by Stacey Lynn
Lilly walked away and I caught again how perfectly that uniform fit her. Her hips, the fullness at her chest.
I glared into my water to erase the vision.
You’re turning into a total fucking perv.
She ignored me and went to the bar, flipped open her computer and typed for two seconds before she stared at the screen, unmoving.
I couldn’t take my eyes off her.
Dad was right.
She wasn’t lost.
She slapped the laptop closed, making me jump. I tried to hide it, but she was in front of me before I’d fully recovered from her quick actions. I was still staring at the fire in her expression and deadness in her eyes.
“Why are you here?”
“Dad asked me to come. Thought maybe you’d be more willing to see he wasn’t a creep or something if we met.” It was partially true. I was there because I couldn’t stay away any longer.
“But why. Why is your dad insisting on stalking me and helping me?” She crossed her arms. It pushed her breasts up, strained the buttons on her uniform.
Hopefully she wore a tank top beneath the ugly dress.
I yanked my gaze up only to get caught on her pursed lips. Chin jutted out. Beautiful, silky hair pulled back and draped over her shoulder.
“Dad’s heart is too big for his body. He gets off on helping people.”
“Does he now?” She drawled the words, venom spitting with every consonant. “Has it occurred to you, or him, that I don’t want or need help? Or that all this attention makes me uncomfortable?”
I honestly hadn’t considered that, and with the way she was looking at me, meaning every word, I felt like shit. Dad’s goal wasn’t to make her mad, or uncomfortable at all. He just knew she needed help, and more, he believed she deserved it.
“I think that came out wrong. He saw you, met you, came back because there was something in him he couldn’t let go—and no, it’s not nefarious, I swear it. He’s got a big heart, likes to help people and wants to help you. Why does it have to be more difficult than that?”
“Because some of us not born with golden spoons don’t get offers for help.”
It was a lie that rolled too smoothly off her tongue. My spoon might have been silver. Hers was golden. At least in all the ways that didn’t matter when life came to an end.
The guys at the table grew louder, interrupting us, and she stepped back, shaking out her arms. “I need to check on them.”
I leaned back in my chair and faced the table. The two guys who could see me smirked as she neared. One blinked first and then put that smirk on Lilly.
He said something I couldn’t hear, probably intentional, and then before I could warn her, lifted his glass, still filled with icy water, and tossed it at her chest.
Her nipples immediately pebbled through and I was on my feet like a shot as she brushed it off her uniform. She was soaked.
They were laughing.
A loud boom came from the side, doors slamming open. I barely paused to see a bear-sized black man with a bald head and fire in his eyes stomping their way.
“Get the fuck out before I rip off your head.”
Holy shit. Where’d he come from?
The cook. It made sense. But I hadn’t seen him at all the entire time I’d been here. How’d he know?
He shoved Lilly toward the counter, closer to me, in a gesture far too tender for his hugeness and fury.
“You okay?” I asked her.
She swiped more water droplets off her dress. “Not the first time, won’t be the last.”
She scurried to the back and I waited until the assholes at the table cleared out, the cook standing over them to ensure they paid their bills and left a tip.
“I’m gonna get trouble from you?” He growled at me when they were gone. I was still standing there. Proud of him. Happy she at least had this guy in her corner on nights she worked.
“Nope. None.” I went back to my stool, drained my water and grabbed a pitcher nearby to give myself a refill.
Lilly came out minutes later, cheeks flushed, makeup smeared in an attempt to wipe it off, and a dry uniform clinging to those beautiful curves.
She strolled right up to me, anger etched in every pore.
“I’ll save you the time and the effort since I highly doubt you want to be here any more than I want you here. I won’t fill out an application for any job your dad might want to hire me for, and you wouldn’t hire me if you knew why. So tell your dad, again… thanks, but no thanks. And please, stop coming in.”
“You’d rather stay here? Dealing with that shit?” Was she serious?
“That shit is what girls like me deal with on a daily basis and it’s none of your damn business.”
Girls like me… it ran through my head like a gong and my lip curled.
I knew girls like her. I’d grown up with them. Even if she wasn’t from some white, upper-class family she still didn’t deserve that shit. No woman did… like her or not.
She was alone. She was the most alone person on the planet. A family who turned their back on her. No friends. Here we were, offering her an easy way out and she was refusing.
Seemed stupid to me. What happened to beggars couldn’t be choosers? I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why in the hell it pissed me off she kept turning us down when I didn’t want her around anyway.
She made me feel shit I hadn’t felt since Melissa and my chest burned.
Feeling anything pissed me off.
She wanted to be stubborn and prideful and an idiot? I should let her. Dad should.
I stood from the stool and dropped down twenty bucks along with our card—for Dad, because I promised him I’d leave it again.
“Enjoy your shift,” I said. “But Dad will be back. He loves Judith’s pies.”
I turned, storming outside the falling apart diner and slammed the door to my car after I climbed in.
My knuckles ached by the time I got back to my loft. My jaw hurt worse. I spent an hour in my weight room and showered and chugged a beer and paced my home.
The whole time, I felt. For the first time in two years, I felt everything.
And I started hating her for that, too.
The next morning I went to Dad, told him she didn’t listen to me either and we’d done all we could.
He looked crestfallen and disappointed.
For that, I hated her even more.
6
Lilly
My life became a routine, set in place mostly by Ellen insisting that a routine would help reintegrate me into society.
I had despised her the first time I met her.
She came to me the day after I left Mitchellville Women’s Prison and showed up at the halfway house, filled with hard features, a stack of papers in her hands with rules and requirements, and an angry look on her face that said she hated me and what I’d done already.
I’d wasted too many years on too many people trying to explain the truth, so I didn’t bother.
Later, I started realizing she wasn’t all bad. We talked about my education, what I wanted now.
She enrolled me in my required Alcoholics Anonymous treatment I’d been doing since I was sent to Iowa. She helped me get my photo ID even though my license was suspended until my parole was over and I was officially free.
And she set me up with Nancy.
My counselor who I originally spoke with twice a week but had slowly stretched out to monthly appointments. Apparently, being imprisoned could create a type of PTSD when inmates were released. We spent so many hours every day being told what to do, not allowed to do, and looking over our shoulders in case we’d made enemies or someone else decided to make us one of theirs. It was a constant mindfuck, where you could never relax and every time you were treated like an animal a part of your humanity was chipped away.
The first time Ellen knew I needed a counselor was that first day I met her.
“What do you want to do now?” She watched me with n
arrowed eyes and a doubting tone. Everything about this meeting unnerved me down to this very question.
Panic squeezed my chest and made my vision blurry. How was I supposed to know? I’d only been told six days ago I was being paroled. I hadn’t had time to plan, time to dream. Hell, I hadn’t even finished college like I’d planned on and now I was sleeping in a room without bars on it, listening to my roommate snore herself to sleep at night while she held an eight-inch blade in her hand.
Now what did I do?
My chin trembled and I brushed away tears. God. For the first time in years, I was crying and that made everything worse. Was I that broken?
Inside, I’d learned to cope. Keep my head down, keep friends with the crew I formed. I turned my eyes away from those who broke rules and I never owed anyone a favor I wouldn’t be willing to pay back.
Now? What did I do now?
“I don’t know.” My voice wobbled and my heart thumped painfully inside my chest. I looked down and saw my clothes. Faded and torn and ratted and stained, I looked like I’d just come up from a three-day drug bender and felt even worse. I hadn’t slept since getting in that taxi.
I hadn’t eaten since last night and it was now dinnertime.
Ellen took one hard, long look at me, and frowned. “How about we go for a walk?”
And that right there, was when I started liking her.
Now, we met up once a month. I knew she kept track of me because she always mentioned my AA attendance and asked how Nancy was doing. Apparently she referred parolees to her whenever she could.
Tonight, I hurried down Ingersoll to the restaurant where she told me to meet her, and like I’d done every day since I was released, tried to remember how to act like I belonged.
Paranoia and survival habits weren’t easily kicked with the taste of clean air and the lack of bars or prison guards hovering close. It’d been almost ten months since my release and I still felt the looks and sneers from the guards when I asked them questions, as if I was a step up from gum on the bottom of someone’s shoe.
They treated me like I was nothing.
In there, I was.
Now, it was difficult on the best days to remember I was anything. On the worst days, when memories pelted me in my dreams and then turned into nightmares, I knew I was less than that.
The air was crisp, and I curled my cardigan with holes forming in the elbows tighter around my stomach. Des Moines was prettier than I imagined it would be, not that I’d done much thinking about it at all, but I heard some of the inmates from here talk about it. They said it was small and a nowhere city with nothing good to do, but I liked it.
Much smaller than Chicago, sure, but it had a cool vibe filled with growth like they were trying to keep young people instead of outpricing everything so they had to move away.
After my required minimum stay in the halfway house, Ellen helped me find my current home. Sure, it was roach-infested and probably about ready to collapse with the next powerful thunderstorm, but it was within walking distance to classes and pretty much anywhere else I wanted to go. Outside of having to take the bus to work and the grocery store, I could walk everywhere.
I found Teddy’s, the restaurant where I was meeting Ellen and felt a rush of warmth as soon as I opened the doors and entered. There were a few people waiting on benches and my back went straight as I passed them.
Head straight ahead. Eyes too. Don’t look at anyone you’re not intending to.
Candace taught me the rhyme the first day she sat next to me. I’d been terrified I’d be forced to do unspeakable things considering how old she was and how much it was clear even to a newbie she was respected. I quickly learned it was just that. As one of the oldest women in prison, Candace helped people get acclimated. Didn’t mean she wouldn’t take you down. She was still tough enough to if she felt like it, but thankfully she’d never felt like that with me.
The memory made me shiver and I squeezed my eyes closed, blanking it out.
You’re not there. It’s okay to glance at someone. Smile.
Nancy’s voice poked through. Reminding me how to acclimate. Still, smiles felt stretched and fake and more like I was cringing. I even practiced them in the mirror. A crooked, broken smile to match the rest of my broken parts.
It was better for all most days if I didn’t try.
I headed toward the hostess stand. I was right on time but Ellen would have been early, either knowing how anxious I got when I had to wait in a crowd or because she believed being on time was being late. Either way, it worked for me.
“Two for Ellen Porter. I think she’s already here?”
“Yes, ma’am. Follow me to your table.”
She was sitting in a back corner where there’d be little traffic. God, some days I loved her. I didn’t know if she cared because it was her job and she really wanted to help people or if it was because she liked me. Either way, she always seemed to do the simplest things I appreciated.
Far from the bathrooms and kitchen, few people would walk by us. More, I spotted the back of her head before I saw her face because she left me the seat where I could see everything.
My racing pulse from the entryway and long walk slowed to a more normal rhythm by the time we reached her, and I slid into the booth the hostess gestured to.
“Thank you.” I glanced at her name tag. “Michelle.”
“You’re welcome. Enjoy your meal.” She grinned. One that wasn’t wonky and crooked and left me to reach for my ice water.
“Nice walk?”
“It was.” I set down my water. Considered trying on a smile but it was too much work. “I don’t usually see you on a Friday.”
She shrugged. “Nothing else going on, figured we could catch up before your shift at Judith’s. How’s that going anyway?”
If Chaz hadn’t already told Judith about the incident with the drunk guys last night, he would. Judith would lose her mind and tell Ellen. If anyone thought I couldn’t handle it, I’d be looking for another job and I didn’t want that. I didn’t mind it there. It was easy work for crappy tips, but I didn’t want to start job-hopping and seem undependable to future employers.
“Some jerks were there last night, but it wasn’t anything I couldn’t handle.”
Although, I was thankful for Chaz’s interference. For such a large man, he sometimes seemed invisible. I didn’t know he was paying attention and there was no way for him to see what was going on unless he watched through the small windows in the swinging doors. But he got there so fast.
And then there was David’s son. Hudson. He’d jumped from the stool so quick it would have slammed to the floor had it not been bolted down. He moved right in, hands fisted, chest out, looking like some superhero ready to avenge my honor—or rip their heads from their neck.
“You’ll graduate in the spring, correct?”
“I should.” With a two-year degree, that would maybe get me an entry-level position somewhere. But it’d be something. Not law school like I’d desired when I was younger, but those dreams died long ago. No, a decent job, where I could do good work, maybe work hard and move up over time would at least give me the ability to rent a nicer apartment, provide for myself even if it was on a discount store budget.
“You shouldn’t have taken so much time off.” Her criticism was said gently, but it still sent a slither of disappointment down my spine.
I shouldn’t have had so much time stolen from me.
“I know,” I said instead because recovery and parole and becoming reacclimated to society meant taking responsibility for actions, not placing blame.
When I was first sentenced, it took me years to see the point in even getting my GED. Since the accident happened before graduation, I was unenrolled the last semester of my senior year, leaving me four credits shorts of graduation. Candace finally convinced me two years later to take the high school completion courses and even then I only attempted it half-heartedly.
What good would it do when I wo
uldn’t be out of prison until I was almost thirty?
I was newly twenty-five, a two-year degree on the horizon and I still felt just as hopeless.
Except for two strangers who offered me help, and I threw it in their face and their business cards in the trash.
A waitress came and we ordered, and afterward, I was still thinking about Mr. Valentine and Hudson. He left in a huff, didn’t exactly seem like he wanted to help me and was only there for his dad, but what kind of man inspired that much loyalty?
And his statement. What was it?
It’d make Dad sad and he’s had enough of it.
I saw that enough in Mr. Valentine’s eyes and smile.
It made me curious what they saw in me.
For the first time, a nugget of regret settled in my stomach. Was it possible they were just trying to do something nice?
We waited for our food to come and Ellen and I talked about life. She tried to talk to me more about plans after graduation, checking out the career placement office on campus, but I was stuck on dark eyes, heavy black eyebrows, and the sharp-edged features of the man who’d jumped to my defense.
I once had everything going for me. Money. Family with status even if it was screwed up. I was popular, pretty based on the attention I got from guys. Hell, I could look at myself in the mirror and see what others saw and feel good about it. That hadn’t happened in years.
I had dozens of friends before the accident, a packed social calendar with plans to head to Purdue in the fall.
Now I had nothing. And it was my own stupid fault.
I was only half paying attention to Ellen, answering questions with shrugs and mumbled answers when our food came, and I poked at my fries.
“Have you… have you ever looked into my case, or the sentencing?” Sometimes, the desire to scream my innocence even after so many years became a tightly coiled ball in my gut, threatening to break free. Not that it’d do any good now.
“I review all cases when an inmate is paroled, so yeah, I’ve looked into it a bit. Why?”
I often wondered how my dad had all of it fall so perfectly into place. It didn’t help I’d lied in the hospital. After I’d done that, who else would have believed me anyway? My dad hired the lawyer, so he was beholden to the man paying his fees, not the teenage girl who’d killed her brother.