Whisper Me This(103)

So right now I’m working on being enough for me.

I’m sitting on the front porch with my journal, breathing in afternoon sunshine that still smells of last night’s frost. The sky is cloudless and blue beyond imagining. The maple on the front lawn is scarlet, and I’ve forgotten about writing down my thoughts because I’m lost in the contrast between the scarlet and the blue and how beautiful it all is. How quiet.

And then a pickup truck pulls into the driveway.

Tony.

My heart does a sideways lurch one direction and then the other. A flock of butterflies that has apparently been roosting in my belly bursts up in a flight pattern that would be the envy of the Blue Angels.

The last time I saw Tony was that day when Walter told us the story of how my mother came to leave Marley behind. Mia and Mrs. Medina have been in and out of our house on a regular basis, and I’ve been to Mrs. Medina’s house for dinner more than once, but Tony has always been working. He hasn’t called to check in or offer any commentary on Boots or any words of support over Greg’s attempt to take Elle away from me.

He hasn’t returned my calls.

I watch him walk up the sidewalk and can’t think of anything to say.

“So this is awkward,” he says. Sun picks out highlights in his hair, makes his eyes shine as blue as the sky. Despite how gorgeous he is, he makes me think of junior high dances, like both of us have too many hands and feet and not enough by way of words.

“You could sit, if you want,” I tell him. “Chairs are free.”

He settles himself into the Adirondack beside mine, and that’s better because we can both look at the tree and the sky instead of at each other. The silence stretches taut between us, until it reaches a point where it’s pulling at my lungs and my heart and I have to say something, anything.

My mouth opens, but before any words come out Tony says, “Would you—I mean, could I take you out for dinner?”

I stare at him in what would be a pin-drop silence if it weren’t for rustling leaves overhead and a car driving down the street. My mouth stays open. This totally unexpected question has incapacitated my brain circuits.

An exploratory drop of drool creeps up over my bottom lip, and that jolts me back to my senses enough to make me close my mouth and swallow.

Tony gives me a smile that’s equal parts charm and apology. “I’m sorry. You can call me Mr. Suave.”

“Does this mean we’re not Betty and Al anymore?” I ask.

He grins, his whole face coming alive in a way that melts my heart. “I thought you’d be mad.”

“I am mad,” I tell him, but my voice doesn’t sound mad, and there’s a smile nudging at the edges of my lips. “Some bodyguard you turned out to be.”

His face darkens, and he turns his head to look out into the street so that all I can see is his profile.

I want him to smile again, to look at me again, but he’s got some explaining to do.

“It’s not that I didn’t want to be here,” he says, finally. “I didn’t feel like you . . . like I . . . the last thing I thought you needed was a guy hanging around who has the kind of baggage I do.”

“Seems like maybe that would be my decision to make. If you wanted to be here, that is.”

“You’re right. I’m sorry. But that’s the thing. As hard as I try to not be like my father, the next thing I do turns out to be just like him. Assuming a woman can’t make her own decisions, for example.”

“Tony.”

He turns his head to look at me, and I can see it takes an effort.

“I need to tell you some things I’ve been too much of a coward to tell you,” he says. “That’s why I haven’t been here. Couldn’t bring myself to do it. I didn’t want to see the way you were going to look at me after. Especially with how Boots turned out to be. And then Greg.”

I lay my hand over his arm. It’s rigid and unyielding beneath my touch. “You are nothing like your father. Or Boots.”

He takes the sort of breath Elle takes when something hurts her. A burn. A slap.

“I’ve been to juvie,” he says.

“I know.”

“I”—he holds his breath, and when he releases it the words ride along with it, all in a rush—“killed my father.”

“I know that, too.”

The muscle beneath my hand softens ever so slightly. When he speaks again, it sounds like a question. “I have nightmares?”

“Know it.”

His head drops into his hands, and his shoulders quake. I’m not sure if he’s laughing or crying, or both. “And you know all these things about me, how?” His voice comes out sounding all muffled.

“Mia.”

“Of course, Mia. My God. Nothing is sacred.” He draws in a shaky breath and drops his hands, but he still doesn’t look at me.

“Mia casts you as a hero. Don’t let it go to your head or anything.”

“Mia is . . . special. I don’t expect the rest of the world to see it that way.” What he means is that he doesn’t expect me to see it that way.

I do, though. Ever since Mia told me about Tony, and how he saved them all from their dad the night he decided to kill them, I can’t help wondering how things would have been if somebody had just put a bullet in Boots’s forehead. Maybe then my mother would have been able to accept me for just me, instead of needing me to also be Marley. Maybe Marley would have gone to college and achieved some amazing degree and been a brilliant lawyer. Or maybe she could have played in a famous band that toured the world. Maybe I would have written novels or painted pictures.