Beneath the Surface (18 page)

God, she was lucky she hadn’t knocked over the entire table or broken anything, like the glass or some bones.

Tabitha smiled as she retrieved her mini-vac from the kitchen and tidied up the floor, had to admit that having phone sex with Eric had been worth the mess, and so much more stimulating than watching a romantic movie with Vogue, her cat.

Vogue screeched and dashed from behind the gray leather sofa and into Tabitha’s bedroom when her mistress bumped the back leg of the sofa with the hand-held vacuum.

“Sorry girl, but it’s the truth,” Tabitha said as if the cat had been insulted by her previous thoughts.

She finished cleaning as best she could, sleepy and tired but paradoxically invigorated at one in the morning on a weeknight.

98

Beneath the Surface

She always came away from her encounters with Eric feeling like this—refreshed and happy, more alive and free than she’d ever been in her life, buoyant and hopeful like a child.

It worried her a little that this might be the false high, short-lived and precarious, that came before the fall into a dark and oblivious abyss. It worried her that she might be like her mother, that her current freedom and energy came at the price of her sanity, that what she’d just done with Eric had only been a small preview of what it would feel like to really let go. Just a small preview of something totally sinful and painfully unattainable.

Tabitha collapsed into a corner of the sofa, head in her hands as she wondered what she’d do when confronted with him in the flesh, how she’d react to him.

How could she face him?

Ha, that was easy. The same way she’d faced him after he’d put his face in her pussy and eaten his fill in a semi-public fitting room, or the same way she’d faced him after he’d made her come against a tree like a savage.

She’d survived each of those with minimal damage; she’d survive this.

Someone knocked on the door and Tabitha jerked her face out of her hands, heart pounding, still pumped with adrenaline after that little episode on the phone.

She went to answer the insistent pounding, quickly checking her face in the gilt-edged mirror in the foyer before she unlocked and opened the door.

“You didn’t even look through peephole, did you?”

“Who else would be knocking on my door at one in the morning?”

Frankie stepped into the house and locked the door behind himself. “That’s beside the point. You should be more careful.”

“I’ll remember that the next time I’m faced with one of your frequent and sudden absences.” Tabitha flounced back to the sofa, dropped down into her favorite corner and scooped the remote up from the arm.

Vogue switched back into the living room to welcome Frankie home, rubbing her fluffy ecru coat against his denim-covered calves, walking back and forth between his legs as if she were completing an obstacle course.

Frankie picked her up by the scruff of her neck and cradled her purring form against his muscular chest, ensconced himself in the corner opposite Tabitha, stroking the little furball in his arms as he stared at his sister.

“What?”

“I worry about you, you know.”

“You have a strange way of showing it.” Why was she acting like this? She liked her freedom and solitude. Liked not having to pick up after a grown man who could give Oscar Madison a run for his money. Liked knowing where all her stuff was, being able to put her hands on things when and where she wanted and needed them, rather than having to search high and low for stuff after hurricane Frankie had gone through her house—

showering, dressing, undressing, cooking—leaving general chaos in his wake.

99

Gracie C. McKeever

“You were the one who thought we were better off parted.”

“Oh, please don’t throw ancient history at me in your defense. Especially when you wanted out as much as I did.”

“No, I didn’t,” he murmured, eyes downcast.

Tabitha frowned. This was news to her.

“I just agreed with you because I knew you were right. I wasn’t good enough for you. Not as a boyfriend anyway. There’s a difference between agreeing with you to keep the peace, or fighting for something I wanted and possibly ruining a great friendship.”

“I never said you weren’t good enough for me.”

“No, you didn’t. But you didn’t have to. I knew.”

“Frankie—”

“It’s no secret, Tabitha. You were going places. I knew that from the fist time I met you, knew that you were going to be someone, do things. I would have only held you back.”

“Stop talking about yourself like a—”

“Loser?”

“If you’re one then I’m one, too.”

Frankie smiled, got up from the sofa and put Vogue back on the floor to loud feline objections. He bent over Tabitha and kissed her on the forehead before he headed for her spotless, stainless steel kitchen.

She crossed her fingers and said a prayer that he didn’t start pillaging her fridge in search of something to ease the onset of another munchies attack.

He came back with a chilled beer in one hand and a coaster in the other.

Tabitha’s eyebrows shot up in shock. Wow, you could teach an old sibling new tricks!

“Did you want one?”

She gave him a you-know-better stare, and watched as he chuckled and lifted the bottle of Corona to his lips to take a hearty gulp.

The only reason there were any beers in the fridge in the first place was because he was here and she was trying to be the accommodating “older” sister, a joke since she only had him in age by a few months.

Frankie finished half the bottle in one swallow, put it on the coaster and turned to Tabitha. “You’re not going to turn into your mother if you have one drink, you know.”

“Thanks for the tip, Freud, but I’d rather not.”

He smiled. “Think you’re going to lose all self-control?”

Tabitha rolled her eyes, got up and went to the kitchen to pour a glass of orange juice then returned to her seat in the living room.

100

Beneath the Surface

Frankie was still in the opposite corner, staring at her. “What have you been up to while I was out?”

“Why do you ask?” She sipped her juice, casually put her glass down on the coaster.

Frankie shrugged, didn’t take his eyes off of her. “You’ve got a lot of color in your face, and I’m wondering what put it there.”

“I’m sure I wouldn’t know.”

“Hmmm.”

“What’s hmmm?”

Frankie grinned. “You’re not still on the nun kick are you?”

“What?” Tabitha blurted. “What gives you the idea I’m on some nun kick?”
And
if you knew what I was doing before you got here, you’d get that idea right out of your
head.

“You were practically living like one the last time I visited.”

“Before the other day, how long ago was that?”

“My point exactly.”

“Just because I’m not on the hard rocking, club trip like
some
people I know, doesn’t make me a nun.”

“I’d hate to think living in that Catholic orphanage all those years rubbed off on you.”

“Oh, you!” Tabitha pulled the throw pillow from behind her and threw it at his head.

Frankie easily grabbed it from the air, chuckling as he cradled it against his middle. “I just want to make sure you’ve gotten over what happened with that guy. What was his name?” He snapped his fingers several times as he looked at her.

“Michael,” Tabitha mumbled.

“Yeah, him.”

“There was nothing to get over.”

He arched a brow and Tabitha fidgeted under his piercing dark-brown gaze.

“You don’t know the whole story.”

“I know enough. You were both consenting adults and went into it with your eyes open.”

“One of us did.”

“He knew the rules of the game as well as you did. He played and he lost.”

“But that’s just it. He didn’t know the rules. I barely did.”

“No one told him to fall in love with you.”

101

Gracie C. McKeever

He made her out to seem like some
femme fatale
, when in truth she had been just as in the dark and desperate for someone to love as Michael. She’d just been a little better at hiding her need from one of the first guys in her life since Frankie who’d shown a sincere interest in her as a person, one of the first guys she sincerely liked. The biggest drawback next to Michael being her co-worker, an insurmountable one for Tabitha, was that he didn’t do anything for her in the bedroom department, too staid and controlled, generating no heat. He reminded her of herself. Tabitha had gone into their encounter with the idea of a one-night-stand in the back of her mind. Her in the driver seat, her controlling the outcome—beginning, middle, and end, but she’d realized too late she wasn’t cut out for the cold, love-’em-and-leave-’em life, didn’t want to have control over someone else’s emotional stability—his sense of self, sexual identity and prowess—

didn’t want that responsibility.

“He put his hand in the fire and he got burned. You can’t spend the rest of your life regretting how it ended, believing you hurt him beyond repair. He’ll live. Life goes on.”

“And if you spout another cliché, I’m going to punch you.”

He laughed, pulled her close and gave her a chaste peck on the lips. “I’m speaking from experience. Why should he have the luxury of all your sweet tea and sympathy?

He’s treading on my ground.”

She couldn’t say anything to dispute him because he was using the same justifications she’d used to dump Michael.

Frankie got up abruptly, and headed for the bathroom. “I’m going to catch a shower and hit the sack,” he said over a shoulder.

She guessed that was her cue to hit the sack herself.

* * * *

Frankie burrowed further under the comforter as Tabitha circled the convertible, putting in her earrings and wondering if having a “real” sib was anything like this.

She went over to the sofa again, leaned over Frankie’s head, cupped her hands in front of her mouth and yelled. “Up, up, up!”

“Aw c’mon, Tabby-Cat. Why you gotta be so mean?”

“No one told you to stay up till dawn playing video games.”

“Ten more minutes.” He turned his back on her, covering his head with the comforter as if for good measure.

“Yeah, I’ve heard that song before.” Tabitha pulled off the comforter, thanking God he’d had the consideration to wear something to bed. She couldn’t count the times he’d stayed over before and she’d discovered during one of her wake-up calls that he was in his birthday suit under the covers. “C’mon, get up. I don’t care if you pack bags at the corner supermarket. You’re getting out of here.”

102

Beneath the Surface

“I was. I mean I am.” Frankie sat up and threw his long legs over the side of the sofa bed, big bare feet slamming onto her cold hardwood floors with such force she thought she was in the middle of a small-scale earthquake.

Vogue came out of her favorite hiding spot behind the sofa to rub against Frankie’s ankles and purr.

Frankie obliged the little beast when she fell over onto her side and showed her stomach for him to rub.

“Have you no shame, Vogue?” Tabitha chuckled as she went back into her bedroom to get her trench coat and bag before returning to the living room to find Frankie had put up the bed, thrown on some jeans and was running a hand over his Afro as he sat in a corner of the sofa.

“Checking to see if it’s all still there?”

He grinned up at her. “What’s for breakfast?”

Tabitha froze in her tracks, trench coat half-on and half-off as she slammed a fist on a hip, arched a brow, and slipped into ghetto mode, something she did easily when Franklin Greer was around. “I know you’re not expecting
me
to fix your big rusty ass some breakfast.” Maybe having a sibling was something like this—if said sibling was a charming underachiever who looked like Lenny Kravitz on a good day.

Tabitha shook her head as she took a seat beside him on the sofa, already castigating herself for what she was about to do. She knew she’d regret it later but he was the only family she had. She wouldn’t turn her back on him, couldn’t. He’d saved her life more than once when she’d been in the system, the only positive remnant from her days in government custody, and she owed him.

She dug into her bag for her billfold, pulled out a twenty and handed it to him.

Frankie leaned in to give her a big kiss on the cheek and a hug. “I’ll give it right back to you, sis, I promise. We’ve got a gig in the Village tonight.”

“Sure.” She’d heard that song before, too.

“Seriously. You’ll see.”

“Just get your ass in gear so I can leave for work.”

Frankie bounced from the bed, gave her another peck on the cheek. “I’ll be ready in ten minutes,” he said as he headed for the bathroom.

“They’re going to put that on your tombstone.” Tabitha laughed.

God he was a pain, but exponentially ingratiating and she loved him more than anyone else in the world.

Frankie had been her first lover, for a little while there, her ideal man. Outspoken, protective and not afraid to stand up to the powers that be when they stepped on the little guy which invariably turned out to be her and their fellow foster system refugees.

When Tabitha had become an emancipated minor at seventeen and left the foster home where both she and Frankie had spent the last year-and-a-half, Frankie left with 103

Gracie C. McKeever

her. He’d had no choice after beating to a pulp their foster father when he’d come home to find the man high as a rocket and tussling with a terrified and half-clothed Tabitha.

She closed her eyes now remembering her rage and powerlessness, how close she’d come to losing her virginity to some crack and pot-smoking malingerer.

Instead she’d lost it to Frankie when they’d moved in together—her Black knight with shining pearly-whites. They’d made a go of it for a time before Tabitha realized that they were too different for the long haul and wanted very different things. Tabitha wanted to be a mover and a shaker, at least in her little part of the world at what she did best, helping people look good.