Seductive Shadows (12 page)

I’d have to remember to take the trash bag out of our can when I got downstairs, to hide the evidence. I’d put it in our neighbor’s instead.

One of her hands quickly gripped my purse and the other reached for the strap on my shoulder. Within seconds, she was emptying my wallet.

“This is for the bottle,” she said, putting the few dollars I had in her pocket. “Now get the hell out of here. I don’t want to see your face while I’m getting ready for work.”

Emma’s body had stiffened; her eyes went wide and her lips parted. I clutched her hand, and pulled her toward the door, feeling her stumble behind me. In the year that we’d been hanging out, I’d heard the Hunts speak sternly but never yell, and they didn’t allow cursing in their house. I needed to find a way to downplay what had just happened so it wouldn’t leave Emma with a scar. I didn’t know if she would ever be back to our apartment again, but I didn’t want her to be scared of the thought.

It wasn’t the only time Emma heard cursing from Mom that night. We had been asleep when she got home from work. The slamming door woke me. She yelled, “Shit, shit…fuck,” as she hit the living room wall, slamming against it so hard that I felt it shake as she fell to the floor. She didn’t have good balance when she drank. Then came the retching. I knew she wouldn’t clean it up now, and she wouldn’t be awake until tomorrow afternoon. Emma didn’t need to see it or smell it, so I tiptoed out of bed and got the rags and bucket from under the kitchen sink.

Mom was on her side in a fetal position, the puddle filling the empty space between her chin and knees. Her arm rested over it. I gently lifted her hands and moved her into a seated position. “I’m going to put you into bed.”

“Leave me here.”

“I can’t, I have to clean up your mess.”

“Leave me here,” she said a little louder.

I had shut my door, but our walls were thin and I knew how her sounds could carry.

“Please, Mom, let me take you to your room.”

“No!”

“Mom, please.”

I had tried my hardest to make up an excuse for the way she had acted earlier. Emma seemed to have understood—or at least she acted as if she did to keep me from feeling worse than I already did. But if she saw Mom like this, she wouldn’t ever come back. And if her parents found out that my mother was a drunk, they wouldn’t allow us to be friends anymore.

“I have the worst life,” she sobbed. “No one loves me…not any of those damn men I screw. They leave me, Charlie. They all leave me in the morning. You’re going to leave me, too.” She rolled to her knees, pulling her hands out of the puke.

The door opened behind me, but I didn’t turn around. Mom was almost on her feet. If I could just get her to her room without her saying anything else, I could tell Emma that Mom was sick with the flu.

“Don’t leave me,” she yelled.

“Mom, not now.”

She wobbled as she tried to stand. “You’re so ungrateful.”

I placed her arm around my shoulder, but she yanked it away. Then she put both palms on my chest and pushed.

“I wish I never had you,” she screamed.

The smell from the floor got stronger the closer I got to it. I caught my balance, stepped over the pile, and returned to Mom’s side. I slid an arm around her waist to guide her toward her bedroom.

“Don’t touch me.” She pushed my arm away again. “Don’t ever touch me.” Then she faced me. I knew what was going to happen before it actually did. It had happened before. Many times. Her arm drew back and her hand opened, and the next thing I felt was her fingers and her nails whipping over my cheek. “You’ve ruined my fucking life.”

“Charlie,” Emma shouted.

I fought back the tears that stung my eyes, the pain in my cheek, the knot in my throat, the anger in my blood. I fought them for Emma.

“Fuck you…both.” She stumbled past the entryway and down the hallway to her bedroom.

When her door shut, I fell to my knees and reached into the bucket for a rag. I still couldn’t leave the mess on the floor for Mom to clean up. I didn’t want Emma to have to smell it for another second. I couldn’t open my mouth to speak because I didn’t know what would come out.

Emma reached into the bucket and took out one of the rags.

I placed my hand on hers, not letting her move any farther, and shook my head.

“Let me help you,” she begged. I stared into her eyes; there wasn’t any fear or sorrow. There was strength. She carried enough for the both of us.

I released her fingers and began to scrub the carpet. I didn’t look up. I couldn’t. The tears were flowing faster than I could control. It felt good to release them, but I wanted them to stop. I wanted to tell Emma it wasn’t always like this; Mom didn’t always get sick on the carpet and slap me across the face. She didn’t always scream. There were days when she left me something special to eat, or gave one of her friends some money to take me to a restaurant.

“She’s lucky to have you, Charlie,” Emma said. “I’m lucky to have you, too.”

I didn’t think Emma had ever been to my section of town before; there was nothing over here that she or her family would want to visit. I doubted that she had ever watched a mother slap her child across the face and curse them out. I didn’t believe she had ever cleaned puke off of the floor. But she had now experienced it all, and she wasn’t running away.

As soon as I got old enough, though,
I
would be running the hell away from here. I had spent enough time at the Hunts’ to know the things that happened in my house weren’t normal. Mom smelled like liquor, wine, and cigarettes; she never hugged me. Mrs. Hunt’s arms would wrap around me at least twice during my stay; her clothes would smell of buttercream frosting, and she would kiss the top of my head, and tuck my side locks behind my ears. Her hugs felt like love. Mrs. Hunt was a mother.

Mom wasn’t. She didn’t deserve that title, and I would no longer use it.

She would now be Lilly to me. Nothing more.

***

Dallas’s voice pushed the daydream out of my head, reminding me that we stood in front of Lilly’s bed. The medicine had made her sleep through our whispers. Maybe I should have hired a part-time nurse to care for her while I was at work. It was more than just needing someone to care for Lilly, though…maybe there was a part of me that wanted to show my life to someone. Why Dallas, though? Did I want to reinforce that it hadn’t been his fault that things had stopped between us—that it was actually my fault? That I had wounds in my soul as large as the sores on Lilly’s back?

His fingers warmed my hand in the way that Emma’s had. He was still here, too; he hadn’t run away after stepping inside our apartment, viewing our mess, smelling the scent that wafted off her body. But something would eventually make him leave. They all left, like the ones Lilly had always brought home. Like Emma.

I wouldn’t let anyone leave me again.

“Why don’t you show me how to get her medicine ready?” he asked.

I avoided the puke stains in the hallway as though they were lines, like it was a game of hopscotch, as I’d done since I was a kid. I knew alcoholism wasn’t contagious, but I some how believed that touching the filthy circles would bring me bad luck.

As I got to the kitchen, I realized he was no longer behind me. He had stopped at the doorway to my bedroom, his hands holding the frame as his body leaned against it.

”There’s nothing special in there,” I said.

He shifted slightly to the side so I could squeeze in next to him. “I’ve always tried to envision your room, where you sleep.” His eyes moved to meet mine, stopping briefly before slowly traveling downward. He lifted my hand and clasped two of my fingers, squeezing them. “And where you touch yourself at night.”

He dropped my hand, and moved to the far side of my room where I kept all of my paintings. Most of them were wrapped and tucked inside my case, but
Kerrianna
was propped on my easel. Professor Freeman’s evaluation and an A grade was tacked to the wooden frame underneath.

“Her breasts look just like yours,” he said as he stood in front of her.

I was a B-cup, and so was
Kerrianna
.

“Most breasts this size look the same.”

“Not yours.” He looked over his shoulder. “I will never forget yours. The way your nipple fit between my teeth…”

He was the first man who had ever been in my bedroom. He looked sexy under the sparse light. His scent twisted with mine. I shifted my weight, the tingling becoming almost intolerable.

“This is a dark piece,” he said. “The darkest I’ve seen from you. Is there something you want to tell me?”

I shook my head. I had never tried to hide my body from him or anyone I had ever been with, and I didn’t need to cut my skin to find a release. I found it through sex.

He moved away from the painting, stopping a pace away from me. “Are you hurting yourself?” His breath hit my lips. It tasted like strawberry gum.

“No,” I said.

“Prove it to me. I couldn’t…I couldn’t bear the thought of you doing anything to your skin.”

I knew I didn’t have to show him anything, but I wanted to. I wanted him. I lifted my shirt up to my neck. The top of my breasts popped out of my satin bra. My stomach muscles tightened when the air hit my ribs. I still hadn’t moved from the entryway of my room. My door was open…and so was Lilly’s.

A tiny moan came from his mouth. The tips of his fingers landed at the bottom of my bra and they traveled to the waist of my jeans, hooking in one of the belt loops. He knew how effective his touch had always been, how his words were usually enough to make me wet. He pulled me a few inches closer. His eyes never left mine.

He was the type who would wait for my move. I could tell him what I wanted. I could beg. But Dallas wasn’t going to step from that spot unless I bridged the gap. So that’s exactly what I did.

After I walked Dallas to the door and locked it behind him, Lilly yelled my name. It was time for her to take more medication, so I wasn’t surprised that she was awake and shouting out demands from her bed.

“I’ll bring your pills in a second,” I said from the kitchen. Before Dallas had left, I’d shown him which meds Lilly took and how to crush them. Since the powder was already on the counter, I only had to sprinkle it onto a spoonful of ice cream.

“Get in here right now!”

With each step that I took, one of my raw lips rubbed against the other, reminding me of what we had just done: the hours Dallas and his different parts had spent inside of me; the feelings he pushed out of my skin with each pump. From one delicious position to another, he knew my flesh. He made my blood flow faster. My heart raced, beating stronger in response to his rhythm. My clients pleased me, but only because it was part of the fantasy that we created. Dallas’s pleasure was real; he was solely focused on my body, how to stimulate each of my senses and the spots he could use to drive an orgasm. Even during the moments that I was giving him my mouth, he still touched me. He left with a key to our apartment and my new number. Did that mean things were going to change between us? Could it because of my work at the mansion? Did I want
more
of him rather than less? I didn’t know.

“You’re a real fucking slut, you know that?” Lilly screamed.

She had heard us. I had tried to be quiet, but he brought out the loud in me.

“How dare you have sex in my house…when I can’t. When I’m lying here. Dying.”

I took a deep breath and kept my voice low. “I pay for this house, too; I can do whatever I want in it.”

“That bed you fucked in is mine. I bought it, and those sheets, and the towel you used to wipe yourself off, and…” She started coughing. I handed her the cup of water from her nightstand, and she took several sips. “So, no, you can’t do anything you damn well want.”

“I thought you were sleeping—”

She threw the cup of water against the wall. The liquid made a round stain on the yellow paint and ran like tears toward the floor. I could tell that little movement had tired her.

“I wasn’t sleeping. Not even close. And now…and now I can’t get your moans out of my head. You might as well have fucked him in my room.”

I could have brought up all the times she had fucked strange men in her room, her bed hitting our shared wall so my mattress shook beneath me. How she had chosen those men and alcohol over me. But I didn’t. Maybe that was because it wasn’t anger that I saw in Lilly’s eyes; it was jealousy. I knew how much she enjoyed sex; I had heard the happiness in her voice several times a week. And during the times I had watched her on the couch, her face was filled with bliss. She was probably going to die without feeling that ever again.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “It wasn’t fair to do that when your room is so close to mine.”

“Don’t do it again.”

“I won’t.”

She looked around the room and took deep breaths. It reminded me of how a toddler would settle after stomping her feet on the ground.

“Was that your boyfriend?” she asked.

We had never discussed the men in my life, or the women. And when I left the apartment for something other than work, she never knew where I was going, and never bothered to ask.

I shook my head. “But since you need your pills while I’m at work, Dallas is going to bring them to you. Be nice to him.”

“Maybe he’ll take some pity on me.”

“Try it.”

“I will, you little bitch.”

“Don’t embarrass yourself—or him. I really need his help…and so do you.”

“Get the fuck out.”

My phone rang from my bedroom, and I quickly shut Lilly’s door and ran to answer it. Victoria had told me not to let any calls go to voicemail. I didn’t know what would happen if they did—or if I chose to ignore a call that didn’t come from the mansion. I didn’t want to find out.