by Grea Warner
“Sure.”
“Tails,” he announced after the flip and reveal.
“Typical.”
His mouth curled on one side and he blinked his eyes at my negativity before saying, “I have to cancel on tonight.” His lips turned downward.
“Yeah? Why? What’s up with tonight?”
“One of my clients is performing downtown in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. He got orchestra seats for me and the kids. They’ll go nuts. I couldn’t pass them up.”
“You should totally go,” I agreed and offered an alternative to my plans in the hope he wouldn’t feel bad for bailing. “Willow was gone with Til all weekend, and we’ve only seen each other in passing the past couple of days. So, it will be good to have dinner with her tonight and maybe, you know, clarify some things ... without, of course, being specific.”
“Yeah, sounds crystal clear.” He laughed.
“It’ll be fine.” I knew Willow felt left out more than anything, and simply spending the time with her to reinforce our friendship was what was most important.
“So, here’s the thing ...” he started.
“What?” My body automatically tensed. “What thing? I thought you already told me the bad news.”
“I did,” he said in that exasperating yet calming tone of his. “Why does the thing have to be bad?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “The first time you pulled that on me, you were jerking me around with not being able to take on any more musicians.”
“What?” But before I could explain, he remembered. “Yeah, that was kind of funny.”
“It was not, Ryan!”
“Okay,” he soothed but still had a last chuckle in him. “Listen, I’m not messing with you. Here. This is for you.” Out of his wallet, he pulled out a small piece of plastic that resembled a credit card and handed it to me.
It wasn’t a credit card, though. It wasn’t a gift card or membership card or discount card of any type, either. Very non-descript, it had me completely confused.
“It’s a key card,” he stated as I twirled it around in my hand. “There is a separate entrance to my neighborhood off of Heritage ... instead of Harlan where the main gate is.”
“Oh, I didn’t know that.”
“Yeah, I know. It’s not as convenient, but it’s only for residents. Everyone else has to go through the main gate with friendly Mr. Dak.”
With his chin nodding upward toward me, I knew the adjective he used to describe the man had at least some hints of sarcasm. I would have never mentioned anything to Ryan about the main daytime guard at the entrance of his exclusive neighborhood, but he was a character. Serious and nosy were definitely two words I would use instantly. He reminded me of a hard-as-nails cop the way he questioned time and time again in his monotone voice if I was on the list for entrance.
“He knows it all,” Ryan continued. “Sometimes too much.”
“Hmmm.” The sound brushed against my lips as I revisited Ryan’s words and started connecting them to the card in my hand.
“There’s no one at the gate on Heritage. You slide the card and the gate opens and allows you in. You don’t have to bother anyone ... until the doorbell, and then it’s me.” He gave a small smile at the end of his explanation.
“Hmmm,” I said again, and I knew it was even more downtrodden that time.
“What?” he questioned. “What’s wrong? That was supposed to be the good news.”
“Oh.”
“What?” He leaned ever so slightly in my direction.
I wanted real good news. Not something that was another coverup for my personal situation with Ryan. I guess I understood how he thought of it as good, though. We wouldn’t have to put up with any questions—at least from a strict guard. I accepted that’s how life was for the time being. But it wasn’t good news.
“I know.” I started to voice my thoughts. “I’m not supposed to be seen. We shouldn’t even be sitting here. I know. I understand. I—”
“Crap, no,” he interrupted me. “That’s not the reason I’m giving it to you. Dang it. I ...” He started to trail his hand toward me but then pulled it away, and I saw the agonizing regret stretch across his face as he did. “Bethany, no one else, besides Kari, her parents, and I have gate access. It’s exactly the opposite of what you’re thinking. Even though we can’t tell anyone yet—yet, Lenay—it was meant to show you that you are an important part of my life. I don’t want you to feel awkward coming to my place or that someone needs to validate your presence. They don’t. I want you there. That’s what I meant by giving it to you.”
“Oh.” I was processing his words ... and liking and appreciating them more as I did. “Sorta like upstairs ... not the guest room.” I offered up an analogy.
“Yeah.” He seemed to breathe easier. “Yeah, like that,” he continued as we both spotted a young man in a low riding baseball cap putting flowers on a nearby grave. “I know it’s not much, but—"
It was to me. “Thank you.” I could feel the warmth in my heart escape in the form of a soft smile on my face.
“You’re welcome.” His lips pursed out a breath and, thankfully, before I thought anymore about kissing them, he said, “So, what do you think about Friday? Try the card out on Friday? Are you free? Fridays are better than midweek, anyway. There won’t be school or work the next morning. We can have a game night with the kids if you want ... dinner ... you can stay ...” He smiled legitimately that time.
“Yeah,” I agreed while mentally going over my work schedule. “I ... yeah. I work, but Friday evening is free.”
“Great. Next up, by the way?” He poked me quickly on my arm. “Getting you a car.”
“Next up?” I smirked back at him, glad to feel like we were legitimately us for the first time that afternoon. “Getting a song sold.”
“It’ll happen,” he said confidently.
“I’m getting a silver Audi convertible,” I proclaimed.
“An Audi convertible.” He rolled his eyes. “Oh, brother.”
“Or a VW bus. I can’t decide.”
I thought he would chuckle, but he just had that same look as when he first sat down next to me on the bench. And then there was his groan—that Ryan Thompson groan. “I should have probably just called you and given you the card later. I was being selfish wanting to see you, and now I can’t kiss you ... and I have to leave. This was harder.”
“But worth it.”
“Uh-huh.” And, after a deep breath, he slowly stood up, did one backward glance, and walked away.
I was going to sit for a moment, not only to allow space between his departure and mine but to gather my thoughts for a potential song that seemed to suddenly be singing inside my head. I didn’t get too far into the process, though, since the grieving fellow with the ballcap was suddenly in front of me. It was only when he said my name that I looked up.
“Andre,” I partially whispered.
He sat without asking for permission. Not that it was mine to give. But still.
“How are you?” I asked the former apartment employee and basement voyeur. Having been caught by surprise, I didn’t know what else to say.
“You’re doing him, huh?”
“What?” It wasn’t that I hadn’t heard him. It was that I was appalled by the crude comment and wanted a second to collect my thoughts.
“Couldn’t hear the words, but it was pretty obvious, Bethany.”
“Geez, no it wasn’t ... Andre.” I clipped my words.
“Smart suit, clean do ... Where’d you meet him? Not in a laundry room, I take it.” He smirked.
Andre wasn’t acting at all like the carefree charmer I had known. The one who had sat next to a drunk me late at night in the laundry room and said I was special and that everyone was going to miss me when I left, especially him. The one who had convinced me that we both needed to release our emotions through our obvious physical attraction. The combination of drinking too much, not having had sex since college
, and knowing if the city of dreams didn’t want me but a built man in a basement did, had made me climb onto the recliner in the adjacent caged storage area and grasp onto the momentary pleasure of him pumping repeatedly into me.
The Andre next to me on the cemetery bench could have never convinced me. He was harder ... colder. He seemed more like his family members I had recently found out about. I knew it couldn’t have been easy with the allegations and things he was going through. At the same account, though, he needn’t take it out on me.
Before I could reply, he continued, “I feel like I know him ... seen him somewhere. Yeah?”
“No,” I instantly denied. “I don’t think so.” I shifted on the bench.
“I just can’t picture—” He stopped dead in his verbal tracks, and my dry mouth tried to gulp down the fear of recognition. “Oh. He looks just like this guy at the gym I go—used to—go to. He’s not, though. I think the gym guy’s hair is lighter. So, who is he, Bethany?”
“Just a friend. Friend of a friend kind of thing.” The lies kept coming.
Gosh, my parents would be so disappointed in me. Was this what the life of a mistress was like? Was it how I had to roll ... in secrets and lies?
“Hmmm,” he said in a way that I knew I hadn’t persuaded him even one little bit. “You get into doing it around corpses?”
“What?” I practically screeched. “I told you, we’re not—” Ugh! I didn’t want to defend myself or talk about sex or Ryan anymore. “What are you doing here?”
Revealing his tight dark curls, he took off his cap and used it to point toward a grave. “My aunt.”
I couldn’t help but soften a little. There was the glimmer of the Andre I had known before. “Sorry. I heard about her passing, and I know she must have meant a lot to you.”
“She was a good one,” he lamented.
“Sorry,” I repeated. “Hope things are getting better for you.”
“Barely. I don’t know how I am going to keep making it with a minimum wage job. I need to find a way to make more money.” Before I could agree that we all would like that, he spoke again. “You are one I won’t ever forget.” He rubbed his hand on my thigh. “If I wasn’t already late for work, I’d find a cozy little storage area near a laundromat with you.”
I closed my eyes momentarily at the sickening thought and stood up. “That’s not gonna happen.”
He joined me and, after surveying my chest with his eyes, said, “Hope this guy—whoever he is ...” His eyebrows crumpled as he paused as if in contemplation. “Well, I hope he’s worthy.” And then he walked away.
I breathed. I breathed again. I breathed once more.
After another beat, where the world seemed to finally come back into focus, I considered my options. I had wanted to stay for a little while and play with those lyrics in my head, but the encounter with Andre had muddied them and, for some reason, had shaken me. I wanted to let the conversation with the former housing employee go. I knew I could do it in a roundabout way with any of the women in the house ... a “guess who I just saw” sort of thing. But who I really wanted to talk with was Ryan, so I picked up my phone and dialed.
“I’m right here.” Ryan’s voice pierced my thoughts after the first ring.
But it wasn’t coming from his phone. It was his authentic voice, and he was standing right in front of me when I turned around. Scanning his face, I noticed his jawline seemed tight ... so much more strained than only moments before when he was sitting with me.
“Hey, you didn’t leave?” I questioned, pressing end on my phone.
“No. I sat down on another bench before I got to the car and was checking messages when I saw ... I’m trying hard not to jump to conclusions like I did with your medicine.”
“What?” I was a little thrown. “What? Why?”
“Bethany, you have to realize what happened with Kari burned me a little.”
“Uh.” It was more of a breath than an actual word as I took in his statement and realized that he must have seen me sitting with Andre. “Oh. Okay,” I empathized. “Listen, what you saw? It wasn’t what you think it was. So, no ... no jumping to conclusions. I was obviously calling to tell you.” I shuddered. “I didn’t know it was him until he sat down.”
“Him? Him who? Who was that? He seemed friendly,” he tagged on at the end ... the surely jumping to conclusions part of Ryan Thompson.
“Andre.”
“Andre? Andr—” He stopped himself. “As in ‘the bastard?’” Ryan knew everything about my regretful night before him—I had not only told him Andre’s name and what had led to my poor choice but why the sweet-talking tramp of a man was crowned with the name “bastard.” When I nodded in agreement, he asked, “Are you all right?”
I loved that those were the next words out of his mouth. I knew he had immediately stripped any doubt from his brain about what he had seen and that his concern for me took front and center. “Truthfully? No,” I admitted.
Ryan’s eyes instantly flinched, and he did the slightest of head nods toward me. “Bethany ...”
When he started to look around, I echoed what was surely transmitting in his mind. “I need to tell you what he said, but we can’t do it here.”
“All right. Let’s go to my car.” He started to turn.
But I didn’t move. “I ... I don’t think we should. I’m afraid he might still be lurking.”
“What?” I had his full, worried attention again.
“It’s okay. He’s not going to hurt me or anything. We can’t be seen together, though. He already has suspicions.”
“About?”
“Us ... who you are.” I felt like I was leaving Ryan down. “Let me get back to the privacy of my place. It will take five minutes. Then I’ll call and tell you.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah.”
“You know how much I want to hold you right now?”
“You know how much I want you to?” I knew the tear was coming. So I tried inconspicuously to swipe it away.
But I must not have done a good enough job. “Dang it.” His arms tensed at his sides, as if he was trying to resist bringing them out to me.
“Five minutes. I’ll call you,” I confirmed, and then I was the one to turn and walk away.
***
“So, what I’m hearing right now is all pretty much good.”
I turned from the open window and practically yelled into the phone. “What? How can you say that?”
“He doesn’t know who I am,” Ryan said in a calmer voice than mine, and I imagined him still sitting in the cemetery since I knew the phone conversation was not going through the tinny sound of his car speakers.
“He hasn’t put it together, no. It just worries me.”
“Bethany, the only thing that worries me is how he thought he could put his hand on—”
“I know.” I cut him off for his own good. “But if you were watching, I stood up to stop him, and then he left.”
“I guess I was a little too preoccupied with the actual touch to take that part in.”
“Well, that’s what happened. I denied everything, but he could tell it wasn’t the truth.” Especially the way I felt about the man on the other end of the line.
“I’m sorry I’ve put you in this position ... you have to lie about us.”
“You don’t need to keep saying that. It’s my choice.”
“I—” he started.
But I stopped him, knowing we had to get back to us—a teasing, easygoing humor. “But when is Kari coming back to the states?”
He breathed out with what I determined was a cleansing breath. “Soon. She’s coming Saturday to get the kids. And then it shouldn’t be much longer until everything is out.”
“Good.”
“Sorry for almost jumping to conclusions. Hopefully, I’m not earning a bastard nickname for that.”
I legitimately laughed. “No, that’s not the name.”
“Wha ... what? You have a nickn
ame for me?”
“Uh ...” I debated.
“Lenay ...?”
“It’s Willow’s, not mine.”
“What is it?”
“Uh ...”
“Come on, tell me,” he prompted.
“Mr. Mean.”
“Mr. Mean?”
I laughed at his shock. “Just because of how you treated me on the show. She doesn’t know anything else—the real you or about us. So ...”
“Mr. Mean.” He seemed to hmmmf. “Well, it could be worse, and it is kind of the role they have me playing now.”
“You are so not Mr. Mean. Thanks for talking me through, Ryan.”
“Back at ya. See you on Friday, then?” His voice softened even more, and I heard the car start and the phone change to his car speaker.
“Absolutely.” I sat down at my desk. Maybe I could write, after all.
Chapter Eleven
I have to admit, I did feel a little more special—a little more as though I belonged—using the key card and going through the private gate of Ryan’s exclusive neighborhood. Besides that, I was also in a good mood because it was the start of the weekend. That meant Kari was coming home, and pretty soon after we could stop the masquerade. My lighthearted feeling came to an abrupt halt, though, as I approached the opened front door of Ryan’s house. The sound coming through its passage did not match my happy heart at all.
It was Ryan’s uncommonly raised voice I heard first. “What are you talking about? No.”
The second voice I didn’t immediately recognize but, oddly, sounded familiar. “We can make it work.”
I didn’t want to interrupt or even dare enter, because, for one thing, it was a heated discussion. For another, I didn’t have a legitimate reason for being at the residence. Of course, Ryan knew I was coming over, but I wasn’t sure whomever he was talking with did. I took a few steps and craned my neck around to the side driveway. A sleek black convertible was parked in front of the garage with Ryan’s BMW next to it. I couldn’t tell the make of the second automobile because of its further away position, but I knew it rivaled the other cars that belonged in the high-end neighborhood.