by M. O'Keefe
Come on, I silently urged Joan. Give yourself one day.
She kept fidgeting next to me. Just when I thought she might relax, she’d twitch around with her towel or her hair or her glasses.
It felt like life or death. I don’t know why and it barely made any sense. But if she couldn’t take a deep breath and let some shit go, it was over for her. She’d burn out trying to get her sister free. Trying to make things right. Blaming herself for everything that went wrong in her life, her sister’s life.
Fucking Murray’s life. She’d take it all on, all the guilt in the world.
If she couldn’t let it go for a few moments, she’d be buried by her guilt. Buried by her regret. She’d go up in flames trying to make everything right.
I knew it because it was as true for me as it was for her.
I wasn’t thinking about second chances today. About what might happen tomorrow. About if being the president of the Skulls was a game I wanted to play anymore.
I was thinking about none of it.
Except the boat.
Which made sitting here for a solid day a test we both had to pass.
Finally, the time between the twitches lengthened. And the time between her panicky breaths lengthened. And then there was a long slow sigh.
“One day,” she whispered.
“One day.”
“What the hell are you going to do with a boat?” she finally asked and I laughed, even though it hurt my ribs.
—
We didn’t eat anything and around noon, another little old woman came out, wearing—of all things a T-shirt with Santa on a beach—and carrying a blender full of margaritas and poured each of us enough to fill a red plastic cup to the brim.
“Beer margaritas,” she said with a sly wink. “The beer makes it less sweet.”
Joan and I both thanked her and accepted her congratulations on our marriage.
“Jeez,” Joan said after a sip. “Mrs. Claus makes them strong.”
She did indeed.
And by the bottom of the cup, drunk Joan became a pleasure to watch, particularly when she jumped into the pool and then got out, that white bikini see-through in places.
I meant what I told her last night. I was all ready to invest in this woman’s drama. Fucking her would burn us both down. But funny how after a beer margarita on an empty stomach, burning down the night didn’t seem like such a bad way to go.
A while later, another woman came out with a plate full of little hot dogs with toothpicks. Another woman brought something called a cheeseball that tasted better than it looked.
There was cheap champagne and a few beers.
Each of them congratulated us on our marriage.
“Jeez,” Joan said again, rolling the mini hot dog in the cheeseball, which because I was a little buzzed on the super strong margarita and the beer, was the best idea I’d ever seen. “How do we upgrade the snacks into cash?”
“How do we get another round?” I asked, draining the last of the beer from my bottle.
One of the units on the second floor with open windows, unfortunately, started to play music. Loud.
“It’s like our wedding reception!” Joan said, her eyes wide. She did a little shimmy, which I appreciated, but I closed my eyes and tilted my face to the sun.
“I don’t dance.”
“Why am I not surprised?”
The music was awful. Country crap. But beside me, Joan started humming and then singing.
“Really?” I asked.
She was grinning, her eyes closed, her body swaying. “Oh, so really. I will not hear anything against the Misters Brooks and Dunn. It’s my wedding reception. Let me be happy.” Another song came on and Joan gave a little squeal.
Clapped her hands like she’d won a carnival prize.
I wondered, for just a second, what Joan would be like if she allowed herself to be happy. Not just while she was drunk beside a pool. But every day.
Because despite all her thick skin and “take your best shot” attitude, the woman had some serious joy.
And that I was seeing it—and she was letting me—felt like she was showing me a secret.
Like the tattoo under my arm.
Like a fleeting and rare second chance. And I had a cold, hard knot in my stomach that had everything to do with Joan and her sister and this rescue mission she was on that had every possibility of turning into a suicide mission.
I waited until the music was over because I didn’t want to ruin that joy of hers. But when the station flipped to a commercial, I got serious.
“Joan?”
“Yeah?”
“What are you going to do when you find out where Lagan is? What is your plan?”
“Get my sister back.”
“How, though? Guns blazing, flashing your fake badges?”
“No,” she said. “I’m not a total idiot. Lagan was letting Jennifer make supply runs with Gwen and I thought I’d watch the camp and when I saw them leave for town, I’d follow them. Convince her and Gwen to come with me when they were away from the camp.”
“What if they don’t agree?”
“She will, Jennifer will agree. She’ll come with me.” It was more prayer than surety, but I knew better than to say it.
“And this Gwen woman?”
“I’ll have the gun. I can force her, and then we’ll go to the cops.”
“What about the pills?”
“Jesus, Max. You got a better idea?”
That was the problem. I didn’t.
“I have to believe this will work. You get that, right?”
Yeah, I got it. But this wasn’t a plan. It was a wish, and sooner or later she had to see that.
I ached to touch her. To put my hand against the velvet skin of her shoulder. I ached for it so badly I could feel it like a memory.
But I knew she’d shrug away, too raw to handle kindness.
On my right side, I felt something sneak up on me and block out the sun. Out of habit, my hand reached for the gun I usually had in the back of my pants.
Habits from a life that somehow seemed long ago after only a few days.
“Sorry to bother you,” the shadow said, and Joan and I both cupped our hands over our eyes so we could make out yet another little old lady. A black woman wearing a long, flowing dress and flip-flops with huge plastic flowers on them.
And she had what looked like a bottle of champagne in a sand pail.
“You’re not bothering us,” I said, my eyes on that champagne. This was an upgrade.
“I remember you,” Joan said. “Nancy. You had all the grandkids.”
“Yes! I’m Nancy.” She smiled, her heart all over her round face. “And I do have quite a few grandkids.”
“Right.” Joan sat up, her arms crossing over her bare belly as if suddenly uncomfortable with the amount of skin she was showing.
“And I remember you. You and your sister. I’m so pleased that you’ve come back and on your honeymoon, too.” The woman’s happy gaze swept over me.
“Thank you,” I said, when Joan said nothing.
“Yes, here!” She handed me the sand pail with the champagne bottle sticking out of it. “Fern told me you eloped. Jimmy and me did that years ago, too. Both our families thought we weren’t going to make it so we decided they shouldn’t be a part of our day. So it was just me and Jimmy in the courthouse forty-two years ago, this year.”
“You showed them, huh?” I said, getting into my part.
“We certainly did and I figure a little champagne never went amiss.”
“Not ever,” I said. This fake marriage thing was exhausting.
Nancy smiled at me but she looked at Joan who was decidedly not looking at her. “I’m so pleased you’re back. Where’s that little sister of yours?”
“College. She’s going to be a nurse.”
“Like Fern.”
“Yep.”
“Oh that’s wonderful news. She was such a bright girl.”
&nb
sp; “Yep. Real smart.”
“You know, she’d have my hide for saying this, but Fern was devastated when you left.”
Joan scoffed, deep in her throat, and then flinched as if she hadn’t meant to make that sound out loud.
“She was,” Nancy insisted. “I know she doesn’t wear her heart on her sleeve and I know that you two had your problems. But she was truly heartbroken when you left and I’m thrilled you’re back to mend fences. Family should be together.”
Oh, she was barking up the wrong tree talking about that. Mending fences. Joan carried a sledgehammer for those fences that needed mending.
“Thank you,” I said. “For the champagne.”
Now move right along, nice old lady.
Nancy smiled but it did not reach her eyes. “Fern’s been different since you left. I’m hoping that we’ll get the old Fern back now.”
Joan nodded tightly and finally Nancy left. In the still heavy silence, I popped the champagne cork and poured half of it into her red cup. “Take this.”
“Thanks,” she said and took a sip.
I poured the second half of the bottle into my cup. I put the bottle down and lifted her arm so that her cup toasted mine. “To showin’ them, baby,” I said, but she didn’t smile. Not even a little.
We sat there as the sun dipped down over the other side of the building and the shadows grew long across the pool deck. The wind that blew up from the ocean was cold against my sunburned skin.
“I’m going inside,” Joan finally said. “It’s cold.”
She dumped the rest of the champagne into the prickly shrubs behind us and a bunch of those little Florida lizards came scurrying out across the white concrete deck. She wrapped a towel around her body, her shoulders bright red, her back criscrossed with the marks of the plastic lawn chairs that we were sitting on.
I drank my champagne and ate the last of the hot dogs all smeared up with cheese from the cheeseball.
A group of men walked past me, their white socks pulled up over their spotty old man shins. One of them…Dean? The guy with the paper, he slowed down as they walked past, and he flipped me a cigar from his pocket.
“Congrats, son. If my wife asks, you didn’t get that from me.”
“Or me!”
“Me either!” The guys all chuckled, walking with some old man swagger out to the beach where they’d smoke their cigars like they weren’t hiding from their wives.
I smelled the cigar, eyed the little label. The real thing. This cigar probably cost a hundred dollars.
“Thank you.”
The last guy, a bald black man built like a boxer, ran his eyes over my tattoos and then he met mine and I saw—in the disapproving set of his chin—that he knew what I was. And what I’d been. Where I’d come from.
I gave him a mocking salute, which he returned. Months ago, that would have pulled me up and out of my chair, ready to go toe to toe with the guy.
But not today. Maybe it was the booze. Or the sun.
Or Joan.
Probably Joan, but I wasn’t going to look too hard at that.
For the first time, who I was and where I came from didn’t seem like the same thing.
They didn’t match up like they had my entire life, like every decision I made had its roots in that club compound where I’d been raised like the weeds growing out of its cracked concrete. Like the patch on my back had soaked into my skin. My blood.
But not anymore.
Something had changed.
Because they tried to kill me? Or because I left for Arizona and would not have gone back if Dylan didn’t call me?
Was the difference the boat? The woman in the white bikini?
I didn’t know.
But it hurt. The difference. And I won’t lie…it was fucking scary. If I wasn’t Skulls, who was I? What the hell did a guy like me do?
I lit that wedding gift up and smoked the finest cigar I’d ever had in my mouth.
Fake marriage had its perks.
It was hard work ignoring the phone on the deck beside me. Hard work not thinking about how I could flip it open, press a button, and call my brother. It became so hard not to think about it, that it was actually all I could think about.
And I could blame it on the booze or the cigar. Or the conversation with Joan. In the end—it didn’t matter. I picked up the phone and called my brother.
It rang three times, and I imagined it sitting on a workbench someplace in his garage. I imagined him not being able to hear the phone over the whine and burn of the engines that had built his new empire. I was so proud of him. So. Damn. Proud.
This is Dylan. Leave a message.
The beep made my heart stop and I almost hung up, but somehow I didn’t.
“Hey,” I said. “It’s me. I wanted to let you know I was okay. Joan told me you said I could come stay with you. Thanks. You know I can’t but…thanks.” In the rush of things I wanted to say, I suddenly found I couldn’t say anything. Not anything important. “Remember that time we took Carlos’s boat? Took it out on the river and ran out of gas?” I felt a wild bubble in my chest and realized it was laughter. Real laughter. “We had to paddle like…God, all day to get home. You were so pissed. When we got back, Carlos chased us around his yard with that tennis racket. He would have killed us with that thing if he caught us.” I was rambling. “Anyway, I…ah…yeah. Just wanted to tell you I was okay. I’m real—” proud of you. Jealous of you. Happy for you. “Anyway. Good night.”
I hung up before the beep and put the phone down on my stomach, like a warm little coal. Burning me, but not bad enough to move it.
Chapter 18
Joan
When I was in first grade, Joe Alfano pushed me down in the playground and I caught the asphalt with my face, skidding about a foot until I came to a stop against the pebbles under the swing sets.
The lunch lady gathered me and my bleeding, beat-up face and took me in to see the school secretary who also played the role of parole officer, debt collector, and unlikely nurse.
We called her Miss Ramona and she was not as nice as she thought she was.
Anyway, Miss Ramona clucked over me and cleaned me up with those scratchy brown school paper towels as best she could and she gave me an ice pack wrapped in the same crappy paper towels to hold against my chin, nose, and forehead, which were truly scraped to hell. I would have scabs for weeks.
“You know something,” she said to me, in the tone of a woman who was either trying to make me feel better or trying to make me forgive that asshole Joe Alfano, “he probably just really likes you.”
With my eyes burning with tears I wouldn’t let fall and my face stinging at the slightest touch, I nodded. Like I understood. Like Miss Ramona was right.
He probably liked me, so he hurt me. Badly.
Made total sense.
And that right there was pretty much my entire introduction to men. It was my map for relationships with the opposite sex. Somehow, Miss Ramona, with that one fucked-up sentence, got into my head and pushed all my newly forming buttons so that from that moment on, I thought men hurting me meant they liked me.
Yes. I know. Fucked-up. But there you have it.
It took me years to see it as bullshit. To try and rewire myself. To unpress those buttons.
And I knew part of my attraction to Max had its roots in the raw, bloody beds of those scabs. And I told myself that wanting him like I did wasn’t healthy. Or wise.
But part of me wanted me to be wrong. Part of me wanted to believe that Max was an asshole but he wasn’t a dick.
That he was different—or could be different.
Part of me, the small and scared part, wanted to trust him. Trust him not to hurt me.
And that part of me was the really dangerous part. That was the part of me with the compass and the road map to hell and all the empathy that got me nowhere.
I lay on my side of that queen-size bed, listening to the hum of the air conditioner, and I tried to make myse
lf fall asleep so I wouldn’t be waiting for him.
But mostly—I was waiting for him.
Because I was a little bit drunk and a little bit sad. And a whole lot horny from a day spent by his side at the pool.
A fun day. Like…laugh-out-loud fun.
I couldn’t even remember the last time I’d had fun.
And even that was kind of messing me up. I wasn’t supposed to be having fun. Not when I didn’t know what was happening with Jennifer.
You don’t deserve fun, an old familiar voice was telling me.
I heard the front door open and my heart kicked up faster. I’d worn a pair of yoga pants and a long sleeve T-shirt to bed. It was as close to a chastity belt as I could find. But underneath the cotton, worn soft and smooth from a thousand washes, my body was waiting.
It was primed and ready and restless with want. With an edgy anger at myself and at the world.
The fridge door opened with a muffled pop, and I heard him fixing himself a sandwich.
“Gross,” he muttered and I smiled, imagining him trying the tuna salad.
There was no chance of sleep now; I was so attuned to him. My heart was in my throat, my ears straining to pick up every sound he made.
I heard the shuffle of his feet across the carpet to the bedroom and wished that I’d just gone to sleep on the damn love seat.
He stepped inside the room and I heard his trunks slide down his body, the rasp of fabric over skin that meant he was naked. He was naked and here. Warm and big and I couldn’t catch my breath.
“Joan?” he whispered.
“Yeah.”
He got into bed, the mattress dipping with his weight, and I rolled into him, registering the hot brush of his skin. The solid strength of his body. Muscle and bone and tendon.
Quickly as we touched, I rolled away from him.
I wanted him, but I didn’t want to. Because this want felt like need…like weakness…and I really didn’t want that.
I hugged the side as best I could, my back to him, but I felt him there in the darkness. I could feel the glowing hot heat of his sunburned skin all along my back and side. I felt like butter left out of the fridge, my edges were melting. I shifted farther away from him, balancing on the very edge of the mattress.
Ridiculous, I told myself. But somehow I couldn’t find a way to stop.