Rough and Tumble (22 page)

If that was what you called it.

Alcohol hadn't chased away the taste of Molly, though, the feel of her, the hunger he still had for her.

Cash shoved Kat's dishrag away from him. “What's taking you so long to get my whisky?”

“Let me think about that.” Her baby-blue eyes weren't full of welcome. “Could it be that Leighton's big-ass pickup was seen last night on the outskirts of town? You must have a death wish to be here, Cash. It's not like your T-bird is unrecognizable.”

“The least you can do is numb me from this drama.”

Kat hesitated, like she was debating whether to serve him. But, finally, she grabbed a glass.

“Top shelf?” she asked between her teeth.

“Bottom.” Because that's where he was. Without Molly around, nothing tasted good. It was all flat on his tongue—the booze he drank, the food he ate.

Sometime soon, the flatness would wear off, but now, every time he thought of her, his heart got sore, and he wanted to make it not feel anything at all.

He'd been broken before, but not now. He was doing his damnedest not to let Molly and all her hopefulness and optimism matter to him, but somehow, she kept creeping back into his chest, his head. His fucking heart. Every time he thought of leaving her in that motel room, he wanted to lash out, bloody his fist through a wall, feel the pain in the only way he could deal with.

Kat served him, then left him alone to brood in the corner of the bar, in the seat where he'd first seen Molly. A ghost of a memory consumed him: her sitting in the chair down the way, sniffing at her whisky, daintily tasting it and making a prissy face. Him wanting her from the second he'd seen her, never thinking it'd actually happen.

That he'd have a chance.

He tossed down his drink, signaled to Kat for another. She obliged him, probably hoping he'd get his fill and leave. When the door opened, everyone at the bar cut their conversations, leaving just the guitar-lick music. And when everyone saw it was Jimmy Beetles, his blue bandana and sunglasses covering his greasy hair, they thumped him on the back in greeting. Hooper introduced him to the tourists.

Looked like another backroom game was on today.

Cash had already taken out his pack of smokes, and he reached for his lighter. After bringing it out, he realized something clung to it.

Molly's hair, blond and soft, curling, still banded together.

He dropped the lighter to the bar, rubbing her hair between his thumb and forefinger. Need pierced him like a jab of agony, and he shot down his second drink.

“I see this is the maudlin corner,” said a familiar voice.

Cash glanced over to see Bennett Hughes with his golden hair, light blue eyes, and cocky playboy smile. Even if it was only the afternoon, he was wearing one of his expensive designer shirts and a Rolex, which he'd probably be giving away to some leather-and-lace cowgirl in a few hours.

“Mind if I join you?” Ben asked. Then, without being invited, he took a seat next to Cash.

“Are you drowning your misery for some reason?” Cash asked, hiding Molly's hair in his hand. “Can't think of why a rich boy would be maudlin.”

“There're reasons.”

Not that Ben would talk about them, even though Cash suspected his mood had something to do with the Hughes family, who was always judging Ben's black-sheep ass. Or maybe he'd been on TMZ again, caught by the paparazzi in some kind of compromising position on the Strip with a half-dressed budding starlet, turning his face from the cameras while pulling her out of sight.

Ben had obviously spied Molly's lock of hair already, and he nodded toward it. “I'm not feeling sorry for myself half as much as you are, buddy. Me? I got my heart broken last night by one of Jesse's strippers. She had a beauty spot right below her lips like you wouldn't believe and—”

“What's new? Your heart's always getting broken.”

“True, but it's a big heart, so it keeps on ticking.” Ben smiled the killer smile that worked so well on the ladies. “Now,
you
look like you wouldn't mind if Beetles came down here and punched your lights out, thanks to how you left him to deal with Leighton. And he
will
probably throw a fist at you once he spots you.”

Big surprise, but then again, a punch might wake Cash up, pull him out of this Molly-hazed coma. In fact, he'd welcome a good punch if it brought him back to his senses. Would it blast out all those what-ifs Molly had put into his mind?

What if we started all over again and, instead of running from everything, we faced it . . . ?

Ben had taken possession of Cash's lighter, lavishing his gaze over Bettie Page like he could talk her off the plastic and into his bed. And, if anyone could do it, Bennett Hughes was the man.

“Always chasing the dream,” he said, going serious. “That's your problem, Cash. To you, women are just as real as Bettie here—which is to say, not real at all. They're an idea to you, and not a good one, either.”

“You know I don't talk about that shit.” Johanna. Nobody in the R&T knew her name, but they knew there'd been someone. Even Molly had realized that early on.

“You don't have to say a word,” Ben said, caressing the lighter with his thumb. Bettie even seemed to purr at the attention. “But watching you in this corner making love to that piece of blond hair . . . It doesn't take a genius to see that this woman threw you for a loop. Was she the anti-Bettie? Did she come alive and shake you up a little?”

Cash kept ahold of the hair, ignoring Ben, taking out his money clip and putting enough bills on the bar to cover his tab. Kat gave him a nod of thanks, then went back to serving the tourists.

“Bennett,” he said, sliding off his seat, “don't mind me if I prefer drinking alone tonight.”

“Salutations, then.” Ben held out the lighter. “Don't forget her.”

Bennett had meant Bettie, but Cash was thinking about someone else altogether.

Would he ever forget Molly?

“Keep it,” Cash said, walking away from Ben, and from the lighter.

It wasn't until he was halfway down the bar that he realized he'd also abandoned his smokes, but he left those, too.

Jimmy Beetles was so deep in conversation with Hooper that he didn't see Cash walk on by. Cash didn't even have the energy to shrug that off. Beetles would confront him about leaving the Leighton dustup soon enough.

He emerged into the sweltering afternoon, not caring about the heat, either. He only moved automatically down the street like a spirit in this old, dead mining town, past the diner with no customers, past a supposedly haunted miner's shack made of collapsing stone, past a junked car in front of Hooper's house.

Molly
, he kept thinking. Was she home by now?
When he'd called the motel, the clerk had told him she'd checked out and driven off with her friends, but was Molly having as much trouble forgetting him?

He was so thick in misery that it took a few seconds for him to realize a flashy red truck was right beside him, tracking him.

It didn't even surprise Cash when the vehicle pulled to a stop in the middle of the slim, mottled road, the engine cut. Someone got out, coming around the front and toward him.

“Fucking Cash Campbell,” said Leighton.

As the slick prick with the pomaded hair, bolo tie, and silver-tipped boots walked toward Cash, he twirled a knife in his hand.

Cash laughed. He didn't even have it in him to be afraid. Fear was a feeling, and he couldn't bother with any, except for one—anguish.

Molly
.

Cash didn't pull out his pocketknife. He only spread his hands out. “I hear you've been waiting for me.”

Leighton pointed at him with the tip of the blade. “No one gets away from me—especially not with the five grand you snaked from me during our game awhile ago.”

“It was fair poker.”

Leighton's face got ruddy. “Fair, my ass. You and your friends think it's funny to shake players down, and I'll get to Beetles, too, if he's ever alone. I'll also get to that bitch bartender for whaling on me with that bat.”

At the threat to Kat, Cash bristled. “You don't want to run around here saying shit like that.”

“Or you'll do what?”

Just as the tension shot sky-high, the sound of a bike roared through the atmosphere, and the next thing Cash knew, gunshots were fired and Leighton took cover as the air wheezed out of his truck's tires.

“Son of a bitch!” he yelled, springing back up from the ground again, his knife ready.

From around the other side of the truck, Jimmy Beetles appeared, packing a revolver, aiming at Leighton. Kat was with him, targeting Leighton with her shotgun.

“Seriously?” Leighton shouted. “You're coming at me with guns?”

Beetles wasn't amused today. “Better than standing there with a knife in one hand and your dick in the other. I saw that you pulled at least one of them on my friend, bolo-face. Put the blade down.”

Leighton raised the knife like he was going to throw it at Beetles, so Beetles fired. The weapon flew out of Leighton's hand. He screamed, crumbling to the ground, clutching his arm.

“I'm shot!” he yelled.

“No kidding,” Beetles said, raising his arms and turning around. “Let it be known that the bitch had a knife. Self-defense!”

Beetles's smile almost broke his face, and Kat got a good laugh out of it, too, keeping her shotgun trained on Leighton.

“By the way,” she said, “someone called nine-one-one the second they saw your pimp truck speeding down the road. Didn't you think the people here would be keeping an eye out for you?”

Beetles shoved his revolver back into his waistband under his leather cut and sneered at Leighton. “That's the way it goes in Rough and Tumble, sweetheart.”

He took out a pair of handcuffs that had probably seen some good use in more intimate places. Then he dropped down, planting a knee in Leighton's back and restraining him as the guy squirmed.

All the while, Cash hadn't moved. He still didn't feel anything—no adrenaline, no rush of wanting to get in on the action. And when Beetles sent him a puzzled glance, Cash could only think,
This is my life. This is what I chose over Molly
.

He walked away.

“Uh, thanks for the save?” Beetles yelled.

Emotions more frozen than ever, Cash lifted his hand in acknowledgement, heading for Boomer's house less than fifty yards away.

There, he waited for the law to come to hear his statement after Leighton had his say. They were going to find Cash anyway, and he owed it to Beetles to get Leighton busted for assault at the very least.

After the cops left—“Just another day in paradise,” one said under his breath on the way out the door—Cash packed the little he had and sobered up. He slid into the T-bird, not knowing where he was going, only knowing he was done with this kind of life after Molly had shown him something else.

He drove away from Rough & Tumble, the only place he'd ever really belonged.

A week had never crawled by so slowly for Molly.

Aced the interview for a new job? Done. Got back in the work saddle again? Done. Moped around the condo bored and restless, knowing full well that something important had dropped out of her life?

She wished she could cross that last one off her list altogether, but the weight of Cash's absence wouldn't go away. She'd tried to get rid of every trace of him, tossing her touristy T-shirts and new clothes in a Goodwill bag and deleting his phone number in her phone's contact book. She'd almost even gotten rid of that picture of the two of them in front of the Extraterrestrial Highway sign: her smiling, him giving her a subtle look with those do-me green eyes that seemed to hold something else as well—a hint of emotion that the camera had caught.

In spite of everything, she held on to that picture like a glutton for punishment, attempting to figure out just
what
had been in his gaze. Simple lust? Amused affection? The possibility of more than even that?

The questions wouldn't leave her alone, even though life continued around her. She got used to going to a new desk every day in a new office, meeting new people. But there was still that certain unreachable something missing. . . .

Thank God for Sofia and Arden, because after Molly had been hired by her new firm and officially quit her position at Genhaven, Walwick & Graves, her friends had wanted to celebrate. Molly was only too relieved to get out of her funk.

That night, they dressed up and went to Jake's in Del Mar. Sunset blazed over their window view of the surf and sand as they ate their entrees. Soft music, the low murmur of other diners, and the clank of silverware played in the background.

Sofia cut into her glazed salmon. “Aren't we lucky to be able to eat with the waves right here?”

Molly and Arden
mmm
ed, their mouths full of shrimp and pasta. Then again, it wasn't as if the conversation had been lively tonight. They hadn't gone out as a trio since the Nevada trip, and it was as if they didn't have anything to say to one another now that they were together.

But after Molly sent Arden a don't-you-have-something-to-tell-Sofia? glance from across the table, the tone changed.

“So . . . I went to a Gamblers Anonymous meeting,” she said to Sofia, casually reaching for her water glass. Her gelled-back hair was even redder from the sunset coming through the window.

Sofia paused with her loaded fork halfway to her mouth, a smile bursting over her lips, her dimples flashing. “You did?”

Arden rolled her eyes, took a drink, then said, “I know—good for me. But it was a bunch of people talking and . . . Whatever. It's not like it helped much.”

When Arden had told Molly the same thing the other night, it'd sucked to hear. Arden needed to
want
to go, and no one could do that for her but
her
.

Molly cleared her throat, and Arden added, “Molly was the one who dropped me off and picked me up.”

Sofia set down her fork. She looked at Molly, and Molly reached over the table and folded her hand over her friend's. She'd hoped Sofia wouldn't feel slighted.

“It was spur-of-the-moment, Sof. My firm is on the way home from Arden's school and she dropped by the day before yesterday after work for a tour, then we started talking about Gamblers Anonymous and looking it up on my computer and . . .”

“You found a meeting that night,” Sofia said, laughing, lifting her fork back up. “That's great. Arden, I'm proud of you.”

Molly was certain she meant it, but after all the garbage Sofia had gone through with Arden during the trip, she should've been the one to be there during Arden's big moment. It didn't seem fair.

Life wasn't fair, though, and Molly had learned the hard way that you had to take whatever you were given—even if it wasn't meant to last.

She tried not to lapse into that funk again, just as she did every time Cash crossed her mind. But everything reminded her of him—the sunset, the wind in the parking lot that had tried to undo the low, strict ponytail hiding the spot where Cash had cut off her hair . . .

When would she be able to leave him behind?

As Molly tuned back in to the present, she realized that Arden was telling Sofia more about the Gamblers Anonymous philosophy. She smiled to herself, listening, glad that Arden was at least dipping her toes into the program. Molly was going to do everything possible to make sure she went to another meeting, too.

The dinner talk came easier after that and, when they finished eating and left the restaurant, Molly took some consolation in the sense that the ties of their old friendship were still holding them together now. But it still . . . wasn't the same. What
was
, though?

At least Arden was in a more spirited mood after unburdening herself to Sofia. “So,” she said, clapping her hands together and rubbing them. “What next?”

They all just stood in the parking lot by Arden's blue Mustang. What next in general? Or what was next for them? The slight reconnection they'd found in the restaurant sputtered as they looked at each other. Molly nervously smoothed down her sundress but then realized that Cash would've called her on the tell.

Cash again . . .

“Maybe,” Sofia said, “we can go for a drink. Molly didn't have much of a chance to talk at dinner.”

Oh, yes, she had. She merely hadn't wanted to.

But . . . a drink. Her pulse sparked to life as something rash jumped up and down inside her. Drinks . . . freedom . . . getting out and letting her hair down . . . maybe that's what she'd been missing instead of Cash—spontaneity, the lust for life she'd discovered on the road . . .

Yeah, maybe that was it.

“Drinks are on me at the Leviathan,” she said. “It's that surfside bar nearby—”

“Where everyone gets arrested,” Arden finished. “I
like
it!”

Sofia was about to protest, but Arden was already unlocking the car doors and climbing in.

As Arden started the engine, Molly held Sofia's arm so she wouldn't get inside yet. “Don't worry,” she said quietly, “I haven't heard of any gambling there.”

“It's not Arden I'm worried about.”

Molly stood back as she absorbed Sofia's meaning. Was she thinking that the Leviathan was another Rough & Tumble? Was she concerned about what Molly might do in there?

An evil little part of her laughed in pure glee as she got into the car.

I'm ba-ack
, it said.

But that part seemed lonely, too, like it needed company, someone to challenge her, to show her what she'd been repressing for years. . . .

She wouldn't think of Cash. Couldn't.

As the sun sank all the way below the waves, they parked at the Leviathan, its curlycued, faded neon sign shaped like tentacles. Sofia covered her forehand with a hand.

“Bikes,” she said, surveying the few choppers planted around the washed-out planks that held the bar together. “Why'd it have to be bikes? I am
so
not blogging about this place.”

Molly and Arden laughed, pulling Sofia out of the car, and it was almost as if they'd never had hard times on that trip.

Crash
, they went through the door.
Whoo-hoo!
Molly and Arden said at the sight of the men slouching on their bar stools. Molly looked around, but none of them were even remotely as interesting as Cash had been.

She wasn't going to be disappointed, though, and she let down her hair then ordered whisky shots, which Sofia once again declined, preferring soda.

Two shots later, Molly had her arms around Arden and Sofia at their table, hugging them to her.

“I love you guys,” she said.

“Me, too,” echoed Arden. “Let's never fight again.”

“Hear, hear.” Sofia raised her soda.

They all clinked, whisky sloshing out of Molly's third glass as she brought it to her lips. As a Def Leppard song rocked the jukebox, Molly recognized it from the Pink Ladies.

Cash, testing her by bringing her to a strip joint, seeing how much she could take. Cash, fighting that drunk for her sake . . .

It felt as if someone had reached into her chest and pulled out her heart. Shit, it hurt, and tears poked Molly in the eyes.

She wanted him back, wanted him here, but he wasn't. He'd left her in a motel room with three hundred dollars and a crying jag. Screw him.
Fuck him
.

Slamming her glass to the table, she stood on her chair, loudly singing along with the sugary song. The men at the bar cheered while Sofia tried to pull her down. But when Arden joined Molly on her own chair, that really got the bar crowd going, and they pumped their fists at them in time to the gyrating rhythm of the music.

Molly danced in anger, in freedom, in screw-you fierceness to the memory of Cash, attempting to exorcise him. But, dammit, she kept imagining his kisses, his hot whispers in her ear and against her skin.

Princess . . .

Dizziness overcame her and she dropped back to the chair, her head in her hands, nausea rising in her gut. It wasn't only the whisky, though—it was everything inside of her sinking into a yawning, hollow hole.

Sofia pushed Molly's hair back from her damp face. “Molly?”

She wanted to sob again, as she had in that motel room, but she was tired of being sad, so tired, and . . .

“I could've fallen for him,” she said. “For the very first time, I could've lost it for a man.”

Sofia laid her head against Molly's shoulder. “I know, Mol.”

“I told myself I could go back to bein' who I was when I got to San Diego . . .” She was slurring, once again a mess. “And it never 'ccurred to me that I wouldn't be able to slip into being who I always was. It's not hard to do that at work—everyone's acting there, 'tending they're businesspeople 'n all that, but—”

“Of course you can go back, Molly. Just give it some time.”

“No.” Molly felt her nape, finding the area where Cash had taken that lock of hair. “If I'm not the Molly who walked into that bar anymore, who the hell am I, Sof? What did I turn into?”

Sofia rubbed her back. “You'll figure it out. In the meantime, I'll still love you, no matter what.”

Her sweet words soothed, but they couldn't coat every aching place in Molly. There were spots Cash had gotten to that no one would ever touch.

“So are you okay?” Sofia asked again.

Molly sat up, wanting to be stronger, the song coming to a flourishing end. “I'm absolutely okay, dammit.”

Give me some time and I really will be
, she thought, wondering if she was actually running from the truth as much as Cash had always done.

***

Another week passed. Another. Then one more.

Some nights the heartbreak was so keen that Molly literally had to press a hand to her chest in bed, staring at the ceiling, trying not to see Cash's face. Other nights she submersed herself in work so deeply that she didn't have time to hurt. The future was now, especially since the firm was talking about putting her on a team that would service an account based in Singapore.

Adventure
, she thought. Surely this would satisfy the appetite she'd discovered with Cash by getting her jollies in new, safer ways.

But the same thoughts keep needling her: was she emulating Cash's pattern by taking off to parts unknown, fleeing from the real problem—
him
?

She pushed the idea aside, sitting with her legs stretched out on her white leather couch in shorts and a tank, surrounded by everything she'd worked so hard for: the thick shag carpet that was cleaned every six months, the view of a color-splashed garden outside her sliding glass balcony door, the marble countertops and fireplace mantel topped with brass-framed pictures of her parents back when they were alive.

She tapped away on her laptop. Work, good for the soul—and good for forgetting . . .

Her cell dinged from its spot on the glass-topped table next to her, and she checked the screen. A text from her sister, who was probably contacting Molly to thank her for covering last month's groceries before she'd made a couple big sculpture sales at an art fair, then paid Molly back some of the money she owed her.

As Molly looked closer at the text, she saw it was actually a picture of a painting—a nebulous portrait of a woman with ice-blond hair that hid most of her face, leaving only a half smile that was mysterious and warm at the same time.

Love ya, sis.

Molly's throat closed as Margaret's meaning sank in.
Thank you for allowing me to do what I love during the hard times
. But, more strikingly, this was obviously how her sister saw her: a blonde hidden behind a veil of hair with only a whisper of the woman who lived beneath it. Molly was still closed off, even to her family.

But . . . Margaret hadn't seen her in Nevada.

Swallowing past the lump in her throat, Molly wrote back.

Love you, too, Margie. This is beautiful. The

world is lucky to have you painting it.

Molly set the phone aside for a while, returning to her digitized accounts, and when her cell dinged again, she almost ignored what she thought would be a smiley face from Margaret. But something pulled her gaze over to the screen, where another picture waited.

A door.

Wait.
Her
door?

She checked where the text had come from, and she didn't recognize the number.

A knock sounded.

Fear and curiosity struck her, and she froze for a few seconds. Someone had her phone number. And someone was here.

Quietly, she laid her computer on the coffee table next to her copies of
The New Yorker
, then got to her feet. The plush carpet cushioned her steps before she walked over the tile of her foyer and looked through her peephole, into the bright entranceway to her condo.