Serving Pleasure (9 page)

“Redo it.”

She pulled off another chunk of dough and started the process again. “You should have gotten Leena to help. I don’t have the patience for this.”

“I know you can do it.”

Rana bent her head. Saint Devi. Filled with confidence for other people, even her screw-up of a sister. They were silent for a while, the sounds of the kitchen surrounding both of them. The other occupants in the room murmured to each other in low tones while Devi started the oil sizzling on the griddle.

Finally, Rana managed to roll out a perfect poli. “Griddle hot?”

“Yup.”

Rana transferred the poli to the ungreased pan, watching carefully as the dough turned a pretty yellow brown. She could feel the rush of words on the tip of her tongue, and she tried to control them, but they burst free. “Do you think…?”

“What?” Devi asked when Rana trailed off.

Do you think there’s something wrong with me? Because I had the best sex of my life last week with this weird hermit guy who lives less than a hundred feet from me. We agreed it would be a one-night thing, but I can’t stop thinking about him, and I’m scared Old Rana’s going to grab a hold of me and I’ll march over to his door and demand more. Did I mention that we met because I was spying on him? Yeah, I could have been arrested for that shit. It was pervy as hell.

How do you think Mama would feel about all of this? Like, would she disown me right away, or wait ten minutes?

Rana cleared her throat. “Do you know your neighbors?” she finished lamely.

Devi shrugged. “Of course. Why?”

She flipped the poli, heating it for a moment before moving it off the stove onto a waiting plate. The circular sweet was perfect, no cracks or blemishes revealing the secret deliciousness hidden inside. “New guy moved in.”

“Oh. You should take him some baked goods. That’s how I made friends with all my neighbors. Bake cookies.”

Or some muffins.

No, no, no. She’d gotten her fucking muffin, her single cigarette. She was finished. Rana pulled off another chunk of dough and began the laborious process of turning it into a perfect poli. “I’ll think about it.”

Devi stirred the curry in one of the pots on the stove, the steam making the small hairs around her face curl. “It’s important to be neighborly.”

Rana smiled, though it felt like a shadow of her usual grin. “Right. Neighborly.”

M
icah stared
at the phone on the couch next to him. He had both a landline and a cell phone, though he barely used either. His parents had insisted on them as a condition of his moving here, and though he was thirty-five and well past the age where he should care what his parents thought about anything, he understood his situation was peculiar.

His family had been through enough because of him, and it caused them a great deal of heartache that he now lived an ocean away. He couldn’t deny them this small measure of comfort.

Which was why he was sitting here on the couch in his studio, staring at his phone. Though his mother called any time she grew anxious over him—which was quite a bit—his father only called him Thursdays, after he’d eaten dinner. Micah suspected the scheduled call was an effort to counterbalance his mother’s more erratic behavior.

Right on time, the phone buzzed. He snatched it up, and Papa’s face filled the screen. “Micah,” his father boomed. The booming was normal. The man didn’t know how to speak at a quieter volume.

The older man’s broad face crinkled, his smile beaming through the video. Micah gave a tight smile, the now-familiar mix of love, shame, and frustration running through him. “Hello, Papa.”

“Angie,” his father said over his shoulder. “I told you he was fine. Come see.”

His mother’s worried face appeared over her husband’s shoulder. Ah, more guilt. Before his injuries, his mum’s face had never had so much as a wrinkle on it. Now there were lines around her lips and mouth. They were always creased when she looked at him. “Stop yelling, David. Hello, my love.”

“Mum.”

“You didn’t call me back yesterday,” she chided.

“I know. I apologize. It slipped my mind.” He was speaking formally, sitting up straighter.
Look normal. Be normal.

His mum tsked. “I would have called the police if you hadn’t picked up today.”

“Please don’t do that,” he said mildly. She’d called the police twice in the past year when he ignored her calls in London.

He’d tried to be understanding, but he couldn’t deny that had been tiring. A benefit of moving here was that his family didn’t have his local emergency numbers memorized. Yet.

“Then you need to keep in touch,” she said sternly.

“Angie, don’t lecture the boy,” his father practically shouted. He leaned in closer. “How are you doing, son?”

“Well, thank you.”
Be normal.

“You look pale.” His mother frowned at him.

“I don’t get pale.”

“You’re lighter than you were when you lived here. It’s called the sunshine state, isn’t it? Not because it rains all the time, surely. If you were leaving your house, you wouldn’t look like that.”

The woman should have been a detective, not a nurse. “I leave my house.”

She harrumphed. “Your hair is getting longer.”

How she could tell, he wasn’t sure. Before the call, he’d ensured his hair was tightly restrained, solely because his mother was mildly obsessed with its length.

There was a barber not far from the flat where Micah had grown up. He’d visited the old man once a month since he was fourteen until about two weeks before the incident. He’d used to wear his hair shorn close to his skull, hating the hassle of how thick and fast it grew.

He didn’t wear it long now out of fashion, but because the idea of someone standing behind him with a sharp object made him want to throw up. He couldn’t use an electric razor on himself, because the noise unnerved him. So, long hair it was, for the indefinite future. At least that way he could tie it back and forget it for a while.

“Boy looks like a warrior. The ladies like long hair,” his father piped up, saving Micah from a reply. Papa winked at her and patted his now-short hair. “Remember how beautiful my hair was when you first saw me? Made you fall in love at first sight.”

“Who says I fell in love with you at first sight?” his mother groused, but she covered her husband’s hand with her own, darker brown over light.

Micah dropped his eyes, a pang in his chest. His parents were poster children for a happy marriage, the best role models he could have had. He’d always been blithe about the fact that someday he would have a relationship like theirs. Now, though…

He studiously avoided looking out his window. He knew Rana’s blinds would be shut, as they had been for the past week. A couple of times, he had thought he heard her car in the driveway, and he’d had to bitterly argue with himself not to go out and drool all over her like an overeager puppy.

One night only, Cinderella. Now you’re done.

They weren’t soul mates like his parents were. Silly to imagine her sitting next to him with her hand on his leg.

“If you came home, I could trim your hair for you,” his mother said.

His shoulders tensed. She’d cut his hair once, because he’d hoped he’d at least be able to tolerate and trust the woman who had birthed him. He hadn’t had a panic attack, but he’d still had to drug himself for the experience. It was far easier to hack it off himself when it grew to an unmanageable length. “I’m not taking an international flight for a haircut, Mum.”

His father cleared his throat. “We miss you.”

The weight of his guilt pressed down on him. “I know. But I— This place is starting to grow on me.”

His mother’s lips tightened, and he didn’t miss Papa bolstering her by wrapping his arm around her waist. “The weather’s nicer, eh?” his father joked, but there was a deep sadness in his eyes.

“Yeah.” That was the excuse he’d given: he needed to get away before the chill of England worked its way through his bones.

It wasn’t all a lie. He’d always preferred warm climates. Florida had been the warmest place farthest away from everyone who knew him.

“If you want nicer weather, why don’t you go to Oahu? It’s paradise,” his mother asked, a trace of desperation in her voice.

He was shaking his head before she stopped speaking. This was an old argument. “No. I don’t want to go to Hawaii.” Both sides of his family were huge, but the maternal branch had some sense of typical British reserve—not much, but some. His father’s people, on the other hand, were so loud and boisterous, Micah could barely think when he was around them.

They would take care of him, of course. Of that he had no doubt. He could imagine his closest cousin Noah throwing a beefy arm around his neck and dragging him—on his paternal side, Micah was considered small—into his favorite bar.
This is my cousin. Don’t make fun of his accent, he’s got an English mother. Micah, come meet this girl.

His aunts would shove food in front of him and demand he eat every bite, and he’d spend long, lazy days basking in the sun, with toddlers running around and over him while every adult and contemporary smothered him with pampering. He’d want for nothing.

Except uninterrupted time to himself.

Micah shuddered. He deeply loved every member of his extended clan. But he couldn’t imagine being the center of attention amongst a giant group of people who were aware of what had happened to him and genuinely cared for him. They would watch him the way his parents and former friends watched him. With worry and wariness that racked him with guilt and inadequacy.

His father pursed his lips, but his mother sighed. “How’s therapy?”

He didn’t hesitate with his standard response. “Great.” He wasn’t lying. The two appointments he’d kept since he’d moved had been unobjectionable.

It wasn’t that he didn’t like the American doctor. Dr. Kim had a gentle manner about him. Micah’s old psychologist had been one of the best in London, but his reserved and clinical attitude had made Micah dread visiting him. Kim, with his messy hair and worn office, was a vast improvement.

That didn’t mean he wanted to go.

Micah controlled his instinctive grimace. He’d never been the most verbose of men. He had always just done things, accomplished things. Before he became stuck in place.

He hated talking, the way it made him hyper-aware of his
problems
. The problem was his whole life. He knew that. He didn’t need to hear himself lay it all out for some stranger every week.

Because his family and friends had been so focused on him, he’d had no choice in London. There was no one here, though, to push and prod him into “opening up.”

“You never told us how the show went,” his mum said.

“I’m sure you know,” he said. “You do have a Google alert set up on me. I’m not big news here, but it made the art section of at least one paper.”

His mother cast his father an annoyed look, but Papa shrugged. “I didn’t tell him about the Google alert. You know your sister has a soft spot for the boy.”

“The alert didn’t tell me how it went for you,” she said, exasperated.

A vague pang of guilt had him shifting, as if his career was a woman he was cheating on. He had barely thought about the disaster of the show. If his night with Rana hadn’t happened, he would have spent the last week obsessing over his professional failures. He parroted the manager of the gallery. “Not bad. Sold about half of the paintings.” Closer to forty percent, actually.

He didn’t expect his parents to be any happier with that number than he was. But his mother’s brave, determinedly cheerful smile had him looking away, rubbing at the ache in his chest, grateful they could only see him above the neck. “Well, that’s wonderful.”

“Good job, son,” Papa trumpeted. “Half is better than zero, eh.”

All was better than half.
The words remained unsaid between them.

“It’s the venue,” his mother said. “The size of the city. Why, if you had been in London, you would have sold out in ten minutes.”

He tightened his jaw until it ached. He doubted he would have sold any more paintings even if he had been in London. Because his work wasn’t as good as it used to be. The few sales had certainly been born of pity or curiosity.

“It’s an important step you took, putting yourself out there like that,” his father said. “We’re so proud of you. Look how far you’ve come in two years.”

Ah, yes. His old psychologist wasn’t the only one who liked to talk about taking steps.

Micah tried to banish the disloyal thought. His parents tried. They were so encouraging. He knew he was imagining the subtle thread of impatience they watched him with.

It’s been two years, Micah,
he pictured them thinking.
Why aren’t you better? It’s been two years, Micah. You need to be over this by now.

They’d never think those things, of course. Those were the thoughts in his brain. Perfectionism was his curse. Was it any wonder it was killing him that he couldn’t be perfect in this?

He shifted. “How’s the family? Aunt Karen?”

His mother’s face softened. “Very good. You know, I saw Paige the other day…”

“She’s well, then,” he broke in. He wanted Paige Wilson to be doing okay, but he wasn’t eager to chat about her. He bore his former model no ill will, though it had been her boyfriend who had landed him in critical care.

Still, it was…difficult to speak of her. Or with her. Micah didn’t often have flashbacks anymore, but sometimes the dark thoughts came and didn’t leave, rendering him unable to function. When that happened, all he could do was replay the parts of that afternoon he could remember, his brain occasionally filling in the blanks with more nightmarish scenarios.

Better to avoid Paige as much as possible than risk her triggering one of those episodes.

“She’s doing fine.” His mother smiled. “Such a sweet girl. I gave her your new number.”

So that was who had called him a couple days ago. He only picked up family members’ calls. If there was a default voicemail set up on the phone, he still hadn’t bothered to check it. “Fine. I’ll call her sometime,” he lied.

“I think that would be nice, Micah. Your friends do miss you.”

I know that.
The flash of anger dismayed him, as it always did. He’d always been passionate, yes, but never angry. Since he got out of the hospital, he’d had to constantly battle his surging temper. He clenched his hand into a fist and counted to ten slowly in his head, aware his parents were watching him. He refused to take his temper out on the people who loved him. Better to rip into a canvas than rip into his parents. He’d learned something good from all those therapy sessions.

When he had his emotions under control, he spoke. “Yeah. I know. I want…”

I want everything to return to the way it was. I want that normal back.

Sex had never been hard for him. Work had never been difficult for him. Family had never been something he rebelled against.

Why couldn’t something just be perfect? Why did everything have to be a goddamn issue now?

Focus on the present, what’s going on right now.
It was all well and good for his therapists to say that, yeah? They weren’t a gigantic seething mess right now.

He shook his head. “Never mind.”

“So walk us around your new place,” his father said, changing the subject with his usual lack of grace.

“Uh, maybe some other time,” he hedged. No need for his parents to see how barren his lifestyle was. It would only worry them. He quickly asked about his cousin, who had recently been detained by police on a car-theft charge. That sent his mother on a long rant about her ne’er-do-well brother’s family.

At the thirty-minute mark exactly—God bless his father and his schedule—they all gave each other strained, worried, loving smiles and hung up.

He tossed the phone on the couch, cradled his head in his hands and breathed out a slow sigh. He was so tired of talking to people who only looked at him and saw something
wrong.

Rana hadn’t.

In a burst of motion, he came to his feet and strode over to his window, gripping the sill.

She hadn’t thought he was messed up. She might have been lying about liking his painting—he was skeptical when so many others were panning his work—but she hadn’t been able to hide the way her body responded to his. She hadn’t been thinking he was broken when she clenched her legs around his head.

He ran his tongue over his upper lip and the scar there, remembering how she had licked it. Even now, he could swear he still tasted her.