She leaned back in her chair, crossed her arms under her breasts, obvious fakes, and tossed her red hair over her shoulder. She smirked, then smiled at me with pity in her eyes. "What's the matter? Jealous that he's tired of you already?"
She thought I was his wife. Or at least his mistress. Aston had probably told her I was. He thought it was funny, sending me to interact with the girls he wanted to fuck, the women he wanted to debase, to turn into whores. He had plenty of girls he obtained through trafficking. But he liked doing this. He liked finding beautiful women, women he saw as a challenge, and seducing them. He wanted to break them, destroy them.
He'd found this one at a party, probably convinced her he wanted her to model for his agency or something. The agency that didn't exist. He would use her up and throw her away when he was finished.
If she made it out alive.
I sighed. "Aston can be a difficult man to...work for," I said.
She smirked again. "Well, it's a good thing I know how to please my man," she said.
I felt sorry for her. It was easy to be blasé, sarcastic even, when you had no idea what you were getting into. It was easy to be casual, when you had no idea you were about to be in the bed of a killer.
“Grandma made tostones with plantains, and we went swimming at the beach, and Sonia and Carmen and I went to the mall yesterday.” I could hear voices in the background, the noise of the family chattering and the clanging of dishes. I felt a pang of homesickness - not for April’s mom’s place, even though I missed it, but for all that I missed now, all that had been ripped away from me when April was taken from me. It was good for MacKenzie to be there with her grandmother, good for her to experience that sense of family, of belonging. I sure as shit wasn’t good at giving that to her, no matter how hard I tried.
How the hell was I ever going to replace her mother? She had been light, sunshine, love to that little girl. And me? I was a fucking murderer.
“It sounds like you’re having so much fun, Mac,” I said.
“I am, dad,” she said. “We’re going to ride horses tomorrow, too. On the beach. Can you believe it?”
“I can’t even believe it at all,” I said.
“How are you doing?” she asked.
“I’m good, MacKenzie. I want to hear more about you.”
“What have you been doing?” Her tone had changed, from one of joy and light to that of a scolding teacher. It sounded accusatory. The shitty thing is that she had every right to be suspicious. I wasn’t doing well without her here, not by a long shot. She had been the only thing I was getting up for in the morning, and without her, I could feel myself beginning to spiral downward.
“I’m doing all the same stuff I did when you were here-going to work, working out, all that,” I said. “I want to hear more about what you’ve been doing, sweetie.”
“Dad,” MacKenzie said, her voice exasperated. “Don’t try to change the subject. Are you okay?”
Christ, she was sounding more and more grown-up every day. She reminded me of April.
“You don’t need to worry about me, Mac,” I said. “I’m the adult. I should be worrying about you.”
I heard noise in the background and then MacKenzie turned from the phone. “No, wait for me!” she shouted. “Dad, I got to go. You want to talk to grandma?”
“I -”
Then more muffled talking. “Grandma says she has her hands in dough right now. She’s baking. Can I call you later?”
She didn’t wait for me to say anything before she said, “I love you. Bye.”
Hearing her dismiss me was like a punch to the gut. It broke my fucking heart. A small part of me, the selfish part, also felt hurt that she sounded so great in Puerto Rico. She sounded better, happy, and I should be thrilled she was doing so well. And I was, really.
But she hadn't done well here, with me, her father.
That had to say something about me, something about the kind of father I was.
A really fucking shitty one.
I paused for a minute and stood there beside the weight bench, wiping sweat from my forehead as I inhaled a few times, waiting for my heart rate to come down. Two hours of heavy lifting and I still felt like I was going to crawl up the walls.
My eyes drifted toward the bike, sitting there, covered, in the garage.
Unridden.
It had been over two years since I’d been on a bike.
I still kept it around, did the maintenance on it. I would put the key in the ignition, start it, listen to the rumble of the engine. I’d feel my heart race every time I started that bike up. And every time I came out here, and opened the car door to get inside, I looked at the bike, and thought about just getting back on it. It seemed like such a simple thing. But every time, I would do the same thing I did now - turn away, open the car door, and settle back into the driver's seat in my buttoned-down shirt and slacks to head to my regular job.
I was a bitch civilian now, like it or not.