THE DEBT BOX SET, page 22
“I can explain.”
“I don’t think anyone cares anymore about your explanations. Sammy certainly doesn’t.”
“Beth can’t go back to her mother.”
“That’s not your call.”
“Why is it Bates’s call?” I pinched the bridge of my nose where a thousand pounds of pressure was building up behind my eyes. “Why is he doing this?”
“That’s irrelevant, Tommy. It was always irrelevant. The only thing that matters is you paying back the debt.”
“Her mom hurt her, Carissa. Really hurt her. And I don’t know if Bates knows that or cares about it. But I do. I said I wouldn’t hurt anyone to pay back this debt. And I meant that.”
“What do you think Dr. Renshaw will do to her daughter?” Carissa asked, and I couldn’t tell if she was being sarcastic or if she was really wondering.
“Her mom thinks she’s sick. Like mentally unwell. She used Beth as a guinea pig for all kinds of drugs when she was a kid, trying to make her ‘normal.’ Who knows what she’ll do if she gets her daughter back? Drug her into a coma, probably,” I said, remembering Carissa coming back from that hospital she’d been put in when we were kids. We helped her hide the meds so she could get off all the drugs that made her feel like a zombie, but she was never really herself again after that. “Hospitalize her, for sure.”
If anyone should understand how scary that was, it was Carissa.
“Why?” Carissa asked, her voice sharp and hard.
“I don’t know, Carissa,” I sighed. “Why do shitty people do shitty things?”
A car pulled up next to us. An SUV with Mexico flags waving from the antenna. The back doors opened and kids spilled out. Two of them with a soccer ball raced into the field where Beth was standing with Pest. She stopped the kids, warned them about the poop and sent them to play a few feet away.
“I’ll be in touch,” Carissa said and hung up.
The mom from the SUV came out with their dog, a dainty little white thing, and she went into the field, too. I wanted to honk the horn, get Beth out of there before she was recognized, but instead Beth asked the mom for a poop bag and stood there and chatted with the lady. Pointing to me, pointing at Pest, who was sniffing the white dog’s butt.
Finally, Beth came back into the truck, bringing with her the smell of outside and a giant smile. It made me crazy how she acted like everything was okay.
“We’ve got to be careful,” I said. “Your picture is everywhere now.”
She waved me off and started the truck back up. “I’m a lady in a field with a dog,” she said. “They didn’t suspect a thing.”
“You take too many risks, Beth.”
“Oh, Tommy. They aren’t risks. I’m just living my life.”
And that, it seemed, was the difference between us. And I realized it was a fucking shame the number of times I’d tried to get her to be more like me, when what I needed was to be so much more like her.
I just didn’t know how.
“I talked to Carissa,” I said.
“And?” She glanced over at me, her eyes wide.
“Hard to say, but I think she’s going to try and convince Bates that you shouldn’t be anywhere near your mom.”
“Well, that’s good news,” she said with a wide smile. “Now we just need to convince my mom of that.”
* * *
Beth
The truck bounced over an unpaved road, lined with trees, taking us down off the ridge. The ocean had disappeared from view a while ago, and Tommy was looking more and more uncertain.
“Where are we going?” he asked.
“Trust me,” I said, which, as soon as the words were out of my mouth, I realized were the most hurtful things I could say. Because he was going to trust me and I was going to stab him in the heart.
He’d peeled off the McDonald’s napkin that had been stuck to his head, and he was bleeding again. His white shirt had scarlet dots on the shoulder.
I turned left at the old blue mailbox, and we dipped down again. I went right, deep into the weeds, to avoid the giant pothole in the middle of the driveway.
My moat, Peter had always said, and in the rainy season, he wasn’t wrong.
I pulled the truck up to the back of what looked like a nondescript one-story house. Cedar shingles had long gone gray with age and sunlight. A pot of something green and overgrown sat beside a screen door under an awning. Butterflies and bugs drifted in and out of the sunlight.
The garage in front of us had a nice apartment built above it, where I stayed when I came to visit. Peter called it my apartment, which was a little ridiculous considering that, after I’d left three years ago, I’d only been up here a handful of times.
But Peter didn’t have anyone else in his life, so the apartment above the garage remained mine.
My heart pounded in my eyes. The palms of my hands.
Two dogs came roaring around the corner, a Doberman mix I didn’t recognize and Bessie, the German shepherd who’d been old when I’d been here last year and now looked ancient.
Pest got up in my lap, paws pressed to the window, her entire body wiggling with excitement.
“They’ll eat you in one bite,” I told her and set her down beside me. “Stay here,” I told Tommy, whose face was all bruised and bloody. Lord, he looked rough.
I’d imagined this moment over the years. Bringing Tommy here to introduce him to Peter. I imagined that it would be happy, no secrets. Everyone prepared and ready. Nervous, sure, but eager.
This was the opposite of everything I’d imagined.
Nothing but secrets and blood.
“Nope,” he said, and we both popped out of the truck, slamming the doors before Pest could get out and get eaten.
The screen door opened, and a tall, raw-boned man with a shock of thick white hair growing wild on his head stepped out into the yard. He had reading glasses on the end of his nose and a red button-down shirt, buttoned up all wrong.
He was holding a shotgun.
“What’s your business here, son?” he said to Tommy, who put his hands up and looked over at me. A whole lot of “what the hell is this mess” in his face.
“Peter.” I ran around the truck, averting shotgun disasters. Bessie, recognizing me, trotted over and nudged my hand for a pat. “It’s me.”
Peter tore his narrowed gaze away from Tommy and focused on me. A smile rippled across his face. He wasn’t a hugger, so we didn’t do that. But he looked at me fondly from a few feet away, and I smiled at him.
“Beth,” he said. “Been listening to the news, thought you might show up.”
“Here I am,” I said with a shrug. Though something like relief rained over me. “I’m really sorry to bother you, but we just needed a safe place to get ourselves organized.”
“You know you’re welcome here,” he said and glanced back over at Tommy. “Who is your friend?”
I’d thought about this. About lying. But before I could say anything, Tommy answered.
“Tommy MacNeill,” he said. “Sorry to barge in on you like this.”
If I hadn’t been looking, if I hadn’t been watching with my heart in my throat, I might not have seen it. The way Peter leaned back a little, his mouth open like he’d been hit in the gut. The shotgun in his hand slipped to his side, and he took a deep breath before looking at me.
I shook my head once, fast; he doesn’t know, I said with that gesture, with the frantic widening of my eyes. He doesn’t know who you are.
Peter closed his mouth, pulled himself together, but it wasn’t easy. The effort was visible.
He coughed and wiped at his mouth, his fingers trembling.
“Looks like you’ve been in a scrape,” he finally said in a gruff voice to Tommy.
Tommy touched his eye, the dried blood there.
“It looks worse than it is.” Tommy aimed for a joke, and Peter glanced away, sniffing like it was just too hard to watch Tommy pretend not to be hurt. I knew the feeling. “It just won’t stop bleeding.”
It felt like the world was sitting on my shoulders, pushing me slowly into the earth, like if I looked down my feet would be buried in the hard-packed soil of Peter’s parking area. I’d be like one of his trees out front, the sky held in my branches.
“Those kinds of cuts are tricky,” Peter said, his throat bobbing above his shirt.
It was obvious I’d gone too far, bringing Tommy up here unannounced. Peter had every right to tell us we weren’t welcome. We brought a shit ton of baggage with us, and Peter had a real aversion to baggage.
“We can leave,” I said, drawing their attention. “If it’s not a good time or whatever.”
“It’s okay,” Peter said. “Go on up and get yourself looked after.” Peter pointed at the garage but was staring at the ground a few feet in front of Tommy’s toes. “All your stuff is up there from last time. I have Angie clean it up every month, just in case.”
My heart squeezed at the thought of this old man waiting for me. Sending his cleaning lady up to the garage to change the sheets just so the place would be ready if I decided to visit. I used to come up here a few times a year, but since my YouTube video took off, I’ve barely called Peter, much less come to visit.
“Thank you,” I said.
“Get yourself settled,” Peter said. “I’m in the house when you’re ready to talk.”
He shot me a pointed look, and I nodded. He was going to want some explanations, and I owed him that.
“Don’t forget your…” Peter peered through the windshield of the truck. “Jesus, what is that thing?”
“We’re not sure,” Tommy said and opened the truck. Pest all but flew into his arms, and Peter’s dogs went nuts at the sight of her.
One sharp whistle between Peter’s teeth, though, and the dogs settled.
“Go on then,” he said, shooing the dogs with one hand and us with the other.
The apartment above the garage was just the way I remembered it. A big queen-size bed. The cat clock on the wall. The shelves of books. The TV Peter surprised me with years ago. He didn’t much like TV. But he did it because I told him about my insomnia, how the TV helped sometimes when I was up in the middle of the night. Old movies with the sound off had become a familiar bedtime story.
The denim crazy quilt his wife had made from worn-out pairs of jeans was still on the bed. The windows were clean, and tons of sunlight fell across the pine walls and floors, making the whole room glow like a honeycomb.
“Nice place,” Tommy said.
“It was for their daughter,” I said and immediately winced. Fuck, this was a tangled web. I put the bags down. There wasn’t much. My makeup and changes of underwear. His duffel bag. “I stay here every time I come up.”
“Peter has a wife?” Tommy asked.
“Had one. She died a bunch of years ago.” I stepped from the bedroom into the bathroom and opened the cabinet under the sink and predictably found the first-aid kit. “Come in here,” I said. “Let’s clean you up.”
He came to stand in the bathroom doorway, and the already small bathroom became tiny.
I could smell him, soap and his laundry detergent and the metallic bite of blood. I opened my mouth to inhale so I could taste the salt of his sweat across my tongue.
I would never not want Tommy. Never. And that was before last night. Last night had made everything a thousand times more clear. More real. I didn’t have to imagine how it would feel to have sex with him. I only had to remember.
And the memories were alive in me.
Even now, I felt him in my body, his lips and his breath, his sweat and his weight.
It had been real. Not a dream.
And I wanted him again so badly I ached with it.
He stepped inside the bathroom, and I shifted to sit on the edge of the tub. He lowered the lid of the toilet and sat there. Our knees touched and we both shifted away, but it was useless. The room was too small. There was nothing to do but touch.
And I felt the hard bone of his knee against the inside of my thigh and I had to bite my lip against the groan. The groan that sat in my throat waiting for me to be unguarded so it could come out.
Everything was going wrong for us. I was, in fact, in the middle of betraying him, and he was on the run for his life after trying to save my life, and it didn’t matter.
The world could be on fire and I would want him.
The white tiles and shower curtain and the bright sunlight made it feel like we were inside of an egg. A bubble.
Something fragile and small that contained, in its brilliant center, just us. Nothing else. Outside this bathroom there was nothing. Nothing that mattered.
“I can do this if you—” He reached for the first-aid kit in my lap as I just sat there, silent and wanting. And miserable with all of it.
“No.” I snapped into action. “I’ve got it.” I opened the first-aid kit too hard, and bandages popped out, rolling across the ground. Trails of pink stretchy fabric, leading into the bedroom, coming to a stop against the corner of the bed frame.
We were both staring at them.
“I’ll get those in a second.” I dug through things until I found the antiseptic wipes and some butterfly bandages that would work on the cut over his eye that kept opening. There were also some ice packs that, when cracked open, got cold. I put those on the edge of the sink, leaning past him, my hair up in its bun brushing his chin. My shoulder brushing his.
“Here,” I said, my voice breathless. My whole body breathless. I opened the antiseptic wipes with my teeth, reminded of how he’d opened the condom wrappers last night. Everything, ridiculously, was making me think of sex. Maybe because I could feel the end coming. The moment when he would look at me and it wouldn’t be kindness he felt. It wouldn’t be affection.
But right now, his ears were so red, his face flushed.
He was thinking the same thing. Not about good-bye. But about sex.
That settled me down inside my body. This I knew.
It was everything outside of the sex that had me rattled. It was the feelings and our past and the secrets I was keeping. It was hard just to breathe without any distance.
How were we going to do this and walk away from each other?
I pulled out the damp alcohol pad and pressed it to his forehead, wiping away the dried blood. Refolded the pad to get a clean edge and wiped away more. His breath brushed over my face, smelling like mint and him, and I felt like I could live on that. For a day or two.
We were so close. Closer even than we’d been while having sex last night. Or maybe I just wasn’t distracted, and I looked at his face like I was memorizing it. Fuck. I was memorizing it.
I could see the darker ring of blue around the lightest part of his eye. The whiskers of his beard were a different color blonde than the hair on his head. I put the butterfly bandage over his cut.
He hummed in his throat at the pressure, and I wanted to put my hand to his throat and tell him to do it again, so I could feel it against my body. “Do they hurt?” I asked, pressing lightly on the spot just under his eye that was swollen and smudged.
“A little,” he said. “Not bad.”
Because it was that moment, and because he’d taken care of me for two solid days, and because I felt so much for him I could barely contain it in my body, I leaned up and kissed that spot. Just under his eye.
“How about here?” I asked. My finger, the nail half covered in chipped green nail polish, touched the edge of his mouth, where the skin had been split.
“Beth,” he sighed.
I kissed the corner of his mouth, but as I shifted away, he grabbed my arms.
His hold wasn’t gentle, his fingers bit into my bare skin and I could feel the rough calluses on his fingertips.
“I want…” he breathed, his gaze making tracks over my face like he was memorizing me, too.
“Yes,” I said. And it was all he needed. He pulled me toward him as I threw the first-aid box into the tub behind me, and then I was in his lap, my legs straddling his, my chest against his.
His mouth on mine. I tried to be careful with the cut on his lip, but he didn’t seem interested in careful. He seemed interested in eating me whole. In drinking me in. He was hard between my legs, and I rocked against him, remembering how good he felt inside me.
I loved this moment, this anticipatory moment, this wild, empty thrill inside my body. I loved knowing how perfectly he would fill me. Just the right side of too much.
He stood up, his hands around my butt, my weight in his arms like it was nothing. And I loved that. I loved how my edges met his. And his met mine.
“Take down your hair,” he said against my mouth.
“What?” I breathed, distracted by the rub of my breasts against his chest as he took us into the bedroom.
“Your hair. Take it down.”
“Why?” I asked, kissing him. His lips and his chin and his cheek and the side of his neck. “It’s a mess.”
“Take it down.” He dropped me onto the bed, and I bounced against the mattress. His face as he watched me was hard, his eyes…everything…different.
Tommy the stranger was looking down at me. Unpredictable and strong and wild.
My body went up in flames, my clothes suffocating.
I took down my hair. The black and colored coils fell down around my face. I brushed them back, out of my way just as he pulled down my pants, taking my shoes at the same time. And then it was just me, my underwear and the inside-out howling wolf shirt.
“Your shirt.” He barely had the words out before it and the sports bra he bought me were tossed into the abyss on the other side of the bed.
“What else, Tommy?” I whispered and put my hands over my breasts. The nipples hard against my palms. I liked the way his eyes flared as I cupped my breasts.
“What else would you like to watch?” I asked, tilting my head, lifting my legs. “What else have you imagined over the years that I would do to you? That you would do to me?” I slipped my fingers down my stomach, my skin waking up in goose bumps at the touch of my own hands.
His eyes caught everything, the goose bumps and my fingers. My damp panties. His fingers trembled as they reached out for me, and I liked that. Loved it even. Loved how this stoic, big man shook. For me. And he always had.
