who she should be going for.
She looked over at the kitchen, separated from the living room only by a counter, where Cruz was whisking gravy. Jeans and a sweater was a very good look on him—sort of a L.L. Bean catalogue model gone rogue. He had his sleeves rolled up again, showing off those damn tattoos. Her kryptonite.
As she watched, Priya approached him, nibbling on an olive. She gave him a light smack on the
arm. “So, what’s with the way you treated my friend? Not cool.”
He looked up from his gravy. But instead of looking at Priya, his eyes locked on Erin. She could almost feel his lips on hers, his body pressing her back against the wall. Under her sweater, her nipples tightened.
“It was a mistake,” he said.
“Erin, Erin.” Will waved a hand in front of her face. “You okay?”
“What? Oh, sorry.” She flushed.
“I’m normally a very good conversationalist,” Will said teasingly.
Priya was still talking to Danny, and Erin heard her say, “You better apologize to Elizabeth or I’ll give you a prostate exam with my foot.”
“She’d do that,” Brian interjected from across the room. “You don’t want to mess with her.”
They’d been talking about the way Danny had treated his date, Elizabeth, that same night Erin had slapped him and he’d kissed her in return. But he’d meant that Erin was a mistake.
Why couldn’t she be normal and just have some no-strings-attached sex? Just get him out of her system. Maybe then he wouldn’t have this power over her.
“I need some air,” she said to a confused-looking Will.
She bolted out the door, and it wasn’t until she stepped outside that she realized she hadn’t even picked up her jacket. But that was okay, because the icy air was exactly what she needed to shock herself back into sanity.
He’d tried to ignore her and focus on whisking his gravy—no one wanted lumpy gravy—and delivering some sort of explanation to Priya about why he was such a dick to her friend. But when he thought back to that night, he wasn’t thinking of Elizabeth.
He could feel Erin’s eyes burning into him, and he couldn’t help himself. He looked at her. And that’s when he understood that it was inevitable. She may have run from his apartment before, but they were two asteroids hurtling through space on a collision course. This was going to happen. The only question was: How much destruction would that collision leave in its wake?
When she bolted for the door, he didn’t immediately go after her. Instead, he turned the heat off on the burner—so much for non-lumpy gravy—and checked the turkey roasting in the oven. He gave it a few squirts with the turkey baster and closed the door. He stirred the pork filling for the pasteles simmering on the stovetop and turned the burner off.
Then he wiped his hands on a dishtowel and announced, “I need to run to the corner store. I’m out of salt.” He put the dish towel down to cover the salt sitting right there on the counter. “Be right back.”
“I can go get that for you,” Priya said.
He pulled his coat on. “I’ll do it.”
Chapter Nine
Erin’s jeans were no match for the cold stone of the front stoop, but she stayed seated anyway. She tapped the cigarette pack twice against her palm and then ever so slowly unwrapped the crinkly cellophane packaging. She freed a cigarette, held it up to her nose and inhaled before slowly, deliberately striking a match from the matchbook she’d pilfered from the convenience store.
She was so engrossed in her ritual that the opening of the front door startled her into dropping the cigarette. Cruz stood over her, looking down that long nose of his.
She fished the cigarette off the ground. “I don’t smoke,” she said nonsensically. Smoking was something girls with smudged black eyeliner and tramp stamps did. She resisted the urge to rub the base of her spine, where a tiny daisy was tattooed.
Cruz dropped down beside her. “I don’t either,” he said. “Can I have one?” She held the pack out and he pulled one out. “Non-filtered.”
“I don’t mess around,” she said. She tried not to look at his denim-clad thigh just inches from hers.
She lit a match and held it to the end of the cigarette in his mouth. He sucked in a deep lungful of smoke.
“I thought you didn’t smoke,” she said.
At first she thought he would ignore her comment, like most of her comments, but after another long drag he actually spoke. “I don’t. Carlos does.”
He slouched and performed some subtle shifting of his facial muscles so that he suddenly looked like a completely different person. He gave her a smoldering look from half-closed eyes.
“Who’s Carlos?” She struck another match with fumbling fingers and lit her cigarette.
“Someone I used to be.” He shifted back to the Daniel Cruz she knew, although she couldn’t help but wonder if she really knew anything about him at all.
She closed her eyes and pictured the file of information she’d dredged up on him earlier. When he was her adversary. Was he still her adversary?
“Carlos was your cover identity, wasn’t he?”
She waited for him to elaborate, but his mouth clamped firmly shut. Normally she would have pestered him for more information. After all, how could you learn if you didn’t ask questions? Instead, she took a drag off her cigarette, the smoke an exquisite burning in her lungs. She was oddly reluctant to break this strange peace settling between them. She’d thought he’d be angry with her. After all, she’d been giving him mixed signals left and right and had probably also given him a raging case of blue balls after their last encounter. But he was back in calm, cool and collected mode.
She shivered and he shrugged off his jacket. He draped it over her shoulders, and it may have been unintentional, but she thought he might have briefly stroked her hair.
She pulled the wool coat closer around her, snuggling into it. “Aren’t you cold?” Why aren’t you mad at me? It’s safer when we’re mad at each other.
“Haven’t you heard? We Latinos are hot-blooded.”
When he smiled, it wasn’t a wide and open one like Brian’s and Will’s smiles. His was a guarded, closed-mouth quirk of the lips, just enough to soften the harsh angles of his face. At first, she’d thought it was because he was a humorless prick, but maybe he, like her, guarded his smiles out of habit leftover from when he didn’t want anyone to see his teeth.
Teeth were always a giveaway that you didn’t belong. The middle class had straight teeth that might have a slight bit of yellowing if they had a bad coffee habit, but would never be crooked or missing or a gnarly brown. She’s spent her first few paychecks on getting hers to the point where she wouldn’t expose her origins whenever she opened her mouth, but habits died hard.
She took another puff from her cigarette and exhaled the smoke slowly. Next to her Cruz continued to smoke, seemingly untouched by the cold air. Which was good, because she wasn’t giving his jacket back.
“I’m not a very good person,” she said.
Cruz looked at her and merely quirked an eyebrow in a very Spockian way.
“I never let anyone borrow my notes in law school,” she said, suddenly wanting lay all her flaws at his feet. As if it would be some sort of protection. She listed her sins in no particular chronological order. “When my mom used to send me out for smokes, I’d buy myself candy with the change and then I would lie about it so I wouldn’t have to split it with my sister. In college, I signed up for a dating website just so I could get guys to buy me dinner. I wasn’t interested in actually going out with anyone, I just wanted to eat. In high school, I worked at a clothing store where I got commission on sales. I used to lie and tell people things looked great on them when they looked terrible. When I found out Amber DeLuca spread the rumor that I screwed two guys at the same time during Matt Sullivan’s party, I slammed her head against her locker so hard I gave her a concussion.”
“Do I look like a priest?”
He looked like another sin. She forced herself to meet his eyes. They were a rich, dark brown. A woman could lose herself in those eyes if she wasn’t careful.
She affected a playful voice. “So what terrible things have you done then? Killed a man just to watch him die?”
She’d never expected honesty in return.
Maybe it was the strange intimacy of the night. Of sitting out on the stoop sharing a secret vice with him, but she forgot they weren’t friends. She wanted to cradle his body against hers and take the pain she sensed lurking beneath that icy façade.
She dared to place a hand on his arm. His muscles were tense under her touch. “What happened?” she asked even though he wouldn’t answer.
He turned his head away from her and blew a puff of smoke. The silence stretched out between them until he surprised her by speaking. “I was in deep with the one of the tribes in the Bloodline faction of the Latin Kings. I was a rookie when I went in—not even a year in the NYPD when the gang unit recruited me. Not that it was a hard sell. I’d joined the police force to do something about the street violence and here was my chance to really make a difference.” He gave a short, bitter laugh.
His undercover work explained so many things about him, especially his taciturnity. Letting the wrong thing slip would have been a death sentence.
“They wanted me to get close to the leadership. So I stood by and watched low level drug deals, minor extortion and other petty crimes. Until I started participating.”
“Because of your cover.”
He nodded. “Every time I made a report to my handler, I got told the same thing: stand down. Sometimes they acted on my tips, but only if it didn’t interfere with the bigger picture—taking down the top. So I moved up until I made the inner circle.”
“And that’s when you saw someone get killed,” she said.
“I warned them that it was going to happen, but my superiors wanted to wait. They wanted to catch Victor Rodriguez, the main triggerman in the organization, and use it to roll him on the bigger fish. They said my tip wasn’t actionable. But what they really wanted was an eyewitness.”
“You saw an execution.”