Authors: R. K. Ryals
Switching on the shower, I stepped into the
spray, the hot water sluicing over bunched muscles and sweaty skin.
My head fell, my hand pressing against the shower wall, anchoring
me. My mind whirled with memories; good ones and bad ones.
I was, in essence, a confused, screwed up
human being. It was hard being normal when the ability to trust
people, especially women, was something I felt incapable of.
Taking a bar of soap, I scrubbed with it,
digging my fingers into my body as if the pain could strip away the
ruined layers of my heart. My skin reddened, scratched in places,
but I continued to jab my flesh until the water had grown cool.
After that, I left.
I climbed free of the shower, pulled on an
old pair of jeans and a wife beater, grabbed a pack of cigarettes
I’d gotten at a gas station on the way out of Atlanta from the end
table drawer, tucked them into my pocket, and I just … left.
Even the word-covered punching bag I knew
hung in the house held no appeal. Only escape.
Jonathan’s Porsche sat in the driveway, his
keys dangling from the ignition, either forgotten or because he was
too naïve to remove them. He deserved his innocence. Screw
mine.
Sliding into the driver’s seat, I started the
car and pulled out of the drive, the windows down. Behind me,
shadows loomed in the house.
The door flew open.
Jonathan stumbled onto the porch, his hands
waving wildly. I barely spared him a glance. Suspended license or
not, I couldn’t stay there. I needed … space.
For a long time, I drove, navigating the back
roads until the edge of town loomed in the windshield. My foot
pressed the brake, my gaze watching the side of the road.
The sun was setting, the dimming light
throwing an orange veil over the earth. A sign loomed. Refuge
Animal Hospital.
The car slowed, my eyes on the three
buildings ahead. I passed them, went a little ways down the next
road, and then turned around.
There, in an overgrown lot next to the
clinic, I saw her.
Pulling the Porsche into a dead end road
behind the space, I parked the car out of view, my gaze on the
grass.
I should have left, but I didn’t.
If I had left, then the world I was
comfortable with, the one I’d learned to survive, wouldn’t have
changed.
And yet maybe this had been my fate all
along.
Without thinking, I’d driven to the clinic.
I’d gotten out of the car without help. I’d trudged through the
overgrown grass of my own accord, and when I reached the cement
block she sat on, I cleared my throat and said, “Hey, roof
girl.”
Tansy
There was too much tension in the house after
work. Hetty spent the first hour lecturing Deena, her voice shaking
as she spoke. I don’t think she expected the anger Deena harbored
and the relief I clung to. It wasn’t the grief she assumed we’d
feel after losing a parent. There was no way to predict our fears
or our emotions.
I couldn’t take it.
After the lecture, the only
topic of conversation was Eli Lockston, a spiel following a
question Deena asked about the
tall
dude
at the rescue. He’d been the one thing
keeping her from running away, and she hated him for it. Ten
minutes into Hetty’s answering prattle, we’d learned Eli was the
second oldest grandson of Carson Lockston, a man who’d made his
fortune off of luck and a well-managed casino. Redneck rich, Nana
called it. Eli was redneck rich and apparently plowing himself down
a dark, alcoholic path.
Silence followed.
Half an hour into a voiceless, glare-filled
dinner, I pushed away from the table, asked for a notebook and a
pencil, and excused myself.
The summer night embraced me, and I stomped
barefoot through short grass to a stack of concrete blocks past the
animal rescue. The blocks were on the street corner, stacked on an
empty lot where there must have been some type of construction
once, a house or a business. It was overgrown grass and bugs now.
Fire ants marched in a single file line near my toes, and I picked
my feet up to avoid getting bitten.
My eyes rose, my gaze roaming over the
property. I’d been angry with Deena when I offered to landscape the
lawn surrounding the clinic, house, and rescue, but I loved
gardening. There was peace in it.
My fingers pressed against the notebook, my
pencil flying over an empty page, making X’s where the buildings
sat and lines where I wanted to make changes. Landscaping came easy
for me, but I couldn’t draw worth a damn. The doodling was more a
distraction. Little curly Q’s here, completely terrible flowers
there.
Several hours passed.
Hetty walked outside a few times, glancing at
me, before ducking back into the house. After the third check, she
didn’t return. People didn’t fear me leaving. Honestly, they didn’t
fear much from me. It was Jet and Deena who made waves. It was Jet
and Deena people worried about.
Cars passed on the road, the darkening sky
making their headlights brighter, like eyes coming at me in the
twilight. I ignored them, doodling until the shadows were too much
to draw by.
I stared into the dusk, the pools of changing
light making me languid.
Another car zoomed down the road, but unlike
the vehicles before it, this one slowed, drawing my attention. My
gaze tracked it, unease trickling down my spine.
The car, a familiar red Porsche, crawled by,
the noise it made fading in the distance. A moment later, it
returned. A car door slammed. Feet rustled in the grass.
The unease grew, but I didn’t run.
A pair of tennis shoes, old but clean, came
into view. My gaze swallowed them whole before trailing up long,
jean-clad legs, over a wife beater to land on a rugged, hard face.
Eli Lockston. The devil himself.
“Hey, roof girl.” His voice was low and
rough, sucker punching me in the gut.
I stared. “Hey back, roof boy.”
He slid his hands into his blue jean pockets,
his thumbs hooked over the edge. The muscles in his arms bunched,
straining with tension. He had a lean, dangerous build, his height
commanding more attention than the rest of him.
“Did you get lost?” I asked lightly.
He shrugged. “You could say that.”
Silence descended, filled only with night
sounds. Bugs buzzed, crickets sang, and passing cars revved. A
plane flew low overhead.
Eli shifted. Tugging a pack of cigarettes out
of his pocket, he slammed the bottom of it against his palm, and
then freed one of the butts. Lighting it, he slipped it between his
lips, drawing attention to his frown. The end sparked.
He exhaled, smoke curling into the night.
“You make a habit of sitting outside?”
Furrows dug themselves between my brows. “I
prefer roofs, but you know …” My shoulder rose.
A safety light came on, throwing a dim glow
over the street.
I cleared my throat. “Look, I don’t know
why—”
“So, your dad committed suicide?” Eli asked
suddenly, cutting me short.
I froze, my shoulders stiffening. Deena had
said too much when she’d verbally attacked me in the yard. “I don’t
see how that’s any of your business.”
He took another drag on the cigarette. “It’s
not.”
That was it. No emotion. Nothing. Just “It’s
not.”
My stomach clenched. I didn’t know why he was
here, why the guy I’d first met on a roof was suddenly standing
next to me, but there was something oddly confessional about
it.
Standing, I stared up at
him. “He didn’t …
technically
, he didn’t commit suicide.
On paper, his organs failed, starting with his liver.
Realistically, he killed himself. My mother died in a car crash
three years back. Dad couldn’t handle it. He started taking copious
amounts of medications, washing them back with alcohol.” Taking a
deep breath, I breathed, “I guess you could say he died of a broken
heart.”
Eli snorted, the sound throwing me. I hadn’t
expected sympathy, but I also hadn’t expected the sudden flash of
angry heat in his eyes.
“Women,” he spat. “It always comes down to
women.” He laughed shortly. “So he killed himself over a woman.”
His head shook.
Anger blazed a trail of fire through my
veins, but I held it back, my curiosity over his sudden rage
piqued.
“You don’t like women?”
He exhaled smoke into the air. “Depends. I
like fucking them.”
The look he gave me spoke volumes. He hoped
to shock me into silence with his words, but his declaration had
the opposite effect.
“Someone really did a number on you, huh?” I
mumbled.
Dropping the cigarette, he crushed it beneath
his foot. “My mother drugged me when I was a kid. Codeine cough
syrup.”
The way he said it, it was
like he just needed to
say
it, like he needed to get it out there in the
universe. It didn’t matter who was there to hear it. Like that day
at the hospital. It could have been anyone on the roof, and I still
would have talked. But it had been him. Today, I was that person. I
was
here
. Right
place. Right time. Or wrong … depending on how you looked at
it.
The anger I’d felt before vanished, replaced
with devastating disbelief. “Your mother?”
His lips curled. “Pretty fucked up,
right?
I nodded.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with her,” Eli
continued, distracted. “She can’t handle things. She likes being
pampered, likes not having to deal with anything difficult.
Children are difficult. My father, her first husband, had a bad
temper. He trafficked drugs, and he was abusive. That’s how it
started. She drugged me with cough syrup whenever she thought my
tantrums would upset him, but then I guess she realized how easy
that made me, and later my siblings, to manage.”
“Oh … wow.”
He wasn’t looking at me, his gaze on the dark
sky. I wasn’t even sure he remembered I was there.
“When my father went to prison years later,
she kept doing it. Until my grandfather walked in on her dosing
me.” He laughed again, the sound full of anger. “Going through
withdrawals at eight years old kind of destroys a kid, you know?
Shit, she could have killed me. She could have killed any of
us.”
My eyes went wide, the desire to touch him
strong. “And that was enough to turn you off women?”
I didn’t know why I asked.
It was definitely enough to turn him off.
More
than enough.
His gaze dropped to my face. “I was a
reckless teenager. With my grandfather’s allowance, all I cared
about was getting out of the house and drowning myself in women, in
affection. I fell hard for a girl I met my senior year of high
school. The ink was barely dry on our diplomas when I asked her to
marry me. She was everything a guy could hope for … until she
discovered I wasn’t interested in taking over a casino my
grandfather owns. She’s pregnant now with my cousin’s kid. They’re
engaged.”
Nothing came out of my mouth. Saying “wow”
didn’t seem appropriate. Saying “I’m sorry” just seemed
ridiculous.
Rocking back onto my heels, I found myself
muttering, “No wonder you’d rather just stick to screwing.”
Eli’s eyes changed. For the first time since
saying, “Hey, roof girl,” I think he realized where he was. He was
seeing me.
“What? No defending your own sex?”
“Not them.”
He squinted, his gaze taking in my figure.
“You’re not much older than my brother, you know.”
My brows rose. “Did you ask or
something?”
“He did.”
“Oh.”
He pulled another cigarette out of his
pocket, but he didn’t light it. “He’s a good kid. A girl could do
worse.” He studied me, his gaze hardening. “He’s not interested in
taking over my grandfather’s casino either.”
My nose scrunched.
Redneck rich
, Hetty had
called them. It didn’t really matter to me one way or another.
“That’s good, I guess. Is that supposed to have something to do
with me?”
Twirling the cigarette around in his fingers,
he said, “It could if you were interested in him.”
I straightened, a strange
feeling stealing over me. I wasn’t interested in Jonathan. I didn’t
want to be interested in
either
of them. “Then it doesn’t have anything to do with
me.”
“You don’t like him?” A defensive tone crept
into his voice.
My toes curled into the soil below. “Is that
why you stopped? To pick me up for your brother?”
“No.” His shoulders slumped. “Well, maybe I
did.”
I squirmed. “Look, nothing against your
brother or anything. He’s charming as hell, but I’m not interested
in anyone. Ever.”
He froze. “What? You don’t like men?”
“To have sex maybe. Outside of that … I’m not
interested in love. Period.”
My words, unlike his,
did
shock him. “You’ve had
sex?”
This conversation was going too far.
Taking a step back, I met his gaze. “I really
have no idea how any of this is your business. I don’t know why you
stopped. Frankly, I don’t care. I’m sorry about what happened to
you. Really, I am—”
“You haven’t, have you?”
“Plenty of times, thank you,” I blurted. My
teeth pressed into my tongue, silencing me.
Eli grinned. “A little young, aren’t
you?”
“Because I’m seventeen? What century are you
living in, dude?” I tucked a strand of hair behind my ears, the
pixie cut I had longer in the front than in the back. “It was an
ex-boyfriend. A year ago. Same person every time. He broke it off.
Couldn’t handle all the stuff I had going on at home.” I glanced at
him. “Is it wrong for me not to want love but still like intimacy?
Isn’t that what you’re doing?”