by Prince, DD
She swallowed hard. She was searching her brain for a reply and I saw fear in her eyes. She didn’t want to say the wrong thing but she certainly didn’t want to say Yes. For the first time the fear on her face didn’t send a thrill up my spine and through my pants. I kissed her again, kissed her in a way that could be called claiming as much as it could be called kissing and she responded with a little moan into my mouth, and then her hands came up and her fingers wove into my hair and it felt like she was really in the kiss and in the moment with me.
But despite how convincing she was, she had to still be just acting and I was trying my damnedest to not let it piss me off and ruin this moment. But, it nagged at me. For her, this was just self-preservation. I pulled away and looked at her accusingly.
Tia
Until he said, “Marry me” he was Ice Cream Parlor Hottie. Somehow I’d managed to convince myself of that and it had made things not so difficult, other than a few awkward moments. I thought I was doing okay and I did start to forget who he really was there for a bit. But then when he looked at me with that scary hunger in his eyes, he was suddenly the guy that had slapped me and scared me and tied me up, who’d threatened me and everyone I loved.
Thankfully he’d broken the awkwardness when I didn’t answer his proposal, if you could call it a proposal, since he more demanded than asked when he said marry me. He broke it by kissing me again. The way he kissed me…wow. I’d gone weak in the knees. How could he make me feel like that one minute and fill me with hate a moment later? Then, he glared at me for a second like I’d done something wrong and then we were walking hand in hand back toward the car and I wasn’t sure what would happen when we got back to his house. He was walking too fast and I got a stitch in my side.
He waited, looking broody, while I washed the sand off my feet in a small fountain near the parking lot and then walked on the hot pavement to the car. He tossed my shoes into the back seat and got in the car and started it.
He was so quiet all the way back to his house that I didn’t know what I was in for. I just kept seeing his jaw muscles flexing as he drove. My heart was racing. The suspense was freaking me out. When he pulled the car into his driveway and got out, I didn’t know whether or not to sit there and wait or get out. I reached for my shoes and then looked at him as he slammed his door.
“What, you want chivalry now?” he quirked his eyebrows up at me. I opened my mouth but nothing came out. He started to laugh. I cracked a smile, embarrassed, and then got out of the car and followed him into the house. I wasn’t sure if the laugh was cynical or if he was just teasing me. I was having trouble getting a read on him.
“What happened to you?” Sarah, standing in the front hall, looked at me like I was something the cat had dragged in. Tommy was arming the house alarm.
“Wrestling on the beach with a golden retriever puppy,” I said and shrugged. I caught my reflection in a mirror on the wall in the foyer. My hair was windblown and I was barefoot without an ounce of lipstick remaining on my mouth and my eye makeup was a little bit raccoonish, “Oh, I’m a mess!”
She smiled, looking surprised and pleased.
“No, you’re beautiful. You can punch the clock, Sarah.” Tommy said, “I don’t need anything else tonight. Where’s Earl?”
“He’s out back. I’ll tell him you’re in,” she was smiling at him, a sort of goofy grin.
“Alright. I don’t need to see him; I just wanted to know if it was him on patrol. Lock the door on your way through the kitchen.”
“Alright. And yes, until midnight, then Marco relieves him,” her smile was still big.
“Alright,” He looked at her strangely.
Patrol. There were men here, guarding. Were they doing more than making sure I wasn’t escaping? I’d seen enough mafia movies to know that most mafia families considered themselves under threat from some enemy or another most of the time.
“Let’s go,” he said to me and took my hand, then we headed up the stairs leaving her standing there still smiling goofily.
Following him up to the master bedroom felt ominous. No sooner had I shut the door behind myself than he’d pinned me against it. He wasn’t touching me with his hands as both palms were flat against the door but his hips were against me and I was stuck. He was breathing heavily, looking down at me. I looked up into his eyes and swallowed hard. It seemed like an eternity passed before he finally spoke.
“So?” he breathed. He threw his suit jacket on the floor and then undid the silver chain around his neck and tucked it into his pants pocket. Then he undid the buttons of the dress shirt and shook it off, then held it in his hand. He did all this while continuing to pin me with his hips. I felt his erection against my stomach.
I took a deep breath. I was torn between wanting to stare at his beautifully sculpted naked upper body and looking away due to the darkening look in his eyes. Obviously our little date was over and now he was back to being himself. Ice Cream Parlor hottie was long gone, if he’d ever even been there at all.
“Think you passed tonight?”
I regarded him for a second, trying to read his eyes. They were smoldering with something. Was it passion? Was it anger? Was it both? Whatever it was, I didn’t like it.
“I …” I started to answer but was lost for words.
“You’re a damn fine actress,” he said, shaking his head, and then he caressed my cheek with just a graze of the back of his hand. The touch was gentle but the look on his face --- it wasn’t. I could feel heat coming off his body and I felt lightheaded. I didn’t say anything.
“Aren’t you the perfect little liar?” he looked upset. Oh no.
“How am I a liar; I wasn’t lying,” I whispered.
He looked at me in disbelief. His face looked on the verge of turning from upset to a sneer and a sneer couldn’t possibly bode well for me.
“I was pretending,” I said quickly, feeling like I was in very dangerous territory.
“What’s the difference?” he frowned at me, “There’s no difference.”
“You told me to behave a certain way and I did. What did I do wrong?” I was trying to not sound snarky. I was trying to not provoke him.
“Nothing. You were perfect.” He looked at me with sourness.
Tommy
Why was I so pissed off?
Because if this girl could, on a dime, play me like this, make it feel that real, I was in serious fucking trouble. She’d already dinged my armor somehow. She was looking up at me with huge eyes and a trembling lip asking what she’d done wrong and truthfully, I didn’t know how to answer her because she’d done just what I’d told her to do. She’d done a masterful job of acting like she wanted to be with me. I felt this guilt sweep through me. I didn’t fucking like it. I pushed it away.
“Do you really want to know what the difference is?” she asked me.
“Yeah, why don’t you enlighten me?”
I needed a fucking drink.
Tia
“I pretended you were the guy from the ice cream parlor,” I said quickly.
He looked at me weirdly for a second, and then it started to dawn on him, I think.
I continued, “When you came into the ice cream parlor, when you flirted with me, I fell into total crush mode. I thought, wow Tia, imagine if this gorgeous man, not a boy, a man, took you on a date? What would that be like? I imagined what I wanted it to be like. A nice restaurant instead of fast food. All dressed up. Romantic. I thought about you for days. You were on my mind right up until I graduated. When I met you for the second time, you shattered that image, that fantasy. Shattered it. Tonight, it felt like my life was on the line and I couldn’t lie, couldn’t pretend to like you, not after everything that’s happened. So,” I took a deep breath, “I tried to rewind things. I pretended you were him, the guy I first fantasized about, how I’d thought you might be.” I swallowed and then continued in barely more than a whisper, “and the date was kind of like I’d imagined and you kind of were like that,
too.”
His expression dropped. He was two inches from my face and he just stared at me. He stared at me for the longest time. I didn’t look away. I just leaned against the door. I finally spoke,
“Tommy, please don’t hurt me tonight.” It came out in a flurry of words, almost like two words, his name and then the rest.
He dropped the shirt on the floor and slowly backed away from me, palms up, like I might shoot, then he was at the bar, pouring whiskey in a glass and then he drank it straight in one gulp and slammed the glass on the bar. I flinched but stayed put. He poured another few inches in the glass and downed that, too. Then he was staring at me and I couldn’t get a read on him. Finally, he slammed the glass down again and strode over to me.
Here we go. I felt sick to my stomach. I felt like I was gonna throw up.
“Go to bed, Tia. Your reward for this evening’s exemplary behavior is that you don’t have to sleep with me tonight. Excuse me.”
Startled, I stepped away from the door and he left. I stood, gob smacked, for a moment, then I walked over to the bar, and poured a bit of whiskey into a glass and I downed it. It burned like a sonofabitch. I got ready for bed, washing the remnants of my ruined make-up off and putting on his dress shirt from the floor and then I tossed and turned almost all night.
I thought about Cal and Rose, I thought about the Carusos’ apartment, thought about my friends, about school in the fall, and most of all I pondered the enigma that was Tommy Ferrano. I didn’t know what to make of him, of the events of the evening. I laid there, lost in thought, torn between stressing about my future and remembering the way that kiss on the beach at sunset felt. Wearing his shirt with his scent on it felt so intimate; it was almost like he was beside me and that scent was Ice Cream Parlor Hottie to me. Not the gangster, the abusive jerk, the guy who’d kissed me like I’d never been kissed in my life, who’d smiled at me, who’d laughed at the puppy, held my hand while we walked down the beach, carried my shoes.
I fell asleep probably just before dawn so slept late. I glanced at the small clock on Tommy’s nightstand and it was 11:30. I sat up and stretched. I got up, used the washroom, took a shower, and put on his bathrobe, which was hanging up on the back of the bathroom door. It was just the tiniest bit damp around the collar, telling me he must’ve used it today. He must’ve showered in here while I slept. It felt too intimate wearing it. I got out of it and stayed in just the towel while I brushed my teeth and then dressed in more of Sarah’s clothes and then made my way downstairs and found Sarah on a stool at the kitchen island doing something on her phone and laughing.
“Hi,” I said, hesitantly.
She waved me over and showed me a picture of a bunch of old men in speedo bathing suits with some silly caption below it. I didn’t even read what it said; I just scrunched up my nose at the image and backed away from her.
She cackled all the way to the single serve coffee maker and brewed a cup for me and then I watched her put in two full and then three quarters of a spoonful of sugar. Yep, the weaning off had begun. She stirred it and passed it to me,
“Today, I’m going grocery shopping. Anything you fancy let me know and I’ll add it to my list. Tell me what you like to eat. What do you want for breakfast today?”
“Nothing, I’m not hungry. And ummm…” I so did not want to have this conversation. It would mean I was settling in here.
“I’ll get you cereal, at least, so you have something in your stomach. I’ll get you some more clothes to wear. What do you like to eat in the mornings? What are your favorite foods? What do you like to drink?” I was about to tell her that Tommy said my belongings were downstairs so I didn’t need any more clothes but her phone rang and she picked it up, “Yes sir?” she mouthed the name Tommy at me. I backed away from her and walked through the kitchen to the dining room where there were patio doors. I took my coffee out to the patio.
A moment later she came out, “He says I should bring you grocery shopping. We’ll go after your coffee and breakfast. He had this delivered for you.” She passed me an Apple iPhone box. The shrink-wrap was loose. I put it on the table and held my lips tight together.
“What do you want to eat? I’ll make you something. At least have some cereal? Open it. There’s a message.” She disappeared into the house.
“Cereal’s fine; thanks.” There was a black iPhone and when I turned it on, there was a text message alert. I opened the text, which said it was from “T”.
“Keep this phone with you at all times in case I need to reach you. It only dials to me and won’t make any other calls. I’ll be home @10-11. Behave.”
I said ‘Whatever’ aloud then I put it down. I liked my phone. My Blackberry. I didn’t know where my Blackberry even was. Why did I have to use this phone? I wanted to throw it in the pool accidentally on purpose.
Sarah came out with a bowl of cereal for me.
“Sugar Crisp?” I asked.
She smiled, “Is that okay?”
I hadn’t had a bowl of Sugar Crisp since my Mom walked the earth. I started to bawl. Like ugly cry hard. She sat down and wrapped her arms around me and let me howl it out. Damn but it felt good to wail. I think I went on for 15 minutes until I was doing that stuttered breathing thing. She just let me. She just sat with me and patted my back and stroked my hair and let me cry it out. She was about the age my Mom would’ve been if she hadn’t died. God, I missed having a mother. Rose was amazing and I’d had some other amazing women help raise me but I really really wanted my Mom. Mom wouldn’t have let Dad sell me to the mafia. If that’s what he’d done.
By the time I let her go my cereal had gone soggy. She got me another bowl, telling me that she always kept it on hand because it was Tommy’s favorite. I told her through the last of the tears that I wouldn’t hold that against the Sugar Crisp and she laughed at me and rubbed big circles around my back with her palm. Mom used to rub my back like that.
Tommy
My phone rang, interrupting a meeting --- a meeting that was dragging on enough as it was and I didn’t need something else slowing it down. It was Sarah. I declined the call. Then I got a sinking feeling about Tia. I had seen her in my bed that morning and it’d stirred something in me that I couldn’t put my finger on. She’d been asleep in my shirt, the blankets kicked off, giving me a raging hard-on.
She’d been on my side of the bed, snuggled in to my pillow. I wondered if the only reason she stayed cuddled up against me at night instead of rolling away was because I was on her preferred side of the bed. But seeing her in my shirt just hit me hard. I had to stop myself from climbing on top of her. I got a quick shower and had left before she woke up. I was about to call back and then Sarah called again,
“Excuse me,” I said to Dare and to the three men I was sitting with, brokering a deal for a very lucrative upcoming construction project. I answered and stepped away, “What is it?”
“That girl just spent twenty five minutes crying on my shoulder like her life was over. She won’t talk, just keeps crying. What are you doing to her?”
The fuck?
I ended the call without a word. For fuck sakes. Few people in the world dared talk to me that way. Unfortunately, Sarah was one of them.
My head was barely in the rest of the meeting. Thankfully, Dare picked up the slack. By the time it was over I knew that Sarah and Tia would be out shopping. I called Earl to check in and make sure everything was okay.
Tia
Grocery shopping with a 6 foot 6 mean-looking black man and a sweet Latino woman who never shut her mouth for more than five seconds was interesting. It broke up the boredom of lying in my torture chamber (AKA his room), at least.
I was quiet, just pushed the cart while Sarah filled it and talked about recipes, about prices, about what was in season, while she asked me questions about whether or not I preferred crunchy or smooth peanut butter, about whether I liked fruit bottom or stirred yogurt. She told me what Tommy liked to eat, like I cared. But this was a diversion
, at least, from the pit of despair I’d been in.
Earl was on the phone, “Yes, Sir. No, no problems, Sir. Yes, Sir. Right, Sir. Fine, Sir. Bye, Sir.”
Fuck off and die, Sir, I thought to myself, or so I thought but I guessed I had actually muttered it aloud and Earl was staring at me with a funny little smileon his face.I tried to smile back, I definitely blushed. I was grateful I wasn’t being babysat by burly number one or burly number two or Tommy’s very intense angry brother. I guess I kind of liked Earl so far. He seemed nice. He had kind eyes. As kind and nice, I guess, as a guy can be who’s helping another guy hold me prisoner.
As my neck was coming around to face forward after smiling at him I saw my foster mother push an empty shopping cart past me. Rose! She made eye contact briefly, and then kept going. This wasn’t her neighborhood. She glanced back at me and subtly made the sign language sign for toilet.
I knew a bit of sign language because last year we’d had a deaf 16 year old girl named Shelly live with us for four months. They were four hellish months because she was a nasty piece of work that made all our lives drama-filled and me and the other girls threw a little “Ding Dong the witch is dead” party with chanting and everything when she was relocated.
Rose wasn’t happy about our celebration at the time, giving us a lecture about being patient and trying to be helpful and turning the other cheek, yada yada, but that girl had stolen something or another (clothes, money, books) from every one of us, had spread lies about Bethany at school and online, and she was just really unpleasant. Anyway, I knew a few signs because of that. I waited until we turned another corner and then tried to be nonchalant, “Is there a public washroom in this store?” I asked Sarah, careful not to look at Earl.
She pointed behind us, “Yeah, back by the customer service desk.”
“Okay, I’ll meet you in ice cream in 5?”
She smiled at me, “You want ice cream?”
I smiled back and nodded. “Be right back.”