by M. O'Keefe
Tiffany handed out the cups and we all took a half-sip, half-bite from our drinks. It was shockingly sweet and really boozy and very cold.
Perfect.
“Where are your kids?” I asked.
“My dad’s away on business for the week, so my mom took them for two whole nights,” Tiffany said. She put her hands up in the air and did a little swaying dance move. “I’m gonna get drunk. And sleep in late. And then I’m going to mop the floors and go to the grocery store without anyone—”
“No,” Bebe cut in. “We’re going to get drunk, yes. Sleep in, yes. And then we’re going to flop out on that couch and watch bad TV all day.”
“I vote with Bebe,” I said and took another swig/bite of my drink. It was melting fast in the heat. “Bad TV, no mopping.”
Tiffany smiled affectionately at her sister. “Bebe does have all the good ideas.” She clapped her hands like she’d had a suddenly great idea. “Hey, I have chips.” She stood up, wobbled slightly, and then made a beeline for her trailer.
“Bring out a bucket!” Bebe yelled.
Without Tiffany, we both took another drink and the silence was thick. I’d never been good with small talk, especially with other women. “You don’t live here, do you?” I asked when the silence went on way too long. “I haven’t seen you around.”
“No.” She shook her head. “I live with my folks in Asheville.”
“Wow,” I said. Tiffany had a sister, a mom, and a dad who goes on business meetings, who all live in Asheville—an hour and a bit up the road—and she’s stuck out here in a trailer park with three kids and a fuckwit like Phil? Hardly seemed right. But then I was no great judge of family dynamics.
“When she got pregnant with Danny and married Phil, Dad disowned her,” Bebe said, like she knew what I was thinking. “Mom and I do what we can behind his back—”
“Like take the kids when he’s on business?”
She nodded. “I send her some money when I can. Stuff for the kids.”
“You know Phil hits her?”
Bebe jerked back, her face turned aside.
“I’m sorry,” I muttered, putting down the drink. “I should—”
“She says he stopped.”
I shook my head.
“Goddamnit,” she whispered.
Tiffany arrived in the doorway of the trailer, holding a bucket aloft. She looked years younger. Radiant, even. And drunk as a skunk. “This one is Bucket-o-Daiquiri.”
“Bring it on,” Bebe said, waving her forward.
“Forgot the chips,” Tiffany said and darted back in.
Bebe grabbed my hand. “Stay,” she said. “Let’s have fun. A lot of fun. For Tiffany. She needs this.”
“Sure,” I said, because I needed it too. The proverbial rug had been yanked out from beneath me and I didn’t know how to process it. Processing Dylan while drunk seemed like a great idea. I had never in my life gotten drunk with girlfriends. I’d never really had girlfriends. This night seemed paramount to me. A matter, quite frankly, of survival.
The slush was now mostly liquid and I took another big swig. Alcohol burned down my throat.
Tiffany came back out with the bucket and the chips and an ice-cream scoop. “Hey, Annie,” she said, sitting down and pointing the ice-cream scoop in my face. “I’ve been meaning to ask you something.”
“Yeah?” I asked, leaning out of the way. Bebe cracked open the daiquiri bucket and took the ice-cream scoop out of Tiffany’s hand, using it to dish out giant balls of yellow booze.
“What the fuck happened to your hair?”
—
And that is how I found myself in the kitchen of her trailer (really, those double-wides were so spacious!), a towel around my neck and Tiffany putting peroxide in my hair. She’d already trimmed up my ragged edges and bangs. I felt like I’d had short hair before, but now it seemed…really short. Boy short.
I couldn’t quite work up the sobriety to care.
“It’ll just take some of the black out,” Tiffany said. “So you don’t look so fucking scary.”
“I look scary?” I asked, and tipped my head back so I could get the last bit of Bucket-o-Daiquiri out of the bottom of my Barbie cup.
“Don’t listen to her!” Bebe warned from the couch. “When I was five she said she was only going to give me bangs and I ended up with a weird sideways Mohawk.”
“Shush,” Tiffany said, in her best stern mom voice. “You’re gonna scare her.”
“I’m not scared,” I said. And I wasn’t. This was all too much fun to be scary.
Tiffany applied the peroxide, which stunk, and Bebe refilled my cup, and all was really quite right with the world.
Until Tiffany touched one of the bruises on my neck. I jerked, thinking it was an accident. But then she touched another one. I opened my eyes only to find her looking down at me. All her pain, every time a fist had touched her skin, bruised her, broke her. It was all right there on her young/old face.
I know you, I thought. I know everything about you.
I reached up and grabbed her hand. “I got away,” I breathed. “I left him. He can’t hurt me anymore.” I don’t know why I said any of that, other than it seemed like the answer to the question she was too scared, maybe, to ask.
Her smile was lopsided. “Good.”
“Anyone want to try Bucket-o-Colada?” Bebe asked.
“Me!” Tiffany and I both said.
Bucket-o-Colada was the best one yet, and Bebe started telling the story of her five-year high school reunion, which apparently included the Prom Queen starting a fight, and we all lost track of time.
“Holy shit, your head!” Tiffany shouted, who the hell knows how much later. She jumped out of her seat and bent me backward over the sink. “Isn’t it burning?”
“I can’t feel anything,” I told her. Which wasn’t true. I was feeling those drinks. I was feeling them hard. The world was actually kind of swimming around me.
I closed my eyes and Tiffany’s fingers worked through my hair. After it was all rinsed out, she towel-dried my hair and then ripped the towel away, yelling, “Ta-da!”
“God love a duck,” Bebe gasped. “You look fucking fantastic.”
“Not too shabby,” Tiffany said, finger-combing it. “Go check it out in the bathroom.”
I stumbled down the hallway to the bathroom, which was full of little-kid toothbrushes in the shape of whales and bath toys in a bucket by the sink, a little kid’s potty seat on top of the toilet.
God, I thought, touching a ribbon tied to a towel rack with a ton of little barrettes on it. How did she do this? How did she do all this with Phil like an evil shadow over her shoulder?
I glanced up in the mirror and then did a quick double take.
My hair was blond. Like white blond. My eyebrows looked darker, my tan, tanner. And my eyes. Wow. Were those mine? They were huge. And so blue.
What I looked like was totally not myself, and that was all that really mattered.
But I did have to admit it was better than the black. Way better.
I thought of Dylan and my body ached in response. A sharp lightning bolt of feeling—of lust—zapped me, and I wondered what he would think of my hair.
If he would like it.
I tried to shake off the thought, because I knew I wasn’t supposed to be thinking that way about him.
But the thought stayed.
Dylan.
Always Dylan.
“Like Miley fucking Cyrus,” Bebe said when I came back into the main room. Tiffany was passed out on the couch, her hands tucked under her face.
“How old is she?” I asked.
“Twenty-three,” Bebe answered, picking up everyone’s glasses and putting them in the sink. The buckets were stacked up in a pile by the door. There were a lot of buckets.
She was a year younger than me. With three kids.
“I gotta go,” I said. I needed Dylan. I needed his voice. I needed those things he asked me to do. I needed
all of it—suddenly worse than ever before. “That was fun.”
“That,” Bebe said with a smile, “was epic. Good luck tomorrow.”
“Ha!” I said and stumbled home.
Inside the trailer it was cool and dark, and I locked the door behind me and slipped right into bed without brushing my teeth.
It took me a few tries to get the bedside table open, but soon I had the fully charged phone in my hand. I texted Dylan.
DYLAN
If Dylan was going to be a god, he was going to be a god among these men. NASCAR officials, team owners, sponsors, drivers, and crew chiefs. Wearing tuxes and drinking scotch, making million-dollar deals over cigars.
None of them looked him in the eye. Not one. Or looked at his face. When these people talked to him, they talked to his nose. Or the black tie around his neck.
The drivers couldn’t even look at him, as if he were bad luck.
There but for the grace of God and all that shit…
There is no grace of God, he wanted to tell those drivers. Put your faith in the machine and the crew and the feeling in your gut when you’re on that track.
Dylan knew he made them nervous and he could enjoy throwing around that kind of vibe.
But now this shit was just getting old. Which was why Blake usually did these things by himself. But Blake had insisted Dylan come this time, and that was a rare enough request that Dylan felt obligated to play along. They’re scars, people. Just scars.
“How is that transmission of yours coming?” Jimmy Morrow asked, his hair so white and thick it was like a cat had taken a nap on his head. Jimmy Morrow wanted Dylan’s transmission. Every man here wanted it. Jimmy was willing to pay him a lot of money but Dylan wasn’t sure he could work with a man who had hair like that. For a second, just a flash, he thought of what his brother would have said about that man’s hair and nearly smiled.
“It’s coming along,” he said.
“I heard you’re getting more horsepower than any other engine builder.”
“It’s a game-changer, gentlemen. I won’t lie.”
Dylan could feel their excitement; they were like circling sharks.
“My offer still stands,” Jimmy said. “I told that partner of yours and I’ll tell you the same thing. I’ll buy 989 Engines. I’ll give you enough money that you can buy yourself another couple of mountains. You can still run the whole operation, build the engines you want, how you want. Think about it, son. Offers like this don’t come around every day,” Jimmy Morrow said to Dylan’s chin, smiling at the other men as though he had Dylan eating out of the palm of his hand.
But Dylan wasn’t anyone’s pet.
“That’s where you’re wrong, Jimmy,” Dylan said. “I get an offer like that once a week. From men who can look me in the eye when they do it. My company is not for sale. Never will be. You can stand in line like the rest of the owners when the time comes. Gentlemen,” he said and took his leave from the silent, gape-faced assholes.
Dylan caught sight of Blake in the corner, surrounded by rich white guys. Blake caught his eye and Dylan tilted his head toward the exit. Blake nodded and Dylan left the stuffy, crowded room that stank of perfume and cigars and stepped out onto the big wraparound porch of the mansion nestled up into the northwest corner of Charlotte.
The humidity was thick away from his mountain and there were way too many people here, but duty demanded he come down occasionally and meet with the men who paid him so much goddamned money. And in the case of Jimmy Morrow, would pay him so much more.
“Hello, stranger.”
A woman stepped out of the shadows wearing a classic black dress over a body that made a man look twice. She flipped long brown hair over her shoulder and shot him a sly smile.
“Jennifer.” Something warm rolled over in his chest. They’d had some good times not too long ago. She was one of the few people from his life before who didn’t treat him any differently now. Though he was rich now, and Jennifer did enjoy money. “I didn’t realize you were here.”
“Just got here,” she said. “I’m surprised to see you here. Someone yank your chain? Force you down off that mountain?”
“Blake insisted I come down and make nice.”
“Hmmm,” she laughed.
“What about you?” he asked.
“Daddy’s looking for a new driver. He’s here to grease some palms.”
“This is the place for it,” he said. The NASCAR corporate gala brought everyone out of hiding. Including him.
“You know,” she said, stepping even closer. He could smell her in the darkness, something bright and sharp. “He was asking if I thought you’d be interested in scouting—”
“No.”
“But—”
“No, Jennifer.”
Her slow prowl across the porch paused for a moment, but she got her stride back. That was the thing about Jennifer: she never got knocked off her stride for long. He actually admired that about her. She pouted at him, making the most of those lips she’d been born with. “You know, you used to be a lot nicer.”
“I used to be a kid,” he said. And a fool. So damn grateful and eager for what those men at the party could give him. So damn happy to be out of his cage he would have done anything for the people paying his way. He’d enjoyed being one of their golden boys for a few short years. An up-and-coming driver with a bright future. It had been a relief putting the darkest of his sins as far behind him as he could. Pretending his hands were clean.
But then karma, his old friend, came back around. She always did.
Luckily he was a far better engine builder than he’d ever been a driver.
“You leaving?” She’d gotten close enough that she could touch him. She didn’t. She wasn’t that brave. Or stupid. She’d been the last woman who’d touched him, years ago. And he’d liked it for a long time, until quite suddenly, he couldn’t stand it.
“Soon,” Dylan said.
“Want some company?” To his surprise, she lifted her hand toward his face, as if she were going to run her fingers over the scars there.
He turned his face aside and stepped back away from her touch. Jennifer had a habit of wanting more. Always more. Too much. And his world didn’t work like that. He didn’t work like that. Whatever he’d had to give a person had been taken from him years ago.
“You know that’s not going to happen,” he said.
She dropped her arm and the sly smile vanished. “You’ve changed, you know that? Ever since—”
“Go back to the party,” he said quietly. “Before you say something we both regret.”
She turned on her heel and headed inside.
Everyone in there thought the accident had ruined him. But he’d been ruined long before.
His phone buzzed in his pocket. A text message.
Layla.
All the bullshit inside that house and inside his head—it vanished.
And he smiled as he stepped off the porch and into the darkness of the tree line surrounding the mansion, having known somehow in his gut who it would be, texting him at this hour.
Sending her that article had been a risky but necessary move. He couldn’t have her thinking Ben was tame. He couldn’t have her getting hurt because he’d put her in that situation. And reading that article had brought so much shit to the surface, reminded him of what a scumbag Ben was, how capable he was of hurting the people around him.
After mailing that article to Layla, he’d sent one of his guys to a hotel in Cherokee because he wanted someone close to her if things went south.
Because that was the thing about Ben. Shit always went south.
Her first text was sent an hour ago; he must have missed it in his arrival at the party.
Layla: Hey.
And then her second one was just a few minutes ago.
Layla: helllllloooooooooo
Dylan smiled before texting her back: Hey yourself.
Layla: You’re there!!
Dylan: I’m here.
Layla: I’m drynk
Dylan: Drunk?
Layla: Very. But I’m still mad about the article
Dylan: That’s why you’re texting? To tell me ur mad?
He knew she wasn’t texting because she was angry. She was texting because she was as addicted to this shit they had between them as he was.
Layla: Not at this moment
His blood thickened and he would give anything to not be at this party. Half of him was ready to step farther into those shadows and tell her to do all the things that got her off. But that couldn’t happen here. He was very careful about how his worlds touched, like a kid who couldn’t let his carrots touch his potatoes.
There was no cross-contamination in his world.
Dylan: Cause you’re drunk
Layla: very. call me
Dylan: Why?
Layla: I want to hear ur voice.
Dylan: You like my voice?
Layla: Makes me very hot. Wt
Layla: Wet. Drunk texting is hard
Dylan smiled before looking up at the glittering windows of the three-story house full of people who kissed his ring but didn’t make eye contact. Jennifer was in there. That smile on her face that told him everything he needed to know about how good his chances were that she’d be willing to lift that skirt of hers in an upstairs bedroom.
Everyone in that party thought he was a hermit and he wondered if the fact that he preferred this faceless woman, a woman he’d never met, over Jennifer only proved their assumptions.
Good thing he didn’t give a shit what the people at that party thought of him. And he would give anything to be alone in his house, sitting in the dark, listening to Layla’s voice, that sweet voice with the country twang and the nervous laugh. What he wouldn’t give to have his hand around his cock, pushing her to try more. To do more. To test the edges of that pleasure and pain.
But he had to put in another hour or Blake would kill him.
Dylan: you’re going to have to do it alone tonight.
Layla: but it’s better with you
Groaning, Dylan texted back: But I’m still at this party.