Tryst Six Venom, page 6
“Trace!” I yell, not even having to look to see who the culprit is. Dallas isn’t the playful one, so I know it’s not him.
Fingers dig into my stomach, and I hold back my laugh, kicking and squirming.
“Stop!” I growl as my brother tickles. “I’m not in the mood.”
“You got sleep,” Trace fires back. “I didn’t get sleep.”
Dallas pushes us off, clutches his towel closed, and disappears back into the bathroom, slamming the door.
“Come on.” I fight Trace’s hold, the scruff on his cheek stabbing my ear. “Coffee first. Please.”
He’s got this thing about moody people. People like Macon and Dallas. People like me. He purposely pokes the bear and doesn’t know when to stop.
We fight, and I kick, hitting the wall instead of him, the plaster cracking and a nice, round dent appearing where there wasn’t one before.
I used to feel bad, but the walls are covered in dents and holes from years of six Jaeger kids. Macon, the oldest and head of the house, won’t know the difference.
“Let me go!” I bark and elbow him in the gut.
His hold relaxes, and I scramble out of his arms, crawling and climbing to my feet, escaping.
But I hear his voice behind me. “Your turn to wash the bedding!”
I stop and turn my head, his short, black hair sticking up all over the place, and his green eyes showing no hint that he’d had a sleepless night like he claims.
“I’m not touching your sheets,” I tell him. “Put them in the washer yourself.”
He bats his eyelashes, and I let out a quiet sigh. If I don’t do his sheets, they won’t get done. And why do I care? No idea.
“Don’t make me touch your sheets,” I plead.
But he just blinks up at me. “Coffee first,” he says. “Coffee will help you feel better about it.”
Whatever. I storm off, knowing I’ll do it and knowing that he knows I’ll do it.
I’m allowed to pout for a little while, though. If our parents were here, I might not feel obligated to give in to him, but Trace wasn’t much older than me when we were orphaned. He thinks a woman will fill that void that not having a mom has left in him.
I step into the kitchen, the chipped blue and pink stucco walls shining with the light coming from the rusted old chandelier over the kitchen table. The shutters over the sink spread open, the white grate keeping out intruders, but letting in the smell and sound of the rain.
Macon leans against the stove, grease stains on his gray T-shirt and the leather peeling on the front of his steel-toe boots. He dries his hands and tightens the thin, leather strap, identical to mine, around his wrist.
I walk for the Moka Pot. “Morning.”
“It’s almost noon.” I hear him sip his coffee. “You’d never know I have five siblings with all the shit you all make me do around here by myself.”
I hood my eyes, bracing myself as I pull the coffee beans out of the cabinet.
It’s not noon. It’s barely ten, and it’s Saturday. “Coffee first, please,” I say.
He’s in a mood, probably been up since five a.m. and had time to self-talk himself into a nice little tizzy that we were the most ungrateful lot. Macon needs sex. Lots of it.
I pick up the pot but feel it’s already full. Ugh, thank you. He brewed another pot.
I pour myself a cup and walk to the table, taking a seat opposite him. “I was at school late,” I tell him, taking my first sip. “I guess the last few months of senior year aren’t for relaxing after all.”
“No, not for relaxing,” Macon says, “any more than it’s necessary to apply to Dartmouth when you’re already going to Florida State.”
I shoot my eyes up.
He reaches over the table, to the stack of bills waiting to be paid in the napkin holder, and plucks out a white envelope, tossing it to me.
I grab it, flipping it over to see the Dartmouth return address in the corner. The envelope is ripped open, and I can feel the letter inside.
“Congratulations,” he tells me before I have a chance to read the letter.
I dart my gaze up to him again as I dig inside the envelope. “You opened my mail?”
But I don’t wait for a response. Unfolding the piece of paper, I don’t know if he’s screwing with me, or if I really got in. My heart pounds as I start reading, taking in one word after the other, holding my breath for the shoe to drop.
It doesn’t. I read the first couple of sentences over and over, reality slowly coming into view.
He’s not lying. I got in. I exhale, smiling as I feel like I’m floating all of a sudden.
I got in. I got into an Ivy League school with a great theater department.
I’m going to Dartmouth.
I squeeze the paper, kind of wishing I could hug someone right now. But I’m the only person in this house happy about this.
“But what do I know, right?” Macon continues. “I’m just a poor, dumb redneck who’ll never be more than this. I should be lucky to learn from you.”
My smile slowly falls, and I look up, meeting his brown eyes. We’re the only two kids—the first and the last—who got our mom’s eyes, but that’s all we have in common. I respect my oldest brother greatly. He takes care of things. He’s reliable, honest, and strong.
I don’t really like him much, though. He doesn’t want me to go to Dartmouth. He doesn’t talk to me other than to parent me.
“You’re the one who pushed me,” I tell him, setting the letter down. “You wanted me to get out of here. ‘Be someone’, you said. ‘Be remembered’. That’s what you said.” I can’t help the scowl spreading across my face. “Dartmouth is ten times the school Florida State is, and you’re still not happy.”
It takes me less than three seconds to get angry at my family, but Macon just cocks his head, playing with me. “And what are you studying at Dartmouth?”
I shake my head. I’m not giving up the theater. It’s my life, not his. “You want me close so you can reel me in.”
“And you want to fly out of arm’s reach where I can’t.”
He thinks theater is stupid. He thinks I’ll wind up a middle-aged failure and realize too late that I can’t go back and make the conservative decisions he thinks I should make.
I’ll be a failure if I stay.
“Eighteen won’t make you an adult, Liv.” He stares at me. “You still need raising. I was twenty-three and I still needed raising.”
I fall silent, tired of going around and around with him about this. His situation was completely different. No one—no matter what age—would be ready to lose both their parents within two months of each other, and also get saddled with raising and supporting five younger siblings.
Over the years, I became in awe of Macon, slowly realizing as I matured what it must have been like for him. He was a Marine, off seeing the world and living his life only for himself. He had freedom and opportunities.
One day, our dad had a heart attack that left him weakened until he finally passed one night. Two months later, my mom followed.
Macon had a choice. He could let us be split up and sent off to foster care, or he could be discharged and return home to pay more bills than he was capable of, feed bellies that were constantly hungry, and be chained to people who would continue to be dependent on him long after they’d turned eighteen.
His life was over, but he didn’t hesitate. He came home.
Wailing hits my ear, and I let out a breath, bringing my mug back to my lips as the crying gets louder and louder.
Here comes exhibit A of what dependency looks like.
“You gotta take this kid,” Army whines, coming into the kitchen and swinging his son over my shoulder and into my lap.
I shoot back, setting down my coffee, the scorching liquid sloshing onto my hand before I grab the kid and hang on to him.
I glare at my second oldest brother as he passes me and heads to the fridge, no shirt, and his jeans hanging looser around his waist, because his five-month-old son still doesn’t sleep through the night, and my brother forgets to eat just like he forgot to wear a condom.
“Army, come on,” I bite out, hefting Dexter up and holding him close. “I’ve got chores and practice.”
Army’s brown hair, a couple shades lighter than mine, is matted on one side of his head, and bags darken the skin under his eyes. “I just need a shower,” he assures. “Please? I’m dying. Damn kid cries all the time.”
I meet Macon’s gaze, both of us finding silent agreement in this one area. Army is twenty-eight, three years younger than Macon, and one of the most irresponsible people alive. We told Army that woman was no good, and now he’s raising a kid alone.
Correction: Not alone. We’re helping him.
Which is why Macon will never be free. Who else will help my brothers pay for their weddings, support their kids, bail them out of jail, have a couch to crash on when their wives kick them out, or keep up the ancestral home?
A drop of water hits the kitchen table, and I look up at the leaky ceiling and move my coffee cup under the leak.
Macon has buried himself here to a point where there’s more than just the six of us to worry about. Everyone in this community depends on Tryst Six.
“Besides,” Army says, ruffling my hair as he moves behind me, “you’ve got the touch with him.”
“I’ve got a vagina, you mean.”
Iron sweeps through, pouring some coffee, and I quickly stuff the envelope back into the bill pile, because I’m not in the mood to talk about it anymore, and I don’t want them to notice it.
“Put it out,” Army yells at him. “Not in the house.”
Iron nods, takes one final puff, and blows out the smoke, running the cigarette under the faucet. He tosses the wet butt into the trash.
Army walks toward the living room. “Two minutes.”
“Arm—”
“Two minutes!” he yells back at me. “Ten, tops!”
And he disappears. I grit my teeth.
Iron follows him without a word, and I bounce Dexter up and down in my arms as I find my gaze traveling to Macon again, grease caked under his fingernails as he fists his mug.
It doesn’t escape my notice that he’s right. We’re all just getting up and starting our day. He’s filthy, because he woke up hours ago. Probably already went to Mariette’s to receive the deliveries of crawfish for the restaurant, got Trace’s truck loaded for him to service lawns today, helped Mrs. Torres repair the pothole in front of her house that the city won’t address, and fixed a motorcycle he’s planning to flip.
“You should’ve gone to college, you know?” My words are quiet. Gentle. “You’re the real brains in the family.”
He doesn’t say anything for a moment, and I’m afraid to look up.
“The hardest choices were never choices to begin with,” he finally says. “That’s life.”
Still sucks, though. Why can’t he just admit that it sucks? He has to want to be somewhere else. He has to know what wanting to leave feels like. He’s not happy. Why does he pretend that he can’t relate to me and to wanting something more?
“You’re not paying forty thousand a year to learn how to playact.” He pushes off the stove and I hear him empty his mug into the sink. “When you graduate in four years, you can do whatever the hell you want. Just get a degree you can use first.”
And then a newspaper drops on the table in front of me, open to page fourteen and folded in half. “It’s time for you to step up and help this family,” he commands.
I lean over the kid in my arms, and read the headline.
Blue Rock Resort Breaking Ground
Blue Rock is Seminole land farther south. They’re building a resort?
I scan the article, only reading a few paragraphs before I know enough not to have to finish the rest. Words like “eminent domain” and “job creation” jump out, confirming what everyone feared three years ago when the protests and lobbying started. As with everything, though, those with the most money win the long game, and those without lose the war.
We have nothing to do with Blue Rock, but if they can get Blue Rock, they can get Sanoa Bay. We’re not a reservation, just a community of ancestral landowners who are lucky enough to be sitting off one of the few and most gorgeous reefs on the Florida coast.
They’ll be coming for us next, and it’ll be a piece of cake compared to Blue Rock.
I stare at the paper. “They can’t do this.”
“If the government determines that the land we’re on is worth more revenue to the state in their hands instead…” Macon tells me what I already know. “If it means creating jobs that get the important people re-elected, then yes, they can. They will.”
• • •
Light sprinkles hit my shoulders and legs, and I lick the water off my lips as I jog around the empty track. Normally, I hate running in the rain. My earbuds aren’t waterproof, and music is the only motivation I have to stay in shape—that and the fact that more exercise means I can eat more guac—but today, I don’t mind it. I need to think. I need silence.
Digging in my heels, I pick up the pace, an energy filling my legs that I’m not used to.
I have six months. Six months until I leave for Dartmouth and three months until I leave Marymount for good. I can figure this out. Macon doesn’t have a plan B to keep our land, because he also doesn’t have access to the developers on a daily basis.
I do. The developer—Garrett Ames—and the law firm—Jefferson Collins—in charge of the resort enterprise, are kicking eight, possibly nine families off their land in Blue Rock.
Collins and Ames.
I’m within arm’s reach of their daughter and son every day right at this school. And I’m sick of these people never paying for what they take.
I’m tired of their kids doing the same.
I squeeze the copper key in my fist as I charge down the rust-colored clay track, the green field at the center glistening with rain as the wheels in my head spin and spin.
It’s a key to Fox Hill.
It’s a key to a private party.
It’s a key to a lot of private parties, I’m sure, and not all of them hosted by Garrett Ames’s idiot, teenage son who doesn’t have the good sense to sin with people who don’t have a motive to hurt him.
Think, Liv. Think. How do I use this?
The sharp key cuts into my palm, but I just squeeze it tighter, seeing them in my mind. Seeing them lose and seeing us win.
Seeing Clay watch me walk away from her.
The rain picks up again, a little harder, and I feel drops pour down my legs and inside my white tank top, my black sports bra underneath seeping through my wet shirt.
There are usually a few cars in Marymount’s parking lot on Saturday. Maintenance crews come to fix things when the students aren’t here, teachers show up to get work done undisturbed, or the team sports need the extra time to practice. But the whole place is abandoned today, the heavy clouds promising more shitty weather to come.
I have no idea why I’m here. I’m not hip on showing up to this place when I have to, let alone when I don’t.
Sticking the key back into my pocket, I dig out the other key, the one to Dallas’s old Mustang that the jerk let me take today, and fall to a walk as I head off the track and into the parking lot. He should just let me have the car. It sits on the street, collecting rust most days, but he’s still under the impression he’ll eventually have enough money to restore it.
“Clay, I’m not practicing in this!” someone yells.
I dart my eyes up, seeing Clay, Krisjen, and Amy in the parking lot. I pause mid-step. Great.
I keep walking for my car, noticing Amy holding a raincoat over her head and scowling. Clay pulls lacrosse gear out of the back of her baby blue, 1972 Ford Bronco convertible, seemingly unconcerned with the rain drenching her black leggings and sports bra.
She doesn’t deserve that car.
“Let’s go to the indoor center,” Krisjen whines. “Please?”
“No, I wanna get dirty.” Clay closes the tailgate and drops her stick to the ground, raindrops bouncing off the pavement around her bare feet.
“Clay, come on,” Amy snips. “It’s cold. And it’s Saturday. I want to go shopping. I snagged my mom’s black card.”
I walk past them, not looking away when Clay sees me and holds my eyes.
The knot in my stomach is there, as it always is when I anticipate bullshit from her, but so is the skip in my heartbeat when I look at her.
I head to my car a couple spaces down, pulling my shirt over my head and wringing it out.
“I love you,” Amy says, “but I’m just going to slip and break my ass out there.”
“Get back here,” Clay demands.
“And don’t pull the captain card either,” Amy tells her, already walking away, “I’ll see you tonight.”
She walks off, and I see Krisjen follow her, giving Clay a shrug. “She’s got her mom’s black card.”
Like limitless shopping is too much of a temptation to resist, and the fact that it’s fraud is completely lost on them.
“You leave me alone out here and you owe me,” Clay yells, “and owing me favors is painful.”
“Meet you at your house at seven,” Krisjen calls out, jumping into Amy’s car.
I hear the engine start and the tires screech as Amy peels out of the flooded parking lot. I slide the key into the lock on the door, slowly turning it as Clay’s eyes set fire to my back.
“Leaving?”
Chills cascade down my arms.
“Pity,” she says. “You need the practice, too.”
Just get in the car, I tell myself. People like her hate to be ignored.
“But it’s always the shit talkers who don’t bring it anyway.” I hear a shuffle, and her alarm chirps, signaling she’s locked her car. “I scored two goals the last game. Not you.”
I open my door, almost smiling at her effort. She scored two goals, because half the opposing team was down with strep throat and they were playing their backup goalie.
And I ran my ass down the field and intercepted both those balls before shooting them over to her so she could score. In four seasons, she’s never known a win without me.
