by Audrey Dacey
Ryan straightened up and matched his friend’s stance. Daniel was a little bit taller and more muscular than Ryan, but he wasn’t intimidated by him. “You’re leaving the city? You want to live in a suburban hell hole like this?”
“We are thinking about a town on the outskirts of Boston, about an hour from here.”
“Do you have a job?” Ryan was shocked. He knew that Lisa wasn’t a fan of the city, especially of the effect it was having on her kids, but the best jobs were in town. Boston wasn’t that far, but it was far enough that most people wouldn’t have heard of the great work Daniel had done. In this business, with the economy in its current state, reputation meant quite a bit, and Daniel’s reputation was spotless.
“That’s what I want to talk to you about. What I’d like to do is open a complete design and construction firm. I would run the business end—talk to clients and such—while you would do the designing to the customer’s specifications. It wouldn’t be glamorous…”
“No,” Ryan interrupted, “it would be absolutely idiotic. I’m trying to earn respect in the architectural world. I’m not going to do that by building little houses in Massachusetts. My career begins and ends in New York. This project is a one-time thing for some friends. I don’t even consider it part of my career. As a matter of fact, it might ruin my career because I am not back in the city schmoozing some big shot.”
“You don’t think that you would earn respect by owning half of your own company? You’d have more freedom. More control over the projects. It’s not going to be all little houses. At least that’s my hope.”
“You’re the best contractor in New York. Why would you leave that?” Ryan was in distress. This was absolutely incomprehensible to him. He knew that no matter how many questions he asked, he still wouldn’t understand.
“Some things are more important, Ryan. If I can provide for Lisa and the kids, it's good enough for me. My friends are also important, which is why I want to take you along with me.”
Ryan shook his head and threw his hands into the air. “You’ve absolutely lost it. You could commute. Live in Connecticut. That’s a reasonable compromise.” Ryan couldn’t help but take this personally. If he had any family, it was Daniel. Ryan knew that he wasn’t socially adept, but Daniel never seemed to care. He was one of the few people Ryan could get along with and trust.
“I want you to think about this. I didn’t think that you would take to this idea quickly. We’re going to use the next couple of weekends to look for houses while we’re out here. We want to move before the school year starts.”
The sound of trucks crunching the gravel of the driveway stopped the conversation at that, and Daniel left the kitchen to greet the local crew he had assembled. They were in for a treat. Daniel was a taskmaster. Unlike most contractors, he wouldn’t be caught dead working on a job a day past the promised deadline.
Ryan couldn’t be more upset right now, but what upset him most was that when he pushed the thought of Daniel moving out of his head, his thoughts were filled with Alexis’s legs. The shorts she was wearing only accentuated the tanned, long legs. The chunky sandals showed all of the curves of her calves, and his fantasies managed for several moments to distract him from his work.
It was the last thing he needed. If anything he needed to be more focused. Daniel was wrong. Ryan didn't need a woman like that in his life, no matter how badly he wanted it. As far as he was concerned, Woman didn't just eat the apple, she was the apple.
Chapter 6
“What the hell are those?” Alexis set her iced tea on the counter and walked over to her sister who was carrying several bags labeled “Neiman Marcus,” “Guess,” and some other stores. “Did you go shopping?”
Alexis started to grab for the bags to see what was inside, but Riley pulled them away from her and walked around the couch to sit down.
“Yeah. So what? I needed clothes. You made me throw mine away.” Riley sat down and started going through her bags, throwing her new pieces on the part of the ivory sectional couch that was perpendicular to where she was sitting.
Alexis was speechless as she watched her sister fling shirts, jeans, and skirts all around her living room. Her cheeks became hot, and she was clenching her teeth so tightly together that she thought that she was going to crack one of her molars down the center. She had offered to take her sister shopping that morning, thinking it would be a good way to get to know her a little bit better.
Alexis turned away and walked back into the kitchen. She turned to face the wall, closed her eyes, and put her hands on the counter, letting the cool marble calm her as she took several deep breaths.
She could handle living with a seventeen-year-old for two months. It wasn’t going to be easy, but she could at least survive. Alexis had quickly realized that she had little control over how Riley behaved, and she was sick of trying to make things okay between them. Especially after this. Alexis offered a dove, and Riley shot it.
Alexis opened her eyes, thinking that she could go about her day, ignoring the personal “screw you” her sister had just delivered to her wrapped in tissue paper from Victoria’s Secret. But when what she saw next was the pile of dirty dishes that Riley had been collecting in the sink since the night before, she pulled in another deep breath, this time through gritted teeth, but it wasn’t much help.
When she turned back to her sister, it looked like a department store had thrown up all over the great room.
“You need to clean this crap up.”
Riley stared silently at the television as though Alexis hadn’t said anything. Alexis pounded across the tile in her black and silver flip-flops. “Did you hear me?”
“Whatever,” Riley sighed without looking at her.
Alexis picked up a sweater that was on the floor in front of her and looked at the price tag. “This is disgusting. Pick up your brand new, very expensive clothes and put them in your room. Then wash the dirty dishes in the sink.”
“You’re out of your mind if you think that’s going to happen,” Riley said, kicking off her sandals into a new pile under the coffee table.
Alexis clenched her fists, gripping the sweater tightly, to prevent herself from smacking her baby sister across the face. “Fine,” she managed to say as calmly as Riley.
Alexis went to the pantry and pulled out a big black trash bag, noisily opening it. Riley continued to ignore her. She began picking up the clothes and stuffing them into the bag. It wasn’t until she was pulling stuff off the couch that Riley finally looked to see what she was doing. She stood up and grabbed some of her stuff.
“What are you doing?”
“These don’t belong here.” This time Alexis didn’t look up. If she looked at Riley she wouldn’t be able to stay calm. That much she was sure of.
“Stop it! These are my new clothes!” Riley scrambled around the room, picking things up and throwing them into the shopping bags.
“Not anymore.”
When Riley collected as much as she could, she stood on the couch and then jumped over. She reached for the bag and tore a hole in the plastic before Alexis could pull it away.
“Give it back to me!”
Alexis glared at her sister before gripping the bag in both hands and walking to the sliding door that led outside. Riley followed, but Alexis dodged her lithely several times. After she stepped onto the deck, Alexis lifted the bag over her head and chucked it as far as she could into the massive backyard. She watched as the tear became wider, and working with the opening, it rained at least $2000 worth of colorful fabric on her lawn. Her only regret was that the pond on her property wasn’t close enough to reap any of the benefits.
“What did you just do?” Riley stood wide-eyed at the edge of the deck, staring at her new wardrobe.
“You are a temporary guest in my home, and your disgusting habits are not welcome. Keep your stuff in your room and wash your dishes, or you’ll look back on today as the good old days, you ungrateful little brat.” Alexis began
walking back toward the house.
“Go pick up my clothes,” Riley shrieked.
Alexis turned around and looked directly into her sister’s eyes. “You’re out of your mind if you think that’s going to happen.”
As she walked through the doorway, Riley screamed at the top of her lungs and then ran past her sister, shoving her as she went by. She ran up the stairs with heavy feet. Alexis winced when she heard the door slam and the music blare from the top floor.
Her heart pounded against her chest, and her hand shook slightly as she took a sip of her tea. This wasn’t the best decision she had made in a slew of questionable decisions, but it was certainly the most satisfying.
Alexis decided to go to the basement for a while. She needed to calm down. And while it was probably not the best place for her because she’d likely only become more frustrated, she knew that Riley wouldn’t bother descending the stairs to a room she declared “a waste of space.” Regardless, Alexis locked the double door behind her.
Alexis took a moment and stared at the hundreds of “Once upon a times” in different colors, sizes, and fonts wallpapering the east side of the room where her desk and computer sat. Alexis tried to write every day, and the only thing she produced were those pages on the wall.
She sat down in her rolling desk chair and woke up her computer. She opened the word processer and typed the four words that taunted her. For a while she stared at the black and white on the computer screen. No story. No character.
The only thing she thought about was the pit growing in her stomach. The one that doubled in size whenever she looked out the floor to ceiling windows to the south and saw her sister’s clothes littering the lawn. It was as though someone was pouring a pitcher of regret into her body, and there was nothing she could do to stop them. She never felt regret when her sister wasn’t here, so she just wanted her to go away. It would be the best for both of their sanities.
Four days. It had only been four days.
Their relationship hadn't always been contentious. When their parents died in the car accident, Riley was only eleven. Alexis wanted to hold her close and protect her from the world, and for a few months she boarded the two of them up in the 15,000 square-foot house that suddenly belonged to Alexis. She had not yet recovered from Frank leaving her. With this on top of it, she shattered into a thousand pieces and had no glue or will to fix herself.
She threw herself into the job of being Riley's guardian. It wasn't easy, but Alexis didn't care. It was her sister. The problem was that it never got easier. It only got worse. Riley went mad with anger and sadness. At one point, she grabbed a sledge hammer from their father’s workshop and destroyed the tree house both used as little girls.
That's when Alexis realized she couldn't do it. She was only twenty-three and not at all cut out to be someone's mother. She hired a nanny, tutor, and therapist. Then she avoided the house as much as possible. Riley seemed to calm down a bit after that, at least according to the reports from Alexis’s employees.
Alexis stood up and walked to the bookshelves that lined the north wall. Her eyes ran along the spines of the hundreds of books on the wall before her, but she knew exactly what she was looking for and where it lived.
She pulled the paper back anthology off the shelf and sat back down in her chair. She carefully opened to page 207. The pages were yellowed a fragile from use and some pages were in the beginning stages of falling out of the book altogether. She had more copies of the book, but Alexis always opened this one. It was the first one printed.
At the top of the page, her name was bold-faced and beneath that the title of her story: “Good Morning Heartache.”
She read through the words she had memorized as a hot tear rolled down each of her cheeks forging a pathway for the rest to follow.
How did her life go so wrong? Was all this the price to publish one story?
She closed the book and turned back to her computer. She logged on to Facebook and searched for Francis Carello.
She clicked on the message button and typed, “You’re a prick.” But she knew that without him, she wouldn’t have had even that small success.
After Frank left, Alexis knew two things to be true, she couldn’t write anything and love didn’t exist. She tapped backspace until the message to Frank was gone. He wasn’t worth her energy, and she didn’t need the fallout from another questionable decision while she was still cleaning up the last.
Alexis picked up the phone and dialed the Franklin School. She asked for the Dean of Students and was quickly connected to him.
“Ms. Conner, what a pleasant surprise. What can I do for you?”
“Dean Mueller, please tell me you have a summer program available for your students.”
The old man cleared his voice. “Yes, of course we do, but we’re already at capacity.”
Alexis groaned internally. “Is there anything I can do to get Riley into that program? A donation? Anything?”
“I’m sorry, Ms. Conner. We just don’t have the staff or boarding to accommodate her.”
Alexis tapped her fingernails on her desk. “You’re quite sure?”
“I’m sorry, but I am.”
She sighed, thanked him, and then hung up.
A Google search for “delinquent teenage girls’ summer camp” gave Alexis some interesting ideas, but as much as she wanted to, she couldn’t bring herself to pick up the phone and call escorts to take her sister to the Utah mountains to live in a make-shift tent and eat beans and drink powered milk for the next eight weeks. She bookmarked the site, knowing that a matter of four days could change her mind.
From that point on it was Alexis’s mission to ignore and avoid her sister as much as possible. It worked once, why not again? Alexis could work in the basement, take the dog on long walks, and swim in the pond as though Riley weren’t there.
Alexis heard the front door slam and the loud rumble of the clunker Riley’s boyfriend drove. If she was lucky, he’d keep her sister occupied and out of the house.
§
Riley crossed her arms over her chest after she buckled her seatbelt. “We have to go to the mall again.” She felt Jimmy’s eyes on her, and she turned to look out the window so that he couldn’t see that she was crying.
“Why? You just bought a ton of clothes this morning,” he said in his smooth voiced that flowed into her like liquid heat. He was always soft and gentle with her, never judgmental. She was sure he wasn’t complaining about going to the mall again, even though he didn’t seem to be a fan of the stores she liked.
“It’s a long story. I don’t want to talk about it. I just need new clothes.”
“Did you get more money from your sister?”
Riley wiped her face and sat up. “I don’t need my sister’s money. I have my own in a trust fund, and I get an allowance. I’ll have enough.”
Jimmy stared straight ahead and pursed his lips as though he were in deep thought.
“Are you okay?” Riley asked. She wished she knew what he was thinking. He would often get quiet and not say anything, and she was constantly worrying that she said something wrong.
Jimmy grabbed her hand and laced his fingers through hers and said, “Of course.” He lifted her hand to his mouth and kissed the back of it. “I’m just trying to figure out how to get you away from your sister, babe. I wish you could stay with me, but there isn’t much space.”
He had three roommates, the band members, in a two bedroom apartment on the outskirts of Franklin. She wished he was closer.
“I know.” Riley sighed. “It’s okay.”
“Are you coming to my show tonight? There’s going to be a great party afterward. I’ll get you in.”
Riley smiled and warmth radiated from her center all the way to her fingertips. “I’d like that.” She rested her head on his shoulder.
“Do you mind chipping in 40 bucks for the keg? It would really help us out.” He turned and kissed her on the top of the head and then squeezed the
hand he was holding.
Riley looked up at her lead guitarist boyfriend, his long hair almost completely covering one of his dark eyes. She still couldn’t believe that he talked to her, much less that he actually cared about her. Every time he touched her or looked into her eyes, she melted.
“Of course. Anything you need.”
Chapter 7
Alexis pulled up to the drugstore in the center of town. She loved her books, but if she spent too much time with them, like she did this afternoon, the dust eventually got the best of her allergies. She was sick of sitting around the house with Sam, so she counted herself lucky that she was out of antihistamine.
Alexis looked at her red nose and watery eyes in the rearview mirror of the Porsche and sighed. While she would prefer to go to a local bar, have a drink or two, and flirt until someone took her home, she didn’t feel like she could attract any high-quality man-beef with snot cascading from her nostrils.
Instead she settled on grabbing dinner from a local deli with an allergy pill kicker as her evening plans. It would be almost as effective as going to a bar, since the chewable tablet—Alexis always took children's medicine because she couldn't stand the chalky taste of pills and the feel of them sliding down her throat—would knock her out for the night. Alcohol on top of that was a wicked bad idea.
She picked up the food first to make sure she would force herself to go home instead of hanging around a pharmacy for several hours in an attempt to avoid Riley. It was just sandwiches, so it wasn’t a great excuse, but it was something.
Alexis wasn't out to make an impression, so she had pulled her long brown hair back in a ponytail, thrown on a pair of black cheer shorts that stopped high on her thigh and had tiny slits on either side, a The Great Gatsby t-shirt—she totally would have slept with Gatsby, and probably Nick—and a pair of black and silver flip flops.