Too Far to Say Far Enough: A Novel (16 page)

Go—

I CAN’T. I just … can’t.

Troy didn’t move toward me this time. He simply flipped my scarf around his neck and fingered the fringe, never taking his gaze from me.

“At least you finally admit how you really feel about me.” He shook his head. “Now is that any way for a prophet to behave?”

The whisper pulsed in my soul, but something louder and heavier shouted it down. I pushed against the unseen force that tried to hold me back from spitting my own words in his face.

It was the seen force that stopped me. I felt Chief behind me even before he said, “Ease it away from the curb, Mr. Irwin.”

Troy slumped his shoulders with exaggerated disappointment. “Too bad your bodyguard had to show up
just
when we were finally making some progress.”

Chief’s hands came down on my shoulders. Triumph gleamed in Troy’s eyes.

“It’s still too late,” he said. “Even with the Hog here to keep you from making even more of a fool of yourself.”

“Is this conversation over?”

Chief said it to me, but Troy answered.

“I’ve said everything I wanted to say. You, Ally?”

Chief squeezed my shoulders. “If Ms. Chamberlain has anything else to say to you, she’ll do it through her attorney.”

A chilling smirk formed on Troy’s lips. “You mean our son? I’d rethink that, Ally, because Kade’s not much of a lawyer. He’s definitely failed to take me out—and we all know he wants to.” Troy pressed his finger to his nose. “But you know, come to think of it, since you’re his mother maybe he’ll listen to you. You of all people should be able to convince him that nobody fights me and wins.” The smirk faded as he bored his eyes into me. “Nobody.”

I didn’t answer. The shine of victory had once more been replaced by the cornered prick of desperation. There was nothing I could say to that, and God had stopped competing to be heard.

Chief let go of my shoulders and stepped beside me. “Should a ‘fight’ become necessary, I am Ms. Chamberlain’s attorney, not Mr. Capelli.”

Troy leered at me. “A word of advice. Never do business with someone you’re sleeping with.”

“All right, that’s enough.” Chief’s hand swallowed mine and pulled me with him to the sidewalk. Troy forced an excuse for laughter that still grated my ears raw as Chief continued to haul me around the corner and up Hypolita Street.

Just as we reached the parking lot where we’d left the Road King, I plastered my other palm over my mouth and pulled away from him.

“What are you doing?” he said.

“I think I’m going to throw up,” I said.

I stood there, breathing and swallowing so I wouldn’t lose the tapas and the marvelous bread and the Sylvia crackers onto the blacktop. What I did want to lose was Troy’s touch, his taunting, his fouling of everything I loved. And the anger that pulled through my veins like barbed wire.

But it was all still there when I turned back to Chief.

“I’d ask if you were okay,” he said, “but you’re obviously not.”

“No. I’m not.” I dragged my hands through the hair India had so carefully styled. “I thought I was past this.”

“This.”

“Losing it when he attacks me.”

“Mmm.”

I folded my arms across my middle, which was still threatening to erupt. “You could at least tell me I really didn’t lose it.”

“Why start lying to you now?”

Chief put his hand in the center of my back and ushered me toward the Harley. His sudden silence made me anxious.

When he handed me my helmet, I hung it back on the handlebar. “I’m sorry if I embarrassed you.”

“You didn’t embarrass me.”

“Then what’s this?”

He didn’t ask what this was. He just took my face in his hands. There was no prekiss look.

“I told you earlier that you can tell where a rider’s going to go by the direction her head’s pointed.”

“And you were going to explain that to me.”

“Right now yours is pointed backwards, Classic. And that’s where you’re going to go until you get this thing resolved.”

“What thing are we talking about?”

Chief nodded in the direction we’d just walked from. “That thing I just saw between you and Irwin.”

“Come on, Chief! There’s
nothing
between Troy Irwin and me.”

He took both of my wrists in his hands and pulled each of my clenched fists forward so I had to look at them.

“What do you call this?” he said.

“You don’t expect me to be angry?”

“That’s not what I’m saying.”

“So what
are
you saying?”

He let go and took my helmet off the handlebar and handed it to me.

I pushed it away. “We’re not going anywhere until you tell me what this is about. You’re the one who’s always saying, ‘tell me what’s going on in there—’”

“I don’t know, all right?”

Those may have been the most frightening words I’d ever heard. The world I’d magically stepped out of two hours before was crashing back in, because Chief didn’t know. And Chief always knew.

“Let’s go,” he said.

“Where are you taking me?”

“Home,” he said.

We rode back to Palm Row in silence. Prom night was over.

The group that greeted me when I walked into the house alone looked like they were about to yell “Surprise!” until they saw the guest of honor wasn’t there.

“How did it go, guys?” My voice sounded stiff, even to me.

Nobody answered except Flannery. “We made some killer outfits,” she said.

She looked at India, who kept her eyes on me. “We’ll show those to Miss Angel later. Have you had a bubble bath lately, Flan?”

Flannery squinted at her like she had two heads, but India’s deep-eyed return stare sent her up the steps. Kade wordlessly closed his laptop and Hank picked up her helmet from the counter. India gave me a kiss on the cheek, visibly restraining herself from saying,
Now you sit down right now, honey, and tell me what is going on
. Only Desmond remained motionless, leaning against the refrigerator with dread drawn on his face.

“We’ll touch base on your financials later,” Kade said.

They all departed as discreetly as diplomats, leaving me to face my fast-deflating son.

“This ain’t good, is it, Big Al?” he said.

“I’m not sure, Des.”

“I don’t see no ring on your finger.”

“Were you expecting a ring?”

He swallowed guiltily. India’s predictions had clearly been the main topic of conversation in my absence.

“Chief and I just had a little disagreement,” I said.

“You want me to talk to him?”

I put my wrist against my mouth and closed my eyes.

“You ain’t cryin’? Come on, Big Al—you scarin’ me here.”

“Don’t be scared,” I said, although I was. “Listen, I’m tired. We’ll talk in the morning, huh?”

“Then we still goin’ to Cappuccino’s tomorrow?”

“We’re going to Kade’s?”

“He said he need us all to help him move into his beach house.”

“Oh. Sure.”

I put up my hand for him to high-five me, but he didn’t move.

“I just gotta know one thing, Big Al, or I can’t sleep tonight.”

“What do you need to know?”

“You and Mr. Chief—you still …?”

His eyes were so big and boyish and frightened, it took every ounce of decency in me not to say,
We’ll be fine, Clarence. Just a little spat. Not to worry.

But the truth was the truth. I couldn’t expect it from my kid if he didn’t get it from me.

“We have some things to work out,” I said.

My voice broke, and the lanky arms were around me.

When he finally went to his room, looking small and sad, I went out to the side porch and leaned on the railing where Chief always propped his feet to wait for me.

It had seemed so clear that God wanted me with him.
Go
, he’d whispered.
Go.
So what was this about?

“Please,” I whispered. “I know I shut you out tonight, but what
is
this?”

You’ll have to go another mile.

“I’ll go anywhere for Chief,” I said. Out loud.

The silence that replied was as heavy as the air clinging to my skin. But the push—the push was there. This time, I didn’t push back. I didn’t know where it was shoving me, but I didn’t push back.

A day earlier I would have been ecstatic to be a part of Kade’s move into his beach house in Ponte Vedra. But the next morning I could barely haul myself out of the bed. I wanted to pull the covers over my head until Chief came to my bedside and asked me to forget the whole thing and marry him. Sylvia would be saying,
Well, wantin’ ain’t the same as gettin’.

So I donned sunglasses to hide my swollen eyes and drank three cups of coffee before I even thought about leaving the house. Flannery actually looked worse than I did. Her swelling had receded, thanks to the ice, but she was a mass of black and blue and it hurt just to look at her lip. We did Neosporin and Advil, and Desmond turned himself inside out trying to coax her out of the sullen place she’d parked herself in.

“I did this for you,” he said and presented her with a drawing of an elfin young woman with curls billowing from her head to the sides of the page, wearing a minidress with an unfinished diagonal hem and a collection of buttons following the same flow across the bodice.

When Flannery only gave it an apathetic glance I blundered in with, “You’re a fashion designer now, too, Des?”

“Nah. Flannery, she made the dress. Last night.” He snapped his fingers. “Took her that long.”

“Whatever.” Flannery looked at me. “Why are we even going to the beach? It’ll probably rain the whole time.”

I shook my head. “Storm’s over.”

“Too bad,” Desmond said. “Then we wouldn’t have school Monday and you and me could work on our wear-it-on-your-body art some more.”

She rolled her good eye at him. “Wearable art.”

“They don’t close school unless the water’s higher than the kindergartners, Des,” I said.

That had about as much of a cheering effect on him as he had on her. All three of us were in a funk when we picked up Gigi, Rochelle, Jasmine, and Mercedes on San Luis Street. Sherry and Zelda had to work at C.A.R.S., and Ophelia said she could handle Second Chances by herself. Five minutes into the drive I couldn’t deal with the sulky silence any longer.

“Hey,” I said to Mercedes, who was riding up front with me, “things are actually looking up for y’all. Flannery and India are onto something with this thing of redoing the stuff that’s not selling. Flannery and Desmond painted—”

Mercedes folded her arms and stared at me.

“What?” I said.

“You gon’ keep pretendin’ you’re in a good mood, or you gon’ tell us what’s goin’ on wichoo?”

I felt a huge stab of guilt. I
had
no problems compared to what these women had endured.

“It’s nothing,” I said.

“Uh-huh. We your family, or not?”

“Hey,” Flannery said from the back.

“What?” Mercedes said.

“She broke up with her boyfriend.”

Jasmine’s hands clutched the seat behind me. “No you did not, Miss Angel! Not you and Mr. Chief.”

I glared at Flannery in the rearview mirror, but Desmond was already whispering furiously into her ear.

“We didn’t break up,” I said.

“You had a big ol’ fight, then,” Gigi said. “I know that look. Been
there
.”

Rochelle grunted.

“I think we better lay off Miss Angel,” Mercedes said.

“You brought it up,” Jasmine said.

“And I’m bringin’ it back down.”

After that we rode without talking. Mercedes put her hand on my shoulder and kept it there.

Normally I liked the ride out to the north beaches, through a tunnel of oaks dripping with Spanish moss that led to the low bridge over the marshland. But as we rose above the Tolomato River portion of the Intracoastal Waterway and passed over Comache Island, I felt nothing but the kind of dread I’d seen on Desmond’s face the night before.

Passing the entrance to Vilano Beach to our right did nothing to help. It had the potential to be a cute waterside village, but so far no businesses had taken hold. A neon sign proudly announced the Town Center, and a Publix was going up, but there was more false optimism there than anything else.