The more time she spent with him, the more she saw how unsettled he was. He didn’t push her away, though, quite the opposite. They were not-so-slowly becoming a…couple. Yes, couple. The word put a lump in her throat, but it was true.
“Alma.”
There was a girl her own age carrying a shopping basket, standing in the aisle just a few feet away. Alma had already catalogued her visually – the voluminous waves of honey-blonde hair, the five-foot-nothing pixie frame and great rack – before recognition dawned. She stared at her best friend Caroline Tippins for a good five seconds before she realized that it was in fact Caroline.
“Oh,” she said, startled. “Caro. Um,” she’d forgotten how to do this polite chit-chat thing apparently, “how are you?”
It had always seemed a shame that Caroline wasn’t taller, because her face was model-perfect. Her blue eyes crinkled up at the corners as her expression became somewhat pained. “I’m good.”
There was an awkward pause in which guilt settled over Alma like a lead weight. How are you? She hadn’t spoken to the girl in well over a year and that was the best she could come up with?
“I’m really sorry about Sam,” Caroline offered. She sounded sincere, but her tone wasn’t just sad out of sympathy. She had no idea what was appropriate here, much the way Alma didn’t. “I was going to come to the funeral but I wasn’t sure…”
“It’s okay.”
“I sent flowers.”
“You did?”
“The white carnation wreath.” Caroline fiddled with the buttons on her work shirt. She wore crisp black pants, peep-toe pumps, and a white button-down. The last Alma had heard, she was struggling to graduate from college, but now she obviously had a job somewhere that required professional dress.
“Those were pretty,” Alma lied, because she couldn’t remember any of the flowers from the funeral.
It was pathetic and more than sad: they’d been thick as thieves, had told each other everything, spent the night at one another’s homes on an almost daily basis, had gone in to get tattoos together, and had chickened out together. They’d discussed first kisses and first lovers. Had woven friendship bracelets in fifth grade they hadn’t taken off until Caroline had lost hers at the beach their senior year of high school.
And now here they stood without a damn thing to say to one another. Before, Caroline had wrinkled her nose and tried, in her own sweet way, to tell Alma that attaching herself permanently to Sam wasn’t the best of ideas. And Alma had cut her out of her life.
“You’re working?” Alma asked stupidly.
“Doing some consulting work for a marketing firm.” She shrugged. “How ‘bout you? You still with the publishing house?”
“No, I’m…taking some time off. I’m pregnant, so - ” Alma closed her mouth because nothing good was coming out of it.
Caroline’s eyes flipped wide. “Really? Wow. That’s great.”
“Yeah.”
Her expression was full of comforts and curiosities, but all she said was, “Congratulations.”
An older woman with a shopping cart brimming with crackers and canned soup pushed past the two of them in a huff, grumbling under her breath about people “flocking in aisles” and it shook Alma out of her regretful trance. She scooted her own cart out of the way and flashed Caroline a quick, tight smile after the other shopper had moved along. She remembered that the Ben & Jerry’s she’d bought for her and Carlos was melting. “Well, I, uh, guess I better get going. Ice cream.”
“Oh, right.” Caroline nodded, shuffled her feet uncomfortable. “Well, good to see you.”
They parted with half-waves and looks that wanted to say more, but finally Alma shoved her cart down the aisle at a near jog. She went all the way to the back of the store and into the bathroom, abandoning her cart and not caring if it wasn’t there when she came back out.
In the mirror, her reflection stared back: thin, unkempt, hair frazzled and the circles under her eyes nearly black. She compared her sweatpants and man’s t-shirt to the polished ensemble Caroline had been sporting, and wanted to gag. How could Carlos even get it up when he looked at her? Forget Carlos, how could she stand to be in her own skin like this? Her clavicles stood out in sharp contrast beneath papery thin skin. Her eyes looked sunken. She wore no makeup. She could have walked straight off the set of a horror movie.
“This has to stop,” she murmured. She put her hand over her stomach, over her baby. Her child with Sam. The legacy of his love for her. It was time for a change. Past time, actually.
9
Carlos hit the wipers as the first raindrops spattered across his windshield. His Firebird didn’t have much traction on wet pavement, so he was hoping the downpours his foreman had talked about would hold off until he was back home. Because he wasn’t sure, given the way his head was spinning, he’d be able to control the car if he hydroplaned.
All afternoon his meeting with Sean had replayed itself over and over in his head until he’d barely been able to mumble responses to his coworkers as he’d clocked out for the day. He’d totally ignored poor Salvador and the guy had seemed genuinely hurt. But Sean had given him a piece of information that had left him so stunned, he was only now able to really dissect it.
Roscoe and his near silent counterpart who went by Meat had been lounging in the reception area. The muscle would have been a dead giveaway to anyone who’d wandered into the office for the wrong reason that this was not a real estate firm, and as they’d nodded an acknowledgement to Carlos, he’d again reminded himself that these were two boys you did not want to piss off.
Aisha had greeted him at the door, had looked down at him from her stacked stilettos that only made her 5’10” frame a good four inches taller. She’d sashayed her hips and ushered him into Sean’s office with a flick of one blue fingernail and a lazy, hooded-eyed look. Sean had been waiting, no phone call, no relaxed chaos of a businessman with his fingers in too many pies. The dealer had been serious to the point of being spooky, the whites of his eyes seeming extra bright, the knot in his silk tie pulled loose. “You can help me,” he’d said, “find the shithead who killed Sam. And we can take him out.”
He’d been talking about revenge. Carlos didn’t know what that desire for recompense tasted like, what it felt like when it surged through your veins. But then again, he’d never had such a wrong committed against him before. Unless he counted what had happened to his mother…which he didn’t.
Revenge was dangerous, in ways beyond the physical. But Sean’s voice had caressed the word, made it sound like something he needed, much the same way he convinced all his buyers that the only thing in the world they needed was another hit, another snort, another smoke. Sean was a dealer, he reminded himself, and it was his job to make his product seem like manna from heaven.
There was an empty spot beside Alma’s truck in the parking lot and he hiked his jacket up over his head before he popped the door release and set off at a jog through the rain that was falling harder and harder by the second. All the way up the stairs to his floor, boots making wet, squishing sounds, he told himself how fucked up Sean’s proposition had been. He wanted out of drugs for good, but suddenly a manhunt that ended in murder was something he’d be comfortable executing? Had Sean lost his goddamn mind? And what about the legal risks if the kill could be traced back to him somehow? Hell, what if they kicked off some kind of gang war? He’d watched Gangland – that shit wasn’t pretty.
But all this logic took a backseat to shock when he let himself in his apartment.
The aroma hit him first: the tang of cooked meat thick and heavy with spices, and a sweet undertone that made him think of chocolate cake. But there were other smells too: Lysol, bleach, air freshener. He hung his damp coat on the peg by the door and stepped out of the entryway into main living space, and the visual was just as stunning as the olfactory sensation.
His same old ratty sectional sofa, recliner and folding chairs remained, but there was a new rug under
his coffee table: an off-white, chic shag thing. All the clutter – the magazines and dirty dishes, empty beer bottles – was gone. The glass surfaces of the tables gleamed. The DVDs and CDs in the shelves on either side of his flat screen had been neatly arranged around several new silk plants in little decorative pots.
He could see that the white countertops and appliances were spotless over in the kitchenette from a distance. As he walked that way, Alma straightened up from the oven, a pan in oven mitt-clad hands, and he marveled at the change in her as she set the dish on the stovetop and heeled the oven door shut.
She was in dark, tight jeans that made her round ass look fantastic, showcased her lean curves. Her top was dark orange, long-sleeved, and tight as a second skin. It showed off the little swollen spot above her waistband where the baby was growing, but the plunging neckline made her tits look spectacular. Her hair was shiny and done up in big barrel curls. Her makeup, as she turned toward him with a dazzling smile, was perfect, all dark eye shadow and glossy lips.
“Hi,” she greeted almost shyly as she pulled the mitts off. “I hope you don’t mind that I cleaned up around here today.”
He didn’t answer, consumed by the shock that his little zombie was nowhere in sight and knockout Alma was back. She looked, in a word, stunning. And not just because she was done-up, but because her eyes and her smile seemed genuine, and not haunted replicas of the real thing.
“Carlos - ” she gasped, and then laughed as he charged her.
He was careful to be gentle as he grabbed her hips and set her up on the counter, pushed her legs apart and stepped up in between them. Kissing her was almost a shame because it cut off her laugh that he’d been dying to hear, but it was worth it. Her lip gloss tasted like cotton candy and her slick mouth slipped against his. Her hair fell in a dark curtain around his shoulders and gave the sensation of being locked into this little space where nothing existed except their lips together. The kiss was feverish, on his part, and she caught up quickly, their tongues dancing against one another.
His hands skipped up her sides and closed over her breasts. He felt her lean into the touch. Her nipples hardened through the cups of her bra.
But then Alma pushed him back with her hands on his shoulders. “Wait,” she gasped as their lips smacked apart. “Wait, wait, wait.”
“What?” he chuckled, breathless.
Her expression, like her others so far, knocked him out. Healthy, twenty-four-year-old girl. “I made us dinner. We should, you know, actually eat it before it gets cold.”
“Maybe I wanna eat something else instead.”
She arched a single brow at him.
“Okay,” he backed up a step and let her slide down off the counter. “What’d you make?”
She moved over to the stove and pointed to the various pots and pans that were cooking, the pan that held a steaming cut of meat that looked amazing. “Beef roast, mashed potatoes. Ahem, garlic mashed potatoes,” she gave him a smile over her shoulder. “Steamed baby carrots. And for dessert - ”
“Chocolate cake?”
There was a foil-covered pan off to the side and she nodded toward it. “With homemade fudge icing.”
“Would you be offended if I proposed right now?”
He didn’t realize how wrong the joke was until it was out of his mouth, but Alma just grinned at him, no trace of distress. “Let’s eat.”
**
Enough light filtered through the cracked blinds that the streetlamp out in the complex parking lot was all they needed to see one another’s gilded shadows. Carlos liked the half-dark, it made this feel like a whole-relationship instead of a charade. Because for him, it had never been a charade. And given what he’d come home to that night, he was thinking maybe Alma wasn’t seeing things in halves anymore either.
Her arm was still clammy with drying sweat as he trailed his fingertips across it and up over her shoulder, down her clavicle, followed the bead of perspiration that trickled between her breasts, and then on down to her stomach. Alma chuckled in a deep, throaty, very satisfied way as he explored her body with just the pads of his fingers. He wanted, badly, to ask her what had changed, why she was suddenly so full-on homemaker. She’d given him a look when she’d gotten down on her knees between his legs he thought he’d never see. He replayed it behind his closed eyelids every time he blinked. And when his eyes were open, he watching the dancing whites of hers just a few inches away in his cramped little twin bed. He was afraid to break this spell by calling it into question.
Turned out, he didn’t have to, though.
The sheets rustled as Alma propped an arm beneath her head. “Hey, baby?”
“Hmm?”
“I…ah, I didn’t shop my resume around today.”
He chuckled too. “I figured that.”
“But,” she went on, voice becoming more serious and less apologetic, “I’m going to tomorrow. I swear. Today wasn’t a total waste because I figured some things out.”
He felt his eyelids flagging. Her raging hormones were making her horny and after the workout he’d just had, he was sleepy. “Yeah?” he asked, restarting the circuit up her arm with his touch again.
“Yeah.” Something in her tone told him she wanted eye contact, so he made it, however difficult in the shadows. “I’ve been acting ridiculous.”
Carlos’s hand stilled. “Don’t say that, you - ”
“Don’t give me an out,” she was firm. “I’ve done nothing but mope around and feel sorry for myself since Sam died. I was a disgusting, un-showered wreck. I lost my job. My family hates me,” she sighed loudly. “I’ve been so focused on grieving, that I’ve let everything else go. And unless I have the balls to off myself - ”
His stomach clenched up and he realized he’d sucked in a breath.
“- I don’t,” she assured, and he felt her hand on his chest. “I don’t, sorry, not where I was going with this.” Another sigh. “What I meant was, I realized I’d become a burden to others. Trying to become invisible made me a bother to everyone in my life and that’s not fair. Carlos,” she moved through the sheets and their shins and knees and hips touched. “I can’t believe you’ve put up with me. I’ve leaned on you so hard.”
His chest tightened. He reached up to brush the hair off the porcelain wedge of her face he could see in the streetlight’s glow. “I wanted you to lean on me,” he hated that his voice sounded desperate.
“I know,” she moved into his touch, her small hand moving to cover his heart. “I don’t know what I would have done without you.”
He wondered how anyone could hurt this girl. As he laid there, his heart literally in the palm of her hand, he couldn’t wrap his brain around the notion of causing her any harm. And that’s what that ski-masked shooter in the stairwell had done. As the blood had pumped out of Sam’s body, the life had gone right out of Alma too. It was an evil, evil bastard who laid that kind of pain on her.
“I’m afraid,” he saw the gleam of her teeth as she pulled her bottom lip between them. “That I’m gonna have to lean on you just a little more while I try to get my shit put back together. Not for money,” she said. “It’s just, I need you, Carlos. In so many ways.”
And I’ve needed you for a long damn time. He couldn’t keep himself from saying what he’d been holding in for weeks. “I love you.”
Her answer was to close the distance between them and move in for a kiss. This one was sweet, unhurried. Their bodies were exhausted, and their lips moved slowly together.
Carlos knew in that moment that, whatever his feelings on the matter, when it came to Alma, revenge was not off the table. He’d do anything for this girl.
When she pulled back, he palmed her stomach, her little almost-baby bump. “Lean all you need to,” he assured her. “I’m gonna take care of you. Both of you.”
10
Both of you. Carlos’s words ran in an almost continuous loop inside Alma’s head, making her warm and tingly from the top of her head to her toes,
which were currently being pinched inside her black leather stiletto-heeled boots. At each new frustration the day provided, she thought about Carlos loving her. Her and the baby. And it made it all just a little more tolerable.
She’d dressed in her favorite gray slacks and a loose, blousy white sweater. Her black motorcycle jacket, heels. Makeup, flawless hair, understated, silver jewelry. She thought she looked damn good. Her lipstick matched her pale pink nail polish. But none of that seemed to matter to anyone but her.
“Ma’am.” The woman in the half-moon glasses on a beaded chain behind the front desk at the high school seemed annoyed that she had to call Alma “ma’am.” “You’re gonna have to apply online,” she stressed the word like it was something she should have already known. “You’ll need to go through screening and submit to a background check. It’s a whole process and we don’t handle that here in the office.”
If this wasn’t her third stop of the day, Alma might have smiled, thanked the receptionist, and left without a fuss. But she was determined to go home employed today. “But, if I may ask, why don’t you handle that here?”
The woman propped a hand on her beefy hip and sighed. “Because I’ve got a lot to do and I don’t have time to background check substitutes.” Again with the making regular words sound like curses.
“Thanks anyway,” Alma said with a fake smile. So much for having been a good student putting her ahead. No one seemed to remember who she was and even if they had, she wasn’t sure it would have been of any benefit. She punched through the double doors with her shoulder, her resume and relevant info clutched to her chest against the stiff wind that was rattling through the parking lot, swirling leaves across the asphalt.
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