by Piper Page
I raised my eyebrows. “Les, that was way too much information way too fast. I have to look at him every day and now all I am going to see if an image of him in a superhero helmet and a magic wand for a penis.”
She shrugged and rolled her eyes, “I can’t help it Mal. I’m an instantaneous, spontaneous nymphomaniac.”
“At least you can admit. That’s the first step,” I teased.
“How was it?” she asked.
“How was what?” I desperately wanted to avoid this conversation.
“Oh my god, sex with Adrian, duh!”
I bit down on my lips. Should I tell her? She was my best friend. I shrugged, trying to be nonchalant about it. “It was nice.”
“Nice? Mallory, nice is masturbating with a new vibrator, this is Adrian Maxwell. He makes women come with a wink and a smile.”
I gave her an unbelieving look. “He’s just a guy, he isn’t a god.” In my mind, I knew that wasn’t true. Adrian was a sex god, a gorgeous, make my body shutter, unbelievable, I would do anything to feel his hands on me again, sex god.
“Really, just a guy? You do know that he’sdated supermodels, right? I think he was seen in New York City during fashion week with that girl that won the last season of America’s Next Top Model.”
“Really?” My eyes went wide.
“Yeah, and last year, he dated that girl in the, oh damn what is that the movie? You know the one, the girl with the long blonde hair and she did that amazing striptease with the balloons and then traveled with Jude Law to L.A. to be a real dancer?”
I wasn’t listening anymore. How was it possible for Adrian to be with me, the short, frumpy Mamma Celeste of Jersey, when he had been with models and movie stars? Did he call them kitten too? Maybe that was what he called all his girls when he had sex with them.
My stomach turned. I needed air. How do I compete with that? Even if I was experienced in sex, if I was the Whore of Babylon, Debbie Does Dallas, and the queen of the deep throat all in one, my little “average girl” look and flower shop career couldn’t match what Adrian had access to.
“Hey,” Leslie put her hands on my shoulders, noticing my sudden funk, “Hey, don’t get upset. He’s totally into you. Look what he did to get you to go out with him and he only just met you. I am sure he is going to call you again.”
I tried to smile and agree with her. “Yeah, I know. Its fine, I mean, it didn’t mean anything. He can call if he wants.” I shrugged, but inside, I was falling apart. What if he was just using me? I had given myself, no, thrown myself at the man, practically screaming “take my virginity” with reckless abandon, but he had stayed the night and made me eggs. Maybe that was his M.O.? Maybe he always tried to leave the girls he screwed over with a lasting good impression, just to keep them in his back pocket. He probably had a woman in each city he went to, waiting with a frying pan and open legs for him. Was I going to be that girl here? Did Adrian Maxwell think I’d be waiting for him whenever he needed a jag on a coffee table or a kitchen sink?
“Hey, uh, Mallory, you’re crushing those roses.”
I looked down at my hands and saw that I had squeezed the delicate rose blooms into piles of bruised petals. I swiftly brushed them into the waste basket. “Sorry.” Boy, was I ever sorry.
Chapter Eight
Adrian
“I don’t know who you are, whether you work for Mike or not, and I don’t really care. If you don’t get the fuck off my hood right now, I’m gonna pummel your ass into the ground.”
The man got up and held his hands up innocently. His smile didn’t falter, and he didn’t step away from my vehicle. He had better hope to all that was good he didn’t scratch my paint job with his thrift store jeans.
“Come on, Adrian, I’m just doing my job here. This would go a hell of a lot easier if you’d listen to reason. It makes me go away, it makes anything else that might happen go away, and like I told you yesterday, it makes us all a little richer. No harm no foul.”
My gear bag was where I dropped it as I took the few steps it took to get me up in his face. My words came out in a hiss through gritted teeth as I loomed over him. “Get it through your little brain, asshole, I want nothing to do with you, and I will never, never fucking throw a game. Not for you, not for anyone else.”
I watched as he bit down on his lip, taking in my words but not really hearing me. He reached back behind him, and I poised to strike. If he had a gun, I might not get out of this unscathed, but damn it, I’d go down fighting.
He sensed me tense. “Relax, man, I only want to show you something. Here, look. I found something the other day I think you’d be interested in.” The man had an object in his hand. It was too small to be a gun. I looked closer as my muscles released a little tension, but I kept my guard up just the same. He flicked his finger across the screen of a disposable cell phone. “Here, you take it, have a little gander. I think you’ll be impressed.”
I took the burner phone. The man crossed his arms in front of his chest and leaned back against my car once more. His eyes danced with expectant amusement.
I looked at the screen. There was a familiar picture from years ago of me in my first and only year of college at one of the many parties I’d been to. I held the phone back to him. “What’s your deal, man? Anyone can see those pictures on FaceBook.”
“Scroll through ‘em, they get better. Go ahead, just swipe across the screen, it’s easy.”
I took the phone in my hand again and scowled at him. “I know how to use a damn cell phone, even one as cheap as this piece of shit.”
He shrugged. “Gets the job done.”
“I’m sure.” My eyes dropped back to the screen, and I pushed aside the first picture to expose a second one of me down on one knee with a long tube to my mouth and a full funnel of beer over my head. I cringed.
“Yeah, I’d never picture you as a drinker, but back then…” He let the sentence trail off, then circled his finger in the air, indicating that I should keep going. “They only get better after that one. Keep going, the anticipation is killing me.” He smirked and pretended to twitter with excitement.
I handed him the phone. “No thanks I think we are done here.”
“I don’t think so, buddy boy.” He pulled out a set of keys and laid the tip of a solitary key point to the paint on the hood of my car. “You can keep going and enjoy the show for free, or it can cost you a couple thousand in a new paint job. Either way, you’re gonna look, your choice on the price.”
“Fuck, fine.” I threaded my fingers through my drying hair out of frustration, and then I scrolled to the next picture. It was a mug shot of me from that same year of college, numbered plaque and all.
“That is one of my favorites, drunk and disorderly.” he taunted.
The next one slid into view. It was a picture of my police record. It showed my arrest from when I was a teenager. How did he get a picture of that? Those records were supposed to be sealed. I was a minor. My father made sure I had a good lawyer and just happened to be friends with the local judge.
I should have served some time in juvenile detention for stealing that car, but I ended up with a summer of hard labor in community service, my dad kicking my ass everyday in yard work when I got home. I knew I was fortunate and I should be thankful, so I never complained once about any of the work.
“It’s an interesting little picture isn’t it? Sure would suck to have that information leaked to the press,” he clicked his tongue and shook his head, “and right before the game that could qualify you for the Super Bowl. By the looks of you out there today, man, you probably would have made MVP.”
I was about to lose it. “Shut your mouth. You have no idea why I did that. My family needed that fucking money to pay my brother’s medical bills. I wasn’t some jerk-ass delinquent, it wasn’t like that.”
I thought I saw a flicker of understanding in his blue eyes.
“You have to understand that. I did it to help, not to just steal a car. I don�
��t know how you got those records, but it couldn’t have been legal. No one will believe you, they’ll think you doctored them—I was fucking sixteen years old, for god’s sake.”
The man placed his hand over his chest, that flicker of understanding replaced with mockery. “You’re breaking my little heart.” He pretended to pout. “You want it to go away? You know what you have to do. It’s not hard, Adrian. It’s easier than getting daddy to pay your bail.” He continued to leer at me. “Really is a touching story, though, a real tear jerker. I bet the girls get wet just hearing about what a charitable, family-oriented man you have become, soldiering on through hardships unknown. They ought to make it a movie. I can see it now,” his hand went across the sky, “Local boy does good, shows at ten and midnight.”
“Fuck you.” I said bluntly.
“No man, fuck you if you don’t get with the program, and it won’t be by your girlfriend. Hell, maybe she’d like to see what kind of man she’s screwing. I can send her the pictures, you know.”
The thought of this asshole going anywhere near Mallory was my trigger. I pulled my fist back and grabbed his collar, slamming him down to the hood of my car, forgetting about the pristine paint job. I was going to mutilate his face.
“Hey now, boys, what’s all this? Maxwell, is that you? Holy hell, get off each other, you damn idiots! Who’s that with you, Dawson?” Coach’s voice brought me back to my senses.
The man stood up, pushing me to the side. He straightened the collar of his leather jacket and took a step toward the coach. “Hey there, Coach. Great season so far. Boys look good out there.”
Coach squinted to see the man in the dimming light of the sky. “Do I know you, son? Maxwell, everything all right here?”
The man continued to speak as I seethed. “Oh yeah, Adrian and I go way back, college days. I got pictures, if you wanna see ‘em.” He held out the burner phone, and I jumped into action.
“Ahh no need for that, there, ah, pal. Coach has seen plenty of old pictures of me from back in the day.”
Coach looked suspiciously between the two of us. “You know him, Adrian?”
“Yep, sure do. We were catching up, that’s all. Got a little heated.” I clapped my hand on the man’s shoulder, squeezing as hard as my fingers could dig through the protection of his leather coat. “We go way back.”
“Yeah we were trying to decide who got laid more in college. See Adrian here has experience in cars and well, I’m an anytime, anywhere kinda lover.”
My eyes must have been burning fire.
Coach nodded. “Okay well if your friend here will excuse us, I need to talk to you Maxwell.”
“Sure thing, Coach, no problem. The game is important, we all wanna win. Don’t we, old friend?” The man pointed a thumb at my chest. “I’ll catch up with you soon, Maxwell, my boy.”
Coach and I stood together in the parking lot next to my deposited gear and watched as the man in the leather jacket strolled with no real direction or need to hurry away from us.
Once he had rounded the corner, Coach turned on me. “You want to tell me who the hell that really was and why you were about to sacrifice your goddamn career to beat the shit out of him, right here in our stadium parking lot? Christ on a cracker, son, do you know what that would do to our image?”
I bowed my head in apology, feeling like a teenager again. “It was nothing. I shouldn’t have taken it that far. I’m sorry.”
“Bet your damn ass you are.”
“I am,” I felt like a fool.
“Listen, Maxwell, I know it’s hard to contain your rage, but damn it, you got to think of the team, not just your own ass. What you do here or anywhere else affects us all. It’s all our asses out there on the line. I don’t know who that hood was, but I know for shit sure he wasn’t your long-lost fraternity brother. He looked like a thug, and we can’t have that type of character hanging around here. You get me?”
“Yeah,” I mumbled.
“No, Maxwell, do you fucking get me?
“Yes, Coach!” I yelled.
“Good! Now get your ass home and stay the hell off the streets tonight.”
I grabbed my bag and flung it into my trunk, cursing under my breath the whole time. I should have told Coach that the goon was part of Mike’s plan to use the team, but the Coach was right, I needed to think of the welfare of the team. Each one of those guys worked their asses off to get where we were, they deserved to go to the championship, and I would be damned if I was going to throw that away for leather-face and Mike Richardson. I was going to fight back. I was going to stand my ground, no matter what it took.
Chapter Nine
Mallory
I felt the cold stone on my fingertip as I traced the letters and numbers that had been carved out of the gray granite rock’s surface. Their edges had begun to smooth with the variants of weather. Rain, snow, and wind all took toll on the dual headstone after five years.
“Ma, Pops,” I smiled as I talked out loud, gazing at the photos that were inset on either side of the stone. “I wish you were still here so you could tell me what to do.”
I let my eyes dart to my car, then back to the stone. I felt foolish, sitting there in the grass of the cemetery talking to pictures, but I needed to talk, and there wasn’t really anyone around that I could be completely honest with. I touched my mother’s face. “Ma, he’s so good looking. I think you would have liked him—and he can cook.” I laughed. “And Pops, he plays sports, you could have placed some nice bets on him with your buddies, for sure. I mean, I haven’t exactly seen him play yet, but I think he might be good, real good.”
I sighed and pulled at some blades of grass. The sun was setting, and I rubbed at my arms. “It isn’t easy to find a good man in Elizabeth anymore. Giovanni is never around anymore, and I’m in that house all by myself most nights. It would be nice to have some company, ya know?”
I touched my father’s picture. “I don’t know if I should trust him, Pops. I mean, you make every man pale in comparison, the way you loved Ma. How do I know if he’s the right one? How do I know he isn’t going to throw me aside for the next girl that catches his eye?”
I looked at my parents as they stared back at me with their eternal expressions. “Les says I should go with it, see where it leads, but we all know Leslie’s track record. I wish you could give me an answer. I mean, I feel him with me, like he’s always around, and I haven’t known him but a few days, but I haven’t felt someone’s presence in my life like this, well since you left.”
I felt a hot tear sting the corner of my eyes, and I quickly brushed the back of my hand over my face and looked to the sky to hold back the tears.
When Ma and Pops died five years ago in a car accident, I cried every day for a month, and then I cried at every holiday for the first year, and their birthdays, and my birthday for the next two. Now, I only cried when I came here, but I was managing to hold that back better. It almost felt like an obligatory ritual. “I wish you could meet him. If you met him, then you could tell me. If he was here…damn it.” I swiped at my eyes again and tried to concentrate on the other stones.
My breath caught in my throat when I realized I wasn’t alone. I mean, I knew my parents and the family members of others were around me, but I wasn’t the only living person in the cemetery that evening. I tried to focus on the person. Were they hearing me gushing to my deceased parents? Ugh, I felt silly and embarrassed. I laid a kiss from my fingertips to each of my parents’ pictures and started towards my car. Unfortunately, in order to get to my car, I had to walk right by the newcomer. I kept my head down and took quick-paced steps to reach my car without being noticed and being respectful to the person who was also obviously grieving. But then I heard footsteps stop.
“Mallory? Is that you, Mallory?”
My head snapped around at the sound of Adrian’s voice. Did I slip and fall, hitting my head on a gravestone? How was he standing here? Why was he standing here? I stood still, caught partway betw
een my car and Adrian. Do I keep going and let him be or do I have a conversation with him, here in the cemetery? What do I say, “who are you visiting?”
Adrian rescued me. “I wasn’t expecting to see you. Do…you have family buried here?”
I nodded.
“Yeah, me too.”
There was a pause, but it was peaceful between us. He was making me more comfortable. How could he do that so easily? I pointed toward where I had traveled from “My parents are over there.”
His eyes went wide. “I didn’t know. I’m sorry.”
I shook my head and pinched my lips in between my teeth. “Thank you. It was a while ago.” I took a step toward him. He was standing beside a small headstone with the name “Maxwell” engraved on it. Under that were the words “Beloved Son” and a date. I wasn’t sure what to say. It could be any of his male relatives, or, and I hesitated to even think it, this grave could be for his own son. It wasn’t out of the realm of possibility. He was twenty-five, and he’d been in a lot of relationships. At least, that’s what the world seemed to see.
Again, when I couldn’t find the words to ask, Adrian spoke for me. “This is my brother Alex.” He snaked his arm around my waist. “Alex, this is Mallory.”
I smiled. “You talk to him?”
“All the time. Whenever I need to hash out a problem, I’ll stop by and have a brother-to-brother moment. It helps me to think things through with some level-headedness, instead of making jump decisions or acting irrationally.”
“That’s nice. I sometimes come up here to talk with my parents, too, when no one else is around, or I think no one would get me.”
Adrian gave my waist a small squeeze. “When he was alive, we fought like Irish banshees. He’d piss me off, I’d kick the crap out of him, and then our parents would make us sit at the table and hash it all out until we found an even playing ground we both could live with. I think he really resented being pushed around like that. He was a stubborn ass, sometimes.”