by Lili Valente
“Burgers and fries will make you a hero.” I turn in his arms and hook my wrists around his neck, pulling him down for a kiss.
There’s no point in keeping Gabe from the kids now. They’ve already met my “date” and if Gabe and I are going to be spending the summer together, they might as well get used to me having a guy visiting the house. I’ll just make sure everyone knows our new friend Gabe will only be around until August, and warn the kids not to get too attached.
It’s not the kids you have to worry about.
I ignore the voice of doom and tilt my head, moaning as Gabe deepens our kiss. I’m not going to get attached. Gabe is fun, sexy, and a much better person than I expected him to be, but I’m not like my parents or my sister. I’m not an addict. I know when to say when. I can put the bottle down when I’ve had enough and not take another drink. I’ll be able to do the same with Gabe come August.
But until then, I intend to have a summer to remember.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Gabe
And when Love speaks, the voice of all the gods
Makes heaven drowsy with the harmony. –Shakespeare
I’m more excited about bringing burgers over to Caitlin’s house than I’ve been about anything in longer than I can remember.
All day Sunday—while I indulge my parents, joining them for church and lunch afterward, before spending the afternoon compiling research on the aptly named Mr. Pitt—I can’t keep a smile from my face. Every once in a while I realize how ridiculous I’m being and logic does its best to drag me down into the gloom I’ve been inhabiting for the past few months, but the idiotic euphoria is immune to logic.
By five o’clock I’m beginning to think my mother is right: a girl is the answer to everything that ails me. Getting swept up in Caitlin won’t change the facts, but if it makes me immune to the emotional side effects of my downward spiral…
Well, isn’t that almost the same thing?
The Buddha said that humans are the result of all the things we’ve thought. The mind is everything, and what we think is what we become. If that were true in the literal sense, I’d still be back in school getting my degree, not doing my best to right a few of my father’s wrongs before I break it to Mom and Dad that I won’t be returning to the university. But maybe it’s true in a different way. Maybe it’s true in the sense that the present is all there truly is. No matter how I’m shaped by my past, or long for the future, now is all I have.
And right now, seeing Caitlin again is enough to keep a smile on my face.
I leave Darby Hill early, taking the time to drive through downtown to the south side of Giffney, where Morris Brothers and Sons and Daughters and Sons—one of the oldest restaurants in South Carolina, passed down through the Morris family for four generations—stands on the outskirts of the historic district. Morris Brothers has the best burgers I’ve ever eaten, so succulent and perfectly spiced I suspect someone in the family made a deal with the devil for the recipe.
I’m sure the kids would be fine with McDonald’s, but I want to bring Caitlin the best. I want her to have the best cheeseburger while we plot our job, and I want to take her out to celebrate someplace posh as soon as we make our first deposit to her college fund. We’ll hire a babysitter, eat an amazing dinner, go to a club and dance like no one is watching, and then spend the night at a hotel, fucking like no one is listening.
It sounds like a night made in heaven.
All day, I’ve been replaying every moment of that hour we spent on the couch. She was so beautiful—not just her lovely body, or the sexy sounds she made when I made her come—but the way she gave herself to the moment, letting go and trusting I would be there to catch her. She was every bit as wild and abandoned as I’d hoped she’d be, and she’s already so deep under my skin I’d have to perform surgery to get her out.
The girl…destroys me. Just thinking about her is enough to get me hard.
By the time I get to her house with the burgers I’m pitching my fifteenth tent of the day, and am forced to sit in the car with the air conditioning blasting for several long minutes, waiting for my cock to get the message that now isn’t the time.
But soon. Definitely soon.
Maybe even tonight, after the kids have gone to bed. We can make our plans, plot out our timeline, and then fuck on top of all the evidence of Mr. Pitt’s crime. The crime he got away with, thanks to my father, a man who feels no moral conflict about going to church in the morning, then sitting down to strategize how to keep a guilty scumbag out of prison in the afternoon.
I’m not going to become a public defender the way I planned, or get to rub my father’s nose in my contempt for the way he practices law, but I can still do something to blot the stain the Alexander family has left on this town before I leave Giffney.
And the fact that I get to do it with the beautiful girl opening her front door to wave me into the house is only going to make the summer sweeter.
“Hello, beautiful.” I cross the toy-littered lawn with burgers in hand, eyes tracking up and down Caitlin’s petite form as she leans against the doorframe.
In cut-off shorts, a blue-and-white-striped tank top, and bare feet, she’s dressed more casually than last night, but looks even more tempting. She’s sexy in a laid back way that makes me want to kiss the glistening skin at her neck, grip her ass through those faded jean shorts, and kiss each one of her moon-shaped toes where the peach polish is just starting to chip around the edges.
“No way.” She stops me with a hand in the center of my chest as I lean in to kiss her. “It’s too hot. I’m not getting within two feet of another person until the sun goes down.”
I lift a brow. “I come bearing eight pounds of meat and five orders of curly fries and I don’t even get a kiss?”
“You’ll get one,” she says, grinning up at me. “You’ll just have to wait for it.”
“I don’t like to wait.” I lean in again. This time she lets me get close enough to smell the soap and sweat mixing on her skin—a scent that makes my mouth water for a taste of her—before spinning away seconds before our lips touch.
“Come on,” she says, laughter in her voice as she disappears into the house, clearly enjoying torturing me. “We’re going to eat in the backyard. At least we’ll have a breeze out there.”
I follow her inside, where I’m assaulted by the smell of too many warm bodies occupying too small a space. The house didn’t smell bad last night—just a little sour and damp, with overtones of garlic—but today’s high was fifteen degrees warmer than yesterday’s. The first summer heat wave is kicking off with highs in the low nineties and one hundred percent humidity, ensuring my family spent the day inside Darby Hill, where central air and heat were installed forty years ago.
I can’t imagine anyone living through a South Carolina summer without air conditioning, but apparently Caitlin and her family intend to try.
“You do have air conditioning,” I say, glancing around the house, looking for a thermostat. “This house isn’t that old.”
“We have it, we just can’t afford to turn it on,” she says, kicking toys out of her path as she makes her way through the living room and into the kitchen. She snags a pitcher of tea from the fridge and sets it on the counter before beginning to fill a blue plastic tray with glasses. “Sorry for the mess. I’ve been working with Ray on a project for school and Sean and Emmie didn’t clean up the toys like I asked.”
“I couldn’t care less about the mess,” I say. “But it’s fucking miserable in here.”
She turns back to me with a falsely sympathetic look. “Oh, poor baby. Don’t worry; you won’t melt. You’re not that sweet.”
“But you are.” I grin as I reach out, snagging her ponytail and giving it a tug as I push her against the refrigerator, dropping my lips to the sweat-slick skin of her throat. “In fact, I think you’re already melting.” I kiss up her neck toward her ear, growling when she pushes me away.
“I’m serious, p
sycho,” she says with a laugh. “No body heat in my vicinity until it’s dark, and at least ten degrees cooler.”
“Turn on the air conditioning,” I say, hungry for another taste of her. “I’ll pay for it.”
She wags her finger back and forth with a smile. “None of that. I don’t want you paying for things. I want to be an empowered lady thief.”
“You’re in a good mood,” I say, loving how much more relaxed she seems today. “Impending crime agrees with you.”
“Revenge agrees with me.” She casts a glance down the hall leading toward the back of the house before turning back to me. “You won’t believe all the things I found out about Mr. Pitt today. I called my friend Jenny who works part time in the office at the junior high. At first she didn’t have much to say, but then I told her how many times I’ve been called in for meetings since Danny’s been in Pitt’s class and she starting spilling her guts. Everyone hates this guy. Everyone. I can’t believe he still has a job.”
I frown. “You shouldn’t have talked to anyone. We don’t want this woman remembering you asked questions about Pitt. Once the police start investigating, it could lead them your way.”
Caitlin shakes her head as she fetches ice from the freezer and plunks it into the glasses. “No seriously, everyone hates him, Gabe. There will be dozens of suspects, and I was careful. I never asked Jenny any direct questions, just led her around to talking about what I wanted to talk about.”
She finishes with the ice and starts grabbing silverware from a drawer overflowing with no less than a hundred mismatched utensils, a chaotic collection that would give my mother nightmares.
“Besides,” she continues, “Jenny’s a friend. She wouldn’t rat me out, even if she thought I had something to do with the robbery. Which she wouldn’t, because she knows I won’t even sneak into a movie without paying.”
I swipe sweat from my forehead, wishing I’d known I was going to be eating dinner in the seventh level of hell before I decided to wear jeans. “All right, but next time, no talking to friends, or anyone else. We keep this between you and me. If we don’t talk to anyone but each other, then we know no one will talk to the police.”
“All right. Makes sense.” She shoves a roll of napkins my way before scooping up the tray. “Speaking of you and me, the kids are pretty keyed up about me having a boyfriend. It’s crazy. I didn’t expect it to be that big of a deal, but I guess our lives are just that boring.”
“You told them I was your boyfriend?” I ask, stupidly pleased.
“Just for the summer,” she says, leading the way down the hall and through what looks like a combination play room/mud room, where trunks full of blocks and stuffed animals war for space with an overflowing coat rack next to a mountain of muddy shoes. “I told them you’re going back to college, so it’s not serious.”
“Who said I was going back to college?”
She pauses, glancing back at me. “Aren’t you?”
“Doubtful,” I say. “But I do have other unbreakable plans.”
She nods, a shadow crossing her face for a moment before she smiles even more brightly than before. “Right, so I told them it was only for the summer, but Sean and Ray are already talking about where you’re going to drive them in your fancy car, and Danny has decided you’re the Anti-Christ.”
I move ahead of her, holding the back door open. “And why’s that?”
“He says you make eye contact like a psychopath,” she says, with a shrug as she ducks under my arm. “I told him that’s the kind of eye contact I like, and to shut up and be nice, but I’m not sure he’s going to be civil. Just so you’re warned.”
I nod, glancing up to find Danny already glaring at me from the far side of the lawn, where the three Cooney boys are kicking a soccer ball while Emmie scoots through the middle of their game on a plastic train.
“Well, maybe Morris Brothers burgers will change his mind.”
“You’re kidding.” Caitlin turns to me with wide eyes, glancing from me to the bag, smile spreading as she backs across the lawn. “I thought I smelled something more delicious than Dave’s Drive In. You went for the good stuff!”
“For you? Always,” I say, enjoying the way she looks both pleased and flustered by the compliment before she turns to shout—
“Food’s here! Rinse your hands in the hose if they’re muddy and come and get it!”
Moments later, I’m surrounded by hot, grass-and-sweat scented bodies pressing in close as I set the bag of food down on the picnic table and begin divvying up the goods. Ray slips onto the seat beside me on one side, Sean on the other, while Caitlin gets Emmie settled and starts handing out cups and pouring sweet tea. Danny is the last to join the group—settling onto the edge of the opposite seat, as far from me as he can get—but his glare fades as soon as he gets a cheeseburger in his mouth. He doesn’t join the conversation or ask to come along for the ride I promise to give Sean and Ray after dinner, but he’s civil, and even laughs when Caitlin teases him about having a tape worm, saying it’s the only explanation for how he can eat three times as much as anyone else in the family and stay so skinny.
The meal takes approximately fifteen minutes—about five times faster than any meal ever eaten in the Alexander home—and then the kids are up playing again and Caitlin and I are alone at the table, surrounded by ketchup-streaked burger wrappers and a few lone fries that escaped being devoured whole.
“Thanks for bringing dinner,” she says, resting her sweating glass of sweet tea against her cheek for a moment before taking a sip.
“You’re welcome.” I watch her throat work as she drinks, wondering how she can make even sipping tea look sexy. “It was fun.”
“It was.” She grins. “You’re good with the kids.”
“You sound surprised.”
“I am, a little.” She lifts one bare, lightly freckled shoulder. “You don’t have any brothers or sisters. It’s not like you’ve had a lot of practice dealing with small people.”
“Small people are just people,” I say. “But smaller. With less bullshit to cut through to find out what they’re really about.”
“True,” she says, casting a glance in the kids’ direction before adding in a softer voice, “Speaking of bullshit, I’m supposed to have a conference with Pitt tomorrow. I don’t know how I’m going to keep from slapping him.”
“What’s the conference for?”
“Same thing they’ve been about all year—Danny’s lack of respect for his elders.” She rolls her eyes. “I mean, it’s no wonder. My mom and dad didn’t exactly instill a lot of confidence in the older generation. Danny’s other teachers have always understood that, and taken the time to work with Danny, earn his trust.” She shakes her head. “But I swear Mr. Pitt deliberately pushes Danny’s buttons. It’s like he wants to see him fail.”
“Maybe he does,” I say. “Seems like he enjoys tormenting the people he has under his thumb.”
Caitlin leans closer. “I was thinking about that today, that Pitt must have enjoyed what he did to his mother. Otherwise, why keep her alive for so many years? Why not ‘accidentally’ give her the wrong amount of medication right away?”
“I agree. If he was after the house and the inheritance, there was no reason to spend nearly a decade sliding meals through a slot in the door and emptying the pot he gave her to piss in.”
“What a fucking monster.” Caitlin’s eyes darken, and rage hardens her features, giving her beauty a cold edge that makes me want to kiss her even more. “I can’t believe he didn’t go to jail. Even if the jury was convinced the overdose was an accident, how did they excuse keeping an elderly woman with diabetes and mental problems locked in an attic for eight years just because Pitt didn’t want to pay for the kind of care she needed?”
I shrug. “Elder abuse is notoriously hard to prove. Almost no one gets convicted, which is why my father took the case in the first place. Even though he knew Pitt was a murderer.”
Caitlin shake
s her head. “How does your dad sleep at night?”
“Very well,” I say, with a smile. “It’s my mother who’s addicted to sleeping pills.”
“No, seriously, Gabe,” she says. “Your dad seemed nice yesterday. Meeting him, you’d never think he was the kind of person who would defend all these horrible people.”
“I don’t know.” I grab Ray and Sean’s discarded burger wrappers and wad them into a ball before throwing them back into the bag. “I guess he’s done the mental gymnastics to make it acceptable.”
“That sounds familiar.” Caitlin sighs, eyes dropping to the graying wood of the picnic table. “I’ve been doing some mental gymnastics the past few days…”
I cover her hand with mine. “But our gymnastics are the right gymnastics.”
“Are they?” She threads her fingers through mine. “I mean, does robbing Mr. Pitt make anything better? It won’t undo what happened to his mom, or keep him from bullying his students, or send him to prison where he belongs.”
“You’re saying the punishment doesn’t fit the crime.” I nod, considering her point. “So you think we should revise our plan? Arrange to have Pitt trapped in a blazing hot room with only one tiny window to look out at the world for a month or two, give him a taste of his own medicine?”
Caitlin’s eyes flick sharply back to mine. “You’re not serious.”
“I could be,” I say. “I like the idea of hitting the guy where it hurts.”
She shakes her head as she detangles our fingers. “No, Gabe, I’m not—”
“Katydid, there you are!” a masculine voice booms from behind us, cutting Caitlin short.
As the color drains from her face, I turn to see an older man with salt and pepper hair, a nose with the same ski-slope shape as Caitlin’s—though larger, and redder—and bloodshot eyes stumbling down the back steps. His ample stomach bounces as he misjudges the distance between the final step and the ground and he staggers sharply to the left before regaining his balance. He’s wearing a stained blue tee shirt and khaki pants, paired with battered black dress shoes, and is about three spaghetti stains short of resembling the bums who gather outside my parents’ church on Wednesday mornings for free breakfast.