by Nicole Fox
“But what about you?” she asks. “You have to think about yourself as well. Don’t you want to be with him again? You didn’t date a single man during those two years you were apart, Gloria, not one. And that was based on a one-night stand. Hell, a one-hour stand. And now that you’ve had all that time with him, I can’t see you with anybody else.”
“Neither can I.” I shrug. “Maybe I’ll become a lonely old woman. Fine, as long as Jimmy is safe.”
Alexis sighs. “Are you sure about this? I bet you miss him like crazy.”
“I do,” I agree. “But I’ll just have to get used to that.”
I drink some more wine and try not to think about his safe-feeling arms and his lips on mine, his breath tickling the back of my neck. Or the way he looked when he talked about his childhood, that quiet desperation that made me want to help him, nurture him, fix him.
“I’m sure it will all work out in the—”
Alexis’ words are cut off by the apartment buzzer.
She raises her eyebrow at me. I shrug.
“You have another friend?” she asks, mock-shocked.
“No,” I reply seriously. “I don’t.” I go to the intercom. “Hello?”
There’s nothing but the sound of pained breathing.
“Hello?”
“Who is it?” Alexis asks.
“I don’t know.”
“Let me go down and check.”
“No,” I say, suddenly nervous. “What if it’s them?”
Then he talks, his voice a weak wheeze. “Gloria … help … me …”
Chapter Twenty
Gloria
Alexis and I drag him up the stairs as he struggles to walk, moaning groggily. He has a wound in his shoulder which has turned that entire side dark red, right down to his fingertips. He looks up at me as I grunt under his weight, smiling sleepily. “I knew I’d see you again,” he whispers.
Alexis has some rudimentary first-aid training which I’ve never seen the point of until now. We lay him out on the couch, not bothering to lay a blanket on first, and then Alexis turns to me with a serious look on her face. “Please tell me you’ve got a kit.”
“I’ve got a kit.”
“Okay. Bring me it, and some towels.”
I do as she says, heart hammering in my ears. But I ignore it. Now’s the time to be calm. Now’s the time to focus on what needs to be done; anxiety comes later. I sit on the coffee table as Alexis does her work on him.
“It’s not a bullet wound,” she mutters in confusion. “Or even a deep stab wound.” She leans close to his bare shoulder, studying it, and then cleans it with the alcohol from the first-aid kit. She narrows her eyes and then moves down to his mouth. For a mad second I think she is going to kiss him, but then she sniffs. “He’s drunk,” she says, shaking her head. “He was stabbed, but it’s shallow. No, he’s talking like that because he’s drunk.”
“Oh.” I let out a breath, both glad and annoyed. “Can you help him?”
“Yeah. I can sew him up—I think. Don’t blame me if I accidently create a Frankenstein’s Monster!”
I go into the bedroom and look down on Jimmy, who stares back up at me with the same sleepy look as Jack. “Don’t worry, little man,” I say. “Everything is going to be okay.”
I go back into the living room when Alexis calls me. Jack’s asleep on the couch, on his side. He has stained the cushions with long streaks of blood. “He should be fine,” she says. “At least, his body should be fine. I don’t know about up here.” She taps the side of her head. “He was talking to me, Gloria, about how much he misses you and … But this isn’t any of my business.”
“No,” I say, not intending to be mean but conscious that that’s how it comes out. “It’s not.”
She nods, chastened.
“I’m sorry.” I touch her on the shoulder. “Thanks for this. For fixing him up. You didn’t have to do that.”
“What was the alternative? Anyway, I’m glad this training finally came in useful!”
I follow her to the door.
“What will you do now?” she asks, standing in the doorway.
“I don’t know. It’s not fair, is it, him showing up like this?”
“No,” she agrees. “It’s not. But that doesn’t answer my question. Are you going to kick him out?” There’s a note of judgment in her voice I don’t like very much.
“To be honest, I think I would be well within my rights if I decided to kick him out. I don’t see why I have to babysit him just because he decides to show up like this.”
She holds her hands up. “Are you trying to convince me, or yourself?”
I sigh, say a final goodbye, and then close the door. I pour myself a glass of wine and sit in the armchair for a long time, watching him sleep. He’s shirtless now and I realize I’ve never seen his back before, not like this, not with the time to study it. It’s covered in scars, large, faded scars that crisscross his skin from his lower back to between his shoulder blades, marks of his childhood that will take another twenty-something years to fade, if they ever do.
After a while—it must be an hour or more, since the room has turned sunset dim—he rolls over and smiles at me. “Am I dreamin’?” he whispers.
“If you were, what would you say?”
“That I’ve missed you more’n I’ll ever understand.”
With that, he falls asleep again, not waking for another two hours. I feed Jimmy and clean the apartment, too wired to sit down. I keep checking on Jack to see if he’s awake. I bring Jimmy into the living room and sit him on the floor with his toys. He looks at Jack with a smile, not a hint of fear, and then smiles at me. Then he busies himself with trying to put a triangle into a circular hole.
Finally, Jack opens his eyes, more lucid than he was last time. He looks around the apartment and then up at me. “Did you think I was really badly hurt?” he says, reading my expression. I can feel myself grimacing.
“When you showed up at my doorstep, hardly able to talk, covered in blood, you mean? Yes, funnily enough, I did.”
He winces and sits up. “Would you slap me across the face if I asked for a glass of water?”
“I’ll try not to.”
I get the water and place it on the table in front of him, getting a perverse pang of pleasure when he winces as he leans forward to pick it up. Then I sit back and place my hands on my knees, just watching him.
“I guess you want some sort of explanation?”
“That would be a start.” I keep my voice cold, the same kind of cold it was when I took Jimmy from his arms and marched out of his apartment, and his life.
“I don’t reckon you’ll like any explanation I give you.” He sighs. Then he tries for a smile. “I missed you, Gloria, I missed you so bad I thought my chest might break in half. Don’t that count for nothin’?”
I stay silent, staring.
He sighs again, massaging his jaw.
“I know I shouldn’t be here, and I get that you want me gone, Gloria.”
“Do you?” I snap. “Because if you got that, you wouldn’t have turned up in the first place.”
“Well.” He shrugs. “I’ve thought about that day a whole lot, when you took the kid and walked out on me like that. I was numb at first, and then pissed, but the more I thought on it, the more I understood. This ain’t your world. You’ve had some tough things happen in your life, don’t doubt it, but gangs and kidnappin’ and all that shit—it just ain’t your realm. I told myself I was going to stay away. I told myself I was gonna respect your decision and leave you be.
“And then, last night, after a bar fight, I got drunk and I got thinkin’. I got thinking about that first time we went in the hotel, how it could’ve been any other girl, and any other guy for you. But it wasn’t. We picked each other, and out of that, we got a kid. I don’t know.” He sighs a third time, heavily. “I reckon explaining how you feel is a hard thing for a man like me to do. All I know is this. I’ve missed you so badly I’
ve ached, Gloria, fuckin’ ached. I never thought I could have a family. Maybe I thought Jackson was my family, but I was wrong. You’re my family.”
He rests his forearm on his forehead. “A shallow wound, that’s the truth, but it cut like a motherfucker.”
“Go back to sleep,” I tell him.
“In a while,” he mutters, voice groggy. “Yeah. Maybe I’m still half drunk.”
“I think you might be.”
“Might be I am.” He smiles.
I fight the impulse to place my hand on his arm, his shoulder. His bare chest. Fight the desire to lean across and kiss him on the cheek, the mouth. I fight a thousand urges and a thousand more.
“But first let me explain something about Big Loco and Jackson.”
He does so, speaking for almost fifteen minutes.
“They’re brothers,” I whisper. “Well—shit.”
“Well—shit,” he agrees.
A silence stretches between us.
He glances at me, then back up at the ceiling. “Do you care about me at all?” he whispers.
There’s so much honesty in his voice. It’s almost childlike. He just wants to know, for real.
“Yeah,” I reply. “I do care about you. Of course, I do.”
He nods, relieved. “I was startin’ to think you didn’t. I learned early on not to show my emotions, Gloria, on account of all the stuff I told you about, but one night a couple of weeks back I was alone, drinking, and I cried like a fuckin’ baby thinking about you and Jimmy. I cried, and for a second, I thought about stopping myself the same way I did when I was a kid, when crying meant weakness, but then I just kept on. I felt pretty damn weird about it the morning after, but there it is.”
“I don’t know what to do with that,” I say.
“You don’t have to do anything with it,” he replies. “I just wanted you to know.”
“Now I know.” I kneel down next to Jimmy and stroke his hair from his forehead.
“How’s he doing?” Jack asks.
“Good,” I mutter, sitting back on the chair.
“Good? That’s good, then. Listen.” He turns back to me; he was staring right at Jimmy, and Jimmy back at him. “I’m the president of the MC now. I’ve spent the last few weeks hunting down Big Loco and Jackson, and I reckon I’ve nearly got ’em. Jackson always made it out that the Devil’s Kin’d stand no chance against the Lady’s Death, but he was talking out of his ass. With the proper strategy, we stand more than a chance. Once I find them, Gloria, once I take out those bastards for good, we can finally be together.”
“When they’re dead,” I murmur.
“Yeah. When they’re dead, but you don’t need to think on that. I’ll make it safe for both of you. I promise.” He looks at me with Jimmy’s eyes, Jimmy’s innocent open, eyes. “If that’s what you want …” Then his eyes fall closed and he begins to snore softly. I prod him in the cheek, seeing if he’s sleeping lightly or truly passed out. He doesn’t respond. He’s sleeping the sleep of a drunk, injured man.
I go into the bedroom and call Alexis.
“Hey,” she says. “How’s it all going?”
“I don’t know. Listen, can I stay with you, me and Jimmy, I mean, just for a few hours? I don’t think I can stay here with him.”
“Why? What’s he done?”
“Nothing bad,” I admit. “Just—if I stay here I don’t think I can keep this up, you know? If I stay here I’ll let myself care about him, because I do care about him, and I won’t be able to stop myself. I need to get away and wait for him leave. It’s the only way I can think of making this work.”
She sighs. “You know you can stay with me,” she says.
“Why do you sound like I just slapped you across the face with a dead fish then?” I counter.
“You can stay with me, but don’t expect me to lie to you. I think you’re making a mistake. I think you should stay there with him.”
“Noted.”
I hang up the phone and quickly gather our things into an overnight bag, and then go into the kitchen and take a piece of paper and a pen. I write: I’m sorry for leaving you like this, but it’s too dangerous. You’re too dangerous, Jack. Please be gone when we get back. I take the note into the living room and place it on the coffee table, and then go to pick Jimmy up.
But Jimmy’s on the move, crawling across the floor right at Jack, a goofy smile on his face. He stops near the couch and reaches up and takes Jack’s hand, which is drooping off the edge of the couch. He squeezes his finger and lets out a sweet, giggling noise when Jack squeezes it back. Then he stands up and manages to half clamber onto the couch, wanting to climb onto Jack’s back. Still sleeping, Jack lifts him, one-handed, and places him on the couch, next to him. Jimmy closes his eyes and nuzzles against Jack’s back, and then he sleeps, snoring in just the same way as Jack.
I stand there with the note in my hand, staring down at the two of them, and in that moment, I know—know without having to think—that I’m not leaving tonight. I ball the note up and throw it into the trash and then sit on the armchair, watching my boys.
Chapter Twenty-One
Gloria
I wake to the sound of Jimmy moaning softly, the way he does when he’s hungry but not that hungry. I rub my eyes, annoyed at myself for falling asleep. Then I pick him up from the couch and take him into the bedroom, sit him on my knee, and feed him. He takes the food greedily, which is one of the best things about Jimmy; he’s no fussy eater.
“Mama,” he whispers, food smeared around his mouth.
“And Dadda?” I ask, tickling his noise. “What about Dadda? Do you like Dadda?”
His forehead creases for a moment, and then he smiles and exclaims: “Dadda! Dadda!”
My breath catches. I think I might cry, but I stop myself. “That’s right!” I tickle him under the chin. “Dadda!”
He reaches for the door, in the direction of Jack. “Dadda!”
How can I leave Jack now, after this? I know that it’d still be the most logical thing to do, but I also know that it’d be a disaster for Jimmy. Perhaps he’d get over it—Jack and I are both proof that kids are resilient—but just because he might get over it, it doesn’t mean it’d be good for him.
“What do you think?” I say, kissing him now on the forehead, now on the cheek. “Shall I stay with Jack? But it’s dangerous, isn’t it? Maybe I should leave him for a little while and wait for all this to be over, huh? But if I walk out that door with you, are you going to start crying when you realize we’re leaving him behind?”
He squints at me, trying to comprehend what I’m saying, and then paws at my face. “Dadda!”
“Yes,” I agree. “Dadda.”
Then the bedroom door opens slowly and my world is once again torn asunder. I struggle to believe what I’m seeing at first. I expect Jack, shirtless, a smirk on his face. I expect him to say something about Jimmy saying Dadda. I expect laughter, and then some version of love.
What I don’t expect is for two armed, masked men to come creeping into my bedroom, wearing wraps on their feet so that their footsteps are silent. The masks are blood-red and pulled up to their eyes, with hoods pulled down to their eyes, so that only the eyes are visible. The lead man brings his finger to the place where his lips would be.
“If that kid cries,” he mutters, “it won’t be good for you.”
I reach into the overnight bag slowly, take out Jimmy’s pacifier, and give it to him. He sucks it and rests his head on my chest, happy at the treat; I’m weaning him off the pacifier. Each movement is difficult, drawn-out. Fear makes me slow. I want Jack to wake up, but I can’t think of a way to wake him without these two men knowing, and their eyes, their dead-of-life eyes … they’d kill us. I know this in the same way I knew that Big Loco’s threats weren’t idle at the warehouse. It’s gut knowledge.
“What do you want from me?” I whisper.
“Come with us,” the man says, that gun aimed at us all the while. It has a silenc
er attached, the kind I’ve only ever seen in movies. It’s much bigger in real life, a massive cylinder. “And don’t make a fucking noise.”
I don’t have a choice, so I stand up, holding Jimmy close to my chest, and follow the men out of the apartment. The injury and the alcohol have rendered Jack completely oblivious to what’s happening. He grunts once or twice in his sleep as we walk by, but he doesn’t lift his head or even roll over. His face is pressed into the couch cushions and his snoring is louder than our footsteps. When we get into the hallway the men tuck their guns away and pull their masks down. I expect evil-looking faces, but all I see are two regular-looking Mexican men, friendly enough, the kind of men I might exchange small talk with while waiting for the bus.