Hard Time (28 page)

“Understandably.”

“Then that girl had a baby about eight months later. Probably would’ve believed it was mine, if I’d fallen for it. Would’ve signed on to be some kid’s dad at sixteen, tied myself to some crazy chick for as long as I could’ve held out.” He paused. “That was mean. But you see what I’m saying. My sister saw it all coming. She yanked me back like I was racing headlong toward a cliff.”

“Jesus. People actually do that to each other? What that girl tried to do?”

“’Round here they do. And my sister can spot that shit coming a mile away.”

“Is that what she thinks I’m trying to do? Trap you?”

“Hell if I know,” he said with a sigh. “Maybe she’s just hurt that I’ve been away for so long, and now that I’m finally out, I’m staying away by choice. She probably thinks that’s down to you—she’s always looking for some third party to blame. She’s always looking for an enemy to butt heads with. But she’ll get over it and realize it’s my choice.”

“I hope so.”

“Enough about that shit. You want your Christmas present, finally?”

I blinked in the darkness. “You brought it?”

“Yeah. You want it?”

“Sure. I’d forgotten all about it.”

The springs squeaked and groaned as he left the covers. He left the lamp off but plugged in the halo of Christmas lights, bathing the room in their soft aura. I sat up, hugging the blankets. He dug through his bag and came back with a soft package, wrapped ineptly in holly-patterned paper, just as he’d promised.

I squeezed it—definitely fabric. “What is it?”

“Open it. It’s not as good as what you got for me,” he added, warmth finally returning to his voice.

I peeled at the tape and opened the paper. A scarf—not a warm winter one like I’d made him borrow, but an accessory. It was crocheted out of filmy ombre yarn, the colors shifting between green and blue, with spangly silver thread worked through it.

“It’s beautiful,” I said, watching the tinselly bits glimmer in the low lights.

“One of my coworkers, his wife makes them. She came by the dispatch office with a bunch, and I saw that one and thought of you.”

You look so good in green
,
my memory read.
Even though you have blue eyes they almost look ocean colored when you wear green. And I’ve never been to the ocean.

“I love it,” I told him, clutching it in both hands as I leaned in to kiss him. “Thank you.”

“Merry Christmas.”

“Merry Christmas.” I admired my present until Eric crossed the room and tugged the plug free, closing us in shadows.

He rolled me over and spooned me, something weary and needy and sad in the gesture. Something desperate in the stiff arm he wrapped around my waist. I tried to make myself soft, receptive, porous. Like a sponge that could absorb whatever defeat he was feeling, lighten his load.

Like you can save him.
I imagined Kristina lashing me with her sneer.

No
, I thought.
Not saving.
Just soothing. Just promising him with my body,
I’m not going anyplace.
A promise my brain hadn’t been able to make last week, too terrified of this trip and its potential consequences.

Consequences that felt so far away now, with Eric’s chest warming my back and his steadily slowing breath in my hair.

Consequences I hoped would never arrive, all just figments of fear and anticipation.

But I wouldn’t get my wish.

“I want you and my sister to go out tonight.”

I stared at Eric, arms freezing midtousle as I toweled my hair. We were in the living room, Eric folding up the couch, me just showered and dressed. Paula had been puttering around since before we’d woken, and I could smell bacon and coffee, cheerful scents that matched the bright winter sunshine sneaking through the blinds.

“Me and Kristina? Out where?” And
why?
Dear God, why? After last night, the only possible venue had to be the
Jerry Springer
set.
My Brother’s Home-wrecking Whore Needs to Butt Out!

“Get a drink or something,” he said calmly. Firmly. He wadded up the sheets and made a pile beside the foldout, avoiding my eyes. “I can drop you two off, pick you up after.”

“That’s the worst idea I’ve ever heard.”

He snatched yesterday’s clothes from the floor, tossing them near our bags.

“I doubt she’d agree to it, anyway,” I added, and sat on the couch to do my makeup. That was one advantage to the way we’d met—no self-consciousness about Eric seeing me with a bare face.
Thanks, Cousins Correctional Facility.

“You let me worry about convincing Kris,” he said. “I just want you two out someplace, together, without me around. So you can hash out your issues, woman to woman.”

I dabbed concealer under my eye, keeping my attention on the compact. “Me and her and alcohol . . . You better leave us with a first-aid kit.”

He paused in my periphery. “That’s not funny.”

“Last night wasn’t funny, either. One more screwdriver and I swear she’d have decked me.”

I didn’t see his reaction, but he was moving again, voice still firm. “I’m asking you to do this, as a favor to me, okay? And I’m going to say the same to her. You’re both in my life, and you’re going to have to get used to each other. I’m not saying you gotta bond and be best friends and get your nails done together or whatever, but I need to know you can survive in the same room without me playing referee.”

I couldn’t think of a worse favor to be asked. “What if it goes just like last night, only in public?”

“Baby.” He sighed and sat beside me, tilting my cushion. His palm was warm as it circled my back, but I kept my attention on the mirror, fussing with my eyeliner.

“Annie, look at me.”

I dropped my hands to my lap and faced him.

His smile was goofy and exhausted. “I’m not asking you to do anything scarier than what you face every Friday in Cousins, okay? Have a drink with my sister. Please. Call the closest thing you two can get to a truce.”

Through the door came Paula’s voice, calling us to breakfast.

“Please?” he repeated.

I surrendered, snapping my compact shut with a sigh and capping my mascara. “I’ll go if she’ll go.” He was right, after all—if I could handle the crew at Cousins, I could handle one mean woman.

Eric smiled his relief, pulling me into a fierce hug just as Paula called us again. We headed down the hall hand in hand, Scooter greeting us along with the mouth-watering breakfast smells.

“Good morning,” Paula chimed, setting a plate stacked with toast on the table.

“She’s not usually this perky,” Eric confided in me loudly as we sat. “Or domestic. Usually it’s corn flakes around here.”

She waved his snark aside. “It’s not just for Annie. I haven’t had a chance to cook breakfast for my baby boy in over five years, you know.” She came up behind him and smoothed his messy hair, squished his face with both hands. Eric captured her wrists and held her hands to his heart, releasing her after she leaned in to kiss his cheek. I fought to hide my grin, chest all full of cotton candy to watch them.

“How did you sleep?” Paula asked, glancing at me as she collected serving spoons.

“Fine,” I lied. I must’ve played the drama recap over and over in my head for two hours before I dropped off.

“Kris awake?” Eric asked.

“I thought I heard her banging around in there.”

And speak of the Devil, Kristina appeared at the kitchen door, finger-combing her long hair. “Morning.”

“Morning,” Eric said evenly.

I smiled weakly.

Kris headed for the coffeepot. Once she’d set her own mug on the table, she asked, “Anybody else?”

Eric and I both raised our hands, and I avoided Kris’s eyes when I thanked her for the cup.

“So, what’s on tap for today?” Paula asked the table at large.

“Thought I’d give Annie the grand tour of Kernsville,” said Eric.

“That’s twenty minutes filled,” Kris said with a grin.

“I’ll stretch it out to a half hour. Take her to lunch at that burger place behind the ice rink.”

Kris nodded at that, gesturing with approval as she chewed and swallowed. “That
is
the social center for Kernsvillians under the age of forty. Couldn’t guess how many times I got to third base in that parking lot.”

Paula shot her a look. “Kris.”

“Twenty bucks says one of us was conceived there,” Kris returned, fork waving between herself and Eric. I smiled to watch Paula get flustered and change the subject.

Breakfast went okay from there, but I hoped Paula didn’t notice how Kris and I refused to look at each other. Once the washer was loaded, Kris announced she needed a smoke, and once again Eric joined her, telling his mom to save him the pans to wash.

They returned shortly, and when Kris disappeared to shower and Paula excused herself on an errand, Eric refreshed our mugs.

“She’ll go,” he said.

“Yeah? Did she roll her eyes a lot, or did you bribe her, or . . . ?”

“I just asked her nice. Told her exactly what I told you—that it’s important to me that you two find your way to acting civil.” He smirked. “Just had to ask her like, fifteen times, that’s all.”

I sank back in my chair, palming my warm mug. “Okay, then. Guess it’s a date.”

“Good.”

“But I still think it’s going to be a disaster, so you better show me one heck of a good time before tonight.”

* * *

Eric did show me a good time. We drove around his hometown to see the high school he’d dropped out of, the places he used to like hanging out at, a drive-by tour of his old apartments. Nothing thrilling, but it was nice to see all this stuff. He’d been a mystery to me for such a large portion of our acquaintance, even our courtship . . . It was cool to lay my eyes on tangible proof of an ordinary life. And fun to try to picture a younger, more slender version of the man I’d come to love; I imagined his teenage self navigating these streets, or sitting in a booth in the K-Ville Grille, where we got our burgers. After lunch we picked up groceries for Paula, and just strolling down the supermarket aisle with him felt good. It felt like a Christmas present, almost, this little peek at what a life with this man might look like.

Though hopefully our future life might not feature quite so much ice and slush.

Paula made a big, awesome spread of rice and beans and beef and tortillas for dinner, then we sat down in front of the TV for the night. Or Eric and his mom did, as Kris and I had big plans.
Girls’ night out!
Cringe.

At quarter to eight I bundled up for the peace summit. It was crazy-cold out, but I forewent my wool scarf, wanting to wear the tinselly one Eric had given me.

When we crunched down the walkway to the truck, Kris let me sit in the middle of the bench seat. Weird. Very weird, me the nervous meat in this angst sandwich. Eric switched on the radio, and none of us said
anything
for the ten-minute drive, not until we pulled into the parking lot of a one-story roadhouse-style bar called The Main Drag.

Then Eric commented, “Busy for a school night,” and pulled over to the side, truck idling.

“Here goes nothing,” Kris said with a grunt, pushing the door open.

I followed.

Eric rolled down his window and lay his forearm along the frame. “Be good.”

“Perfects angels,” his sister sang snidely, leading the way, me following.

“No liquor, Kris,” Eric called. “You know how you get.”

“Whatever you say, Dad.”

I could about hear his sigh from twenty paces. “Call me when you’re ready to get picked up.”

I offered him a wave and a skeptical smile then followed Kris inside the bar.

The place was way nicer than I’d guessed from the facade. Not classy, but cool, with a kind of saloon vibe, bustling but not rowdy. Though it was still early.

“How’s this for a cozy little chat?” Kris asked dryly, waving to a small booth across from the center of the bar.

“Works for me.”

She stayed standing as I slid in behind the table.

“What’re you drinking?” she asked.

I didn’t feel like explaining my usual cocktail to her. “Light beer. Bud or Coors or whatever. Thanks.”

I watched her at the bar as I unbuttoned my coat. The faded redhead behind the taps greeted her warmly, like Kyle did with me.
Bartenders like us
, I thought, scribbling it down on my short mental list of things we had in common.
Bartenders like us. Men have hurt us. We both love Eric Collier.
Please let that be enough to get us through this perverse playdate.

Kris returned with a pitcher and two glasses. I poured and she unsnapped her puffy down coat, shoving it into the corner of the padded bench. She wedged herself in after it, her legs so long I felt our knees brush and angled mine to the side.

“So,” she said after a deep drink, folding her arms on the Formica.

“So.”

She smiled tightly. “You hate me, don’t you?”

“A little, yeah.”

“I’m not your biggest fan, either.”

I palmed my glass in both hands but didn’t drink yet. “I don’t know what he expects to happen tonight. But I don’t want to fight with you again. It’s not going to get us anyplace.”

“What should we talk about instead?” she asked, not quite snarky but a touch too sweet. “Clothes? Boys?”

“I don’t know who you think I am,” I said evenly, “but you’ve got me wrong.”

“I bet you were prom queen and worked summers at the malt shop.”

I shook my head. “I tutored. And I went to homecoming, but I wasn’t queen by a long shot . . . And it wasn’t exactly romantic. My date got so drunk he threw up in my parents’ car when I drove him home, then he told me one of the cheerleaders once gave him and his friend head in the school library.”

My deadpan delivery brought the shadow of a smile to her face. “Classy.”

I nodded. “He was, actually, compared to my college boyfriend.” Without meaning to, I gave my formerly bad ear a rub.

“He the one you threatened to sic Eric on?”

I smiled, embarrassed. “Yeah. That’s the one.”

Kris pursed her lips, gaze dropping to her glass. “I shouldn’t have mocked you like I did, last night. About that. Eric called me on it today.”

I couldn’t help but notice she hadn’t actually apologized, but it felt like progress.

I shrugged. “You were pretty drunk.”

“Was your ex pretty drunk, when he treated you bad?”

“Yeah.”

Her brows rose. “Not much of an excuse, is it?”

I shook my head. “No. Popular one, though.”

She smirked and held up her glass to that, then took a swallow. I did the same, then laughed as I set my beer down, registering what we’d just drank to.

“That might be the most ironic toast possible. Cheers to the bad decisions people make when they drink.”

“It’s par for the course, when you’re young and stupid,” she said thoughtfully. “Bit pathetic when you get to be my age.”

Again, a non-apology. Eric must have really worked her over that afternoon. I softened a little in return.

“I was stone-cold sober when I said that psycho stuff to my ex. It was like ten a.m., in the Gap. With Christmas music playing. In the underwear section.”

She snorted at that, dropping her head then coming up grinning. “Oh fuck, that is too good.”

I laughed, studying the foam lingering around the edges of my beer. “His girlfriend was in the changing room. God knows what he told her about me, after I ran off.”

Kris shrugged her broad shoulders. “Fuck them.”

Now
that
deserved a toast.

We chatted for a long time about high school—the scandals of forgotten friends, the reputations of notorious classmates. Who the kings and queens of our respective schools had been, and how sad it was that those had probably been the peaks of their lives, everything after a downhill slide.

After perhaps thirty minutes of that and two pints apiece, we fell quiet. I turned memories over in my mind. All the things I’d put up with, when I’d been younger. The things I’d shut out. The things I’d let people get away with. Then I thought of Eric.

“Your brother told me what you did for him, when he was a teenager,” I said quietly. “Scaring him away from that girl who ended up being pregnant.”

She shook her head. “Poor boys—they stand
no
chance. I saw a tornado tearing toward him at a hundred miles an hour, with that girl. All he saw was a long pair of legs in a short skirt. Way I ran her off, you’d think she was a bear. But I’d just lost my son, not even a year before. I was a bear, myself. A mama bear, and Eric feels like my kid, sometimes. Especially back then.”

I was surprised to hear her bring up her child. The way Eric had spoken about it, and finding the boy missing from the family snapshots, I’d assumed it was verboten.

“When I looked through your mom’s photo album,” I said slowly, then trailed off, nervous.

“What?”

I met her stare and ripped the scab off. “There weren’t any photos of you and your son.”

She blinked. To my surprise and cautious relief, her eyes didn’t glow with anything resembling anger, but rather went a touch glassy and far away. I’d seen her brother’s do just the same, whenever I’d pushed him toward ground he didn’t feel like retreading.

After a long silence, she said, “I hate that she does that.”

Confused, I frowned. “Does what?”

Kristina took a long drink, draining her glass. “She keeps them separate. All the pictures of me, pregnant, and all the pictures of Danny.”

“Danny.”

She nodded then signaled to the bartender for another pitcher. “Named for his father,” she told me. “Shows how dumb I was at seventeen,” she added with a wry smile, “thinking that’d get him interested in being the kid’s dad. He was twenty-five going on twelve, that asshole.”