by Ruthie Knox
“Three years.”
“You still drink?”
“Never.”
“You raise hell? Go out to bars, pick up women?”
“No.”
“So how long before you’re done with your penance? When do you get forgiven?”
He made his fists flatten out on his knees. Not her fault that she didn’t understand. She didn’t know.
“Not yet.”
She wrapped her arms around him and rubbed her wet cheek against his neck. “I forgive you, Tony.”
Oh, fuck. He didn’t want any of this. Not the cold sweat or the shaky hands, and not this flare of anger at her, that she could think it was so easy.
That he should be so vile, so worthless as to take comfort in her forgiveness.
When she started to shake, he put his arms around her, and when she kissed him, he lay her down on the bed and made love to her all over again, burying himself to the root in her softness.
She stroked her hands over his hair and said his name. “Tony, Tony.” She said it like a prayer. Like the Catholic kids did—Tony, Tony, turn around. Something’s lost and must be found.
She wanted to find him and give him back to himself, but that wasn’t how it worked.
“Tony.”
He took his name from her, took her body and her mouth and everything she offered him, and he didn’t give her anything back.
The orgasm stole his breath and left him empty. A sinkhole in his chest that wouldn’t go away.
It only got bigger. The worst thing would be to pretend it wasn’t there. He’d get to thinking he could have her. Keep her. He’d do everything he could for her, and then he’d mess it up, and she would fall in.
When the sun came up, he put on his clothes, laced up his boots, and left.
Chapter Twelve
Amber’s mother plucked the carton of ice cream off the table on her way to the kitchen.
“Hey! I was eating that.”
“You can’t have ice cream for lunch. It’s not healthy.”
“I was having it for breakfast. Because of the power outage.”
“The power’s been back on since yesterday morning.”
Amber couldn’t argue with that. “I’m an adult. I can eat ice cream whenever I want.”
“You can eat your own ice cream when you want. In my place, you eat ice cream for dessert. Or for a snack. Not for lunch.”
“Breakfast.”
“Either way. What’s gotten into you?” Her mother flapped a manicured hand at Amber, a gesture that took in her limp posture and the fact that she was wearing a bathrobe at eleven a.m.
“I’m sad.”
“Yes, darling, I figured that out. I did warn you.”
Amber got up and fetched the ice cream from the freezer. Rocky Road was her favorite, and even though the consumption of ice cream made her a walking cliché, it also made her throat feel better.
The depth of her grief kept surprising her. She’d awakened early, before the sun was all the way up, and had instantly known that he was gone. She’d thought she was fine. That she was handling it. And then she’d gotten out of bed and made a cup of tea, and after one sip, she’d started to cry.
It was just what he’d said would happen, which made her furious.
I’m fine, she kept telling herself, first in her head, then out loud. But she hadn’t been able to stop crying.
She took her prize into the living room and dropped onto the couch to scoop ice cream directly off the sides of the paper carton.
Her mom came in through the archway that separated the dining area from the living room, her hands staked out on her hips. Sunday morning, and she was dressed in her church clothes—a skirt with a short-sleeved blouse and pearls. Though the outfit wasn’t so different from her everyday clothes. Janet Clark believed in being well turned out at all times.
“You’re not even going to tell me what happened?” she asked.
Amber shook her head. “Personal boundaries.”
Personal boundaries was code. It meant, essentially, Back off, or I’m moving to Switzerland. She and her mother had been doing much better as a pair ever since Amber had discovered that personal boundaries existed, and she could erect them.
“Did he hurt you?”
This question arrived in a quieter, less interfering tone, representing a real fear that Amber needed to soothe—not Did he hurt your feelings? but Did he rape you, attack you, take advantage of you?
“No.” She said it too loudly, and the word seemed to bounce around the apartment walls.
She tried to think how to explain it. How to tell her mother that Tony hadn’t tricked her or lied to her, that he’d been absolutely straight with her from the beginning, and she had known he would be gone in the morning, and yes, he’d hurt her anyway. Badly.
“Not on purpose,” she said.
Her mom came over and sat next to her on the couch. She flipped on the television, and a commercial for Survivor came on.
“Your sister watches this,” Janet said. “I can’t understand the point. A bunch of idiots on an island. Who cares?”
“Katie likes idiots. Look at her boyfriend.” Levi was a smooth-talking, good-looking kid who didn’t have an ounce of common sense.
Her mom made a snorting noise. “Hand me that ice cream.”
“You’re just going to take it away from me.”
“No, I won’t. Hand me the spoon, too.”
“You’re going to eat with me?”
“Just a little bit.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be at the Parish House lunch thingy soon?”
Janet’s mouth compressed into a line, and she put out her hand. Amber gave her the ice cream. “Yes, but you’re sad. Spoon.”
She took the spoon and dug into the ice cream. “Mmm. This is good. All melty still from the freezer being out.”
“I know. Don’t eat all the marshmallow parts,” Amber said.
“Tell me again which Mazzara boy you got mixed up with.”
“Tony.”
“Is he the one who had the accident all those years ago? Hit his daughter with the car?”
Amber’s throat closed, and she reached for the ice cream. After swallowing another bite, she said, “No. That was Patrick. Tony is older.”
“What’s he like?”
“He’s great. And … and kind of messed up, I think.”
“Drugs?”
“No.”
“Alcohol?”
“No. Jeez, Mom.”
Her mother was unrepentant. “So what kind of messed up is he?”
“Just the ordinary kind. Nothing terrible.”
“Well, he can’t be ordinary messed up, or he would be too smart to make you so sad. He would be here, treating you like a princess.”
She thought about saying that he had treated her like a princess, but she was afraid her mother would ask how, and she didn’t think cock jokes and orgasms were her mom’s idea of the princess treatment.
But they were Amber’s.
He’d made her feel as though she could say anything. Be anybody. That she could be who she was inside her heart, inside her head, instead of who someone else wanted her to be.
He’d made her feel amazing. And then he’d left.
She understood what he was doing. When she’d looked him up in the phone book and called his home number, she’d done it knowing that he wouldn’t pick up.
Just in case you change your mind, my number’s 427-7786. Call me if you want to talk. I’m here.
She’d listened to herself leaving the message, fully aware that he wouldn’t call back. That she probably sounded weak and desperate in exactly the way he’d predicted.
But damn it, she wasn’t weak and desperate. She just really, really liked him, and she refused to let him slink off without at least having to hear her voice again in the daylight. He shouldn’t get to drop her without having to make the decision one more time.
Apparently he’d made it. He
’d had all day Saturday to return her call, and he hadn’t done it.
Resulting in more crying.
“The damage is done,” she said. “I’m in the ice-cream-eating phase. Give it back.”
Janet passed the carton over with her lips pursed like she was trying to keep herself from saying something. It was rare that her mother tried to keep herself from saying anything. Amber tried not to be curious but gave up almost immediately.
“What?”
Janet sighed. “I was only going to say that if he’s the ordinary sort of messed up, and he’s a man, he’s probably just being an idiot. And if you like him, it doesn’t have to be over unless you want it to be. But then I remembered that you invited him up to your apartment and his truck was still there when I went to sleep at twelve, and I thought, Why am I encouraging this kind of monkey business?”
Reluctantly, Amber smiled.
Her mother touched her hair. “Maybe you should talk to him,” she said.
“It wouldn’t do any good. It’s not really about me. It’s just … him.”
“Definitely being an idiot.” Her mom glanced out the window. “If you do talk to him, be sure to make him grovel. They’re always better in bed after a good grovel.”
Shock forced the laugh out of her. “Mom!”
Janet gave her an amused sideways look. “You’re old enough to bring men home and too sinful for church. Doesn’t that mean we can do girl talk?”
“You’re my mother.”
“Of course I’m your mother. I’ll always be your mother. But you’re such a good girl, you hardly need any mothering. You need cheering up.”
Janet leaned toward her, plucked the ice cream out of her hand, and scooped out the last good marshmallow stripe. “Isn’t it better than getting a lecture?” she asked.
“Yes,” Amber said, with some trepidation.
“You don’t sound so sure. Haven’t you ever done girl talk before? You dish, and then I give you all kinds of useless advice, and then we mock him for a while until we’re giggling and you go home and take a shower and pull yourself together. You’ll feel better after, I promise.”
She looked at her mother, dressed in those impractical clothes, with her sympathetic eyes and mischievous smile.
Why not? She thought. Why the hell not?
“Okay.”
“Oh, good.” Janet leaned toward her. “Now tell me what happened in the basement.”
Chapter Thirteen
Tony kept away from the community center all morning, messing around with paperwork in the office until he ran out of excuses not to do his job.
He drove the fifteen miles from Mount Pleasant to Camelot at a crawl. When he got there, the blonde was behind the desk, and Amber was nowhere in sight.
He found Patrick hanging sheetrock in the meeting room closest to the old part of the building, holding the panel up while a nineteen-year-old college dropout named Casey pounded in the nails.
Tony usually had Casey pushing a broom. He never gave him work that involved skill. The kid didn’t know his ass from apple butter.
“What are you doing?”
Patrick gave him a wry look. “Hanging rock.”
“Where are Rick and Matt?” Tony asked. His regular sheetrock guys had been scheduled to come in this morning.
“They didn’t show,” Patrick said.
“Neither of them?”
“Right.”
“Jesus. Did you call them?”
“No. Where have you been?”
“In the office.”
The sheetrock needed to get done by Wednesday, and Patrick had only three panels up. Tony and Patrick working together could have finished the whole room inside of two hours. Rick and Matt were even faster.
“How long you been at it?”
Patrick looked at Casey, and the kid shrugged. “I don’t know, since ten?”
Three and a half hours.
“Casey, you can take five. I’ll handle this.”
The kid handed Tony his hammer.
“Where are the nails?”
Casey pointed to a box on the other side of the room.
“What the fuck? Bring them over here. When your break’s over, go clean the floor in the aerobics room. Somebody’s been walking on it with dirty boots again.”
Tony took over pounding nails through the panels into the joists. It felt good to hit something. He’d spent the past two days filled with restless violence.
“Dude, where’d you go this weekend?” Patrick asked. “Cathy said she called you during the storm and you weren’t home. I called three times yesterday.”
“I was here during the storm. Working late.”
And I was home all weekend, pacing holes in the living room carpet like a caged animal.
His brother shifted beneath the panel, finding a better position for his hand. “You had to go down into the basement with the lights out?”
“Yeah.”
“That sucks. Was it just you, or—no, that director girl would’ve still been here, huh? I bet that was interesting. She try to jump your bones?”
“Shut up.”
The warning in his voice made Patrick look over. Tony watched him leap to the logical conclusion.
“You were holed up with the director girl, huh?”
“Her name’s Amber. And no. I was home all weekend. I didn’t answer the phone because I didn’t want to talk.”
“Touchy.”
Tony hammered without saying anything, hoping Patrick would take the hint and leave him alone.
Between blows, he heard the faint, intermittent buzz of a chainsaw. Amber must have called somebody to pull the limb off her car and cut it up.
Her voice came through from the other side of the plastic.
“No, Kim was supposed to take that shift. Give her a call, okay?”
“That girl is cute,” Patrick said. “With the whistle and all. Amber, huh? She gave me half her sandwich at lunchtime.”
Tony pounded another nail into the joist.
“I think she likes me. Maybe I’ll see if she wants to go out this weekend. Take her to that place in Danville where they do the line dancing.”
“If you lay a finger on her, I will kill you with my bare hands.”
A huff of laughter. “That’s what I thought,” Patrick said.
“Fuck you.”
“She any good? She looks like she might not know which end is up.”
He gripped the hammer so hard, his fingers started to ache. “Seriously, Patrick, shut the fuck up.”
Her voice drifted into the room again.
“… big galvanized tin bucket we used for the Halloween party? It might be big enough. I’m not sure. I can take a look later, after …”
He couldn’t take this. Couldn’t hear her, see her, talk about her.
Coward.
“We’re starting that job at the church tomorrow,” he said. “I’m going to be there a lot. I want you to take over here. Keep the crew in line. Quit jerking around all morning hanging three panels of sheetrock.”
He hammered in the last nail, and Patrick let go of the panel, rolling his shoulders and staring at Tony with a set jaw. “We talked about this.”
“I know, but you have to do more. There’s too much work for me to be in charge of it all.”
“So hire somebody. Mom says there’s enough money.”
“I already have you.”
Patrick shook his head. “We talked about this,” he repeated. “I don’t want the responsibility, and nobody wants an ex-con in charge of their construction site.”
“You work hard, you do a good job. If people have a problem with it, they can bring it to me.”
“I have a problem with it.”
Tony took two steps and got right in his brother’s face before he even knew he was angry. “What the fuck, Patrick? You gonna go on like this forever, pretending to be a nobody meathead ex-con? You’re smarter than that. You should be running this fucking company.�
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His brother’s eyes narrowed. “I never wanted to run the company.”
“Well, what did you want? Why aren’t you doing it?”
The questions came out of him with so much force, Tony felt as if he’d toppled over on the inside. As if he couldn’t get his feet back under him and his entire body was aching, shaky and sick. Something in his blood. Something really wrong with him.
Patrick’s face flushed red. “Back off, Tony.”
“You’re always telling me that. ‘Back off, Tony. Leave me be. I can handle my own shit.’ But look at you. You haven’t done anything since you got out of jail. You’re a bum. I can’t count on you to even call the goddamn crew when they don’t come in, or to tell me about it so I can call them myself.”
“Don’t expect me to read your mind. You’re pissed at me because you fucked that girl, and now you want me to take over the site so you don’t have to see her. I never thought you were such a pussy.”
“This isn’t about me,” he said. “It’s about you. It’s about your future.”
“Not today, it isn’t.”
Tony’s mouth clamped shut, his nostrils flaring as he tried to get a handle on the sudden pressure in his sinuses.
“Forget it,” he said. “We need more rock. Why aren’t all the panels in here already?”
“Casey’s idea. If we get them as we need them, we can take a little break between each one.”
“Waste of fucking time.” Tony stalked into the hall, heading toward the curtain and out the side door, where they had more sheetrock on a truck.
“… talk to Rosalie here about arranging private swim lessons …”
Amber was right outside the curtain. He froze. He didn’t want her to see him like this, flayed open with anger.
“You going or not?” his brother said from behind him.
He went.
When she saw him, her eyes widened as if she thought he might pounce on her and hurt her, and that made it worse. He would never hurt her.
Not any more than he already had.
“Hi,” she said.
He paused. But what could he say? If he opened his mouth, it would all spill out.
He nodded at her and kept going, walking fast out the door, slamming into it with both hands and pushing into the sunlight, sucking down the fresh air as if he were dying or drowning.