Insta-Hate (Instant Gratification #1) Page 18

  The telephone rang and I jumped up to get the receiver. The caller ID said it was Meg. “Hey,” I said, out of breath.

  “Good morning! Surviving the after-Christmas fun fest?”

  “You know it,” I said, too chipper.

  “What’s going on? Do you have company?” What was she, psychic?

  “Yeah.”

  “Is it Arsen? Is he there? Did he stay the night? Was he good?” She was shouting and Arsen grinned, successfully stuffing double A’s into the damn toy I couldn’t get to open. I hung up on her.

  “She’s on medication. It’s not really working,” I told him as my face caught on fire.

  “Meg was always blunt.”

  “Yeah, she still is. Unfortunately.”

  He looked up at me with a crooked smile. “It’s okay. We’re both adults. And if people see me coming around, they might jump to conclusions, but we can set them straight.”

  “Yes, we will be straight setters. Together. But not together-together.” Oh damn, I need wine. I was stupid. This was stupid.

  Walking into the kitchen, I yelled to him, “Coffee?”

  “Sure,” he chuckled. Asshole.

  When I brought his cup, I poured it into my donkey mug that said Jack. He took one look and smiled. “I guess I deserve that.”

  “Mhmm.” I huffed, clutching my own mug. It was full of ice and Pepsi.

  “What are you drinking?” he asked. Tally answered him, flopping onto the couch with her iPad. “She’s drinking Pepsi. Gave up the coffee. It gave her gas.”

  My eyes bugged out of their sockets. “It did not give me gas!”

  “Beans do that; they give people gas,” she explained. “And coffee is made from beans.”

  Arsen started singing, “Beans, beans, the musical fruit…”

  Tally joined in: “The more you eat, the more you toot.”

  Mortification didn’t seem like too small a word for my feelings on the matter. I sipped my Pepsi chanting Ohmmmmmm in my mind and remembering the hot sand of the Dominican. It was my latest happy place.

  I closed my eyes and didn’t realize that Arsen had moved until I opened them and he was right in front of me. Jerking back, I sloshed Pepsi all over the floor. “Oh my gosh! You’re a freakin’ ninja!”

  “I’ve been told that before,” he laughed, moving to the kitchen to get paper towels. He bent to wipe up my mess and smirked up at me. “I want to ask you something, but I need you to be honest with me. If you’re uncomfortable in any way, just say so.”

  “Okay.” What did he want?

  He stood up and leaned in close; so close I could smell his cologne and feel his breath on my cheek. “Can I take Tally shopping for a couple of hours?”

  “Uh, what?”

  “Shopping? She wants to refurbish some furniture for her playhouse and I was going to take her to find some. There are some antique shops around here.”

  “Sure. Yeah. She likes that ‘Junk Gypsy’ show.”

  He smiled. “That’s what I’ve heard. I actually watched an episode last night to see what it was all about.” Melt my beating heart.

  “So, yeah. If she wants to go, that would be fine with me. You can get her car seat out of my car. It’s just a booster, but she has to be in it and I have work to do and I’ll just work on that.” I was rambling.

  “Work? Are you writing something new?”

  Smiling and feeling light as air, I answered, “I am.”

  “That’s really good, Lex.” He paused and then asked Tally if she wanted to go junk hunting, to which she immediately replied, “Yes!” and proceeded to jump up and down.

  “Get your shoes and coat on,” I said, watching as she ran toward the door, struggling with both tasks at once. I hugged her tightly. “I’ll miss you.”

  She smiled. “I’ll just be gone for a little while, silly.”

  “I’ll still miss you. I love you, Tally bug.”

  “I’ll love you forever, Lexie bug,” she giggled, making a silly face.

  “I’ll love you beyond forever,” I told her.

  Arsen cleared his throat, blinked, and gave a thin smile. “We’ll be back soon.”

  “Be careful,” I yelled as he grabbed the seat out of my car and put it in his. Waving as they backed away, my heart felt a little emptier.

  THIRTY-TWO

  The Trip

  Arsen

  The antique shop across town was amazing. Natalia was in awe of everything rusty, wooden, or old—which was most everything. We decided on a side table and chair, and then Tally found a few rolls of old floral wallpaper that was yellowed, but she decided needed a home. She was toying with an old Coke box when I stepped up to the counter. As the elderly woman who worked there rang up my things, a gleam of silver caught my eye. It was a small, heart-shaped locket that looked almost identical to the one I bought Trinity after Tally was born. It had a picture of our baby on the right and me on the left so she could keep us next to her heart, which was where she promised we’d always be. I didn’t know what happened to the locket.

  Did it disappear when she did?

  I fingered the silver and the woman at the register noticed. “You’re buying an awful lot. I’ll throw in the locket for free if you want it,” she said with a wink.

  “Thank you,” I replied, taking it off the display. “I’d be happy to pay for it.”

  “No, it called for you.”

  “Pardon?”

  “You looked like it took you on a trip, maybe to the past. It called for you. It belongs to you, whether you know it or not.” The woman smiled. “That’ll be one hundred eighty-eight dollars and thirty-seven cents. Cash or credit?”

  I swallowed, removing my credit card from the slot in my wallet. “Credit, please.”

  ***

  Tally and I had to get creative when it came to loading our chair into the car, but upside down in the backseat beside her worked best.

  “Maybe we can make it shorter—saw off the legs, and then maybe we can paint it and use sandpaper to distress it. That’ll make it look old and fancy.”

  She spouted ideas the entire way home and I listened intently. Most of her ideas were things I could handle, though a few were out of my realm of very basic handy work expertise. We pulled into the driveway of Lex’s new house and Tally unbuckled, helping me free the chair and get the other things out of the trunk. She hefted the end table, but it was a little too heavy. I ruffled her hair. “I can get it.”

  “Think Mom’ll let us do all of this inside? It’s cold out here.”

  I looked toward the house. “I hope so. Maybe we can butter her up somehow.” The locket burned a hole in my pocket. Tally grinned and raced toward the door. She opened it and came right back outside, biting her fingers. “What’s wrong?”

  She whispered, “I think Mom’s crying.”

  I knelt down. “How about you go make yourself busy in your room and I’ll talk to Mom?”

  She nodded. “Okay.”

  Holding the metal door open, I watched as she toed her shoes off and tip-toed down the hallway to her bedroom, easing the door closed behind her. I found Lex in her bedroom-slash-office sitting at her desk, reading something on her laptop. Knocking on the door lightly, Lex jerked in surprise.

  “I’m so sorry. I knew Tally was in here and I’m trying not to look like a mess, but I’m failing miserably at it.” She swiped at her cheeks, removing the moisture.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “It’s nothing. I’m fine.”

  She wasn’t fine. People didn’t cry when they were fine. They cried when they were sad, frustrated, or overwhelmed, occasionally when they were happy, but never when things were just mediocre fine.

  Lex stood up and glanced back at her desk. The strip of photo booth pictures was sitting beside her computer. “Sorry. Sometimes I just try to remember, and when I can’t, I get really aggravated at myself.”

  I stepped toward her. “It isn’t your fault.”

  She looked up and
let out a harsh laugh. “I know, but it’s no less frustrating.”

  “I can’t imagine.” And I couldn’t, but maybe I could help. “Would you like to know about that day?”

  “Where’s Tally?”

  Smiling, I said, “She’s in her room and doing fine.”

  Lex sat on the mattress of her bed. “I’d love to hear something real.”

  “That day was very real. I wanted to take you to your senior prom. I was at NC State and came home for the weekend just so you’d go. You were pregnant and showing and refused to buy a dress, even when I took you to the mall and offered to pay for it and rent a tuxedo. I thought you’d be disappointed to miss it and I felt bad about…you know, knocking you up while you were still in high school. So while we were at the mall that day, you held my hand and talked and laughed. We went to dinner and then ate frozen yogurt at this little place in the food court that you loved. They had your favorite flavor: chocolate coconut. After the yogurt, we were leaving the mall and you spotted the photo booth. ‘I may not get a picture at prom, but this would be even better,’ you said. I knew you missed your friends and not going, even though you said you didn’t want to go. We sat in the photo booth for fifteen minutes, because the machine was old and slow and we never knew when it was ready to snap a picture until the flash blinded us. You got a strip and I got a strip. This was mine.”

  “I wonder what happened to mine,” she said.

  “You used one picture for a locket that I gave you. I told you to put you on one side and me on the other, but you only put me inside until Natalia was born. Then you said the two pieces of you were always with you, never missing.”

  Tu me manques. ‘You are missing from me’. “After the baby was born and you were feeling better, we got the tattoos from a friend of mine who started his own shop with his brother. You never told your parents. The words, which you learned in French class, were important to you. You’d say that as long as I was across the state, I was physically missing from you, but that I was never missing from your heart.”

  “Tu me manques,” she whispered. “Do you know that after the accident, I had to look up what it said? I had no clue. I couldn’t remember that I had even taken French. But the craziest thing was that I would dream, and sometimes my dreams were in French. Sometimes my dreams were of a boy with dark blue eyes, but that’s all I remembered of his face. He was missing from me. And you’ll think I’m insane, but part of me recognized you on the steps of the frat house. Part of me knew it was you, the missing piece, Arsen.”

  My throat tightened uncomfortably. “I took Tally shopping and found this,” I said, pulling the locket out of my pocket. “It’s not exactly like the one you used to have, but it’s close. And I thought you might like to keep Tally’s picture close to your heart again.”

  With a shaking hand, she reached out and took the delicate chain from me, looking at the silver heart etched with angel wings. “Thank you, for this and for the memory.”

  “Sure. Do you mind if Tally and I work on a few things in the kitchen? I’ll clean up the mess we make.”

  “I don’t mind,” she said, gripping the silver heart like it was her only life line.

  THIRTY-THREE

  New Year, New Trouble

  Alexandria

  Arsen showed up at noon on New Year’s Eve. He didn’t text or call before coming; he just assumed we would be there. Maybe it was that, or maybe it was my period talking, but he needed to give me a head’s up. What if we had plans? Not that we did until later that evening, but still.

  Natalia was thrilled to see him carrying lunch from her favorite chicken place, even though I’d just made turkey sandwiches. “Hey!” He grinned, holding up the fast food bags. “Thought you might be hungry.”

  “Yeah,” I said, throwing the turkey back in its deli bag and then stuffing the now-wet bread back into its wrapper. “Thanks.”

  “You okay?” he asked, passing me by and reaching for dishes.

  “Super.”

  Tally danced in a circle around him, paying homage to fried chicken and all things Arsen. He gave me a strange but annoyed look, and continued his task. He and Tally ate at the kitchen table while I rinsed the plates I’d just dirtied, meant for sandwiches that didn’t get eaten.

  I grabbed the food he brought me and made my own plate before joining them, but I might as well not have been present. “Nice necklace,” he said with a twinkle in his eye.

  “Thanks.”

  “Someone very important must have given it to you.”

  “Someone who once was very important to me did give it to me, or so I’m told.”

  “About the giving?”

  I snorted. “About the level of their importance.”

  “Oh, never doubt the level of that person’s importance.”

  “Do you have plans for this evening?” I asked sweetly.

  “I do,” he said, sitting up straighter.

  “So do we. Don’t we, Tally?” Tally’s head volleyed back and forth between me and Arsen.

  “We do,” she answered cautiously. “We’re going to Aunt Meg’s.”

  Arsen took a large bite from his sandwich. “Sounds fun,” he said with a slight smile.

  Tally pushed her nuggets away. “Can I go out to my play house now?”

  “If you wear your coat. It might be fifty degrees, but it’s still chilly.”

  “Okay,” she agreed, jumping up and running to put on her coat and shoes. She was in the back yard in a flash.

  “What was that?” Arsen asked, wiping his mouth with a napkin.

  “What was what?”

  “You baiting me. You knew I’d have plans.”

  “Have you told your girlfriend about her?” I stood up and ticked my head toward the back yard.

  He hesitated, making a dramatic show of chewing his food. “Not yet. Not that it’s any of your business what Cynthia and I discuss.”

  At the sound of her name, my fingers tightened against the edge of the table. I closed my eyes and took a calming breath. “Look, I just think that she’ll be angry if she finds out you’ve been spending a lot of time here without an explanation.”

  “She doesn’t know that I’m here.”

  My heart cracked a little. It hurt like hell.

  “She doesn’t know about you yet, either.”

  A mirthless laugh bubbled up from my stomach. “That’s just awesome, Arsen. Way to man up.”

  He stood up, the chair legs beneath him scooting across the kitchen floor. “Are you kidding me right now? I think I’ve been pretty damned understanding and flexible about everything, and you’re going to get pissed because I haven’t spilled your life story with my girlfriend? She isn’t just a flavor of the week, and I won’t spring this on her out of the fucking blue!”

  “But you will! If you don’t tell her what you’re doing and why, when she finally finds out it’ll feel just like you’ve been lying to her.”

  “So you’re on her side?” he said, shaking his head, hands on his hips. “Looking out for her well-being? Pardon me if I call bullshit on that.”

  “Keeping secrets doesn’t help anything, Arsen.”

  “You think I don’t know that? You don’t know anything.”

  He grabbed his coat and stormed outside into the back yard, slamming the door closed behind him. I wanted to bean him in the head with the Male Tears mug. Asshole.

  ***

  Arsen

  New Year’s Eve at Lex’s was a cluster fuck, but she was right—as much as I hated to admit it—and I did, with a passion. I didn’t know who pissed in Lex’s Cheerios, but I did need to talk to Cynthia. She deserved to know the truth. I would tell her tonight, before we left for the party.

  I dressed in a sharp, black suit with a white shirt. She didn’t mention a tie, but I brought one just in case. When I pulled up in front of her building, she was waiting for me at the curb in a tight black sequin dress that left little to the imagination. Cynthia was a beautiful woman. She was s
mart and steady and wasn’t moody like other women I knew.

  “Hey, handsome,” she said with a bright red smile.

  “You look beautiful.”

  “Thank you,” she said, blushing. “I appreciate you coming with me tonight.”

  The party was at the home of a friend she worked with. It was an annual tradition and she said that she’d go alone if I wanted to skip it or would be uncomfortable, but I wanted to be with her. It was New Year’s Eve. Couples were supposed to ring in the New Year together; to kiss at midnight, throw confetti, and wear quirky party paraphernalia.

  We made our way through the dark streets, stained by red, yellow, and green. I swallowed, gripping the steering wheel. It was now or never. “There’s something I need to talk to you about.”

  “Oh, no. This isn’t one of those, ‘I’m dumping you for New Year’s’ conversations, is it?” Cynthia looked genuinely worried or sick. I wasn’t sure which.

  “No, it’s nothing like that. I just… I found out that I have a daughter. She’s getting ready to turn eight and until very recently, I didn’t know much about her. When she was born I knew about her, but then her mother and their family moved away and I didn’t have contact with them for years—despite my best efforts.”

  Eyes wide, she looked at me, grabbing my hand. “Wow. That— I didn’t expect that at all.”

  “I’ve been to see her a couple of times, but didn’t want to say anything until I knew her mom was stable and not going to up and disappear again.”

  “And she’s not?”

  “No, she’s not going anywhere.”

  Cynthia’s hand gripped mine tighter. “Are you still involved with her mother?”

  “What?” My pulse raced. “No. We’re amicable, but I’m only involved with you and Natalia. That’s my daughter’s name.”

  Nodding rapidly, she smiled. “It’s a lovely name. Maybe one day, when things are settled, I can meet her?” she asked.