His Uptown Girl

by Liz Talley

  “Sometimes love happens.”

  “Love?” she chirped, trying to rein in the rollicking panicky feeling in her gut. “You know what? I don’t want to talk anymore. Forget about this. It’s the emotion and wine. Not a good mix.”

  Inside the club, the band struck up a fast beat and the doors flew open. Several people stumbled out, their chatter and laughter almost sacrilegious in the severity of the night, in Eleanor’s realization she couldn’t prevent herself from falling in love with Dez.

  Dez placed both hands on either side of her head. He didn’t kiss her, and she didn’t blame him. She was soggy, but he did level gray eyes at her. “You said being honest with one another is the only way.”

  “I didn’t say only way. I said something about, you know… I don’t remember. But being honest isn’t always the right thing, especially when you end up looking like a fool. I should be able to handle dating without turning into a whacko.”

  His eyes puddled into velvet. “You know you’re much more to me than a friend and a lover, don’t you?”

  “That’s what scares me.”

  “Why?”

  “Because the last guy I loved took something sacred and crushed me and then left me behind to deal with an assload of crap. I was stalked, belittled, talk-show fodder and it made me—”

  “A survivor. Not every guy is Skeeter. You can’t apply that to all of us. It’s unfair.”

  “Why not? Everywhere I look love doesn’t last. I’m a prime example. You’re a prime example. Things go to shit all the time.”

  “But we survived.”

  “I know. But it’s very, very tenuous. So, feeling this way about you paralyzes me, Dez.”

  “So if things don’t work out between us, you’ll wither up and die?”

  Would she? She’d been through so much after Skeeter was killed—erecting walls to protect herself. Clinging to a safe world made sense…until she’d pretended to lock herself out of her store, and the cracks had started. Bricks fell to the ground and she stepped outside, blinking into the sun, feeling again. But now that the walls lay in ruin around her, enemies assembled, and she stood naked, something deep inside prodded her to erect a new fortress. “I don’t know.”

  “Well, I do. You’re strong, just like this city. Storms will come, but you will endure no matter how much it chips away and reshapes you.”

  Eleanor nodded. “Sorry for ruining things tonight.”

  “Not to toss your own words back at you, but you’re human.”

  She grasped his hand, determined to salvage the night, to do what he suggested—stand strong. “You’re pretty smart.”

  “For a street musician who digs old ladies.”

  His teasing was exactly what she needed. Time to bring lightness and sexiness back to their night. “Speak for yourself. I’m working this dress with no support hose, and I’m ready for you to check out the new lingerie I bought today.”

  She tugged his hand to the back of her thigh where the garter held the fishnet stockings. He slid his hand beneath her dress and cupped her bare bottom. It was as forward as Eleanor had ever been while up against a wall outside a club.

  “Mmm,” Dez growled in her ear, trailing one finger toward the inside of her thigh. “I like this nonexistent lingerie.”

  She smiled. “Take me home and I’ll let you see it.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  TRE TOOK THE 40-ounce malt liquor from Grady and leaned against the cool metal of the Charger. Crazy Eight and some dude they called Hoops lit up a blunt and passed it back and forth as rap music boomed from the car radio, heavy on the bass, making the car hum beneath Tre. It was bumpin’ and made him feel chill.

  “So you gonna go back to playin or what?” Grady asked, taking a draw on the drink he held in his hand. He and Grady had played horns together in school. Grady had played the trumpet, not as well as Tre played the sax, but good enough to earn him a spot in the Lil’ Brass Rebirth Band. Of course, those years were behind both of them, but every now and then they talked music, and Tre was reminded of a time when they had been friends. Before Grady rolled with the 3-N-Gs. Before life got hard.

  “Yeah, got a gig across from where I work. Pays pretty good if tips roll in.”

  “Cool. That’s what you need to be doin’. That’s your future, cuz.”

  “Yeah, it’s with Dez Batiste. Remember him?”

  “For sure. He’s tight on those keys. Always thought he was cool.”

  “Yeah,” Tre said, keeping an eye on his front door. He’d returned from the nursing home two hours ago, dropped off by Alicia with a sweet kiss. He’d stepped out on the porch, wanting a reprieve from Cici and the kids, and Grady had spied him and held up a beer. Usually, Tre would ignore his former friend, but tonight he felt good. Like bad luck couldn’t touch him. So he’d walked over to hang for a while.

  “Yo,” Hoops said. “Let’s bounce and roll over to Biggie J’s. He got bitches crawlin’ all over his crib and I need some honey, ya know?” He opened the car door.

  “You wanna go to Biggie’s with us?” Grady’s dark eyes glittered a challenge. “We just gonna chill, dog.”

  Tre glanced back at his house, and then at the guys testing him. He didn’t want to seem like a bitch, but he also didn’t want to go to Biggie whatever’s crib. Grady and his boys ran into trouble often and “just chillin’” could turn into something not cool fast. “Nah, I better bail. Got stuff in the morning.” Like church with Alicia.

  “Whatever.”

  Something inside Tre flickered at the unspoken rebuke in Grady’s eyes. Tre hadn’t been nowhere but work and his house in a while, and Grady said they was chillin’. Probably gonna smoke blunt and drink. Get crunk. No big deal. “You know, maybe I’ll roll with you tonight.”

  “Cool,” Grady said, draining the forty and pulling his keys from his pocket. “Let’s head.”

  They all climbed inside the car—Grady and Crazy Eight up front, Hoops and Tre in the back. Dr. Dre rapped old school on the radio as they pulled away, and Tre settled back against the leather, reaching for the cell phone he kept in his back pocket, but it wasn’t there. Damn. He’d left it on the counter at home.

  They rolled slow ’cause that’s how Grady liked it. He could see his friend’s head move side to side as he surveyed the hood. Crazy Eight’s shoulders were tight and he reached under the seat and pulled out a piece.

  Tre’s gut tightened. “What Crazy Eight doin’ with that?”

  Crazy Eight turned, white teeth glinting in the darkness. “Keepin the peace, boy. We ain’t gettin’ jumped.”

  Grady’s eyes met Tre’s in the mirror. “Chill, dog. We ain’t lookin’ for trouble. Eight likes his nine out, that’s all. Never know.”

  Tre tried to relax, but with a dude holding a gun, he couldn’t. They’d only gone three streets over when Tre knew he’d made a mistake. He should ask for them to put him out. Better to walk the streets. What if they got pulled over by the cops? Weed, guns and beer. Not to mention any of the dudes in the car could have a warrant out. Tre had screwed up when he’d climbed in. He was stupid.

  “You making me jumpy,” Hoops said, puffing on his blunt. “Here.”

  He passed the blunt to Tre. “Nah, man. I don’t roll that way.”

  “You don’t smoke?” Hoops drawled.

  Tre shook his head and looked out at the hood passing beyond the glass. As soon as they got to Biggie’s whoever the hell he was, Tre would walk to a bus stop and go home. Thank God he still had his bus pass in his back pocket.

  “Ah, naw. Look at this shit.” Crazy Eight waved his piece toward a house on the corner. Someone stood out front, hand in pocket. “You think he stupid or something?”

  Grady’s eyes met his again in the mirror. “Look, cuz. We gotta stop for this fool. He owe an OG some serious cheese and hadn’t paid up. Been talking to a snitch, too. We got business, you dig?”

  Crazy Eight slid a round in the chamber and hopped out as Grady slowed. Tre clutched
the seat as he watched the homeboy in front of the house take off toward the stairs, scrambling like something in a cartoon.

  “Shit, this fo real,” Hoops laughed, taking a drag on the blunt as Crazy Eight start yelling at the dude running.

  “Get your ass out here,” Crazy Eight called as Grady put the car into Park but left it running. “You know you owe. Get your punk ass back out here.”

  “This ain’t my beef,” Tre said to Grady, leaning up. “Let me out.”

  “Where you gonna go?” Grady asked, opening up the center console and pulling out a Desert Eagle. “Look, this won’t take long.”

  “No, Grady. This ain’t me.”

  Grady opened the door. “Then run, bitch.”

  Tre climbed out, one foot hitting the pavement as gunfire burst out on the sagging front porch of the Central City house. Leaping toward the sidewalk, Tre twisted to see Grady climbing out behind him, gun in hand.

  Tre didn’t think. He ran.

  Bitch or not, he wasn’t part of whatever Grady and Crazy Eight had going down. The glow of Hoops’s blunt shone through the tinted window of the Charger, and that was the last thing Tre saw as he sprinted toward the heavy bushes surrounding a house down the street. The bushes ran right to the edge of the cracked sidewalk—a perfect shield to duck behind to avoid the battlefield sprung up in the middle of New Orleans.

  Gunfire spat at the night, lighting up the darkness as Tre ran as fast as his legs would carry him toward somewhere far away from Grady and whatever went down behind him. Shouting erupted. More gunfire.

  The sidewalk was uneven, and Tre tripped over a root, sprawling onto the pavement four houses down from where Grady’s car was parked. The headlights were still on, engine running. Grady stood beside the closed door of the car as more gunfire, this time from an automatic, sounded, then Grady wasn’t standing anymore.

  Tre’s friend pitched forward, blood spurting, flying into the air, like on a video game. A silent scream emerged from Tre’s mouth as the Charger absorbed a volley of bullets, the metal punctured with a line of holes. Glass flew as shouts sounded around him. Men yelled as a car engine fired nearby.

  An old Lincoln Continental burst out of the house’s drive, tires screeching, stopping for whoever it was who stood on the porch holding what looked like a Tec-9. The dude shouldered the gun and jumped inside as the car shot by Grady’s Charger.

  Tre felt small rocks beneath his hands pushing into his skin, the sting of cuts from his fall, the cold shrouding him. The woody stem of the bushes poked into his cheek and the buttons of his collared shirt bit into his neck.

  What he didn’t feel was anything inside him. He was cold, empty. Just like that night years ago.

  And then like water in a bathtub when the plug is yanked out, he was sucked back into darkness.

  In that moment, he fell through time, and there stood his mama with eyes of sadness watching him and Shorty D. And Shorty D, not as he was now, but as a toddler, snot-nosed and baby sweet. And G-Slim, hard and determined to kill. And that night. That night Tre ran…just like he ran this night.

  Always running from death.

  He slammed back to the present as doors to the houses around him began to open. In the clear cold, he heard the sirens.

  Run, Tre. Get up and go. Pretend this night never happened, just like you pretended the other night had never happened.

  In. Out. Breathe.

  But Trevon was no longer an eleven-year-old boy. He was a man, and though he wanted to forget all the bad in life, he knew he couldn’t run from it.

  He stood as a few other people pushed their heads out their doors into the night, like turtles finally brave enough to see what had gone down on their street.

  Tre brushed himself off and walked back to the Charger. He didn’t want to go, but he did. Grady had been a banger, but he’d also been his friend. They’d thrown the ball together in the street, shot hoops, eyed pretty girls and created music together. Tre wasn’t the man Grady was; he was the man he’d promised his mama he’d be. He was the man Big Mama had raised. He wasn’t perfect, but he wasn’t going to turn his head the other way, not when Grady might need him.

  As he approached the Charger, Tre saw his friend facedown, his gun about a foot from him, blood pooling under his chest. Grady’s face was turned away from Tre, eyes open. Tre knew he was gone. He didn’t touch anything. He caught sight of Crazy Eight lying slumped at the foot of the old house’s steps. Another man, maybe the one Crazy Eight chased, lay half in the open door, half out. Not one of them moved.

  Then Tre heard a moan from inside the car.

  Hoops.

  He jogged to the passenger’s side as an older man crossed the street, approaching the car as if it contained a bomb. Tre looked at the man who wore a faded Hornets shirt and appeared scared stiff. “Call 911.”

  “Already did,” the older man said, eyeing the car. “Someone still in there?”

  “Yeah,” Tre said, opening the door. “I’m going to see if I can help.”

  “You with them?” the man asked, still on guard, shifting his gaze up and down the street.

  “No, sir. I’m definitely not with them.”

  *

  DEZ STIRRED as the phone rang. He didn’t want to give up the dreams, the piano beneath his hands and something to do with a recording contract and a hungry dog sitting outside the bar, but the ringing was insistent.

  He shifted in the bed and felt Eleanor solid against his back.

  “Phone,” he muttered, flopping an arm over, inching toward the edge of the bed.

  “Mmmm?” she said, rolling onto her other side.

  He pushed into a sitting position, fumbling for the wireless sitting on the mirrored bedside table. He found it, pressed a button. “Hello?”

  “Hello? Mrs. Theriot?”

  He passed a hand over his face and glanced at the alarm clock. 1:45 a.m. “Eleanor.”

  She stirred, blinking as he flicked on the lamp. “What is it?”

  “Phone,” he said, shoving it her way.

  Even though sleepy, her eyes widened. Never a good call when it came in the wee hours of the morning. “Blakely?”

  He shrugged.

  “Hello?” she said, turning panicked eyes to him. He tried to portray calmness, but it was hard with his eyes still not adjusted to the light.

  “Wait a sec. You’re talking about Tre? Trevon Jackson? A shooting?” Her eyes widened.

  Dez slid out of bed and grabbed his pants from the fancy armchair, and then searched for his shirt.

  “Of course. I’ll be there in a few minutes.” Eleanor hung up the phone and pushed a hand through her tousled hair. “Tre’s in trouble. There was a drive-by shooting and he was involved somehow. They have him down at the station. He asked them to call me.”

  Dez buttoned his shirt. “You don’t have to go. I’ll take care of it.”

  “No, he’s my employee and he called me. We’ll go together,” she said, throwing back the covers, wearing nothing but the skin the good Lord gave her. A small part of him wanted to sweep her back into bed for one more round of finding the good in life in Eleanor’s arms. But the rest of him knew they had something to do—help a young man who had nowhere else to turn.

  Ten minutes later they backed out of Eleanor’s drive and headed toward downtown.

  “I didn’t know Tre was involved in gangs,” Eleanor muttered, her hair in a crooked ponytail, which made her look cute in a slouchy way. Street light streaked by, throwing stripes on her sleepy face—it made her look sad…something that she hadn’t been able to shed even during their intense lovemaking. He sensed her pulling away, but didn’t know what to do about it. Just like Tre, Eleanor was accustomed to going it alone. With Blakely pulling crap, her parents standing across the neutral ground from her, and the enormous history of being a Theriot, Eleanor prepared for a storm. She latched the virtual shutters on her emotions…because she was scared.

  He understood. He’d done something similar a
fter his recordings were destroyed, but instead of shutting everyone out, he’d tried to become someone else, to become a regular guy. And he wasn’t a regular guy, no nine-to-five guy, and he never would be. Suburbia felt like a prison. “I didn’t see any signs he was in a gang. No tats, no colors, no vibe coming off him. If anyone were to ask, I’d say he wasn’t involved, but sometimes we don’t know people the way we think we do.”

  Eleanor slid her gaze to him as he took the exit off I-10. He wondered what she thought, but was too afraid to ask. He probably didn’t want to know.

  They pulled into the police station, and as they climbed the steps to the front glass doors, Dez took Eleanor’s hand in his. She squeezed his hand and looked over at him. “Thanks for coming with me, and thanks for caring about Tre. He’s not easy to know.”

  “Who is?” Dez asked.

  She stopped. “You’re saying weird things. Did my honesty scare you earlier?”

  “No, but I think it scared you.”

  Eleanor shook her head. “No, honesty doesn’t scare me. Falling in love does. I don’t want that in my life. I don’t want to feel that…”

  “Vulnerable?”

  “Yeah. Probably makes me weak, or maybe it makes me a fool, but I feel what I feel.”

  Dez shrugged. “Yeah, you do, but I don’t think it’s a good enough reason to run.”

  “I’m not running, am I?” she said, her green eyes flashing in the yellow glow of the station lights. “I’m here.”

  “Why?”

  “Why am I here?”

  “Yeah. If we are such a bad idea, why are you still sleeping with me? Why are you still holding my hand?”

  She dropped his hand. “I don’t know. If I were smart, I’d stop. We both agreed this was not a forever thing. It’s tearing me and Blakely apart. Causing my parents to side with the Theriots, something that never happens, by the way, but I can’t stop. I can’t let you go…yet.”

  He didn’t say anything because her admission tore a hole in his heart. But she was right. If they were going to stay buddies who took mutual pleasure in each other, it should be easy to stop. He’d always been able to walk away when things got too complicated.