Risk (Gentry Boys #2)(18)
“Everything okay?”
She tried to smile but I could tell she was a bit rattled. She glanced at Cord and shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“Anything I can do?”
“No.” She quickly hugged me. “But thanks. It just really is a Gentry world, that’s all.”
“You don’t need to remind me of that,” I muttered and Saylor looked at me with raised eyebrows. I nudged her. “Why don’t you get out of here? I’ll cover for you on cleanup.”
“Thanks,” she said absently, staring at Cord. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
She collected Cord and the two of them left with their arms securely around each other. I couldn’t help but wonder if whatever was going on had to do with Creed.
The new waitress was apparently too good to help with cleanup. I glared at her back while she chatted with Griffin and tapped her pink polished talons on the surface of the bar.
“Some folks are still working,” I said loudly.
Julie turned to me with a frozen smile, looking me up and down. I wasn’t in spectacular shape just then. My hair was tied up in a sloppy ponytail and the jeans I was wearing had been a better fit several years and a couple hundred spin cycles ago.
“Some people are better suited for hard labor than others,” she retorted in such a pointedly bitchy way I was tempted to shove a bottle of tabasco sauce up her little pug nose.
After I wiped down the tables and straightened all the chairs I took my serving apron off and stalked to the back. From the smug way Griffin glanced at me I could tell he thought he was in business with this Julie chick. I stuck my tongue out at him just because I could. His eyes widened and he returned to listening to Julie drone on about sorority hazing rituals.
I grabbed my purse and popped my head into Ed’s office. “I’m takin’ off now, boss.”
Ed looked at me. It seemed that before I walked in he’d been busy staring at his shoes.
“Fine,” he sighed, then ran a hand across his pink scalp. A bottle of antacid sat on the edge of his disordered desk. I retreated quickly, needing to get away from that sad vision for fear my soul might shrivel.
The air outside was humid. Usually when I left work for the night and got into my car I felt an overriding sense of freedom. I was on my own. I had everything I needed and I would keep working until I was able to climb higher. But tonight, as I remembered the way Cord and Saylor had looked together, so sweet and loving, I felt a little lonely.
Stephanie wasn’t home. That wasn’t a surprise. She was rarely home. My roommate was so furtive and tight-lipped that sometimes I wondered if she was in the mob.
Dolly ran to greet me and I picked her up, kissing her between the ears. “I know. You’re always happy to see me.”
I set her down and went to toss my purse in my bedroom. I was hoping there was ice cream left in the freezer. I planned to eat it sloppily and wipe my mouth with the back of my hand as I lounged on the futon to watch the most depraved reality television show I could find.
Don’t do it. Don’t do it.
But I did it. I did it anyway. I picked up Creed’s shirt and breathed through the fabric. The act made me feel so wanton and pathetic I had to sit down. Was this the direction I would always go, no matter how desperately I tried to turn myself into something better?
“You want it, girl. Shit you’re the type who was born to it.”
It wasn’t Creed’s voice I heard in my head. It had an Alabama backwater drawl and the memory of it made me feel slightly sick.
I was aware my fingers were twisting the shirt fabric as my jaw locked. He hadn’t been the first man to put his hands all over me but he was the first one who managed to crack the barrier and get everything he was after.
When Laura Lee found out her latest man had been screwing her daughter she lost what little mind she had left. At age thirty six she looked ten years older. The closer the four of us grew to womanhood the more she would watch us with incredulous misery. I didn’t know if my sisters suspected what I’d already figured out; our mother wasn’t longing for the babies we’d been. She was grieving for the youth we’d cost her.
I’ll never know how things would have gone if I’d stayed. Maybe Laura Lee would have gotten over her wrath and I could have finished high school. There was no man to fight over, not anymore. He had taken off without a second glance like so many men before him. But there were still the things my mother and I said to each other.
“Filthy f*ckin’ whore.”
“Goddamn crazy bitch.”
There was still the sting of her hand on my cheek and the welts on my back from the hairbrush she’d beat me with. There was something else too; something she had never known about and would never know about.
I didn’t even consider Laura Lee as one of the worst of my many losses. I could live without her. But it still stung to be without my sisters.
Dolly seemed to sense my miserable mood. She rubbed against my legs and let out a little whine of commiseration.
I didn’t let myself think about it. I just pulled out my phone and called a number.
“Hi,” said my sister Augusta. She sounded breathless, as if she’d been in a rush to get somewhere quiet so she could answer her phone. I took that as a good sign.
“Hey, Aggie.” My voice kind of died right there. For all those girlhood years, I’d taken for granted the easy way we talked to each other in a kind of secret language that came from navigating life together. Anger happened sometimes and was expected but it never lasted. It was a bump to be stepped over.