What He Wants

by Jessie Gussman

  The driver shook his head.

  “Mind if I ask if anyone has one?”

  “Help yourself.”

  Torque stepped up and called out over the low murmur of voices, “Anyone have a blade I can borrow to fix the bus?”

  No one said anything for a few moments. Then a big-shouldered, tough-looking dude at the back called out, “I’ve got one. Come get it.”

  Torque walked back the narrow aisle toward the man who spoke. If they weren’t on a cheap bus bound for nowhere, Torque might have thought that as big as he was the dude was a professional football player. But the hard look in the guy’s eyes was as familiar as his own breath.

  He stopped at his seat.

  The guy stared at him hard for a minute, sizing him up. Torque kept his gaze steady and his face impassive. He’d never bulked up like some guys had, although his shoulders had widened. But he didn’t cower or even feel fear. He’d learned that it wasn’t normally the big guys that one needed to watch out for.

  A small movement of the guy’s brow broke the stare. A shadow of a smile touched his lip before he flicked his ten-inch knife out of the boot that rested across his knee. He flipped it around, his fingers graceful and sure, before offering it to Torque, handle first.

  Torque stared at his wrist and the “M” with the flying rat tattoo. Mexican Mafia. Ruthless. Vicious. Pitiless. Yeah. He knew it from experience.

  His poker face had become his greatest asset in prison, but he’d stared at the tattoo an instant too long. His eyes flicked back up to the man’s face where a smirk slouched on his mouth. The three tattooed dots by his right eye, representing the gang lifestyle, crinkled together as his eyes narrowed.

  God forbid the dude think Torque was somehow an enemy. “Thanks, bro.” He gripped the handle. Intricately carved, it felt smooth and warm in his hand. “I’ll take care of it and make sure you get it back.”

  The guy jerked his head. Torque broke the number one unwritten rule from his time inside and turned his back on a man he didn’t trust, walking back to the front of the bus and back out into the glorious bright air of freedom. Maybe he’d pitch a tent in his gram’s backyard and live outside for the rest of his life.

  It took a few minutes to figure out how to get the skirting off the bus, and a few more to weasel his way under it enough to reach the airline that needed to be severed and wire-tied off. He made his ten-minute deadline, though, and the patrolwoman pulled out behind the bus, lights flashing.

  After delivering the knife back to the Mexican Mafia dude, Torque returned to his seat and sunk down into the cloth cradle. Felt good to be useful again. To have something to occupy his hands and to have honest work to accomplish. Wish he had a job lined up.

  His brother Tough had a body shop and did some light mechanical work on small cars. Torque was good enough with his hands that he could be a help to Tough. But it was the big trucks and the diesel motors that were in his blood. That’s where his heart was and where he wanted to be. It had been his dream forever to own his own diesel repair shop. To feel the power and vibrations, to breathe the exhaust, to work in the grease.

  But he’d take what he could get, he supposed, since he’d be starting from the ground up. His brothers had told him that the shop he’d worked in as a kid had closed down after old man Miller had passed away. Made his heart feel a little painful pinch thinking about the kind old man who’d taken him in as a grade school kid and given him a few bucks a week to sweep the shop and wash trucks. His responsibilities had increased over the years until he’d been the main mechanic and the main money-earner for the shop as he tore down the mechanical motors and rebuilt them.

  But old man Miller was gone, his shop closed down. Turbo had told him that much on one of his visits.

  He leaned his head back against the headrest and closed his eyes. Wasn’t going to worry about tomorrow.

  “Hey, sonny.”

  Turning his head, he opened his eyes. The little old lady beside him peered at him from over the top of her thick glasses.

  He blinked. She must have been talking to him, but he was one hundred percent sure he didn’t know her.

  “Yeah?”

  “You’re the Baxter boy. The one that went to prison.” She put her hand on his arm.

  His body wanted to flinch, and he fought the urge to hide. Stupid side effects of freaking prison.

  “Yeah.”

  “I remember my husband talking about you. Remember him showing me your picture in the newspaper.” She grinned, and somehow, even with the wrinkled skin, smart but sunken blue eyes, and wild, white hair, she looked youthful. Girly.

  He’d won the local fair’s pulling contest the summer before he went up. He was only sixteen and had built the motor himself. Paper made a big deal about it, and he’d landed on the front page. Not that he had parents to give a crap, although Gram had seemed pretty proud of it since she cut the article out and used one of her Christmas magnets to stick it on the refrigerator.

  The lady didn’t seem to need him to talk, so he didn’t.

  She leaned closer. “He was jealous of that old man Miller. Said with a kid like you working in the shop, the sly old fellow would never lack customers.”

  He shrugged. The bus slowed as it came to the end of the exit ramp. It wasn’t hard to see the big truck stop just ahead to the right. Looked like his patch job was gonna hold.

  The lady tightened her fingers on his arm. He focused back on her face. “You weren’t visiting that prison. You were leaving it.”

  “Yeah.”

  “My Tyke could always fix anything and wasn’t afraid to stand up and say so.” She let go of his arm and placed both hands on the purse on her lap. “Do you have a job lined up?”

  He hesitated before answering, just because he wasn’t sure what to say. That was the one question she could have asked that would make him curious. “Kinda.”

  “If it doesn’t work out, I’d like to talk to you. Tyke’s Garage. Take Seventh Street out of town in the opposite direction of Miller’s, and it’s at the top of the hill overlooking Brickly Springs.”

  Now he knew who she was and where she was talking about. “You were in the sewing circle with my gram.” The year his mother died, Gram’s sewing circle had made him and his brothers each a new quilt. His oldest brother, Ben, fourteen at the time, had taken off after the quilt but before the funeral. Hadn’t heard from him since. His dad left a couple years before and didn’t bother coming back for the funeral, let alone birthdays or Christmas. But Tough and Turbo, in third and first grades, if he remembered correctly, since he’d been in fourth grade and they were one and three years younger, had stayed. As he had. They were too little to do anything else. Too little to put the pieces of their broken family back together, too, although Gram had tried. The quilting group had helped.

  He refocused on the lady beside him. “I’m sorry. I didn’t recognize you.”

  “It’s been a good many years.” She pressed her lips together. “I was over in Philly at the doctor’s. Been going for years. Ever since I had the cancer.”

  He couldn’t believe she went to her appointment alone. “Where are your daughters?” If he remembered correctly, she had two.

  “They both work. It’s not like I’m too old to find my way around myself. This was just the regular checkup.” She gripped her purse with both hands but seemed to relax a little as they talked.

  “Grandkids?” he asked after a moment. It was odd to have a fairly normal conversation.

  “Nope. Both my girls were modern women who didn’t want kids.”

  The bus jerked to a stop at the far side of the truck stop. Torque barely noticed. He supposed he couldn’t judge, since his mother, if she were alive, would hardly be proud of where he’d been, but he thought maybe she’d be a little pleased at the circumstances that had landed him there and the stand he’d taken. But, if his mother were alive, he’d be treating her like a queen, not making her take the bus to a doctor’s appointment in Ph
illy.

  Maybe one had to lose their mother to really appreciate her. ’Course, he couldn’t say the same about his dad, so maybe that’s where his personality flaw was. He just differentiated between leaving on purpose and leaving with no choice. Cancer hadn’t cared that his mom had four boys who needed her.

  He looked again at the old lady beside him. She’d been a friend to his gram through the loss of her daughter. She and her friends had done all they knew to do to comfort four grieving boys after the death of their mother.

  It wasn’t that he owed her anything, but he wanted to feel like a human again. Doing something nice for someone without thought of repayment. Taking care of someone other than himself. Man, even just looking at a sweet, little old lady, made him feel like he was alive and in the world of the living again. Color and softness. Tools that fit in his hand. Boots that made him feel like a man again. Jeans and soon a t-shirt that actually fit.

  She’d asked him to go talk to her, and he would. “I need to see my gram. Might not make it out today, but I’ll walk up tomorrow.”

  The lady nodded and settled her purse in her lap. “I’ll expect you around lunchtime. Come hungry.”

  He wasn’t sure exactly what she was offering, but it wouldn’t hurt to check it out.

  Chapter 3

  “What he’d say? How’d it go? How did he look?” Kelly Williams fired question after question at Cassidy as she stepped through her apartment door. Cassidy sighed and leaned against the closed door. Kelly was a bundle of energy, and sometimes it was almost overwhelming.

  “I’m sorry. I’m doing it again, aren’t I?” Kelly asked ruefully. Her ponytail swung as she bounced one of the twins Cassidy was fostering with the hope of adopting on her hip.

  “Mom!” Jamal, the twins’ older brother, whom Cassidy had already adopted, came running out.

  “How was school today?” she asked.

  He gave the requisite “good” and mumbled something about a paper in his backpack. She handed him an apple, and he raced back into the living room where he was putting a model airplane together on the high table where the twins couldn’t reach it.

  Cassidy shook her head and pushed off from the door. “No. It’s not you.” Nissa held her little arms out, and Cassidy threw her purse down before taking her from Kelly. As the little arms encircled her neck, she sighed inside. Was there anything sweeter than the love of an innocent child?

  “I’m thinking it didn’t go well.”

  “No.” With the typical three-second attention span of a twelve-month-old, Nissa straightened her legs and shifted her body. Cassidy set her down and watched her toddle to the living room and join her sister on the floor with the blocks scattered everywhere.

  “He hates me, and he doesn’t want to have anything to do with me.”

  Kelly gasped. “Did he tell you that?”

  “Not exactly.” She turned to the counter and started wiping without really paying attention. “But he took the bus rather than ride home with me, and I had to practically beg him to come to the sponsor meeting tomorrow night.” She was getting tired of begging. She’d begged every official she knew to pass the legislative permission required to start and fund the sponsorship for prisoners program. Now, Torque, the whole reason she fought for the program to begin with, didn’t even want to be part of it.

  “Not good.” Kelly moved around the kitchen, as familiar with Cassidy’s as with her own, and began making tea.

  Cassidy forced a smile, hoping to cover her acute discouragement. “You treat me better than I deserve.”

  “That’s what friends are for. You’d do the same for me.”

  A knock sounded on the door. “That’s probably Harris.” Harris would have hurried over as soon as she closed the library for the day. “Better set another cup out.”

  Kelly was already on it, while Cassidy went and opened her door.

  Harris only needed one look at her face. “Not good, huh?” She walked in and wrapped her arms around Cassidy.

  Cassidy hugged her back. “It’s that obvious?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  They sat down at the table where Cassidy could keep an eye on the twins and Jamal. She smiled at his concentration as he carefully separated the parts of the airplane. At eight years old, he was four years younger than the recommended age on the airplane box, but this was the third one he’d put together. Her son had a gift.

  “He didn’t want to come home with me. He didn’t want to do the sponsorship program. Basically, he hates my guts.”

  “He didn’t say that,” Kelly reminded her.

  Like he had needed to.

  “So he’s not doing the sponsorship program?” Harris asked, her brows drawn, her expression concerned. She knew how hard and for how many years Cassidy had fought for that program.

  “He said he’d come to the meeting tomorrow night. He didn’t commit.”

  “You’re still in love with him,” Kelly, direct as always, stated over the rim of her tea cup.

  “I was never ‘in love’ with him. Infatuated maybe.” He was the first person in her life who seemed to see beyond the good looks she’d been born with to the brain that lay under it. He’s the one who said she should be a doctor. When she told him she couldn’t stand the sight of blood, he’d said, “Well, a lawyer, then.” And that’s what she’d done. She’d still earned some money as an underwear model, and that helped put her through law school. Her parents, the owners of a vast empire of various kinds of pickles, now semi-retired, would have paid. But with Torque in prison, serving her time, she hadn’t been able to live the high life. It wouldn’t have been right.

  Harris and Kelly just looked at her. They didn’t believe that she’d never been in love with Torque.

  “Really.” The best memories of her life were riding beside him. Her last carefree days. Maybe that’s why she cherished them so much. “I just...” She spread her hands out on the table. Even her friends didn’t know about that night and what happened and what exactly Torque had done. She hadn’t even known Kelly then. And she hadn’t become friends with either Harris or Kelly until a couple of years ago when she graduated from law school and became a public defender in her hometown.

  “Wasn’t he your boyfriend in high school?”

  “No.”

  Her friends had accepted her explanation about feeling bad for Torque because he had been given an unfair, too harsh sentence. She hadn’t realized that they both, apparently, thought she had feelings for him.

  “Never?” Harris asked gently.

  “No. We didn’t even go to the same school.” At least not from her second grade year on, when the private, all-girls’ school had opened in the next town over. Torque would have been in Kindergarten.

  “You’re older than him.”

  “Yes.” Which she figured was why he’d done what he did. She was nineteen, a sophomore at Stanford, but home from college to attend the homecoming football game and give it some publicity. She’d never been a superstar model, but she’d been well enough known that the homecoming committee had requested her presence.

  He was only seventeen, a senior in high school. But Torque always seemed older. Maybe because of his hard life. Or because he was quiet. Serious.

  Still, she had assumed, and he probably had too, that they’d not charge a seventeen-year-old as an adult. She’d been wrong.

  Her tea was getting cold. She picked the cup up, surprised to see her hands trembling.

  “If he agreed to come to the meeting, maybe he’ll agree to do the program,” Harris said reasonably.

  Cassidy hoped so. Not only would it look good on his record, and not only would it help her save face, since it would be embarrassing to have fought so long and so hard for it only to have her first sponsor ditch her, but it was a way for her to help him. Maybe.

  Cassidy changed the subject to Kelly’s latest charity project, and they talked a little about the activity center she was hoping to start, which both Harris and Cassid
y had agreed to help with.

  “How’s the adoption coming?” Kelly asked as they stood, clearing off the table and putting their cups in the dishwasher.

  “I meet with my caseworker the day after tomorrow. It’s been six weeks since their mom was sent to prison, and they finally got the dad, who’s in for life, to sign off on custody.”

  “Did they decide that you were okay as a single mother?”

  “No. They’re very firm that I could adopt one child as a single mother, but their policy is firm that they don’t allow a single mother to have two children under the age of three by herself.” She sighed, looking over at the twins, who now had every doll and stuffed animal they owned scattered out on the floor with the blocks. “I, uh.” She paused. “I might have told them that I’m seeing someone and it’s serious.”

  “I didn’t know you were seeing someone. Let alone that it was serious.” Harris’s slightly cultured voice held a tone of complete disbelief.

  “I’m not.”

  Kelly rolled her eyes. “Is that what they’re coming for tomorrow? To meet him?”

  “No, I told them we weren’t living together. They agreed to let me foster the twins. Only because they really like to keep siblings together. So, that’s what they’re coming to see, that I’m doing okay with Jamal and the twins in a foster situation. They might allow me to keep them longer—until my nonexistent serious boyfriend proposes or moves in—if things look good to them.”

  “Where are you finding a serious boyfriend?”

  “I hope that they’ll decide I’m doing well and that they’ll make an exception this time.” She leaned against the counter. “I know it was wrong to lie. I actually didn’t mean to. Didn’t really think about it. But when she explained her policy, we were sitting in the conference room. Jamal was playing with his sisters, and he was so happy. He wanted to be with his siblings so desperately. It’s all he has, and he feels protective of them. I had to do everything in my power to keep them together.” She ran her finger along the edge of the counter. “The words slipped out, and I thought it would give me the time I needed to form a plan.”