The crowd finally started to thin. The only people left where me and four other drunks. I sat and watched the half-burnt cigarette dangling between two of my fingers. I wasn’t a smoker. Never had been. It was a distraction to keep my mind from sinking back into the deep, black hole it went when life got too hard.
Tammy came over and sit two shot glasses on the table and then filled them to the brim with Jack Daniels. She handed me one and tipped the other back, letting the golden liquid slid down her throat. I followed her lead, and rejoiced at the burn that slipped all the way to the pit of my stomach.
“Okay, are you ready to talk?”
“I have nothing to talk about.” I slammed the shot glass down and pointed to it, signaling I wanted another shot.
Tammy shook her head. “It’s that girl you’ve been bringing in here, isn’t it?”
“Annie is none of your business. She’s nobody’s business. She’s different.”
Tammy sit down on the bench reserved for Annie. “No girl is different; some just know how to weasel into your heart a little more.”
“Annie hasn’t weaseled herself anywhere.” The anger in me was growing with each word. “She’s just precious. She silences the demons in my head. The demons I’ve fought for years. The sex, the liquor helped me cope, but with one smile from Annie, they all go away. It doesn’t matter because she sees what a piece of scum I really am. I can’t even buy her with things because she doesn’t care about things. She cares about people, and I lost all that because I can’t keep my dick out of some random whore.”
“Lucas, you should really quit stickin’ your pecker into everything that breathes, before you catch something Ajax can’t even get off.”
I moaned, and Tammy cupped her hand around mine. It felt wrong. “Show her you’re different with her. Find the one thing she needs and give it to her.”
Tammy poured me another shot, and I had it thrown back immediately.
Could I even begin to prove I wasn’t the world’s biggest scumbag when deep down I knew I was?
Tammy gripped the bottle and went to leave but not without one more piece of advice. “You’re worth it, Lucas. This girl is the luckiest girl around to have someone like you willing to fight for her.”
I jerked on my riding jacket. The one thing I could give her was a part of her past.
Chapter 15
Annie Prieto
I climbed off the bus, let out a sudden sigh, and opened my mouth to speak but nothing came out. Lucas was sitting on my doorstep, leaning against a brick column.
His eyes were closed but he eased them open at the sound of my footsteps falling upon the walkway.
He was pale and there were deep dark circles under his eyes. Only Lucas could be bewitching with a sexy hangover.
Friends. Lucas and I are only friends. If that.
I let my backpack slip down my arm and onto the ground. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m not really sure.” He flicked the cigarette he was smoking onto the grass. I’d never seen him smoke before and was a little astounded he was even smoking at all. “Where have you been?”
I sat down beside him and clasped my hands in my lap, not sure what to do with them. “Spent the morning at the newspaper office going through old microfilm trying to find out something about my mom.”
Confused as if he woke up in some foreign land, he pulled his ball cap down over his eyes, shadowing any emotions in them.
“The librarian helped me get an appointment with the editor,” I said. “I think she was just hoping I would leave her alone a few days.”
Lucas didn’t seem to hear me. He was too deep into the thoughts in his head.
Lucas’s eyebrows pulled in as he took a deep breath. “It’s over with Candice and me. It really never started but no more.”
“You can see anybody you want. Friends don’t get to dictate who the other screws.”
There was a sudden stinging to my eyes, and I had no idea why I even wanted to cry.
“Whatever, I just wanted you to know,” he replied.
The taste of cigarettes lingered on my tongue, but those damn cigarettes did nothing to calm my nerves. I scraped my hand over my jean leg, trying to release some of the pain in me. The idea I hurt was hard enough, but realizing she didn’t give a rat’s ass was agony.
So many things I wanted to say. I wanted to tell her how she made me feel. Things I thought were impossible to feel for anyone. I swallowed back the lump slowly swelling in my throat. I was unbelievably crazy about her, and it was driving me insane because I didn’t know how to process those feelings. I couldn’t find the words to say. Focusing on showing her was the only option.
“Will you take a field trip with me?” I popped my head up, a move I quickly regret, but I couldn’t allow her to see an ounce of regret, I smoothed out my face into a pleading smile.
“To where?”
“My granny’s,” I said, but my voice was a little more than a whisper.
She blinked, a rapid, fluttering succession of confusion. “Why do you want me to meet your grandmother for?”
“Because she knew your mother.”
I wasn’t sure what I expected but it wasn’t what I got. Annie silently stood and motion with her hand to follow her. She understood the power that silence wielded. Silence often said more than words ever could. I picked up her backpack off the ground and followed her up the porch stairs.
When we entered the front door, I glanced around at the house I’d literally despised my entire life, but now served as the home to the only one I'd ever cared about. It was still hard to understand.
She pointed to the couch, informed me she would be back in a few minutes, and switched on the television.
I took a seat on the couch and pretended to stare at the television while Annie primped or did something in her bedroom. My watch hand slowly ticked by. Ten minutes ... twenty minutes ... forty minutes. I didn’t have a clue what was even playing on the television. I was nervous and scared. Not a combination I was familiar with.
I stood when I heard Annie’s bare feet scuffling against the floor.
“Keeping up with the Kardashians? Didn’t take you for a Kim K fan,” Annie said and bent over to slip a pair of sandals on. The sheer, asymmetrical dress she was wearing rose slightly, exposing about an inch more of her upper thigh.
Kardashians or Kim K fan didn’t register with me. I was too busy picking my jaw up off the floor. Annie stood center stage in the room. She was beautiful; every part of her was perfection.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” she asked.
I nodded. There was nothing I wanted more than to share her with my granny. Pride might be the word I would have chosen to use.
“I know one thing about your mom.”
Her eyes lit up and she took a step toward me. “What?”
“She had to have been beautiful to have a daughter as gorgeous as you.”
A brief flash of disappointment crossed her face but was quickly replaced with that enchanting smile that always managed to turn my brain into a pile of mush. She looked down at the dress she was wearing. “Thank you, Lucas, but you look hungover.”
“I am hungover. Your mom was beautiful and so are you. My dad’s an ass. See, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”
I buried a hand in each of my back pockets, fighting the urge to say, I hope you learn something about your mom today, but mostly, I just want my granny to meet you. Damn, I’ve never felt like this before. This has gone way past friends. I think I’m maybe, sort of, a little bit, completely falling in love with you. I looked away before I blurted out all the crazy thoughts racing through my mind.
“You okay,” she asked.
I nodded and held out my elbow, and after a brief pause, Annie took it, allowing me the privilege to escort her to the truck.
I opened the passenger side door for her, and she stepped in then turned her entire body to face me before I had a chance to shut the door. �
�Lucas, I know your dates like these small gestures, but we’re just friends. Remember?”
The urge to scream, I’ve never opened a door for anyone else before, and hell you are much more than a friend was intense. Most girls put too much expectation into those small gestures. They believed it made them special and cherished. Not Annie. Not the one I actually did cherish.
I placed my hands on her knees. “Best friends, and friends do take care of each other. Now buckle up. I only have one female I classify as a friend. I want to keep her safe.”
I walked around to my side of the Jeep, repeating to myself, Friends, all Annie wants is a friendship. That’s all it will ever be.
I climbed in, not sure what my next move should be. Should I talk, hold her hand, ignore her?
“Lucas,” she said, bringing my attention back to her and the small smile touching her lips. “It was a very sweet thing to do. No other guy has ever opened a door for me before.”
I nodded. “You deserve to have the door opened for you. But I understand. We need to draw a line. You know with this friend thing and all.”
I pulled out of the driveway and headed toward my granny’s. Annie didn’t say anything else, instead she seemed to have been focusing on some unseen image in the windshield. I flipped on the radio, trying to stop staring at her long, lean legs. Which she happened to cross, only making her skirt ride up a little shorter. Annie had great legs. They were runner’s legs. I should have asked her if she ran. She definitely had the body for the sport.
“Bob got me a job at the club this coming weekend. Some ball.”
Shit, I’d totally forgotten about that. I’d been scheduled to escort Candice to that event for over a year. How would that make Annie feel? Hell, I know. She would smile and say that’s wonderful. Because she’s that wonderful and the last thing she would’ve wanted to do was to hurt someone else. Another reason she was too good for me.
But I would save that tidbit of news for another day. Today was about proving I wasn’t a universal dick.
“You’ll make a ton in tips.” Because you’ll be the prettiest thing there. I put the truck in park. “We’re here.”
Chapter 16
Annie Prieto
Only two streets from my present home was a tidy little shotgun house. I had walked by it numerous times and admired the large elm tree in the front yard and the overabundance of azalea bushes. It was a well-loved and tended to home but I would’ve never believed that the matriarch of the Carter clan would live in such a simple place.
“This is your granny’s home?”
“I guess you can say that. She has a big house she shared with my grandfather but she has always preferred this place. To be honest, she has never cared for my grandfather too much.”
Lucas gripped my hand when I got to the front of the truck. The idea he wanted me there made me ridiculously happy and almost forget about Candice.
“Does your grandmother know we’re coming?” I asked.
“Yeah, I think she is looking as forward to this as I am.” Lucas swung open the door and hollered in a way of a greeting, “We’re here. Hope you have lunch cooked.”
“In the kitchen, Lucky,” she said.
“Lucky?” I asked as I followed Lucas through an immaculate but cozy living room.
“She’s always called me Lucky instead of Lucas. She told me I was her lucky charm because I made her the luckiest grandmother in the world because she got to love me.”
“There they are,” his grandmother said when we rounded the corner into the kitchen.
I paused, jerking Lucas still. It was Mrs. Ann from the Downtown Cafe.
“Not what you were expecting?” Lucas whispered in my ear.
She was nothing like I thought she would be and exactly how I thought she might’ve been.
“I know her,” I whispered back. “She comes into work all the time.”
“Um, I didn’t know,” Lucas said.
I mentally calculated Ann’s age to be somewhere in her seventies, and she seemed to be one of those ladies who didn’t fully come into her looks until she was older. Her face was classic; the kind a painter would use for inspiration, and she had white hair curled tightly against her head. She was in great physical shape, but I expected that from what I heard about the Carters. Her physical appearance was almost the image I had in my head but the ebullient expression on her face took me by surprise. She was almost jumping up and down when she saw us.
Lucas never let go of my hand — not even when his grandmother stopped battering the chicken she was cooking. Her fingers were covered in wet sticky flour but it didn’t stop her from hugging first Lucas then me, all the while holding her fingers out not to get us dirty. I felt safe in her arms and wanted to protest a little when she finally let me go.
“I’m fixin’ chicken. Hope you like it. It was one of your mother’s favorites,” she said as she leaned back from hugging me.
Hope settled into my gut as I closed my eyes and let her words sink in. No one had mentioned my mother before. Much less told me some trivial fact about her. She loved chicken. So did I. Matter of fact, Pawpaw use to laugh at me as a child because I never ordered steak at a restaurant, always chicken.
“Yes, ma’am, it’s my favorite.”
“Good, mine is better than Bob’s,” Ann said and winked.
Lucas laughed. “Yours is better than everyone’s.”
Lucas finally let go of my hand and walked over to pour himself a glass of sweet tea. Ann’s house was extremely neat, all polished and scrubbed. She had a collection of knickknacks on every flat surface. I shoved my hands into my back pocket, and for once, I wasn’t sure why, but I finally felt at home in Carterville.
“Have a seat,” Lucas instructed as he sat down at the head of the table and patted the chair next to him.
I wiggled my butt in the chair beside Lucas and watched as Ann went back to dipping her chicken first in buttermilk then flour. It was exactly how Mimi made chicken when I was little.
“Mrs. Ann, can you tell me more about my mother?”
“Call me Granny. It's what Lucas calls me.” She placed the last piece of battered chicken into a pan of hot grease and washed her hands under the kitchen faucet. She took her time scrubbing her nailbeds and stared out the window above the kitchen sink. “Let’s see your mom,” she finally said as though she had drifted back from some dream, “she worked for us about a year, and was full of life and made you happy just being in the room with her.” Ann finally turned around to face me. “She was beautiful. You look a lot like her.”
“Really, I always figured I had a lot of my father in me because at times I don’t really look like a Mexican.”
“Sweetie, your mom wasn’t Mexican. She was Colombian.” Her warm hand reached out and took mine in hers with a gentle squeeze. “She was very proud of her heritage.”
My chest felt heavy making it hard to breathe. Joy. Happiness. Sorrow. Guilt. Loss. It all swirled together in a mayhem of emotions. Elated at finally learning something about my mom and sad at how little I actually knew. Tears stung my eyes. Lucas covered my hand laying on the table with his. The warmth was just what I needed to process the information.
“Did you know who my dad was?” I asked and prayed she knew the most important of facts.
“I didn’t know about you until two months before you were born. I still remember Evie’s smile and the way she softly stroked her stomach. She loved you fiercely. If I could give you anything, I would give you the ability to feel how much you were wanted and loved.”
The tears finally started to flow but were easy to handle with Lucas and Ann each holding one of my hands.
“Why did she wait so long to tell you?”
“My husband was an ass of a man who thought the only people worthy of anything were people like him. He never thought Evie was good enough because she wasn’t a white elitist but your mother was more precious than any of us. I’m sorry we couldn’t keep you and love you and tell you
every day how special Evie was. I wanted to.” Ann’s eyes watered, and she didn’t even try to stop the tears from sliding down her face. “Lucas has been my greatest joy in this life but my second is having him bring you back where you belong.”
“Okay, enough of the heavy. You’re going to let the chicken burn, and I’m starving,” Lucas said and cocked his head toward the stove.
“Ow,” Ann squealed and hopped up to rescue the chicken.
Lucas winked at me and stroked his finger against my palm.
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