Games of the Heart

by Kristen Ashley

  “So you’re breaking up with me because you found out a guy who turned out to be a serial killer felt me up.”

  He blinked, his chin jerking back with his blink and hesitated a moment before he said, “It’s more complicated than that.”

  “No, it isn’t,” I shot back.

  “Yes, it is,” he returned immediately and firmly.

  I suddenly leaned in and hissed, “Bullshit.” Then I took five steps to him, snatched the books out of his hand and shook them in the air at my side. “You know why Darrin had these? Because I gave them to him.”

  Mike blinked with the chin jerk again.

  “Yeah,” I snapped. “I was leaving town and was going to throw them away and Darrin thought the shit I drew in them was too pretty just to throw away so he asked if he could have them and I said sure.”

  Mike stared at me.

  I kept going.

  “I also told him about Denny, like, the night it happened. He was pissed as all hell, got a bunch of his buddies together, found Denny and messed him up.”

  Mike continued to stare at me.

  “I don’t have any demons, Mike,” I kept snapping. “Darrin took me to Father Phillip and Father Phillip took me to visit Thelma Whitehouse. She’d been attacked a few years earlier and talked at some self-help group in Indianapolis. We got together a dozen times, maybe more. She was cool. So cool, only a few of the times we talked about Denny and then I was over it so we talked about a whole load of other shit because she was into music like I was and she introduced me to pottery making. She still sends me Christmas cards and those funny emails you pass around all the time and I do the same.”

  “Dusty –” Mike started but I talked right over him, taking two steps back as I did.

  “And Beau wasn’t a psycho dick when I met him, Mike. Dicks never are dicks until they think they have their hooks in you and you can’t get away so only then do they show you the dick within. He’s handsome and he could be really sweet and he was great in bed. He just can’t wrap his head around the fact that I’m the only woman in his forty years who kicked his ass out. Yes, he’s that conceited but that’s on him, not on me. And it’s totally uncool for you to suggest that me getting felt up by a lunatic when I was in high school is the reason why I make poor choices in men. It isn’t. I don’t bring that shit on myself. I don’t search that shit out. There are just a lot of dicks out there. And them being dicks isn’t on me either. They’re just dicks. Darrin was worried about the men in my life because Darrin is my big brother. That’s what big brothers do. They worry. He was settled and happy with his family. He wanted me to have that too. It wasn’t only Rhonda he told that shit to. He told me all the time he wanted that for me.”

  “You changed,” he reminded me gently. “You became not you.”

  “Uh…yeah,” I replied. “I was a girl. I was fifteen. I got my period, my hormones were all over the place and my sister was a complete and total bitch who seemed to exist to make my life a misery and some of that time she wasn’t even around anymore because she was at college. Still, she’s smart and she was committed to the task so she found ways to do it. My parents didn’t get the music I listened to and talked to me about it constantly, certain I was going to commit suicide or some stupid shit like that. I mean, what the fuck? So I liked Nirvana and Kurt Cobain blew off his head off with a shotgun. That didn’t mean Dad had to hide his which he did. They just didn’t get me. Nobody got me. I didn’t even get me. And this was because I was fifteen, I was artistic and I wanted my life to fucking start. Not tomorrow, not in three years, yesterday. I was young, stupid and impatient. I get that now. I get that then I was a little bitch and acted like one. I’m not proud of the way I was then and I know my behavior was ludicrous. I look at pictures of me back then and cringe. But, since then, I’ve been through more phases because that’s just me. I’m a woman. We do that shit. Hell, I’ll take my grunge phase over my Shania phase. Black leather pants and all that hair? Crazy.”

  “Honey –” he began again and moved toward me but I leaned into him and snapped, “Don’t you fucking get near me,” and he stopped dead.

  I stared at him.

  Then I told him, “I’ll give you this. When Denny Lowe went on a rampage, that freaked me out. But only because I felt fortunate he didn’t snap when he was trying his thing with me. It sucked, that coming back up but it was way over, he didn’t get very far, I got away and I survived. I was even surprised he turned out to be as whacked as he was because, seriously? He was kind of charming before he got all handsy. That creeped me way the hell out but I guess they can be like that, people who are loop-di-loo in their brains. When Denny did his thing, wreaking mayhem all over The United States, Darrin and I talked about it a lot. But not because I needed him to comfort me. Because he was way more freaked about it than me thinking what could have happened to his baby sister at the hands of that madman. So it was me comforting my brother not the other way around.”

  “Sweetheart –”

  “I’m not done,” I snapped.

  He closed his mouth and held my eyes.

  I let him do that for a while then I whispered, “Thanks, Mike. It’s good to know early you’re an asshole. I’m glad to know that now before I gave my heart to you because I had one day with you and I was all set to wrap it up in a tidy bow and hand it right over. I’m glad to know you don’t want kids but I do so even if you weren’t an asshole, we’d be wrong. And I’m glad to know you know straight up you wouldn’t make a move for me seeing as it would suck to be with a guy who I spent one weekend with and got excited about the possibility that Hilligoss would be a ten minute drive away every day rather than a six month wait. I actually got excited about being home again and watching Fin and Kirb finish growing up and going to their football games on Friday nights. So it’s good to know I’m not with a man who didn’t give enough of a shit about me to consider that same thing.”

  “Dusty, give me a chance to speak,” he said softly.

  “No, you’ve said enough,” I returned immediately and then kept right on talking. “You know, I don’t know what went down with your wife or that Violet woman. What I do know is I’m not them. And I also know that twice, you jumped to conclusions about me, this time making it three. And I’ll mention that not one of those times did you actually take the time to speak to me like an adult about the shit going on in your head. So, I’ll add to things I’m glad about and that is that I don’t have to endure a lifetime or however long we might have lasted of your tests. Me proving I’m good enough for the super hot, gorgeous Mike Haines. Because frankly, that would be exhausting.”

  He didn’t speak and I noticed his face had gone blank.

  So be it. It was time for me to finish up.

  So I did.

  Speaking softly, I told him with complete honesty, “What I’m not glad about is that you showed me something amazing and then you yanked it right away from me. I’m so sick of men toying with me like that, playing games with my heart. So the last thing you get from me, Mike, is that I’m really, really not glad after caring about you and thinking the world of you for decades that you turned out to be a man like that.”

  Then I turned, tossed the fucking teenage angst bullshit journals I wrote twenty years ago on his couch and started to move through the room so I could get the fuck out of there.

  I didn’t make it and this was because Mike caught my upper arm as I tried to pass him.

  My head snapped back and I hissed, “Take your hand off me.”

  “You laid it out, Angel, and I deserved it now you give me a chance to explain.”

  “Take your hand off me.”

  He pulled me gently in front of his body and dipped his head closer to me, whispering, “Give me a chance to explain.”

  I stared up at his face.

  God, I wished he wasn’t so beautiful.

  “Take your hand off me.”

  “Honey, give me a chance –”

  I went up on my toes a
nd in his face, screamed, “Take your hand off me!”

  Then I didn’t give him the opportunity to comply. I wrenched my arm free, took two quick steps past him then whirled.

  “No more chances, Mike, this,” I pointed to the floor, “is strike three.”

  Then I ran out of his house.

  Luckily, he didn’t follow me.

  And luckily I made it home safely even though my visibility was limited due to me crying my fucking eyes out.

  * * * * *

  Saturday, 9:36 p.m.

  Mike stood in the cold on the balcony off his bedroom staring at the Holliday Farm lit up in the not so distant distance and holding his phone to his ear.

  Not surprisingly, he got voicemail.

  “Sweetheart, don’t leave without phoning me. There’s more to say. I’ll meet you wherever you want. But we need to talk, Dusty. Please, honey, don’t leave without seeing me.”

  He took the phone from his ear, hit the button to disconnect and continued to stare through the cold dark.

  Then he put the phone on the railing of the balcony, picked up the glass of bourbon also sitting on the railing, lifted it and threw it back.

  Then he put the glass to the railing and trained his eyes back on the farm.

  “Fuck, I’m such a fucking dick,” he whispered.

  Then he grabbed his phone and the glass, turned around and walked back into his house to get more bourbon.

  * * * * *

  Tuesday, 9:49 a.m.

  I got on the plane carrying a white bakery box filled with fresh Hilligoss donuts for Jerra and Hunter.

  I’d turned in my rental by myself.

  I didn’t look back after I got through security.

  And after the plane leveled out, I couldn’t help but think I couldn’t wait to be home.

  Chapter Six

  Wounded Bird

  With her hands carrying the handles of a hamper filled with folded, clean clothes, Clarisse walked through the door at the top of the stairs that led from the basement to the living room. When she did, she saw No stretched out on the couch watching TV, his hand in a bag of microwave popcorn.

  His eyes came to her, dropped down to the clothes she was carrying, he grinned his teasing grin and she knew he was about to say something that was going to tick her off.

  “Penance or are you workin’ off the allowance you owe Dad?”

  She stopped and stared at her brother.

  It wasn’t either.

  Something was wrong with Dad. She didn’t know what it was but whatever it was made him not right in a way Clarisse didn’t like. Since they came home from Mom’s last Sunday, he’d seemed sad or mad. She didn’t know which but it felt weirdly like a combination of both. What was weirder was that he didn’t seem mad at someone, he just seemed mad. And Clarisse thought it seemed almost like it was at himself.

  Clarisse didn’t like it when her Dad was mad at her. What she did like was that when he got mad, he said it right away, explained it, doled out punishment and they moved on. This was unlike her Mom who could sit on being ticked about something for months. Clarisse figured she could do it even for years. Then she’d suddenly explode when it was least expected and it was never pretty. She didn’t only do that with Clarisse and No. When they were together, she did it to their Dad all the time.

  So if their Dad was mad at one of them, he would say. And he wasn’t saying. And since Clarisse couldn’t talk to him about whatever was bothering him, she was doing the next best thing.

  She was helping out.

  On Monday, her Dad took a case that meant overtime. This meant for the last three days he didn’t get home before nine. Once they were in bed when he got home and she only knew he got home because he came in and kissed her temple like he always did when he got home way late.

  And with Dad working so hard and being upset, someone had to look after things.

  On this thought, her stare at her brother became a glare and she suggested acidly, “You could help out.”

  His brows flew up. “With what?”

  “It’s your turn to vacuum this week,” she reminded him.

  “So, I’ll do it on Saturday.”

  “You should do it now so it’ll be done when Dad gets home. And the dishwasher needs to be unloaded. I ran it when I got home from school.”

  No studied her and she knew why. Usually they both had to be reminded to do their chores and sometimes they had to be reminded more than once. And also, neither of them did anything extra unless they were told. Like running the dishwasher.

  “What’s your gig?” he finally asked, his eyes flicking back to the hamper before again coming to her face. “It’s not your week to do the laundry. It’s Dad’s.”

  “Well, if you haven’t noticed, I have. Something is up with Dad.”

  His eyes grew more alert and she knew he’d noticed. Then again, they were both children of divorce and their parents’ marriage had gone from bad to really bad and stayed that way a while before it was over. They were unconsciously attuned to their parents’ moods like kids from happy homes were not. And when you learned something like that, unconscious or not, you never lost it.

  She finished, “He’s workin’ late so I’m helpin’ out. You don’t wanna, fine. After I finish with the laundry, I’ll run the vacuum and I’ll unload the dishwasher.”

  And with that, she turned on her foot, flounced out of the room and down the hall. She carried the clothes upstairs and put hers away. The ones that were No’s she just put on his bed. His room was a disaster, it wasn’t worth the effort and if he pulled his finger out, he could put his own clothes away.

  She was walking back downstairs when she heard the vacuum go on and she grinned.

  Her brother could be a pain. But they both were old enough to know what was going on when their parents got divorced. They also were old enough to know what was going on when their Dad got full custody of them. And they both wanted to live with their Dad. Mom’s apartment was small and even now when they were with her they had to share a room which sucked big time. First, because No talked under the covers to his many babes on his cell. Then, he talked in his sleep. It drove Clarisse insane.

  She knew if he was in the mood, No would help out. They’d both do anything for Dad mainly because Dad proved he’d do anything for them.

  Because the house wasn’t as big as their old one but it was still big and took forever to vacuum, feeling generous, Clarisse went to the kitchen and unloaded the dishwasher. Then she wiped down the countertops. Then she walked back downstairs and got the hamper loaded with the folded bundles of her Dad’s clothes and took it upstairs to his room.

  When it was her turn to do the laundry, she always put her Dad’s clothes away. No would put the hamper on his bed but Clarisse put them away. This was because she liked spending time in her Dad’s room. It was big and roomy. It smelled like his aftershave. His bed was enormous and had gorgeous sheets and a beautiful comforter that had swirls of taupe, tan and chocolate. He had an awesome balcony leading off it with super comfy Adirondack chairs. Both the balcony and chairs she loved.

  This was because she and her Dad would often kick back out there, talk, he’d tease her and he’d listen to whatever she had on her mind, him drinking a beer, Clarisse drinking a pop. She loved the view of the Holliday Farm across the way not only because the yellow farmhouse with its white curlicue woodwork was sweet but because Finley Holliday lived there and he was hot. And in the summer, if she was on the balcony, it was a good possibility she’d see Finley on a tractor. And if it was hot, which it often was in Indiana in the summer, there was an even better possibility she’d see him on the tractor without his shirt on. And seeing as he was seventeen and on the football team, Finley Holliday without his shirt on with a tan in the summer was a sight to see.

  She hoped when she got married she had a room just like that. And she kinda hoped when she got married, she’d get married to a guy who looked a lot like Finley Holliday.

  A
s she started shoving her Dad’s socks in his sock drawer she heard the vacuum closer and knew No had moved to vacuum the stairs.

  That’s when she found them. Two books with girlie covers shoved in the back.

  Her brows drew together. First, her Dad wasn’t girlie in any way. He and No were both total guys, through and through. Second, she’d put socks away in that drawer more than once and she’d never seen those books before.

  Biting her lip and listening to the vacuum coming up the stairs, she looked to the opened double doors that led from her father’s room to the hall.

  Then quickly, she snatched up one of the books. She opened it to a random page and froze, staring at a pretty picture drawn in pastel pencils across both pages. She’d never seen anything like it. It was colorful and she liked the swirly pattern. If it was bigger, to replace the vampire posters, she’d like all sorts of pictures like that framed and put up on the walls in her room.

  Still, it was weird. Was her Dad drawing pretty, swirly pictures? That couldn’t be right.

  She flipped to the front of the book and froze again.

  There was a name and a date on the inside front cover.

  Dusty Holliday and the year was years and years and years before.

  Dusty.

  Dusty Holliday. Holliday.

  Dad’s babe.

  Dad’s babe was a Holliday.

  Clarisse cocked her head to the side as she felt something funny fluttering around her heart. Her Dad’s babe had given him her diaries from when she had to be a girl. Clarisse didn’t know what to think of this but it felt like she thought that was kind of sweet.

  The vacuum went off and Clarisse knew that meant No was unplugging it downstairs so he could plug it in upstairs.

  Quickly, she shoved the book back in the drawer and finished with his clothes. Then she hung out in her room while No finished vacuuming upstairs.