by Falon Gold
“I’m glad you’re home, baby girl.” His voice is gruff against my ear.
I can imagine his thick lips stretching across this face as he smiles beneath the large nose that fits his face perfectly.
“Me too, daddy. I missed you,” I say into his wide chest, covered in a plaid, button down shirt over jeans.
Just as the front opens behind me and gives me a chill, my father steps back and pens me with a worried glance from wide set, jet black eyes.
“Where in the hell have you been, baby girl?”
“Daddy, I’m fine. I was at a hotel on vacation in Vegas. I left this morning, after taking a couple of more days for myself. I really needed it.”
Frank frowns. “Your boss works you that hard?”
“He did, but I fixed it. That’s why I’m here.”
I know I’m making light of the situation that has caused me so much pain, but the different versions of older Owens in their late thirties and early forties have walked into the great room. M y aunts, Chrysalis, and twins, Barbie and Jen, along with my other uncle Luke, the baby of the older Owens clan are all listening. That’s too many ears for my liking.
“So, you’re here to stay?” Blake asks, from behind me.
I turn around, with my hands still resting on my father’s shoulders. Blake, with my duffel bag in his hand, stops at the bottom of the stairs. My mother, with my purse and cell phone in hers, are walking up them.
“No, but I’m here for at least a couple days.”
That brings a grin to Blake’s face, which probably doesn’t mean anything good for me.
“Good, Malisa. Picking on people is frowned upon when you’re a cop, but you are my sister, so that makes it okay.”
“Mom!” I yell, just like old times, hoping to warn Blake off from the practical jokes and teasing that he’ll do, with no everlasting damage.
It’s still annoying, though.
Everyone laughs at my distress. I don’t want to imagine what they’ll do if they find out about Apollo. Lydia pauses midway up the steps then looks down at her hand, just before my cell phone rings in it.
“Don’t answer it!” I shout, but my mother’s already swiping the accept icon and raising the phone to her ear.
She shrugs and says sweetly into the mouthpiece, “Hello.”
I hang my head, and sigh. Nothing’s changed with her, either. She still does what she wants to, and that could be because she’s the product of a mob boss, or so my father claimed almost daily when I lived here.
Uncle Tommy sets loose a round of his hefty laughter, for such a short man.
“Must be the stalker,” he quips.
He’s no better than Blake.
“What stalker?” Blake demands, in a steely voice that he uses when he’s pissy, and no good will come of it.
Shit! Shit! Shit!
My head snaps up. “I don’t have a stalker, Blake.”
“Bull swanky, kid,” Tommy pipes in. “Your boss has been calling here every few hours since Sunday, checking to see if you’ve snuck out of the hotel and showed up here in the spur of the moment road trip. Looks like he was onto something, when he couldn’t get you on the horn and no one else had seen hide nor hair of you. As soon as Lydia tells him that you’re here, she’ll have another guest to put up… with,” he adds in a nonchalant tone, as if my boss showing up here would be normal.
But Uncle Tommy may be onto something. Yet, I can’t be sure if he is or isn’t, while standing down here with him. I turn, to run for the stairs, just as my mother okay’s something.
No no no!
“Mama, give me the phone please!”
She laughs into the receiver instead. “Yes, Mr. Ford, our house is fifteen miles from the airport on a straightaway. You can’t miss—”
“No mama!” I yell, waving my hands like I’m directing a fleet of aircraft, while taking the steps two at a time.
She cuts her eyes my way then turns her back, and finishes climbing the stairs. “Okay… Apollo, it is… No, you want be imposing. We’ll be glad to have you.”
Holy, holy hell!
I reach her just as she tops the staircase. Then I reach around her to snatch the phone from her hand, and run back down the steps and out the front door as if my life depends on it. Well, my broken heart depends on it anyway. I stop beside the Jeep.
“Mr. Ford, don’t come here,” I gasp, breathless from the only workout I’ve intentionally took part in, in my entire life.
He says nothing.
“Mr. Ford—”
“I’m still here, Malisa… and I’m still coming. I need to talk to you, face to face.”
I bend over, trying to place my head between my knees. I don’t know if the running has made me lightheaded, or it’s simply because I ceased to breathe when Apollo said he needed to talk to me, face to face. Both are probably a contributing factor.
“No… you don’t get… to do that,” I pant.
“Malisa, I know I shouldn’t have left Vegas, but I was angry… and hurt. Sweetheart—”
“Don’t!” I cut him off, before he wakes the sleeping storm of my emotions. I wasn’t going to give him any more opportunities to pull my heart even more to his side. “You weren’t the only one hurt. Let me go. Well, actually… Jesus, where’s the air… I should say stay away, since you’ve already let me go, but I’ll be back at work in at least a few days, so don’t call your lawyers.”
“I can’t let you go, my Lisa,” he whispers.
A bolt of lightning streaks through my abdomen and upward into my chest. My heart absorbs the electrical current, which sends my heartrate through the roof. Now, I really can’t breathe. When will I stop being affected by Apollo?
I don’t know if that is even a possibility, which makes me angry.
“You did let me go, Apollo. Now leave it that way. If you wait a few weeks, you’ll forget about what happened the other night and the day after. It was that short of a relationship.”
“Have you forgotten?” he asks softly, just as someone walks up behind me.
“Malisa,” Blake yells, making me spin around.
Privacy is a pipe dream at 256 Dillard Lane.
“Who is that?” Apollo asks, the whisper of his voice now a cold, steely, and demanding murmur.
“The cops!” I snap. “So, stay away, Mr. Ford.”
Blake reaches out an empty hand to me. “Give me the phone, Lisa Poo.”
I cringe, hating that nickname, which has a disgusting origin thanks to Blake, and yes it involves poo of course.
“No, Blake. I got this.” Then I shake my head and begin to back away.
Apollo hisses in my ear. “Malisa!”
“Mr. Ford, please don’t come here,” I beg, while stepping back from an advancing Blake, who’s still reaching for the phone.
“Malisa, you owe me the chance to explain.”
Owe him? I’d already given him everything, and he still wants more?
I grow rigid with fury and forget to keep stepping away from Blake. “You have a lot of nerve, Apollo, to think—” Blake lunges forward and rips the phone from my ear before I can finish. I don’t miss the irony of doing that to Lydia, and now Blake has done it to me.
I’ll apologize to my mother later. Right now, I need my phone back, which is going to be next to impossible. I grow more and more horrified as Blake puts the phone to his ear, while wearing one of his mischievous smiles, which is the reason for my horror. The next few minutes aren’t going to play out well for me, either, and this is how they’ll go…
I’ll start to jump, reaching for whatever Blake has snatched from me, hoping to rise above his towering frame and take it back. He’s about six four now at twenty-six years old, but I won’t get any taller than five four, at twenty-five. This is where the ‘next to impossible’ comes in. I won’t get back what Blake has taken from me until he’s ready for me to have it. Yet, I’ll try desperately to get it anyway, before he decides to give it back.
Like I said
, nothing’s changed at my childhood home. Blake’s still the harmless bully, I his helpless victim, who grabs a fistful of his sheriff’s jacket and starts to jump and grab for the phone pressed to his ear, and miss.
I scream, “Give. Me. The. Damn. Phone.”
Blake keeps the phone. “Hello.”
I resort to calling for backup, while leap frogging and coming up empty-handed, “Mama.”
Blake just moves in time with my pointless jumps, twisting his head out of the way of my desperate grabs, and I come away empty-handed, pitifully.
“This is Sheriff Powers with Arrow’s Sheriff Department. Who am I speaking with?” he asks in an official, authoritative tone, which I’ve never heard him use before.
It’s probably reserved for those he’s about to arrest. That won’t stop me from assaulting him if it gets my phone back though.
“Dammit all to hell! Give me the phone, Blake! Mama!”
He tilts his head to the side. “Oh, you’re the Apollo Ford that’s kept my sister away from home. Care to tell me why she decided to disappear then just show up at home when we haven’t seen her in all this time?”
More panic overwhelms me, and I stop jumping so the escalating feeling can take me over in peace.
“That’s not your business, Blake,” I growl low, hoping Apollo will keep quiet like he did when he chose to just fly out of my life.
But just in case he decides to unburden himself, I start to scream my mother’s name repeatedly so Blake can’t hear, and make more desperate jumps for the phone, again. He spins away. I follow the side of him that has the phone, which puts my back to the front door of the house. When he grins down at me, I wonder where the hell my mother is. Lydia should’ve been out here ages ago.
“Mr. Ford… Well, sure I’ll call you Apollo, and you’re welcome to come down. We’d love to have you for a few days… Yep, I’ll meet you in the morning about nine. Bye now.” Then Blake presses the phone into my chest gently.
I clasp my hand around the phone, holding it tightly to my chest, which is filling up with pure dread. Apollo isn’t the only one coming here in the morning.
“Dammit, Blake, do you know what you’ve done?” I ask, barely above a whisper, anxiety compressing my lungs.
He shrugs. “I offered to meet your boss and show him how to get here then find out what happened between you two.”
“It’s none of your business what he’s done, and I’m already meeting someone else at the airport in the morning!” Suddenly, I regret coming home, and step back from Blake. “I shouldn’t have come here.”
I hadn’t come home to unburden the woes of my limited love life on my family, just absorb their love so it would repair the damage Apollo had done. But my road trip backfired. Two totally different men will show up at my parents’ home in the morning, and it’s just a matter of time before my love for my boss becomes everyone’s business.
But not if I leave first.
Chapter Eleven
Blake pulls his own cell phone from his pocket. I start to realize just how much of an insensitive cad he is. I walk away, leaving him standing on the driveway alone. I have to pass by the whole Owens clan, my parents included. They’ve miraculously appeared on the front porch after Blake mucked up the rest of my life. If everyone is waiting for more drama to erupt at my expense, they all better buy a crystal ball, because I’m putting as much distance as I can between me and Arrow.
Inside the house, I take the stairs two at time. At top of the staircase, I pass by one long hallway on my immediate left that leads into my parents’ room and overlooks the second level, to walk straight into the hallway for the other three, much smaller bedrooms. The guest bedroom sits alone on the left side of the hallway, often unused. On the opposite side are the two bedrooms filled with mine and Blake’s childhoods.
My old room is at the end of the second level. The squeaky floorboards between my bedroom and Blake’s still give me away. It’s weird that the floor still squeaks under the plush, gray carpet, even after the renovation. When I’m inside my room, I lock the door behind me, and my childhood space is still decorated in pale pink, sky blue, and pine wood furniture. The room seems so tiny now, the en suite bathroom even tinier, when compared to the master bedroom in my apartment and the one I spent Saturday night in with Apollo.
Don’t think about that, Malisa, at least not right now.
I begin to make plans for my return trip to Utah, much sooner than I’d like to go, but I can’t stay at my parents’ home. There’s no peaceful way to grieve Apollo here, not with everyone up in my business. I guess it’s true that you can’t go home again.
I sit down on the striped comforter on my twin bed, beside my duffel bed and purse, which holds my plane ticket with the airport’s number on it. After punching the numbers in my phone, I wait for someone to pick up. Just as the ringing line is replaced with a greeting from a live operator, someone knocks at my bedroom door.
I ignore the knock and request a flight out as soon as possible.
“Your name, ma’am?” The operator’s voice sounds identical to the one that companies, from small to Fortune 500, seem to use for their automated systems, making me think that this lady has been doing this job for too damn long.
“My name is Malisa Owens.”
A knock trespasses against the door again, and then the knob turns wildly.
“Malisa!” Blake yells through the wooden barrier, then bangs on the door.
I ignore that, too.
“Ma’am, is your address 137 Woodard Lane Apt B in Lake City, Utah?”
“Yes,” I answer, warily. “Why does that matter?”
“Because you’re on the no-fly list,” she responds dryly.
No fly?
“What? I just flew in!”
Blake stops banging and yelling through the door.
“Yes, you just arrived in Colorado only a couple of hours ago, but you’ve just been added to the no-fly list only minutes ago, by… Sheriff Blake Powers of Arrow, Colorado.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” I scream, but I didn’t mean to do it in the operator’s ear… no, that’s a lie. I am fucking furious. Blake has literally grounded me.
“No Ms. Owens, I’m not kidding. Goodbye.” The operator even manages to say that robotically, before promptly hanging the hell up on me.
All I can do is stare at the phone in disbelief.
Blake starts turning the knob wildly, again, drawing my attention from my cell phone.
“Malisa, open the door, please.”
“Blake!” I yell, almost hysterical, “I think you’ve done enough damage for one day! Go away!”
I lean over to stuff the useless ticket back in my purse violently. I rattle the Jeep’s keys in my pocket. I grin, and the heightened state of my emotions settle. Maybe I can’t fly out of Colorado, but I sure as hell can drive away from Arrow. Eventually, Blake has to go to work, and everyone else has to go to sleep, if they all don’t just go home first.
I hear a thump against the door, followed by Blake saying, “I didn’t mean to piss you off, Lisa Poo.” His voice is muffled.
“Seriously, Blake,” I snap, and my emotions, which I’m beginning to refer to as whirlwind, kick back into high gear. “You put me on the no-fly list like I’m a goddamn domestic terrorist, and you thought you wouldn’t piss me the hell off? I would never do something like that to you. You are officially just a cop to me. Now go harass someone else.”
“Malisa, I don’t want you running off. I can just as easily call and have you taken you off the list.”
“Talk to me when you have!”
“Not until you tell me why you cut everyone off and then showed up at home, after four years.”
“I only owe my family that explanation, and they haven’t asked.” Everyone had only wanted to know where the hell had I been—a much easier question to answer.
“You’ll always be my family, Lisa Poo. Without the Owens, I don’t know where I’d be.”
Another thump echoes through the door. “I know something’s wrong, Malisa, and you’re running from it… or your boss. But you have to let me in so I can fix it, little sister.”
I have nothing to say. It seems no one can fix my heartbreak but Apollo. But I’m terrified of getting back with him, which means I’m stuck with waiting for time to dull the pain and for Blake to take me off the no-fly list.
“I’m sorry, Malisa. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”.
“Blake, you’re a damn bully! Of course, you mean to hurt me.” But he’s never gone this far before.
“It was always in fun, little sister, and I’m worried about you. Everyone is. You need to stay put so we can work through whatever’s bothering you. That’s all we want.”
His tone may be filled with regret, but I don’t care. I’d suffered enough for the last three days, and he’s blocked the only way I have of coping with my heartbreak—leaving to find a place where I can heal. As long as my air travels are blocked and I’m essentially stuck in Colorado, I have nothing to say to him or anyone else.
“Go away, Blake.”
“Jeez, Malisa, just open the door,” he whines, in a deep tenor not meant for whining.
“I don’t think so, Blake. You’ll probably take my phone and invite someone else here that I don’t want to see right now.”
“Again, I’m sorry, Lisa Poo, and I’ll fix it… somehow. But what did your boss do to you?”
“Again, I don’t want to talk about it.”
I burrow my head under the mountain of pink and blue pillows at the head of my bed, muffling any sound that may come through the door next. Suddenly, I feel as if I can’t keep my eyes open. Maintaining a broken heart and an angry dialogue is exhausting. I decide to catch a nap, at least for a couple of hours, then call Derek to cancel breakfast on my way away from here. I couldn’t find the street in this condition, but this house isn’t home anymore. Not when the man that hurt me is welcome to visit.
It’s a mistake to intentionally remember Apollo, as if I could forget him. The stupid tears make an appearance. I let them roll where they may, mainly soaking the mattress until sleep comes for me, along with the nightmare of Apollo showing up to meet my parents, with one of the ditzy socialites he’d dated in Utah. I jerk to consciousness and snap my eyes open, while laying on my side.