by Hazel Jacobs
“What?” She puts out a hand to balance herself and gathers her thoughts. “What are you doing here?” she asks.
Tommy takes a step toward her. “You weren’t answering your phone.”
“You ever think that might have been by design?” she snaps.
She hadn’t wondered what she would say when she saw him again. Her brain hadn’t thought that far ahead. But now that she’s got him in front of her all she can think of is the lazy smile on his lips when he’d been kissing Danielle.
And she is pissed.
Sersha struggles to her feet, her body cold and unresponsive at first. She comes at him fast and has the pleasure of seeing his eyes widen in alarm as she shoves him hard in the chest.
“You fucker!”
He sways on his feet, only just managing to keep his balance, but Sersha shoves him again before he can stand properly and he falls back onto his ass, letting out a soft “oof” as he lands on the concrete.
Some older men next to the arch watch the scene with amusement. Sersha sees them exchange smirks as one of them takes off his cap to her. She gives them a salute before turning on her heel and leaving Tommy on the ground.
“Ouch… Wait, Sersha. Shit! Sersha, hang on!”
“Don’t tell me what to do,” she shoots over her shoulder. Her voice takes on a mocking tone as she continues to walk away from him toward the pubs at the end of the road. “I’d be happy if I never saw her again. I don’t want her, Sersha. I swear… I must have been out of my mind to believe that shit.”
“Sersha…”
He grabs her by the elbow, and she violently pulls herself out of his grip.
“Don’t touch me!”
“I can explain…”
“Oh, I’m sure you can,” she says. “I’ll bet you’ve got a completely factual, and not at all unbelievable story, about how you’re the victim in all of this and Danielle was taking advantage of you. Am I right?”
“Well…” He looks confused. “Yeah… actually…” Sersha turns her back on him. “No, no, no… Sersha, please. I’m begging you to just give me a few minutes, that’s all I ask!”
Sersha can hear the old men near the arch snickering. When she looks over her shoulder and sees Tommy shooting them a glare. Then he turns his pleading eyes back to Sersha, and she feels the sight of him—so sad and guilty—cut through her like a knife. She hates that the sight of his face does that to her. She hates that after he hurt her so badly, she can still feel sorry for him. He doesn’t deserve that.
“How did you even know where I was?” she asks.
“Your mom,” he replies. “I called last night. I was worried… you weren’t answering your phone and you weren’t at your apartment—”
“Wait! You said my mam told you where to find me?” Sersha asks. Tommy nods quickly. “And why the hell would she have done that?”
“Because I showed her this,” he says, brandishing his phone at her. The phone she’d been bringing to him on the day she’d walked in on him and Danielle. “It’s a video. Shit…”
Rain is beginning to fall.
Tommy stuffs his phone back into his pocket and looks around. “Is there somewhere we can go?”
“Come on,” she says, turning around and waving her hand at him so that he’ll come with her.
If her mam saw something that made her send Tommy to Sersha’s thinking place, then it must be worth seeing. It’ll have to be damn convincing, though. Her brain is still fuzzy and dull from the fury she’d felt when she saw him. But now that she knows her mam sent him she figures she should at least hear him out. Sersha’s mam knows a thing or two about deadbeats, after all.
She guides Tommy to Sally Longs, a pub just up the road from the arch. It looks like a beat-up, ramshackle place from the outside. The side of the building is graffitied, and the façade was painted a dull red ten years ago, but inside is all cheer and charm. It’s full of seadogs and retirees enjoying a pint and watching the football on most days. The food’s cheap and hearty. When Sersha and Tommy walk in, the bartender looks up from behind the brightly painted red and green counter. She’s a younger woman, and Sersha recognizes her as the younger sister of Peggy Winter, a friend of hers from school. Sersha takes off her jacket and slides into a booth near the door, just in case she needs to make a quick exit.
“Do you… want a drink?” Tommy asks, pulling his scarf off of his neck and laying it down on the bench opposite her.
“They know me here,” Sersha says, nodding at the bartender. “If you give me a reason to stay, then we’ll get drinks.”
Tommy’s cheeks are pink, either from cold or fear she can’t tell. He sits down across from her and takes his phone out.
“One thing I learned from Logan,” he says as he swipes through to the home screen. “Is when you’re dealing with Danielle, you should have evidence.”
He shows her the phone. There’s a video file open. At his hopeful look, Sersha takes the phone and plays the video.
The camera seems to be in the top corner of a room. The studio room. Sersha had never noticed a camera in the room before. Tommy is there, with his head on the mixing board, apparently fast asleep. Sersha remembers how exhausted they had both been that day. Tommy’s got his head on his arms and a notebook sticking out from under them. The audio from the video is a little low, and when Tommy hands her a pair of headphones she mutely stuffs them into her ears.
She doesn’t hear the door open, but she sees Danielle enter the room. She’s got a low-cut top on and her handbag in her elbow. She watches Tommy for a moment with an almost predatory look on her face. Then she carefully steps around him. The soft carpet on the floor muffles the sound of her footsteps. She sets her bag gently down on the floor behind Tommy’s chair, but not before she pulls the fluffy sleep mask out of it.
Sersha watches as Danielle slips the sleep mask over Tommy’s eyes.
Tommy reacts immediately, waking with a start. Disoriented, he reaches up to take off the mask, only to have Danielle’s hands grab his wrists and force them down to his sides.
The picture is pixelated and grainy, but Sersha can see the lazy smile that curls around his lips.
“Temptress,” he says, leaning back in his seat. Sersha’s throat goes dry. “Didn’t we talk about getting frisky in the studio?”
Danielle straddles him. Sersha can’t see her face. Tommy’s hands come up to wrap around her, but she forces them down to his sides. Then she grabs his face and kisses him.
Sersha has to look away. She knows what she’s going to see. She’s going to see Tommy enjoying the kiss, really getting into it. She hears the sound of lips smacking through the headphones, clothes ruffling as Danielle takes off her top, and then the sound of the door opening and then rapidly closing.
“Was that the door?” Tommy asks in the recording, in the exact same tone that from Sersha’s memory.
Danielle tosses her hair back over her shoulder and keeps kissing him. Tommy’s hands twitch as though he’s inching to pull them up, but he doesn’t. He lets them dangle, lets himself enjoy the kiss. His hips buck slightly, and Sersha wants to growl as Danielle grinds down on him.
After a few minutes, the door slams open again.
“What the ever-loving fuck is happening in here?”
It’s Dash. He sounds pissed.
“Jesus Dash… you ever heard of knocking?” Tommy asks, pulling out of the kiss and sounding annoyed.
Sersha watches as he raises his hand and pushes the sleep mask away before Danielle can stop him. His expression goes from lazily annoyed to horrified.
“What the…”
He tries to push himself away from Danielle and ends up pushing her off of his lap and onto the floor. Danielle makes an annoyed sound and turns to glare at Dash, not bothering to cover her exposed breasts. Dash, for his part, appears unfazed by the sight of a half-naked woman. He’s not the sort of guy to blush at boobs.
“Do you mind—”
“What the hell, Daniell
e?” Tommy demands. He stands up, pulls the mask off, and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “I have a girlfriend!”
“But Tommy—”
“Stop! Whatever you’re going to say, just stop. Pick up your shirt and get out… I can’t even look at you right now!”
Danielle looks furious as she pulls her shirt back on, grabs her purse and stalks out of the room, deliberately slamming her shoulder into Dash as she goes. There’s a pause in the audio as Tommy collects himself. Dash enters the room properly and Sersha can see the way his hair hangs limply. As though it is wet. As though he’s sweating from having to run.
“Dude…” he begins. He sounds anxious.
“Jesus, can you believe her?” Tommy asks, turning back to the mixing board and straightening his notebook. “That’s the last time I let a girl kiss me without getting a good look at her. This is worse than that time with Slate—”
“Dude—”
“I shoulda known when she wouldn’t let me touch her. Hey man, thanks for coming in when you did. I owe you—”
“Dude!” Dash says. Tommy clams up and turns to look at Dash curiously. “Sersha was here.”
Sersha watches as Tommy’s face immediately falls. He looks horrified as his eyes widen, his mouth drops, and he looks at Dash like he’s hoping that he’s kidding.
“What?” Tommy whispers. The camera mics only barely picks it up.
“She just left in tears. She wanted me to give you this.”
He hands Tommy his phone. Tommy takes it numbly.
“No,” he says, “No, no, no. Fuck!” he roars.
And then he’s pushing past Dash and running out the door. Dash follows him. The video ends and Sersha sees her face reflected in the black screen. Her eyes are heavy with emotion and her lips are in a thin line. She doesn’t like the way that she looks in that reflection. When she raises her eyes, she sees Tommy’s hopeful eyes watching her.
She clears her throat.
“Apple cider,” she says.
“Apple cider?”
“Apple cider.” She jerks her head toward the bar.
“Oh, right, yeah. I’ll get that.” He slides out of the booth and pulls a couple of folded Euro bills out of his pocket. Sersha lays the phone down on the table between them, letting what she’s seen wash over her.
She has to admit that it’s damn convincing. She’s so glad that the studio has cameras. She’s so—she doesn’t know how she feels. It’s difficult for her to reconcile the fact that Tommy hadn’t cheated on her, that Danielle had tricked him, taken advantage of him, assaulted him, and that Tommy had been so horrified that Sersha saw, with the fact that she’s been heartbroken for the last few days. It’s as if she’s been feeling the pain of a broken leg for over twenty-four hours, only to find that it’s nothing and that she doesn’t even have a bruise. It’s disorienting.
Sersha pulls her phone out of her pocket and turns it on. There are a lot of missed calls, voice messages, and texts. She sends a group text to Black Lilith and Mikayla.
Sersha: Tommy showed me the video. I’m sorry for worrying you.
She gets a message from Mikayla immediately.
Mikayla: Call me when you’re ready.
Dash’s text comes as Tommy is walking back to their booth with two pints of amber liquid.
Dash: thank zombie jesus yall scared the shit out of me xx
Slate: love you both galway girl.
There’s no message from Logan, but Sersha assumes that he was with Mikayla when she sent hers. She smiles at the screen as Tommy sets down the drinks. Closing the screen down, she shoves the phone back into her pants.
“Thanks,” she says.
“You’re welcome,” Tommy replies. He still looks unsure of himself as he joins her in the booth. “I’m… you’ve got to know how sorry I am.”
“From what I saw, it wasn’t your fault.”
“I know, but I’m still so… so sorry that you got hurt,” he says.
Sersha takes a deep gulp of cider so that the lump in her throat doesn’t rise too high.
“Sersha, I hate that you saw me like that. I thought it was you—”
“I know,” she interrupts. She’d known the moment he’d called Danielle ‘Temptress.’ “I know, Tommy.”
She puts her drink down, and Tommy reaches across to take her hand. She feels the unusual cool of his fingers and chews her lip. She didn’t think that she’d feel that anymore. She hadn’t reconciled herself to it, but she’d been planning to. She’d told herself over and over that Tommy is a monster and that he doesn’t deserve her tears. But now she knows he’s not.
“I’m just… so glad,” she says.
Tommy’s smile is soft and grateful as he pulls her hand up to his lips and kisses it. She feels herself melt.
“God, Tommy, I was… I could hardly think, I was so distraught.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Like really distraught,” Sersha says. “I’ve never, ever been so upset at something a man did.”
Tommy grimaces and kisses her hand again. “I’m sorry…”
“No, you don’t understand… I’ve never cared about someone enough for them to hurt me like that.”
Tommy’s eyes go wide at Sersha’s words, but there’s also a faint smile on his lips. His blue eyes search hers. She can smell the clean scent of him from across the booth.
“I care about you, Tommy.”
“I care about you too, Sersh,” he replies quietly.
She can see the bartender watching them with interest from behind the counter. Sersha knows that this is probably the most drama that the woman has seen in this bar for the day. Leaning forward, Sersha drops her voice so that it’s barely above a whisper, “I think I might even be persuaded to fall in love with you,” she tells him. The dreaded ‘L’ word falls from her lips so easily. Sersha hadn’t dared to let herself think it while she’d still been hurting, but now that she’s seen how much he can hurt her, she knows that it can’t be anything else. No one can betray a person like someone they love.
Tommy’s smile is dazzling. “I don’t think I’ll need much persuasion,” he tells her.
He leans across the booth and kisses her. It’s chaste and sweet and everything she’d been desperate for over the last twenty-four hours. Sersha tilts her head and loses herself in the kiss for a moment, until the sound of applause from the men in the bar and the bartender makes her laugh so hard that she has to pull away, only to see Tommy laughing with her.
The brownstone that Black Lilith shares is surprisingly clean for a space shared by four men. Sersha has a feeling that she has Tommy to thank for that. After seeing the way that he’d pottered around his family’s home, tidying as he went, Sersha feels confident in that assumption, though Dash seems to be surprisingly good at keeping things tidy as well. He’s the only one in the group, apart from Mikayla and Sersha, who’d thought to use a paper towel to hold his pizza as they share their boxes around the coffee table in the living room.
“So what do you think of the place?” Slate asks from his spot cross-legged on the ground next to Mikayla’s legs. He’s got a mouth half-full of pizza but he can still speak.
Sersha looks around the room. The walls are painted gold, but a kind of mangy, uneven gold which tells her that the boys probably painted the walls themselves. The coffee table looks like they got it from a flea market but the couches look new. There’s a bookshelf in the corner with Sci-Fi books and comics. Instruments litter the room—a ukulele behind the couch, a guitar beneath the window, a piano pushed up against the opposite wall. Logan and Mikayla are wrapped around each other on one of the couches. Sersha and Tommy are side-by-side on the other, not quite as entwined as the other couple, while Dash and Slate are on the floor.
It feels homey. It feels like the sort of place that a family would live.
“It’s nice,” Sersha says. Tommy grins into his slice and leans over so that his side is pressed against hers. “Big.”
�
��Well, we need space for all the ladies,” Slate says, winking at her. “Maybe I’ll get a steady girlfriend. Tommy and Logan can’t be the ones having all the fun.”
“Bullshit!” Dash says. “As if you’re gonna settle down before I do.”
Sersha feels Tommy reach around to rub her shoulder blade with his thumb. It turns out that they’re not as touchy-feely of a couple as Mikayla and Logan are, at least not in public. But then again, no one is as touchy-feely as Mikayla and Logan are. Sersha and Tommy can’t seem to keep their hands off of each other when they’re alone, but when they’re in front of other people they tend to keep it low-key. Sersha can’t remember if it was a conscious decision on their part or if it’s just a natural part of their relationship.
These little touches are like secrets. Hidden moments where Tommy and Sersha can show what they’re feeling without bringing anyone else into their bubble.
“Speaking of me being Tommy’s steady girlfriend,” Sersha says. “I’ve got a bone to pick with you, Slate!”
Slate cocks his head like a Labrador that’s heard something weird. “A bone?” he says, making Sersha snort. “Pick away, beautiful.”
“When you described your three ways with Tommy. Which, by the way…” she turns to Tommy and gives him a significant look, “…we’re gonna need to explore the possibilities there.” Tommy waggles his eyebrows at her while Dash giggles into his pizza. “But Slate, you accused Tommy of having stamina issues and I can now confirm…” she has to raise her voice because the men and Mikayla are laughing, almost drowning Sersha out, “…I can now confirm that you are a dirty, rotten liar, Slate whatever-your-last-name-is!”
Slate’s got a shit-eating grin on his face while everyone else in the room laughs. Mikayla has buried her face in Logan’s neck, her shoulders shaking with her laughter, while Logan has to shift his pizza into his other hand so that she doesn’t end up wearing it. Tommy is bright red beside Sersha, but he’s laughing too so she knows that he’s not too concerned with the fact that she’s talking about his performance in front of his friends.