Neighborly Intentions 2 (Perfect Hearts)

by Falon Gold

  “Surrounding counties? Isn’t Dalton fine for sitting on someone’s couch and spilling my guts?”

  Kay always did go the extra mile. “Nothing but the best for my sister and I love you. I also want details of your first, no, second night with Roland in the morning. As a matter of fact, call me when he leaves, so I can come over and get the details in person and give you that list. We’re long overdue for girl talk anyway.”

  I groaned, “Girl talk is so overrated, but fine. I love you too, Kay. I wish you a good umpteenth night with Hayden, and I promise to call when Roland leaves tomorrow. Thank you for the list in advance and night, love.”

  “Night, baby girl. Tell Roland night for me too,” she added before hanging up.

  I set the phone down beside me and stretched out on my bedroom floor beside the bed, refusing to debase my clean covers with today’s dirt and grime accumulated from the move. In the mirror above me, neon red letters reflected from my clock sitting on the nightstand closest to the window. I had been watching the numbers change religiously while talking to Kay. In about thirty more seconds, nine o’clock would roll around. Roland’s truck had yet to grace his driveway. It was gone from my driveway when I got back home from picking up my car and returning the U-Haul, and I was growing desperate for the man to get here. And desperate for a bath.

  I peeped up at the mirror again. The numbers seemed to have stalled at eight fifty-nine.

  “Fifteen more minutes, and I’m calling it night and going to wash this damn day away,” I uttered to myself though I just knew he’d show up at some point.

  He better have a damn good reason for being late too, and oh how I was looking forward to spending the night with him. A thrill shot through me. I grinned so damn hard my cheeks ached. If this was how it felt to have a significant other, a girl could get used to this sensation, and I was considering kicking my own ass for denying myself this feeling when a rumbling engine emanated on the street close by.

  I hopped to my feet fast and was sprinting for the front door before realizing I was even in motion, running toward someone for a change. Neither Kay or I would recognize the woman I was now. I was clearly missing Roland but happy, and it was his fault. I would thank him for it if he ever damn got in here.

  After snatching the door open, I trodded onto the porch as his truck swung into my driveway, parking behind my car. With his bright lights blinding me, I carefully picked my way down the front steps to the sidewalk. My front steps and sidewalks, I amended.

  He cut his engine. I crossed the grass that seemed to have grown an inch while I waited for him. While adding getting my own grass cut tomorrow to my mental list of things to do, I neared the driver side of Roland’s truck just as he made the mistake of opening his door to get out. I jumped the man. He caught me in his arms. I was almost positive that he would always catch me and smothered his face in kisses with no idea where my confidence in him was coming from, but I liked it. Who was this woman?

  I reeled my lips back in to look in him square in the eyes while cupping his face with both hands. “You were almost late, mister.”

  His lips pulled back in a wide smile. His eyes were a little glazed over. I reveled in causing that look on him, and I’d let him thank me for it if I ever got him in the house.

  “I know, baby,” his deep voice rumbled. “After leaving Hayden’s and Kay’s houses, I made a quick pit stop to pick us up something to eat. I figured we both would be too tired to cook but was hungry. Kay told me to go by her parent’s grocery store and pick something up on her from the deli.”

  My stomach grumbled at the mention of food, which I hadn’t even thought about. Nothing trumped Roland right now, not even my empty gut.

  “I’ll have you know, big guy, that ‘on her’ means that Kay’s parents gave you whatever you wanted for free.”

  “Hey, don’t knock ‘on her’ until you’ve tried it, little woman.”

  I snorted. “I created ‘on her’. Kay and her parents fed me for a few years before I figured out how to do it for myself. The Jesters saved my life when it was hanging in the balance for real when I had no one to pull me back from the edge, and trust me when I say you don’t ever want to see a nine-year-old on the edge. It ain’t pretty.”

  More sad truths about you, Anna? Are you trying to run him off?

  I rolled my stupid lips inward. They just let anything out of them whenever he was around. “Sorry about rambling on, Roland. You seem to pull my past right out my mouth. I haven’t figured out how to stop that yet.” If I didn’t learn soon, I was going to ruin this night fast.

  His smile ebbed away. “Why are you apologizing? I wish you weren’t ashamed about your past. It makes you you. Nothing that happened when you was a kid was your fault, and I like you just the way you are, so stop trying to hide things about you from me. I won’t judge. Besides, who doesn’t have a past? You aren’t a real person without one, and Anna, my childhood, my past is just as bad as yours.” What?

  Forget my past. If his was as bad as mine, someone had made his childhood a living hell, and they were going to answer to me for it.

  “What do you mean as bad as mine, Roland? And who did hurt you as a kid? Just give me a name.” I would tear the world apart, looking for whoever treated him badly.

  “We should take this in the house if we’re going to get that deep. Let me get the sacks.”

  I wasn’t ready to get down when he set me on my feet again. Deliberating on jumping him again, I stood there, tapping my foot and impatient to learn who would do something to this beautiful man who I bet was kind as a child. “How many sacks do you have? I’ll help you carry them.”

  He bent over to reach across his driver seat then glanced back at me, smiling again. “It’s only two and I got them, sweetheart. Just stand there and be beautiful like you’re doing.” His compliment had a microwave effect on me; I liquified.

  Pondering what I had done to deserve this man took the place at the forefront of my mind where our shitty pasts and horrible childhoods were holding court. Our mutual troubles as kids floated to the back of my mental space, but they weren’t forgotten. We would be discussing them at length right after I got him inside my bathroom.

  “You’re not so damn bad yourself, soldier, and I missed you today, so could you hustle please?” I needed to be back in his arms pronto, hadn’t expected to voice my needs, didn’t know this new me at all, but I liked her. She knew having Roland in my life beat being alone in the world while angry with it every time.

  Towing two huge paper sacks off the passenger seat, Roland chuckled. “Yes ma’am, I’ll hurry up, and I missed you more than you could ever know… and for a lot longer than just today.”

  But, I wanted to know… everything and anything he would tell me. “Don’t be so sure about that, Roland. You pretty much had me when all you wanted from me was a smile.”

  Chapter Twelve

  ~Anna~

  It took a minute for us to get ready to bathe even though we split up in the living area to accomplish our tasks faster. Roland went toward the kitchen to find some utensils and glasses, and pop the cork on the white wine he had bought. I made tracks to the back corner of the bathroom to run some lukewarm water sans the lavender-fragranced bubble bath in the octagon-shaped tub. If it wasn’t the size of a small pool, I wouldn’t let Roland stuff himself in it.

  If he wasn’t here, I’d have made due with the standalone shower that stood right across from the bathroom door. I hoped he didn’t mind floral-scented soap. If he did, wasn’t he lucky that all he had to do was go next door to get what he preferred to bathe with? And I should ask what he preferred before he stripped.

  “Roland,” I yelled out.

  “Your soap is fine, Anna!”

  How the hell?

  “I’m not even going to ask how you knew what I was about to say. I’m sure I won’t like the answer,” I commented as I grabbed towels from beneath the oak, double sinked-cabinet facing the shower stall.

  T
hinking of him with other women… Let’s just say I wanted to cut somebody. God, I was capable of being jealous too. Nobody was perfect though.

  “Anna, I know that you’re considerate. The thing is you don’t know that you’re considerate,” he responded from the bedroom. When did I become considerate? “And I hope you don’t mind that I put everything on this huge, silver platter I found in the cabinet over your refrigerator,” he mentioned while walking inside the bathroom, veering to the left toward me who was moving back toward the tub.

  Just about every food Nat served in the deli balanced on the platter he gripped in both his hands. The only thing missing was pizza, and he certainly wouldn’t have had any problems reaching the cabinet over the refrigerator.

  “I don’t mind you getting the platter down if you don’t mind me calling you to put it back up after I wash it. I had to climb on the countertop to put the platter with the dishes I don’t normally use, and I’m afraid of heights.” I stacked the towels in easy-grabbing distance on the glass vanity table between the tub and toilet, and then turned the water off in time to hear him laugh at another of my flaws. Being acrophobic was the least of them.

  He sat the platter down beside the towels. “I don’t mind putting it back where I got it from. I’ll even wash it when we’re done with it.”

  I unsnapped my shorts and toed off my sneakers. “No, fair is fair. You got the groceries. I got the cleanup, just not the climbing.”

  “See, considerate. You know it’s not fair that you got the gray stonework in here, the brick fireplace in the living room and I have cheap Spanish tile in my bathroom and a plain white wood fireplace.” He stood only a few inches away, observing me strip with his eyes scouring over me.

  Good thing I wasn’t ashamed of my body. “Spanish tile and your fireplace is not plain or cheap. I know that because I grew up with Kay, a certified decorator all her life, and she should start her own decorating business. The woman has serious taste. If you want to change something about your house, she’s the one to call. She Hayden’s place and it is gorgeous.”

  “When did you meet her?” He inquired and reached for the tail of his t-shirt.

  I dropped my bottoms on the floor, and gave him the story of how I was leaving the school and walked up on Kay, who was tiny then and tiny now, getting her ass handed to her by a bigger second grader. “From then on, she was mine to protect, so I walked her home and told her family about what had happened. The bullying had been going on for a while, but Kay was too ashamed to tell her parents. I don’t understand how adults can look the other way while a child suffers. A teacher had to have seen something. Between me and the Jesters, she’s never had to deal with another bully again, and they practically took me in as their own.”

  Fully nude, I stepped into the water. “They even put me a bed in Kay’s room when being at home was not the place to be, which was every day but especially at night when my mother had her crack buddies and guy friends over. Unfortunately, if I wanted to make money to eat, then I had to go home where I got paid for doing the ladies’ hair around the block. The ladies in Kay’s neighborhood went to a hair salon.”

  “And that’s how you got into doing hair?”

  “Yep.”

  He sat down behind me then pulled me into his chest. That safe feeling popped into place immediately, and I didn’t know if I could ever do without again. Even I couldn’t make myself feel like this.

  I ran my fingers along his wrist on the arm with the tattoo sleeve. “I also do tattoos. I started at thirteen.”

  “Really? Where’s your equipment?”

  “Yep, and it’s in the closet… somewhere. I practically shoved everything in there to work on the bedroom. Luke Valentine taught me everything I know about ink and I’ve put the knowledge to good use every weekend since but this one. Normally, I’m a certified hustler every day.” Then, I shut up. If there was such a thing as diarrhea of mouth, I had it.

  “You say that like there’s something wrong with hustling.” He handed me a glass of wine.

  I sipped from it. “There is something wrong with it when a kid has to do it to make her own way in the world.”

  He passed a crispy chicken leg to me then wrapped his arms around my body, his hands resting on my stomach. “Anna.”

  “Hmm,” was how I acknowledged him calling to me between bites of Nat’s succulent chicken.

  “You’re not alone anymore.”

  “I know, Roland. I haven’t been alone since I met the Jesters, but I still felt separate from them. I thought if you weren’t born to a certain type of family, you, well, you basically weren’t shit, weren’t going to be shit. I thought maybe I had done something wrong to deserve Shelly, or maybe I believe that I ain’t shit because that’s what she’s told me all my life. I thought if I kept myself separate from other people, I wouldn’t have to hear I wasn’t shit from anybody else, but I like having you around. You’re like my very own teddy bear because man, you are huge. Anybody ever tell you that?”

  “Yes, I’ve been told that and who you were born to isn’t your fault. Your mother is an accident of birth as far as I know, but it doesn’t matter who we’re born to. It’s what we do with the life we’re given that matters in the long run, and Shelly was blessed to have you because if anybody got to pick their relatives, you wouldn’t have picked her. No one would have… I sure as hell wouldn’t have picked my father,” he added so quietly I barely heard him.

  The air got thick around us and we seemed to be teetering on the edge of something. I had been here before with Kay the day I walked her home and heard her story. Roland and I were doing the same thing she and I had done that day; we formed a bond that would last a lifetime no matter what we went through, but he and I hadn’t taken that last step yet.

  “What’s your story, Roland?”

  He rocked his head against mine. “You want the long version or the short version?”

  After tossing the chicken bone into a nearby small trashcan, I pulled his arms tighter around me. “Whichever version that tumbles out of you. Don’t think, just speak.”

  He began a horror story that wasn’t the same as mine, which I shared next, but we didn’t have to go through the same things for our pasts to be almost mirror images of each other when it came to how bad things were for us as kids. Bad came in different forms. He had no mother because she had died. I had no father because he didn’t care that I existed. Roland’s aunt was for him and his brother what the Jesters were for me; a safe place that we had access to when we needed it. However, there was always a reason we had to go home.

  Where I went back to make the money for the bills that my mother never once wondered how they were being paid, Roland didn’t have to hustle but withdraw money from a checking account filled with the insurance money from his mother’s death. He and Cade took direct punches to the body from their drunken father. Though I never took a blow from my mother and the adults she brought around, they had no problems grabbing me too hard, pushing me down, or simply trying to push their dope on me, which was when me and the kitchen cabinets got to know each other well.

  My mother must’ve never taken a good look in the mirror and saw the drug’s effects on her. She was meaner when she wasn’t high because she was fiending for dope. If she wasn’t fiending, she was spaced out as the random guys she’d brought home did things to her that I tried to defend her from. My intervening was usually when I got pushed to the floor or grabbed and slung on a couch.

  It was heartbreaking to hear that Roland had to defend his brother by getting between Cade and their father’s fists until Roland was big enough to fight his father off. I had to take care of only me, which was difficult for most adults to do. Since I couldn’t do for my mother what she wouldn’t do for herself, I learned to stay away from home when it was filled with junkies taking what they wanted from her. She got robbed as much as she got groped.

  Roland and I found our escape from rotten parents almost at the same time. I got my own
place. He found his place in the military with Hayden’s unit where he grabbed life by the horns and made something of himself. While he was losing his fiancée to his brother, I just keep humping along, surviving, wondering how long it would be before daughter became like mother.

  “That will never be your life, Anna. I won’t let it.”

  I believed him completely. “I’ll certainly make sure to do my part to make sure that I never become Shelly.” I had been trying to do that all along, but I might’ve been going the wrong way about it by just denying myself everything.

  “I know you won’t become like her because you already know what not to do.”

  “Thanks to Shelly,” I say dryly. “At least I can give her that much credit.”

  “And you should, Anna. She’s earned that at least as a parent.” If his dry tone was any indication, he wasn’t giving her a compliment.

  “Roland.”

  “Yeah, babe.”

  I tipped my head back against his shoulder to make eye contact. “You’re not alone. I’m adopting you into my heart and keeping you there.”

  He smiled. “I know I’m not alone. I have you, and I’ll make you glad that you have me too.”

  “Too late. I already am glad to have you. We’ve bonded, and it’s going to be impossible to let you go now.”

  “Hmmm, no, we bonded on the dance floor when you smiled at me. You just hadn’t felt it yet.”

  “Hmmm, no,” I mimicked, “ I felt it, I just didn’t know what to do with the bond.”

  He laughed. “See, we’re already a regular couple who can’t figure out how to agree on anything.”

  “If this is how we disagree, well, then I like it.”

  “Me too.” He dipped his head to set his mouth gently on mine.

  The kiss morphed to a battle of tongues and teeth. He flipped me around in his lap. Straddling him, I guided him inside me, riding him until the water was cold and we climaxed together. He bathed us both then carried me to the bed, laying me down gently before going back for the platter. After feeding me from his hands, he fed from my body. His licks and nibbles tossed my mind into the skies, but the suction from his lips between my thighs pushed me into deep space. While I floated mindlessly, he entered me and incited an orgasm that lifted me onto another plane. I promised to do the same to him next time before I passed out.