He finished and settled his hands on my waist, waiting.
I laughed quietly, giving in. “I think I quit my job tonight,” I told him. “I’ve been working the ticket booth at Bridge Bay Theater. They’d asked me not to dance on the premises anymore, and I…” I paused, searching for a way to explain so I didn’t sound pathetic, “did whatever I could to stay involved there, maybe change their minds. But she won’t budge.”
I drew in a deep breath and exhaled, reiterating my boss’s words. “‘It’s unsafe, and I could hurt myself,’ I told him, getting angry all over again and starting to tear up. “My boss said something like “God has a path, and I need to go where life leads me.”
“What the fuck?”
“Right?” I said, my voice thick with tears. “I just wanted to, like…burn the whole place down.”
He snorted, shaking with laughter, and after a moment, I started laughing, too. He kissed me, reminding me that no matter how the night started, it was ending very well. I wanted to stay with him, but he had friends with him, and I wasn’t sure if he already had plans.
“So…” I said, changing the subject. “You have friends.”
It was kind of weird, confirming that he was a regular guy with an everyday life. And here I thought he was a vampire, rising only when the sun set.
“Can I meet them?” I asked.
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because they’re mine, not yours,” he warned, moving his mouth under my ear. “And you’re mine, not theirs.”
“Well that narrows down your identity,” I replied. “An only child, because you never learned to share.”
I’d figure it out eventually. Or find a way to make him tell me. After all, I was keeping him a secret from others, too.
But, it occurred to me, I wasn’t a secret to him. While he was one to me.
Why?
I didn’t feel guilty about hiding him from others, but he was hiding himself from me. There was a reason for that.
Was he old? Attached? Psychotic?
Or maybe…embarrassed by me?
But he suddenly spoke up, breaking me out of my thoughts. “Where does your boss live?” he asked.
My boss?
I narrowed my eyes. “Why?”
Damon
Five Years Ago
We left Anderson’s car where it was and climbed in mine, the guys having already moved on, as I drove her back through town and to her boss’s house.
“What are you going to do?” she asked me.
I pulled up, parking along the curb, across the street from the theater manager’s house, a craftsman-style home with a large wraparound porch and several gables. The yard was green and pristine and only a single light shone from outside the front door.
I wasn’t sure yet. But I always came up with something.
Emory Scott lived in this neighborhood. It was nice and clean but boasted none of the mansions the seaside area of town did. I actually preferred it here. Houses close together, neighbors…it would’ve been a nice place to grow up.
I put the car in Neutral and pulled up the e-brake. “What do you want me to do?”
I looked over at her, her hands clasped in her lap, looking kind of nervous, and I smiled. Her mouth twisted, and I could see the apprehension all over her face. So scared of getting into trouble.
But I was sorry. No one told her what she could and could not do.
Except maybe me.
“I don’t know,” she muttered, looking uncertain. “Let’s just leave.”
“You want to dance?” I prodded. “I’ll get you anything you want.”
“How are you going to do that?”
“I get anything I want,” I stated quite plainly.
She laughed under her breath, probably thinking I was joking, and I went weak for a moment, the light in her eyes the most beautiful thing I’d seen in a long time.
But she shook her head. “No.”
Jesus. Is this how she wanted it? Me taking care of shit that hurt her or pissed her off behind her back because she was too timid? Because that’s what would happen. I didn’t let things slide.
“No one denies you,” I said.
“But not like this,” she told me. “I won’t like how it feels if I don’t earn it honestly.”
Yeah, I got it. I’d probably feel the same way about basketball.
But…
“She deserves to cry like she made you cry, at least,” I pointed out. “At the very least, a pout.”
Telling Winter to give up dancing—encouraging anyone to not do what they wanted to do—was arrogant, presumptive, and smug. I wanted to shut her up.
“I can probably have her fired,” I said.
But Winter just laughed.
I frowned. “Can I at least flood her yard and do donuts?”
“Nothing destructive,” she ordered me. “Nothing mean. It’s got to be funny. And like…easy to clean up. You know? Something elegant.”
“Something middle school,” I corrected her snidely.
She rolled her eyes and sat back in her seat again, smiling to herself.
I relaxed into the headrest, pondering what I had in my trunk. My buddies and I had all been summoned back to town from college to host Devil’s Night tomorrow night, and as soon as we got back today, we’d gone supply shopping. I had bottles of liquor in my trunk, but Winter didn’t want to start any fires. There was plaster, glue, flashlights, and the guys had some other shit, like rope, smoke bombs, and sledge hammers. Most of this stuff we probably wouldn’t use tomorrow, but we’d been so into it after having not taken part in the Thunder Bay night of mischief for a couple years, we lost our heads and got excited.
Something non-destructive, though.
We didn’t do anything non-destructive.
And then I remembered. I also had some air horns and duct tape in my trunk.
Jesus. Well, that was it then. I knew what we had to do.
I couldn’t believe I was sinking this low, for Christ’s sake.
“Buckle up,” I told her, shaking my head at myself. “I know what we’re going to do.”
She held the back of my sweatshirt, following me as I jogged down the pathway, around the corner, and past the elevators. I’d been forced to come to Bridge Bay Theater dozens of times growing up to see performances my parents sponsored or to visit my mother when she deigned to perform as if the town should be so grateful to have a genuine Bolshoi ballerina in their midst. Really, it was just an ego boost for her, since she hadn’t performed on a grand scale since she was fifteen. My father married her, brought her to America, and that was that.
I knew this place like the back of my hand, even though I hadn’t been here in years. Luckily, the basement window still didn’t lock.
“You’ve done this before?” Winter asked me.
I held the door open, pulling her into the ladies’ bathroom and turning on the lights and my flashlight off.
“My sister and I did it at our house and once again at the pizza parlor,” I told her.
We were like fourteen, but I remember it being pretty funny.
Oh, how times had changed and what made me smile.
“Here, hop up on the counter,” I told her.
She did, and I dumped my duffel bag in the sink, digging out some air horns, wooden sticks, and duct tape.
Diving into one of the stalls, I measured the stick’s length from underneath the toilet seat to the button on the horn, seeing how it fit.
Perfect.
Good.
I came back to her at the sinks and put the bottle in her hand, fitting her fist around the can and the stick, to hold it in place.
“Hold that right there,” I instructed. “Hold it tight.”
She nodded, and I got busy making the can, wrapping tape to keep the stick in place on the button, so when someone put weight on it, like sitting on the toilet seat, for example, it would sound off, creating an ear-splitting cry loud enough to shake the foundations of this whole fucking place.
And make every single person inside choke on their coffee.
“So you have a sister,” she inquired, continuing our conversation.
“Yep. Not an only child,” I corrected her and her assumption about my lack of manners in sharing.
“How old is she?”
“A year younger than me.”