by Love, B. T.
I shrieked like an idiot and turned to look behind me at his target, which was a small tree that already had two other knives lodged in its bark. “Wow,” I said, looking back at him. “You’re good.”
“It’s a hobby of mine,” he said, smiling at my compliment. “So,” he continued, “you were about to tell me if there’s something else that interests you more than being a teacher.”
“Oh, yeah,” I laughed softly. “I have something else in mind, but it’s not, I don’t know, practical, I guess.”
“What do you mean it’s not practical? What kind of career is it?”
I took a sip of wine and stared down at my glass. “Marine biology.”
“How is being a marine biologist not a practical career choice?”
“I don’t know,” I shrugged, looking back up at him. “My mom talked me out of it. She said it would be hard to find a job in that field, but if I were to become a teacher I would have more options. I think the real reason is because she just doesn’t want me to leave her, and I would have to move away if I were to pursue the career I want.”
“Hmm. Sounds unfair.”
“Yeah, well, that’s just how life is I guess.”
His eyebrows pulled together. “It doesn’t have to be.”
“Well,” I smiled, “maybe it doesn’t have to be. I mean, it’s summer so I’m taking a break from school now anyway. Who knows, maybe I’ll end up pursuing it when I go back.”
“I think you should.”
I nodded at his encouragement; it was nice having someone backup my desired career choice. It didn’t happen very often.
“So what about you?” I asked. “What do you do for work?”
He hesitated for a moment as he reached behind him for his beer. “I’m in the disposal business,” he finally answered before taking a swig from the bottle.
“Oh. Like the garbage company?” I asked.
“Something like that.”
“That’s probably a good job to be in, huh? I mean, being around garbage all day sucks but I bet it pays really well.”
“Yeah,” he nodded. “I make pretty good money.”
“Nice.” I smiled as he downed the rest of his beer and sat it back on the concrete behind him. “Today must have been a long day,” I said. “That’s two beers you’ve drank within a short amount of time.”
He nodded with a straight face and sunk back down into the bubbling water. “That’s actually number four and five. So yeah, you can definitely say it was a long day.”
“Does your job have weird hours?” I asked.
His eyebrows pulled together. “What do you mean?”
“Well, earlier today when you left you said you had to go to work. It was the middle of the day.”
“Oh, yeah,” he shrugged. “Sometimes I work unconventional hours.”
“Does that make it hard to have a relationship with someone?”
“Jeez, you sure are full of questions, aren’t you?”
I laughed and looked down shyly at the water. “I’m sorry, I’m just a talkative person I guess.”
A small smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. “That’s okay. It’s actually nice having a real conversation with someone new. And to answer your question, yes, it does make it hard to have a relationship with someone.”
“It’s probably hard to make plans to do stuff. Like your girlfriend probably would have wanted to have dinner tonight with the rest of us.”
He closed his eyes and leaned his head back against the concrete. “Is that your way of finding out if I’m single?” he asked with a smile in his voice.
I laughed, feeling like a complete idiot at being so forward and obvious about my intentions. “Just blame it on the wine.”
He laughed out a puff of air. “Yeah, well, I currently do not have a woman in my life.”
“Oh,” I said, happy with his answer. But I was in fact getting drunker by the second, and the alcohol was spurring me to tease him. “I figured you weren’t into women . . .” I joked before taking yet another sip of wine.
“What?” he asked, his eyes bursting open and his head lifting away from the concrete. “What on earth would make you think that?”
“Well, you just have such a little . . . wiener.”
“Okay,” he said, laughing loudly as he sat up and leaned forward, revealing more of his muscular chest. “First of all, there are plenty of straight men who have little dogs. The size of the wiener doesn’t matter.”
“It’s the way you use it?” I flirted. God, I needed to put down the wine.
He shook his head with a handsome smile. “Yes, as a matter of fact. And I use my wiener to pick up women.”
“I bet you do,” I laughed. “Ah, man, I’m sorry. I tend to overstep when I have liquor in me. Which is something I guess I shouldn’t do to a man who has a pair of throwing knives behind him.”
“No kidding.” He chuckled and relaxed a bit, leaning back against the side of the hot tub. “Yeah, Machete isn’t exactly the manliest of dogs to have, but, I guess you can say he holds a special place in my heart.”
“I can tell. How did you get him?”
“I rescued him.”
My eyebrows lifted. “Really? That’s so sweet.”
“Well as a gay man I tend to have a soft spot for neglected animals.”
I laughed loudly and skimmed my hand along the water, throwing a small splash in his direction. “Oh shut up!”
He laughed and threw a splash right back at me. “Me shut up? What about you? You barely know me and you’ve already pegged me as something I’m not just because I have a little dog. That would be like me saying you would be easy to get into bed because you’re a college girl who drinks.”
This man intrigued me so much. “Well tell me Troy, is that what you think?”
He sighed and brought his strong arms out of the water, relaxing them on the concrete behind him. His eyes darted around my face like he was trying to get a better reading of what kind of person I was. “No,” he finally answered. “I don’t think that about you at all.”
“Good, because I’m not easy.”
The side of his mouth pulled back with an irresistible smirk. “Yeah, I know.”
“And how do you know that?” I smiled, intrigued even more by him.
“I guess I don’t know for sure, technically. But, I don’t know, you just seem a little inexperienced.”
My eyebrows raised. “Inexperienced? Let me tell you, Troy, I’m far from inexperienced.”
His hands raised casually in defense. “My bad.”
“Well why don’t you enlighten me on your reasoning with that?”
“I don’t know, you might not be able to take it.”
“Oh I can take it . . .” I cleared my throat, realizing how dirty my words had sounded. “I mean I can handle it.”
He chuckled deeply, the happy sound exciting me and my alcohol-drenched body. “Well I’ll start by saying you’re young,” he said.
“Twenty-one isn’t that young.”
“And you’re very nice.”
“So being nice makes me inexperienced? That’s a lame argument.”
He nodded and laughed, looking down at the water. “I know. As I said it I could hear how lame it was.” He looked back up, his eyes a little glassy from his intoxication. “I don’t know, I guess I’ll just always see you as that little girl that your brother always talked to me about.”
And that was when I slid right into the friend zone. It was a cold place, the friend zone, even in the hot water that was bubbling around me.
I gave him a small smile as I mentally swallowed the awareness that I was just a little girl to him. “Well, you knew of me as a little girl but I only know you as a grown man. But, I understand why you see me how you do.”
His head lightly cocked to the side. “If it makes any difference, I think you’ve grown into a very beautiful young woman.”
“Thanks,” I smiled, clutching my wine glass to my chest.
As much as I enjoyed his compliment, I couldn’t help but feel bummed. A woman wants to be attractive to a man, desired by a man, not looked at as if she were a child. But I had to respect him for making his stance on the subject very clear to me. I respected him for not leading me on. “Well,” I said, standing up in the hot tub, “this water and wine did what I needed it to do. I’m going to go back upstairs and get some shut eye.”
His eyes shifted to my dangling belly button ring before meeting my face once again. “Okay, Scarlett. Sleep well.”
“You too, Troy.”
Four
I opened my eyes the next morning to a knock at my door. “Hold on a sec,” I said, slipping out from beneath the covers to hunt for some clothes. I pulled on my pajama pants and a loose-fitting sweatshirt. “Come in.”
The door opened and in stepped my dad, holding a medium-sized cardboard box in his hands. “Hi Scarlett,” he said with a smile as he entered the room. “How did you sleep?”
“Pretty good. I got in the hot tub and had some wine; that helped a lot.”
“Ah, yes. Troy told me he visited with you out there.”
I was part pleased and part curious as to why Troy was talking about me. But he made his intentions clear to me last night, so he was probably just making conversation with my dad. Nothing more.
I sat down on the bed, crossing my sweatshirt-covered arms in front of me. “I kind of had too much to drink last night and overstepped I think.”
He sat down beside me and placed the box on the other side of him. “Troy’s a good guy; I like him. But he’s no good for you.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, my eyebrows pulling together with puzzlement.
“Well,” he hesitated, “first I want to say that I know I haven’t been in your life, so it’s not really my place to give you my opinion.”
“It wasn’t your fault that you weren’t in my life; it was moms.”
“I know,” he nodded. “But the fact remains that I wasn’t there. And to top it off, you’re an adult now, so I can’t tell you what to do or who to date. But trust me on this one sweetheart, Troy is not the one for you.”
I smiled, my lips turning in. “Yeah, I understand, dad. I just met him anyway, it wasn’t like I was trying to get with him or something. Like I said, I had a little too much wine and I was being flirtatious. And as my dad you have every right to look out for my well-being, no matter how old I am.”
“Good,” he said, patting my knee. “I’m glad you understand.”
But I didn’t understand. What was it about Troy that made him no good for me? Troy’s been around my brother for years so it made sense that my dad would know a lot about him, so I guess I had no choice but to trust his judgement. But on the other hand I was an adult and I was fully capable of making my own decisions about my life. Be that as it may, Troy didn’t have any interest in me anyway. It would be different if he were trying to initiate something with me, then maybe I would go against my dad’s advice and try to crack the mysterious code of Troy Valenti. But that wasn’t the case. So listening to my dad was easy.
I smiled and nodded to the brown carton next to him. “What’s in the box?”
“I’m glad you asked.” He reached over and pulled it onto his lap. “These are all of the letters that your brother and I have sent you over the years. There’s even a couple from your uncle in there.”
My face lit up with a giant grin. “Are you serious?”
“Yep.” He pulled the folded flaps open and looked down into the pile of envelopes. “We wrote you all the time, only to have them all returned to us. I wanted to give these to you so you could see how much you’ve meant to your brother and me through these years. We never stopped thinking about you.”
My happy gaze shifted from the box, to his eyes, and then back to the box again. I reached over and took the box into my hands, pulling it onto my lap. “There are tons of letters in here.”
“Seventeen years’ worth.”
I pulled one out and inspected the front. The return address was the prison where my dad was incarcerated at, and it was addressed to me. A thick obvious line was crossed through my address and the words return to sender were written boldly in my mother’s handwriting. I flipped it over and ran my finger under the flap. “Do you mind if I read one now?” I asked.
“Not at all.”
I pulled out a single folded sheet of yellow lined paper and opened it up. “Dear Scarlett,” I read the letter aloud. “Today is your tenth birthday. Happy Birthday, my sweet daughter. I hope you have a good one. By now you probably like boys and you probably like some kind of boy band. If I were there for your birthday my present would be tickets for you and your best friends to see your favorite band in concert. I’d get you a bike and rollerblades, and a backpack filled with all kinds of candy.” I stopped reading and looked up with a chuckle. “For my tenth birthday my mom got me a bike.”
“Great minds,” he smiled.
I looked back down at the letter. “I hope your birthday is a good one,” I continued to read. “I love you with my entire heart, and can only hope that you know that. Love, Daddy.” I folded it up and stuffed it back in the envelope. “That was really sweet, Dad.”
“Well, I want you to read through these so you can see what we went through. I’m not gonna lie, a few of them are pretty deep. I had some rough times in prison and every once in a while I would write you a letter to vent my frustrations, knowing it was going to be sent back to me. It helped me get by on some of the harder days.”
“I understand; I can’t wait to read them.”
He smiled and leaned into me, kissing the side of my hair. “I’m so glad you came and found me.”
“Me too,” I agreed. “But I have a question: You’ve been out for a few months now. Why didn’t you try to get a hold of me again, or maybe come find me?”
He nodded, understanding why I would ask the question. “To be honest, sometimes I wondered if you were the one sending some of the letters back. Your mom didn’t always write on all of them, so the slash through your address could have been yours. After you became an adult I figured your mom would have given you the letters to make the decision yourself. I felt that you would have reached out if you wanted to.”
“Well, my mom still kept everything from me, even as an adult.” I shook my head, thinking back to all the time I could have gotten to know my father better, time that had been wasted because of her. “I mean, I understand that she was scared and was trying to protect me, especially since she almost lost me.”
“I’ll never forgive myself for that,” he cut in.
I put my hand on his shoulder and smiled. “Well I’m giving you permission to forgive yourself. It was a long time ago, and I’m fine. I don’t even have any health problems now because of it.”
“I’m so thankful.”
I took my hand away and sighed. “My mom, she tries to run my life. She tries making decisions for me all the time. It’s frustrating. I’ve been trying to cut the umbilical cord, so to speak.”
“Your mother is a good woman. There were plenty of reasons I fell in love with her, one of them being her strength. But sometimes that strength can cross over into control. She means well, but if you feel that what she’s doing is too much for you, then you have to take the situation into your own hands. You’re a Nicoletti; we know how to handle our business.”
I looked over at him and smiled. “You’re right; I am a Nicoletti. I’ll take care of it when I get back. But for now I’m here to rekindle our relationship.”
“And that we will.” He put his arm around me, pulling me into him. “We’re going to barbecue tonight to celebrate our new relationship.”
“Do you barbecue every night?” I joked.
“Yes we do, because what is life without a grilled piece of meat on your plate, huh?” He looked down at me and smiled happily, which made his eyes crinkle. “I’m going to invite the rest of the family over so they can see what a beautiful woman y
ou’ve become.” He squeezed me tightly and then let go, standing up from the bed. “It’s Friday. There’s nothing that goes better with a Friday night than ribs, beer, and a big-ass family reunion.”
* * *
If there was one thing my mom told me that I listened to about coming out to visit my dad, it was to keep my mouth shut about whatever his business dealings were. I didn’t ask questions about his past with heroin distribution; I didn’t ask if he was presently involved. I didn’t ask my brother either, because it was obvious to me that he was immersed with something hush hush as well. I just kept my nose out of their affairs and went about my own business while my dad spent his day at the pizza parlor and my brother answered countless quietly-spoken calls on his cell.
I sat on the bed and pulled the box of letters next to me. It was so exciting going through these written memories from my dad and brother’s past. It gave me a view into the window of their life at that time, making me feel more acquainted with the people they were back then.
I dug down deep in the pile like I was drawing a winner for a raffle, and took out another one that was from my dad. My finger eagerly tore under the flap and I pulled out a single white sheet.
Dear Scarlett,
I can’t believe you are almost twelve years old. I often wonder what your hobbies are. Maybe you’re like your old man and you play baseball. When I was your age I was on the baseball team and I was really good at it. Your grandparents and your uncle Ted would come to every one of my games and cheer me on. I remember there was this one time someone threw the ball and it hit me right square in the nose. Blood was everywhere, but you know what I did? I kept playing. My coach tried to get me out of the game but I wouldn’t listen to him. He told your grandpa to make me leave the field but he told him if I wanted to stay then I could. So I stayed in the rest of the game with dried blood all over my face. And you know what happened? I hit a home run right before the game was over. You know, if I would have given up and left the game I wouldn’t have experienced that home run. Even my dad didn’t give up on me, and because of it he got to brag to his friends about how I ended the game on a high note with a broken nose and bloody cheeks.