The Best I Could

by R. K. Ryals

  “Yeah,” Jonathan agreed, “and I’m pretty sure Pops has already called something in. I’ve got plans later, so we better get his car back.”

  “I’ll drive it.” My gaze slid to Mom. “The keys?”

  She stared, horrified. “You can’t drive right now!”

  “Ivy, it’s fine,” I soothed. “You ride with Jonathan, and he can follow me back to the orchard.”

  “I’ll keep close to him,” Jonathan promised.

  Mom fidgeted, her gaze flicking between us. Our shoulders tensed, prepared for battle, but in the end, Mom reached for the purse hanging from her shoulder, pulled out a set of keys, and handed them to me.

  Pops drove an old powder blue 1970’s Camaro, and I slid behind the wheel, adjusting the leather seat before glancing into the rearview mirror at Jonathan’s car.

  He made sure Mom got in before he walked to the driver’s side, throwing me a wave.

  Pulling out of the parking lot, I navigated the streets, keeping just under the speed limit until I reached the back roads, my gaze flicking occasionally to check on Jonathan. Mom was talking animatedly in the passenger seat, and I could tell by the look on his face that it was her usual barrage of words.

  I switched on the radio, and an old country song started to play, one of those sad ones about losing everything. Surprisingly, I didn’t turn it off. Somehow it seemed to fit. Not the mood, maybe, but the road. The hot night and trilling bugs outside. Trees blurred past, shadows chasing us to the orchard.

  The animal hospital van was parked in the drive when I pulled in.

  Tansy walked around it, opening the door, and the interior lights popped on. The parts of her hair dyed red were beginning to fade, hints of blonde showing through. Like always, her eyes were lined in dark eyeliner, a black tank top and an old pair of cut-off shorts hugging her figure.

  Deena’s words, “she was beautiful”, rang through my head, and I stared at her, at the graceful curve of her neck, her smooth, unblemished face, and the way her ass filled out her shorts. She was beautiful now. I hadn’t known her then, but this darker beauty was captivating in a way that made my body tighten.

  “Hey,” I called out, climbing out of the Camaro.

  She backed away from the van, just long enough to catch my eye. “Hey,” she responded quickly, rushing to get inside the vehicle. Away from me.

  Shutting the door, she sat behind the wheel, staring.

  Jonathan pulled in next to me, Mom’s babbling voice spilling out of the car.

  “I hope Pops has food and lots of it,” he muttered, climbing out, weariness gripping his voice.

  Lifting his hand, he waved at the van, but Tansy didn’t see him.

  “Just get Mom in so Pops doesn’t worry,” I said, handing him the Camaro keys.

  They left, the babbling fading into the background, the screen door shutting them away from the yard.

  I leaned against Pops’ car.

  Tansy started the van, gripped the steering wheel, and then turned the van off, leaving silence and singing crickets behind.

  The van door opened, and she jumped out, her face angry as she marched toward me.

  “I don’t like you,” she snapped, stopping a few feet away. “Just know that okay?”

  Crossing my arms, I stared at her, lips twitching. “Okay? So we’re putting up boundaries now? For friendship?”

  She stiffened. “I don’t know. Maybe.” Sighing, she glanced at the house. “Which is a problem. For me.”

  Of course it was. Because if she was feeling the need to put up boundaries, then she was wanting to cross lines neither of us was admitting was there. Out loud anyway.

  Her gaze found mine, the lost look twisting my heart.

  “Come here,” I murmured, stepping away from the Camaro. Moving past her in the drive, I sauntered to the cottage, not looking to see if she followed.

  I knew she would, not because I had that much confidence in myself but because I had that much confidence in her curiosity.

  “I’m not going into your place,” she protested, pausing on the cottage porch.

  I pulled open the door. “Afraid I’ll ask you into the bedroom?”

  “No,” she admitted. “I’m afraid you won’t.”

  My gaze flew to hers, holding it. I had to remember it wasn’t sex Tansy feared. She made a tempting seductress. It was something deeper.

  “Maybe I’ll surprise you.” My voice dropped, my brows rising.

  Releasing a shuddering exhale, she threw a glance over her shoulder, cursed, and then swept past me into the cottage.

  Her gaze slid over the interior, noting the carelessly tossed clothes, unwashed coffee mugs, and the lingering smell of cigarette smoke.

  She sniffed. “Pops lets you smoke in here?”

  “No.”

  She glanced at me, amused. “But you do it anyway.”

  “Not really, but that shit sticks with you. On your clothes. In your hair. I don’t really notice it anymore.”

  Passing her, I nodded at the hallway beyond the living room.

  The cottage was small but comfortable. Two bedrooms branched off a living room full of overstuffed chairs and a tiny, modern kitchen.

  Pictures flanked the hallway. Most of them school photos Grams had framed and hung. Heather, her full-figured body enfolded in a navy blue dress, her cheeks dimpled. Jonathan, lanky and freckled, his smiling eyes on something off camera, Lincoln looking as taciturn then as he did now, and me in varying stages of awkwardness.

  “The hall of shame,” Tansy said, grinning. “I think everyone has one. I swear my mother hung up every terrible school picture we had until she passed.”

  “It’s an unwritten rule that school pictures have to be terrible,” I agreed.

  She laughed. “The ones of your sister are good though.”

  “She’s the photogenic one.”

  Heather took after her dad’s side of the family. Most of the women on that side were curvy, full-figured, and confident. Any issues my sister had were because of our mother and her father. Not her self-esteem.

  “Here,” I told Tansy, pulling open the guest room door.

  She paused, glanced inside, and then looked at me.

  “Go in,” I prompted.

  When she entered, her eyes landed on the punching bag, curious and intrigued. Not many people saw this bag, but when they did, they usually looked at it the way she did now.

  “This is yours?” she asked.

  “No, it belongs to the guy who looks like me and sleeps in my bed.”

  Ignoring my sarcasm, she approached it, her gaze scanning the black and red scribbles.

  One word caught her eye, and she stiffened. “What is this?”

  Glancing at the scrawled Tansy on the bag, I said, “This is my bag of demons. The red words anyway. The others are ...”

  “Words that mean something to you?” Tansy finished in a whisper, her gaze frozen on her name.

  “Some of them,” I replied. “Others are things I think could mean something to me.”

  “Could?” she repeated. She looked at me. “Why are you showing me this?”

  Edging past her, I grabbed the red permanent marker off of the dresser and offered it to her. “Write something on the bag. Something you want to get rid of. A demon.”

  She laughed, the sound high and tense. “You’re kidding me right now.”

  “Take it.”

  “I'm not writing anything. That’s your stuff on there. That has nothing to do with me.”

  “Just one word,” I told her.

  “No.”

  I shook my hand at me. “Just take the fucking marker, Tansy. Trust me, okay?”

  Her gaze dropped to my hand. “Why?”

  “Because I want to see what you write. Just one word. Don’t think about it. Don’t give it any thought. Just write.”

  When she finally accepted the marker, her hand shook. “Just write, huh?”

  “Anything.”

  Twisting off
the lid, she stepped in front of the bag, permanent marker fumes overwhelming the space.

  “Don’t give it any thought,” I reminded her.

  “Shit,” she mumbled, leaning in to scrawl on the bag.

  In red, she wrote, Death. Then next to it, she wrote, Love.

  Two words she wanted to get rid of. Her demons. They weren’t what I expected, but I was beginning to discover things with Tansy never were.

  “Happy?” she asked, returning the marker, hand still shaking.

  Taking it, I caught her hand before she could pull away, capturing it in mine.

  “Let me go,” she whispered.

  I pulled her toward me instead. “Tell me who you are, roof girl. Tell me something about the girl inside your head.”

  “You don’t want to know her,” Tansy argued.

  “Let me be the judge of that.”

  Everything Deena had said about Tansy today, every hurtful thing she had flung out about her sister, only intrigued me more. What had changed her so much? It would be different if Tansy was like my mother, or even Mandy, but despite the pain in her, she tried hard to put her family first and that made her different. Most of the women in my life put themselves first … in often unhealthy ways.

  “Talk to me,” I urged.

  She peered up into my face, her dark eyeliner smeared onto her cheeks. “I don’t want to be in my head right now. Don’t you get that? I want to be out of it. I want to see, feel, and do things that have nothing to do with my head.”

  My gaze studied hers, the fierce passion behind her words captivating me. “Is that why you started cutting?”

  She tried pulling away, but I wouldn’t let her.

  “I’m not a cutter,” she protested.

  “Yeah, you are. It doesn’t matter if you did it once or more than once, if you cut to feel better, you’re a cutter.”

  There was no judgment in my voice. None. I didn’t know what made her do it. I wasn’t there inside her head, and I couldn’t judge what I didn’t know.

  She jerked against my hold. Again, I held on. She wasn’t struggling because I was hurting her, she was struggling because I was trying to get to know her.

  We played a silent game of tug of war before she finally hissed, “Twice. I’ve done it twice. Break the skin, I mean.”

  The confession slammed into me, urging me to find out where the second place she’d cut was, but I fought the temptation to look.

  “Tell me something about you,” I repeated. “Not the cutting. You.”

  She went rigid in my hold. “God, you don’t give up, do you?”

  “I’m a boxer, roof girl. We give up, we go down.”

  She smiled at that, fleetingly. “I have dreams sometimes about blood.” She looked away from me. “My brain feels like a television. Memories and things that flash in and out, filled with static. The channel keeps changing until I’m confused about it all, about how I got here and who I am. Before my mom passed, I thought I had it all figured out. I’m not sure when that just went away.”

  Releasing her suddenly, I touched her face, the marker falling to the floor between us. Shame and disgust filled her eyes.

  “You think I won’t like the girl you are now?” I asked.

  “You don’t like messes,” she reminded me. “Or women.”

  I threw my eyes up. “God, I need to learn to shut the fuck up. Misconception is a bitch. I don’t have a problem with messes. Hell, I’ve been one. And women ... I don’t know. I’m not looking for commitment with one. I’m not sure that’s a thing with women.”

  “The same could be said about men,” she pointed out.

  “Men like sex, roof girl. It’s true. Some men just see women that way. I do. A lot. But ... Oh, fuck it. Women like sex, too. That’s not the problem.” My gaze fell to the floor, to the red marker. “Here,” leaning over, I picked it up, “let’s talk about my problem.”

  Walking to the punching bag, I wrote romance in red.

  She laughed, shocked. “You have a problem with romance?”

  “It’s an ideal no man can attain. Look at my mother. Married four times. Been in more relationships than I can count. She falls for men, spends some time in their lives, and then moves on.” I shrugged. “Then there’s women like Mandy. She had someone who gave a damn about her, but then she left because what he could give her wasn’t enough. But mostly it’s the women like Mom who give me a problem with romance. How do you make something work with someone who is in love with falling in love and not the man himself?”

  Tansy studied me, her gaze flicking to the word I’d just written. “You know, as much as I hate to agree with you, all women are in love with falling in love. That twinge in the gut, the sweaty palms, the rapidly beating heart, and this incessant need just to hear his voice feels good.”

  My gaze traveled down her frame, down the black tank top hugging her torso to the waist of her shorts, to the button that kept them closed.

  “Are we describing you right now?” I asked, stalking her. “Because love isn’t the only thing that causes the heart to race and the palms to sweat.”

  She backed away, the guest room wall stopping her escape, heat flaring in her eyes.

  “I’m just saying that it feels good to fall in love. It’s heady,” she breathed, her voice low. “Entire industries are built on the feeling, on making women feel that over and over again. Movies ... books.”

  Meeting her at the wall, I trapped her, my hands caging her in. “Built on love or attraction? Because lust feels awful damn good, too.”

  Dropping one of my hands, I played with the bottom of her tank top, running my fingers just under the hem to press against her stomach.

  She inhaled sharply. “What kind of point are you trying to make?”

  Pulling her hands above her head, I pushed her against the wall, my lips melding with hers. Long, slow, and deep.

  She kissed me back, moaning, the sound going straight to my groin. Sweeping my tongue into her mouth, I tangled it with hers.

  Her body moved against mine, a desperate dance my hardening dick responded to.

  Keeping her wrists trapped with one of my hands, I dropped the other, running it down the side of her face, her neck, her breast, and her stomach before I pushed it under her shirt.

  She shivered.

  “Tell me,” I whispered, my lips falling to her neck, “is your heart racing now?”

  I kissed her pulse, felt it thudding, and grinned. “That’s lust, roof girl.”

  Lifting my head, I broke the contact, my chest heaving. My hand remained under her shirt, splayed against her back.

  Tansy stared up at me, her eyes dark and excited. “The only point you made is that you can turn me on. I’m betting you can do that to a lot of women. The falling in love feeling is different. Women are in love with the idea of it, that melting feeling of knowing there’s just one person out there. For her. Not all women need to feel that over and over again. If they do, they read a book or watch a movie, and then go find the person they love, hug him, and if he’s lucky, screw his brains out. They don’t go searching for love with someone new like your mom does.”

  I was having a hard time getting past the fact she was turned on. “Are you looking for love?”

  “No,” she whispered, “because I’m afraid of what that will mean for me one day. But lust ...” The words trailed off, her eyes searching mine.

  My hand slid to her stomach, working its way slowly up to her chest, to the bra I shoved aside before cupping her breast. Her hot skin filled my palm. Taking her nipple between my fingers, I pinched it lightly.

  Breath hissed out of her. “It’s not fair, you know? You touching me without letting me touch you.”

  “If you touch me, roof girl, I won’t be able to stop.”

  “Then don’t.”

  We were frozen, my hand on her breast, my dick so hard the only thing I wanted was release.

  “Tell me something about you,” I persisted, kneading her gently.


  Gasping, she pressed herself against my palm. “Do you do this to women often? Use the promise of sex to get information?”

  I chuckled because Tansy’s blunt way of avoiding my question not only amused me, it added to my arousal.

  “You’d be my first,” I replied. “I don’t usually try and get into the heads of the women I sleep with.”

  “Then why me? Now?”

  I stared at her. “Fuck if I know.”

  The sound of the cottage door opening had me dropping my hands, releasing her, but I didn’t step away.

  “Tansy in there with you?” my brother called, coming down the hall. “Pops saw the van, and we didn’t see her outside.”

  Tansy smirked, heat still filling her eyes. “He’s compromising me in here!”

  “Bitch,” I hissed, grinning.

  “Oh, well, that’s all good then,” Jonathan said from outside the bedroom door. “It’s probably better if Tansy comes out and joins us for dinner.”

  She glanced at the door. “I’m leaving,” she announced. “There will be something at home.”

  “Suit yourself,” Jonathan replied. “Tonight, it’s Mexican.” Thudding footsteps sounded down the hall, stopping at the door. “I’ll wait on the porch.”

  The cottage door closed.

  Tansy looked at me, her eyes wide. “I’ve always liked gardening, but knitting came after my mother died. Something to pass the time when there was nothing else to do, and I realized, after figuring out how to do it, that I really enjoyed it.”

  Her gaze fell to the punching bag, to the words written there. “I used to be into other things. Cheerleading and science.” She chuckled. “A cheerleading science geek. I used to compete at these science fairs. My projects were mostly environmental. I won my first science fair in fourth grade. A project I did on acid rain.”

  “This is you trying to talk my dick down, right?” I asked, keeping it light because I could tell from the way she looked that she wasn’t comfortable sharing things about herself.

  “Did that count?” Her gaze found mine again. “As me telling you something about myself?”

  Stepping back, I kept my eyes locked on hers. “Yeah, except now I’m picturing you in a short skirt with safety glasses on your face.”