Best She Ever Had (9781617733963)

by Ellis, Shelly

  It had been a long flight, and thanks to Cynthia’s antics and their argument, he hadn’t gotten a lick of sleep while on the plane. He wouldn’t get any rest once they arrived at the hotel either because they had to immediately start looking for the kids. In short, he was exhausted and not in the mood for Cynthia’s crap right now.

  “I’m just saying that you two get along well,” she replied a little too loudly. “I mean, I wish I could call my ex at one o’clock in the morning and say ‘hey’ and have him—”

  “I didn’t call her at one o’clock in the morning to say ‘hey’!” he snarled, reaching the end of his rope. “If you’re going to eavesdrop, make sure you do it right! I called her to find a way to help track down Jared and Clarissa. It’s another tool we can use.” He shook his head in bewilderment. “I wish you would get the hell over whatever grudge you have against Vivian. It’s getting pretty old!”

  “Whatever grudge? Whatever grudge? You know damn well she insulted my mother and we got into a fistfight once! How could I not hold a grudge against her, Korey?”

  “You two were teenagers when all that happened. Not to mention that you won the fight!”

  “You’re damn right I did! No one disrespects me or my family, and I let that bitch know it!”

  From anyone else, a statement like that would have been empty bravado, but from Cynthia Gibbons it was totally the truth. That day back in 1994 she did let Vivian know she wouldn’t be disrespected—and she did it with her fists . . .

  Korey remembered that day vividly. In fact, it was how the two lovers finally got acquainted.

  He had known Cynthia Gibbons most of his life, but they were never friends. She was the aloof, almost bitchy pretty girl he had secretly lusted after, like most of the boys in town. Outside of the occasional flirting, Cynthia wouldn’t date or take any of the guys at school seriously. She played with them like a cat would a ball of yarn. She was much more interested in older men who drove nice cars, could take her out to fancy restaurants in the city, and buy her whatever her young gold-digging heart desired.

  One fall day, Korey and his boys stumbled upon Cynthia and Vivian battling it out in the school parking lot in the center of a circle of screaming and jeering girls. Vivian had a fistful of Cynthia’s hair twined around her fingers and was whaling on her with her purse, swinging the leather clutch like a billy club. But Cynthia delivered a one-two punch to Vivian’s stomach, sending her opponent careening backward. The girls landed on the cracked asphalt with a thud. That’s when Cynthia got the better of Vivian. She climbed astride Vivian like she was a Shetland pony and started pummeling her. Korey stared, slack-jawed. He had never seen a girl that fine fight so hard. He had expected someone like Cynthia to fight with fussy slaps and wild, windmill-like swings. Instead, she battled with the focused intensity of a prizefighter.

  But her victory was short-lived. Vivian’s friends started to pull at and hit Cynthia. That’s when Korey knew he had to intervene. He had no idea how the fight had started, but it was one thing for the two girls to duke it out and settle their dispute among themselves. It was another thing for all of Vivian’s friends to suddenly decide to fight Cynthia simply because their buddy was losing.

  He took a fortifying deep breath and stepped into the fray—braving the swinging purses and clawing nails—and his boys reluctantly followed. They pulled the girls apart, and Korey dragged Cynthia away, kicking and screaming.

  She was still cursing when he opened his car door and shoved her inside. They pulled off seconds later.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Cynthia shouted as they turned left and sped away from the school parking lot just as the aging security guard hobbled through the front doors onto the school’s concrete steps to see what all the ruckus was about. “I didn’t need anyone to pull me out of that! I didn’t need any help!”

  “What do you mean you didn’t need any help? You were about to get your ass whupped!” He glanced at her as he drove. “Those girls were about to jump you!”

  “I could’ve taken them!” She glared at him as she tried to finger-comb her hair back into place.

  “Yeah, right,” he muttered. “About a half dozen girls? You could’ve taken them all? Who the hell do you think you are? Bruce Lee?”

  “I could’ve done it! Damn it, if need be, I can take you too!”

  He drew to a stop and turned to face her. Her hazel eyes were blazing. Her ponytail was undone, and tufts of hair were sticking up around her head. Her shirt was askew and ripped at the collar. She looked like a deranged woman. At the sight of her, he burst into laughter.

  “What’s so funny?” she asked.

  “You! You’re so funny.” He laughed again and took off when the light turned green. “I’m trying to rescue you, and here you are threatening to kick my ass. I bet you would do it too. Wouldn’t you?”

  Her face softened. She returned to finger-combing her hair back into place. A wry smile tugged at her lips. “Probably.”

  Korey shoved his hand into his jean pocket and pulled out a wad of napkins he had taken from the school cafeteria earlier that day. “Here. Your mouth is bleeding a little.”

  She hesitated before taking it. “Thank you.” She then lowered the passenger-side visor and gazed at herself in the mirror as she wiped her face. “So where are we going anyway?”

  “Your house. I figured that’s where you’d want to go.”

  “You know where I live?”

  “Everyone knows where you live, Cindy.”

  “Really?” She cocked an eyebrow. “Am I that famous?”

  “Your family is.”

  She eyed him warily. “Oh, so you’re about to talk about my family now too, huh?”

  “No! No! It’s just . . . well . . . everyone in town knows you guys. That’s all.”

  She sucked her teeth. “Yeah, I bet they do. And I can only guess what they say about us.”

  “A lot,” he answered honestly, “but I never put much into what other people say.”

  “Is that so?”

  This time a genuine smile appeared, making his stomach clench and his palms sweat as he clutched the steering wheel.

  For a few minutes he had forgotten that he was alone in a car with Cynthia—the Cynthia Gibbons, whom he had fantasized about for years, trying his best not to ogle her in the school halls or from the back of geometry class. But now that she was smiling at him, he was unnervingly aware of her—her warmth, her smell, and that alarmingly sexy mouth of hers. He could feel a budding hard-on nudging against his jean zipper.

  Cynthia turned and flipped up the visor. “Man, I look like shit!”

  “No, you don’t. You couldn’t look like shit even if you tried,” he blurted out, then wanted to kick himself as soon as he said it. She laughed at the alarmed expression on his face, and he felt his cheeks grow warm. “I mean . . . I mean, you look—”

  “I can’t let my mama see me like this,” she continued, cutting him off. “She’d want to call the police or sue somebody. Is there anywhere else you can take me besides my house? I wanna clean myself up before I go home, and I’d prefer a place with not a lot of people,” she added. “I don’t want anyone to stare at me . . . with me looking the way I do.” She fingered her ripped shirt.

  If someone had told him that he had won a million dollars, Korey wouldn’t have been any more happy or shocked as he was at that moment. Cynthia wanted to go somewhere alone—with him?

  “Uh . . . uh, yeah,” he uttered, putting some bass in his voice, trying his best to sound smooth and casual though he was bursting at the seams on the inside. “Yeah, umm, I-I know a place.”

  He drove her to a creek near Chesterton that only the old-timers and die-hard fishermen frequented. He waited patiently on the dock as Cynthia sat in his car and fixed her hair and makeup, but even after she tidied herself, she didn’t seem ready to go home. They walked along the waterfront and talked until dusk about school, Chesterton, the football season, and what they w
anted to do after they graduated.

  For the first time, Korey realized that Cynthia wasn’t as aloof as he once thought. She was funny too, another thing that pleasantly surprised him. He had always had a crush on her, but that day he started to fall for the real Cynthia, not some untouchable girl he mooned over from afar.

  When he dropped her off at her house that night, she leaned across the seat and kissed him. She did it so quickly that he didn’t realize until after she pulled away that she had done it. He could only remember the ghostly sensation of her lips: warm and honey sweet. He watched in awe as she threw open the car door and climbed out of his mom’s beat-up Cavalier.

  “Thanks for the ride,” she said nonchalantly before slamming the door shut and racing up the slate driveway to the Gibbons mansion’s French doors.

  She didn’t look back.

  Korey drove home, not knowing what to think. He lay awake in bed later that night, replaying that day, wondering if what happened between them held any potential.

  No, he resolved before turning off his television and lights and closing his eyes. A girl like Cynthia would never be interested in him. He had been a passing amusement, and it was best for him to forget what had happened.

  By the time he arrived at school the next morning, he had prepared himself to once again be ignored by Cynthia, and she proved him right. He saw her near her locker, and she looked past him as though he were a pane of glass. He saw her in line at the cafeteria, and she continued to chatter and laugh with her sister Dawn, like he wasn’t there.

  “Told you so,” a voice in his head chided as she walked by his lunch table, completely oblivious to him.

  So when the school day ended and he walked back to his car, he was shocked to find—of all people—Cynthia leaning against his car hood, waiting for him.

  “Wanna go for another ride?” she asked with a grin.

  What was he supposed to say? No?

  He eagerly nodded and stepped forward to unlock his car doors.

  That’s how it all started . . .

  “That bitch Vivian knew she couldn’t win in a fight with me, so she got back at me the one way she knew how—by fucking you!” Cynthia screeched as she pointed at him, making the cabdriver lean over to stare at her in the rearview mirror, then slowly shake his turbaned head.

  Korey rolled his eyes. It was obvious that she hadn’t paid much attention to his suggestion of letting go of her grudge against Vivian.

  “She knew we were together! She knew you were—”

  “I don’t know how she would have known that,” he replied, deciding if Cynthia wanted an argument, then damn it, he would give her one. “How would anyone have known we were together with all the cloak-and-dagger bull you made me do! ‘No one can know we’re together, Korey! It can’t get back to my mom,’ ” he said in a high-pitched voice, mimicking her. “For seven months, I kept making up stuff and sneaking around like a criminal so no one would figure out we were a couple. It got so bad my mama thought I was on drugs! She was about to send me off to rehab until I told her about you!”

  “Well, Vivian sure as hell figured it out! She wanted you all along and she got you!”

  “And you got everything else! So what’s your point?”

  “What?” She stilled. “What does that mean?”

  What did she think he meant? If you considered how the two women’s lives had turned out, Cynthia definitely was the victor. She was wealthy and beautiful—basically a more mature version of the knockout she had been in high school. Meanwhile, the years hadn’t been as kind to Vivian. She was about sixty pounds heavier, had a lot more wrinkles, and was far from wealthy. In fact, she and her second husband were up to their eyeballs in debt thanks to Vivian’s crazy spending habits. She had even swallowed her pride and borrowed money from Korey a few times to pay overdue bills.

  “You won, Cindy. You won, all right?” he said. “You got the big house. You got the millionaire. You got everything your little heart desired. Why can’t—”

  “No, I didn’t,” she blurted out, making him frown.

  “No, you didn’t what?”

  “I didn’t get everything my heart desired,” she answered softly.

  Their eyes locked, and Korey saw longing and regret in those irises that unnerved him.

  Not possible, he told himself. There were many things he knew Cynthia was capable of, and remorse wasn’t one of them. She was probably still drunk from what she’d swallowed on the plane, and he remembered that sometimes alcohol made her maudlin and moody. She’d turn back into the old Cynthia as soon as she sobered up.

  The cab pulled to a stop in the semicircular driveway in front of their hotel. Korey broke his and Cynthia’s mutual gaze, ending the charged moment. He reached into his pocket to pull out his wallet. “When we get to the reservation desk let me do the talking, okay?”

  Her brows furrowed. “Why do you get to do—” She then snapped her mouth shut. Her nostrils flared. “Fine,” she murmured, surprising him.

  He had definitely expected an argument.

  Thank God for small favors, he thought.

  Korey handed several bills to the driver as Cynthia threw open the taxi door, stepping out of the AC and into the dry desert heat. He climbed out after her. Each had a carry-on case in their hands when they made their way to the hotel’s gold revolving doors: his was a cheap pleather case that he had picked up at JCPenney four years ago; Cynthia’s was a brown Louis Vuitton luggage bag.

  Probably given to her by one of her ex-boyfriends, he thought.

  Korey hoped he wouldn’t have to wear any of the clothes he had hastily packed. He wanted to find the kids as quickly as possible, before they had the chance to do anything stupid that could impact the rest of their lives. But time wasn’t on his side. He glanced down at his watch. It was already 10:13 p.m. Pacific time.

  Korey and Cynthia stepped through the glass revolving doors and were hit by a rippling wave of sound. They entered a maze of gift shops that sold a menagerie of shot glasses, liquor bottles, T-shirts, baseball hats, and every overpriced tchotchke one could imagine emblazoned with the words “Las Vegas” or “What Happens in Vegas . . .”

  They then passed rows upon rows of slot machines. In front of each machine was someone on a stool pulling a lever—men and women, young and old, some chain-smoking and others sipping their drinks with tiny red straws. Several had giant plastic tubs filled with coins perched beside them.

  Korey and Cynthia finally reached the opulently decorated lobby, with its three-story Corinthian columns and cheesy six-foot Roman statues. They dodged a group of rowdy drunken men who were laughing and high-fiving one another and then a bellhop who was struggling to load more than a half dozen suitcases onto a luggage cart.

  Korey walked up to the reservation desk with a smile. The petite brunette at the counter smiled back, showing the dimples in her plump cheeks.

  “Hello, sir, welcome to Pompeii Hotel and Casino! How may I help you today?” she asked warmly.

  “I’d like to get a room if you have any available.” He glanced at her name tag. “Judy.”

  “Well, if you had tried to book one last week when we had that big convention, probably not. But this week, you’ve got a good chance.” She winked. “Just let me check to confirm.” She punched a few buttons on the computer touch screen. She squinted. “I was right. You’re in luck! We have a king and a few doubles available. Can I have your name, sir?”

  He gave it to her and she nodded, inputting the information into the computer. “Looks like this is your first time as a guest at our hotel. Is this your first time in Vegas too, Mr. Walker?”

  “No, I’ve been here before . . . back in the late nineties. Came here with a group of buddies.”

  “Bachelor party?” the young woman asked, scanning the screen again.

  Cynthia grumbled behind him. He had forgotten she was there for a second. He turned to find her with her arms crossed over her chest, impatiently tapping her foot.
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br />   “Something like that,” he said, turning back to the woman at the reservation desk. “We were trying to convince him not to get married. None of us liked his girlfriend very much. We figured a weekend in Vegas at strip clubs and getting him drunk would bring him to our way of thinking.”

  The young woman giggled. “Well, that’s an interesting tactic.”

  He shrugged. “What can I say? We were twenty-something dudes. It made sense to us at the time. It didn’t work, though. They got married anyway.”

  “Really? Did you guys—”

  “Ask her about Clarissa,” Cynthia interrupted, whispering from behind him. “Ask her!”

  The young woman frowned.

  “Excuse me, Judy,” Korey said, holding up a finger. He then turned to Cynthia. “I am going to ask her,” he whispered back slowly, leaning toward her. “Calm down, woman. I told you to let me handle this.”

  “You’re not handling it! You’re shooting the breeze like you’re sitting on someone’s front porch, drinking lemonade. You’re wasting time!”

  “You ever heard the saying ‘You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar?’ ”

  “Yeah! And?”

  “Okay, then let me do this my way—with honey. Just calm the hell down.”

  Cynthia’s eyes narrowed. Her lips tightened. Korey turned back to the woman at the desk.

  “Sorry about that. You were saying?”

  The young woman laughed nervously. “I was going to ask you if you guys eventually warmed up to his wife. But that’s all right. You’re probably eager to just get to your hotel room.”

  Korey grinned. “No, I’m fine. And no, we didn’t warm up to his wife. But as it turns out, we didn’t need to. They got divorced three years later.”

  They chitchatted for a few more minutes as she finished checking him in. Korey turned on the charm, making her laugh several times, and making her blush at his bawdy humor. Meanwhile, Cynthia seemed to grow more and more annoyed. He could sense the tension emanating from her like a stink cloud. She wasn’t being very subtle with her loud sighs, which sounded more like moans, and restless foot tapping.