Natural Born Charmer

  Dean marched down the pink-carpeted hallway. As long as he concentrated on wringing Blue’s neck, he wouldn’t have to think about what a jerk he was being. He hated knowing he’d hurt her. She truly believed he’d been embarrassed to introduce her to his friends, but it wasn’t embarrassment. If the guys had taken the time to talk to her yesterday instead of treating her like a maid, they’d have fallen in love with her. But Dean didn’t want anyone—especially not his teammates—picking over something as personal as his affair with Blue when it was still so new. Hell, he hadn’t even known her for two months.

  And now she was planning to leave him. He’d realized all along that he couldn’t count on her. But after the way he’d treated her yesterday, it wasn’t so simple to shift the blame.

  He’d reached the landing when he remembered what Nita had said. The old woman loved to make trouble, but she also cared about Blue in her own twisted way. He turned around and went back upstairs.

  Blue’s bathroom had pink walls, pink tile, and a shower curtain printed with dancing champagne bottles. A towel, still damp from her shower, hung crookedly on the towel bar. He knelt in front of the sink, opened the cupboard door, and stared at the cellophane-wrapped box sitting right in front.

  He heard quick footsteps behind him. “What are you doing?” she said in a rush.

  As his brain registered what he saw, the blood rushed from his head. He picked up the box and somehow made it to his feet.

  “Leave that alone!” she cried.

  “You said you were on the pill.”

  “I am.”

  They’d been using condoms, too. Except a couple of times…He looked at her. She stared back, all big eyes and pale white skin. He held up the pregnancy test kit. “I’m guessing this doesn’t belong to Nita.”

  She tried to give him her mulish look but couldn’t carry it off. Her eyelashes swept her cheeks as she looked down. “A few weeks ago when I had food poisoning from Josie’s shrimp…I threw up my pill. I didn’t think anything about it.”

  A freight train roared straight toward him. “Are you saying throwing up one pill could get you pregnant?”

  “It’s possible, I guess. My period was due last week, and I couldn’t figure out why I wasn’t getting it. Then I remembered what had happened with the pill.”

  He twisted the box in his hands. The train screamed through the bones of his skull. “You haven’t opened it.”

  “Tomorrow. I need to get through Nita’s party first.”

  “No. No you don’t.” He pulled her the rest of the way into the bathroom and shut the door with the flat of his hand. His fingers felt numb. “Today. Right now.” He tore open the box.

  Blue knew him well, and it didn’t take her long to see this was one fight she couldn’t win. “Wait in the hall,” she said.

  “Not on your life.” He ripped open the box.

  “I just went.”

  “Go again.” His hands, usually so nimble, fumbled with the directions as he tried to unfold them.

  “Turn around,” she said.

  “Stop it, Blue. We’re getting this over with right now.”

  Wordlessly, she took the box. He stood there watching her. Waiting. Finally, she got the job done.

  The directions said to wait three minutes. He marked the time off with his Rolex. It had three dials, one of them a tachometer, but all he cared about was the slow sweep of the second hand. As it inched its way around, a dozen thoughts he couldn’t sort out—didn’t want to sort out—tumbled through his head.

  “Isn’t the time up yet?” she finally said.

  He was sweating. He blinked and nodded.

  “You look,” she whispered.

  He picked up the stick with clammy hands and studied it. Finally he raised his eyes and met hers. “You’re not pregnant.”

  She nodded, expressionless. “Good. Now go away.”

  Dean drove around for a couple of hours and ended up on a back road. He pulled the truck off to the side of the crumbling asphalt and got out. It wasn’t even ten o’clock. Today would be a scorcher. He heard the sound of moving water and followed it into the woods where he came to a creek. A rusted oil drum lay on its side in the water along with some old tires, bed springs, a smashed highway pylon, and some other junk. It didn’t seem right, people dumping their shit like this.

  He waded in and began dragging it out. Before long, his sneakers were waterlogged, and he was covered in mud and grease. He slipped on some mossy rocks and got his shorts wet, but the cold water felt good. He wished mountains of litter clogged the creek so he could spend all day here, but before long, the water ran free again.

  His world had caved in. As he climbed back in his truck, he couldn’t get a deep breath. He’d take a long walk when he reached the farm and straighten out his head. But he didn’t make it that far. Instead, he found himself turning into the narrow lane that led to the cottage.

  The sound of the guitar drifted toward him as he got out of the truck. Jack sat in a kitchen chair on the porch, his bare ankles crossed on the railing, and the guitar cradled to his chest. He wore three-day stubble, a Virgin Records T-shirt, and black athletic shorts. Dean’s muddy socks had collapsed around his ankles, and his feet squished in their sneakers as he approached the porch. The familiar wariness shaded Jack’s eyes, but he kept playing. “You look like you lost a pig-wrestling contest.”

  “Anybody else here?”

  Jack strummed a couple of minor chords. “Riley’s riding her bike, and April’s gone for a run. They should be back soon.”

  Dean hadn’t come to see them. He stopped at the bottom of the steps. “Blue and I aren’t engaged. I picked her up outside Denver two months ago.”

  “April told me. Too bad. I like her a lot. She makes me laugh.”

  Dean rubbed some caked mud from between his knuckles. “I saw Blue this morning. A couple of hours ago.” Now his stomach was giving him trouble, and he tried to suck in some more air. “She thought she might be pregnant.”

  Jack stopped playing. “Is she?”

  A bird called out from the tin roof. Dean shook his head. “No.”

  “Congratulations.”

  He stuck his hands in his clammy pockets then pulled them out again. “These pregnancy tests people buy…You have to—Maybe you already know this. You have to wait three minutes to get the results.”

  “Okay.”

  “The thing is…That three minutes while I was waiting…I had—I had all these thoughts running through my head.”

  “I guess that’s understandable.”

  The steps creaked as Dean came up onto the edge of the porch. “Things like how I’d go about setting up medical care for Blue. Whether I trusted my attorney to handle child support or if I should have my agent do it. How to keep it out of the papers. You know the drill.”

  Jack rose and leaned the guitar against the chair. “A panic reaction. I remember the symptoms.”

  “Yeah, well, when you had your panic reaction, you were—what?—twenty-four? I’m thirty-one.”

  “I was twenty-three, but the bottom line’s the same. If you weren’t planning to marry Blue, you had to come up with a plan.”

  “It’s not the same thing. April was crazy. Blue’s not. She’s one of the sanest people I know.” He meant to stop there but couldn’t. “She said I’ve turned her into another one of my dirty little secrets.”

  “People who haven’t lived in the spotlight don’t understand.”

  “That’s what I told her.” He rubbed his stomach where it was burning. “But those three minutes…Everything I was thinking. The plan I was coming up with…The lawyer, the child support—”

  “All kinds of shit runs through your head at a time like that. Forget about it.”

  “How am I supposed to do that? Like father, like son, right?”

  Dean felt as though he’d ripped himself open, but Jack sneered. “Don’t bring yourself down to my level. I’ve seen you with Riley. If Blue had been pregnant, ther
e’s no way you’d have turned your back on your kid. You’d have been right there for him while he was growing up.”

  Dean should have let it go, but his knees bent, and he found himself sitting on the step. “Why did you do it, Jack?”

  “Why the hell do you think?” Jack bristled with derision. “I could candy coat it for you, but the bottom line is that I didn’t know how to deal with April, and I didn’t want to be bothered with you. I was a rock star, baby. An American icon. Too busy giving interviews and letting everybody kiss my ass. I’d have had to grow up to be a father, and where was the fun in that?”

  Dean dropped his hands between his knees and picked at the paint flaking on the step. “But it changed, didn’t it?”

  “Never.”

  He came to his feet. “Don’t bullshit me. I remember those father-and-son get-togethers when I was fourteen, fifteen. You trying to figure out how to make up for all those lost years and me spitting in your eye.”

  Jack grabbed the guitar. “Look, I’m working on a song here. Just because you finally decided you want to dig up old garbage doesn’t mean I have to grab a shovel, too.”

  “Just tell me this. If you had to do it all over again…”

  “I can’t do it over, so let it go.”

  “But if you could…”

  “If I had to do it again, I’d have taken you away from her!” he said fiercely. “How’s that? And once I had you, I’d have figured out how to be a father. Fortunately for you, that didn’t happen because, from where I stand, you turned out just fine on your own. Any man would be proud to have you for a son. Now, are you satisfied or do we have to fucking hug?”

  The knots in Dean’s stomach finally eased. He could breathe again.

  Jack dropped the guitar to his side. “You can’t make peace with me until you make peace with your mother. She deserves it.”

  Dean stubbed the muddy toe of his sneaker against the stair tread. “It’s not that easy.”

  “It’s easier than holding on to so much pain.”

  Dean turned away and headed back to his truck.

  He left his muddy sneakers and socks on the porch. As usual, no one had remembered to lock the front door. Inside, the house was cool and quiet. A basket in the foyer held his shoes. His caps hung on the coatrack. Next to the brass tray where he tossed his keys and spare change was a photograph of him when he’d been eight or nine. A bony, bare chest; knobby knees sticking out below his shorts; a football helmet engulfing his small head. April had taken it one summer when they’d lived in Venice Beach. His childhood photographs had popped up all over the house, pictures he didn’t even remember.

  Last night, Riley had tried to drag him in to see Blue’s murals, but he’d wanted to see them for the first time with Blue, and he’d refused. Now, he turned away from the dining room without looking in and wandered into the living room. The deep-seated couches were a perfect fit for his long frame, and the television had been positioned so he could watch game film without light reflecting on the screen. The sheets of precisely cut glass protecting the wooden coffee table made drink coasters unnecessary. Drawers held whatever he might need: books, remote controls, nail clippers. Upstairs, none of the beds had footboards, and the bathroom counters were higher than normal. The showers were spacious, and extra-long towel racks held the oversize bath sheets he preferred. April had done it all.

  The echoes of her drunken sobs whispered in his ears. “Don’t be mad at me, baby. It’ll get better. I promise. Tell me you love me, baby. If you tell me you love me, I promise I won’t drink anymore.”

  The woman who’d tried to suffocate him with her twisted, erratic love could never have created this oasis that had become his home.

  Today had been too much. He needed time to come to terms with all these muddled feelings, except he’d had years, and what good had it done him? Through the French doors, he saw April entering the screen porch from outside. He and Jack had built that porch, but she’d conceived of it: the high ceiling, the arched windows, the slate floor that was cool on even the hottest day.

  She braced the heels of her hands in the small of her back to cool down from her run. Her body glistened with sweat. She wore black shorts, a bright blue racerback top, and she’d pulled her hair into a twisted ponytail far more stylish than Blue’s haphazard arrangement.

  He needed to get into the shower. He needed to be by himself. He needed to talk to Blue, who understood everything. Instead, he pushed the handle on the French doors and quietly stepped out onto the porch.

  The temperature had already hit the mid-eighties, but the tiles were cool against his bare feet. April had her back to him. He’d moved the chairs last night when he’d hosed down the porch, and she was pushing them under the table again. He walked over to the CD player that sat on a black wrought-iron baker’s rack. He didn’t bother to check which of April’s albums was in the changer. If it belonged to his mother, it would be right. He hit the button.

  April whirled around as music blared from the small speakers. Her lips parted in surprise. She took in his muddy appearance and started to say something, but he spoke first. “Do you want to dance?”

  She stared at him. Agonizing seconds ticked by. He couldn’t think of anything else to say, so he began to move to the beat. His feet, his hips, his shoulders. She stood frozen. He held out his hand, but his mother—this woman who lived to dance when ordinary mortals could only walk—his mother had forgotten how to move.

  “You can do it,” he whispered.

  She drew an unsteady breath, the sound somewhere between a sob and a laugh. Then she arched her spine, lifted her arms, and gave herself up to the music.

  They danced until sweat dripped from their bodies. From rock to hip-hop, they showed off their moves, each trying to outdo the other. Strands of hair stuck to April’s neck, and muddy streaks trickled down his bare legs onto the tiles. As they danced, he remembered this wasn’t the first time. They’d danced when he was a kid. She’d pull him away from video games or TV, sometimes even from his breakfast if she’d gotten in late. He’d forgotten there were good times, too.

  Right in the middle of a song, the music abruptly snapped off. A crow squawked in the silence. They turned to see a cranky Riley standing by the silent CD player, her hands on her hips. “It’s too loud!”

  “Hey, turn that back on,” April said.

  “What are you guys doing? It’s lunchtime, not dance time.”

  “Any time is dance time,” Dean said. “What do you think, April? Should we let baby sister dance with us?”

  April stuck her nose in the air. “I doubt she could keep up.”

  “I can keep up,” Riley said. “But I want to eat lunch. And you guys smell.”

  Dean gave April a shrug. “She can’t keep up.”

  Riley’s forehead wrinkled in outrage. “Who says?”

  Dean and April stared at her. Riley glowered back. Then she snapped the music back on, and they all danced together.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Blue swiped a highlighting blush across her cheekbones. The soft pink complemented her glossy new lipstick and darker mascara. She’d also used a little kohl liner along her lash line and some smoky eye shadow. She looked great.

  Big deal. This was about pride, not beauty. She had something to prove to Dean before she drove away from Garrison.

  As she left the bathroom, she spotted the empty pregnancy test kit she’d stuffed in the wastebasket yesterday morning after Dean had left. She wasn’t pregnant. Excellent. Very, very excellent. She couldn’t be responsible for a child, not with her vagabond’s lifestyle. She’d probably never have a baby, and that was fine. At least she’d never make a child go through what she’d experienced. Still, she felt a new emptiness inside her. One more thing she’d have to get over.

  She headed for Nita’s room. The hem of the sundress she’d bought for the party brushed her knees. It was sunshine yellow with a ruffled hem and a corset top that made the most of her bustline.
Her new purple sandals had satin ankle ribbons tied in delicate bows. The bright purple accents from the sandals and the amethyst-colored earrings Dean had given her provided a funky urban edge to the dress’s ultrafemininity.

  Nita was doing a last-minute primp in front of her mirror. With her big blond wig, diamond chandelier earrings, and billowy pastel caftan, she looked like a parade float sponsored by a senior citizens’ bordello, but somehow she managed to carry it off. “Let’s go, Sunshine,” Blue said from the doorway. “And remember to act surprised.”

  “All I have to do is look at you,” Nita said as she took Blue in from head to toe.

  “It was time, that’s all.”

  “Past time.” As Blue came nearer, Nita reached out and fluffed a wisp of Blue’s hair. “If you’d listened to me, you’d have let Gary cut it like this long ago.”

  “If I’d listened to you, I’d be a blonde.”

  Nita sniffed. “Just a thought.”

  Gary had been itching to get his hands on Blue’s hair since the night they’d met at the Barn Grill. Once he had her in his chair, he’d drastically shortened the length to just past her earlobes, snipped a set of peek-a-boo bangs that highlighted her eyes, and cut a hullabaloo of short layers this way and that around her face. The cut was way too cute for Blue’s comfort, but necessary all the same.

  “You should have fixed yourself up for that football player from the start,” Nita said. “Then he might have taken the two of you seriously.”

  “He takes me seriously.”

  “You know exactly what I’m talking about. He might have fallen in love with you, too. The same way you have with him.”

  “I’m crazy about him, but I’m not in love. There’s a big difference. I don’t fall in love.” Nita didn’t understand. This was about Blue leaving with her head high. She had to make sure Dean never looked back at her with even the faintest tinge of pity.

  Blue hustled the old woman outside. Nita checked her lipstick in the visor as Blue backed out of the garage. “You should be ashamed of yourself for letting that football player drive you out of town. You belong right here in Garrison, not running all over the place.”