by Amelia Gates
How well do we really know our friends, anyway?
How well do we know our lovers?
My neighbor Brandy was married to her high school sweetheart for thirty years before she found out that his “military career” was actually another family three towns over.
My own mother was blind to my father’s alcoholism even though he drank right under her nose and hardly ever went to bed sober anymore. If they could be wrong about their husbands, what made me think I could really know what my boyfriend—ex-boyfriend, I corrected myself—was capable of? I mean, we were just kids back then. And even though I thought Kash and mine was a special kind of love, I couldn’t exactly be sure. Kids and their stupid, feelings, right? Kids and the trust they put in the untrustworthy.
“I can’t,” I growled through my teeth. It trailed into a keening wail before I bit it off again. I couldn’t possibly know. That was why I’d asked him. Sideways at first, and then directly. But my questions went unanswered, festering into a pool of rage and grief and paranoia. The Tenacious Tripod was broken beyond repair, and everything around me was telling me it was Kash’s fault. While my heart was telling me that it wasn’t. But the thing was, my heart wasn’t how it once was. It was a mess. A mess of wanting and needing and missing Kash. A mess of mourning and wanting and needing my brother. A mess that the only two men in my life who I really, really, cared about couldn’t put right again.
I took a deep, shuddering breath and straightened my spine. I wouldn’t let Kash just sweep back into town and pick up where he left off with me. I might give him a chance to answer my questions, but I wasn’t making any promises. Not to him, and definitely not to myself. At worst, he was my brother’s killer. At best, he’d ghosted me for six whole years. Either way, I didn’t owe him a goddamn thing.
I wiped my face and hauled the case of beer up with renewed vigor. Screw him and everything he’d ever done to me. Everything he’d ever done to my family.
But his image followed me home, floating in my mind’s eye. Those deep, mournful brown eyes which had always broken my heart. His shoulders, broader and more muscular than they’d been before he left. His rough hands, reaching out to help me. I could see how strong they were. I remembered how gentle they could be. His scent, that earthy, clean-smelling aroma that clung to him no matter what he was doing. He still made my heart flutter, and that pissed me the hell off.
I nearly broke the screen door off the hinges as I marched into the house. I slammed the case down on the table, my eyes burning with new, furious tears.
“Hey! Watch it! You break those, you’re gonna go get me more.” Dad glowered in the doorway, his shoulders hunched with tension that wouldn’t dissipate until he’d drunk himself into a stupor. He twisted a cigarette into his mouth and patted his pockets.
“Sorry,” I snapped.
“Don’t take that tone with me, missy.” He took a couple steps toward me, trying to look threatening with half of his attention arrested by the beer beside me. “I don’t know what crawled up your ass, but you better handle that mouth.”
“Sorry.”
“That’s better. What’s the matter with you, anyway? Boys didn’t give you enough attention? Damn it, where the hell is my goddam lighter?”
It was sitting on the table next to his ashtray, where it always was when it wasn’t in his pocket. I picked up the heavy zippo and slapped it into his hand. “Drink your beer.”
I was suddenly too exhausted to be angry. I trudged down the hallway—it seemed longer than usual somehow—past the bathroom, past Hunter’s room, into the tiny little 12x10 paneled room I’d lived in since I was three years old. The floor creaked just outside my narrow door and the floor buckled. One of these days I’d put my foot clean through it, I was sure. Maybe then we would find a way to upgrade from our single-wide piece of crap trailer. Maybe one day we would get the hell out of here and move away to something better, something…something far away from here.
My full-size bed was too big for the room, and the lavender-and-grey bedspread I’d bought myself contrasted sharply with the comic book curtains Hunter had given me for Christmas the year before he died. I’d grown so much, but part of me still felt trapped in the life of that distraught eighteen-year-old girl. Hunter was my twin, the other half of my mind—how was I supposed to move on from that? Evidently, I hadn’t. Hence the curtains in my room and the drapes of sadness around my heart.
I flopped on the bed, almost missing the fury which had struck me down in the woods. At least there was energy in that. Now that it was gone, I just felt empty and confused. Just like I’d felt ever since Hunter died and ever since Kash got locked away.
A light tapping at my door barely made me stir and I tried to put a look on my face that seemed a lot more neutral than the pained one I’d been sporting ever since I got home.
“Come in,” I mumbled. I didn’t have to talk too loud to get through these thin walls.
My mother’s signature shuffle crept up behind me. She rarely walked and never strode—she had this way of moving around that reminded me of a mouse, hands tucked close to her body, spine gently curved in a protective posture. I vaguely remembered a time when she was full of life and color, long ago. She used to sing and dance and wear bright red lipstick. I never saw her like that anymore. The more she morphed into this shadow of her former self, the more I started to wonder if I had imagined it all.
“Daisy.” Her voice was a gentle question.
“I saw Kash,” I said bitterly. “He offered to help me with the beer.”
“Oh, that was nice of him. How is he?”
I shot her a sideways look. “I didn’t bother to ask.”
“Oh?”
Her bafflement was enough to stir up the emotions that had gone cold, and I sat up on the bed and stared at her.
“Why would I ask him that, mom? Why should I care? Why do you care?”
Her lips tilted into the weak ghost of a smile. “He was Hunter’s favorite person, next to you. He was like a son to me, once. I think it’s natural to wonder how he’s been, don’t you?”
I gaped. “No! No, I don’t think it’s natural at all! What’s natural is the desire to squeeze his head until it pops between your hands, to want to hog-tie him to the back of a truck and drag him until his skin falls off, to—”
“Daisy, please.” She shook her head, her cheeks pale. “I understand you’re angry. And you have all right to be. But…” she paused, her voice growing smaller. “That graphic language upsets me.”
Graphic language? Shouldn’t the graphic violence of her life upset her more than a little colorful language? I never could understand her. But I moved closer to her on the bed and she patted my knee.
“It’s hard for all of us,” she said quietly. “Hardest on you, I think.”
“He was your son.”
“Yes.” She inhaled as though she was going to elaborate further, but she didn’t. She breathed it out and offered a small smile. “I’ll get you some dinner. You’ll feel better after you eat.”
She kissed my forehead and left me feeling more confused than ever. Kash was locked up for the murder of her son. Just like everyone in this town, I was sure that she believed they’d caught the right guy and now, here he was, roaming our streets once again. Why wasn’t my mother more pissed off about this? Why wasn’t she calling for a march to overthrow the injustice of Kash being let out early on a stupid technicality. At least that’s what the papers were all saying. But the papers also said the world was going to end last year.
Fury was so comfortable, an emotion so sure of itself that it left no room for doubt. It was clarity, pure and simple. I’d expected it to be answered by my mother’s own subdued version of anger, validated by her pain. Uncertainty crept in around the edges. Did she know something I didn’t, or could she just not bring herself to be angry at a man she’d doted on as a second son? Or was she just like me, unbelieving that Kash could ever do such a thing. But at least I had the sense to st
ill be mad at him.
“Hell, even if he was innocent, he still ghosted me for six years,” I said weakly.
I eyed my laptop. Newspapers weren’t the only source of information. I could do the research myself and find out how he actually got out of prison. I scowled and tossed a blanket over the machine.
“I’m not going to give him the satisfaction,” I said out loud. “He did it, everybody knows it, that’s the end of it.” That’s what I needed to believe. Because…well, if not him, then who?
It wasn’t the end of it. Not even close.
Chapter 3
It’s real easy to decide where to go when you’ve only got one option. Didn’t mean I had to like it, though. Problem is, the only place I wanted to be was wherever Daisy was, and she didn’t want me anywhere near her.
I rolled my right wrist, loosening it up—the memory of all the unanswered letters I’d written aggravated the carpal tunnel I’d gotten in the process.
“Guess words don’t fix shit,” I muttered. “Get it over with, man.”
The only motel in town was a three-story cube near the center of town. It was the oldest building we had, complete with hitching post and water trough. Every year Danton would clean it up and petition the historical society to make it a landmark. Every year, the historical society would call the fire marshal, who would write citations for the ancient wiring and windows. It was a whole thing around here.
The door screamed as I pushed it open, calling old memories back to life.
“Welcome to the Danton Daily, Weekly, Monthly,” a pile of paperwork on the front desk said in a rushed monotone. “What’cha need?”
I winced. Of course he still owned this place. Who else would want it? My fantastic day was just getting better and better.
“Monthly,” I said.
He popped up from behind the paperwork like a ferret. His janky teeth stuck out over his bottom lip, his lazy eye rolling wildly while the other one stared hard. His hair, always prematurely gray, stuck out all over the place except for a saucer-sized patch on the very top of his head that shone under the dimmed lighting.
“Kash? ‘Zat you?”
“Hey, Leroy.”
“What’chu doin’ here? I thought they got you for life! I’ve had to make some bad decisions man, bad decisions, you really left me in the lurch y’know. If I know’d you was comin’ back I never would’a done it, but I ain’t know so it ain’t my fault, no sir.”
“What the hell are you talking about, Leroy?”
His good eye shifted back and forth at hyper speed. “You still sellin’?”
“Man, I just got out of prison. I ain’t even showered yet. You gonna give me a room?”
“Yeah, yeah, sure thing man, sure thing. But listen, uh—you know when you left, it put me in a bind. I needed mine, y’hear?”
“I hear you, I hear you,” I said, getting bored of his yammering real quick. “Gimme a key, Leroy.”
“I jus’ want you to know, I’m loyal as they come, lord help me if I’m not the most loyal friend a man’ll ever have.”
“Great.”
“So?” He stared at me expectantly, one hand on the room key I needed.
“So what?”
“You gon’ start your, erm—business again? ‘Cause if you are, I’ll move some stuff around. You know me, ol’ Leroy, I’m loyal as they come.”
“You gonna hold my room hostage until I tell you yes?”
“No, no, no hostages here. I know what you do to hostages.” He chuckled nervously and pulled the key off the wall but held it tight in his fist. “What’d Hunter do to you anyway?”
“Nothing.” God I was tired of talking about this. “Not a damn thing. Now give me my damn key.”
“Hol-hold on, hold on, you went and killed a man who ain’t done nothing to you? Well that makes me downright nervous, Kash. I don’t know if I want you in my hotel.” Leroy stared hungrily at me. Nervous my ass.
“Bet it wouldn’t make you nervous if I told you I was gonna be setting up shop here,” I said.
His face split into a rotten grin because, well, of course it did. “There you go! That’s the Kash I know. Here’s your key, you’re gonna be in room 314. Jes’ sign here—gonna be $665 for the month.”
I blinked and widened my eyes at him. “Thought this place was a hundred a week, Leroy.”
“Inflation, man, I can’t help it. What’s the matter, you ain’t got it?”
“I got six hundred total. No, wait…” I stopped and took out the money the bits and pieces of cash that jingled in my pockets. I pulled a couple bills away from the rest of the cash and then started counting. “Five hundred and…ninety dollars and…wait…five cents. Thought I might like to eat sometimes too, so I kept something back,” I said, patting the few dollars I’d skimmed from the pile.
Leroy stroked the thin wisps of tangled hair he thought was a beard and smirked at me. “Well, look here—I might be able to cut you a deal, seeing as we’re old friends and all.”
“Is a tick really friends with a dog?”
His smirk fell and he scowled. “Man, you’re about to talk yourself out of a room.”
I grinned. “Sorry, go ‘head.”
“What I was gonna say was, this place needs work done on it. Historical society day’s comin’ up, and I can’t afford another damn fine. City said they’d pay the last one since they’re the ones dead set on getting this dump landmarked, but they ain’t done it. You know anything about wiring?”
“I know how to use the internet,” I said blandly.
“Well then use it. I need these wires uncrossed by the end of the month. You do that, I’ll let you stay here for—say…two hundred and fifty?”
He would hold this favor over my head for the rest of my life and I knew it. Camping out in the woods behind Daisy’s place was starting to sound like a viable option—but I really did want that shower. One with soap and a curtain and privacy.
“All right, you got a deal.” I stuck my hand out to shake his crusty paw, then snatched it back at the last second. “But! You have to promise you won’t be pestering me for anything. No tree, no glass, no nothing. I’ve got eyes on me, man.”
“Yeah, yeah, sure man, I promise. But—you are gonna get back in it though, right?”
I shook his hand and snatched the key, leaving his question unanswered. “Two hundred and fifty dollars a month plus handyman junk. Deal?”
“Deal, deal, but come on man, you are gonna start selling again, aren’t you? Dayle charges too much and his dogs are mean. Look!”
He tugged up his sleeve to show me a bite mark which had clearly needed stitches and antibiotics weeks ago and had gotten neither. I swallowed a gag.
“Maybe you shouldn’t be pissing the dogs off then.”
“I didn’t do nothin’. It was Dayle shorting me, I saw the scale man, I read the same numbers he did and he had me shorted.”
“What eye did you read them with?” I grinned.
Leroy tugged his sleeve down indignantly. “You gon’ answer the question?”
“Are you?”
“Bastard.” Leroy glared down at his paperwork and blinked a few times, trying unsuccessfully to get both eyes facing the same direction. “Well? You got your key, get out of my lobby.”
“You got it, boss.”
I was halfway to the stairs before he started shouting after me.
“You best come find me in the morning! You still got wires to fix!”
“Yeah, yeah, I’ll fix ‘em.”
314 was a smelly room in the middle of a smelly hall overlooking the smelly alley behind the building. But at least it had a shower and soap. I tossed my crap on the bed and it landed like a rock on springs that had gone and had all their bounce used up. The old clawfoot tub in the bathroom was streaked with rust, but I didn’t need it to hold much water anyway. Plus, though I wasn’t exactly a beggar, I lucked out on the deal Leroy offered me, so I wasn’t going to be all ungrateful and shit. A room was a r
oom was a room and at least this room wasn’t a prison cell with a slab of cement for a bed.
Pipes shrieked and rattled as I turned the water on. The shower head spat a few times, then settled on a slow dribble.
I cringed and clenched my teeth together. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
I turned the handle harder and the pipes gurgled and choked, spraying one violent blast before dribbling some more.
“I’m about to get myself electrocuted in this shower, you know,” I pleaded with it. “Give me something!”
It hissed and choked a few more times before hacking up a hunk of limestone, then the dribbling stream transformed into a vicious firehose.
“Thanks,” I said blandly. I might have whooped a little too.
I stepped into the shower and closed my eyes like I was soaking in all the luxury of a Ritz Carlton. Not that this moment right here didn’t feel just as good. Maybe better. I wasn’t working on prison time anymore. Here I was, taking a shower when I wanted and, most importantly, alone and without fear. I stayed in the shower for much longer than I needed to, longer than the warm water decided it wanted to stay with me. I did my best to avoid washing the skin clean off my body, only stepping out when my bones shook with an icy chill.
Chapter 4
“So, your boyfriend’s back.”
Lizzie’s voice nearly made me jump out of my skin. I’d been trying very hard to focus on putting books where they belonged without thinking about Kash. He’d taken up entirely too much brain space lately. I’d lost sleep over him the night before and had taken the long way to work that morning just to avoid the motel. I was sure he was staying there—it wasn’t like he had anywhere else to go.
“Ex-boyfriend,” I corrected her. “Also, this is a library. Keep your voice down.”