by Strong, Mimi
“You know this area well?”
“I might.”
“How? Did you grow up around here? In a la-dee-da mansion like that?” I pointed up at a house perched on the hill behind the shops. The house next to it was a glass box, but this house had a circular column with a peaked roof, like a turret on a castle.
“I did.”
“Is your family rich or something?”
Grinning, he said, “Yes, we're very rich with dysfunction.”
I gazed up at the beautiful houses again. “Must be nice to look out over the ocean.”
“Where'd you grow up?”
“Here and there. Mostly in the country.” It was my usual, vague bullshit answer, but he gave me this look that said he didn't buy it. “Ever been to North Carolina?”
“Can't say I have.”
“I spent some of my time there, but we moved around a lot.”
“Why's that? For your husband's job?”
The wedding band was tight on my sweaty finger. “Mm-hmm,” I lied. The lying didn't seem so bad when there weren't any actual words.
We had ducked down the side street and some people were coming out of the ice cream shop. The man coming out held the door for us, and he seemed to cower, shrinking away from Sawyer, with his eyes wide open and his knuckles white around his cone. The man's wife scurried past us and grabbed her husband's elbow to drag him away.
I glowered after them. “What the hell?”
“Guess I look like trouble,” Sawyer said.
“That was unreal. The guy acted like you were going to punch him.” As I looked at Sawyer, I saw a flicker of what the strangers had seen. His eyes had a hungry look in broad daylight, and his hair wasn't ponytail-long, but it wasn't cut short and conservative either. I'd made some assumptions about him because of the subject matter of his tattoos—seaweed and an octopus didn't seem that scary to me, not compared to demonic faces and tattoos designed to intimidate people. Sawyer's tattoos were artistic and beautiful, not threatening—or at least they were to me.
The tiny Asian woman who stood behind the ice cream counter glanced warily over at the cash register. Was she shitting me? Did we look like thieves? I shook my head in disgust at the small-mindedness of people. They want everyone to be equal, so long as they look the same and the women wear push-up underwire bras and try to look like magazine covers.
Sawyer didn't let her suspicion ruin the moment. He grinned at the woman. “Pam, right? I used to come here every day when I was only this tall.” He held his hand one foot above the counter top.
She squinted, then her eyes widened in relaxed recognition. “I know you! How you been? Who is this?” She looked over at me.
“This is my friend, Aubrey.” He fumbled in the pockets of his jeans and pulled out some folded bills. “What's your favorite flavor? You should let Pam guess. She's really good.”
Pam waved a hand at him. “No, I don't do that anymore. People, they don't like.”
“Pam's a psychic,” he said, eyes wide and serious.
She got a mischievous grin that made her look a decade younger. “Chocolate chip mint,” she said.
“Sure. Give me a double scoop of that.” She wasn't that far off, but it was one of the more popular flavors, after chocolate and vanilla. My real favorite was strawberry, but mint sounded nice.
She scooped the green ball onto a cone and topped it with a pink ball of strawberry, to my surprise.
“This one is memory,” she said, and she made Sawyer a cone of chocolate and coconut.
He insisted on paying, even though I got my wallet out of my purse and tried to physically push him away from the cash register. The guy was like a chunk of granite, impossible to move or intimidate.
We walked out and back down to the boardwalk, where I felt like a walking advertisement for ice cream. People stared at us and our cones like we had something special they could never have. They probably assumed we were on a date, just two store-robbers taking the day off from our crime spree.
I was pretty quiet along the walk, partially distracted by the psychic ice cream encounter. The more I thought about it, the more obvious the answer became. She must have been watching my face as she moved her hands over the different tubs of ice cream. She read my expression, like Sawyer had done with the sketch book, stopping on the frog drawing that made my eyes light up.
Was I so readable, so transparent? I didn't like that one bit.
Sawyer pointed to a bench, and we took a seat facing the ocean. The sun was maybe an hour from setting, and the clouds were tinged with orange already. Seabirds squawked at each other over the sound of waves washing over the rocks. The water looked inviting, but I knew it would be cold. Some blue-lipped kids in their bathing suits were nearby, daring each other to go in further.
“Dares,” Sawyer said, apropos of nothing.
I replied, “A shitty way to trick people into doing things.”
“You see everything as a battle of wills, don't you?”
I'd finished my cone and was twisting and folding the paper wrapper between my fingers. “If it's not other people, it's yourself, isn't it? You have to fight the urge to hit the snooze button, and that's how the day starts off. Then it's one battle after another until you drag yourself into bed, even though you just got your second wind and you want to stay up late reading while the rest of the world is quiet, and you can hear yourself think.”
He leaned back, stretching his arms out along the back of the bench, then folding the left one in so it wasn't behind me.
“I think of the alarm clock going off as an opportunity,” he said. “Don't hit that snooze button. Make every minute count.” He pumped the air with a closed fist. “Rah, rah, rah.”
Blinking into the bright ocean view, I said, “Speaking of time ...”
He jumped up and offered me his hand. “That's right. I've been avoiding it, but we should go look into the abyss. The abyss being the piece of garbage I'm trying to fool people into thinking is art.”
I stood without taking his hand, and we walked back to the bike.
The helmet seemed even smaller this time, triggering the claustrophobia again as I pulled it down over my ears. This time, I fastened the strap without pinching my chin fat.
The temperature had cooled, and as I got on the back and wrapped my arms around Sawyer's lean, muscled torso, I was grateful for the body heat.
We looped back the way we'd come, over the overpass and back toward the bar, passing it on our way. A few minutes later, he pulled into the driveway of a house that wasn't more than a dozen blocks from where I lived with Bell.
This old house wasn't the same as the one where the guys having the party had invited us to join them the week before, but it could have been that house's sister.
The porch was crooked and looked like it was trying to run away from the main house, which was old and sad, easily the least desirable house on the street. Its mismatched upper windows made the house look like it had a black eye.
I followed Sawyer up the porch stairs, careful to step on the right side—not the left—as he warned. A skinny red-haired guy was napping on a sofa on the porch, covered in a bleached-out patchwork blanket.
Sawyer pushed open the unlocked front door, saying, “Nothing inside to steal, so no need to lock up.”
I nodded in agreement as I tried to come up with an excuse not to step inside. My uncle knew I was with Sawyer, and he'd basically vouched for him, but should I be there? I wasn't afraid for my safety, but I still didn't want to go in. I liked Sawyer a lot more before that moment of seeing where he lived, back when he was just a cute guy trying to rescue me.
“It's not as bad inside,” he said, waving to invite me in.
Chapter Five
I rushed into Sawyer's house, feeling guilty for my thoughts. Who was I to judge? I'd lived in places so much worse, but now I had a decent apartment without bugs and I was getting picky?
I wandered in and tried not to breathe deeply.
The main floor was full of mismatched furniture and strewn with dirty dishes and takeout containers, but enough windows were open that it didn't smell as bad as it looked. The mess in the front room could have been cleaned up in about an hour, and the kitchen was quite tidy, probably because whoever lived there didn't cook.
The most interesting thing about the place was the pool table that sat where a dining table would normally go. The long wall beside the pool table was pocked with holes, apparently from darts. A number of the darts were stuck in the wall, centered around the round rosettes on the old-fashioned wallpaper.
Sawyer pulled a brown dustcover off the pool table. “Rent's cheap,” he said. “They're planning to tear the house down before the end of the year, so we can do whatever we like. My roommate painted his room black.” He looked down at his feet and kicked at something on the carpet. The chunk of whatever-it-was didn't budge. “I shouldn't have brought you here.”
“It's not that bad. I basically grew up in one shack after another.”
He frowned at me, tipping his head quizzically. Oh, he was so sexy when he did that. Or anything.
Scoffing, he said, “You didn't live in a shack. You're exaggerating.”
I didn't want to tell him, or at least I didn't think I did, but I opened my mouth and did. “You know how it is in the country. You have a mobile home, only it's not mobile anymore. Just a metal box that gets hotter than hell in the summer and cold in the winter. You run out of room for all the kids and uncles that come to stay, so you get some lumber and your friends in construction come by and you build yourself an add-on. No permits, because it's at the back of the trailer, where it can't be seen from the road. Then a year later, you need some more space, and you salvage some more wood and you add on to the end of the last addition. Who needs a roof when you have plenty of tarps? If the snow or water comes in, you just throw on another tarp.”
“Brutal. You grew up like that?”
I walked around the pool table until I found the balls and started racking them. “My room wasn't so bad in the winter, with the blankets over the windows and the little space heater running. Wasn't so great when the power got cut off.”
“Was that in North Carolina?”
“Thereabouts.” I rolled the pool balls back and forth within the plastic triangle, their swirling colors and stripes hypnotizing, like an old-fashioned barber's pole.
“Wanna break?”
I shook my head vehemently. “Too scary. I feel like I'm going to put the tip right through the felt.”
“So what if you do? This felt needs replacing.” He chalked a cue and balanced it pointing upright, the base in his palm. That was when I noticed how high the ceiling was, to allow him to pull off the trick. He stretched his tattooed arm toward me, offering the cue like it was a pretty flower.
“First lesson is breaking,” he said.
I took the cue and got into position with the cue ball.
“I'm not gonna put my arms around you or touch you,” he said.
“Good.” I leaned over and rested the tip between my knuckles.
“But I want to.” He rested his elbows on the edge of the table and stared intently at me. “I want to put my arms around you to get you to relax. Drop your elbow, you're way too high. If you try to shoot like that, I will be buying new felt soon.”
“Sorry.” I lowered my arm and decreased the angle of the cue so it was closer to level with the table.
“Any time now,” he said.
I balked, standing up to chalk again and wipe my hands on my jeans. My eyes kept going to the floral wallpaper with the dart holes in it, and I imagined some young housewife from days gone by picking out the paper and pasting it on the wall with love.
“Where will you go?” I asked. “When they tear down the house?”
He caught me in those moss-green eyes of his and gave me a hungry look that seared me with desire. “Why do you ask? Are you looking for a roommate?”
I flushed under the heat of his gaze. My mind flashed an image of Sawyer walking around to my side of the pool table, turning me around, and sitting me on the edge as he kissed my lips and neck. Along with the image came the imagined sensation of his lips, hot and wet on my skin. How good it would feel. How good it would be to tell him everything, and have him love me, in spite of everything.
“I only have so much chalk,” he said, startling me back into the moment.
Dammit, why did he have to look so amused by everything I did?
I blew the excess chalk off the tip and leaned down again, glancing up for a nod of approval before I took the shot.
The wood connected with the ball, hard, and the cue trembled in my hand. The balls made a satisfying crack, but fewer than half of them even moved.
“I suck.”
He grinned and corralled the balls back into the triangle-shaped ball rack. “So, do it again until you don't suck. There aren't many things in life you get a second chance to get right, but this isn't life, it's a game.” With an easy grace, he rearranged the balls and nodded for me to try again. “Put the ball a little to the left of where you had it before. And hit it… hmm… what's the word?” He scratched the dark stubble on his chin.
“Harder?”
“Ah!” His eyebrows shot up. “Yes, hit the balls harder. Good idea.”
I tried again, with more power, and was rewarded with a few more balls rolling languidly out of formation.
Again. Finally, some action.
Again. Worse.
Again. Hopeless.
Again and again, one humiliating shot after another. I tried to go home, but Sawyer blocked my exit.
Again. A spectacular break, like the kind I'd seen guys at the bar do, with balls scattering. I whooped with glee as one ball sunk into a pocket.
“Wow,” he said. “Aubrey the Goddess of Sadness and Sarcasm, smiling and making excited noises. Now I've seen everything.”
I stood proudly, one hand holding the cue, the other hand on my hip. “Now if someone bets me that I can't break, I might not lose that bet.”
“Time for me to take you home, before you tire yourself out.”
Setting the stick in the corner with the others, I said, “Don't you want me to look at that thing you're working on?”
“It's up in my bedroom.”
“And?”
His Adam's apple bobbed as he swallowed. “And you're married. I wouldn't feel right taking you up there.”
I crossed my arms. What was that feeling I was having? I wanted to go upstairs, but my desire wasn't about seeing the art. I wanted to push him the way he'd been pushing me. I wanted to do the thing he said we couldn't.
Or did I?
I bit my lip and thought through our conversation from earlier, about dares. Was he daring me to go up to his bedroom? This was all a game to him. A game of seduction.
“Fine. Maybe next time,” I said, picking up my purse and putting it on my shoulder.
“I guess I could move the art down to here.”
“Whatever,” I said, crossing over to the front door. I didn't wait for another reply as I opened the door and stepped out on the porch. The skinny guy was still sleeping on the tattered sofa on the porch.
Sawyer came out the door just as my feet touched the front walkway.
“Thanks for the lesson,” I called over my shoulder.
“Don't you want a ride home? I've got a spare helmet here, so we can both have one.”
“I'm fine. I don't live far from here!”
“What street are you on?”
“I don't know what it's called,” I said, which was a lie. We both knew it, but he was quiet as I walked away.
Chapter Six
SAWYER JONES
My friends told me not to mess around with a single mom. Well, half of them did, and the other half told me to use a condom, and make sure it was one I brought, so it didn't have holes poked in it.
I'd heard about guys getting trapped by women, but it had never actually
happened to anyone I knew. It was just stuff of legend. Stuff you talked shit about to make yourself seem cooler and more worldly than you were.
My housemate, Spanky, was the first to give approval of Aubrey. He saw her on the porch when she came by the house, even in his BC-bud-enhanced state of relaxation. After she left that day, he came into the house and said one word: “Quality.”
“I dunno, bro, she's got issues.”
“Dat ass.”
“I may have also noticed the rockin' body, but thank you for being a gentleman and not pointing that out while she was here. In fact, thank you for not even coming inside. You do an excellent impression of the stoner roommate from True Romance.”
His eyes red and eyelids uneven, he stared at me like I was a walking, talking goat, and he'd never seen a walking, talking goat before. “Dude, wait. Was that real? Was a girl in our house?”
“Yes. The quality girl with dat ass. Real.”
He nodded at the pool table. “Rack 'em.”
Spanky's real name was Arthur, but he'd earned the nickname back when we both were in school. Those days, he'd turn down offers for parties because they kept him up too late and messed with his “schedule.” He had a regular routine that consisted of pulling up a specific series of porn sites on the computer and finishing up no later than twelve-thirty, then being in bed by one.
Girls loved him because he never cheated on them. His number one loyalty was to himself.
As we played a few games that night, I thought about asking him where his money was coming from. He'd been so broke back at Christmas that he'd missed rent and had me cover. I asked him to pick up a few things for the house, and the toilet paper he provided was the giant roll kind—the type you steal from a public washroom, not the kind you buy at SuperStore.
I overlooked his petty thievery, because I think we've all done a few things we're not too proud of, but since February, he'd been flush again. It did not take a bachelor's degree to figure out the kids who visited him on the porch all hours on the weekend weren't just coming by to look at the fish tank he had listed for sale on Craigslist.