9.
S ANDI
I took my time making my dinner, not that I was really interested in eating anything. I hadn’t been for almost two weeks now.
I laughed at myself as I thought about why I’d lost my appetite and decided not to dive back into that particular abyss again. Instead, I did the one thing that was guaranteed to make me happy, at least for a while. I checked the time, did a few quick calculations, and then picked up the phone to call my son.
The second he answered, my heart felt lighter, and not for the first time, I thanked God for the technology that would let me see his smiling face in real time. I couldn’t imagine how hard it must have been for mothers not all that long ago when their children moved away and the only way to connect with them was through letters. I was sure that the invention of the telephone made parents grateful that they could talk to their children whenever they wanted, but whoever invented live video chat should win a Nobel prize. I knew that every parent who depended on it to connect with their children would agree with me.
“You don’t look happy, Mom,” my son, Wyatt, said after the usual greetings and questions.
“Of course I’m happy! I’m looking at your face right now, and there’s not much on this earth that makes me happier.”
“Don’t bullshit me, Mom.”
“Don’t take that tone with me, Wyatt .”
“What are you gonna do?” Wyatt asked with the same little laugh that always brought joy to my heart.
“I’ll use my mom powers for evil instead of good and reach through the phone and slap that shit-eating grin off your face for starters.”
Wyatt barked out a laugh and said, “I don’t think that mom powers can travel internationally. There’s a treaty or something in place, I’m sure.”
“Don’t test me.”
“Then tell me what’s wrong.”
“I can’t.”
“Oh. It’s about a man then.”
“I refuse to have this conversation with you.”
“You’re sort of a captive audience. You might be on the other side of the planet, but that just works in my favor because I know you miss my handsome face too much to hang up on me when I start to pry.”
“I’m cataloging the infractions and will make you pay the second I see you in person again.”
“Nah,” Wyatt said with a shrug. “The first thing you’re going to do is hug me and bawl all over my shirt. You won’t even remember you’re pissed for at least three days, and by then, I’ll have reminded you that I’m freakin’ awesome and can do no wrong.” When I just glared at him, he laughed and said, “Come on, Mom. Tell me why you’re sad so I can figure out how to put a hit out on someone I’ve never met.”
“Do you grill your father like this?”
“You should call him and ask. The two of you can commiserate about where you went wrong and how ungrateful your children are.”
“And how Garrett is our favorite?” I asked with a grin.
“I know you tell him that just to make him feel good. I’m the favorite right now.”
“Only because absence makes the heart grow fonder and all that bullshit.”
“You’re just . . . Well, shit! I’ve gotta go, Mom. I love you, and I’ll call you soon, okay?”
“Love you! Stay safe, baby.”
The screen went dark, and I sighed but then tossed it in the air with a shout and fumbled it when it rang in my hand. It bounced off the counter onto the floor and then slid under the table, and by the time I answered it, I was out of breath.
The second my sister’s face came on the screen, she laughed and asked, “Where the hell are you, Sandi?”
“If you must know, I’m sitting underneath my kitchen table,” I said haughtily, as if that was perfectly normal.
“Do I even want to know why? And why are you out of breath?”
“I just hung up with Wyatt before you called. The phone scared the shit out of me, and I fumbled it. Just be glad I answered because I stubbed my toe and threw my back out trying to get to the damn thing before you hung up.”
“Your story sucks. Try again.”
“It’s the truth.”
“I want to hear that you were in the middle of some wild, crazy, freaky shit, not some boring story about how clumsy you are.”
“Do you honestly think that if I was in the middle of . . . all of that that I’d answer the damn phone?”
“Of course you would, because it’s me calling.”
I crawled out from under the table and saw Tammy grimace.
“What’s that look for?”
“Now I know what you look like when you’re all out of breath and red in the face when you’re having sex.”
“ What ?”
“When you’re on top,” she further explained, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
I looked down at the screen in horror and yelped. “Holy shit! That’s what I look like?”
“Yes,” Tammy said as I suddenly saw the ceiling before she reappeared with her hair hanging down on either side of her face and her glasses sliding down her nose. “See?”
“Oh. My. God.” I groaned as I stood up and then plunked down into one of the kitchen chairs. “I’m never going to have sex again.”
“Now try this,” Tammy said before there was a blur of motion and then her face reappeared, looking completely different from a few seconds ago. “This is what Clayton sees while I’m looking up at him while he’s all red in the face and sweating.”
I giggled and said, “I’m gonna throw up.” I leaned my head back and lifted the phone above me for a new angle before I touched my temple and turned to the side for another view. “This I can live with!”
“I know, right?” Tammy asked.
I heard her husband, Clayton, laughing in the background and said, “Tell that dumbass to shut up!”
“He said that gravity is a bitch, but we are too.”
“Why haven’t you killed him yet?”
“I’m waiting until he retires so I can get an extra check every month. We’ll need it to tip the cabana boys when we move down to that exclusive retirement community in Florida.”
“Speaking of Florida and their wonderful winter weather, what’s it like at home right now?”
“You know Michigan winters. It’s a balmy 21 degrees.”
“It was 73 here today.”
“That’s it. Screw the extra monthly check. I’m gonna kill Clayton and go on the road with you.”
“When should I expect you?” I asked with a grin.
“The next time he pisses me off.”
“So, tomorrow?” I asked.
“Most likely.” I heard Clayton in the background again and grinned when my sister flipped him off. “So, what’s new with you? Any word from the nomadic sex god?”
“Not a peep.”
“Asshole.”
I sighed before I said, “I could kick myself for giving a shit.”
“You should just look at it like a pleasant interlude that may or may not happen again in the future.”
“He got what he wanted, and now he’s gone. If I’m being honest here, I got what I wanted too. And it’s not like I expected forever or anything. Maybe just a note or a simple text that said it was fun, but he had to leave. A smoke signal. Something.”
“Maybe he’ll reappear.”
I couldn’t tell my sister, but I did hope to see Ajax again, if for no other reason than to make sure he was still alive. The man had left town with three gunshot wounds that were still healing, for God’s sake. The nurse in me wanted to make sure he was okay, even though the woman in me wanted to give him a few more.
“I’m not cut out for this shit, Tammy.”
“As unfortunate as it seems, you’re gonna have to get that way or give up sex altogether. You’re not in one place long enough to develop an actual relationship, so if you want to get laid, you’re gonna need to figure out how to handle a one-night stand.”
“I know,” I said with a sigh. “I thought I had that shit down, but I clearly don’t.”
“Have you called him?”
“No.”
“Sent a text?”
“No.”
“Then how do you know he left on purpose? Maybe he was kidnapped by a Columbian drug lord who wants to use him as a mule or . . .”
“Have you been watching true crime shows again?”
“No, but there’s this series we really like about a woman who starts out as a drug mule and becomes a drug kingpin. It’s pretty cool.”
“Yeah, so I’m almost positive that he wasn’t taken by a drug lord; however, the thought that some woman he left hanging in the past caught up to him and chopped his body into tiny little pieces before she spread them along the highway on her way back home crossed my mind.”
“Did it cross your mind, or are you planning something similar?”
“I guess we’ll see.”
◆◆◆
AJAX
I walked into the house and was surprised to find Sandi sitting at the table with a bowl of salad and a glass of wine. She looked shocked to see me and even more surprised when I lifted up the bag in my hand and said, “I guess I’m too late to surprise you with dinner, huh?”
“You brought dinner?”
“I did. It’s nothing extravagant, but I thought you might appreciate some good Texas barbeque, so I picked up some combo plates with peach cobbler for dessert.”
“You did?”
I set the bag on the table and asked, “If you’d rather eat rabbit food, you can. I’m sure this stuff will reheat just fine tomorrow.”
Sandi looked from the bag to my face and then back again, and her expression went from extreme confusion to homicidal in a split second.
“You brought dinner.” This time it wasn’t a question, but a statement, so I just nodded as I started unloading the containers onto the table. I looked over and found her watching me, but when I smiled, she just narrowed her eyes before she looked down at the bowl of lettuce and took a deep breath. “So, I know I disappeared suddenly, but . . .”
“You did? I didn’t notice.”
I gave her a skeptical glance and then slid the container with her meal in it across the table toward her before I said, “I can explain.”
“I don’t need an explanation. We had an interlude, and then you disappeared.”
“Interlude?”
“What else would you call it?” Sandi asked.
“Fantastic.Mind-blowing.Hot as fuck.”
“For you, maybe, but I’ve had better.” I felt my jaw drop in shock and couldn’t seem to close my mouth, no matter how hard I tried. “Now, get the fuck out of this house. I have officially signed a lease since the last time we spoke, which means I’m supposed to be here and you are not.”
“Listen, Ratched, I know you’re upset, but I got called out on a job that was just supposed to take one, maybe two days, but it turned into a shit show. I’m back now, though, so it’s all good, right?”
“It’s all good?”
“Yeah. Did you miss me?” Sandi held up her fork and then squinted to look at me through the tines. I watched her for a few seconds, wondering what in the hell she was doing, and then pressed, “Well?”
“Hold on! I’ve almost got it.”
“Got what? What are you doing?”
“The thought of never having fresh coffee with my favorite creamer isn’t working, so I’m trying to remind myself of what the world would look like from behind bars.”
“Huh?”
“Shh,” Sandi whispered. “I’m weighing the pros and cons.”
“Did you miss me?”
“Generally, the patient isn’t sad about it when a rash goes away, Ajax.”
“Honey, listen, I’m not gonna lie and tell you that I didn’t accept that job because I was running scared, but do I need to remind you of what you said just a few feet from here about ten seconds after I yanked your pants down?”
I realized my error when Sandi narrowed her eyes and took a deep breath in through her nose. I was surprised at just how quick she moved, and before I could even react, I was covered in bits of lettuce and had salad dressing dripping off my nose.
I winced when French dressing seeped into my right eye, but even through the burning haze, I could see Sandi moving toward the food I’d brought in for dinner. By the time I’d swiped the food off my face, she had her Kindle stacked on top of her dinner and the container of peach cobbler perched on top of it next to the bottle of wine that had been sitting on the table.
Sandi gave me one last parting shot that explained her anger more eloquently than words ever could when she stabbed her fork into the middle of my food container and left it sticking upright before she grabbed another fork out of the holder on the counter and stomped down the hall.
The bedroom door slammed so hard that it seemed to shake the house, and I couldn’t help but chuckle to myself before I mumbled, “Fuck! She’s even sexy when she’s pissed.”
I had to go out to my truck and get a clean shirt from my go-bag before I could clean up. I made use of the kitchen sink to wash my face and arms where the dressing splattered as it fell. While I cleaned up the mess on the table, I tried to come up with a plan to get Sandi to talk to me that didn’t involve my death, but was drawing a blank.
When someone knocked on the door, I stood there in the kitchen waiting for Sandi to come out of the bedroom and was surprised when she yelled, “Answer the fucking door, asshole!”
“There’s something really wrong with me to think that’s hot,” I mumbled as I walked over and opened the front door.
I was shocked to find my niece standing on the porch with my friend Rooster behind her and was pleasantly surprised to see Tiny, another of my club brothers, behind them, holding hands with a woman I didn’t recognize.
Rosie took advantage of my stupor and pulled open the storm door before she shoulder-checked me as she walked past. I glared at Rooster and Tiny when they burst out laughing.
“What are you doing here?” I asked my niece as I stepped aside to let the others come into the house.
“I own this house, Uncle Eric.”
“I know that, Rosie-girl. I thought you were going to be staying in Red River.”
“We’re here for the Halloween carnival,” Rooster explained as he walked toward my niece.
“Ajax, this is my girl, Amethyst. Amethyst, my brother Ajax.”
Tiny’s girlfriend tilted her head and studied my face as I greeted her and then burst out laughing before she said, “I can see it.”
“See what?”
“How a woman might want to kill you,” Amethyst answered before she walked past me. Over her shoulder, she called out, “There’s a twinkle in your eye that’s probably going to get you stabbed before the day is over.”
“What the fuck?” I whispered as Tiny slid past me.
“When the call came in, Rosie put it on speaker, man.”
“What call?”
“My tenant has asked that I remove you from the premises so that she doesn’t have to get the cops involved.”
“She called you to rat me out?” I asked in outrage. Before my niece had a chance to reply, I yelled toward the bedroom, “Come on, Attila! You can’t call in backup before I even get a chance to explain myself!”
“Uncle Eric, I’m not exactly sure what you did to that poor woman, but I’m going to guess that you were . . . well, you . For some reason, she’s locked in the bedroom for your safety, not her own.”
I let my head fall back and stared at the ceiling for a few seconds while I listened to Rooster and Tiny try to stifle their laughter, but when I lifted my hand and flipped them off, they couldn’t hold it in any longer and started cackling. Even the woman I’d just met was laughing at me. When I took a deep breath and looked over at my niece, I saw she was standing there with tears in her eyes and her hand over her mouth so she could hold in her own laughter and couldn’t stop myself from glaring at her.
“Ratched and I are having a tiff, but we don’t need spectators or referees. I just want to explain to her why I disappeared so we can get past it and move on.”
“I would suggest you send a letter,” Rosie said as she motioned toward the door. “As much as I love seeing you again, Uncle Eric, I feel like we should take this conversation elsewhere before Sandi comes out of that room and beats you like a snare drum and then has the cops haul you away for trespassing.”
Rooster snorted and then started laughing before Tiny started in again too. I shoved Rooster into Tiny, and Amethyst burst out laughing again, but my niece managed to keep a straight face until I yelled, “Just because I’m leaving doesn’t mean this is over, Ratched! I’m not done with you yet!”
◆◆◆
“Wow.” I didn’t even reply, just stared at my brother until he opened the door wide enough for me to walk through and then waited for him to shut it behind me. “This is a welcome surprise.”
“I promised I’d keep in touch, so here I am.”
Chandler laughed softly before he said, “Come on in. I was working quality control in the kitchen for Steph.”
“Quality control?”
“That’s the nice way of saying that I like to watch her move around the kitchen while I beg for scraps.”
I sighed before I said, “That sounds more familiar than I’d like to admit.”
“I wasn’t sure it was possible, but you’re even more of a ray of sunshine than usual,” Chandler muttered sarcastically as he led me toward the kitchen.
We walked around the corner, and my sister-in-law looked up and gasped before she rushed across the room, brushing her hands over her apron. She pulled me in for a hug and then held on to my shoulders as she smiled at me and said, “You came back!”
“I said I would.”
“Yeah, and I promised my doctor I’d work out more often, but you don’t see my ass at the gym, do you?” I smiled at my sister-in-law until she reached up and pulled something out of my hair and asked, “Is this lettuce?”
“Coffee?” Chandler asked as he refreshed his own mug.
“Yes, please.”
“Why so glum?” Steph asked as she walked back over to the stove and picked up the spoon she’d been using before.
“I just had an encounter with Sandi.”
“An encounter?” Steph asked, without turning around.
“That’s where the lettuce came from.”
They both asked, “What?” at the same time, and I wanted to groan. Even after all these years together, they were still perfectly in sync. It was enough to make me puke, but also something that made me insanely jealous. That was a new emotion that had developed a few months ago when I watched my friend Sugar and his old lady working together in their kitchen.
I sighed as I sat down, and after taking a sip of my coffee, I explained, “I got called about a job a few weeks ago, so I went to take care of that. It took longer than I thought it would, and when I came back, Sandi was pissed.”
“Because you went to work?” Chandler asked.
“Yeah.”
“No,” Steph argued. “There’s more to it than that, I’m sure. I didn’t get to know her very well when we were in Red River, but I could tell she’s not the type to go off without a reason.”
“Did you decide that before or after she started cuffing me to the bed to keep me still?”
Steph snorted and then cleared her throat before she turned around and asked, “What did she say when you told her you were leaving?”
“I didn’t have time to talk to her about it.”
“And you didn’t talk to her while you were gone?” Chandler asked.
“No, no, no. Back up, buddy. You didn’t have time to talk to her about it as in you couldn’t explain the job or . . .”
“I just left.”
Chandler narrowed his eyes before he tilted his head and asked, “And then you didn’t talk to her while you were gone?”
“I was working.”
“Wow.”
I looked at my brother and asked, “Is that your word of the day, or what?”
“You took off for two weeks with no explanation, didn’t keep in touch while you were gone, and then showed up out of the blue like it was nothing?”
“I brought dinner.”
“Again, wow .”
I looked over at Stephanie and found her leaning against the counter as she studied me like a specimen in a petri dish. Finally, she asked, “Why aren’t you talking about this with Sandi?”
“Because she said she wasn’t cut out for prison right before she dumped her salad on my head and then threatened to call the cops if I didn’t leave her house.” My brother burst out laughing, which I sort of expected, but I was shocked when Stephanie doubled over with laughter. “Why is that so fucking funny?”
“You’re a moron!”
I scowled at my brother, and he shrugged, but then I saw Stephanie walking across the room out of the corner of my eye and looked over at her. She was smiling so brightly that it was almost scary, and she said, “You’ve finally found a woman who can’t be swayed by your bullshit or your charm, and you don’t know how to handle it.”
“I should just fucking leave. Isn’t that what I do?”
“You did leave, but you came back. That is not what you do.”
“I thought there was something there. The more I thought about it, though, the more it made me think that taking off without looking back was the right thing to do. I couldn’t fucking help myself and had to come back and see her.”
“You’re smitten!”
I scoffed before I said, “I’m a little too old to get smitten , Steph.”
“Apparently, you’re not, because that’s exactly what this is,” she argued.
“Well, she must not feel the same way because she kicked my ass out of her house.”
“Honey, a woman doesn’t want to be a second thought. She wants to be the first thing you think about when you wake up in the morning and the last thing you think about at night. Leaving her without a word and then showing up two weeks later proved that’s not what this is.”
“But it really is! I can’t get the woman out of my head. At first, I thought it was Stockholm Syndrome, but even I know that’s bullshit. There’s just something about her that I want to explore for a while.”
“She’s not the kind of woman that’s okay with ‘a while,’ I would assume?”
“She said this was one and done, so I don’t know what her problem is.”
“You came back.”
“I told you I couldn’t stay away.”
“But she thought you were gone for good without a word. You put her in the forgettable column, and that’s not good for anyone’s ego, even if they were the one that said there wasn’t going to be anything more.”
“So, what do I do? I can’t go back to her house because she had Rosie show up and kick my ass out.”
“If she really wanted you gone, she would have called the cops,” Stephanie insisted.
“Well, I’m sure as hell not going back there now!”
“She’s different, isn’t she?” Chandler asked. When I nodded, he said, “Then you need to do things differently than you have before. Obviously, you can’t just slide in and bullshit your way into her good graces. You’re going to have to work for this, and let me just say, when you win a prize after putting in some effort, it’s more worthwhile than you can ever imagine.”
Chandler reached out and took Steph’s hand, and I remembered how it felt when Sandi held my hand that day in the cabin - and the way she looked at me made me feel like I was ten feet tall and bulletproof. I wanted that again.
The problem was that I had no idea how to get it.
I sucked up my pride and asked, “How can I get her to look at me like you just looked at my brother?”
“Work for it.”