RECKLESS — Bad Boy Criminal Romance (5 page)

I meet and talk to a Spanish girl with short wavy, light brown hair.  We move from the bar to a small table and I order a chicken sandwich and a Heineken.  She wears blue jeans and a pink T-shirt with black print that reads “I’ve Been Civilized Long Enough.”  On her left forearm is a multi-colored tattoo of a dragon.  We joke around and she sips a Pabst Blue Ribbon and is only slightly drunk.  She tells me she’s a hairdresser and later she touches my hair and says, “Your hair’s really nice.  If you ever decided to cut it all off you could donate it, you know.”

“Do the poor and hungry prefer that over money?”

“No!  For, like, kids who can’t grow hair because they have some medical condition or whatever.”  She blinks and smiles.  “A friend of mine had super long hair and wanted to cut it short.  So I cut off her ponytail and put it in a plastic zip lock bag to donate.   And then it sat on my dresser for, like, four months until I got around to doing it.  I can be kind of lazy sometimes.”

I chuckle.

“But really I’m not that lazy.  I’m going to start my own hair salon someday.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, it’s my dream.  I’m going to save up and do it.”

Around her neck I notice a gold crucifix necklace.  “I see your necklace,” I comment.  “Are you religious?”

“I’m Catholic.  Not a very good one though.”  She giggles.  “I love God and everything.  But I have a hard time following all the rules all the time.  A girl has to have a little fun sometimes, you know?”

I smile and say, “I’m with you.”

A female friend of this girl standing nearby looks over at our conversation.  Apparently she finds it cute because she grins mischievously, pulls out a cell phone, snaps a picture of us, and then scampers away.

The hairdresser girl laughs at her friend and tells me, “Sorry about that.”

“You know what I wonder sometimes?” I say after swallowing the last bite of my chicken sandwich.  “I wonder about the number of times I’ve been in the backgrounds of other people’s pictures.  Like, who knows, maybe this is some meaningful moment in their lives and maybe it’s some picture they’re going to keep for a long time.  And the focus isn’t on me, yet there I am somewhere in the backgrounds of those moments.”

              “I like that idea.”  She looks at my eyes, then my lips.  The two of us lean over the small table, about to kiss.  Our lips are about to meet when out of the corner my eye I see Maya’s friend Wyatt.  He stands at the bar and stares over at us.

              I pull back slightly from the girl and say, “Can you excuse me real quick?  I just need to go say something to my friend and I’ll be right back.”

              Confused she says, “Okay.”

              I walk over to Wyatt, extend my hand and say, “Hey, how are you?”

              He reluctantly shakes it and says, “Hi.”  Wyatt looks around and says, “Where’s Maya?”

              “Not here.  She went out with some of her girlfriends.”

              “Who’s that girl you’re with?” he asks.

              “Oh, I’m not really with her.  I just came here to have a drink and get a bite to eat and she started talking to me.  I don’t even know her.”

              He doesn’t react.

              “Maya said you guys used to hang out a lot.  Why don’t you get your girlfriend and we all do something sometime?”

              Wyatt shrugs and says, “Yeah, maybe.”

              I stand there a moment but he doesn’t say anything.  “You don’t seem in too talkative a mood,” I say.  “I’ll see you later.”  I start to walk away.

He says, “I don’t like you.”

              I turn back and say, “Excuse me?”

              “I don’t like you,” he repeats.

              I force a smile and say, “Since you’ve only ever said about three words to me, I’m not sure how that’s possible, but whatever.”

              “You’re fucking my friend,” he says.

              I exhale a chuckle at his nerve.

              “She deserves someone who would do anything for her.  You don’t strike me like that type of person.”

              I shrug and say, “Whatever, man.  You probably want to fuck me yourself.”

              A girl walks up to Wyatt.  She has dark mid-length hair.  She’s a bit plain, somewhat overweight.  She matches Maya’s description of Wyatt’s girlfriend.

              “Hey,” I shake her hand.  “I’m Tom, Maya’s boyfriend.”

              I notice her flinch at the name Maya, but she smiles and says, “Oh, cool.  Nice to meet you.”

              I nod to Wyatt and walk away.  I sit back down at the table with the hairdresser girl.

              “I thought you might’ve forgotten I was waiting for you,” she says.

              “Not at all,” I say.  “No way was I going to forget about you.”

              She looks downward, smiles, then looks back at me coyly and says, “Are you going to kiss me now or what?”

              I smile.  “Yeah, just not here.”  I stand and take her by the hand and walk toward the exit.  But before we leave I stop.

              “What?” she asks.

              “Do you want to do something fun before we go?”

              Bright-eyed she asks, “What did you have in mind?”

              I glance over at the bar where I see Wyatt leaning against the bar top, talking to his girlfriend.  I whisper something into the hairdresser girl’s ear.

              She laughs and says, “What?!  I can’t do that.”

              “Sure you can.  He’s my friend.”

              She shakes her head, thinking, and asks, “Are you sure?”

              “Definitely.  He’ll think it’s hilarious.”

              She thinks some more, then breaks a smile.  “You know what?  Fuck it.  Why not?”  She swipes an abandoned half-full beer off a table and approaches Wyatt.  She abruptly interjects into Wyatt and his girlfriend’s conversation.  “Hey,” she says to Wyatt.  “Why haven’t you called me?!”

              “Do I know you?” Wyatt asks.

              “You’re going to pretend like you don’t even know me?!” the hairdresser girl yells.  “Fuck you if you think you can fuck me and then treat me like this!”  She tosses the remainder of her half-full beer at him, slams the glass on the bar top, and walks back over to the exit. 

Beer dripping off his shirt, Wyatt looks at his girlfriend.  She gives him an icy stare and wordlessly walks off.

Hairdresser girl meets me at the exit laughing and says, “Was that good or did I go too far?”

“Oh, no, that was perfect.”  I put my arm around her waist as we walk out.  “He thought it was hilarious.  I could tell.”

I drive to her apartment in a neighborhood northwest of downtown Miami.  We sleep together and afterward I drift into a light slumber.  I wake up at midnight.  Darkness pervades the room but my eyes quickly adjust.  Beside me hairdresser girl sleeps with her face in my direction.  I stand out of bed.  I find her purse next to her cherrywood dresser.  Inside her wallet I find only one five-dollar bill and a single.  I sift through the rest of her purse looking for more but find nothing.  I shake my head and laugh to myself.  I take a deep breath.  “Fuck it.”  I put the cash back in her wallet and the wallet back in her purse.  Sitting on the edge of the dresser, I stare at her in the dark.  I think about what she did to Wyatt and smile.  Quietly I say, “You’re too cool to rob anyway.”

She starts to stir.  She wakes up, sees me and groggily asks, “Everything okay?”

“Yeah.”  Readying myself to return to Maya’s apartment I ask, “I have work early tomorrow so I need to leave.  You mind if I take a shower real quick before I go?”

“Sure.”  She sits up.

In the shower I rinse the scent of her off me.  She walks into the bathroom, standing outside the shower and asks, “Will you call me?”

“Yeah, I was going to ask for your number. Write it down for me before I go.”

I catch a glimpse of her outside the shower curtain.  “Tonight was the most fun I’ve had in a long time.”  She sits on the edge of the sink.  “It’s so weird.  I wasn’t expecting to meet anyone.  It was like you came out of nowhere.”

“That’s how it works.”  I turn the shower off and she hands me a towel.

As I get dressed she says, “Give me your cell and I’ll put in my number.”

“I actually don’t have it on me.  Why don’t you just write it on a piece of paper?”

She scribbles her name and number on a scrap of notepad paper.  She hands it to me at the front door and kisses me softly.  “Call me and we’ll get into some more trouble together.”

I drive away in my Toyota and feel a little bad knowing she’ll never see me again.

Chapter Four

I return to Maya’s apartment early one evening after being out all day.  It’s the end of a scorching hot July.  The sunset, however, offers a cool breeze that takes the edge off.  The twilight of summer impends and I feel confident as I walk inside to see Maya.

She’s on the couch watching some reality show.  Her brown hair is in a ponytail and she wears baby blue sweat pants and a white tank top with a yellow bra underneath.  “Hey, babe.”  She stands and kisses me.  “I was thinking of making spaghetti for dinner.  Does that sound good?”

“Yeah, sounds great.”  I pinch her ass and she squeals.

I walk into the bedroom and take off my coat and tie.  I unbutton my shirt and lie on the bed wearing a white undershirt and khaki pants.  After several minutes Maya walks in and asks, “When do you walk me to start cooking?”

“I’m going to take a quick nap.”

“Okay, I’ll wait about forty-five minutes or so to start.”

I drift off until a knock at the front door of Maya’s apartment wakes me.  I hear some talking and gradually it becomes clear that the voice talking to Maya belongs to Wyatt.  They walk into the living room and Maya steps into the bedroom.  She looks at me and I pretend to be sleeping.  She closes the bedroom door and returns to the living room.

His voice distraught, Wyatt says that his girlfriend dumped him, I hear.

Maya listens to him ramble while doing her best to comfort him.

Eventually I hear him say, “I wanted to ask you something about Tom.  Is he here?”

“He’s in the bedroom asleep,” Maya says.  “So don’t be too loud.”

“How often is he over here?”

Maya doesn’t say anything.

“Is he living here?”

“Only temporarily.  Until he finds his own place.”

“Until he finds a place?  You’ve been seeing him for how many months now?   How long is he going to take?”

“You don’t understand.  I mean, he’s busy at work every single day.  And on weekends we like to spend time together and have fun.  He doesn’t really have time to look for a place.”  She’s quiet for a moment.  “Plus … I don’t know, I kind of like having him here with me.  I mean, I definitely haven’t pushed him to go look.”

Bluntly Wyatt says, “I saw him at a bar with another girl.”

In a somber tone, Maya asks, “What are you talking about?”

“One night I was out, right before I got dumped, and I saw him.  I don’t know.  It was weeks ago.  You definitely weren’t there.”

“What?”  Maya stands and paces.  “What do you mean?  What do you mean he was
with
her?”

“Well … they were sitting together.  And talking.”

“Did he kiss her?”

Wyatt is quiet for a second and then says, “No. I … It looked like he was going to.  Like he was about to but –”

“Did he touch her at all?”

He’s silent again before saying, “No.  Not that I saw at least.  But it did seem like something was going on.”

“So he was just talking to her?”  She pauses, stops pacing.  “So what?  They were just talking!  Why is that a big deal?  He can go out and talk to people.  And so can I.  Why does that matter?  What’s wrong with that?”

“Nothing.  I don’t know.  I just thought … Maybe I was wrong about the whole thing.  It was just the way they were sitting together.  And you weren’t there.  I just thought I should tell you about it.”

  “Shit,” Maya says.  “Why’d you tell me this?  He was just talking to her.  We love each other.  He wouldn’t do something like that to me.”  She pauses again, takes a few breaths, and calms her voice.  “Ever since we met he’s treated me really well.  Why would you come here and insinuate that he’d do something to hurt me?”

“I just –”

“Look,” she interrupts him.  “I’m sorry you broke up with your girlfriend.  But I don’t need you interfering in my relationship and messing up something good for me.  I’ve told you before I only like you as a friend.  You and I are never going to be together.”

Wyatt doesn’t respond.

“I think you should go now.”

I hear Wyatt leave and Maya shut and lock the front door behind him.  Maya opens the bedroom door and walks in while I still pretend to be sleeping.  She sits at the foot of the bed for a while.  I can feel her quietly staring at me.  Eventually she crawls up the bed and gently lies on my stomach.  She kisses my chest.  I stir, pretending to wake up.  Maya kisses my neck and I open my eyes and look at her.