“I bake.”
AJ’s brows crease. “You mean, like …” he starts, pressing his thumb and index finger together and bringing it to his lips.
“No, I don’t get baked. I bake. Like cookies and stuff.”
How does he do it? Even when I’m drowning in tears, AJ has the ability to make me laugh.
He rises from the couch, lifting me off his lap, and then sets my feet down gently on the floor. “I like cookies. Let’s give it a shot.”
9
AJ
A light dusting of flour covers every surface of Casey’s kitchen. It’s like a scene from Scarface in here. Not that there are many surfaces to begin with—the room is the size of a matchbox. Almost as if the kitchen was an afterthought when they made this apartment.
Casey stands over a huge mixing bowl, humming along with the radio as she measures out a cup of sugar. I lean against the counter, one ankle crossed over the other just watching. Her hair is in a ponytail, she’s not wearing a bit of makeup, and her Dallas Cowboys pajama pants do nothing for her figure, but I swear I’ve never seen her more beautiful. Standing at the oven, Casey seems completely at ease. She’s baked two trays of cookies so far, all from memory, and not a single tear fell the whole time.
The earlier sadness in her voice tore me open. It was like reliving the death of my own parents again with every tear that fell from her giant blue eyes. Losing a loved one like that causes irreparable damage. I have an intense need to fix things. It’s what I do when something is broken. I tinker with it until it's whole again. But this problem is unfixable. The only thing I can do is be a friend and keep her mind occupied.
When she pops the cookie sheet into the oven and turns, a wavy strand of gold falls over her face. “Are you sure you don’t have to go back to work? I feel bad keepin’ you.” She pushes the strand away, leaving a small streak of flour in her hair. I reach for her, running my fingers through it and wiping it away.
“I think I’m entitled to one afternoon off. Besides, there’s nowhere else I’d rather be than with you.”
Casey’s lashes are dark and stuck together from crying, tiny crowns gracing each lovely blue eye. Her tongue slips between her lips, moistening them as they part. It leaves a thin sheen of saliva that shines in the midday sunlight beaming through the small kitchen window. I lift the brim of my cap just long enough to scratch my head before plopping it back down—a nervous tic I’ve never been able to shake. Part of me wants to kiss her so badly it aches, but the logical part knows taking advantage of a vulnerable chick is a real douchey move. Still, I can’t seem to tear myself away.
“You have a little chocolate here.”
She swipes her fingertip over the corner of my mouth, letting it graze across my lips before slipping it between them. The taste of sugar explodes on my tongue, from both the cookies and what I’m sure is the natural flavor of Casey’s skin. Everything about this is wrong. She spent the entire afternoon crying on my lap. She’s confused and hurt, and I shouldn’t want her this bad, but fuck, it’s hard to control.
I reach up, closing my fingers around her wrist. “What are you doing to me, Case?” My voice is deep and husky, riddled with want I no longer care to hide. The look in her eyes and the smell of her skin turns me inside out. She knows what she’s doing to me.
At the other end of the room, the doorknob jiggles. Casey jumps as Marisa comes bursting in. Her orange hair is wild, and huge silver earrings dance in the light as they dangle from her ears. I wouldn’t be surprised if her panties were wadded up in a ball in her purse. She’s the very poster child for the walk of shame. “Oh!” she says, hovering in the doorway, a sneaky smile spreading across her too-red lips. “Well, well, well. What’s going on here?”
“Nothing,” I reply, pushing off from the counter. “Just making some cookies.”
Marisa looks at Casey, then back at me, with her Joker style grin. She probably thinks I slept here.
“Looks like a whole lot of nothing to me,” she says, walking further into the room. “It’s cool. I ain’t here to judge.” She saunters into her room and closes the door behind her.
I look back toward Casey while shoving my hands into my pockets to adjust myself with stealth. Marisa’s sudden appearance threw water on my libido but not nearly enough. I need a cold shower and a cigarette. “I’m gonna take off for a bit and let you rest.” I push her ponytail off her shoulder and run my fingers through it freely. “But I’ll come back to pick you up tonight if you want.”
“Can’t wait.” She lifts herself onto her toes and presses her lips against my cheek as I back away. “And AJ.” I turn from the open doorway to face her. “Thanks.”
The sun is still high in the sky as I roll past Morello and Tate and into my sister’s driveway. She’s probably going to give me shit for never returning to work after lunch, but whatever.
As usual, music plays through the open windows, loud and brash. Geoff Tate screams in his high-pitched soprano, preaching about religion and sex ruling the world. Meanwhile, back at Casey’s, some dude with two first names was prattling on about the power of prayer. The irony of the situation puts a smile on my face as I jump down from my truck and head for the door.
Not bothering to knock, because no one would hear me anyway, I let myself in and head for the kitchen. My sister is always cooking something. Whether it’s a giant meal, a snack, or baby food, she lives in this kitchen. She’s so much like our mother—it’s scary sometimes.
“Don’t you two have a room?” I grumble as I enter and find Jameson nuzzling her neck from behind while she stirs whatever it is she’s cooking on the stove. He looks up, flashing me that stupid, lazy grin of his.
Originally, the idea of them together was enough to make me want to go on a murder spree. I actually went all alpha and forbade him from going near her, but I guess love has a way of conquering all the obstacles in its path. Fate will always intervene when it’s meant to be. I sound like a chick, but it’s true. Love will find a way. My father loved my mother so much he couldn’t stand to be apart from her. Her death eventually killed him. It’s hard to live with a heart that's so broken.
“It’s my house, motherfucker. If I wanna bend my wife over the table and tap her ass in the dining room, I will.” Jameson stands full height and steps away, punching my shoulder on his way to the fridge. “Again.”
“You’re late,” Jillian jokes. She’s so used to this routine between Jameson and me that it doesn’t even faze her anymore.
She turns to give me a quick hug, and I panic. Usually, I change my shirt before coming over, but with everything that happened this afternoon I forgot. “And you smell like …” A sheen of sweat breaks out on my skin. Jillian may be the size of a large child, but you do not want to piss her off. The last time she caught me smoking, she lost her damn mind and went all Tasmanian devil on my ass. I wait for the inevitable shit storm, but instead, she pinches her brows together, and says “Cookies?”
Why couldn’t she just smell smoke?
“Oh. Yeah. I was with a friend.”
A slow smile grows on her lips as she crosses her arms over her chest. “And you were baking? Would this be a female friend?”
“Yeah. What of it?”
“Look at his face! Holy shit!” Jameson bellows. It’s not until he points it out that I realize I’m wearing the lamest grin of all time. I feel my face get hot. Thankfully, my skin is dark enough to hide that shit. Jillian got Mom’s snow-white complexion, while I was blessed with an all-year tan like our father.
“Fuck you, dude!” I say, trying my best not to appear like a love-struck idiot in front of my brother-in-law. He’ll never let me hear the end of it. Neither of them will. Ballbusters—both of them!
“Tell me everything,” Jillian insists.
I should have just gone home. There’s a reason I haven’t mentioned my non-relationship with Casey. Because there’s nothing to tell. We had one date. It's way too soon to be involving my crazy family. Especi
ally Jillian.
When she was single, she didn’t care what or who I was doing. Now that she’s married, the topic of my love life is always front and center. Married people are cult leaders. They’re always trying to recruit new members. If she thinks I have even the possibility of a girlfriend, she’ll be naming my kids before I know it.
I bring a bottle of beer to my lips and hope my silence is enough of an indicator that I don’t want to talk about it. Turns out, it’s not. “At least tell me her name!” Jill begs.
“Casey. She works at The Wreck.”
Jillian’s absurdly large eyes grow as big as saucers. “Musician?”
If there’s one person on this planet who loves rock ‘n’ roll as much, if not more, than I do, it's Jill. For me, it’s always been about technique. The way the various pieces fit together seamlessly, each unique sound working together to create something majestic. Each player has his own voice; it’s not just about the singer. Jill is different. She loves it as a whole. She feels it deep in her bones and uses it to control her moods and her feelings. The soundtrack to her life constantly plays wherever she is.
When we were kids, Jameson and I played music in the garage out back—me on the drums and him on guitar. Jill would sit there for hours just watching us. It didn’t matter that we sucked, just hearing the music made her happy. The idea that I may be involved with a musician would be like completing the circle.
“Bartender.”
Jill turns back to her pot and continues stirring. “Do I get to meet her?”
I take another swig of my bottle and change the subject. “Zakk sleeping?”
My nephew is the perfect segue out of any conversation. The second someone mentions his name, Jill gets all soft and pliable. It’s ridiculous how something so small can have such an enormous impact. The second that little ass-kicker came flying out our family began breathing again.
“Nah,” Jill says with an instant smile. “He’s in his playpen in the other room. I have to feed him, though. You can go get him if you want.”
Zakk’s baby pen sits in the corner of the family room, facing the television. Bert and Ernie dance on the screen singing about ducks and shit, but Zakk looks too amused by the squishy ball in his lap to notice. Black hair pokes up on his head in every direction as he tries his best to shove the entire ball into his mouth.
“Hey, kid. You don’t wanna eat that.” I grab him from his mesh prison, making sure to avoid the V-shaped wet mark on his shirt. I’m told he’s teething, which explains the drool always pouring out of his gummy smile. Wiping his face with a nearby cloth, I carry him into the kitchen where Jillian’s already laid out a pureed feast.
“Thanks,” she says, taking the baby and setting him in his high chair. He smacks the white tray in front of him and shouts, demanding food.
Jameson shoves a spoonful of vegetable mush into Zakk’s waiting mouth. He swallows it down then yells until Jameson does it again. Seeing Jameson with his own kid is bizarre. When we were younger, I was the one on the straight and narrow, and he was the fuck up.
His home life was shit. He ran away at sixteen and didn’t return for five whole years. Now, six years later, here he is, covered in tattoos, wearing a Quiet Riot T-shirt, and making silly faces at a baby who bears his eyes. If you had told me back then our lives would turn out this way, I never would have believed it. He should be the one coming to dinner at my house, envious of my awesome life, not the other way around.
A curtain of blond hair slides off Casey’s shoulder as she leans forward in my truck. Above the hood, the diamond sparkle of a million stars glitter overhead and below us is a bird’s-eye view of the tiny city I call home. This time of night most of the houses are dark, but the lights on the highway shine bright, as does the passing of each car racing to its next destination.
“What is this place?”
“When I was just a kid, my mom got cancer,” I start, inhaling a deep breath and letting it out slowly. “She came into my room one day and told me she was dying and that, as the oldest child, it was my job to be strong for my sister. Jillian was only eleven at the time, so sweet and innocent. My mom made me promise to protect her, to be good to her, and to keep her safe. I said I would, and I never went back on that promise. Everywhere I went, Jill came along.”
Secrets aren’t something I keep. They fester inside your body like a spreading infection, turning everything sour as a result. I speak from experience. Nothing good comes from keeping shit inside. No, I wear it on my sleeve. If people don’t like it, fuck ‘em. No one has the right to judge me.
The death of my parents is hardly a secret, but discussing my feelings on the subject is rare. It’s the one and only thing I continue to keep to myself, in spite of my open-door policy. But I need Casey to know that I understand how she feels. She’s not alone in her grief. I feel my own every day. It’s always there, hiding dormant and popping up at the worst times to say hello.
“I was thirteen when she died. My dad withdrew, my sister hid in her room and cried for days, and I was left to fend for myself. My dad had this old drum set and taking my aggression out on it really helped. When it got too late to play, I’d escape into the woods on those rare moments I was alone and just walk.”
Now that I’ve started, I can’t hold back the avalanche of words and feelings that seem to want to burst out of my chest and into the atmosphere. I’ve spent so long holding it in, unable to discuss it with Jill, not wanting to show my vulnerable side to Jameson, that now I can’t control it.
“I found this place and, for some reason, being this far from the world made me feel closer to her. I’d just sit for hours until the sky began to change and the sun would rise before heading back to get Jill up for school. It was the only thing in the world that was mine and mine alone.”
“You never brought anyone else up here?”
“There’s never been anyone else, Case. I spent my life looking after Jillian, instead of building one for myself.”
“What about your dad?”
“He was around for a while, but my mom took a piece of him with her when she died. He loved her so much.” The lump in my throat is damn near suffocating. I swallow hard, blinking my emotion away. Men are supposed to be strong. Only pussies cry. “Anyway, he didn’t last long. We lost him a few years later.”
“Thank you for sharing it with me.”
Casey’s hand finds mine and, for the first time, I notice how filthy my hands look. Black stains from a lifetime of fixing cars have made their permanent home inside the cracks and crevices of my fingernails; no matter how hard I scrub, they never seem to get fully clean. I’m only twenty-seven, but my hands could tell the story of a fifty-year-old man.
The door of the old Chevy creaks as she pushes it open and jumps out. I follow suit, slipping down from the truck and meeting her in the front. The soft glow of the moon and stars is the only light, other than the twinkling of fireflies dancing around and the glimmer from the street lamps in the city below.
“Dance with me.”
“But there’s no music.”
“We have all the music we need in here.” She presses her hand to my chest before sliding it around my neck. I feel her heart beating fast as I hold her against me. The distant cars rushing down the highway and the chirp of a thousand crickets serve as the musical interlude to our dance that’s hardly even a dance at all.
Her hands slip into the hair at the nape of my neck as she rests her head on my shoulder. The sweet smell of her skin rings around me. We’re both alone in this world, needing someone to lean on and coming up short. When everyone around me fell apart, I had to be the strong one, with no one to do the same for me. Casey and I share it, and together the burden isn’t quite so heavy.
Warm breath fans across my mouth as she lifts her head and her lips come dangerously close to mine. She wears them natural. Not covered in the gunk girls wear around their mouths. They’re petal pink and perfect, and I want nothing more right now than to mak
e them mine.
“Casey.” My whisper is hoarse as my index finger catches under her chin. Her blue eyes look black in the dim surroundings but shine as bright as the firefly glow around us. A gentle breeze sends golden tendrils across her forehead. I skim my fingertips across her skin, pushing the rogue strands behind her ear. The tongue sweeping across her lips is the sign I was looking for. My lips graze her cheek, leaving a tiny trail of kisses to her delectable mouth. Lightning flashes behind my eyes the second they meet.
It's a gentle caress, a whisper of a kiss, but her taste, her smell, the feel of her body pressed tightly against mine takes me over and makes me want more. I’m mindless with a need I’ve never had before. Her tongue skims mine with tentative little licks before allowing me to invade the sweet cavern of her mouth with my own.
When I pull away, her hooded eyes are glazed. My body reacts, knowing I’m the one who caused the lustful gaze staring back at me. It takes every ounce of restraint I have not to grab her again and kiss her lips raw. To push her against the truck, and guide every inch of my throbbing cock slowly inside her until she’s begging for more. But she’s a nice girl, and I don’t want to push her too far.
“Come on, cowgirl. It’s late. I’ll take you home.”
“Or maybe it’s early. Depends on how you look at it.”
Casey blinks her long lashes as she throws out the same line I fed to her just days ago. I feel her hands roaming my stomach as it twists with want. Is she giving me the green light?
Sweetest Obsessions - Anthology Page 8