by M. O'Keefe
Changed by Dylan.
DYLAN
Dylan walked from his house to the warehouse, where the rest of the team was still working on the engine. They weren’t gods yet, but they were getting close.
Yet instead of contemplating improvements on the bit slopes, he was thinking about vibrators.
Specifically, sending one to Layla.
And maybe some lingerie. Expensive, classy stuff. He had a thing for black lace, but he could send her something in every color. But he didn’t know what size she was, so that made it tricky.
He’d go with the vibrator.
It wasn’t hard to imagine her shocked; she’d be shocked. But then she’d be interested. Very interested.
The thought made him smile. And hard. An entirely new and weird sensation. But one he was getting used to when he thought about Layla.
“Dylan!”
Margaret was waving him down from the door of his house. She was actually waving a kitchen towel at him. As if he were a plane, or a soldier leaving for war.
“What?”
He’d spent too much time arranging to send cake and talking to Layla. His team—Blake, actually—was getting pissed, and he really needed to get to the warehouse or he’d have a mutiny on his hands.
“There’s a call for you on the landline,” she said.
“Take a message.” He turned, folding and putting away thoughts of Layla and vibrators, and tried to get his head to focus on the work.
“It’s from the hospital down in Cherokee.”
That made him pause and Margaret took advantage, coming at him with the cordless phone. “I think you should take it,” she said.
Dylan stared down at the phone she was holding out to him. Layla wouldn’t use this number, so it couldn’t be her.
“Everyone on staff is here, right?”
She nodded.
Which meant it was someone in his family.
“What do they want?” He didn’t touch the phone.
Margaret’s sympathy vibe was turned way up and he realized whatever was waiting for him on the phone, it was bad.
When he was a boy and Mom was using again, he and his brother would hide all their nice shit. Anything that might be worth some money that she could sell. Bikes got buried beneath the weeds behind the apartment. Swiss Army knives and video games, shoved beneath a floorboard in Max’s room. When Dylan started racing, bringing home hundreds of dollars, Max got him a cash box and they buried it in the side yard. He’d been sixteen years old and making more than Dad as some petty soldier in the Skulls. Sometimes they didn’t see it coming until it was too late, and shit was gone before they had a chance to hide it, but they got better. Faster. Started hiding everything they got the second they got it.
Just in case.
In his head, in his gut, he was doing the same thing. Hiding everything that made him happy. Everything that made him soft. Anything that might hurt when it got ruined or driven away by whatever was waiting for him on the other end of the phone.
I’ve been an idiot, he realized. He’d let down all his guards.
“Give me that,” he said, grabbing the phone from her hand, too rough. Too mean. Margaret didn’t deserve it, but he was sharpened to an edge and anyone that got close got hurt.
“What?” he said into the phone, braced for impact.
“Dylan Daniels?” a woman asked. A nice-sounding woman, which only made him colder. Sharper.
“Speaking.”
“Are you next of kin to one Ben Daniels?”
He shifted his foot in the dirt. Widening his stance. Bracing himself for impact. “Is he dead?”
“No,” the woman rushed to say. “Gosh, no. I’m sorry I led you to think that. He’s not dead—”
“Is he dying?”
“No,” she laughed. “The man is tough as nails. I’m calling because—”
“He’s not dead and he’s not dying?”
She paused. “No, he’s not.”
“Then don’t call me until he is.”
He pressed the end button and handed it back over to Margaret.
“I need to get to work,” he said and headed back toward his garage. Toward his work. It had saved him from his family once before and he could count on it to do so again.
Pop used to do this thing when he was drunk, when Dylan and Max were young. He’d take those big fists, with the tattoos across the knuckles, and pound them against their shoulders, as if Dylan and Max were stakes and he wanted to drive them into the ground.
Remember who you come from, he’d say with every punch. Remember who you little bitches come from.
Dylan used to wobble under the force, fall to the side. His knees buckling.
Max never did. Not once.
All of Pop’s friends…his brothers, would laugh and get Max a drink. A shot. A joint. A girl. Whatever reward for toughness was available. Dylan never learned that toughness from his dad. He wanted his pop to be like other dads, his mom to be like other moms. He wanted them all to be a family, like the ones on TV. The ones that did nice things for one another.
Sweet things.
It wasn’t until he got sent away that he learned how to be tough. The toughest, actually.
He was forged steel.
And he was forgetting. Layla was making him forget.
He came from a long line of villains. And that shit couldn’t be forgotten. Couldn’t be erased with cake.
You need to remember who you are, he thought. Because you told her not to go building any fantasy around you, and now look at you.
Cake. What the fuck was he thinking?
He’d send another package. More honest this time.
Dylan Daniels was still the beast. The bad guy in the stories. Layla just didn’t know it yet. And he was forgetting. He was letting himself forget. Because he’d somehow gotten addicted to the sound of her voice. The way her voice made him feel.
Sometimes it was nice pretending to be the hero.
But it was time to stop.
ANNIE
Another package arrived from Dylan the next day.
“What are you doing, girl?” Kevin asked, handing me the package. He’d brought it out to me as I was locking up the shed after work. It was a perfect, hot day. Bright sun. Cool breeze. I’d jumped back in the swimming hole today and felt cool and sleek all the way through.
“Nothing, why?” I had no experience playing it cool and I failed miserably at it.
“Seems to me like you got yourself a long-distance admirer.”
“And so what if I do?” I asked, laughing. Because I did! I had myself a long-distance admirer! Blood rushed to all of my skin, a full-body blush as I thought of yesterday. How I couldn’t say no to him. Wouldn’t say no. Why would I?
“You…sure that’s smart?” he asked. I blinked, surprised he would ask. “It’s just…you know when you showed up here, you looked like you’d—”
I stiffened and turned away, horrified by the memory. That he would bring it up. “I’m fine.”
“Yeah, I hear that a lot from people and they’re lying to me,” he said.
“I’m not lying.”
He looked like he was about to say something else. Something about the box. Maybe about the guy who gave it to me and I was touched, I really was. But I didn’t need his concern.
“Thank you, Kevin,” I told him. “But you don’t need to worry about me.”
I walked away from him, back to my trailer. But I felt his eyes on me the whole way.
—
Once inside my trailer, I tore open the box. On top was a folded-up piece of paper, two twenty-dollar bills, and a sticky note.
If you still decide to go, buy yourself some drinks at that strip club, the note said.
Still decide, I thought with what could only be called a giggle. He’d told me to go; he’d set down the rules. I was going.
I was well aware that building some kind of infatuation around this guy was dumb…but it was also fun. And fun was
a rare enough bird in my life that I was going to let it stick around if it wanted to.
Good God. Forty dollars’ worth of drinks? Was he nuts? I’d buy myself one. Maybe. And then a box of hair dye, because my roots were coming in and I looked like a weird off-color skunk.
But beneath the drink thing, it said, This is why I watch him. This is why I want you to stay away.
The folded-up piece of paper was a photocopied news story from ten years ago.
GANG MEMBERS ARRESTED AFTER TRIPLE HOMICIDE
Beneath the headline was a picture of a younger Ben and two other men in handcuffs being led into a police station.
Quickly, I closed the article, pressing my thumb along the crease as if I could seal it shut. Forever.
Triple homicide?
Gang member?
Joan had said that, remember? She’d said, that day at the lake, that he’d been a part of a gang. He’d been kicked out for doing something awful.
Was this it? Was this the awful?
It seemed ludicrous. Like a joke. He fried zucchini flowers and told me to stay out of the sun. He gave me tomatoes from his garden. The other morning I woke up to find a loaf of cornbread on my stoop. Still warm.
He was a man whose regrets and remorse sat on his shoulders, nearly visible.
This…article didn’t make any sense.
With shaking hands, I opened the paper back up.
Three members of the Skulls Motorcycle Club have been arrested in relation to the October house fire that killed two men and a young girl that took place in the Tallyrand area of Jacksonville.
According to local law authorities, the two men who died in the fire were tied up and alive at the time the fire was set. The girl was apparently asleep in an upstairs bedroom. The house, area residents claim, was used to make and distribute methamphetamines.
“Between DNA testing and eyewitness testimony, we’re confident we’ve got a case,” says county prosecutor Edward Hayes. “All evidence points to the three suspects tying up those two men, setting the house on fire and leaving them to die. Those two deaths I have no doubt were premeditated. Whether or not they knew the girl was upstairs is a matter we will have to determine in court.”
I closed the article again and fumbled for the phone. I texted Dylan.
Is this article real? Did he kill those people in the fire?
A little girl?
Was I living next to a murderer?
The phone rang and I answered it before the first ring was over. “Is this a joke?” I asked.
“No,” Dylan said. “It’s not.”
“What happened, did he go to jail?”
“Not for this. The whole case was thrown out because the prosecutor fucked with some evidence. He was a little too keen to get those guys behind bars, and so they all walked.”
I paced the very small distance the charger cord let me.
“Is that…did he?”
“Set the fire so those guys would burn to death? Yeah. I think he did. He was some kind of enforcer for the MC.”
“MC?”
“Motorcycle Club.”
“Oh Jesus, oh God.” I sat down on the edge of my bed. That little girl…
“You are safe.”
I didn’t even think about that. If Ben wanted to hurt me he’d had a month to do it.
“Why did you send that?”
“So you know who he is. And who he’s not.” His voice was loaded and hard. Mean sounding. Like he was angry.
That article and what I knew of Ben did not connect in any way. “I have no idea who he is,” I cried. “Not after this.”
“He’s someone you can’t trust. He’s someone you do not want to get close to. Not for any reason. I don’t want you to be scared; I want you to be informed. To be smart. I shouldn’t have asked you to look in on Ben and not tell you the whole story.”
“Did he go to jail for something else?” I asked.
“Yeah. He was in and out of jail until the club kicked him out a few years ago.”
“Why did they kick him out?”
“I don’t know, Layla. Just…keep away from him.”
I sat up straight and blew out a slow breath.
“You okay?” he asked.
“No. And why do you sound mad at me?”
“I’m not mad at you—”
“Then don’t talk to me like that.” I was stunned those words came out of my mouth. Stunned. But I was too angry myself, too freaked out, to process any of it.
“Baby,” he sighed. “I’m sorry. I just needed you to know.”
“Well, now I’m pissed at you.” I was pissed at him for his tactics. I felt bullied. I shifted on the bed and the money slipped down over my hand. Bullied and cared for. What the hell?
“But…thank you for the money. Forty bucks is too much, though—”
“Forty bucks is nothing. Look, I gotta go. I have this party thing…”
“Yeah, sure,” I said. “Me too. Well, not a party thing. But I need to go.” It was Thursday night and I had my weekly date with the laundry building. He had a party thing. Awesome.
What the hell are you doing, Annie?
“Will I talk to you later?”
“We’ll see.”
“No. Layla. No ‘we’ll see.’ If you’re done, be done. If you’re not, I’ll talk to you later.”
“Where in that choice is there room for me to be pissed at you?” The words choked me as they came out of my mouth. Was that me, saying that?
His laughter was unexpected, a husky curl that would usually make me close my eyes and shiver a little. “Both choices have that room. Depends on how pissed you are. You can still be mad, baby, and keep doing the things we do.”
I didn’t really know how. How to hold both my anger at him and my desire for him in the same hand. But I knew I didn’t want this to be the end.
“Okay,” I breathed. “I’ll talk to you later.”
“Good,” he said, the relief in his voice obvious. He’d been worried I would end it.
I hung up and then walked over to my stove, where the foil-wrapped loaf of cornbread sat in between the burners.
How could the Ben I know be the Ben that was in that newspaper?
How can you be the woman lying on a kitchen floor begging your husband not to kill you and the woman having phone sex with a man you don’t know? How did those two realities live side by side inside of me?
That was the truth, wasn’t it? We could all be so many things. Victims and criminals. Sinners and saints. Devious and virtuous.
That was what my mother was really scared of, why she kept us so alone out on that farm. Why she tended that garden of radical fear and suspicion. Because we were editors of our own selves, revealing only what we wanted to show. Being only what served us best.
Trust was an enormous act of faith.
And faith…God, faith was hard.
Who was Ben? Really. Who was I?
And who the fuck was Dylan?
That night really was laundry night, so I loaded up my stuff, including the last book I’d bought at the library, a historical romance that was the second in a series, so I was a little lost, but hooked all the same.
To my surprise, Tiffany was sitting out at her picnic table, the twinkle lights on making the dusty little yard actually seem quite lovely. And she was sitting with a woman who looked just like her but without the bruises and the dark circles under her eyes.
But the real kicker was that Tiffany was laughing. Head thrown back, hand pounding the table—laughing.
“I’m not kidding, Tiff,” the other woman was saying. “He said, ‘I’m the pitcher, he’s the catcher, and there’s nothing gay about that.’ On a blind date! Who says that?”
“Oh, Bebe,” Tiffany sighed, wiping her eyes. “That stuff only happens to you.”
“Well, I’m super lucky then, aren’t I?” Bebe took a swig of some unnaturally green concoction in a plastic Spider-Man cup.
I was actively and posi
tively envious. Of the whole thing. The laughter. The green drink. The fact that Tiffany looked…relaxed. I wanted to look relaxed.
Had I ever looked that way?
Shit. I needed a friend who was not a potential murderer or a stripper with a chip on her shoulder or a man I have phone sex with but know nothing about.
And frankly, not a one of them could I really consider a friend. A friendly acquaintance, a begrudging neighbor, and a man who turned me on like a blowtorch, but to whom I only lied.
Tiffany looked up and caught me staring. I smiled and tried not to look like some kind of weird friendship stalker.
“Hey, Annie,” she said, still relaxed. Still smiling.
“Hey, Tiffany.”
“This is my sister Beatrice.”
Bebe rolled her eyes and kind of half stood up, reaching out her hand. I stepped farther into the backyard to shake it. “Please, call me Bebe.”
“Nice to meet you, Bebe.”
“Come over and have a drink,” Bebe said. “I brought over like ten Buckets-o-Margarita—”
“Buckets-o-Margarita?” Tiffany asked.
“It says that on the label, Tiffany. I’m not making it up. Anyway, I took them from work. So it’s free and there’s lots of it.”
“I…I don’t want to impose…” I stammered, when I really did. I really wanted to impose.
“You’re not,” Tiffany said. “Honestly, we’ve got to drink all this green booze before my kids come home and think they’re slushies.”
“Well…” I smiled. “As long as I’m doing you a favor.”
“Oh,” Bebe said, nodding, her face all serious, “you are.”
“Let me just put my laundry in and I’ll come back.”
I practically threw my laundry into the machine with the soap and the coins and then walked back out to the picnic table. Tiffany was coming out of her trailer with one Spider-Man and two Barbie cups filled to the brim with icy green booze. She was licking the top of one like an ice-cream cone.
“You’re right,” she said. “It says Bucket-o-Margarita.”
“I told you,” Bebe said. “Who’d make that shit up?”