He stepped into the house and looked at her. She remained half sitting, half laying, and her left boob was hanging out of the armhole of her dress.
Embarrassed, and embarrassed for her, I tried to decide how to handle the situation.
Cash sat down in the loveseat across from her and acted like he didn’t even notice. “What proof?”
“My unappreciated twat,” Jennifer spat. “If you wouldn’t have punched Tito, I’d be riding his dick right now. You stole my dick.”
He chuckled a dry laugh. “If anyone stole your dick, it was Tito.”
Jennifer sat up. After resituating what portions of her were exposed, she looked at Cash. Her face was smeared with confusion. “That doesn’t even make sense.”
“He got what he had coming,” Cash said.
Jennifer tried to stand, but barely lifted her butt off the cushion before giving up. “We want to know why you hit him.”
“I’m a problem solver,” Cash said matter-of-factly. “I hit him because he needed hit.”
“Why?” Jennifer asked. “Why’d he need to be hit?”
I sat across from him on the loveseat, hoping that he would respond truthfully, but doubted my wish would be granted.
Cash glanced at me and then at Jennifer. He crossed his arms. Then, he crossed his ankles. He raked his fingers through his hair.
“You know that feeling you get when you like someone and you’re not quite sure if they like you back?” he asked. “You want to know, but you’re afraid to ask. You know what I’m talking about?”
Jennifer responded “yes” audibly, at the same time I responded “yes” silently.
“Well, I was a sophomore in high school, and that’s how I felt. I’d been crushing on this girl for a long time. She’d come over to my house at night and sneak in my bedroom window. We’d stay up all night talking about things that we didn’t share with anyone else – or so I thought, anyway. At the time I was young and stupid, but I’d lay in bed after she left and think all of that ‘what if’ shit. You know, ‘what if she liked me?’ ‘What if she let me kiss her?’ ‘What if this, what if that.’ Everyone knew how I felt about her. Hell, I talked about this girl day and night. Then, one night, she snuck in my window and started telling me a story about this guy she started fucking and how she was feeling guilty about it. I felt like someone smashed my heart with a fuckin’ sledgehammer. Hell, I couldn’t even breathe. But, I faked it, and acted like it didn’t hurt. I told her not to feel guilty. Of course, I was feeling a little jealous. So, I asked her who it was. After a I gave my word that I wouldn’t react harshly, she told me. Once I found out who it was, it was pretty clear why she was feeling so guilty.”
“Did you and Tito grow up together?” Jennifer asked.
Cash nodded. “We sure did.”
“It was him, wasn’t it?” Jennifer asked.
“Yeah,” Cash said without much emotion. “It sure was.”
My heart sank. His reluctance to commit to be in a relationship made sense. Not perfect sense, but I understood his fear of commitment a little better.
Jennifer’s eyes shot wide. She stood, steadied herself on the arm of the couch and shook her head in disbelief. “She fucked him?”
“He fucked her,” Cash said in a bitter tone. “More than once.”
“It takes two willing parties to do the dick dance,” Jennifer said with a thick tongue.
Cash shrugged. “I gave my word to her, so I let it slide. And, once I decide to let something go, it’s gone. So, from then until now, I tried to forget it ever happened. Then, when I saw him over here, I got pissed off. After I found out that he had no idea which one of you lived here, I realized he felt no remorse for doing what he’d done in the past. That’s why I hit him.”
While Jennifer appeared to be absorbing what had been said, Cash rested his forearms against his thighs and gazed blankly toward the kitchen.
I cleared my throat. “I understood all of that except for the last part. Why would it matter which one of us lives here?”
“He knew the woman who lived in this house was off limits,” Cash said.
“Oh.” I swallowed heavily. “How’d he know that?”
“Because I made it clear,” he said.
I felt warm and tingly inside.
Warm, tingly, and smitten.
And. I. Loved. It.
58
Cash
The tremendous amount of horsepower that Ghost had extracted from the five hundred and fifty-seven cubic inch engine was obvious. The rump RUMP rump RUMP rump from the Mustang’s exhaust shook everything that wasn’t bolted down.
He revved the engine once, sending an eardrum-shattering roar throughout the garage. I loved horsepower as much as anyone, but the sheer force belting out of the exhaust was pounding my eardrum deeper into my skull with each rotation of the car’s camshaft.
Ghost sauntered to the driver’s door, reached inside, and shut off the ignition. The hair on my arms continued to crawl for a few seconds afterward, nonetheless.
He pulled earplugs from his ears and shook his head. “That should do it. With ninety-three octane, this ought to hit the dyno at eight hundred horsepower. Maybe a little more.”
“What good is eight hundred horsepower in this little fucker?” I shouted. “All it’s going to do is spin the tires.”
“Your focus is being mean, and mine is making shit run like a top. With that four-link suspension in the rear, it’ll snap your neck when it takes off,” he said. “Hop in and I’ll show you.”
“I don’t need my neck snapped,” I said.
“That’s a matter of opinion,” Goose said from behind me.
Half deaf from the Mustang’s tuning session, I hadn’t realized Ghost was behind me. I turned toward his voice. “What the fuck’s that mean?”
He stepped around me and looked the car over. “Means there might be a few of the fellas that’d like to see you get your neck snapped for once.”
“You still pissed about me smacking the midget?”
“You didn’t smack him Cash. You broke his fucking jaw with a sucker punch.” He turned to face me. “It was a punk move on your part.”
I glared back at him. “You calling me a punk?”
“I’m saying it was a punk move. I didn’t mention it in front of those women, because it’s none of their business, but Tito didn’t deserve that.” He faced the car. “You’re wrong on this one, Cash.”
“Matter of opinion,” I huffed.
Goose’s lifted his head out of the car’s engine bay and looked at Ghost. “Care to give an opinion, big man?”
After a moment’s thought, Ghost looked at me and cleared his throat. “I understand your reasoning.”
“See,” I blurted. “Brother Ghost agrees.”
“You interrupted me before I had a chance to finish,” he growled.
“Oh.”
“I understand your reasoning. But Goose wants an opinion, and I’m going to give one.” He folded his massive arms over his chest and looked at me with serious eyes. “Tito stuck his dick in a girl you had a crush on, and when he did it, he was wrong. We all knew you liked her, including Tito. No two ways about it. But, he was a kid, and fifteen-year-old kids make decisions with their dicks, not their brains. We grow older, and we learn from our experiences, and from our mistakes. He hasn’t done anything but support us and the club since then. He’s done nothing but respect all of us. Tito’s good people. If he wasn’t, he wouldn’t be here.”
“He was at that chick’s house trying to get his dick wet, and he had no idea which one of those girls I’d been fucking with,” I said through my teeth. “In Wednesday’s meeting, I said – specifically – where she lived, and that little braniac remembers everything. He knew whose house he was at, what he was doing, and that there was a fifty-fifty chance that the chick he was fucking with might have been her. He got what he deserved.”
Ghost coughed out a laugh. “You’re a stubborn prick. So fucking stu
bborn that you’re blind. Either that, or you’re just plain stupid.”
I gave him a side-eyed look. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
“In that same meeting when you’re saying you said specifically where this chick lives, Baker asked you a question.” He raised his index finger and cleared his throat. “‘A girl sucks a dick like that, and you’re telling me you’re done with her?’ That’s what he asked you. In case you forgot, your answer was ‘yes’. That response made her free game. You’re wrong on this, Cash. Be man enough to admit it.”
I hated being wrong.
The fact that I wasn’t right sank into the pit of my stomach like a hot stone, burning the entire way down. If I was being honest with myself, I had to admit that my response to Baker’s question about Kimberly was inaccurate. I said it because I felt I needed to be done with her. Obviously, I hadn’t walked away from her emotionally, and punching Tito was proof.
I gazed blankly at my two brothers for a moment, and then swallowed heavily. I narrowed my eyes, tightened my jaw, and alternated glances between them.
“Fuck you, and fuck you,” I said.
I turned toward my motorcycle.
“Where are you going, asshole?” Goose asked.
Admitting I was wrong required casting every time I was right aside, and then starting over. From scratch.
I wasn’t opposed to admitting it, but I sure didn’t want to do it any more frequently than I had to.
Tito, not unlike the rest of us, lived modestly. A true nerd since childhood, he spent what little time he wasn’t riding his motorcycle with his nose buried in a book or against the screen of his computer.
I meandered up the walk and stepped onto the porch. Before I had a chance to raise my fist to knock, the door of the two-bedroom ranch home swung open.
Dressed in a pair of swishy pants and a wife beater, Tito stood in the opening. The wires that held his jaw together left him incapable of speaking. He stepped to the side and gestured toward the living room by tilting his head.
“I’ll make this quick,” I said. “I know right now I’m probably the last motherfucker you want to see.”
He swept his laptop off the end table and sat down on the couch. While I took a seat in the chair across from him, he opened it and then looked up.
I glanced around the sparsely decorated home and wondered how many times a day he cleaned it. Free of all clutter and fitted with three pieces of leather furniture and four end tables, the living room resembled a psychiatrist’s office, or a waiting room in the hospital.
He turned the screen of the laptop to face me and cleared his throat. Four words – large enough for me to read them from across the room – were on the screen.
WHAT DO YOU WANT?
“I want to admit I wasn’t right when I hit you.”
He pecked at the keyboard, then flipped the screen so I could see it. The massive font took up the entire screen.
YOU’RE ADMITTING YOU WERE WRONG?
I nodded. “Yep.”
A few strokes of his fingers later, and his next thought was revealed.
SAY IT. SAY YOU WERE WRONG.
“Fine.” I crossed my arms. “You want me to say it?”
He nodded.
Other than when my mother forced me to apologize as a child, I couldn’t recall ever being wrong. Not once. There was nothing I could do, however, to convince myself any aspect of what I’d done was right.
“I’m wrong,” I said.
Surprisingly, the words didn’t get tangled in my throat.
He studied me for a moment, and then typed another message.
BAKER TOLD ME WHAT YOU SAID
“About what?”
ABOUT WHY YOU SUCKER PUNCHED ME
“What’d he say?”
I KNEW WHICH OF THOSE GIRLS WAS YOURS
“Bullshit.”
I DID
My eyes thinned in disbelief of his claim. “How?”
GOOSE SAID HER HAIR WAS BLACK
“When did he say that?”
AT CHURCH
Church was biker slang for our weekly meeting. I felt uneasy. Much worse than the feeling of being wrong. Or, being doubly wrong. I felt like the idiot that Baker often said I was. As necessary as an apology was, I wasn’t going to allow Tito to beat a dead horse. I was wrong, and I was willing to admit it, but I wasn’t going to be chastised for an hour about it.
“Well, I was wrong, and I’m sorry.” I waved my hand in his direction and stood. “Maybe when you get your jaw unwired you can go back and see that chick. She’s pretty cool. Got big titties, too.”
He typed another message, and then stood. He turned the screen to face me and held it tight to his chest.
I’M SORRY FOR WHAT HAPPENED WITH ASHLEY, TOO
He’d never apologized for what he’d done. I’d spend the years wondering if he thought he was right, or if he was simply too stubborn to apologize. Having him do so, even if it was written on a computer screen, seemed to cleanse all the ill thoughts I’d been harboring for all those years.
I clenched my fist and extended my arm.
He tucked the computer under his left arm and pounded his right fist into mine.
I embraced him in a hug and patted him on the back. “Get well, Brother.”
He patted me in return and murmured something through his clenched teeth. As I released him, his knee came crashing into my nuts with so much force it lifted me from my feet.
Taken by complete surprise, I folded up like a cheap suit and fell at his feet. In utter agony, I writhed on the hardwood floor, wondering if – or when – I’d ever be able to have sex again.
Eventually, my stomach stopped convulsing. As my vision came into focus, I noticed he was hovering over me. The laptop’s screen glowed, waiting for me to read his parting message.
I looked at the blurry screen, blinked a few times, and then read the words he’d typed.
WE’RE EVEN
59
Kimberly
He seemed nervous, which made me feel uneasy. I wouldn’t have guessed men like him ever got nervous. Watching him pace in front of the living room window told me otherwise. When he glanced at the street for the umpteenth time, I had to ask.
“Is everything okay?”
“Everything’s fine. Yeah.” His gaze met mine. “What’s the deal with that friend of yours across the street?”
“What do you mean?”
“What’s her story?” Facing me, he tilted his head toward the window behind him. “Is she available?”
“She’s uhhm. Yeah. She’s. She’s divorced,” I muttered, confused as to why he was asking. “Why?”
“I was just wondering. I thought Tito might want to get with her when his jaw’s better.”
I was relieved at his revelation as to why he asked, but I couldn’t help but laugh a little at the thought of it. “After that story of yours, I don’t know if she’ll want to. Maybe. It’s hard saying with her.”
“Yeah. That’s kind of why I stopped by. That, and a few other things.”
“You lost me.” Confused, I sat on the edge of the couch cushion and gave him a look. “What do you mean?”
He sauntered across the room and relaxed at my side on the couch. “I want to elaborate. Make a few things. I don’t know. Clear. A couple of things, anyway. Maybe three or four.”
His stammering made me feel uneasy again. It worsened with each pronounced tick of the Tiffany & Co. Chelsea knock-off that sat on the end table at his side.
“Okay,” I murmured.
He was beating around the bush. I wondered what could have happened in the twenty-four hours since he’d revealed the complications of his childhood romance that almost was. While ideas of him laying out his departure plans formulated in my overactive mind, he cleared his throat.
“I wasn’t one hundred percent truthful with you – or with myself – when I told my story the other night. Or when I told you about why I didn’t do relationships.”
I was still quite curious, and a little relieved. “What uhhm. Okay. Well, I’ll listen if you’d like to clarify things.”
He inhaled a long breath. After exhaling heavily, he stood. “I’m not sure if it was what happened with the girl when I was in high school or something else, but I’ve always kind of ran away from anything that even came close to resembling a relationship. I’ve never been in one, really.”
His tired eyes met mine. It was my cue to make him comfortable with the situation. “I’ve only been in one, so we’re pretty close to each other in that respect,” I said, hoping my lack of relationship experience would provide him peace of mind.
He turned toward the window. “I told Baker I was done.”
After studying the darkened street, he turned around. His face was solemn.
I was far more confused than I was before he started speaking. Hoping that he was at a loss for words – and that he was going to complete the half-finished sentence that he’d started – I waited.
But nothing came.
“I’m sorry. I don’t know what that means,” I said. “You told Baker you were done?”
He sat in the chair across from me and let out a breath. “I told everyone about you. Then, when Baker asked whether I was going to continue seeing you or not, I said I was done. But I wasn’t.”
“When did this happen?”
“The Wednesday after the Sunday night we ate dinner here.”
I still had no idea where he was going with the conversation. I looked at him and wrinkled my nose. “A few weeks ago?”
“I guess,” he said. “Yeah.”
“But you’re not? Not done, that is?” I asked, my voice laced with hope.
“No. That’s why I’m here. I wanted to clear things up.”
I thought I knew what he was trying to say, but I felt like I may be reading between the lines. Considering his nervous state – and the fact that he’d done nothing more than mutter a few half-baked sentences – I stood and shook my head.
“I just finished spring inventory. It’s been a long, exhausting day, and I’m mentally challenged right now,” I explained. “Start at the beginning. Just say everything you want to say, and don’t leave anything out.”
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