Volume One: In Moonlight and Memories, #1

by Julie Ann Walker

  I stop in the middle of the sidewalk. “Have you forgotten her?”

  He tugs at his ear. “You know I haven’t.”

  “Believe me, she hasn’t forgotten us either. That kind of friendship never dies.”

  “Okay, but that doesn’t mean she wants to see us. Up and leaving like we did? That kind of friendship might not die, but I can sure as shit see it turning into the mother of all grudges.”

  When he frowns thoughtfully, his expression is as familiar to me as the scar above my left temple. The scar is new, just a few months old, and yet I’ve studied it enough to memorize its exact shape and color. But I’ve been seeing this particular expression of his since I befriended the bastard in a rare moment of pity. Most pathetic thing I ever witnessed was Lucien Dubois that day in the school lunchroom, sitting by himself in the corner while the jocks on the football team hurled filthy names like son of a whore and prostitute progeny at his head.

  Speaking of heads…

  Mine’s killing me.

  We resume our journey up Maggie’s street, and I pluck my flask from my back pocket. Unscrewing the cap, I take a deep pull. The whiskey slides down my throat and hits my belly like a firebomb. I welcome the burn, knowing it’ll take the edge off of the knife skewering my skull.

  “You’re not doing yourself any favors swilling that stuff.” Luc glowers.

  The liquor sours in my stomach. “When you get blown to hell by a suicide bomber, feel free to hand out advice. Until then, mind your own shit.”

  I can tell he wants to argue, but doesn’t. Loyal, slow to anger, and…most important…kind. That’s Luc for you. The cool-headed yin to my hot-tempered yang. Probably why we’ve made such a good team all these years.

  Undoubtedly why we’re both still alive.

  “So how d’ya wanna play this?” he asks.

  He’s a typical Southerner with a typical slowness to the cadence of his speech. But he has a way of smashing his words together to make up for lost time.

  “It’s Maggie. We don’t have to play it any way.”

  “You didn’t exactly leave things with her on good terms. You might wanna start with an apology and work your way up from there.”

  The memory of that awful day tries to claw its way to the surface. I punch it in the face until it retreats. “You know how it was for me,” I say irritably. “I was too ashamed to tell her what I almost did. And if I’d seen her again, I wouldn’t have been able to leave. You and I both know I had to leave.”

  He shrugs. “But that was then and this is now.”

  “Right.” I take another fortifying slug of whiskey before screwing the cap on my flask and shoving it into my back pocket. “And now I have a plan.” The Plan.

  I step off the curb when a bachelorette party comes our way.

  How do I know it’s a bachelorette party? The plastic penis necklaces the women are wearing are my first clue. My second is that one of them has on a white tank top that reads, “I’m getting married.” While her entourage is wearing black tank tops that read, “So we’re getting drunk!”

  Their necklines are low. Their boobs are sky-high. And the looks on their faces as they stare at Luc can be described with only one word: predatory. Their eyes flit over him like flies around cake.

  Not that I’m dog food or anything. I get my fair share of female attention too. Some might say more than my fair share. But back when I first met Luc, it was me who knew how to charm all the girls. Or…one girl in particular.

  Sometime during the last decade, however, Luc went and grew into himself. Realized it a few years back when one of the female support personnel for our twelve-man commando unit leaned over to me during a sitrep—that’s short for situation report for all you nonmilitary types—and whispered, “I swear he walks into the room and I spontaneously ovulate.”

  I wink at one of the ladies who’s sizing me up and then grin when she blushes.

  Luc frowns as they pass, and we’re engulfed in a choking cloud of perfume. “Thought you came back here to reconnect with Maggie May.” The censure in his voice is unmistakable.

  “I came back so we can both reconnect with her. And because, for better or worse, New Orleans is home.” Home. That one simple, yet complicated, word takes root in my heart and sends up spindly shoots that flower and bloom, filling my chest. “I want to spend the rest of my life eating beignets and walking these crumbling streets,” I add.

  “We shoulda brought her flowers.”

  That makes me snort. “Yeah, sure. I can see it now. ‘Here, Maggie. Here are some tulips to make up for running away and not bothering to contact you for ten years.’”

  I look both ways before crossing the street and stepping onto the opposite curb. Fedora is still leaning against Maggie’s balcony railing, not hiding his curious stare. I snap him a quick salute. He touches a finger to the brim of his hat.

  Raising my voice, I take a chance she’s home and yell, “Magnolia May Carter! Get your sweet ass out here! I’ve missed your pretty face!”

  Probably not the most circumspect way to let her know I’m back, but I’ve never been one to pussyfoot around.

  Fedora looks over his shoulder, and that’s when I spot Maggie pressed against the wall between the two open windows. My heart pounds hard enough to burst through my chest as she edges toward the railing. The evening is so soft and feathery that for a moment her profile is cameoed against the pale light streaming between the buildings.

  I don’t know if I want to shout with joy or crumble into a heap of sorrow because…

  She looks good.

  Still a little thing, topping out at barely two inches over five feet, but she’s curvier than she used to be. She fills out that pair of jeans like a dream.

  Guess ten years will do that to a girl. You know, turn her into a woman and all that jazz.

  Her dark hair, once long enough to brush the small of her back, is now cut to shoulder length and falls around her heart-shaped face in messy waves. But her eyes haven’t changed. They’re still as blue as a robin’s egg.

  Angel eyes.

  Eyes that haunt my dreams.

  Hundreds of times, I’ve thought about what it might be like to see her again. Imagined all the things she could say. But she exceeds my expectations when she plants her hands on her hips and cocks her head at a saucy angle. “Well, butter my butt and call me a biscuit. I thought for sure I’d never see your sorry hides again.”

  Her accent is pure New Orleans. Brooklyn-by-way-of-the-Mississippi-River-Delta. A strange mash-up of a Southern drawl and Northern pronunciations heard only in this city.

  “Maggie May, it sure is…” There’s a hitch in Luc’s voice as he stumbles to get the words out. “It’s so good to see you. It’s been way too long.”

  For a decade, I managed to parse the pain I felt at leaving her, at losing her, into bearable, bite-sized pieces. But seeing her again has made them congeal. Now they’re stuck in my throat like chunks of concrete.

  Was I wrong to come back here?

  No. This is right. This is the only way.

  “And whose fault is that, Lucien Dubois?” she demands. “I’ve been here. Where have y’all been?”

  “We…” Luc starts, but then he shakes his head helplessly.

  It was never his idea to cut off all communication with her, and I know what doing so has cost him over the years. Back then, I convinced him it was the only way she’d move on. From me. From us. From what happened that night in the swamp. Told him it was the best thing for everyone involved. Told him it would keep her safe and ensure the superintendent of the New Orleans Police Department never had any reason to doubt their story. I told him to just…let her go.

  Now the look in her eyes—all that old affection mixed with confusion and more than a little hurt—tells me what I’ve known all along. What I’ve known but chose to ignore. We can’t let go of each other. From the moment we met, she saw me and I saw her. And together with Luc, the three of us made up the whole wor
ld.

  Fedora looks from her to us then back again. “Best be on my way, cher.” His thick Cajun accent makes the endearment sound like it should be spelled sha. “Now, if you decide to do yourself a favor and leave work early tonight, come see us play at da Spotted Cat, mais yeah?”

  When he kisses her cheek before stepping over the windowsill and disappearing into her apartment, I feel a green-eyed monster hop atop my shoulder. The little shit whispers all sorts of ideas in my ear. Most of them revolve around feeding Fedora a five-fingered sandwich.

  But I lost the right to fight for her ten years ago. Besides, fighting was part of Old Cash. New Cash has to focus on The Plan.

  “Well, are y’all coming up, or do I have to traipse into the middle of the street to hug your necks?” she asks.

  She’s always been good like that. Able to buck up no matter how much shock or anguish or agitation she might be feeling. I’d bet two inches of my dick that right now she’s struggling with all three.

  “We’ll come up,” Luc says before I have time to consider whether it’s a good idea to go inside her home. To see what she’s become, who she’s become. To smell her wildflower smell and feel her skin against mine when she hugs me.

  More shaken than I was the day I woke up in the hospital to a mind-melting headache, I follow Luc to the gate beside the door of the spice shop occupying the street level of Maggie’s building. In true New Orleans style, her apartment is accessed by a short tunnel leading from the sidewalk to a central courtyard. From there, we’ll find a set of stairs going up to her place.

  Fedora is at the gate to meet us. It squeaks painfully on its hinges when he opens it. “Jean-Pierre Marchand.” He extends a hand.

  Luc is the first to shake, giving Marchand his name.

  “Dubois, huh?” the Cajun muses. “Well, thank you for ridin’ to Maggie’s rescue all dem years ago. Me, I don’t know what I’d do without her.”

  Luc blinks in surprise. Considering he’s only ever told me what really happened that night after prom, I understand why he’s taken aback. If Maggie told Marchand, then Marchand must be someone truly special.

  The green-eyed monster on my shoulder gains ten pounds and starts talking faster.

  “Cash Armstrong,” I say when Marchand offers me his hand. I squeeze his fingers harder than is probably necessary, but if the Cajun notices, he doesn’t let it show.

  Instead, he leans forward and says with quiet menace, “Good to meet you. And me, I don’t care how long it’s been. If ya hurt Maggie again, I’ll break your head, yeah?”

  A startled laugh bursts from me. I decide on the spot to like the Cajun.

  “Sorry to tell you, man.” I gesture to the scar above my temple. “But that’s already been done.”

  He narrows his eyes in consideration, then tips his hat to us before sauntering down the street. He’s whistling a tune that’s vaguely familiar. When I see the fiddle case in his hand, it comes to me. “When the Saints Go Marching In.” An old Louis Armstrong classic. Luc was teaching Maggie to play it on the guitar in the weeks before we left New Orleans.

  “After you.” Luc holds the gate wide and I walk through the short tunnel into the courtyard. The brick pavers are old and rounded at the edges. Some are jacketed in a soft layer of green moss. Others are crumbling or missing altogether. Wrought-iron furniture with bright red cushions is arranged around the space, and a large fountain dripping cool, clear water stands sentinel in the center of it all.

  The air is humid and heavy with the smells from the spice shop and… Downy fabric softener. Someone nearby is doing a load of laundry.

  Here in the shade of the buildings, the small amount of sunlight remaining outside is lost. But white twinkle lights strung along the railings of the inner galleries cast the whole place in a magical glow.

  There’s nowhere on earth quite like the Crescent City. No sound quite like the wind over the jigsaw rooftops of The Quarter. No sight quite like the big paddle wheel on the Steamboat Natchez. No joy quite like the daily revelry in the streets.

  Through all the laughing and crying, the birthing and dying, this city…she abides. Like a jewel in the crown of the South, she gleams eternal. And despite the erratic rhythm of my heart and my sweaty palms, I can’t deny it’s good to be back.

  “Come up.” Maggie’s voice drifts down to us from above. She’s come out the other side of her apartment to stand on the gallery that runs the length of her unit.

  Luc beats me to the stairs and takes the steps two at a time, his boot heels clapping eagerly on the treads. Once he hits the landing, he stops, staring at Maggie the way he’s always stared at her. They’re close enough to touch, and yet the years of silence have created a chasm between them.

  Guilt hits me hard. I’m the one who built that distance. I’m to blame for…everything. But leave it to Maggie to bridge the divide. She takes two steps and throws herself into Luc’s arms.

  I glance down at my own boots, too ashamed to see the relief in my best friend’s eyes. But my chin jerks up again when I hear Maggie laugh. It’s a gossamer sound, as light as cotton candy. Luc twirls her around, sending her hair flying in a silky curtain that makes my fingers itch to reach out and touch.

  When the green-eyed monster starts up again, I flick the fucker off my shoulder and imagine stomping on its head. No time like the present to set The Plan into motion.

  Making my way up the stairs, I reach the landing as Luc sets Maggie on her feet. She looks at me, her cheeks flushed prettily. “Cash?”

  I try to remember The Plan, but I can’t remember who I am, where I am, when I am. With Maggie using those angel eyes on me, with my name fitting inside her mouth like it’s meant to be there, I’m in high school again. A boy on the verge of becoming a man. A neophyte falling in love for the first time.

  “Maggie.” Those two syllables are pulled out of me by the force of feelings that will never die.

  Chapter Three

  ______________________________________

  Luc

  Time is a strange thing. Some moments drag on forever. Others? They pass in the blink of an eye.

  Take me, for instance. One day, I was a boy running as quickly as I could toward manhood. The next, I was a man who simply wanted to be a boy again. To go back to a time and a place where heartbreak and rejection, lost years and lost opportunities weren’t a part of my story.

  Long ago, Maggie May was mine.

  Well…not mine exactly. Not in the way you might think. But she was my only friend.

  At Braxton Academy, New Orleans’s most elite private high school, I was an outcast on account of my mother, and because I was a poor kid from the swamp with black-water brain and mud blood. Maggie was an outcast because she was a lowly freshman who’d lost her parents in Hurricane Katrina two years earlier. She walked around with a haunted look on her face that was a constant reminder of a tragedy that most folks in town (especially the rich ones) just wanted to forget.

  That’s how we found each other.

  Even though she was two years younger, and even though we didn’t have any of the same classes, her loneliness and my loneliness led us to the same place after school. Unlike most kids who took off the minute the final bell rang, Maggie and I sought the quiet solitude of the library.

  I can still remember the first time I saw her…

  She was wearing a yellow sundress under a white cardigan, and her long, black hair reached down to her waist. I rounded the corner of the aisle where she was browsing and stopped to watch her run her fingers along the spines of the books.

  She reminded me of a siren from Greek mythology. Or a fairy from European folklore. With skin like porcelain and soft, slender limbs, she stole my breath at first glance. Literally. It whooshed out of me like I’d been punched in the gut.

  She must have heard because she turned. Her sky-blue eyes met mine, and her cupid’s-bow mouth curved into a tremulous smile.

  That’s all it took.

  When she ask
ed, “Have you read Harry Potter?” I could hardly speak. But you better believe I went home that night with The Sorcerer’s Stone in hand. I read every one of those books (and some of them are long) so I’d have something to talk to her about.

  It took me two weeks to find the courage to touch her hand while we sat at one of the library’s wide wooden tables. Twice as long as that to get up the gumption to ask her to the diner on the corner for milkshakes after school.

  That’s where it happened.

  That’s where Cassius “Cash” Armstrong walked through the door, sat down at our booth, and I lost Maggie.

  Not that I blame him. Or her, for that matter. Some things simply are.

  Like the way Cash came to my defense against the whole football team his first day at school. Like the way he nearly got himself suspended for telling Dean Sullivan, the police superintendent’s son and Braxton Academy’s star quarterback, that he’d beat the living shit out of him if he ever said another word against me or my mom. (Back then, that was a true threat. Whereas it took me a good portion of my twenties to grow into my frame, Cash was as big at sixteen as he is now.) Like the way Maggie May’s voice got softer and lower when she spoke to him.

  Like the way she looked at him then.

  Like the way she’s looking at him now…

  On account of me loving them both, and because I know they both love me, I don’t begrudge them their connection. In fact, I’m happy to see it’s as strong as ever.

  After a decade of riding Humvees and donkeys through the mountains of Afghanistan, after years of assembling guerrilla armies and training military police to fight the opium trade controlled by the Taliban, and after a head injury that made him “unfit for duty” and unable to continue doing the job he’s so good at, Cash could use a little comfort. A little grace.

  He could use a little Maggie May.

  I see the look that comes over his face as she goes up on tiptoe to embrace him (one of wonder and guilt and remorse). And I close my eyes, sucking in a long, steadying breath. Smoky jazz hangs in the air. It competes with the muted clip-clop of the carriage mules taking tourists on rides around the Vieux Carré and the hollow drip-drop of the fountain in the courtyard below.