Billy smiled and rolled her eyes. Carly was such a mother hen. But now, with the cool of distance, and not currently being put on the spot and dragged onto a stage unexpectedly, Billy could see Carly’s continued, much gentler, meddling for the care it was meant to be.
There, at least, was one relationship that seemed bulletproof. She and Carly had been through some shit together, they fought wildly when they fought, they drifted apart and surged together, but they never lost each other. They understood each other.
She replied with a quick message full of congratulations and good wishes for the big gig, and love for the friendship. She insisted yet again that she had no desire to sing on stage anymore. Because she honestly didn’t. She didn’t want that life; she wanted the life she was building.
She didn’t mention that Carly’s semi-stated ‘I told you so’ might well be misplaced after all. Cain had been gone for hours. Amir and his staff were downstairs, banging around in the kitchen, and her errant father had not yet returned.
Also unmentioned: Tony. Despite their own romantically complicated past, Billy could and did share the details of her uneven love life with Carly. Normally, she’d be able to work out her feelings and concerns about a new love with her dearest friend. And Carly wouldn’t judge Tony’s mobsterness too harshly. She took people as they came to her. If they ‘vibed’ right, she didn’t get wrapped up in what they did.
But Billy didn’t know if Tony would ‘vibe’ right. Certainly, Cain was not picking up a good vibe. Then again, Cain wasn’t such a good guy, either. What he had that Tony didn’t was charm. People liked Cain because he gave them a version of himself that was laid-back and amusing. He’d order you a drink, ask to hear your story, listen, order more drinks, and make you laugh. And then he’d disappear and leave you holding the check.
On the other hand, Tony came off dour and intimidating. He was not going to order you a drink at all, unless he wanted something from you. But you knew that up front.
Tony could be charming, but it was a different, darker charm, and not on the surface. You had to stand up to the dour and intimidating, peel back that layer, to find the slow smile and low chuckle.
Holy shit, she was doing twisting aerial mental flips to make room for this man in her life. But she couldn’t help it. She wanted to reach him. There was somebody worthwhile under that toughened flesh.
She got up from her desk and went to dress. He wanted to see her tonight. Hoping that meant he’d be in the club before it closed, she dressed accordingly.
~oOo~
Hours later, fifteen minutes before the club doors opened for the night, while the kitchen was packed, Billy’s father returned.
And he brought Billy’s mother with him.
He strolled right into the bustling kitchen and held the door for a woman he despised, who despised him right back. Two people who hadn’t even looked at each other in at least seven years, since Billy’s Smith College graduation, to which her father had reeled in late and wasted, and after which Allie and Cain had refused even to stand on either side of her for a photograph.
None of her staff knew her well enough to think much of it. They greeted Cain like the new friend they thought he was, and smiled warmly at the woman they no doubt assumed was his girlfriend. Amir asked what happened to Cain’s face, and he made a joke about defending the honor of a woman.
They looked like a well-matched set, her parents: Cain in his black leather, Allie in her snug, low-slung jeans and batik handkerchief top, both of them dripping with leather and silver jewelry, both of them wearing makeup, both heads of grey hair dyed black and aggressively styled to hide thinning.
The aging rocker and the aging groupie. Neither of them good sailors on the sea of life, but one of them wrapped in a sturdy life vest and the other treading water.
Billy stared and couldn’t move.
“Hey, billy goat!” Allie lifted waif-thin arms and approached for a hug, and Billy got control of herself just in time to back away.
“What are you doing here? What are you doing together?”
Her mother dropped her arms without any sign that she’d been hurt by Billy’s rejection. “Cain looked me up in Boston and said you needed us.”
“I don’t.” She glared at her father, whose swollen face showed no expression.
Her mother waved at Cain. “Did your new boyfriend do that to his face?”
Despite the typical crisis-mode level of the work going on around them, and the racket that went with it, Allie’s question made an impact. They all stopped and stared.
“New boyfriend?” Malachi asked with a grin.
“None of your fucking business,” Billy snapped.
Malachi blinked and went back to his work. The rest of her staff did, too, but the air was full of muffled tension. They were all trying to eavesdrop while appearing to work.
“Let’s take this to my office, please.” Billy spun on her heel. “Derek, you open, and you’re in charge of the floor. I’ll be down as soon as I can.”
Derek, finishing up a grinder at the staff table, stood. “On it, boss.”
Without bothering to see if her parents followed, she stormed from the kitchen and headed to her private stairs.
~oOo~
Billy sat at her desk. Her parents sat in the chairs before it, as if they were vendors here to discuss a problem with the booze delivery or something.
She turned her attention on Cain first. “I can’t believe you told my mother. Were you seriously tattling on me?”
“Don’t be mad, baby girl,” her mother cut in, her hands fluttering like the wings of a trapped bird. “He’s worried. I am, too.”
“For the first fucking time in my life. I’m almost thirty years old, and when have either of you ever cared what I did?”
“That’s not fair, Bill,” her father muttered. He seemed chastened, now that he was sitting before her at her desk, in her office. That was something, she supposed.
“It’s not, baby. I took care of you all your life.”
“No, Mom. I took care of you.” She moved her regard to her father. “And you. Neither of you has ever taken care of anyone, including yourselves.”
“But I was there,” Allie said, the syllables quavering on a wave of hurt. “You and me, we were a team.”
That was true. Her mother had given her a home, and been a friend. They’d been a real-life version of The Gilmore Girls, with a much less capable Lorelai, a way more rebellious Rory, and a far wealthier Emily and Richard. But Allie had done her best, and hadn’t flitted off into the ether. She’d been there.
“You’re right. But you never cared what I did, so long as I was happy. So what if I tell you that I’m happy right now, with Tony?”
Her father grunted, and Billy shot him a sidelong look and an eyebrow raised in warning.
“Baby, you know I love bad boys. They’ve been my downfall all my life.” Allie turned pointedly toward Cain with that sentence, then returned to Billy. “But there’s bad boys, and then there’s bad men. You gotta know the difference.”
“I do.” Though that was the precise point on which both her attraction to and her concern about Tony balanced. She was trusting her instincts that he was merely a bad boy, when the empirical evidence suggested the other.
“Did he try to rape you?” her mother asked.
What was the answer to that important question? Billy lifted the Tiffany letter opener from and laid it across her palms. “No. We’ve been ... rough with each other, and Tony got his signals crossed. We’ve talked since, and clarified things so it won’t happen again.”
Cain sighed rhetorically and leaned back in his chair, crossing his arms over his paunch, the physical manifestation of paternal impatience.
Billy wanted to punch him in his swollen nose. Instead, she took the letter opener in one hand and waved the point around like she was considering its efficacy as a weapon.
It was a good weapon, she knew.
“Your father says he
’s a Pagano man. I didn’t know you were so deep in with them. You gotta watch yourself, baby girl.”
Billy laughed. “Careful, Allie. My memory is pretty good. I remember Smash.” It was more than twenty years ago, Billy had been in grade school, but Smash had been the kind of guy you remembered. And Smash and Allie had been memorable together. Two or three summers, they’d been a thing, and Smash had made some weekend visits to Boston, between summers, as well.
He’d been a Pagano man. Come to think of it, maybe he’d been an enforcer, too. He’d had the craggy look of a tough guy, and he was built like the damn Hulk, but he’d been good to her mom, and sweet as sugar to Billy, always bringing her toys, books, and candy, and other little trinkets, putting her on his shoulders while they walked on the beach, holding her hand on the boardwalk.
Wow. She hadn’t thought of Smash Colombo in a long time. He’d just disappeared at some point. Men had come and gone from Allie’s life, and thus from Billy’s, for as long as she could remember, often enough that it wasn’t worth much thought. But Smash had stood out among that rogues’ gallery.
“Do you remember what happened to him?” her mother asked now.
Billy shook her head. “He just wasn’t there anymore.”
“He was killed, Billy. They had his funeral a couple weeks before we came for the summer. At the same time, that old diner, Sassy Sal’s—remember it, with the pink?—closed up for renovation, right at the start of the season, and there were rumors all over town that something awful went down there. A lot of people got hurt. Smash got killed. Some say Nick Pagano’s wife was hurt then. That’s what happens when you’re with a Pagano man. Best case, you end up alone and sad, without any answers but whispers. Worst case, you get killed, too.” Allie leaned close and set her hands on Billy’s desk, spreading all ten manicured fingers wide. “I just want you to be careful, billy goat. I don’t want you hurt.”
Allie wore her mother’s emerald ring on the middle finger of her right hand. Five carats. It didn’t quite go with her bohemian chic look, but if you checked the labels, you’d see that everything Alexandra Bradford-Jones wore was high-end. Even her ratty jeans were couture. She’d always spent money where she wanted and landed on her daddy’s lily pad when she ran out.
Now that Allie had her inheritance all to herself, without anyone to dole it out, Billy wondered how long it would take her mother to go honestly broke. She’d have to try pretty hard, but nobody was more adept at screwing up her life than Alexandra Bradford-Jones. Except perhaps Calvin “Cain” Jones.
Billy hoped she hadn’t inherited that particular family trait.
“I am being careful, Mom. I promise. Let me live my life. I’ve been doing better at it than either of you.” She turned to her father. “Okay?”
“I’m worried, Bill.”
“Noted. Your worry isn’t going to change my mind.”
“You don’t care that he did this?” Cain waved at his face.
“I do. I hate that he did it, and I expect him to apologize. He needs to control himself better, that’s not a question. I’m willing to give him a chance to be better. You both should understand second chances very well. But I honestly don’t care how either of you feel about it.”
Her parents sat quietly and took that in. Billy stood up. “Now. I have a business to run. Cain, if you still want to help me, I’d like you to walk the floor with me tonight. Unless you drove Mom here and need to take her back home.”
They turned to each other and shared a message in a look. Billy’s mother faced her again. “Cain drove me, but I’d like to stay for a while and see this club of yours. If you don’t mind.”
“We can hang here for a few hours,” Cain said, “and I’ll take her home later on.”
Tony wanted to see Billy tonight. Maybe he meant to show up in the middle of the night, after everyone was gone, but maybe he’d show in the club. She’d been hoping for the latter. But it looked like he would meet her mother if he did.
As much as she wanted to see him, she didn’t think she could deal with him meeting her mother, on top of everything else. She’d call him and explain. She’d been ambushed today, and didn’t wish to inflict a similar pain on Tony. Besides, it was too early to be tangling their parents up in things. It was bad enough that Cain was already snagged in their weave. Adding Allie could tear the whole thing apart.
Billy considered these two people who hated each other, who’d done nothing but squabble over her since she was two, and probably before that. “It’s surreal to see you two cooperating. That’s scarier than anything.”
Allie grinned. “See how worried we are, baby?”
That remark deserved to die alone, so she ignored it. With a sigh, she stood and walked to the door. “Okay, let’s go down.”
Cain came first. As he got to the door, he said, “You called me Dad last night.”
“Did I?”
She didn’t remember doing it. She’d stopped in ninth grade, after one of his patented failures, when he’d told Allie to put her on a bus to Philadelphia, and then forgotten to pick her up. She’d spent a night and part of the next day in the Philly Greyhound station, and decided that she didn’t have a father.
“You did. It felt good, even then.”
Billy had nothing to offer in response but a vague nod. She wasn’t going to call him Dad anymore. He’d never deserved the title, and this little effort to intervene in her life wasn’t the way to change that.
~ 17 ~
Tony gripped the ends of the towel around his neck, clenched his fingers tight, felt the pressure of the terrycloth across his nape, and worked hard to keep his cool. The last couple days, since Hell’s Kitchen, he’d had to really put his back into keeping his hackles down.
“We haven’t agreed to this,” he told Sonny, and was proud of himself for sounding reasonable. “Nobody told you to do this.” Sonny was a lesser partner; it wasn’t his right to go rogue.
“I told him,” Tim said. “We talked about this in the partners’ meeting. Didn’t think there was any harm in running the numbers.”
One of Tony’s few remaining tethers popped loose, and he looked Tim in the eye. Tim’s share of CBSD was equal to Tony’s. “We talked, but didn’t make a decision.”
Tim crossed his arms and leaned back, setting his ass on the edge of his desk. “Sonny and I did. Together, we’re a majority vote.”
“So you went ahead and did this, knowing I didn’t want it?”
He stared at the tablet on Sonny’s desk and swiped through the pages of a completely revised business plan for Coastal Ballistics and Self-Defense. Yoga classes. Fucking CrossFit. A goddamn snack bar. A full plan, including costing, sketches, resource lists, everything. For something he’d been clear he did not want.
They’d caught him on the way out of the sparring ring with this shit. He was sweating and exhausted, his mind was fried, and they were dropping this on him now. Well, fuck that.
“No.” With a flick of his hand, he shoved the tablet off the desk; it hit the concrete floor with a metallic clatter.
“Fuck!” Sonny muttered and swooped to collect his traitorous tech.
“Tony.” Tim stood straight and took a few steps closer. Not in arm’s reach, Tony noticed. “We’re trying to save this place. If you want the basement, you’ve gotta give somewhere. This is an easy give. We won’t change the look of the place. We all want this to be hardcore. But we want it to work.
“A snack bar?”
Tim took the tablet from Sonny and brought it closer to Tony. The screen was cracked now, but still usable. He swiped until he came to the artist’s rendering of the ‘new and improved’ lobby, then turned the tablet so Tony could see clearly.
“Look. Not a snack bar. It’s supplements and protein shakes and shit like that. Flavored water and vitamin infusions. The shit we all take anyway, but offered here, at a premium for the convenience. I’ve got a list of serious yoga people—no gentle, new age crap, but the real deal. We need wo
men in here, Tone. And we need people who want to be badass but aren’t there yet. This will help pay for the basement. We figured out a way to let you keep what you want here. Do you get that?”
He did get that, but he didn’t like being set aside, run around, or otherwise ignored. With very few exceptions, people did what he fucking said. And now here stood Tim and Sonny, telling him he was the minority vote in the business that had been his own goddamn idea? That his say didn’t fucking matter?
“Do what the fuck you want,” he said and stormed out of the office.
~oOo~
After his shower, he sat on the bench before his locker and rested his head in his hands. The locker room was fairly busy right now—early on a weekday evening, they got decent traffic from guys hitting the range or the gym after work—but everybody left him alone, and the owners’ nook of the locker room was practically private.
His brain felt squishy for how hard his thoughts had been careening around in there for the past few days. He couldn’t name all the different emotions and doubts and certainties he’d felt, lost, felt again, questioned, decided, or set aside lately. Since Hell’s Kitchen. Since meeting Billy Jones. Since last fall, in a Ukrainian video store.
He needed to see her. When he was with her, things started to make sense, or at least quiet down for a goddamn minute. He needed something, and he found it with her. What it was, he couldn’t yet pin down, but it was important. He thought it was his search for understanding that had gotten him in so much trouble the night before, thinking what he needed was a wild fuck.
His phone rang, and he reached into his locker and dug it out from under his folded jeans. Seeing her name on the screen, he grinned and answered. All he had to do was think of her, apparently, and she was there.
“Hey, beautiful.”
A soft chuckle caressed his ear. “Hi.” He could hear the club behind her, recorded music over the sound system and a low rumble of people, and he checked his watch, surprised. Damn, it was later than he’d realized. The club had been open for about half an hour.
Accidental Evils Page 20