Smoke: A Bad Boy Romance

by Paula Cox

  She pries my fingers loose from my knees, brings my hands to her face, and kisses my knuckles. “Thank you for sharing with me,” she says. “I know it’s hard. It was hard for me, too.”

  “I feel comfortable with you,” I say, knowing that the man I was a few weeks ago would rip the piss out of me for saying something like this. But I don’t give a damn. Not now, not here, not with Darla.

  “I feel comfortable with you, too,” she says, kissing my hands again. “More comfortable than I would’ve believed when you first swaggered into the Coffee Joint.”

  “I was an asshole,” I say.

  She winks at me. “Oh, I know that. But that’s what attracted me to you in the first place.”

  “Then you must be a twisted freak,” I laugh. I take my hands from hers, lean forward, and place them on her legs. She draws in a gasping breath and her face is taken by lust, a look I know well now, a look I long for. “A really twisted freak . . .” I slide my hands up her legs.

  She opens her legs, still naked from our sex, and pulls on my wrists. “Only for you,” she says.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Darla

  The next few days are a hellish combination of renter’s insurance, buying clothes (picking away at my meagre savings), and looking for work.

  I stay with Brody, but I don’t see him much because he’s on the late night to early morning shift. Most mornings when I wake up, the space on the bed beside me is empty. But even so, as I wander the streets and call up the insurance people and meet with my landlord to discuss the whole mess, my mind returns again and again to Brody. I think of the night we shared, the night where he protected me, took care of me, and I think about the parts of our pasts we shared with each other.

  He was in love once, I think. He was in a relationship. And he got burned, just like I got burned. He knows the pain I felt; he’s felt it himself.

  I think of the sex. No, the lovemaking. I think of how gentle he was, and yet how passionate. It’s easily the most intense sex I’ve ever experienced. It was like having sex for the first time. I never realized how close and intimate it could be, how it could bring you closer to a person’s heart as well as their body.

  He knows my pain, I think, for the thousandth time, as I walk down the street with a bundle of résumés under my arm. I walk down the street, from coffee place to coffee place, but I don’t see my fellow pedestrians, don’t hear the honks of the cars, barely even register the disinterested shrugs of the staff at the various coffee shops I try to apply to. I see Brody, opening the door to an apartment he shared with his high school sweetheart. I see his pained face and I see the anger rising up and then rolling back within him. I see him creating the armor with which he’d shield himself for years. And most of all I see us, together on the couch, naked and panting, sharing our life stories.

  If I’ve learnt one thing in these past few days, it’s that there’s a hell of a lot more to Brody than I ever realized. I’d assumed he was a jerk and that was all. I’d assumed he was a jerk for the sake of being a jerk. But now I understand. But it’s not that simple, I tell myself. Because Brody is arrogant and self-confident. Nothing can change that. And I think he enjoys it.

  But knowing where he came from gives me a much better understanding of who he is now.

  It’s the fifth day after the explosion when I go into a coffee shop and a thin, tall man wearing glasses looks over my résumé and nods. “I think you should interview,” he says.

  I’m so happy I almost throw myself across the counter and hug him. Instead, I nod and keep my voice as calm as possible. “That’s sounds good,” I say.

  “My lunch is at three o’clock,” he says. He adjusts his glasses and then gestures at the clock. It’s half past one o’clock. “Why don’t you come back then and we’ll see what’s what?”

  “That sounds good to me,” I reply.

  I leave the coffee place with a wide grin on my face.

  Despite everything, life is good, I think. Brody is on the morning to evening shift today, so when I go back to his apartment tonight, he’ll be there. The renter’s insurance is a pain, but I’m confident I can get it sorted. And I have a job in the pipeline.

  As I walk down the street, I actually start whistling.

  Life is good, I think again, smiling from ear to ear.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Brody

  I’m in the workout room with Marco. He lies on the bench and I stand behind him, spotting. He’s pushing himself hard, trying to build up to the next level of weights. His arms strain and he grunts with each push.

  “Alright,” I say, taking the bar from him. “Don’t kill yourself.”

  I rest the bar on the brackets and hand him a towel. Taking it and wiping down his face, he grins. “No way, man,” he says. “Call me Iron Man, I’m so jacked.”

  I snort. “Yeah, you fucking wish.”

  He leaps to his feet, drops the towel, and raises his hands like a boxer. “You wanna go, big man?” he snarls, bouncing from foot to foot. “Is that what you want? You wanna dance?”

  “I don’t hit women,” I smile.

  He leaps to me and punches me in the arm. I duck, weave past his next strike, and then tackle him to the floor. He shouts and tries to pull my arms from his legs, but he can’t do it. I get him to the ground and grin down at him. “What’s it going to be?” I say, pressing his forearm into his neck. “Time to quit?”

  “Yeah, yeah,” he sighs, tapping my arm.

  I stand up and he picks up his towel, wiping down his arms. “You’re evil, man.”

  “Heard that before,” I grunt.

  Marco leaves the room and I lie down on the bench. I do a few reps of the weights, finding it easier than Marco did, and then go to the leg machine and work on my quads. My body is aching nicely when Marco pokes his head through the door.

  “Round two?” I say.

  “No way, man.” He crosses himself from shoulder to shoulder, belly to neck. “I don’t want to die today.”

  “Smart man,” I laugh.

  “I’m the smartest goddamn man alive.”

  “So if you’re not looking to get your ass beat, why are you here?”

  “There’s a pretty girl from the Coffee Joint to see you.”

  He retreats from the room.

  Darla, I think, belly becoming warm at the thought. Darla’s here.

  I haven’t seen her much these past few days, though she’s been crashing at my place. I thought tonight would be my first chance to see her properly, but if she’s here, that means she couldn’t wait that long. I smile at the thought as I stand up from the leg machine. I feel different around Darla now, closer. I shared a part of myself with her I’ve never shared with anybody else. For the first time in years, I feel like somebody understands me. Understands the real me. There’s still the mad animal attraction. No amount of sharing could ever get rid of that. And when we fucked the other day—a small window between waking up and leaving for my shift which we both pounced on—it was just as passionate and hard as it usually is. But there’s something beneath all that, something else, something emotional rather than physical.

  What this all boils down to, when you get to the meat of it, is that I’m damn excited to see her. I’ve got a wide smile on my face as I leave the weights room and walk toward the entrance.

  The smile dies when I see not Darla, but her friend Tracey. She’s dressed like a groupie at a metal concert. A black denim jacket with the sleeves ripped away at the elbow, showing her forearms. Knee-high black socks with red skulls on them. Chunky boots. If you passed her on the street, I think as I approach her, you’d think she was going to a fancy dress party.

  Before I can even say hello, she charges me, arms outstretched as though she means to hug me. I take a step back, dodging her. She stops, eyeing me closely.

  “Can we talk?” she says. She’s out of breath and there are two high red spots on her cheeks.

  “Uh, sure,” I say, wondering
what the hell is going on.

  “Somewhere private . . .” She nods at Marco, who sits at the other end of the room, leaning back on a chair and rolling a cigarette.

  Somewhere private . . . doesn’t she know I’m with Darla? What is this?

  “We’re fine here,” I say.

  She flinches. “Oh, okay.”

  I wait for her to explain what she’s doing here. When she doesn’t offer an explanation, I say: “Is there something you need? Tracey, is it?” I know her name. I’m just being a jackass because I’m disappointed. I expected Darla and instead I get this cryptic pixie woman.

  “Yes, it’s Tracey.” She glances at Marco, steps forward, and lowers her voice. “I have something to tell you,” she mutters.

  “Right . . .”

  Suddenly, she brings her hands to her face and bursts into tears. The sobs wrack her body and she trembles. She claws at her cheeks, wiping away the tears, but more spill from her watery eyes. She’s wearing black eyeliner and after around half a minute her eyes become pitted and ringed in black smudges. I watch her passively, more than anything curious about why this woman, who I barely know, would come to me and start crying.

  Then a thought enters my mind and I snap: “Is Darla okay?”

  Maybe that’s why she’s here, I think. Something has happened to Darla and . . .

  “Yes,” she sniffs, rubbing her nose until it turns Rudolf-red. “Yes, Darla’s fine. But she is why I’m here.” She wipes her face one final time and looks me straight in the face. “I have to tell you something,” she goes on, voice shaking as though at any moment she could burst into tears again. “I don’t want to tell you, because it means betraying my friend. But how can I hold it to myself? It’s like . . . if you had a friend and you knew he’d done something bad, but you also knew that telling would cause him a whole boatload of pain, what would you do? Could you tell somebody? Or would you rather keep your friend happy? This is my dilemma!”

  “Spit it out,” I sigh, losing patience. Damn, this woman can talk!

  “Yes, yes . . . sorry.” She takes a step forward so that we’re standing close together. I want to take a step back, but something in her bearing tells me that if I do, she’ll withhold her information. She looks up at me with trembling lips. “It was Darla who set fire to the Coffee Joint,” she says. “And . . . and . . .” She almost breaks into sobs. She sets her jaw, determined, and fights it away. “And it was Darla who put the bomb in her apartment!”

  I take a step back. A giant fist has just punched me in the gut. Sick rises in my mouth. I swallow it down. “What are you talking about?” I snarl. “Why the hell would Darla do that—”

  “To get your attention!” Tracey cries. “Darla isn’t the person you think she is. She’s obsessed. Can’t you tell that? She’s been obsessed with you ever since you first walked into the Coffee Joint. I knew it was a problem a long time ago, but I never did anything to stop it. She used to talk about getting your attention any way she could. She used to tell me she dreamt of being saved from a fire by you. She told me the idea really turned her on. And after the fire, I spoke with her—it was the morning you were there—and she point-blank told me what she’d done. All of it, to get your attention. And she even told me that she’d go one better. Reel you in. That was her phrase.”

  “Hold on a minute,” Marco says, joining us. “Do you understand how serious this accusation is? The police have already apprehended a man.”

  “Carl,” I say, thinking: Didn’t Darla come to his defense?

  I think back to that day. Yes, I’m sure of it. Darla was shouting something amidst the sounds of fire and shouting and mayhem. What was it? When it comes to me, I bring my hand to my mouth. I didn’t register it then, but I do now. She’d said: “But it wasn’t him! I’m sure of it!” Yes, she’d shouted that. She said she was sure of it, I think.

  All of it . . . just to make me notice her. All of it . . . just to get my attention. Can it really be true? Could she have really been that desperate to get to me? My instinct is to throw this idea into the trash where it surely belongs. But then I think of Julia, my childhood chair and the way she sweated and writhed on it. I trusted her, I think. And look what happened there.

  I try to fight back the suspicion, but it begins to formulate in my mind and there’s little I can do to stop it.

  “And you’ll go to the police?” I mutter. “Is that what you’re saying? You’ll make a statement.”

  Now she’ll say no. She’ll admit she’s lying. She won’t want to go to the police station and give a statement on record. It’ll ruin her when it comes out that she’s lying—

  “Yes!” she cries. “Of course I will. I love Darla, but arson . . .” She shakes her head sadly. “It’s no joke.”

  “No,” Marco says quietly. “No, it’s not. Okay, man, I think I’ll run her down to the station and stay with her while she gives her statement, eh? You can hold down the fort here.”

  “Fine,” I say.

  I don’t wait for a response, just turn and pace toward the gym room. I slide even more weights onto the bench-press bar until it creaks with the strain. Then I lie down and lift, lift, lift, until my muscles burn and I’m growling through gritted teeth.

  “Can. It. Really. Be. Fucking. True.” With each word I perform a rep.

  Then I jump to my feet and kick the bench so hard the weights and the bar clatter to the floor, cracking the tiles.

  “Fuck!” I snarl.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Darla

  I’m sitting in the park with a book and ham-and-cheese baguette when my cellphone rings.

  When I answer, I recognize the mechanical voice of Mr. Garvey, the man who’s been dealing with my claim for the renter’s insurance. I’ve never seen what Mr. Garvey looks like, but if his slow, droning voice is anything to judge by, he’s a bespectacled fifty year old with a plain brown suit and well-polished brown shoes. I imagine him sitting alone in a cell-like office and staring blankly at the wall.

  “Hello, Miss Castle,” he says. “How are you today?” How-are-you-today, Robot Booting Up, Sequence Beginning.

  I stifle a laugh. I’m feeling unbelievably happy and silly after being told about the interview. I feel like a teenager, hopeful, the whole world ahead of me. I know that this feeling is mostly due to Brody, the knowledge that later on tonight I’ll be in his arms and he’ll stroke my hair and kiss me and we’ll laugh and make love and fuck and talk. We’ll grow closer.

  “Oh, fine,” I say, after an overlong pause.

  “That is great,” he says.

  Another pause. Mr. Garvey shuffles papers. I tell myself I won’t let whatever this bombshell news is ruin my day. But I’m counting on the renter’s insurance and if they decide that they don’t want to cough up, it might be time to buy some mime makeup and an old hat.

  “Uh, thank you,” I say.

  He clears his throat. I check the time. Almost time for me to leave for the interview.

  “Mr. Garvey,” I say. “Is there something you want to tell me?”

  “Yes,” he says. “I want to inform you that your renter’s insurance manager has consulted with the damages team and the fire team and each department concurs that you should be allowed a full claim to your insurance policy effective immediately, to be transferred via bank or wire or by check, whatever the claimant’s preference.”

  “Bank!” I squeal, hardly able to contain my excitement. I’m bobbing up and down on the spot like an excited kid. I look up at the blue sky and a bird ducks its wing and dives to the left. I’m never normally one for gazing at nature and finding the beauty and blah-blah, but today I feel so happy I find myself grinning up at the bird like a loon. “Please tell me this is true, Mr. Garvey!”

  “Yes, it is true, Miss Castle,” he says. “I will action the bank transfer upon termination of this phone call.”

  I giggle. “Mr. Garvey, has anybody ever told you that you have a wonderful vocabulary?”

  I t
hink I hear him smile. I made the robot smile!

  “No, they have not. Why, thank you.” A hint of humanity comes into his voice. “Is there anything else I can help you with, Miss Castle?”

  “No, Mr. Garvey. You have been most helpful. You told me these calls are monitored, right? Well, to anybody listening, Mr. Garvey is the best employee you have and you’d be fools to lose him!”

  Mr. Garvey clears his throat. If before I could hear him smile, now I’m sure I can hear him blush. “Thank you, Miss Castle,” he says. “Have a good day.”

  “You, too!” I grin.

  I finish my baguette, throw the remains in the trash, and jump to my feet. I feel infused with energy. A few days ago, my apartment was a smoldering mess. Now, sure, it’s still a smoldering mess, but I’ve got the insurance money to look forward to, as well a job interview, as well as being with Brody later on! My grin spreads across my face until it feels like the corners of my lips are going to stretch all the way up to the sky.