“You wanna go to breakfast with your parents?” he asked.
What I wanted was to find a safe place in the world, one, little, safe place. I didn’t care if it was a cardboard box in an alley in the scummiest section of New York City. If it was safe, with no murderers or bitchy ex-girlfriends of the guy’s bed I was sleeping in or ex-high school sweethearts who yelled at me and teased me about what I called my cat and who could kiss way, way better than he did twenty-two years ago, then I wanted to be in that box.
“You wanna know what I want?” I asked Colt.
His arms gave me a squeeze before one of his hands drifted into my hair and I felt him wrapping it around his fist.
“Yeah, I wanna know what you want.”
Then before I could stop it and even before I knew it was what I wanted, I said, “I want Dee and Morrie and the kids to come with us and, yeah, I wanna have breakfast with Mom and Dad at Frank’s. The whole family, eating Frank’s pancakes and drinking coffee and pretending life is normal.”
His eyes moved over my face before he said quietly, “You want that, I can get you that.”
“I want it,” I said quietly back.
“You got it, baby.”
Then he let me go, gently set me back a few inches with his hands at my waist, twisted, nabbed his phone from the counter, flipped it open, hit a button and about five seconds later, he said, “Morrie, get Dee and the kids together, February wants a family breakfast at Frank’s. Meet us and Jack and Jackie there in an hour.” His eyes came to me before he said, “Right. See you there. Later.”
He flipped his phone shut and said, “Get a shower, Feb, or we’ll be late.”
Without anything else to do, I turned from Colt, finished making my coffee and I walked through Colt’s crackerbox house that I liked too much, into his bedroom with the Harry’s print I liked too much, passed his bed which was big and comfortable and I liked it too much, into his bathroom which was just normal but it was still his so I liked it too much and there I took a shower.
* * * * *
Sundays were golden days, always had been.
Years ago when we were younger, Mom and Dad didn’t open the bar on Sunday. That meant that day was family day, Mom and Dad both home. Colt, Morrie and Dad used to sit in front of the TV watching football games and Mom and I would drift in and out. Mom would make nibbles for them out of cereal, nuts and pretzel sticks that she’d coated with some tangy, salty goo and baked. Or she’d make big bowls of popcorn that she poured real, melted butter on. At night she made us sit down to a big, family dinner, pot roast or meatloaf or fried chicken. After that we’d play a game, usually teams, boys versus girls. Or later we’d play cards, mostly euchre and Colt was always my partner.
When we got older, they opened the bar but for shortened hours, opening at three, closing at eleven. Morrie, Colt and I were usually out and about, hanging with friends or staying at home and watching videos or Colt and me would be up in my room necking.
I’d always loved Sundays but I hadn’t had a really good one in a really long time.
That day Colt gave me a really good Sunday. Such a good Sunday, I could almost forgive him for what he did.
Frank’s was a crush as it always was on Sunday mornings after church. We waited for a big table and it was worth the wait to have a stack of Frank’s fluffy, blueberry, buttermilk pancakes smothered in whipped butter and warm syrup, a bottomless cup of his top-notch coffee and family all around being loud. I finagled a seat between Palmer and Tuesday so I could poke Tuesday in the side and make her giggle and grab Palmer’s head and give him kisses so he would look at his Dad and whine, “Dad! Auntie Feb keeps kissing me!”
Sometimes there were three conversations at once. Sometimes someone would capture everyone’s attention. Sometimes someone would tell a story and everyone would laugh. Sometimes someone would just say something funny and everyone would laugh.
We all felt the glow of the day, even Dee. So much Dee did the unbelievable and walked down with us to J&J’s to help us get ready to open. Dee hung with me as I went about my business and I was guessing this was because she was unsure of letting Morrie back into her heart. I wanted her to let Morrie back into her heart but I didn’t want to push so I let her trail me and showed her what I did. She surprised me by seeming interested, paying attention and asking questions so I went a little overboard and showed her other things as well. When we opened she sat beside Colt at his end of the bar, drinking diet, gabbing and laughing with Colt. The kids sat in the office, probably screwing everything up and I knew Morrie and I wouldn’t be able to find anything for days.
Later Meems called me to see what was up and I told her it was Sunday and everyone was hanging at J&J’s. In twenty minutes, Meems and Al strolled in, Meems had a chat with Dee and then she and Dee led Tuesday and Palmer outside so Meems’s Mom could take them and Meems’s brood to her house to watch some new DVD Al bought and later, for dinner, she’d be serving them her famous homemade corndogs. I called Jessie to tell her the gang was all there and Jessie and Jimbo drifted in not long after.
The clientele on a Sunday were almost always only regulars. Usually lonely souls who didn’t have anyone to spend their Sundays with but they didn’t want to be alone. They’d sit in their chairs or on their stools, eyes usually glued to the TV over the bar, always ready to have a chat with you if you gave them a hint you were at their table or stool to ask for more than their order. And on a Sunday you always had time to chat about more than their order.
Dad, Mom, Morrie and me spent some of our time talking with customers, Mom and Dad more than Morrie and me as they had catching up to do. But most of the time we’d find ourselves over at Colt, Dee, Jimbo, Jessie, Meems and Al having a gab or a laugh.
I didn’t think about Colt and my kiss. I decided to think about being with my family and friends and how good that felt without me holding onto shit and feeling mostly dead inside. How good it felt to laugh and feel it down straight in your belly. How good it felt to watch the face of someone you love get animated while they talked about something they thought was funny or something their kid did that was cute. How good it felt to be alive, unlike Angie, Pete and Butch who’d never have times like that again. How good it felt to realize this was precious and holding onto pain meant missing times like these even when they were right there for you, close enough to take hold.
Evening hit the bar and Al and Meems challenged Jimbo and Jessie to a round of pool. They’d been drinking steadily for hours and they were making more noise than we usually had on a Saturday night and it could get seriously noisy on a Saturday night.
I was watching them when I saw Morrie come around the back of Dee’s stool, lean in and kiss her neck. I also watched as a golden Sunday worked its magic and she tilted her head to give him better access instead of trying to move away. My eyes slid to Colt who’d caught it too and his eyes had come to mine. We shared a smile and his hit me somewhere private, somewhere that had always been mine, somewhere that I’d never let anyone into, not even him decades ago. His smile just stormed right through the gates I had locked there and settled in like it was going to stay awhile.
I looked away and thought it was high time for me to break my cardinal rule. I never drank on the job. If I was back of the bar, I was sober. Morrie didn’t adhere to this tradition though he never got sauced just would have a beer every once in awhile, usually when Colt or one of his other buddies dropped in. I made myself a rum and diet and brought it back to the end of the bar.
“You let Feb pick breakfast, my woman wants Reggie’s pizza for dinner,” Morrie announced to Colt before he slapped him on the back and said, “dude, get your ass off the stool, come with me to order.”
Reggie’s was around the corner. Reggie was Irish, had a shock of red hair and scratched his beer belly when he laughed which was a lot, mostly at his own jokes. Even Irish, he made the best pizza in the county, bar none. You went there to order and if you were close enough, like we were,
he sent his son, Toby, to make the delivery.
Colt slid off his stool. I had my drink on the bar, my hand wrapped around it. Before Colt left, his eyes dropped to my hand, he reached out and grazed my knuckles with his fingertips. The touch was there and gone, I could have imagined it if I hadn’t felt it zap straight through my system.
I stood there staring at my drink curled in my hand and I heard the front door close.
“Feb,” Dee called and my head snapped up.
Her eyes were on me and she looked happy. I hadn’t seen her that way in awhile, her look erased the lingering effect of Colt’s touch and I smiled at her.
“Thanks for giving my brother another chance.” A cloud drifted across her happy face and I wished I’d never said anything. “Shit, Dee, sorry. I should keep my mouth –”
She cut me off. “What’s happening with you and Colt?”
“Nothin’,” I said quick as a flash. “He’s helping me out, he’s just being nice. It’s an intense time. So intense, we’ve called, like, a truce or something.”
“Don’t know much about truces but I’m guessin’, even if they call a truce, enemies don’t touch each other’s hands and they sure don’t get caught by their parents making out in the kitchen.”
Mom and/or Dad had a big mouth.
I turned fully to Dee. “Dee, honey, don’t get any big ideas about this.”
“You know, Melanie left because of you.”
I felt my eyes grow round, actually felt them get big and I wondered if they were bugging out of my head.
“What?”
“She left, ‘cause of you.”
This couldn’t be true. I didn’t even want it to be true.
“She didn’t, Mom told me she left because she couldn’t have babies.”
“Would you leave a man like Colt ‘cause you couldn’t have babies?”
I didn’t answer that.
“Man looks like Colt?” she went on.
I took a sip of my drink.
“Man acts like Colt?”
I gave her a look and said quietly, “Dee, remember, I left –”
She shook her head. “When you left, Colt was still finding his way. I reckon you had reason but you held it to yourself, fair play and no one has place to judge. In the end, when you two broke, the age he was? He was a man but we girls know he was mostly still a boy. But he’s a man now. The kinda man you don’t leave for stupid shit.”
“Not being able to conceive isn’t stupid,” I defended Melanie.
“Nope, you’re right. I didn’t have Palmer and Tuesday, I don’t know what I’d do. But Morrie stayed the man I married, livin’ for me not livin’ for the bar, he’d be enough for me for always.”
“Morrie doesn’t live for the bar.”
Dee gave me a look and I couldn’t say I blamed her. It’d feel that way to me, never seeing my husband because he was either sleeping or at the bar.
Morrie had played the field through high school and after. Never had a serious girlfriend, not once.
He’d met Dee years ago, she lived two towns over. They’d met after some football game when he’d been in his pads and jersey, walking back to the locker rooms after we’d beat her home team. They struck up a conversation that lasted about five minutes and he’d never forgotten her.
He met her again while she was at a friend of hers bachelorette party. Her girls had been doing the trawl, J&J’s came up late, about six bars in. She’d been hammered and Morrie’d just been hanging at J&J’s then, working construction. They’d struck up another conversation and he’d pitched a fit when she said she was leaving, getting into her girlfriend’s car to go to another bar. It was part that he didn’t want her to go, part that he didn’t want her to get in a car with a drunk woman behind the wheel. Even just getting acquainted, they’d had a rip roarin’ fight, Morrie won and he took her home. They were inseparable ever since – engaged within six months, married after just a year.
It was fair to say until we took over J&J’s, he doted on her and she returned the favor, even after all these years and two kids.
But now Morrie took assuming the running of the family business seriously, maybe too seriously. She’d been lost in that and she didn’t like it.
I could see her point.
“My babies are my world, but you got a good man?” Dee said. “Wouldn’t be hard for you to make do.”
“Mom said Colt and Melanie tried to make a go of it but Melanie –”
“Melanie wasn’t Juliet.”
I stared at her silent, mainly because I didn’t know what the fuck she was talking about.
Dee kept going. “Romeo and Juliet, say they didn’t die but Juliet got pissed and took off. Everyone would know it was Romeo and Juliet, would always be Romeo and Juliet, even if later Romeo hooked up with Nancy. No one ever heard of Nancy, doesn’t even sound right, Romeo and Nancy. Everyone knows Romeo’s meant to be with Juliet. Even if Romeo loved Nancy, Nancy would always know she was never Juliet.”
I didn’t want Dee to compare Colt and me to star-crossed lovers who eventually died in each others’ arms because, these days, that was way too damn close for comfort.
And I didn’t want Dee to think like that at all about Colt and me and Melanie.
“Dee –”
“She lived her life with Colt in your shadow. She wanted a baby that bad to stake him to her, ‘cause no way a woman could live her life knowin’ she wasn’t her other half’s true other half. She had to find a way to make him stay and Colt would stay, no matter what, for family. She couldn’t give him that and she couldn’t live under that cloud, wonderin’, each time you came home, when his head would turn.”
I didn’t want to be talking about this. We were treading on dangerous ground.
“He’s a man, Dee, but he wouldn’t step out on Melanie.”
I said it even though I couldn’t be certain it was true, not because of me but because Colt had a dick and that was, in my experience, the bottom-line truth of it for all men.
“Don’t matter he wouldn’t, she thought he would. She got out from under that cloud and I don’t blame her. I don’t know why she stepped under it in the first place. Made her miserable and she made Colt watch her fade away.” I opened my mouth to say something but Dee waved her hand in my direction and continued. “I like Melanie, don’t get me wrong, she’s a good gal. But she didn’t do right by him. He felt it, her leavin’ him, and that was cruel. She wanted something she couldn’t have, knew it and reached out and grabbed it anyway but he paid the price.”
Again. I knew was what she left unsaid and that unspoken word cut through me like a blade.
“Dee –”
“Everyone wants to see you two happy, Feb, together, apart, it don’t matter. Just happy,” she leaned in, “but neither of you are happy, girl, and we all know why. It’s tearin’ both of you apart and all of us right along with it.”
“I love you, babe,” I said quietly, “but with all the shit’s that’s going on, I don’t need this.”
“With all the shit that’s goin’ on, girl, you need this more than you ever did.”
“There’s things you don’t know.”
“Yeah, I know, but they happened twenty years ago, Feb.”
“But –”
“Alexander Colton touched my hand, watched my ass while I moved, got that smile on his face when he saw me laugh, especially when I was going through all kinds of hell, I’d learn to get passed whatever it was that happened twenty years ago and grab onto happiness.”
I started to say something, I didn’t know what, but I didn’t get it out.
This was because I heard an angry, male voice shouting, “You cunt!”
My head came around and every fiber of my being froze when I watched Loren Smithfield stalk across the room.
“You, fucking, cunt!”
He was talking to me. I knew this because his eyes were on me, not to mention the fact that he was pointing at me.
“Lore,
what the fuck?” Al asked loudly from the pool table but his cue was at a slant at his side, held in his fist and he was starting to move closer.
Lore ignored Al, he had his target in his sights and not even Al was going to make him lose sight of that target. He made it to my end of the bar and smashed a fist into it, making a loud noise that caused me to jump. “Point the finger at me for killin’ Angie! What the hell is that?”
Oh Lord. I didn’t figure this was good.
“Lore, calm down, man,” Jimbo said, also moving in close as did Dad and, I was surprised to note (vaguely, because I was scared out of my mind at the fury twisting Lore’s face), Joe-Bob.
Dee sat frozen on her stool, her eyes locked on Lore, and Mom, Meems and Jessie stayed back.
So did I, holding my position by Dee with the bar a safety barrier between me and Lore’s rage.
Lore jabbed a finger at me. “I got kids, they hear this shit… a job, a reputation, a life in this town, people think this shit about me, you think this shit about me. Jesus, you bitch!” He leaned in, his whole body a threat, still pointing at me. “I should hack you up, you crazy cunt!”
That was all he said because suddenly he wasn’t there. Instead he was five feet back and still sailing, bumping into chairs, arms wheeling and Colt was stalking him silently, calmly, his movements slow and economical, his eyes on Lore like Lore was prey.
Lore gained control of his limbs, locked his eyes on Colt and took a stance that was defensive at the same time it was threatening. “Back off, Colt.”
“You need to go somewhere and calm down, Lore,” Colt advised stopping, not taking a stance, just standing there loose-limbed but looking alert and at the ready.
“Fuck that! She told you I killed Angie,” Lore shouted.
“How’d you hear that?” Colt asked softly.
“Marty, we were havin’ beers at Josh’s place.”
Colt shook his head in an unhappy way that I reckoned Marty just caught himself some trouble.
“She’s helping with the investigation at my request,” Colt told Lore.
“Yeah, and she fingered me!”
For You Page 15