Claudia seemed to be enjoying herself. She initially picked at her Belgian waffle with its heavy dollop of whipped cream and thick, sauce-drenched strawberries. Then as her mood lightened, her appetite grew until the gigantic waffle was all but gone and she was reaching over to take occasional fork-fuls of pancakes and eggs from Dez’s plate.
“So, with all this hot sex going on at home, were you ever tempted by another man?”
“Darling, please.” Another reluctant smile transformed Claudia’s face.
“Oh, come on. I just want to know if I got my whorish ways from you or Warrick.”
When her mother flinched, Dez could have slapped herself. But Claudia surprised them both with a grim laugh. “I think you got it from my side of the family. Not necessarily from me, mind you. More than likely your grandmother. She loved sex.” Claudia pointed her fork, sticky with whipped cream and strawberry sauce, at Dez. “You know, she had at least a half a dozen affairs before Daddy finally got enough courage to throw her out. Not that she stayed gone. Like most men, he couldn’t resist her for long. Even after she showed up pregnant with a child that wasn’t his.” That was Aunt Paul. Granny Martine’s love child.
“I know that Granny was scandalous. I was talking about you. Don’t think I didn’t notice how you avoided my question about the other men.”
Claudia laughed. “Look, but don’t touch. That’s my motto where temptation is concerned. Paulette always said that I was so much into self-denial that I should be a nun, but I don’t think that I’m that bad. I’m just not as . . . free with myself as she was.”
“Free.” Dez chuckled. “That’s a nice way of putting it.”
“How else—”
“Hey, Claudia, I thought that was you.”
They both looked up as a tall, lawyer-looking man stopped at their table. He was handsome enough in his adventurous pink pin-striped tie and a well-cut Italian suit.
“Hullo, Kincaid,” Claudia greeted the stranger with a deliberately cheerful smile.
“Sorry to intrude.” He propped himself up on an empty chair next to their table.
“It’s all right. We won’t flog you for it.” Claudia turned to Dez. “I’m not sure if you two have already met but, Kincaid, this is my daughter, Desiree.”
He shook Dez’s hand. “A pleasure.”
“Kincaid taught a finance class at school a few semesters ago.”
He must be a wild man.
Dez smiled, trying to at least pretend that she didn’t want him to disappear.
“Well, it’s good to see you again. Listen, let’s get together and do something soon.” He passed Claudia his card. This probably wasn’t the first time he was doing that. “I’ll leave you ladies to your lunch. Good to meet you, Desiree.”
Dez cringed at the way he made her name sound, all feminine and fragile. “Yeah, take care.” She stretched her lips at him.
“I hope he’s not one of the men you’re finally considering,” she said when he was safely ten feet away. “He looks too much like Daddy.”
Claudia arched an eyebrow in surprise. “You haven’t called Warrick that in a long time.”
“Sometimes I slip and forget. Anyway”—she waved her hand dismissively—“my point is, you can’t go backward. Straight ahead is the only option. Just like
Warrick
, that guy doesn’t deserve to eat the shit off your shoe.”
“And speaking of eating,” her mother made a face around her mouthful of Dez’s hash browns. “I am, so hush.”
“Fine.”
After breakfast, Dez dropped her mother off at Eden’s and watched as the two women embraced in the doorway before slipping inside the pretty bougainvillea-covered bungalow. She trusted her with Eden. Dez wasn’t quite sure of the nature of their friendship, but she knew that the tall, robust-looking woman would take good care of her mother.
On her way back home, she checked her cell phone. She hadn’t answered its persistent ringing all morning and knew there had to be a few messages. She had four—one from her brother asking her to do some stupid thing or other, two from Rémi, and the last from Victoria.
“I don’t like how we left things the other night,” she said on the voice mail. “I’d love to make it up to you. Call me.” She left her number.
Dez saved Victoria’s message and called Rémi back. After a brief conversation, the two women agreed to meet up later in the week.
Chapter 14
“S
o how have things been for the prodigal?” Rémi turned to Dez. They slouched on one of a dozen benches lining the stretch of beach, drinking vodka from paper-bagged glass bottles and taking occasional peeks at the stars winking above them.
“Do you and Derrick get together and compare notes or something? He called me the same thing not too long ago.”
“But he didn’t say it with this much love.”
“How did you guess?”
The two women laughed. It had been a long night. The other women who had been traveling with them on the night’s adventure had long since retired for the evening. Staying out past three in the morning on a school night didn’t feature into their plans. Rémi and Dez were danced out, fucked out, and smoked out. Their cigarettes, plain old nicotine this time, dangled limply from their fingers while their eyelids drooped over reddened eyes. But they weren’t ready to end it yet.
“What’s the matter with that boy anyway? You think by now he’d find the right girl and loosen up. Isn’t he about to turn twenty-seven?” Rémi sprawled back against the bench and tipped back the brim of her hat. “If a change is coming, it better come now.”
“It might never happen. I mean he’s the lawyer, the offspring with the legitimate job, the well-earned money, the platinum life. By all appearances, he’s doing everything right. He doesn’t need to change. Both he and my mom love him just the way he is.” Dez laughed, putting the bottle to her mouth again. “Neither of them gives a shit that he’s got a stick up his ass a mile wide and just as long.”
“Ouch.”
“What? Reliving old memories?” Smoke from Dez’s cigarette curled up around her face, forcing her to narrow her eyes against the gray stream.
“Hmm.” Rémi smiled in the dark and took a drag of her own cigarette. Then for no other reason than they could, they laughed.
“I’ve been missing you since you’ve been away, Nichols.”
“I know. It’s been the same for me, too, but I couldn’t come back yet. Not without a good reason.”
“I guess a good reason showed up, huh?”
“Yeah.” But Dez didn’t want to talk about that now. She didn’t want to talk about death or anything else permanent. “Mama called me back and I had to come.” That was close enough to the truth.
“Understandable. I wish you’d given my request some priority, too.” An ocean of silence fell between them.
“I was sorry to hear that your daddy had passed on, Rémi.”
“Thanks.”
“Mama told me last fall.”
“And I got your card.”
But it hadn’t been enough, even Dez could see that. “Eventually it was all right. He and I were never close, and although he disowned me, I still loved him.”
“I know. Love is a treacherous thing that way. You don’t always love the people who love you back.”
“Here, here.” Rémi raised her vodka skyward before tossing the last of it down her throat. The bottle clinked when it fell in the trash can a few feet away. With a harsh sigh, she leaned her head back to look the sky full in the face. Her own face was slack from want of sleep.
Dez looked away from her friend’s pain and rested her eyes on the horizon instead. In less than an hour the sun would come up. Dawn was a glimmer beyond the stars, a slow graying of black skies, and the most subtle of blushes where the sky met the ocean. She wanted to have been there for her friend, to have been less self-absorbed to see that Rémi wouldn’t be merely glad that the man who’d thrown her out of the palatial family home, even erased her name from the family Bible, had died. She’d sent her a card all right. Something breezy and funny that hadn’t really captured the spirit of what she wanted to say, but had to do because she had been in a hurry, rushing through some town and high on Ruben.
The sun gradually rose, spreading across the expanse of sky and sea like a lush blanket of grays, then pinks, then a vivid, lush gold that bathed their faces in brilliant color.
“Sorry about how things ended in the desert with Ruben.” Rémi’s voice was rough from the cigarettes and vodka. “I know it was hard.”
“Yeah. I’m sorry too. But I’m more sorry that I wasn’t here for you when all that shit went down with your dad and the rest of your family.”
And just like that, things were clear between them. They quietly breathed the shared air and stared out to the ocean, letting the old hurts float away with the lifting morning breeze.
Rémi crushed her cigarette out on her boot heel and dropped the butt in the trash. “Let’s get out of here and get some coffee.”
“What’s open at this time of morning except for IHOP?”
“There’s a place just off Biscayne Boulevard. It used to be Candy, that boy’s club.”
“Have I been gone that long?”
“Oh, yes, my friend. You have.”
They found a cab to drop them off on the tiny street off Biscayne. Dez stared up at the cheerful two-story house with a balcony ringing the second floor and brilliant fuchsia bougainvillea dripping down its red brick walls. Small tables sat on the porch, already occupied by people watching the day’s virgin sun and drinking their morning lattes. A gigantic rainbow flag waved lazily from the front porch just below the sign hanging from the eaves that said VICTORIANA.
“When did all this happen?”
“Two years ago. Just after you left, actually. Sweet, huh?”
Very
. When she ran off with Ruben, the city didn’t have a gay spot that wasn’t a club. Sexy. Smoky. Very nighttime. This place was cute. Inside, Victoriana was light and airy with artfully painted wooden tables scattered around the large space, potted plants near the open windows, and a young cutie behind the coffee bar.
“Jailbait,” Rémi warned.
“Doesn’t mean I can’t look.”
They bellied up to order their first round of drinks, then stumbled out to the porch and commandeered one of the tables to recover from the night’s excess. Dez rubbed her eyes and hunched over her black coffee. The scented steam bathed her face in heat. Just the mere presence of caffeine was enough to send her body on the road to recovery. The alcohol felt heavy in her system, weighing her body down in the chair. She was getting too old for this. Glancing over at Rémi made her feel slightly better. Her friend looked as exhausted as she did. A quick peek at the clock inside told her that it was just past seven o’clock.
The sound of high heels dancing up the walkway tore her eyes away from her coffee. Victoria Jackson walked toward the building looking fresh and breezy in a knee-length floral dress and a light sweater in the seventy-degree morning. Her luscious breasts bounced with each step, echoing the spring of the loose curls around her face. Was that a pencil stuck in her little updo? With her big handbag gaping open with what looked like books, catalogues, and magazines, she reminded Dez of her high school librarian. Sexy Mrs. Renfroe. Now all she needed were some wire-rimmed glasses and that teasing smile that the librarian always wore when she was suggesting a new book for Dez.
“That woman always looks so fucking good,” Rémi murmured. “I would do her in a minute.”
“I wouldn’t.” Dez pursed her lips. “I’d take at least an hour, maybe two. You see her often?”
“Not nearly enough. Running into her at your mom’s the other night was definitely not the usual thing. She owns this whole place, although she works mainly at the bookstore upstairs.” Rémi’s sleepy eyes roamed freely over Victoria. “I always wondered if she was single, but she seemed so . . . reserved.”
Dez sat up in her chair. “You mean she’s a dyke?”
“If not, then close enough. She and your brother might have had a thing.” Rémi waggled her eyebrows at Victoria who was still making her leisurely way toward the building. “I don’t mind bi chyks.”
Dez didn’t either, but it didn’t matter. She had enough reasons not to pursue this woman. Still, she
was
nice to look at. “You say that now, but remember that girl you were fucking around with in college who dumped you for that boy?”
“I’m already over that.”
“Like hell.”
Behind her, Dez heard Victoria’s voice, floating out to the porch in warm, indistinct notes. Slouched in her chair, Rémi watched her over Dez’s shoulder, her mouth curving up with that flirtatious, lopsided grin that so few women had been able to resist. She sipped her espresso and straightened up in her chair as the footsteps came closer.
“Morning, Ms. Jackson.” She touched a fingertip to the brim of her hat, acknowledging the woman walking up behind Dez.
The beige hat and its silver studs encircling the crown complemented Rémi’s olive skin and the shadowed wicked curl of her mouth. Did Victoria like that? Dez felt a momentary surge of jealousy.