Walk (Gentry Boys) (5 page)

Evie

Briana couldn’t stop crying.  Rivers of liquefied mascara ran down her pale cheeks and Kendra cursed as I reached over with a tissue to dab the ruined makeup away.  Again.

“Stop it,” Kendra warned, brandishing the mascara tube like a wizard’s wand.  “You don’t want to be looking at your wedding album in twenty years and answering your kids’ questions about who the mangled raccoon dressed in white might be.”   

“I can’t…” Gasp. Hiccup. “Help it!” 

“Maybe she needs another glass of wine,” I suggested helpfully and Kendra threw me a look because the lovely bride had already downed half a bottle on an empty stomach.  That wasn’t our fault.  We knew Briana was a lightweight and a weepy drunk.  However, Briana’s hair-flipping, stink-faced, maid-of-dishonor sister had been alone with her for ten minutes in the tiny dressing room and somehow snuck in a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon.  By the time we snatched it out of Briana’s hands she was already glassy-eyed. 

“I’m just so happy!” Briana wailed as a fresh tsunami of tears erupted.

Kendra tossed the mascara on the table in disgust.  Earlier today we’d taken far longer than we should have in getting Briana and her wedding accessories out of her apartment and into the limo.  With five fluttering bridesmaids, a surly maid of honor, assorted Midwestern aunts and cousins plus a surgically modified mother-of-the-bride who sucked the attention out of the air like vacuum cleaner, the scene fell somewhere between a sorority party and a circus. 

Just then the door to the dressing room burst open and Darcy, Briana’s roommate, thundered into the room.

“I fixed her!” she declared smugly. 

Briana hiccupped.  “Who?”

“The soulless sister.  I told her date she has crabs.” 

I frowned.  “What date? Hannah broke up with her boyfriend three weeks ago and has been nothing but pissy about all the wedding prep.  She didn’t even bring a date.”

Darcy crossed her arms.  “Sure she did.  That short guy with the butt chin and blue tie.” 

“That’s my mom’s new boyfriend,” Briana said, yawning. 

“No!  He’s like twenty three.” 

Briana shrugged. “Mom’s a cougar.” 

“Oh.”  Darcy looked uncertain all of a sudden.  Then she shook her mane of blonde hair and became cheerful again.  “Well, Butt Chin left early so everyone’s just going to have to live with that.” 

Between the three of us we managed to clean, powder and sober up the blushing bride.  Then Briana got a load of herself in the full-length mirror and gasped. 

“It’s really happening,” she whispered in a small voice of wonder. 

Kendra and I glanced at one another and smiled. 

Then Briana’s lip started trembling and her newly dried eyes started watering.  “I’m so happy!” she howled.  

“Oh shit,” complained Darcy, grabbing the box of tissues. 

The ceremony was quick and lovely.  Briana managed to hold her tears through her vows although I saw her groom’s eyes shining dangerously a few times.  At the end he kissed her tenderly and then held her close to his chest while I struggled not to burst into tears myself.  It was beautiful, watching this new life start.  There was no emotion on earth as hopeful as love, as worthy as love.   

We moved over in a graceless procession to the huge covered patio, which had been elegantly laid out for the reception.  Despite all Kendra’s valiant efforts to set me up with a date for the evening, I’d come alone.  I wasn’t sorry, especially now that I was observing Kendra’s struggle to deal with her own date.  He was a good looking but rather vacant fellow who did something dull and technical on the production side of her show.  He was sitting on my left and poked me in the side at one point to ask if I had any Pepto Bismol in my purse.  Then he disappeared for an hour.  Kendra didn’t seem put out. 

I was having a good time.  A great time.   At least I was until I visited the bathroom and heard some of Briana’s cousins bitchily saying that the blissful couple ‘rushed into this shit and won’t last six months’. 

My face burned as I sat on the toilet with my panties around my knees.  Why the hell couldn’t people just let people be happy?  Really, did it physically hurt to keep their nasty tongues inside their stupid heads?  Just who the actual
fuck
did they think they were???

Suddenly the women were staring at me, agape, red-cheeked, overly perfumed.  That’s when I realized I’d flung open the stall door and asked them that last precious question out loud, at the top of my lungs. 

The champagne had been poured a little too freely tonight and Briana wasn’t the only lightweight.  But unlike my friend I didn’t get weepy.  Just hostile.

With a flourish I flushed the toilet, pulled my panties up and calmly walked to the sink to wash my hands. 

“Who the hell are you again?” one of the cousins asked me.  She resembled a two hundred pound jackrabbit, twitchy nose and all. 

“I am a bridesmaid,” I answered with a straight face.  “Do not screw with me.” 

Then I left.  It wasn’t my finest moment.  What was it about weddings that turned people into sociopaths anyway? I read a story just last week about a wedding brawl that started when one bridesmaid accused another of stealing her hair extension.  Or was it her husband? It didn’t matter.  I needed some air. 

I left the party to its line dancing mania and walked toward the dark golf course, removing my shoes and then giggling like a child over the tickle of grass between my toes.  It had been so long since I’d felt that, the distinctive sensation of cool grass on bare feet.  Why was it that we left behind such simple pleasures when we reached adulthood? 

“Macon!  Macon!!  Last one to the lake is a rotten egg!”

“Hey, Evie!  Wait up, would ya!” 

Those echoes belonged to another place, another time.

Sometimes I found myself making a wish that had never occurred to me as a girl.  I wished there’d been another Dupont.  Brother or sister, it didn’t matter.  Just someone else who had shared the unique world that siblings created with one another. 

Once upon a time, Macon, the serious intellectual, had asked our parents why they’d never had any other children.  Our father had laughed and insisted that we, their twins, were dreams come true.  And when your dreams came true you didn’t try searching for new ones.  That was just the kind of fanciful excuse our father would have invented.  Richard Dupont was a professor of mythology.  He spoke in terms of fables and muses. 

Coming upon the lake in the darkness was like finding a magical land.  It was narrow and likely shallow.  In the daylight it was probably nothing special, just a ditch carved out of the earth to create scenery and likely filled with recycled wastewater.  But at night, with the full moon reflecting on the still surface, it was pure enchantment. 

Or, I might have still been wearing champagne goggles. 

Kneeling down on the bank, I was glad Briana had chosen bridesmaid dresses that were loose and fell right above the knee.  Kneeling in a gown was hell.  Maybe I was still feeling all tenderly sloppy from the wedding or maybe I was channeling my childhood affection for myths and wishes because I found myself searching eagerly for shooting stars.

My hometown of Flagstaff, in the northern segment of the state, wasn’t nearly as bright or populous as the Phoenix area.  Nighttime was magnificent there, full of constellations and celestial events that faded in metropolitan skies.  When I was a kid I believed in the secrets found in shooting stars and birthday candles. 

I had neglected to blow out any candles on my birthday last week.  But if the sky gave me a sign, any sign, I’d be happy to make up for that lost wish right now.     

STONE

When I told Bash I was going for a walk he raised an eyebrow but said nothing. 

It was the middle of the reception and there wasn’t much for us to do but hang around in the shadows and wait for the music to stop.  Bash and the guys were betting small bills over a deck of cards on an unused patio behind the kitchen, far beyond the partying guests.  They weren’t hard gambling.  It was all in good fun, a way to pass the time until we had to dismantle all the party equipment.  They’d invited me to play along but there was a certain restlessness inside of me that wouldn’t let me stay put.  I couldn’t just sit.  I’d sat for years. 

Once the sun had set the air had cooled quite a bit.  I paused and tasted the night air of late summer, capturing it in my lungs.  I wanted to keep it.  I wanted to collect every breath in the wide open world and store it inside. The feeling was greedy.  A man who had never lost his freedom wouldn’t completely understand it. 

Only when the blood began pounding like crazy between my ears and my head started feeling light did I let the air out and go back to breathing regularly. I wondered if I would ever get over this, the feeling that every free moment needed to be hoarded.  I wondered if I would ever be careless and normal again.

The moon was one slice away from being full.  I could make out the rolling hills of the golf course beyond the reception hall.  Nobody would be out there now, at least nobody who had any business being out there.  I was tempted to follow that lonely direction and lose myself in the open solitude but then thought better of it.  I’d have a hard time explaining to any roaming security patrols why I chose to wander around a deserted golf course after dark.  I veered toward the lake instead. 

It wasn’t a true lake.  None of these sporadic bodies of water in the desert were.  It was an expensive hole filled with water pumped in from somewhere else.  It must have cost the resort a small fortune to keep it looking nice.  Grass lined the banks and the gentle chatter of ducks echoed in the darkness.  The party raged on several hundred yards behind me but I wasn’t alone.  A girl sat beside the water and watched me walk closer. 

I stopped breathing at the sight of her.  Some part of me doubted she was even real.  She stood out as if she was illuminated from within.  She had long hair that spilled over her shoulders and I felt the oldest urge known to man as I checked out her figure.  She was a siren, a temptress of legend who had somehow risen straight from the brackish water.  My mind was full of all kinds of wild theories until she spoke. 

“I know you,” she said.  “You’re Briana’s neighbor.”

Briana.  Loud mouth on a little redhead.  She shared the apartment next door with an even louder roommate who was always wandering the corridors shouting into her phone.  Bash called them Table Tots and I didn’t understand the reference until he explained.  He’d hooked up with that roommate, Darcy, about a year ago.  When he tried to see if it could become something more, she’d laughed and said Bash didn’t ‘bring anything to the table’.  

“So by Table Tots,” he’d informed me, “I mean girls who are on the prowl for a meal ticket instead of a man.  Beware.” 

Bash hadn’t quite graduated from high school and he barely scraped by working two jobs.  That Darcy chick wasn’t insulting his character because she didn’t care if he had one or not.  He didn’t have money and that was enough for her.  Bash had a twinkle in his eye when he told the story and I knew he wasn’t losing any sleep over it, but still.  The words had to sting a little.

The girl sitting beside the lake was patiently waiting for me to respond.  I looked her over more closely and felt the click of recognition. 

“The diner,” I blurted.  “About two weeks ago.  I was there with my cousins.  You were sitting by the window with two slices of cake.” 

She twitched like she’d been electrically stunned. 

“The diner,” she said softly.  “That was my birthday. I don’t remember seeing you there though.  No, I was talking about the dumpster.” 

“The dumpster?”

She nodded.  “You threw my garbage away.”

She was right.  I remembered now.   

Two days after my release I was out for a night walk, passing by the dumpster on the north side of the apartment complex.  I saw a small female figure struggling to haul an overstuffed garbage bag into the enormous bin.  She was startled when I came behind her and lifted the heavy lid higher.  If I’d thought about it first I might have just done the gutless thing and kept walking.  I wasn’t used to running into nice young women in the dark and I’d have been worried that I would scare her.  But instead I swung the heavy bag into the dumpster where it landed with a crash of broken glass. 

The girl, this girl, had looked up at me, laughing, and said something about tequila and a bridal shower.  I was already walking away when I heard her yell, “Hey, thanks!” but I didn’t turn around. 

I didn’t realize she was right behind me until I got to my apartment.  I had my hand on the door and jumped about eight feet in the air when she skittered past.  

“Thanks again,” she said and I could feel her hesitation, waiting for me to say more. 

I didn’t. I just nodded and didn’t look up until she’d disappeared into the apartment next door, where by the sound of it there was some kind of female bonding orgy happening.  She probably would have smiled if I’d said even one friendly word but instead I just closed the apartment door behind me and mused that my old Emblem crowd would get a nasty chuckle out of the fact that Stone Gentry was now afraid of girls. 

“I remember the dumpster,” I told her and cringed over the robotic sound of my voice. 

The girl sat up a little straighter, resting her hands on her thighs.  I couldn’t tell what color her dress was but here and there pieces of it shimmered in the moonlight as she studied me. 

“You’re not very friendly,” she observed rather matter-of-factly.   

“Sorry,” I muttered and turned away. 

“Wait!” She stood up and took a few steps in my direction. 

I had to fight the urge not to run away.  Fast.  From some barefoot five foot tall chick in a bridesmaid dress.  Seriously, what the fuck had I turned into? 

“I didn’t mean to be rude,” she said softly. 

“Neither did I,” I answered.  I crossed my arms.  It felt like a challenge.  I uncrossed them.  

“I’m Evie,” she said.

“Stone.” 

“Stone.  Is that a nickname?” 

“It’s
my
name.” 

She tilted her head.  “Well my goodness aren’t you easy to talk to.”  Then she giggled.  It was a sweet sound, like wind chimes.  I felt myself smiling. 

“I’m a little out of practice I’m afraid.” 

“Oh?  Why is that, Stone?”

Once upon a time I would have come up with some charming bullshit answer.  Now I didn’t see the point in hiding from honesty.  Better to lay it all out on the table and let this Evie girl recoil in horror before she ran back to the party as fast as her sexy legs could carry her. 

“I just got out of prison, Evie.”

She stared.  A cloud skated across the moon, deepening the darkness.  I couldn’t see her eyes and found myself holding my breath, waiting for her to mumble some excuse and then return to a pretty world where the guys didn’t know what lockdowns and lifers were. 

“What did you do?” she asked. 

Not a frightened question.  A quiet one.  A curious one. 

“I stole a car.  I wrecked it.  A girl died.”  I coughed then cleared my throat.  “I spent one thousand five hundred and thirteen days in a locked cell. I have a brother who hates me for that and more. I wish I could undo it all but I can’t. Some things just aren’t fixable.  And you should know something else, Evie.  This is the longest conversation I’ve had with a pretty girl in four god damn years.”  

I listened for her gasp.  I watched for her to shuffle uncomfortably and back away.  She didn’t do either one.  She looked down at herself and smoothed her palms over her dress. 

“I love this dress,” she said cheerfully, as if I hadn’t just unloaded a ton of bad history all over her.  “Were you at the wedding, Stone?  I didn’t see you there.  I would have noticed.” 

The cloud uncovered the moon once more.  The added light gave me an even clearer view of Evie.  She was all cuteness, soft hair and petite curves.  An age-old lust started to stir.  I pushed it back into oblivion.  She was just being polite. 

“No, I wasn’t at the wedding.  I work for Cappie’s Party Rentals.  We set up all the tables and chairs for the reception.  I’m just waiting around for the party to end so I can clean up.” 

Evie nodded.  “I was a bridesmaid.  Briana’s always had a thing for the Roaring Twenties and she wanted her wedding to have some flapper flair.  That’s why I look like I just stepped out of the pages of
The Great Gatsby
.  It’s a book about – “ 

“Enigmatic millionaire Jay Gatsby,” I cut in.  “He is obsessed with his old girlfriend, Daisy, who is now unhappily married to an asshole named Tom Buchanan.  Gatsby moves into the mansion near Daisy’s and becomes pals with her cousin in the hopes he’ll find a way to re-enter her life.  This leads to a series of disastrous events and Gatsby winds up shot in his own swimming pool.  It’s F. Scott Fitzgerald’s most famous work, an iconic portrait of the Roaring Twenties.” 

Evie clapped her hands a few times in delight.  “As the daughter of an English literature professor I am very impressed.” 

I shrugged.  “There were a lot of books in the prison library. There was a lot of time to read them.” 

“I see,” she said softly. 

I’d only been vaguely aware of the music floating out of the reception tent; a long obnoxious string of thumping noise that was easy to dance to.  Most of the songs I didn’t recognize.  They must have been released over the last few years. But now a slower song was starting and I recalled it with a jolt.  Four years ago it had been incredibly popular.  I hadn’t heard it since then. 

“I should go back in there,” Evie sighed. 

“You should,” I agreed.  “I’m sure your guy is looking for you.” 

“No guy.” 

“Girl?”

“No.”  She was amused.  “Although sometimes I wish that was the case.  Girls I can figure out.   Men on the other hand are a persistent mystery.” 

I searched for something smooth to say.  Something flirty and disarming about how any man worth his own teeth would love to take her anywhere.  I couldn’t find the words though.  They would have been trivial.  After all, I just met her. She was classy, she was nice and she was obviously intelligent. But I was a little rusty when it came to sweet talk and Evie wasn’t some silly teenager. I couldn’t think of anything worse than letting her believe I was a bullshit artist trying to climb inside her panties, even though that place sounded like a pretty fantastic destination. 

Fuck.  Stop.  Can’t have her. 

“Some mysteries are worth solving,” I finally managed to say.  “Don’t you think?”

She considered for a minute.  “Some are,” she finally agreed.  “But a girl still might require a few clues along the way.”  Evie put a finger to her soft lips and gazed wistfully toward the reception tent.  “I love that song.” 

“It’s a good song,” I agreed, relaxing slightly. It
was
a good song, one of those tunes played relentlessly on every outlet until everyone’s sick to fucking death of it.  This one had been at the top of the charts that final summer four years ago.   It was a reminder of youth and all the dreamy possibilities of the future. 

“Dance with me, Stone?” She asked the question so softly, so bashfully.   

I swallowed.  The night birds splashed and cooed somewhere in the dark water.  The music kept playing.  If I hesitated for too long this moment would be lost.   I’d already lost enough moments that might have been.  Beautiful women didn’t regularly wait in the moonlight. 

I went to her.  My arms remembered how to slip around a female waist and I pulled her close.  Evie was small, delicate.  She had to stretch to reach my shoulders, wrapping her hands around the crisp collar of my white shirt.  The soft sigh that escaped her was almost my undoing.  When she pressed her cheek to my chest everything inside of me that had been sleeping suddenly awoke.  I was aware of breasts and hips and strawberry-scented hair.   It was all mixed together in unholy agony; the sweetness of holding her and the thunderous fury of lust that demanded to grind, push, invade.  If I dared to pull her any closer she’d feel every inch of it. 

I want.  I want.  I want. 

Maybe this dance in the dark with a stranger was what we both needed.  She was near enough to feel the pounding of my heart and as we swayed to the music her breathing grew just as fast as mine.  Her fingers tightened on my shoulders and her body pressed against me with its own demands. I lifted her.  Just a few inches, just enough for my lips to reach her neck.  Not kissing, not sucking or insisting.  Just traveling, wandering across soft, tender skin and as her head rolled back she let out a moan that let me know I could have anything I wanted. 

And I fucking wanted it all. Down there on the wet grass, up against the nearest tree, or hell, just right were we stood.  I didn’t fucking care.