Champagne Life (31 page)

Later that evening, the setting sun created a beautiful deep auburn sky. There wasn't a cloud to be found. DeShaun put Jenn's Range Rover in reverse and backed down the driveway. He liked
the feeling of power he had behind such a large vehicle. His rental car, although a luxury vehicle, was in no comparison to a four-wheel drive. He could get used to this.

“Where do you want to go for dinner?” he asked, backing out into the street. He placed the car in drive and stepped on the gas.

“I know this fabulous place on the water,” Jenn said. “You're going to love it, I promise.”

“Tell me where it is and I'll get us there.” He pulled out of the cul-de-sac. They drove past the neighboring houses, each one looked larger than the last, with huge backyards and two—sometimes even three—luxury cars parked in the front.

He pulled onto the main road. She turned to him. “I'm sorry about what happened. I completely forgot my housekeeper was coming today.”

Earlier, when he had heard the housekeeper's footsteps heading toward the master bedroom, by instinct, he quickly hopped off Jenn, grabbed his pants at the foot of the bed and scrambled to get them on before the housekeeper busted in. Luckily, Jenn had locked the door the night before, so the housekeeper stood outside, banging on the door, asking in broken English if Jenn was okay. Eventually, they surfaced from the room, walked past the housekeeper and headed down to breakfast, as if nothing had happened, which in actuality, it didn't.

“Do you think she'll say anything?” he asked.

“Rosaria? No way. She's seen much worse.”

“What do you mean by that?” He was slightly put off by her comment.

“Not like that. I simply mean when Berti and I have parties, there are usually one or two overnight guests parading around.”

He had spent the entire day with Jenn. First, they went shopping downtown for some bargains. Apparently, Jenn had a bargain-
hunting obsession, if that's what she called it. She picked up a lamp priced at $437 and an oriental rug for over $2,000. She even purchased a $500 shadowed image of Isaac Hayes, which according to the salesperson, was a collector's item. “This is for you,” she had told him. He didn't have a place to put the picture yet, but when he got his own spot, that would be the first thing he hung up.

They ended the afternoon at a winery, which she visited frequently, and bought a bottle of Burgundy wine for $300. When they returned to the house, they spent more time together watching movies and eating popcorn, something he and Naomi used to do. He introduced her to the movie,
Juice
, and she made him watch
Sabrina
with Harrison Ford, which he rather enjoyed.

“You're not at all like I expected,” DeShaun had told her while sipping on wine and munching on popcorn while watching his movie pick.

“You're exactly what I expected…thank goodness.”

DeShaun reached forward and switched on the radio. He hit the first preset button, then the second and third. “You sure love country music, don't you? What happened to Biggie?”

“I love country music, too” Jenn said. “Berti always listens to it and I sort of ended up enjoying it. Don't tell me you don't listen to country music?”

“Not if I don't have to,” DeShaun said. “It's too twangy for my taste. I used to be down with the Dixie Chicks, though.”

That was only a half-truth. Naomi was the one who bought all of their CD's. Every Sunday on the way to the bird sanctuary, she'd pop in the CD and they'd listen to “Landslide” at least four times. Just thinking about it made him sad, so he popped it out of his mind as quickly as he could. That was the past. He was concentrating on the future.

“How do you feel about animals?” DeShaun asked.

Jenn rolled her eyes. “I hate all critters. They're gross and do nothing but mess up expensive furniture, kind of like kids. You're lucky, you don't have kids, DeShaun.” She thought a moment. “You don't have any kids, do you?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Don't get me wrong,” Jenn said. “I had one, Kyle, when I was younger and Berti had two from a previous marriage. Kids take up all your time and rob you of your youth. I found that out the hard way.”

“I kinda like kids.”

“Those that don't have kids always claim to like them. If you actually had them, you'd be telling a different story.” She pointed a finger to the left. “Turn here. It's right down the road.”

DeShaun turned onto a dirt drive. He could hear the pebbles kicking up underneath the Range Rover's tires. “Are you sure this is the way?”

“Uh-huh.”

He kept driving until he reached a tiny wooden shack-like hut, overlooking the water. There were no spots designated for parking so he pulled the vehicle off to the left, in the grass, and put it in park.

“Is this it?” he asked.

“This place has the best hotdogs around. Bet you didn't know you could find a place like this around here, huh?”

“More like hoped.”

“Oh, wow,” Jenn said. “You are snobbier than the Whitmans, and you know how picky they are with their parties.”

“I know you didn't just say I was worse than the Whitmans.” He reached out to grab her arm, but she swerved and took off running toward the waterfront. “You think you can beat me?” he said, taking off after her. He caught her at the front of the restaurant.

“You look astounding in that suit I bought you today,” she said.

“I appreciate it.” He wished he could dress like this all the time. When people said designer clothes were like regular clothes with a higher price tag, they probably had never dressed in the more expensive gear. His pants hung perfectly, accentuating his manly goods. The shirt, a breathable cotton, draped over his pecs and shoulders like it was specially designed for him, which in a way, it was. Jenn had insisted the outfit be tailored to fit his physique and now he understood why. Even the Calvin Klein underwear was softer against one of the most important parts of his anatomy. As ridiculous as it sounded, walking in the clothes gave him an excitement that, before today, only women could do.

He kissed her. After the great day they'd spent together and under the golden sunset, it seemed like the perfect thing to do. He was thankful that a woman could make him feel good again. He hadn't expected that to happen anytime in the near future and here it was, under a sunset with the winds coming up from the water, gently whispering between them.

“What was that kiss for?” she asked.

“You didn't like it?”

“I loved it. But it came out of nowhere.”

“It came from a genuine place. I enjoy being with you and I hope you feel the same.”

“I do, Deshaun, but remember I'm moving to Japan. You realized it was coming. I told you before at the party, Berti got a job there and was flying back and forth. I wasn't sure anything was going to come from it, but it has and now I'm leaving.”

“I assumed the entire move thing was off now.”

“Why would you assume that?”

“I don't know,” he began. “I just figured—”

“Figured what?”

“When are you leaving?”

“In two days.”

“Two days!” he exclaimed. “Why didn't you tell me about this?”

“I did.”

“Not that you were leaving in two days! You said the date kept getting pushed back.”

She sighed. “Let's just go in and enjoy a good meal. I don't want to think about it right now. I want to have some fun tonight.” She took DeShaun's hand and led him into the tiny restaurant that smelled like scented vanilla candles and raw seafood.

Reluctantly, he allowed Jenn to lead him to a tiny table in the corner. “We're going to make the best of the situation while we can.” She gently rubbed his arm.

DeShaun nodded, but he wasn't in the mood to eat. He felt like a kid on the verge of a tantrum who just found out his best friend was moving away. Not only was he going to miss Jenn, he now had to bear being alone once again.

I
t took every ounce of my being not to slap her. I was so sick of her blaming me for everything gone off track in her life, when in essence, Cara had gotten everything she ever wanted. Mom and Dad saw to that.

“I can't help it you could never keep a man,” I said. “Maybe if you had paid a little more attention to your boyfriends, they wouldn't be so eager to start sniffing in my direction.”

“Real mature, little sis,” Cara said. “You are such a—”

“Such a what?” I goaded. “Finish the sentence, Cara.”

“Thank goodness I'm a Christian. If I wasn't, I'd remind you about certain things I'm sure you don't want me to mention ever again.”

“You bitch!” I lunged forward. My fingers were an inch from her neck when Mom stepped in between us.

“Stop it, now!” Mom yelled as my cousin, Sarita, grabbed my arms and pulled me back. “This is the worst possible day you two could have decided to pull this mess. You are disrespecting your father's memory and I won't have it!” Mom took a deep breath to regain her composure. “Knock off this mess before I kick you both out.”

“I'm sorry, Mom.” I shot Cara one last dirty look before heading toward the kitchen and out the back door. I needed time to cool down.

Jeremy followed. “Hey, you all right?”

“That girl pisses me off every time I see her. I shouldn't let her do it but somehow I do and every single time this is the end result. The last time I saw her was nine years ago, before I was married and even then she had something smart to say. We never got along.”

“She didn't even attend your wedding?”

I shook my head. “Nope and I didn't expect her to either, which was why I didn't bother to send her an invitation.”

“What did she mean about you stealing and marrying her boyfriend.”

“It's a long story.”

“What? You got somewhere to be?”

I took a deep breath, preparing to give the condensed version. “Years ago, when I was twelve and Cara was fifteen, we used to come out here every day after dinner and swing until the sun went down. Then when the stars appeared, one-by-one, we would wish on each one, telling each other what our wishes were. One of my wishes was that my sister and I would be best friends forever. I mean, it was unheard of for a fifteen-year-old to allow her preteen sister to hang around with her and her friends. I had the best sister in the world.”

“What happened?” Jeremy asked.

“As all good things do, it came to an end. At sixteen, Cara started dating a guy, Derrick Santangelo. Derrick was my first crush and she knew that, but she didn't care. They dated for about a month and then he stopped coming around. One night, my sister invited her friends over and I overheard their conversation. Cara told her friends that she was tired of Derrick and was ready to dump him. She had met another kid, Marcus, and they had already had sex.”

“What did that have to do with you?” Jeremy asked, confused.

“Nothing at the time, but three years later when Cara went off
to college, Derrick asked me out and we started dating. At first, it was only a fling, but then I really started liking him and he liked me, too. He was my first.”

“So, that made you fifteen, then?”

“I was about to turn sixteen when we first had sex. I was in love. I wrote everything down in my diary, professing that one day we were going to get married and have four or five kids.”

“Cara found out?”

I nodded. “One Thanksgiving, she came home from college and she was different. She had morphed into this angry, self-absorbed, self-righteous person. When I would ask her if she wanted to hang out at the movies, like we used to, she'd laugh, telling me that she didn't hang with ‘pain-in-the-ass little bitches anymore.' And that was a direct quote.”

“She said that?” Jeremy asked. “I've only just met her but she doesn't strike me as the type to say something like that.”

“She wasn't always the holy roller she claims to be now,” I told him. “According to her, she was a woman and couldn't be bothered anymore. One night after dinner, I caught her in my room, sitting on my bed, reading my diary like it was her right. When she looked up and saw me in the doorway, she looked at me with such hate it made the devil look like a saint. She had read my entry about Derrick.

“Ouch,” he said. “But didn't you like him first?”

“That didn't matter to her. When she started dating him, even though she knew I liked him, I wasn't angry because she was my sister. I loved her, regardless. I thought it would be the same for her, but it wasn't. I'll never forget that night. She whipped past me, practically knocking me over, and headed straight for my parents. She told them everything. She must've memorized the entire thing, too. She rattled off how many dates I had snuck out to, how many
times we Frenched and told them how many times we had sex. She even detailed the times we had it—when my parents went out to dinner for their anniversary, the time we came back from the beach, you name it, she told it. She even read that Derrick and I had crossed the state line and gotten married. The legal age in Georgia is sixteen and I was only fifteen.”

“You were married before? What did your parents do?”

“It was ugly. I had never been beaten before, but my father whipped off his belt and beat me for ten minutes straight. They had the marriage annulled and I was grounded for a month. I didn't care about any of that. It was when they said I could never see Derrick again that tore me apart. The entire time, my sister sat there and watched with an evil grin on her face.”

“Wow. That was bad.”

“That wasn't even the end of it,” I told him. “The last night Cara was home, I picked up the phone to call my girlfriend, but instead of a dial tone, I heard my sister's voice. I listened to her beg Derrick for another chance, promising him that she would ‘give him some' like he's never had it before.”