by Kristie Cook
The neighbor’s curtain, however, parted, and an older woman, probably in her seventies, peeked out, then came out her front door. Her mouth moved, but I shook my head and yanked on my ear. I brought up my typical “I can’t hear” screen on my phone to show her, but she was already inside and out again with a paper and pen.
“Nobody lives there,” she wrote with a shaky hand. “Been empty for some time now.”
“How long, exactly?” I wrote. Her mouth moved, and she probably didn’t know I could read her lips as she debated with herself—was it a few months ago or before her hip surgery? Before, but the first one or the second one? The first one was over a year ago. She didn’t think it’d been that long.
She finally shook her head then wrote: “About a year ago?”
As if I could trust her assessment. I scrolled through the photos in my phone to a picture I’d taken of another picture, the only one I had left of that life. I showed it to the older woman and asked if she knew the people in it.
“Oh, yes,” she started to speak. I nodded and let her know I could read her lips. It would be much faster than waiting for her to write it all out. “I think I do. I haven’t seen them in years, though. Did he die? I think he did. Oh, no, maybe that was her son.”
I cringed, but she rambled on without notice, and it became clear she didn’t remember much unless it happened at least fifty years ago. But she was quite vocal about me.
“I don’t understand ya’ll and your doodles on your skin. Doesn’t make sense why you’d want to ruin what God gave ya, bless your heart.” She cocked her head as she looked up at my face. “Did you fix my TV, sonny? That jumpy screen will drive an old woman mad. You’re the cable man, right?”
She grabbed my arm with surprising strength and dragged me inside. Without understanding why I was even doing it, I looked at her cable box, tightened the connection, and was on my way. She tried to give me five dollars, but I left it on her end table and pounded pavement to get out of there. She was a sweet old lady who probably shouldn’t be living alone, but we’d wasted enough of each other’s time.
I drove aimlessly around the small town, circled the town square, then pulled into an empty parking spot and stared ahead without seeing. Where had the woman I’d once called Grams gone? Had she been the woman the neighbor said had recently moved out? And what was “recently”? She’d never clarified if it had been a few months or a few years, although surely the place wouldn’t have stayed empty for long. Maybe Grams had gone back north, to where I’d grown up. But what about the old man, my gramps? Well, he’d been my gramps at one time. Until he decided I was no longer anything but a bad memory to him, and I decided the feeling was mutual. Was he really dead? Was Grams dead, too?
A lump formed in my throat, and the urge to punch something nearly overcame me. I needed air. I jumped out of the car and started walking. I had no destination in mind, but a head of curls drew my attention to the diner on the other side of the square. I made my way over and although the curls were gone, I ducked inside and slid into a booth, the only customer there. It was a little early for lunch, but my bio-clock was so whacked, I didn’t care.
A Georgia-peach of a waitress took my texted order in stride and brought me chicken-fried steak with gravy and mashed potatoes and bottomless cups of sweet tea. She even went so far as to give me her number. Surprise, surprise. I left it on the table, which didn’t escape her notice—her lower lip stuck out in a pout as her eyes followed me out the door. No reason to lead her on. Tempting, but I was still on a mission.
To where, I wasn’t sure. My gut told me to hang tight here, even when this little town seemed to be a dead end. Of course, my gut had been wrong about Italy, so maybe it had lost its touch. Maybe I shouldn’t trust it so much. But without facts or even clues, what else did I have to go on besides instinct? Besides, to be honest, it was more than normal instinct or a vague sense of what I should do. This was a gravitational pull as if I had a huge magnet in my ass moving me beyond my control. Or more like a barbed trident hooked into my insides, yanking me around, to and fro, and if I fought it, I’d have one helluva hole in my gut. So I didn’t fight it.
After stopping at a barbershop for a much-needed haircut, I returned to the hotel and paid for another night. Once in my room, I pulled out my tablet—the only computer I still had—and tapped into the hotel’s Wi-Fi. Maybe I was supposed to stay here because this place really wasn’t the end. There must still be something—a clue, a lead, a person—I might find here.
Hoping to find a new address, I searched my grandparents’ names, but found nothing. Not just no known address, but nothing at all. I’d found this address for Grams on the Internet two years ago and had confirmed it right before leaving for Italy. There had also been the obituaries with their names listed as survivors and articles about the accident, but now there was nothing. Zilch. Nada. Even the obits were gone.
I scrubbed my hands over my freshly buzzed head. What was I supposed to do now? Sit here and wait for another clue? Another pull on my gut? What kind of plan was that? It wasn’t one. I threw myself back on the bed and stared at the ceiling, trying to develop a new plan, but my mind drew a blank. I had nothing to go on. I was done. My mission for the last two-plus years had ended.
Anger began simmering within me, but jetlag won out.
The room was dark again when I woke, and my mood foul. I needed a drink. Turns out, the hotel bar was the hopping spot of the town. By the time I made it there, it was already half-full and a country band was setting up on stage. Yee-fuckin’-haw. I slammed back a shot of tequila. And then another. And more until all thoughts of my screwed up family, of the failed goal to find my real family, even of Leni were obliterated. And lucky for me, the little peach from the diner showed up, and she wasn’t nearly as mad as she’d pretended to be.
Unfortunately, her boyfriend was. Unfortunately for him, that is.
A few more drinks and he and his friends might have had me, but they didn’t know whom they were messing with. I used to get paid to fight much uglier and much meaner dudes than this. So when I saw the fist flying at me out of the corner of my eye, I ducked, then threw a punch of my own. Someone must have said to take it outside, because two large hands shoved me until we were through the door. Adrenaline pumped through my system, giving me a high I hadn’t felt in years, and I jumped around on the balls of my feet. I wished I could speak—speak normally, anyway—but my taunting came in other ways.
The three douchebags fell for it and came at me all at once. Not a single fist touched me, but I landed several punches on them. I danced around as they swung, ducking and dodging when necessary, then answering with my own fists. A small crowd poured out of the bar, gathering around us. As much fun as I was having, I’d have to end this soon or someone would call the police. Cops were a buzz-kill. With three more punches and a knee to a face, all three of the fuckers were down. The crowd quickly dissipated, leaving the dudes on the ground, me and my peach.
“Your boyfriends?” I mouthed to her. She wrinkled her nose at the guy directly at my feet, then held her index fingers in a cross: ex. Then she wrapped her arm around my waist and insisted on accompanying me to my room to make sure I was okay.
She inspected every inch of my body and not only with her baby blue eyes. I let her think she had control—a game her type liked to play—but only for so long. There was only one reason she was in this room with me, so when my turn came, I gave it to her like she’d never had it before. I didn’t have to hear to know she screamed, but each time the wall vibrated as the bed slammed into it, Leni’s name reverberated in my mind. I grabbed a fistful of straight, black hair, but felt curls. When I squeezed my eyes shut, green eyes and honey skin swam behind my eyelids. I couldn’t shake her, even as the peach and I went on and on, making a mess of the extra bed. There was a reason hotels came with two beds—one for sleep and one for play. I never
did both in the same place. Jeric Winters did not sleep in wet spots.
When I was about to blow during our second round of the night, my gut clenched as though I’d been punched.
The instinctual pull that had led me halfway across the world and back to here hooked into my insides and reeled me in like a carp. Only stronger than usual. More urgent than ever. Outside. I needed to get outside. The reason I was in this God-forsaken town sobered me instantly. Was she out there? The one I’d been searching for all this time?
Something was seriously wrong, and I . . . needed . . . to be out there. The feeling overwhelmed me, took command of my muscles. Without giving the order a second thought, I jumped off the peach, barely registering her confused daze, and grabbed a towel as I headed for the door.
When I threw it open, a few cuss words slipped out of my mouth right before I hurdled the railing and sprinted for the parking lot.
Chapter 5
I lay in bed with my arm securing a pillow over my head, although it did no good. I should have gone to the lake. Why didn’t I go to the lake? The drive would have been worth it to sleep in my peaceful camper, surrounded only by nature. But no. For some idiotic reason, I thought it’d be better to stay close to town. I had things to do tomorrow. Places to go. Phone calls to make.
Today’s visit to the courthouse did nothing but confirm what Officer Unfriendly had told me yesterday—Theodore Drago didn’t exist according to the State of Georgia. But the court clerk, doing her best to show her southern hospitality, said if I brought in some paperwork of his, maybe we could get to the bottom of this mystery. Unfortunately, that meant making a phone call I really didn’t want to make. Tomorrow morning I would have to, though. It was time, anyway. I’d hoped to find Uncle Theo along with a perfectly sound explanation and not have to worry Daddy, but apparently that wasn’t going to happen.
But all of this wasn’t what had me still awake at one a.m. Neither did the fact that a strange tattoo of a flame had mysteriously shown up on my inner wrist. I didn’t have to think about it all day when my stack of bracelets covered it, but when I took them off tonight, the mark and where it had come from confounded me. But not enough to keep me awake when jetlag should have claimed me hours ago.
I missed Italy. More specifically, at this very moment, I missed the ancient inns where I stayed with their thick, heavy walls separating the rooms. The walls here could be sliced through with a box cutter. Earlier, it had been a baby in the room to the left of mine, crying its poor little heart out. For hours. When she finally settled down, the television in the room above mine blared some kind of musical show, and I think the occupant was dancing along with the people on TV. And they must have been clogging. That went off at eleven, and my room had fallen blissfully silent. I relished the peace, thinking I could finally go to sleep. As I drifted off, though, the giggles and the squealing began next door, right next to my head, followed by groans and moans and a rhythmic pounding against the wall. It went on for seemingly ever. What guy could even go that long? Judging by the girl’s screams, which were now reaching a crescendo, he must have been an animal. Or maybe unable to ejaculate? Ugh. Just finish already.
But they didn’t. I couldn’t take one more bang against the wall, one more shout of “yes!” I sprang out of the bed, grabbed my key-card while stuffing my feet into my cowboy boots and charged out of the room. My initial intention had been to go for a walk, hoping by the time I returned, the couple would be worn out, but being the middle of a dark night and near the highway, leaving the hotel’s well-lit property probably wasn’t such a good idea. I thought about going for a drive, but if I was going to do so, I may as well drive to the lake.
Why not? Good question. Why shouldn’t I go to the lake and make the drive back when I had the paperwork I needed? Besides the facts that it was 1:30 a.m., I was exhausted, and if they were done, I could be asleep in minutes here, nothing stopped me. I made a deal with myself: one lap around the hotel and if the wallbangers were still going at it, I was packing up.
The first-floor rooms opened to a sidewalk encircling the building, with a railing on the outside to keep anyone from traipsing through the landscaping to the parking lot. After passing several rooms, I reached the outlet that spilled onto the blacktop, where I felt a little more comfortable than being so close to people’s doors. My imagination pictured someone grabbing me as I walked by and yanking me inside their room to do all kinds of disgusting acts.
When I nearly completed my lap of the parking lot, though, I wished I’d stayed closer to the building. An eerie feeling raised the hairs on the nape of my neck, then out of nowhere, two big, black shadows flew at me.
Literally flew.
They soared through the air, shapeless like obsidian mist, and joined together over my head. They swirled into a cloud, and the black vapor spiraled down and around me, like some kind of tornado, though no wind blew. Not a single hair on my head stirred, but a screech of, “We always find you” filled my ears. I threw my hands up as shields, and I tried to scream, but my heart had lodged in my throat, blocking any sound. My mouth clamped shut before I sucked any of this craziness into my body, and I shot my arms out in a sort of karate-chop. For the briefest of moments, not even a nanosecond, my hands hit something solid, but then the mist disappeared completely. Gone. As if it had never been there.
I glanced down at myself, wiped my hands over my t-shirt and pajama bottoms, expecting to find them damp or covered in black dust, but there was nothing. When I looked up, a man ran at me, wearing nothing but a towel and spewing a series of slurred profanity.
And my breath sucked back in all over again.
He stopped dead in his tracks five yards away in front of me, and his fist grabbed at the towel’s corners before it came loose, while his deep blue eyes popped wide open. A bazillion thoughts jumbled in my mind. What was he doing here? Did he follow me all the way from Italy? Was that him causing the bed to bang against the wall? What happened to his hair? This was too wild to be a coincidence. Maybe he had something to do with everything going on. It should be illegal to look so hot. Were those piercings in his nipples?
Jeric and I stood there staring at each other as if caught up in some kind of surreal warp where time stood still. His mouth hung open, and he was clearly as surprised to see me as I was to see him. His hands twitched to say something, and the towel began to slip. He caught it in time, although the terrycloth now hung much lower on his hips. I couldn’t stop staring at those hips, where his muscles began to form a V that ended behind the fabric. My thighs trembled, and my throat went dry.
“What’s going on?” a female voice called from behind him.
Of course, he didn’t hear her, didn’t react, but I broke my stare and looked up. A woman with raven hair, only her hands and arms covering her girl-junk, stood in the doorway next to mine, eyeing Jeric and then me. I thought I might puke. When a barely audible but still sickening splat hit the pavement in front of Jeric, and my gaze followed the sound to the used condom lying at his feet, I did throw up a little in my mouth.
I looked up at his red face, back at the girl who whined for him to return, then turned away, hoping to skirt by this unbelievable situation, go to my room and pretend none of this ever happened. A hand grabbed my wrist. My stomach tilted and whirled and fell off a cliff, leaving me even queasier than I already was. The word “dyad” wafted through my mind again, and once more I felt like I knew him. Really knew him like I knew myself. But I didn’t. Not really. I shook my arm free and strode off, toward the other end of the breezeway so I wouldn’t have to pass their room to get to mine.
My heart raced and my hands shook like an addict’s as I tried to swipe the card and open my door. After three tries, I was finally in, slamming the door behind me, then leaning against it to catch my breath. I closed my eyes and inhaled through my nose, then blew the air out just as slowly. My heart eventua
lly resumed its normal pace.
Why was I so upset? Was it seeing him again? Here, of all places? That had to be it because I had absolutely no right to have a single feeling about his state of nakedness or the pounding and screams keeping me up all night. He was a guy in an airport, a passing stranger, nothing that justified me to care what he’d been doing and with whom.
Except he was here, in my hometown. What were the odds? Although, that could explain why I thought I knew him. Just because he’d been headed to Miami didn’t mean he was from there. Maybe I’d seen him around? But again, what were the odds? And why wouldn’t he mention anything about it when I said I lived near Atlanta?
“Who cares about him,” I muttered, trying to convince myself I didn’t. I needed to care more about the attack, or whatever the black mist had been, although it felt so unreal now that I wondered if I’d imagined the whole thing.
A pounding on the door right behind me, as though directly on my back, made me jump and do a half-spin at the same time. I stared at the door with wide eyes. Was it Jeric or that . . . thing? Either way, did I dare answer it? The door rattled in its jamb as the force of the banging increased. I peeked through the peephole. Jeric’s face molded into an expression of anger and worry as his fists continued to beat the door. If he didn’t stop, he’d wake up the baby next door as well as the rest of the hotel. Reluctantly, I opened the door, right in time to hear his woman screaming profanities at him from the parking lot. Over his shoulder, I saw her flipping him off right before ducking into the driver’s side of an older model T-bird. This satisfied me in a way it shouldn’t have.