12.
Tam gave Mike two days to cool off,
and by that time, the gothic horror that was his mother’s fleshless,
blue-veined hands clacking knitting needles together like she was eighty-years-old
had become too oppressive to tolerate. Her hair was coming back in uneven black
tufts; she scratched at it occasionally through the paisley silk scarf that was
wound tight around her head. She was between treatments, she was home, and the
sound of her humming and the way she kept offering to make him food was a
razorblade across his patience. Her presence made him itch, and that left him
so guilty he couldn’t stand to look at himself in the mirror. So after
Melinda’s fifth insistence that she was and would be fine, he left the
apartment and it felt like his car took him to Buckhead and Mike’s townhouse
without any input from him.
Mike wasn’t home from work yet, but
the drive wasn’t empty; there was a red Volvo sitting in front of the one-car
garage, its driver leaning back against the trunk with arms folded and long
legs crossed at the ankles. She was in a long wool coat that came just to the
hem of her skirt, her dark hair streaming away from her head in the wind. Delta
was, he had to admit, tailor-made for the pages of a Victoria’s Secret
catalogue, but it wasn’t admiration that rolled his stomach over when he parked
along the curb and climbed out. Mike was right: he didn’t know shit about women…at
least not this kind. All their coy pretend smiles and cutting glances, the
deliberate posturing and pouting – he’d never had an ounce of patience or
respect for that bullshit.
He shoved his hands in the pockets
of his leather jacket as he approached the sidewalk, eyes on the door,
intending to ignore her, but Delta peeled away from her car.
“Wait,” she said, and when he didn’t,
her heels clipped up the walk behind him. “Tam.”
He wasn’t going to wait for her, but
he had to get his keys out and let himself in the townhouse, so the waiting
happened, and she caught up with him.
“Tam.” When she reached out and laid
a manicured hand on the sleeve of his jacket, he was stunned he didn’t turn to
stone. He spared her a glance and her sculpted dark brows were pulled together,
the smooth, elegant lines of her face tweaked with stress.
“What?” he asked, doing his best
Jordan dead-face impersonation.
“Is Mike coming home tonight?” she
sounded almost, if he believed it, upset. Sad or stressed or something.
“Supposed to be.” He fitted the key
in the deadbolt and turned it, moved on to the knob.
“How soon? I need to talk to him and
he won’t take any of my calls.”
“Yeah, well, usually, when you
embarrass the shit out of somebody, they stop taking your calls.” The door
opened and he wanted nothing more than to step inside and slam it in her face.
Instead, he pegged her with a frown and asked, “why do you ‘need’ to talk to
him?”
“I just do,” her tone was pleading. “Can
I come in and wait for him?”
He wasn’t going to tell her ‘no’ –
it was cold and she was Mike’s business, not his, and he wasn’t that big of an
asshole – but he was going to make her work for it. “I dunno. Can you keep from
being a bitch?”
Her eyes narrowed: almost amber in
the late sunlight. “Can you?” she fired back, and Tam decided arguing with her
wouldn’t be any fun.
“Whatever,” he muttered, and waved
her in after him.
**
Delta guessed that a casual observer
would say she and her best friend Regina were nothing alike in looks or
personalities, but they at least complemented
one another. Tam wasn’t just Mike’s opposite; he was a dreadful little shit. As
she unbuttoned her coat and unwound her scarf in the living room, she watched
the wannabe skateboarder dig his keys and wallet out of his pockets, drop them
on the coffee table, and throw himself down on the sofa and grab for the
remote. He couldn’t even bring himself to feign politeness.
“Can I have some water?” she asked
as she draped her coat over the back of a chair.
He pointed to the kitchen without
taking his eyes off the TV.
Dreadful
little shit, she thought again and walked
around the half-wall into the kitchen. She found a pack of bottled water in the
fridge and took one, eyes doing a sweep of the room as she took her time
unscrewing the cap.
There were a half a dozen Far Side cartoons taped to the black
plastic sides of the stainless fridge, and a calendar that appeared to be
marked with Mike’s workout routine: cardio,
weights, cardio, plyo…etc. A neat stack of takeout menus on the counter and
the barren fridge shelves told her he didn’t cook often if at all, and probably
not well at that.
Struck by an idea, she found his
pantry, a box of Duncan Hines brownie mix, and then launched a full-scale
expedition for the rest of her ingredients. There was a casserole dish in a
lower cabinet that would serve, and he had plenty of eggs. Olive oil from the
pantry would have to replace the Crisco the box called for, but it would work.
Smiling to herself, Delta lined everything up on the counter and pushed up the
sleeves of her white poplin shirt.
She was stirring the wet ingredients
into the dry with spoon and mixing bowl when Tam called, “what the hell are you
doing in there?” from the other room.
“Making brownies,” she called back,
and the TV was muted.
“What?” he asked.
“Brownies,” she said in a sugary
sweet voice. “And the secret ingredient is bitchiness.”
Sound resumed on the TV and she kept
working. When they were in the oven and she’d washed and put away the dishes
she’d used, she went to sit on the loveseat across from Tam, not missing the
guarded, curious look he fired her.
“Actual brownies?” he asked after a
long moment, and something akin to hopefulness came alive in his face.
Inexplicably, her snarky retort died
on the end of her tongue. Without his frown, other lines became visible around
his eyes and mouth; a stress that was amplified in the wild, almost childlike
fire moving around in his blue eyes. She didn’t know if it was fright or fury
or maybe both, but it was something deep-seated and long-held, something he
probably didn’t even know he projected. It left her a little bit frightened,
and very curious.
“Yes,” she said carefully. “They’ll
be done in about twenty minutes.”
His eyes – too bright and boiling
over with unhappy energy – went to the TV and then came back to her. He
shrugged and reached up to pull at the thick spikes of hair across his forehead.
“Guess I’ll grab a shower, then.” When he got to his feet, the frown had
returned, but Delta had seen what was beneath it and wasn’t fooled when he shot
her a look that suggested she not misbehave in his absence.
She frowned back and listened to his
sneakered feet go down the foyer, up the stairs, across the hall. When the
water cut on, pipes groaned somewhere in the walls.
When she figured it safe, she went
around the coffee table and took his seat, gaze falling on the wallet he’d left
behind. She told herself she wanted to know his full name in case she ever had
to give it to the police – because he had that look about him – but she was
gripped with good old fashioned nosiness too, as she picked up the wallet and
flipped it open.
There were a half a dozen ten dollar
bills and a few ones in the cash sleeve. Two credit cards. A CVS customer card.
A ticket stub from an AC/DC concert in ’08. He looked shell-shocked in his
license photo, but she couldn’t read his info because the plastic sleeve was
scratched and cloudy. She worked a nail beneath and managed to slide the ID
out. Tameron Wales, she read before
something that had been tucked behind the license went fluttering down to the
floor.
She leaned forward and took a corner
of it between two fingers. It was a photo, the kind you’d get at a carnival
photo booth, of Tam sporting even longer hair and a girl on his lap. She was
young, a dirty blonde, with a sweet little pixie face and huge eyes. Both her
arms were around Tam’s neck and she smiled up at the booth’s camera as he
pressed a kiss to her temple.
Delta flipped it over and read the
bold, all-caps label handwritten on the back. Joey 2003. Back to the wallet, she found two more from the same
photo booth session inside the license sleeve. Tam was smiling in both
pictures, the kind of smile that reached off the paper and told anyone looking
at this snapshot of time that he’d been deliriously happy in that booth with that
girl, whoever she was.
“What the hell?”
She jerked, head snapping back on
her neck in sudden panic. Tam was standing on the other side of the coffee
table, Mike’s sweats and t-shirt hanging off of him and making him look even
thinner than he was. His hair was wet and pushed back off his face, and all
that anxious, trapped-animal fire she’d thought she’d seen in his eyes before
was roaring now. He was livid.
“What the hell are you doing?” he
repeated, and she dropped his wallet, license and the pictures on the coffee
table like they’d burned her.
“I…I’m sorry. I just…”
He grabbed for them wildly,
snatching the photos and wallet to his chest like she hadn’t already seen them.
Like they were something she shouldn’t
have seen. With one hand braced on the table, he shot a glare at her that sent
a frightened thrill up her spine.
“You don’t say shit about this to
Mike,” he hissed. “Do you understand? You
didn’t see these. They don’t exist.”
Delta lifted her palms in a
defenseless pose. “I won’t. I -,”
“Don’t say anything.”
“I won’t,” she repeated, too
dumbfounded to even defend herself.
Hands shaking, he fumbled the
pictures back in the sleeve, slid his ID over them, and stormed out of the room
with one last shudder-inducing glance in her direction. When he was gone, Delta
slumped back against the sofa and released a deep breath she hadn’t known she
was holding.
I
should go, she thought. This was a stupid idea.
But there was a click as the front door unlocked and stupid or not, she couldn’t
change her mind. Mike was home.
Great chapter!
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