Violet’s Bucket List

by Embers, Tuesday

  Eli sighed. “I know why he’s mad. He used to be a bouncer at Club Seven before Antonio bought the place. Antonio realized the club was basically a dealer’s paradise, and fired the staff who let tha happen. Antonio trusts me and his people to clean up the problem, but tha put Dan out of a job. He’s been sore about it from the beginning. Ye guessed he had money in the game, aye? Ye were probably right. Lads do stupid stuff when they’re desperate. Add tha to the fact tha the old staff was using what the club was dealing, and it’s no real secret why Dan’s broke and irrational.” He tapped the side of his nose.

  I gaped at him. “Cocaine? Well, Dan’s not going to just let all of that go. I mean, honestly. What would your mother say? I’ve got half a mind to send her a picture of you all bruised up like this and let her go off on you.”

  Of all things, Eli chuckled at me. “You’d have a hard time doing tha, seeing as how she’s six feet under.”

  I froze at having put my foot in my mouth, yet again. “Are you serious? Oh, that was a stupid thing to say. I’m so sorry.” I couldn’t stop myself, but flung myself forward into his arms, hugging him around the neck. Once I’d been close to his body, I only wanted more.

  Eli touched the small of my back tenderly, comforting me after I’d just brought up a terrible memory for him. “Aw, tha’s alright. Died when I was a lad. I think my mammy would’ve taken to ye, though. She no doubt would’ve been cussing up a storm at the picture you’d send her of my face like this. Am I still handsome?”

  “Ridiculously. Unfairly. Still, I like the look of you in one piece, not shattered like this. You’re lucky he didn’t break your nose.” I snuck a dainty kiss to his neck and slunk out of his embrace. I went back to pinching the bridge of his nose for him, hoping the blood would clot eventually. “Let me drive you to the ER. This isn’t good, Eli. You’re going to have bruises all over your stomach.”

  “Ye worry too much. Do ye baby Brady and Caty like this?”

  I shrugged. “I do when they need it. You just got the crap beaten out of you.”

  “Don’t say it like tha. I won, no problem. I can’t exactly go knocking a lad out in the first few seconds. People set down money for a good show, so I gave them one.”

  “How much do you make off of these fights? Why do you do it?”

  “Winner gets thirty percent of the door, loser gets five. Tha’s not why I fight, though. Garcia Securities pays me well enough.” He sighed, and I could tell that the Hot Girl Blurts that kept him from concealing his true self from me was kicking in. “It’s hard to go from the action of the army straight into civilian life. I miss the rush, Mouse. A man needs to feel alive.”

  “So, getting punched in the face makes you feel alive?”

  “Aye. Doesn’t jumping out of an airplane do the same for ye?”

  He had me there. “Find another adrenaline rush. Something that doesn’t involve you bleeding profusely.”

  “Ah, you’re a sweet thing. As soon as my nose stops bleeding, I’ll be wanting my winner’s kiss. A good one, mind ye, with plenty of fainting, like the wee damsel ye are.”

  I rolled my eyes at him and decided to play a little with the rope I had. Eli made me nervous with how strikingly beautiful he was, but I vowed I wouldn’t turn into a mouse this time. I had the hottest guy in the universe half-naked on the bench with me. I summoned up all my courage and leaned forward into his body space, placing delicate kisses along the side of his neck. Slowly and sweetly, I nuzzled the vulnerable parts of him, feeling him melt for me every bit as much as I turned mushy for him. He was so rough around the edges, but here in the crook of his neck, he was exposed and almost shy as my lips puckered the skin, as if I had a right to do such things. I felt powerful when Eli trembled, holding himself back so I could be the daring one this time.

  My phone rang, which it didn’t often do in the middle of the night. It was the only thing that could’ve pulled me away from my moment of seductive bravery. My eyebrows furrowed when I glanced at the caller ID. I positioned Eli’s hand over the bridge of his nose to pinch the injured area, smirking at his lidded eyes, and answered my phone. “Hey, Brady. What’s up?”

  “I think I screwed up, and I know you need to come home.”

  “What’s wrong? You’ve got that I-just-did-something-illegal sound to you,” I said, causing Eli to tent his eyebrows in curiosity.

  Brady’s panicked whisper worried me. “I did something stupid, and I need you to undo it! Where are you?”

  “I’m at the match still, cleaning Eli up.”

  “Oh, man. I’m sorry. No, no. You do your thing. Good for you, V. I hope your cleaning him up ends in something nice and dirty. I shouldn’t have called.”

  “Brady,” I warned. “What’s wrong?”

  “So many things!” he whispered again, that same note of anxiety creeping in. “I gotta go. Don’t tell Caty I called you. When you come home, act like it was your idea.”

  “Um, my idea to come back to my own home? Okay. I think I can do that convincingly. Brady, honey, what’s going on? You’re all squirrely.”

  “This conversation never happened!” he whispered, and then hung up.

  I touched my pointer finger to my forehead, confused as to what had him so tweaked. “Brady’s freaking out, but I don’t know about what. Something’s off. Let’s get your nose to stop bleeding, and get going.”

  Eli tested the clotting by unpinching his nose to see where we stood in the whole healing process. “Have ye ever slept with Brady?”

  I blinked at him, wondering if my brain had gone spontaneously bonkers. “Hello, left field. What made you think to ask that?”

  “It’s not an odd thing to assume two roommates who’ve known each other as long as ye have might be turning sheets every now and again.”

  I stood, unsure if I should be offended or not. “Brady and Caty are my best friends. They were family to me when I didn’t have any left. I’ve never slept with Brady. I’ve never even kissed him.”

  “Grand. Sorry if tha was weird to ask. Ye just had tha look tha a woman gets when a man she’s seen naked is in a jam.”

  I rubbed the nape of my neck uncomfortably, my eyes darting to the door to make sure we were alone. “Well, that’s a different story. I’ve seen Brady naked before. A few times, actually. But it wasn’t like that. Chemo was rough on him, and he fell in the shower once. I helped him up, and that’s that. Gave him a few baths after that, but it was more holding him together while he cried in the tub than anything romantic. A few times after his surgery, he was scared something was wrong, so he had me check the stitches on his scrotum.” I palmed my chin, knowing that blunt honesty was the way to go with this, even if it was too much information. “There was one time he asked Caty and me if we’d ever go home with a guy who had only one testicle. Caty told him to drop his pants so she could see the damage. That way when we told him we would totally take a guy in his condition home, he wouldn’t think we were just making stuff up so he’d feel better.” I let out a small, nervous huff. “Like women care about balls.” My neck shrank a little, not meaning to say “balls” in front of Eli.

  “Jays, tha’s awful. You three… You’re good friends, tha’s for sure.”

  “I’ve seen Brady naked more than most, but it never ever led to anything. Brady’s been my brother, my sister, my best friend, my dad on more than one occasion, and my kid a few times. Never my boyfriend, though.” I waved my hand between us as if to clear the air of a funk. “I’m not sure I was supposed to tell you the chemo stuff. It’s Brady’s business who knows and who doesn’t. I just didn’t want to lie to you.”

  Eli studied my guarded movements with a careful eye. “I’m sorry to hear about tha. Brady’s a good fella. I can’t imagine how hard tha must’ve been on ye.”

  “On me?” I tilted my head at him, watching in confusion as he dabbed at the last of the dried blood on his upper lip.

  “To almost lose your family like tha? To watch your best friend wither in front of
your eyes?”

  I gulped, keeping the confession tucked tight inside of me. Brady’s cancer had been rough on me. It came the same year my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. I’d lived in constant worry that I would lose them both. When Brady pulled through, that elation gave birth to hope – hope that my mom would be okay. It didn’t work out that way, though. Part of me wondered if it might’ve been an easier pill to swallow if I hadn’t had that optimism. Caty understood, as she loved Brady every bit as much as I did, and she’d grown up clinging to my mom instead of her own, more distant mother.

  Sometimes the sadness reared its ugly head and chased me down even still. It was coming up on her birthday, which was a bitter pill I wasn’t ready to swallow. There was no one to buy balloons for, no one to bake a cake for. My mom was gone.

  Just… gone.

  “I dealt,” I said simply, hoping survival counted as “dealing with it.”

  “Let’s get home. I know you’ll be worrying about him until we get there.” He stood and pulled on a sweatshirt. Then he picked up his duffel bag with one hand and reached for me with the other. We walked out of the locker room hand-in-hand, declaring to the emptying arena that Eli and I were very much in this together.

  16

  Finally, a Use for Number 34

  “How do we not keep guns in the house?” I shouted, unable to control the volume of my voice. I was more worked up than Caty was, though it was her who’d been wronged.

  “Vi, honey, calm down.”

  “Do not tell me to calm down! I’m going over there right now to pack your stuff and throw him down a flight of stairs. Doesn’t he know how good he had it? Let me tell you, by the time I’m finished with him, Dennis is going to be eating through a tube.” I threw my jacket over my shoulders and toed on my shoes. When Eli stood in front of the door to block my exit, I glared at him, but instantly regretted the mean look. Eli was far too sweet to be glowered at. “Please move.” My teeth were grinding together.

  “I don’t think bloodshed is the way to go on this one, Mouse.”

  I frowned up at him, arms akimbo. “You want to call me ‘Mouse’ right now? Do you think I’m trying to be cute? Dennis cheated on my best friend. I think that entitles me to a little bloodshed. He had his fun; now it’s my turn.”

  Eli’s nostrils flared, his tongue sweeping his lower lip as he took in my fury. “I don’t think it’s cute; I think you’re dead sexy when you talk all aggressive like tha. But the thing is, I’ve grown rather attached to ye, and don’t fancy seeing ye hauled off to the slammer.”

  “Let’s go, Brady,” I all but growled.

  Caty’s voice was quiet, but help a firm note of a command to it. “I’d rather you stay with me, Vi. It’s been a long day, and I just need my best friend. Commiserate today, vengeance tomorrow.” She was on the opposite end of the couch from Brady, who was looking anywhere but at her doe eyes.

  My shoulders lowered, and I peeled off my jacket. “Oh, fine. But I’m not holding back tomorrow. I hope he likes selling cars with a black eye.” I shook my head, knowing that wasn’t enough for all he’d put Caty through. “Maybe I can take a tire iron to his BMW, too. Hit him where it really hurts.”

  Eli’s jaw dropped, and I couldn’t tell if he was scared of me, appalled, or rethinking the whole holding my hand thing I really kinda loved. “But you’re so gentle and soft. I can’t picture it.”

  I pinched the bridge of my nose and closed my eyes. “That’s because whenever I’m around you, I’m a clumsy mess. And I am gentle, but not when people mess with my family. My normal life includes a don’t-screw-with-my-friends clause. You’ve never hurt Caty or Brady, so you don’t have to worry about that.” I grew flustered when it seemed like I was the crazy one, and pointed my finger at Caty. “She keyed the car of the girl at school who spray-painted ‘Frito Bandito’ on my locker. Then she broke into the car and put shoe polish on the seatbelt.”

  Caty raised her chin. “Don’t ask me to apologize for that. I wouldn’t back then, and I won’t now. Skank had it coming.” She let out an airy giggle. “Black line of shoe polish clear across her neck and her cheerleader’s uniform. I think the phrase is ‘Be aggressive. B-E aggressive!’” She met Eli’s confused gaze. “This is just how we do things.”

  Eli turned back to me, bewildered. “I can’t picture ye wielding a tire iron, bashing up a lad’s car.”

  “Follow me tomorrow, and you’ll get a front row seat to the mayhem,” I answered with a shrug. “Dennis cheated on Caty, Eli. She walked in on them.”

  “Aye. I heard the same thing ye did. What did Dennis say when ye confronted him?”

  Caty’s voice was small, her nose red from crying. “He didn’t say anything, because neither of them saw me. I was so shocked, I slipped out and drove to the match. Mind if I crash on the couch tonight?”

  “Tonight and every night. We’ll get another bed in my room, and it’ll be just like old times.” I wanted to storm out into the night to enact vengeance, but Eli was still in front of the door like a guard, forcing me to behave. “Come on. Just let me mess him up a little bit. We’re seriously letting him off the hook for this?”

  “Ye should calm yourself, Mouse.” Eli snatched at my chin and brought my ear to his lips. “Turn me on any more, and I’ll throw ye over my shoulder and take ye into one of these bedrooms – I don’t care which. I’ll take my sweet time showing ye what we can do with all this anger.”

  I shivered, exhaling as my body slumping against his. I went from tiger to mouse in the span of a few well-placed sentences. I melted in his arms, which held me to him, my head on his broad chest.

  Caty stood and started pacing the living room. “See? That’s what I want! That’s what Dennis and I were supposed to be to each other. He was supposed to calm me down, and I was supposed to excite him. I haven’t felt… Even if he hadn’t cheated, I don’t know.” Caty shook her head, sadness springing from her and floating into the air surrounding us. “He’s not the one.”

  I snatched the bucket list off the fridge and slapped it on the table next to the pad. “Number 34,” I declared with a clear threat in my voice.

  Brady moved into the kitchen, his eyes skimming the list. “Come on, Vi. I put that on there as a joke.”

  Eli stood behind me and read over my shoulder. “‘Make your enemy regret the day he was born?’ Tha’s seriously on the bucket list?”

  Brady rubbed the back of his neck. “Yeah, I was in a bad place for a while, what with the chemo and all.” His eyes cut to me. “We can’t make Dennis regret the day he was born.”

  My head swiveled with too much attitude. “Maybe you can’t.”

  Brady drank in the challenge emanating from my steely stare, and finally nodded. “Okay, then. We’re really doing this?”

  I refused to budge. “Starting tomorrow.”

  Brady stalked to the fridge and pulled the magnetic notepad off, smacking it down on the kitchen table with a pen. “Then we plan. Dennis doesn’t know you know, right, Caty? Aside from Vi getting arrested after Dennis definitely presses charges, how can we make him as miserable as you were when you saw him cheating on you?”

  Caty dropped into one of the stiff-backed chairs at the kitchen table and sniffled. She looked up at Brady as if he was the first man who ever told her she was beautiful. “You mean it? Because I don’t want Violet to go all Lorena Bobbitt on him, but I feel like there’s gotta be a happy medium between the tire iron and shrinking off with my shame.”

  Brady got down on his knees in front of her, giving her a second to stop acting squirrely at the intense eye contact he didn’t hold back. “Listen to me, Caty. You’ve got nothing to be ashamed of. Did you cheat?”

  “No. Of course not. That’s not me.”

  “Did you try to make it work with that blind, ungrateful idiot?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Then shrinking off isn’t an option. How long do you think you can keep up the charade of living there?”

  C
aty shrugged. “About until Wednesday, probably. Wednesday’s hump day,” she explained tactlessly to Eli, who grimaced.

  “I’m starting to see why things went so south between the two of ye.”

  Brady sat in the chair next to Caty, pulling his seat closer to her, so their shoulders were touching. “Okay, then. Operation: Take Dennis Down for Messing with Our Girl is in the planning phases.”

  I took off my shoes and raised my hand. “I can do the usual car tricks.”

  “Perfect. He loves his BMW.” Brady was all for lists.

  “Let me at her.” I rubbed my hands together in anticipation.

  Eli shot me a wary look. “Why do I not like the sound of tha?”

  I waved off his concern. “Nothing too scary. Just sugar in his gas tank and bananas in his tailpipe.”

  Brady shook his head. “Wait. You can’t do those, or he’ll know it’s you. He’s probably heard all about when we went off on Mr. Klein for hitting on your mom.”

  I deflated. “Rats. You’re right.” My lips drew to the side as I thought. “I’ve got to do something to his cars. I don’t like that he never lets you drive them, Caty.”

  Eli’s eyebrows bunched together. “He doesn’t let ye drive his car?”

  Caty shook her head. “I guess that is weird.”

  I stood straighter. “I’ve got it. I’ll dump a little spoiled milk in the trunk of his car. It’ll soak into the carpet, but he won’t smell it right away, unless he opens the trunk. Then I can put sardines in his air vents.” My shoulders slumped. “Not quite as good as a tire iron, but it’s a start.”

  Brady scribbled my idea down on the pad. “Love it. We want stealth misery. If he doesn’t figure out it’s us, we can keep this up for a while.” He snapped his fingers. “Nair for his shampoo. He’s always looking in the mirror at his hair. Hit him where it hurts.”