I hated making those types of calls, but I’d learned it was best to spit out the facts and let people deal with them how they would. “Well, Bobby, you’ve hydrolocked your engine.”
“Is that bad?” he asked.
“Um, yeah. Pretty bad.” I told him I’d hold off doing anything until he authorized it, because it was going to cost a couple grand. Poor guy was nearly in tears when he called back to tell me to do it. He’d probably swerve around two-inch-deep puddles for the rest of his life.
Diagnosis required concentration. Doing the work, not so much. My mind was free to chew on everything that happened last night—and there was plenty to ponder.
Pearl had answered the door wearing a mouthwateringly short denim skirt and boots. A little white top that sorta twisted around her a couple of times and tied in the back just about finished me off. I caught sight of that bow at the small of her back when she turned to call good-bye to her mom, and all night, every time my hand grazed it, it was all I could do to beat back the image of giving it a tug and unwrapping her like a sugary, melt-in-your-mouth piece of candy.
Her friends ranged from tolerable to pretty cool. Over dinner they did a little scientist shoptalk that I couldn’t follow, but after a few drinks they slipped into stories about lab mishaps, research trips, and gossip. We hit several bars within a three-block radius. The second was a karaoke place I generally avoided at all costs because I didn’t sing and had no desire to listen to other poor fuckers who couldn’t but thought they could. It wasn’t my circus though, so I just smiled and said, “Yes ma’am.” By that point they all treated me like I was one of them, except one dickhead who wanted Pearl though she seemed oblivious to it. Kyle tested the limits of my patience all night long.
When he grabbed her hand and hauled her onstage to sing a duet, the only thing keeping me from busting his jaw wide open was the fact that I was the best friend and I’d promised to look after her, not beat the shit outta her friends. But then he couldn’t sing for shit and she sang her parts—a tad slurred—directly to me instead of to him like most people did during duets. The desire to wipe the floorboards with him eased off, and my eyes never left her face as she serenaded me with words I wanted her to mean.
Her older colleague, Kaameh, looked back and forth between us, but I held my straight face and pretended not to notice her studying my reaction. Near unbearable when I wanted to stalk up to that stage, pick Pearl up, take her straight through the back door, and press her up against the wall outside. I wanted to untie and unravel the folds of that white shirt until I freed her from it, push that little skirt just high enough to get my hands underneath, and tell her to wrap her shapely legs around me, boots and all. I wanted to kiss her until she couldn’t think. Until I couldn’t think. Which wouldn’t take more than two seconds of her pretty little mouth under mine.
By the third bar, Pearl was drunker than I’d ever seen her. I shouldn’t have liked that, but damn, I did. She giggled and leaned against me and said, “Hiiiiii, Boyce.”
She pulled me out on the floor to dance, something I wasn’t fond of doing until right then, with her. Under the light of a disco ball, we two-stepped to Lonestar and slow-danced to Green River Ordinance, and she twirled around me to some damned boy band I was happy not to know the name of while I made sure she stayed upright.
At the end of the night when I drove her home, she curled in the passenger seat with a silly smile on her face and fell asleep. I carried her to the front door and her stepdad let me in, chuckled at the pint-sized snores coming from her, and led the way to her bedroom. I didn’t let on that I knew and remembered exactly where her bedroom was.
“I take it she had a good time tonight,” he said.
“She sure did. She may regret it in the morning, but she enjoyed it fully.”
She came to when I laid her on the bed. I took her boots off and set them out of the way and moved the wastebasket closer. I wanted to help her out of that shirt and skirt—neither of which would be comfortable to sleep in—but I reckoned that was inadvisable under the circumstances of parents hovering just down the hall, waiting for me to leave.
Then she told me I was sweet, which was a cockeyed, harebrained, undeniably drunk thing to say. “That’s why I love you,” she added before nodding off, and everything tangled and froze—the heart in my chest, the breath in my lungs, the thoughts in my head.
I stumbled into the hallway and down the staircase like I was the one who’d downed margaritas and shooters like they were going out of style.
Before I reached the front door, Dr. Frank came out of the kitchen and pressed a bottle of water into my hand. “Thought you could use some rehydration for the road. Listen, I know it’s late, but if you’ve got a minute, I had a question or two about the garage.”
Still dazed, I mumbled, “Um, sure,” and followed him into the kitchen. We passed the table and sat at the granite bar on a couple of barstools like we were just two guys shooting the shit instead of me and Pearl’s stepfather at near three o’clock in the morning. I twisted the cap off the bottle of water and swallowed half of it.
That’s why I love you.
Dr. Frank knit his hands together on the bar, pointing his index fingers toward me as he spoke. “Pearl says your mama’s taken ownership of the garage and intends to sell it off. That accurate?”
I nodded once, knocked catawampus by Pearl’s drunken confession. Would she mean it sober? “Yes, sir. She’s just waiting for the official transfer to go through.”
“Have you—or has she—had a business valuation done on the garage? To know its worth as a going concern versus auctioned liquidation of the property, tools, and equipment?”
Auctioned liquidation. That jerked me right back to earth. I had no damned intention of hanging around to witness that and didn’t particularly want to discuss the likelihood. “I handed the spreadsheets over to Mr. Amos, her attorney, but I have a decent idea of it since I’ve been doing the accounting for a couple of years now.”
He rubbed his chin and then said, “The probability that your mama will find a taker for that place without you at the helm is low. She’s more likely to break everything up and unload it piecemeal, I’d guess.”
Meaning liquidation. Yeah. Got it. “I reckon so,” I said. I liked the man well enough based on how Pearl felt about him, but there was only so much of this rubbing-salt-in-the-wound shit I could take.
“So she might be interested in selling the whole thing, lock, stock, and barrel, to a singular entity.” He laid this statement down like he was placing a hand of cards faceup on a table and watched as the purpose of his questions hit me.
“To you?”
“Possibly. I’m always on the lookout for investments, especially here on the island, particularly small, locally owned businesses. It’s good for my personal property value and my practice that this place maintains its laidback, small-town image. That said, you, as the current key employee, would have to be part of the deal—that’d be an associated agreement. If you’re not game, I’m not game.”
“Are you… suggesting that you’d buy Wynn’s and I’d work for you?”
“I’m planting the idea in your head. We probably don’t have a whole lotta time, but we’ve got a few days. Mull it over. If you are interested, I’ll get my CPA in touch with your mama’s attorney and get a look at those numbers. There’s due diligence that’d have to happen before any deal, you understand, handshake or paper.”
I drove home in a stupor, as unprepared for the next shock of the night as I was for the first two.
• • • • • • • • • •
I’d just fallen asleep when I heard a pissed-off voice—a male voice—that sounded as if it came from inside the trailer. As I grabbed the wooden bat from under the bed and threw my bedroom door open, I heard my mother’s equally worked-up voice and the sound of a slap.
Without a second thought, I ran across the space between the bedrooms and busted through her locked door. A man I’d never seen had he
r by the shoulders. “Hands off!” I roared, bat up, and he released her and sprang back with his palms in the air like I was a one-man SWAT team.
“What the fuck, Ruthanne?” he yelled, eyes wide. “What the fuck?”
The lights were all on in Mom’s room, which made her handprint on his face real visible.
“Who the fuck are you?” I spat, keeping the bat up and over my shoulder, ready to knock a home run with his head if he came at me. I outweighed the guy by at least seventy pounds. Unless he was armed and fast, I’d kick his ass to hell and back before he could count to ten.
“I done told you I live with my son,” Mom said, chest rising and falling. She jerked the housecoat she wore most of the day, every day, around herself and tied the belt.
“You made it sound like he was a kid.” He pointed at me. “That ain’t no kid!”
“No shit,” she said, a hand braced on her hip. “Better not lay another finger on me.”
Keeping an eye on me, he raked a hand through thinning, greasy hair. I figured him to be younger than her by a decade or so, but that didn’t make him a prize. He had the same weedy look Thompson had when he was sent to Jester—scrawny and lean, no muscle tone. “Why is he here, Ruthanne?” he whined. “Thought you said this place belonged to you.”
“He runs the garage, Riley.”
“So? You’re gonna sell it all off anyway. He’s gotta go.” He glared in my direction and I glared back.
Her eyes flicked to me. “Me and him have a deal. He gives me the cash that garage earns every week, and I let his little spic girlfriend live here for another month.”
I clenched the bat in my hand, teeth grinding, and fought to breathe normally when my mind and body were begging me to swing that bat in every direction, consequences be damned. “Pearl is gone,” I gritted out. Thank God, thank fucking God. “And I can be gone tomorrow. Hell, I can be gone in ten minutes. In which case you’re responsible for the cars I haven’t finished fixing, settling the end-of-month debts, balancing the books, and figuring out what the fuck everything is worth, because I’m nothing but a fucking employee with no fucking liability for any of it.”
“Shit,” Riley muttered, lowering his hands but leaving them where I could see them. I didn’t lower the bat. “When do we get the fuckin’ money, Ruthanne?”
“As soon as I sell this dump, that’s when—just like I told you.” She spread her hands. “You shoulda kept your damn job and stayed in Amarillo—”
“I don’t need you tellin’ me what to do, woman!” He jabbed a finger at her and started toward her but halted when I stepped forward too, bat at the ready to knock him into next week. Wide-eyed, he twitched and pointed that finger at me. “Goddammit, junior, you best step off.”
Christ on a fucking cracker, my mother had picked another winner.
I arched a brow. “Or else what? I’m the one holdin’ the bat, asshole.”
I did not need this shit. Nothing was stopping me from backing across this trailer, throwing everything I owned in my TA and leaving town in a cloud of dust. There was something to be said for a future wiped blank and laid bare, unhooked from the past. But what if I didn’t want to be unhooked from my past? If I took off, the opportunity Dr. Frank had dangled in front of me would dissolve, and I would never know if Pearl meant those words she’d said.
“I’m going back to bed. I have work tomorrow—starting in about five hours. So if y’all are planning on killing each other, shut the fuck up about it.”
I had Bobby’s waterlogged engine pulled by noon. I hadn’t heard from Pearl, but I was pretty sure she’d spent most of the day cussing the existence of alcohol. She’d probably never remember what she’d said to me, but I would never forget it.
Pearl
Brain still sloshing inside my head and stomach heaving with any sudden movement, I lay in bed until noon, calculating my chances that Boyce would interpret my drunken admission as inebriated hogwash. And whether I wanted him to.
After wrestling out of my outfit—not quite as cute smelling like stale cigarettes, beer, and sweat—I pulled on a big T-shirt, brushed my teeth to offset the I-just-licked-a-carpet taste in my mouth, and wound my riotous hair into a knot before descending the staircase one slow step at a time, gripping the handrail until my feet touched the cool marble of the ground floor. Mama had left me a note next to a basket of still-warm blueberry muffins—she and Thomas had gone into Corpus for lunch and errands.
Tux purred, winding around my legs until I gave him a fat blueberry, which he ate. Mama always said he was so pampered he’d be toast in the wild. I wasn’t so sure, because that cat would eat anything. On the other hand, macaroni and cheese didn’t grow on low-hanging trees.
Picking at my muffin and waiting for coffee to brew, I scrolled through my colleagues’ Instagram posts from last night. Boyce was in several and Lord almighty, he looked good. I’d always thought he was hot, but lately my eyes loved everything about him—every single thing—as if I no longer saw him through the same lens.
Kaameh had posted a pic of us dancing: Boyce laughing down at me—one hand at my waist, fingers grazing the tie that kept my shirt wrapped tight, and me on my toes—smiling up at him, hair falling in waves down my back.
At one point last night, he’d leaned in close and asked, “So what happens if I pull this little string in back and spin you around?”
High on the delicious punch of his hot breath in my ear and the scrape of stubble grazing my cheek, I bit my lip to stifle an impending giggle. I was under the influence of both alcohol and Boyce Wynn—a dangerous combination. “You’ll find out what I’m not wearing under this shirt.”
His eyes burned like green fire, and I knew if we’d been alone I would’ve been spinning like a whirligig. “Mmm-hmm,” he said.
I stared at that picture, and a snapped undercurrent zinged straight to my core as if he were standing in my kitchen, his hands on me, urging me to come undone under the influence of his firm touch.
Me: Thank you for taking care of me last night. I’m alive. Mostly.
Boyce: You’re welcome. Feeling the effects today are ya?
Me: GAH. My brain hasn’t stopped sobbing and asking if we’re gonna die. So glad I asked for today off work. I’d have been facedown on the keyboard all day. I rang in 21 good and hard.
Me: Well that came out wrong. :-/
Boyce: I’m biting back so many witty comments right now out of pity for your incapacity to retaliate…
Me: Gee, thanks.
Boyce: Any regrets?
Me: No. No regrets.
Boyce: Good.
No regrets.
Not a lie, applied to last night. Not the whole truth, applied to the length and breadth of the relationship Boyce and I shared. Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote, The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone. That night on the beach years ago—when I caught sight of that girl sprawled on Boyce’s lap—all I felt was quick, hard betrayal. And on the heels of that blow, I just felt stupid. I had never questioned whether I should have stood my ground. Whether I should have demanded to be more to him than just another hookup. Whether I was more.
Pearl Torres Frank always did the smart thing, and accepting the way things were instead of railing against that all-too-predictable conclusion and exposing my naïve heart for what it was seemed the smart thing. But leaving those words unsaid—I wanted to be your only—was also the cowardly thing. My one moment of regret in my twenty-one years.
chapter
Twenty-four
Boyce
For the first time in a long time, I was trying to sort out a concern I couldn’t discuss with Pearl. After Sunday supper at Mateo and Yvette’s place, Yvette locked herself in their bathroom to take a bubble bath and read a book with a near-naked dude on the cover whose ripped chest and abs said, I got all this by spending most of my time at the gym. I don’t actually have time to run a billion-dollar corporation or screw anyone for longer than maybe fift
een minutes.
I’d noticed Pearl shoving that exact same book under her stack of sheets at the end of the sofa before the night of the storm.
“Your woman reads this stuff?” I asked, picking it up off the counter.
Yvette snatched it out of my hand and rolled her eyes. “Later, loser,” she said, and her sons fell all over each other giggling.
“Trust me, dude. Her reading that stuff is all good for me,” Vega said.
“Hmm,” I said, filing that away for later.
Vega and I kicked back on his porch with a six-pack of Coors and a pack of Camels while the boys played on the two-story fort we’d built in their backyard last summer, and I told him the details of Thomas Frank’s proposition.
“I’ve never heard anything bad about the guy,” he said. “But that garage should have been yours, Wynn. You’d be going from being the boss to being an employee.”
I took a drag, watching the boys take turns going headfirst down the slide. “Can’t do shit about that, man. Yeah, it sucks, but Amos says she’d have gotten half of everything fifteen years ago in a divorce—court-ordered—and maybe he’d have had to sell the garage back then to give it to her. I dunno, man. What’s done is done. I just don’t want to cut off my nose to spite my face, you know?”
“I hear ya.” He paused to take a sip and holler at Arturo for throwing rocks over the back fence into the neighbor’s yard. “What about the trailer—would you have to like…rent it?”
“Good point. No idea.”
One of the boys tore by us, the other one right behind him with a Super Soaker the size of my arm. “Oh shit,” Vega said about one second before his kid turned and sprayed him smack in the face, knocking the can right out of his hand. He jumped up, grabbed the hose and turned it on, then ran after the two of them, who shrieked like they were being chased by that dude from Saw.
Watching them, I remembered when we’d found out Yvette was knocked up. They’d been arguing over the fact that his chief activities after graduation were playing drums in a band that had little ambition and less talent, smoking weed, and playing Gears of War while stoned. Then one day she’d announced she was pregnant, breaking up with him, and moving to San Antonio to live with her older sister because her parents were super religious and freaking out and she couldn’t deal. We sat staring up at her from his parents’ sofa, mouths ajar and controllers forgotten in our hands.