by A. L. Woods
Karen and I looked at each other in a provisional truce. She didn’t give me the satisfaction of acknowledgement, instead turning on the wedge of her boot and slithering out of my cubicle in search of her next victim.
When I heard her voice several desks over, my knees gave out on me, body sinking into my seat. I could feel my pulse beat behind my eyelids, my insides swirling at the confrontation, at the words that no doubt would have left me had it not been for Sean.
The initial source of all my frustrations.
This had to end. I couldn’t afford the burden of his presence in my life. It was a weakness, and I didn’t need any more of that. I had that area of my life well covered.
“Don’t call me again,” I said, “Don’t think of me, because I won’t think of you.”
“Somehow, I don’t believe that,” Sean drawled.
“What you felt was attraction, and it was one-sided,” I loftily replied.
“I pegged you for a lot of things, Hemingway, but a liar wasn’t one of them.”
“Thank you for proving my point about not knowing me at all.”
“What are you so afraid of?”
You. Everything about you. Aloud I said, “I’m not afraid of anything.”
His laugh was bitter, a forced sound that didn’t carry his warmth from earlier.
“Right, and what other bullshit do you like to fill that pretty little head of yours with?”
“I’m hanging up now.” My hand shook as I clutched the receiver, but I didn’t hang up.
“You actually can’t handle the idea of someone wanting to get to know you.”
“What you want, you can get from any other woman, but it won’t be me.”
“Do you honestly think I would put in this much effort for a lay, Raquel?”
My name on his mouth sent my insides tumbling, a stifled gasp escaping me. It sounded so beautiful and familiar on his tongue, like a languorous melody, that I wanted to hear him say it over and over again.
I swallowed before I mustered a reply. “I don’t know what you would do to get laid,” I said, the impending lie swirling around my palate as if it were an acerbic wine, “but I’m not interested in finding out. I meant what I said to you last week.”
“What part?” His voice was tight.
“The closest you’ll ever get to fucking me is in your dreams.” The words were whispered so softly, I barely heard them.
But he did. A seductive chuckle reverberated from the other line of the phone.
“In that case, I’ll see you in my dreams. Nighty-night, Hemingway.” He hung up before I had the chance to do it first, taking my ego and dignity away with him.
CHAPTER NINE
The remainder of the workday dragged at a snail’s pace. The job site was alive with last-minute fixes to the house, mulch being added to garden beds, additional trees being planted in the backyard. When I wasn’t licking the wounds caused by Raquel’s remarks, I spent my time puttying and sanding the hole she had left in the office drywall with the doorknob a week earlier. I was sure there was a metaphor somewhere in there—filling the void created by someone else.
When five o’clock came and the yard had emptied of workers, leaving nothing but the sound of Canadian geese flying south, Dougie stuck his ugly mug into the office, dirt up to his elbows, his fingernails stained by earth, toting an emptied lunchbox, and announced that he was coming over.
Behind him, Katrina sat on the bottom step of the stairs, resting her elbows on her knees, her hands cupped around her face. She sported a beguiling look, eyes fixed skyward, as if she hadn’t mentioned something passively in Dougie’s ear. Trina had the same deadly affliction the rest of my family did—they just couldn’t mind their own business, even if their lives depended on it. She held her hands up in deference when my stare narrowed on hers before making herself scarce, feet beating it up the stairs. It didn’t take a family session with Dr. Phil to know that the little shit had read my emails.
That was how four hours later, Dougie ended up sprawled out in the corner of my sectional, his feet up on the distressed coffee table next to a nearly empty box of pizza. While he concentrated on the video game in front of him, I recounted to him the interview a few weeks back, the article (which I was all too ready to hand over to him, but immediately regretted once his eyebrow hit his hairline and his smile grew slimy), the emails, and finally, the phone call.
When I had nothing else to add, I leaned back against the couch, resting my head against the leather upholstery in defeat.
“Well,” he chuckled, pausing the game, stretching to reach for his beer on the coffee table, “You’ve got it bad for this broad.”
I didn’t miss the tinny smugness that laced his words as he tipped his beer bottle back, forest green eyes appraising me with mischief.
I scowled at him, my scathing stare making words unnecessary. Thanks, Captain Obvious. I never would have drawn that astonishingly observant conclusion on my own.
The statement hung between us. I managed to lift my shoulder in a shrug, peeling the damp and fraying label away from my own bottle. I had dated my fair share of women in thirty years. The last ten years alone had been a revolving door of problematic relationships, including one that had been a hell of a close call.
It wasn’t that marriage wasn’t on my radar so much as I hadn’t really had the time to make that kind of emotional investment in anyone. I had spent the last ten years focused on keeping my family’s financial needs met, and that didn’t leave me with a whole lot of time to date seriously. I had my fun. I knew where to find a bed partner when I had a need for company that went beyond the grip of my own hand. The arrangement had worked for me, and it had worked for the women I slept with. There was never any confusion with what I was looking for, and they were amenable enough to agree to the terms. I wasn’t big on the dinner and a movie thing, or walks along the Quequechan River Rail Trail, or spooning after the deed had been done.
Sex was transactional. We both came hungry, we both left satiated.
Raquel, though, she was like a tempest. She was the kind of phenomenon that meteorologists tracked for days; and just when you thought you had an understanding of its pattern, it changed course and uprooted every single tree across the state, turning everyone’s lives upside down.
Thoughts of her invaded every spare orifice within my mind, like heavy rapids of water desperate to move and find a new home. A storm had brewed behind her eyes when I had touched her, and that had been all I needed to reassure myself that it hadn’t been one-sided, that she felt it, too.
I was willing to do the dinner and move thing—hell, I wanted to do the dinner and movie thing. She wanted to walk along the Quequechan River Rail Trail? I’d fucking buy hiking shoes. I wanted to spoon this woman, imprint the scent of her in my sinus tract until I was drunk on vanilla, citrus, and tobacco.
But I had been out of the dating game for so long that I wasn’t sure how to get from the bedding part to the heart-conquering component—and at the number of my missed hits with Raquel, I would be lucky if I managed to get the first three digits of her area code confirmed for me.
Dougie had always been better at the dating thing than me. Not because he was particularly better-looking than me—not with that busted nose, no offense—he just carried himself with a swaggering confidence, like he had a pair of brass balls between his legs. You couldn’t replicate that shit. Women flocked to him, the normal kind—not the ones who appeared perfectly normal, only to…well, it doesn’t matter now.
The point is, Dougie knew what he wanted and generally went after it. He never took no for an answer, and that was how he had wound up with Penelope, who was not only out of his league, but out of the orbit his galaxy revolved around.
Yet somehow, she had not only agreed, but was now seven months shy of birthing his child.
“Do not tell Penelope I told you,” he had warned me through a mouthful of pizza an hour ago. “She’ll kill me if she finds out I told you
before she had a chance to tell Raquel.”
“So, not just your fuck buddy, huh?” I had jested, slamming a closed fist into his bicep. He winced, but a bashful smile blossomed on his face. My best friend was happy, and there was no one else who deserved it more.
Twenty odd years ago, Dougie had taken me under his wing. When you leave one country for another, nothing can prepare you for what’s about to unfold. At eight, I was still naive enough to believe my parents when they told me things would be easier in the great US of A. Dad had a job lined up already at a brickyard, Ma’s sister got her an opportunity with the local Portuguese padaria—that’s “bakery” in English—where her days would start at three in the morning, but she would be home by lunch toting loaves of freshly baked pão stuffed in clear bags for sandwiches.
My parents’ optimism had me believing that I would be able to assimilate easily in our new home with zero struggle. Learning English would be a cakewalk, making friends even easier, and maybe if I was lucky, I would convince an American girl to grant me my first kiss before I headed into fourth grade.
And like most well laid plans, things did not go accordingly.
Dad’s new boss jilted him pay that made it hard to keep the lights on. Mom never made it home for lunch, and when she did, she was sporting a deep wrinkle between her brows, her arms too stiff to move. My older sister Maria cried every single day over the homework she didn’t understand, and I was failing to make any friends. People treated us like we were lepers; even the ones who had experienced our plight so many years before turned up their noses at us. They had struggled once, too, so in their minds, why should they help us? We weren’t deserving of any kind of advantages that hadn’t been offered to them.
Turns out, when you’re an interloper starting life in a new place, people aren’t always that hospitable—especially schoolyard kids from blue-collar neighborhoods. Those little assholes will find your biggest insecurity and run with it until you’ve got a therapy bill that’s higher than the price of your first shit box car.
Inhibition is natural at some point in time for most people, but at that point in time, everyone at Oak Grove Elementary School had something that left them vulnerable to relentless teasing, or bullies that stalked them as they ambulated through tree-lined neighborhoods on their way home, only to wind up breathless once their worn sneakers hit their own property line, their heads cocked over their shoulders.
Every student had a weakness, only mine was not understanding them.
For weeks, I heard their voices, the mockery of their pitch filling my ears, but I was never the wiser. I masked the hurt that filtered within me from the acerbic venom of their tones and the cruelty in their sneers, all while convincing myself that they were trying to be friendly. It was when the school bully, Peter Filch—who was teetering that fine line between overweight and obesity—shoved me off the playground set that quick and lean eight-year-old Douglas Patterson had had enough.
He took the schoolyard bully out and was inaugurated as a hero to our classmates with one single, well-placed shove.
So it was only natural that we would grow up to be thick as thieves, getting into mischief, talking ourselves out of trouble. Dougie had been more like a brother to me than a friend over two decades. He knew me as well as my sisters and Ma did, maybe even more so.
And now I was going to take advantage of his almost one degree of separation to help me get what I wanted…
Raquel.
CHAPTER TEN
“So,” I said, making no real effort to be slick with Dougie. “What do you know about her?” I assessed him over my bottle of Harpoon IPA.
He didn’t meet my stare, but I caught the quizzical quirk of his brow. “Raquel?” he asked, as though he needed any clarification.
I nodded, just to humor him.
In response, he cracked his neck, a bored expression settling on his face. “Not much, to be honest. We’ve met maybe three times over six months, and every time I see her, she looks like she’s ready to claw my eyes out like a harpy.”
“You think she’s in love with Penelope?” Alarm pulled my brows together. If she did play for the other team, there was nothing I could do about it.
He scratched the space above his left brow, tilting his head in consideration. “Definitely not in love with her, but loves her in a sisterly kind of way.” A ghost of something passed over his face, his lips thinning in a tight line while rubbing the sparse smattering of facial hair that littered his jaw line. “I think she’s lonely, and I’m poaching the only thing she’s got.” His head lolled to the right, an attempt at a smile failing to lift the corners of his mouth. “Penelope told me she’s had a pretty sad life. That might be the only redeeming part of her.”
“What do you mean?” I ignored the sinking of my heart in an open body of water with no life raft in sight.
“Sorry, man.” He held up both his hands in surrender, giving me a pointed look, as if I should have known better than to ask him to betray his future baby mama. “Not my story to share.”
Translation: If my baby-mama finds out I told you anything incriminating, she would have my balls wound tight around her little fist.
God, that was weird to think about, Dougie having a kid. Dougie having a kid with Penelope, of all the damn people in the world. It dawned on me then that these moments between him and I were going to become rare commodities. My house would become a safe haven for him when they argued, or on Superbowl Sundays.
I didn’t feel sad about it, like maybe I should have. If anything, the thought that kept slamming into me like a jackknifing semi was that for the first time in my life, I wanted it, too.
The girl. The kid.
“So, what are you going to do?” he pressed, pulling my attention back to the matter at hand.
My throat worked at the thought, my sarcasm coming out from within the metaphorical wooded forest where I’d left my brain and balls. “Eat some Papa John’s, rub a few out, and fall asleep with my hand on my dick and Die Hard playing in the background once you decide to get out of my house.”
“You invited me, asshole,” he reminded me, throwing his head back with laughter. “Trust me, I would much rather be between Penelope’s thighs right now than listening to you whine about a woman who won’t give you the time of day.”
“Correction, Trina invited you—but thanks for the reminder.”
Dougie bent at the waist in a half bow while remaining seated, sweeping his arm across the space in front of him, “I aim to serve, sire.”
“You practicing your bowing for when you break the news to Mommy and Daddy Dearest, Jeeves?”
It was clear that Penelope’s parents weren’t going to take too kindly to their prized trick pony being tainted by a blue-collared stallion with no pedigree, no college degree, and maybe five grand in accessible funds to his name.
“Don’t remind me.”
“Maybe they’ll taxidermy your head and place it over their fireplace mantel.”
“Hopefully next to their trophies and ribbons of achievement.” Dougie beamed, as if that was better than winning the Powerball.
“Smug bastard.” I said with a shake of my head, the laugh tight as it left me.
“Seriously, man,” Dougie’s said, his tone turning earnest, “What are you going to do about this Raquel thing?”
“Yeah, what are you going to do?” A familiar high-pitched voice chimed in from behind him.
Bemusement hit me as a startled Dougie propelled himself upward from his end of the sectional couch, eyes wide with unbridled alarm, as if the stories his mother had taunted us with about hostile Fomorians in our youth had finally come true.
“Jesus Christ,” he bit out, scowling in my sister’s direction. “Why are you slinking around?”
Trina blinked, something sly glinting in her eyes, a sideways smile tilting her mouth.
“I prefer Trina, but Jesus Christ has a nice ring to it.”
Dougie fisted a hand through his hair, s
hooting her a look of daggers. His thick brows drew together, frustration etching into his rugged bone structure. After a few moments he let out a labored sigh, his face softening as the irritation ebbed away from him.
“Hey kid,” he finally greeted, smoothing his clothes, as if he was looking to busy himself while he collected his bearings. In the end he simply settled back onto the couch, gaming controller in hand.
The youngest of my sisters beamed, skipping over to the couch. She launched herself next to Dougie with a dreamy sigh of youthful contentment that carried over The Used track coming from the game on the TV— clearly pleased with the reaction she had gotten out of him.
In the months since she moved in with me, Trina had been trying to scare me, but had been failing miserably. I was impervious to her cheap scare tactics, and she lacked the patience that was truly required to build up the intensity of a true attempt at freaking me out. Dougie didn’t have any siblings, so mine spared him no mercy when he entered their territory.
He was a cheap kill.
“How’s it going, big head? Long time no see.” Trina placed a chaste kiss on his cheek that was pebbled with dark, unruly facial hair. All was forgiven in that moment, his concentration never breaking from the TV, the pads of this thumbs aggressively working an analog stick and an X button.
“Shit,” Dougie huffed. I watched as he went for the touchdown, only to be intercepted. “Brady, you useless motherfucker.” He tossed the controller to me with indifference, the handles damp with sweat, flopping against the back of the couch, “This game sucks.”
I cringed inwardly, knowing we were both reliving the loss of the Pats. “You’re just pissed that art is emulating real life.” I knew it was a bad idea when he pulled out the copy of Madden NFL ’08 from his coat pocket.
“The Giants should have never fucking won. It was highway robbery, and you know it.”
He wasn’t wrong. It had been a painfully tight game, the three-point loss devastating.