I scuff my boot around in the gravel. I’m still embarrassed every time I think about how I’d joke around with no thought of keeping my guard up.
“He was trying to tell me something I didn’t want to hear. He grabbed my arm to make me listen. That’s all it was. It wasn’t some violent thing. It was an annoying thing.” I’m telling all of this to Tom.
“It was a grabbing-someone-at-work thing. A bruise thing. Absolutely not okay.” Tom’s eyes are Valeska orange. In my black and white world, it’s the only color. For one deep throbbing instant, I want to be in his arms, those big hands cradling my head. No one could put a bruise on me.
“You don’t want to take him on, man,” Vince advises Tom. “That guy is huge.” He’s noticed Tom’s expression and looks away with a grin, half obscured by smoke. “Well, you might do all right. You’ve been hitting the gym.”
“Nope.”
“This here is a hard-work body,” I tell Vince. I’m starting to get annoyed at him and his light, snarky, sexy banter. A conversation with Vince is like trying to thread a live worm onto a hook.
Then I realize something, and it’s enough to stop my heart. Vince is the same as me. How does Tom even deal with me? Oh shit. I’ve got a type all right: It’s me. His tongue stud winks in the dusk light. My variation winks back from the dark cup of my bra. We’re so similar we could be twins.
“I’m serious, I’ve got to leave.” I unlock my car. “You’re blocking me in.”
“She sure is good at leaving, huh?” Tom says to Vince in an unexpected moment of kinship.
“She’s a pro. So what else is up, man? I heard you’re marrying that hot brunette. Congrats.”
Vince heard about it during one of my drunk sad Sully’s booze fests. I didn’t think he was properly listening. Who knows what I said.
I’m starting to get a hot, embarrassed face. My key ring is being an asshole, every key twisted and caught on the next. I’m shaking them in fury and I cannot bear to hear even one piece of wedding news.
Tom’s voice cuts through everything. “No, we broke up.”
I turn on the point of my boot and frown at them both. He never lies. Why would he feel the need to?
“Oh. Sorry.” This seems like bad news to Vince. He looks between me and Tom, sizing things up, and then decides something. He detaches his butt from his car, treads on his cigarette butt, and saunters over in boots that are very similar to mine.
He puts a hand around my waist. In a nauseating nicotine exhalation he whispers, “You’re a bit irresistible. Come over later. I’m gonna fuck you so good.” His bottom lip brushes my earlobe.
I hope Tom doesn’t have good hearing.
Vince has told me far worse, and with much more detail, but I recoil and push him away. “Pass.”
A pizza delivery car pulls up against the curb. “I’ll get it,” Tom says shortly, digging in his pocket for his wallet, Patty deposited into the violets.
“Aw, come on. Let me convince you.” Vince likes when I’m a challenge. He’s just another one of those bar guys, being treated like dirt and loving it. If I went all soft and mushy with Vince, I guarantee I’d never see him again.
“See you later, Darce,” Tom says, walking inside with his pizza. Patty follows him, her nose turned up like a snob. I brace for the door slam, but he closes it quietly.
“Don’t come driving around here,” I say to Vince with a threat in my voice. “It pisses him off.”
Vince nods and puts a piece of gum in his mouth. “I remember him from high school, and what he was like around you. Got a little pushy with me once.” Vince seems to have surprised himself. He looks at me with a new expression. “Hey, we’ve known each other a long time.”
“No, you’ve got it wrong. Jamie was the pushy type.”
“Nope, definitely Tom. Watch out he doesn’t fall back in love with you,” Vince says in a voice that sounds like he’s joking. Words that sound serious. “You’d wreck a guy like that when you leave. See ya.”
Before I say anything, he’s getting into the car and revving the engine unnecessarily. He reverses without checking his mirror, swings back in a showy loop, and screams off. I stand there for a long moment, trying to settle myself.
How did I not notice that I have been casually screwing my male doppelg?nger? Does the whole thing count as a weird kind of masturbation?
Something about the soft sound of the front door closing bothers me. I bet he thought I’d cave in, forget Truly, and get in Vince’s car. I’ve gotten into countless black cars. He stays home. It’s what we do. If leaving were a sport, I’d be a Hall of Famer.
Back in love.
Back in love with you. Was I blind? Even dumbass Vince knew it?
My key slides into the front door like Loretta’s hand is steadying mine. I walk through the house with no thought in my head except that I need to find Tom and tell him that I’m going to do better. Be better. I’m cutting the shit.
This house feels like a tuning fork. There’s no sound, but there’s vibration in here now, a deep bass line that I feel in my stomach. Tom is standing in the kitchen with his back to me, a hand on each side of the old, deep sink. My personal life is clearly sickening.
“Sorry about that,” I say, and he jumps in surprise, hitting his head on the cupboard above him with a crack. He howls in pain.
“Shit. Sorry, sorry.” I run to him and pull his head down. I rub my hand on the top of his head. “Oh, poor Tom. I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it, I was careless.” The words run together and I’m not talking about his head now. It’s a relief to be able to say it.
“Normally I can hear you walking a mile away.” Tom rolls his shoulders, agony in his voice, and when he straightens back up to his full height my hand slips to his shoulder. “Don’t sneak up like that.”