Between Friends (19 page)

“Vin …” Alex nodded in greeting, appearing with his jacket slung over his shoulder. He entered the kitchen, which was becoming overcrowded. The atmosphere was charged with additional tension now that Vin was home.

“I didn’t know he was going to be here,” Vin said a bit gruffly, referring to Alex, but not addressing him. “I coulda stayed and helped if you wanted.”

“No,” Lillian said adamantly. “You needed to get
out
of the house. I needed to stay
in.
Besides, it gave me a chance to visit with Dallas and Alex. I didn’t think you’d mind,” she said reasonably, patting his arm.

Vin grunted. “Hi,” he finally mumbled to Alex. “Thanks for helping Lillian.”

“Anytime,” Alex responded.

“Yes,” Dallas also voiced.

“And it gave Alex and Dallas a chance to meet. How is Larry and Marilyn? How did the work go?”

Vin turned and picked up the flowers. “Okay. They want you to come out. Stay a few days. Here, these are for you.”

Lillian was delighted, and accepted them with a smile as if it were the first time her husband had ever brought her flowers. Dallas knew it wasn’t. She was charmed by Vin’s thoughtfulness.

“I’d better get going. You two probably want to be alone, have dinner and some peace and quiet for the evening,” Alex interjected. He reached out and stroked Lillian’s shoulder, and she smiled up to him with an assurance that she was fine now.

Dallas also took advantage of the opportunity. “I have to leave, too.”

“Alex, maybe you can give Dallas a lift back to the city …”

“Oh, no … I’m not going back tonight. I’m staying with my family. I can walk the two blocks.” She got a purse from where she’d left it, under the kitchen table on the floor, and Lillian got her jacket from a closet next to the basement entrance.

“I’ll drop you off. It’s on the way,” Alex insisted in a voice that brooked no debate. He crossed the kitchen as he put on his coat. He stood a foot or two away from Vin addressing him. “I don’t know what else you might need a hand with, but let me know. I can come back out.”

Vin turned around. Dallas had always considered Vincent Marco to be a giant of a man. Perhaps because he was stocky and always seemed so aggressive to her. But he was about three inches shorter than Alex, and the difference to Dallas made Vin suddenly seem less intimidating.

Vin cleared his throat. “Yeah. Sure. Look, I appreciate you coming out to help Lilly.” He awkwardly offered his hand for Alex to shake. “Dallas, you, too,” he said again.

“Good night, darling,” Lillian crooned and she reached to hug and kiss Alex. “Thank you for everything.”

Dallas noticed that Vin averted his eyes. And then Lillian turned to her with the same words and expression.

After a moment of repeated good-byes, Dallas and Alex left the house. They said nothing as they walked to Alex’s car, and he opened the door and held it for her to get in. But she didn’t right away. She turned to Alex, sorry that she couldn’t see his face.

“Can I ask you a question?” Dallas opened softly.

Alex let the door go and proceeded to walk around the front of the car to the driver’s side. “Go ahead,” he instructed, unlocking his own door.

Dallas hesitated. She hoped she wasn’t getting too personal. “What are you to the family? What was your relationship to Nicholas?”

Alex opened his door before he looked at her again.

“I don’t have any relationship to Nicholas or Lillian … Vin is my father.”

A
LEX PULLED UP IN
front of the house and put the car in neutral. He stared out the windshield onto the dark street. Dallas did the same. Someone’s dog barked mournfully from a backyard. A gruff “shut up” quickly silenced the animal. A car turned into a driveway down the block ahead of where Dallas and Alex sat. Getting out of the car, the driver cast a long and curious look at them and finally headed into the house. When the door closed it became very quiet again.

The ride from the Marco house took less than three minutes. Neither she nor Alex said a word to each other the entire time. They exchanged brief glances and grinned, looking away.

“You lost weight,” Alex observed awkwardly.

Dallas grimaced. “You’re not supposed to tell a woman that. You’re supposed to say … you’ve changed, or you look great.”

He chuckled. “Yeah. That, too.”

“You stopped smoking. And your hair …” Her gaze roamed over him. “What happened?”

Alex looked at her. “Life. Does it make me look old?”

“No … it’s kind of interesting. It looks good on you.”

It made him look, oddly, more like Vin.

Vin Marco was Alex’s father.

Now Dallas realized why, even when she’d first seen Alex, he’d seemed familiar. But now that she thought of it, now that she’d actually seen Vin and Alex side by side … now that Alex had said so himself … of course Alex was Vin’s son. Another son. The
other
son.

Dallas gazed at his profile. He seemed lost in his own thoughts. He didn’t seem in a particular hurry to leave.

Alex waited for the questions to begin. It made him uneasy. Not because he wasn’t prepared to tell about himself, but because it also meant talking about his mother. Vincent Marco being his father was more her story than his. And Alex had always been more protective of her than himself.

He caught Dallas’s intense gaze upon him. He couldn’t see her whole face. Just the places where the shadows created from the streetlamps didn’t fall directly on her.

“You probably had guessed,” Alex said quietly.

Dallas shook her head slightly. “No, I didn’t. Not
that
way. I never would have thought … Vin seems to be so in love with Lillian … I …”

“He is in love with Lillian. I don’t think Vin has ever loved a woman as much as he loves her.” He looked out the front windshield again and shrugged. “Vin and my mother … it wasn’t about love. It was a whole lot of other things.”

“Oh …”

He laughed softly. “You don’t really understand. That’s okay.”

“Look, I don’t think it’s any of my business. It doesn’t matter.”

“It doesn’t?” he asked cynically.

“No, why should it? Not to me or to anyone else, I bet. I mean, it’s not as if it doesn’t happen and …” She sighed in annoyance. She looked at him squarely. “Why am I trying to make it sound better?”

“I don’t know. Why are you?” Alex asked.

Unexpectedly, he put his car into park and turned off the engine. The humming sound of the motor died, and they were left in the small space of the vehicle with the sounds of their own breathing. Alex swiveled in his seat and reached out to touch her shoulder. “Okay, let’s forget it. I was just answering your question. I’m not anything to the Marcos.”

“But you just said that Vin is your father,” Dallas said, confused.

“That’s right. He and my mother met and
bang
! That’s where the connection ends. He made a shot in the dark, and I was the bull’s-eye. Vin didn’t know I existed until I was almost fifteen. I knew who he was. I used to think that he’d come to look for me. But he really didn’t know. So, I went to him.”

In the dark, Dallas could see the tightening in Alex’s jaw. The fingers that just touched her shoulder slid away and curled unconsciously into a loose fist. She knew exactly what had happened between Vin and Alex and how Alex must have felt. Her stomach muscles clenched as she had a vision of herself at five, facing a black man with glasses and a mustache, with a black woman beside him, telling her he was her father. It didn’t fit. It didn’t make sense. But it was true.

“He didn’t believe me. He denied it. But Lillian … she took one look at me and knew.” Alex shifted to a more comfortable position in the seat and sighed deeply. “If Lillian hadn’t stood up for me and tried to calm him down, I would have left and never gone back. She was crying and, man … I was so scared I was shaking. But I was also mad as hell. Nick was there, too. He just kept yelling and shouting, ‘Get outta here. You don’t belong here …
I’m
his son …’”

Dallas stared blindly into the night, the story coming to life before her eyes. A skinny kid with dark hair standing for the first time ever, alone before the formidable angry shock of his own father. And being rejected.

“You were so brave.” Dallas shook her head in wonder. “I don’t think I could have done that.”

“I had to. I had to know.”

“But … it … didn’t work out. Did it?” she asked carefully.

Alex shook his head. “He had Lillian. And he had Nicholas. I didn’t compute. I didn’t fit. Hell … I wasn’t supposed to happen.”

Alex looked at her, touched her shoulder again. “You know, Vin is not a bad guy. He’s honest. He works hard. He’s good to Lillian. When she fell in love with him and agreed to marry him, I think Vin couldn’t believe his luck.”

“What do you mean?”

“Lillian once told me her parents didn’t much like the idea. They didn’t think he was good enough for her. He wasn’t one of them, if you know what I mean.”

Dallas did. She remembered the photograph. She knew about Lillian’s background and family. Her father owned a number of successful neighborhood businesses where she’d lived. She had an older brother who had also done well, who lived in New Jersey.

“Vin getting Lillian to marry him was a big deal. She was the best thing that could have happened to him. Lillian made him feel like more than he thought he was. When I showed up, it was like I blew his cover.”

“And Lillian?” Dallas asked.

“Lillian …” Alex murmured in consideration. And then he sat there slowly shaking his head, as if he couldn’t find the right words to say it all. He raised his left hand and then let it drop to the steering wheel. “She didn’t hold it against me or Vin. She tried to bring us all together. She wanted Nick and I to get along. That didn’t go over big, but …” He sighed deeply. “Lillian probably saved my life. I’d do anything for her.
Anything.
Next to my mother, I love her more than anyone else in the world.”

Dallas was deeply moved, but she wasn’t surprised at all by Lillian’s part in the drama. All she had to do was remember standing outside that fence when she was seven years old, with Lillian urging her to come closer.

“You know what I’m talking about,” Alex suddenly said. Dallas turned her attention sharply to him. “Lillian is exactly the same way with you as she is with me. So, what’s your story?”

Already Dallas was shaking her head, denying that there was anything remotely as significant as Alex’s relationship to Vin and Lillian. Not willing to share her history, and not sure she could explain it to someone who never had to worry about race first.

“I was just a little girl. My family was new on the block …”

“I know. The first black family, or something like that. That’s what Valerie said.”

“Lillian was just very kind to me. I don’t know why. But I’ve always liked her. She’s … one of my favorite people,” Dallas confessed shyly.

Another car came down the street behind them, its headlights shining and growing larger like spotlights. They ignored the slow-moving vehicle until it continued down the street and turned the corner. It was quiet again. He waited for her to continue.

She waited for him to ask. Dallas knew he was going to. She could almost feel the question forming on the tip of his tongue. She felt like her heart was beating faster. She held her breath, waiting.

“Do you remember that time? Not with Nick. That other time?”

Oh, my God …

Dallas closed her eyes briefly as her stomach heaved. It was an odd kind of giddiness. She nodded.

“Me, too,” he murmured with a nervous chuckle. Dallas remained silent. Alex gently shook her arm. “Hey. You aren’t ashamed, are you?”

Again she merely nodded.

“Why? Don’t do that.”

She templed her hands and fingers, hiding her mouth behind it. “I can’t believe I did that. I can’t believe I actually had the nerve to call you and …”

“Yeah, well … I couldn’t believe you did it either … it’s okay,” Alex rushed to reassure Dallas. She shifted in the seat and uttered a slight moan. He stroked her arm and squeezed it gently. “I’m not complaining but … it was the first time anyone had just asked me to …” He made a helpless sound, unable to find the words for how incredible it had been.

“Please … I can’t talk about this,” Dallas said, nearly out of breath.

He took hold of her arm again. “I don’t want to upset you, but I have to ask you something. I mean … afterward, I nearly went crazy wondering …”

“I don’t want to …”

“Dallas …” He said her name with a sudden urgency. “I have to know. Were you all right?”

She stared at him. She hadn’t been at first. After they’d made love and she’d gone about her business and Alex had just gone. She’d never found out where to. Dallas thought now, as they sat facing each other discussing one of the most important moments of her life, fifteen years ago, that she had no idea what she would have done had things worked out differently.

Her gaze shifted out the car window. Her hands were locked together in her lap. She could feel the firm grip of his hand, and the absentminded way his thumb rubbed along the material of her coat. The pressure went through to her skin.

“I was two weeks late with my period,” she said in barely a whisper. Alex uttered an oath under his breath. She could tell, however, that it wasn’t in anger but rather a confirmation of his worst fears. “I can’t begin to tell you how scared I was. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t tell anyone. I … I thought … I thought I was pregnant.”

Just saying it evoked in Dallas the total panic she’d felt several weeks after the evening spent with Alex. She’d cried to Valerie. To Maureen. But she’d never told either of them a thing about him.

Dallas had wanted to have sex. That’s all it had been to her at the time. She had hoped that it would one day be romantic and tender, like true love … sacred and pure. But the boys she knew only wanted to get into her pants. For them it would have been a conquest. For her, it was the ultimate surrender. The first time had to be with someone she could trust. And the only person she could trust, because he’d never tried to take anything from her, had been Alex Marco.