Our Sins

by Kimberly Blalock

  When he was in the apartment with me, it was bearable. When he was gone, it was a nightmare I would relive moments of that night over and over. Seeing Monica’s face, the gun. Oh, that gun. I can still feel it in my ribs. Poking me, threatening my very existence.

  “What are you going to do while I’m out?”

  “Go over some emails, drink a beer, and watch a game. Nothing too interesting.”

  “I won’t be gone too long, just a few hours.”

  “I’ll get the bed nice and warm for ya,” he purrs in my ear. I shudder from the tickle.

  “I love you,” I offer.

  “I love you more.”

  “Impossible.” He’s nuts.

  “That sounds like a challenge.” Definitely is.

  “If you think your man enough.” I laugh

  “I’ll show you man enough.” A chaste kiss meets my lips.

  “You sexy bitch. That man’s brought the color back to your cheeks. I love it.” She opens the door to her huge apartment pulling me into a death grip.

  White walls blind me with brilliant pops of color, mostly reds and blacks. A huge white wrap around sofa hugs the wall. White carpet adorns the floor beneath me. Small tables with bright flowers in large vases bringing more color to the room. “Come on in.” I risk a glance behind me wondering where Brent’s hiding. Well, he’s not behind me. I close the door.

  “I love your place, it’s beautiful.” My hands clasp together. I dread this. I desperately don’t want to lie to her. I focus on the pictures that cover the walls. Black and whites mostly. “Oh.” Our childhood pictures hold an entire marble table hostage, lit on either side by tall table lamps. My hand lands on the picture of Addie, Amy, and myself in our cheerleading uniforms. Addie on one side of Amy and me on the other each holding one of Amy’s legs smiling so innocently. Good times.

  I tuck a loose strand of wavy hair behind my ear.

  “Wine?” She holds a glass of red liquid in front of me. “Wish we could get those times back.” She’s not the only one.

  “Yeah.” I nod.

  She shakes her head. “Okay sit, sit. This isn’t gonna be a cry fest.”

  “I’m not sure it’s legal to drink red wine on a white sofa.” I don’t want to be responsible for the accident that’s waiting for us. Or me.

  “It’s fine.” She waves away the comment sitting kitty corner to me adjusting her blouse. “Okay the color’s back, but what’s up with the drab look? Something wrong?” Shit.

  I force a smile feigning innocence, knowing full well I’m about to lie. “Nope, totally amazing.” I’m not completely lying I suppose. I am really happy with Evan. “What’s up with you?”

  “Oh. My. God. Doll!” She takes a chaste sip setting her drink on the white table covered with several of her favorite books. My favorites as well. “My job is amazing, my apartment is amazing, my life was amazing until… Wait for it.” She just stares. I gesture with my hands for her to get to the point. “Dom is leaving for New York.” She palms her cheek.

  I remember him telling me that, but I thought he’d said she knew. “Really?” I feign ignorance sipping my wine.

  “He talked about it a while ago. His stupid bitch agent makes all kinds of promises though and most of those fall through, so I’d hoped this would, too.”

  “Isn’t this a good thing for him?”

  She sighs again. “Yeah. Great for Dominic. Fabulous for him, but shitty for me. I had a life there, Abby. Friends, an apartment, and I came back here for him. Now he decides he’s just gonna pick up and leave? What the fuck?” She slaps her legs. She’s hurting.

  Now I’m understanding her desperate girls’ time phone call. “When is he planning to leave?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t want him to go.” She drops her head leaving her golden locks tumbling.

  “Will he be gone for long?” My heart is so sad for her.

  “Yes, he’s been looking for permeant residence.”

  I tread lightly with my next question for fear of the answer. “Has he asked you to go?” I swallow hard.

  “Oh yeah, every single day.” She waves a hand following it up with a long drink from her crystal glass.

  “I’m confused. He’s leaving. Check. He’s moving there. Check. And, he’s asked you to go? Did I get all of that right?”

  “Mhmm.” She nods.

  “And? You don’t want to go?” I pry. Amy can be such a difficult bitch to deal with. She’s the best friend a girl could ever hope for. Amazing and always there. She’d give the Prada shoes directly off of her pretty pedicured feet, but she’s so dense sometimes.

  “I just settled down. Haven’t you been listening? New job, apartment? Oh God, I really love this apartment. I don’t want to leave.”

  “It’s just an apartment. I’m sure they have great places in New York, Amy. Do you love him?” I know she does.

  “This has nothing to do with love. Love isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. There’s so much more to it.”

  My eyes are saucers. If you love someone, that’s all there is. Right? Do I have this all wrong? I can barely breathe when Evan’s away. I’d move to Japan if he told me that’s where he was going. I can’t imagine what could be more important than love.

  “You’re scared to commit.” I challenge her. I’ve gotta give it to her straight.

  “Seriously, bitch?” She stands to answer her phone. “Hello? Yes, please send him up.” She sets her phone on the table reaching for her bag. “Chinese. I hope that’s okay. I ordered you extra noodles.”

  “Hell yeah, that’s okay. I’m actually starving.” I’ve been so nervous and excited at all the same time that I forgot to eat today.

  “Good cause you’re getting really thin.” No one in L.A. says that. There’s never a ‘too thin’.

  Amy opens the door retrieving the food.

  “I’m just fine.” I snatch the noodles from her tan hands with the tall glass of criticism splashing me in the face.

  “I’m just saying you’re thinner than normal and even then it’s really tiny.”

  “Why are you scared to commit to Dom?” The damn chopsticks fumble to the table.

  “It’s not that I’m scared to commit, I’m just worried I’ll pick up and move to have him meet some rock star perfect model and leave me,” she says behind her chop sticks.” Amy has a few very close friends. Other than myself she would simply consider acquaintances. She doesn’t trust easily. Her parents love her but haven’t been very supportive in her life. She doesn’t know how to get over to the thought of loss. When we were teenagers, it was Addie or myself she would go to. Addie dying changed Amy as much as it did me. She’s scared and that’s exactly why.

  “That’s kinda the same thing.” I pause offering an empathetic glance. “He loves you. I know he does. If he’s asking you to go, then he wants to be with you. He works with beautiful models every day and still he asks you to go. Not them, that’s gotta count for something, right?”

  Her chopsticks fall to her plate. “Abby…” Her head falls. My hand instantly clutches hers. “I don’t want to lose him, but I can’t give this to him right now.” She raises her head, a tear slipping away.

  “Why?” I ask with a soft whisper.

  Her stare scares the absolute shit out of me. Something deep and dark hiding behind those eyes. A shiver runs through me. “I just can’t. Not right now.”

  There’s more silence than talking through the rest of dinner. I’m usually pretty comfortable with silence. This silence, though, no. Something isn’t right. I know her. If she wanted me to know, she’d have already said. I know what it’s like to have secrets, however, so I choose not to pry.

  The rest of our night is simple, nothing heavy in topic. She fills me in on the gossip she was privy too. We just relax. The tour of her apartment is insane. The closet is almost the same size as her bedroom. One wall filled with shoes, another designer bags. The amount of clothing the girl has, all color coded, by the way, is sickly out
of control. Many countries could eat for a year with the amount of money she pays for clothing. Ridiculous.

  I glance to my phone seeing its eleven o’clock, and a sense of urgency to get home hits my gut. I’m scared she’s gonna ask questions, not even knowing why I think she would. She doesn’t know that there was a homicidal shoot out at our apartment or that we’d even moved. It literally never came up. I was so terrified to tell her for fear it would lead to more questions I let her talk about herself all night. I can’t do it. Talking about anything these days is too much. My parents are beginning to ask lots of questions, and I can’t deal with it. We’ll be dress shopping in a few days and that leaves me open to deal with everyone around.

  What do I say? I know their oblivious, but I don’t know how to lie. I’ve always been as honest of a person as I could be. “I have to go.”

  “Really? Is his leash that tight?” She laughs “Or his dick that big?” I smile at the latter question. “Well, in that case I’ll see you later.” We say our goodbyes and she follows me to the door. “Dress fitting Tuesday? You going to show up for this one?” Oh shit.

  I wrinkle my brows waving away her question. “Oh yeah,”

  “Good, I’m anxious to meet Evan’s sister. Is she as sexy as he is?”

  “She’s pretty damn hot.” I laugh.

  “Figures,” she scoffs. “Love you.” We hug again and I leave. When I reach the stairs, Brent’s there waiting for me.

  Brent drives me to the hotel in silence. Much needed silence. When I reach the suite, the door opens before my key enters the door.

  “You okay?” Evan stands before me in nothing but the sexiness God gave him.

  “I am now.” My lips part taking him all in as he reaches around me closing the door. My hand wraps in his as he walks me to the bedroom.

  “Was it that bad?” he asks, walking into the bathroom turning on the tub.

  I begin undressing, wanting nothing more than to be in that tub with him. “No, it was really good. She didn’t pry.”

  “Is she okay?” I love that he worries about my friend. So caring about others. He’s not asking because he’s nosey, but simply because he cares that she’s okay. She’s important to me and, therefore, important to him. She’s my family and now he’s taken claim to her as well.

  “Ahh, that’s a great question actually.” I hum sinking into the tub.

  I continue with the nights events and fill him in on all that happened. My back against his solid chest as his hands trace circles on my belly. He quietly listens until I’ve finished.

  “He loves her. I know that for sure. If he asked her to go, he wants her to go.”

  “Yeah.” I agree. “I’m afraid she’s making a terrible mistake by not going. I don’t expect her to up and move anytime a man ask her to, but this is Dom we’re talking about.”

  “Be supportive. Offer your friendship and she’ll make the decisions that are right for her. It’s all we can do as friends. People have to find their own way. Just let her know that you’ll be there to help her pick up the pieces.”

  “How did you get so wise?”

  “Not wise, just been that friend I guess. The one that’s needed someone like you to be there.”

  “Michael? Is he that for you?”

  “Michael. Yeah. He has seen me at my absolute worse. He never judged me and was always there to lend a hand getting my ass off of my face. There’s only a few people in this entire world I’d trust with my life and he’s one.”

  “Who are the others?” My curiosity peeking through the tips of my nerves.

  He gives a slight chuckle. “You and Natalia. That’s it, you three are all I really have.”

  “Tell me about the time you met her. She was with Marco right?” I’ve heard a few things about that time, but no one’s really filled me in on it.

  “Huh.” He sinks further into the tub with me close. “I was undercover. I wasn’t supposed to be in Brazil then. It all started with a meeting here in L.A., that’s what originally brought me to California. He was running drugs and guns. I was an undercover buyer. He didn’t trust me. They rarely do in that game. They’d shoot their mother if they thought they couldn’t be trusted.”

  “Oh my God.” I had no idea it was that dirty.

  “Yeah, it’s pretty fucked up.”

  “Was that near the time you saw me?” It has nothing to do with him meeting Nat, but I want to know.

  “No, this was about six months before. I got a call one night that Marco wanted another meeting. I was getting as much information as I could. I knew I’d be in the shit hole of it for a while. It’s difficult getting shit to stick if you don’t have the right information, plus we wanted others involved so I was given the green light to leave the country. He was solely responsible for being the largest distributor on the west coast of some of the most lethal weapons distributed. They wanted him bad.” He squeezes me.

  “I had no idea.”

  “I know. That was his game. He wrapped himself into women’s lives. Many women.” That last part stings. I hate him, but while I at one time loved him, he was nothing but a liar and cheat. That hurts if only for a second. “I met Nat on my sixth trip to Brazil. She ran his shit as his right hand. She was young and tough. No one fucked with her. She was a fearless girl with nothing to lose. She’d jump in and do what needed to be done.”

  “Sounds like our girl.”

  “Yeah, not much has changed.” His hands slides across my wet breasts. “Marco had me fly down there, said he had some new guns and wanted me to take a look. In that game, you don’t fuck with the cartel. If you were buying their weapons you bought what they told you to.” My ears are wide open, but my heart is constricted in fear for the things he endured. I imagine there’s a lot he’s leaving out.

  “I flew down there planning to go back with a shit load of guns, but Marco had me pegged. He didn’t know all my details but had a few ideas. He was convinced I wasn’t trust worthy. Anyways, he wasn’t going to ask questions, he was just going to kill me. Nat approached me at the airport. I knew something was off. She said that she had me checked out. I knew I was a dead man by the look in her eyes; only I thought she was going to be the one pulling the trigger.”

  “Did you know she was your sister then?”

  “That’s when she told me she was pretty sure that we shared the same father.”

  “Oh?” Why have I not heard this entire story before now?

  He continues, “She wasn’t positive, but from what small amount of information she had about him, she couldn’t let Marco kill me. She had no family. No one in her life except Marco.”

  “What about her mother?” I gasp in shock.

  “She’s been gone for a long time,” he whispers spreading the warm bath water across my neck. I want to hug her. I didn’t know. I had no idea how hard she’d had it. I guess I still don’t know. No wonder she’s so crazy. The things she does are on the edge of insanity.

  “Now I get it. Some of it anyway.”

  “Yeah. It was hard for her to make the decision to leave that night. We talked for a while. We bonded right away. She had an old picture of Thomas and her mother. I knew he was probably her father.”

  “So she just left?”

  “Yep. That night. I didn’t even leave the airport. I watched him from a distance after that. I worked from behind the scenes. I hated working with that scum,” He scoffs. “Hell, I hated watching him too. But.” His arms wrap around me. “Then I saw you. And that’s all she wrote.”

  “Did you watch everything we did?”

  He’s silent for a few beats. “No, but I saw you every day. I began needing to see you every day. My life was… really fucked up then, Abby. You were the only bright light around. Seeing you made me feel human again. I slowly began to feel grounded. I didn’t feel worthy of living anymore, but seeing you with him... sorta gave me purpose.” I hear a light huff around me as I pull my toes up to the edge of the tub. “Michael knew what you did to me
. He used it as a sort of leverage.

  “Leverage? What do you mean?”

  “I guess he was at his wits end with me. That’s how he pulled me out of the worst time of my life. Knowing you were alone with him, trusting him, and giving yourself to him.”

  “You were jealous?” I tease.

  “No. I was scared for you. For the first time in my life, I worried about someone other than myself.”

  I turn in the tub pressing my breasts against his stomach and resting my chin on my hands to look at him. “I was okay.” I don’t want to think about this anymore. I can hear the hurt in his voice, the cracking with each word. The hushed presence of anger crackling around us has me wanting to comfort him. Bring him back to the here and now. “I’m glad that you’re okay, now.”

  His brows wrinkle. “Abby, you silly woman. It was you that wasn’t okay.”

  “I’m okay now.” My hand slowly trails along the cords of muscle. My nipples tingle with each centimeter they travel. I watch his chest flutter from the pounding of his heart, his tan skin glistening from the water. He tucks the wet hair splayed across my cheek behind my ear, trailing his calloused fingers down my neck ever so gently.

  “Sometimes I look at you and can’t believe you’re really looking back at me.” I feel the same way. But I opt for silence rather than conversation. I’d like to continue in other ways. I want to speak to him with my body, my mouth.

  “The water is getting cold.” I slowly bring myself to a standing position running my hands along my center as I do.

  “Oh shit.” His mouth hangs. Eyes wide.

  I run my hand along the curves of my bottom turning just an inch in his direction.

  “Holy shit.”

  I step out dripping wet, hair clinging to my cheeks. Evan steps out a few breaths later. I don’t bother with the towel. I meet the door and palm my hands along the wood trim with my bottom flashing his view. When I feel him inches from my flesh, I move forward padding into the bedroom. My skin prickles with excitement knowing his hands will ravage my body at any moment.