by A. L. Woods
Almost.
The cold fall air swept inside when she finally opened the door, the heavy oak slamming shut behind her, rattling the gallery wall of mirrors in the family room.
Silence filtered between us, my eyes burning a hole through the solid wood. A wheeze of an engine coughed to life, her tires skidded against the driveway, and then, without seeing her, I knew she was gone.
“You are,” Trina started, shaking her head so hard a curl of her pink hair loosened from behind her ear, “a giant, fucking idiot.” I didn’t miss the smarmy smile that had birthed to life on her round pout. My sister didn’t miss any opportunity to goad, especially at my expense.
“Who’s an idiot?” Penelope warbled. She leaned over the bannister, her features warm and eager, obviously hoping to be let in on the interaction like the damn interloper she truly was.
Then a thought slammed into me.
She hadn’t heard a damn thing.
I swung my glare at my sister, threatening her a hell of a whole lot of more pain if she so much as opened her mouth and revealed one detail.
I would give Raquel that honor.
Trina stiffened on her roost. She couldn’t compromise with me.
I was all she had left right now.
Her nostrils flared, realization dawning on her.
“No one,” she murmured, fleeing down the stairs, breezing by me, disappearing into the kitchen.
“Where’s Raquel?” Penelope asked, seemingly ignoring my sister’s premature departure, I guess playing it off as typical early-twentysomething histrionics. She stood akimbo, her long neck craning as if searching for her friend.
“She told me to tell you to meet her at the cafe.” The cogs of my mind churned so loudly that I was certain Penelope would pick out the half lie.
Instead, she sighed, shaking her head. “Typical. She never waits for anyone.”
The weight of that sentiment hung between us as she came gliding down the stairs like she was the lady of a grand maison, and not an interior designer who was also fucking the foreman, whose weekly take-home was less than the cost of the designer bag she picked up from the console table tucked against the stairwell.
“Want me to bring you something back?” she asked, sliding into her camel-colored car coat, freeing her trapped hair from the collar with a wave of her delicate hand. “I’m grabbing Dougie lunch, too.”
I ignored the rumbling of my stomach. I suspected I’d be wearing whatever she brought me back if I accepted the offer, and I had no intention of bringing this jacket to the dry cleaner.
“Nah, I’m good.”
At that, she shrugged, opening the door, a chill rushing in. “Suit yourself.”
I glanced at the clock on the wall, deciding that if I left now, I’d be back in Fall River before Penelope could arrange a cavalcade of people to show up at the house waving pitchforks and lit torches in my direction, demanding retribution for my disgrace.
Hell, maybe I’d have time to move and change my name, too.
CHAPTER SIX
Penelope hadn’t been even marginally surprised when I told her about the stunt assclown had pulled. In fact, she laughed into her stupid blackened chicken salad, spearing a piece of avocado onto her fork and shoving it into her mouth to stifle her giggle.
“I did tell him you didn’t have a boyfriend,” she tittered.
I paled, my brows bending inward together–I was beginning to think she had been the catalyst to that ostentatious conversation.
“How the fuck is my dating life relevant to an interview?”
“Raquel, lighten up. You’re attractive to a blind person.”
I rolled my eyes in disdain. I’d always felt homely-looking at best, I didn’t need her well-intended compliments. “I have no tits to speak of, one of my eyes is larger than the other, and my parents really could have saved me some ridicule if they had gotten me some braces. I am failing to see what you find marginally attractive about me.”
“Stop being self-depreciating.” Penelope dabbed at the corners of her mouth with a crumpled napkin, appraising me with her sea-blue stare. “It’s natural to have one eye that’s marginally larger than the other. I happen to think your teeth are endearing, and besides, Sean is an ass man.”
“How on earth do you know that?” I pressed, becoming hyper-focused on the latter detail.
She shrugged noncommittally, giving me a tilted smile, batting her long lashes at me as if she was part of his inner circle. And for some painfully asinine reason, I wanted to be in it, too.
“I overheard him and the guys on the site talking about it.”
“Gratuitous pig.”
“He’s a man, Raquel,” she said, as if I had forgotten what was going on between his legs since we left the house, like that gave him some sort of license to objectify me with his arresting stare. And then she swung her sword of moral superiority directly at the soft spot at my neck, making contact, “And I’ll have you know that I caught you eye fucking him in the kitchen. So save your holier-than-thou speech.” Her eyes narrowed at me.
I slouched in my seat, the fingers on my left hand curled behind my neck, the heat of my embarrassment warming them.
Busted.
“I looked, so what.” Still slumped, my hand retreated to help pick up the overflowing roast beef sandwich, taking a generous bite, my jaw working the sinew.
“So, you’re no better than him. He just happens to be aware of his likes, that’s all. There’s nothing wrong with that…and frankly,” she paused, frowning, “you could afford to develop some taste.” Her nose crinkled, and for a moment, it was hard to discern whether it was at me, or the dried date she had just picked off her plate, disposing of the pruned fruit onto a side plate.
My brow arched north. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”
“Exactly what I said.” She sipped her sparkling water, her visage demure in contrived delicacy. “Your taste in men is abysmal at best.”
“I’ve been with one guy,” I hissed.
“That’s my point,” she stressed impatiently, as if I was slow to catch up. “One guy. You don’t even know what you like.” She sipped her soda water again. “Broaden your horizons. You liked looking at Sean, and that is a massive upgrade from who you’ve been…doing.” Her smile strained just before she popped a small piece of bread into her mouth—her fifth roll since we had gotten here.
Penelope wasn’t into carbs, but I guess the conversation had made her work up an appetite.
“I don’t think I entirely understand what you’re getting at.” I was playing coy, and we both knew it.
She tucked the fork under the side of her plate with perfect precision. Her freed fingers knit together, a cursory look tacking itself onto her suddenly severe face.
“Let me spell it out to you in a way you’ll understand, then.” Her lilt rolled upward, far away from her expensive Connecticut boarding school territory, heading toward the slums of South Boston. “Stop fucking a chucklehead whose nickname is a wicked misnomer.”
I blinked at her before annoyance flanked me. “No one says ‘chucklehead’ anymore,” I muttered, ignoring the truth in her words.
Tobias “Cash” Peake was about as chuckleheaded as they come—my dad had called him “that ‘friggin ’igit kid,” never bothering with his name. My dad wasn’t wrong, and neither was Penelope. Cash’s preferred moniker didn’t exactly have any merit. That guy was perpetually broke, despite living rent-free with his Nan.
Still, he kept loneliness at bay when my thoughts threatened to consume me as Holly Jane’s anniversary approached, and frankly, that was enough. But it wasn’t enough to satisfy my best friend who looked at me like I had just told her Michael Kors was better than Prada. (She got kinda prickly about that shit.)
“Raquel.” I heard the warning in her voice, like an Amber Alert over the radio. Penelope’s temper was known to be on par with a Nor’easter if you pushed her hard enough—don’t let the glossy hair and high cheekbon
es fool you.
“It’s fine, Pen. Stop stressing; it’s not good for you. Premature wrinkles and all that shit.” I waved her off, giving her a chipmunk smile just before popping the last bite of my sandwich into my mouth.
“You just,” she paused speaking into her salad, her chin bent downward, a hand framing her forehead as she contemplated loud enough that I was sure the entire shoebox-sized cafe was about to hear.
“I just…?”
“You need better coping mechanisms. Especially during this time of year.”
My throat worked at the tiny granules of sand that had filled the stretch of my neck without warning. Gone was the jovial nature of our conversation, Penelope’s eyes grew glossy with unshed tears. The ghosts of my past danced throughout the cafe, setting off an eruption of goosebumps along my arms for all the wrong reasons. The hairs on the back of my neck rose at half mast, and I blinked at her with the tenacity of a nervous tick.
I hadn’t forgotten that the anniversary of my sister’s death was coming up.
I had compartmentalized it. I didn’t talk about it. I had stowed the painful memory into a box and shoved it into my storage unit in the basement of my apartment, seldom, if ever, looking at it. Instead, to Penelope’s point, I buried it, or let someone else, help me bury it instead. Every year without fail, Cash found himself in my bed, whispering all kinds of pointless sweet nothings in my ear that were irrelevant to me because it didn’t change my reality.
My little sister was dead.
And she was dead because of me.
No amount of talking about it was going to remedy that. There was only suppression and suffocation now. My best friend was raised by moneyed parents’ who believed in therapy even when you weren’t despondent. Maybe it was grooming their daughter for the inevitability of her life, or perhaps they genuinely cared about what was doing in her head—they had tossed around thousands of dollars to ensure her sylph-like shoulders were stress-free. Yoga retreats and mindfulness training had all been part of Penelope’s youth. Even now, in her late twenties, she still had weekly visits to her therapist at his Back Bay office. Penelope’s parents had cared about ensuring she knew what to do about the ugly parts of life when they confronted her.
My parents were not frays on that proverbial rope. They communicated their thoughts and feelings through their fists, and any sentence that attempted to articulate how they were making you feel might have earned you endless ridicule and a slap that would have required Neo’s Matrix-like reflexes to avoid.
I didn’t bottle this shit up because I liked it; I contained it because I didn’t know what else to do with it.
“You going to eat the rest of that?” I asked, jerking my chin at her salad.
She exhaled with defeat, the waves of her hair loosening as she shook her head—whether it was at me, or at the salad’s looming future, I didn’t bother to confirm. I stabbed the field greens and popped the end of the fork into my mouth, training my gaze outside.
Penelope said nothing else for the remainder of our lunch, but I felt her disappointment over my indifference all the same.
CHAPTER SEVEN
It had been a week since the interview from hell.
I leaned back in my desk chair, my eyes skimming over the newspaper in my hand, the aroma of the printed ink on the cheap newsprint an intoxicating fragrance. Penelope’s judgement call had been spot on—not only did that resplendent colonial look good on the cover, Sean did, too.
My insides flipped, the tip of my finger tracing over the photographic image of the sharp angles of his face, the stiff and hard outline of his body. His linebacker shoulders were wide, his hands tucked into his pockets. Hands that had made me feel things I had never felt before…things that left me feeling confused and strangely vulnerable.
I hadn’t communicated that part to Penelope. She would have gotten ahead of herself, and ultimately, nothing would ever transpire between Sean and I, so why even bother planting the seed of an idea in her pretty little head. She would try to cultivate an entire overgrown field of wildflowers for Sean and I to fuck in; anything that would sever my physical ties to Cash. Hell, I was convinced that was why she had gotten me that ridiculous vibrator in the first place: to teach me that self-love was important, and it started with my nether regions. My vibrator wouldn’t be there to mop up my tears, though, would it? It wouldn’t understand my pain or the depths of my grief. It wouldn’t swallow my sobs or stay with me until after the anxiety blew over.
Cash did.
And whether Penelope wanted to see it or not, I didn’t have her grace, or her garden party-like beauty. I was a thorny weed, my stems prickly. The kind that people blindly picked at sans gardening gloves, only to recoil when they felt the stab of my predatory instincts.
Just like Sean had.
My lids dropped shut for the briefest of moments, an unbidden memory barreling toward me. I would never admit I had liked his attention once I learned that Trina was his sister, and not his wife. My body warmed with the heat in his awareness that literally sucked the air out of my lungs and made my brain turn into slush. I felt naked under his appraisal, despite being fully clothed, like he had seen all the things that I had masked. This man, who knew nothing about me beyond what he saw at a superficial level, only had to touch me, and a world that had always seemed dull and colorless suddenly seemed bright and promising.
The interaction had been cheap, and I felt feeble for the mental investment I had committed to repeatedly reliving the interaction. I would never see him again.
On an exhale, I forced my lids open again, my gaze fanning over the headline and my byline.
He photographed just as beautifully as the house. He was imposing and impressive, profile slightly turned to the left, his lips tight, but his eyes—his eyes were cavalier, with a wry, boyish charm that didn’t fall in line with his initial greeting. It was only after I pressed him, only after I had naively taken the bait, that I learned what Sean was.
A womanizer.
Still, he looked good in print, and if this photo got more people to pick up the paper in spite of the vapid headline, I didn’t care.
LIFE REBORN
FALL RIVER MAN GIVES EATON CENTURY HOMES A SECOND CHANCE
by RAQUEL FLANNIGAN
Earl hadn’t given me a choice in the matter of titles; in fact, prior to the agreed-upon title, he put the kibosh on my three initial versions of the fleshed-out story. He flustered with my first iteration (SEEMINGLY DECENT FALL RIVER MAN GIVES OLD HOUSES A SECOND CHANCE), nearly had an aneurysm over the second, (MONEY HUNGRY JACKASS FROM FALL RIVER FIXES BROKEN HOUSES TO MAKE HIMSELF LOOK LIKE LESS OF A DICK)—before we met halfway in the middle on the third.
“We are a community paper, Raquel.”
Like I had needed the reminder.
Earl had his own ass to protect; I got it. In his mind, we had already taken enough risks by snubbing the fire department—we needed to err on the side of caution. The Eaton FD got their story too, just not the front page. They would get over it, and if they felt the need to hose someone down, I’d be the sacrificial lamb, pool floaties and all. Earl was still nervously tittering about it, cautiously looking over his shoulder everywhere he went, as though not running the story on the first page was a liability.
The charity car wash story was on page three, above the promo of the Old Maid Cafe’s Thanksgiving special in the next four weeks.
Thanksgiving.
For most, the time of practiced gratitude was a welcome reprieve, nipping closely on the heels of silver bells and mistletoe. Thanksgiving was my version of hell. It meant enduring my mother’s ridicule, picking curiously at a Thanksgiving TV dinner with cranberry sauce that tasted like paint thinner and turkey that had the texture of leather. My stomach cramped at the very idea of it, my lower abdomen twisting.
It was hard to say what would be worse—my mother reminding me that it should have been me in the car, not Holly Jane—or the bullshit she tried to tell me was all she
could afford to feed me with.
My Ma had money, her money and my own.
See, on top of being a desperate and consistent lay for Cash once a year when I needed to just not think, I was also the spineless twit who forked over a large chunk of her paycheck to ensure my mother went without nothing her blackened heart so much as dreamt of.
Yeah, I know. Surprised? I am, too. When I left that house ten years ago, I swore to God I would never have anything to do with her again. I didn’t answer her calls or Dad’s. My sister made a point of using Cash’s pager to get hold of me when she needed me, and that was our primary form of communication.
Then Dad died, and Holly Jane went a few months later.
Then Ma started crying about being hungry or her power bill, my guilt had settled in after I landed my first full time job, and I did what Flannigans always did.
I took care of my own, because that bitch didn’t have anyone else.
Honestly, ten years later, I still couldn’t believe Dad had gone and gotten himself killed over something so stupid, so ill-planned, so poorly contrived. For a man who had carried the weight of the world on his shoulders, had provided for his daughters, his good-for-nothing wife, and so many others, it was next to impossible for me to reconcile that he had died the way he did.
I’ll be honest; my father hadn’t been good man. He took care of his own with no remorse, just like everyone else did in our pocket of Southie. But, if you asked anyone who knew him, really knew him, he wasn’t a bad one, either. He had been susceptible to the perils of love, just like any other man who got caught up in that novel idea of forever. He had spoiled my mother to a fault. And that woman was vile, ostentatious, and plain fucking evil. Her motivators were very easy to understand: sex and money. It didn’t really matter where either came from or who she had to crush under the sole of her cheap high heel to obtain it. She had shown up on my grandparents’ doorstep, pregnant with yours truly. Dad had done what his very Irish Catholic background demanded of him: ‘til death do us part.