Chapter 4
4
BENNY
I see the corner store, just like it used to be. Gino and I rode our bikes there practically every day in summer to get ice cream bars or big slushies. When my dad took over the business we moved out of the neighborhood, and it’s been a long time since I’ve had one of their frozen Cokes. I park across the street and head that way.
I’ve heard people say they feel like they’ve been struck by lightning when something shocks them. I always figured that was an exaggeration. Until I catch sight of her. I stand stock still in the middle of the street like my brain got blitzed by sudden voltage.
Last time I saw Daisy Cooper, she had a sunburn on her shoulders that was starting to peel and she was chewing cinnamon gum. She’d had on a pink tank top, her long wavy hair swept in a ponytail, big dark eyes faraway that last night. The next day she’d skipped town to move out west and didn’t return my calls.
Six years later, I’m getting honked at and flipped off by drivers as I stand in the middle of a busy street, my entire body arrested at the sight of her. The third person that honks lets out a stream of profanity questioning my intelligence. I turn toward the person and when they recognize me, they go silent.
“Shit,” I hear him mutter, “Sorry, man.” He tucks himself back into the driver seat and rolls up the window. It’s the effect I have on people who know the weight behind the Falconari name and organization.
I ignore him and get my limbs back online so I can eat up the distance between my hazardous spot in traffic and the place where Daisy stands just outside the doorway of Santino’s talking to the owner.
I approach her like she’s a figment of my imagination, like the two beers I had were something stronger, something that could give me hallucinations. Mrs. Santino straightens up from where she was leaning on her broom.
I don’t greet the woman or ask about her grown kids. I don’t compliment how the place hasn’t changed.
I just say, “Daisy?”
Up close, I know it’s her, but something feels off. Her hair is shorter, darker. The sexy cropped tank top and freckled shoulders are long gone, replaced by a white tee and cut offs. I remember those long, tanned thighs wrapped around me, and breathe in too sharply at the bone-deep memory.
Daisy turns to look at me, startled, her eyes locking on mine. She looks flustered.
She doesn’t answer me, doesn’t say my name. It hits me how much I want to hear her say my name again.
I haven’t been pining over her for half a decade or anything stupid. I just feel like one of those assholes on TV that talks about the first breath of free air after years in prison. It’s impossible that I haven’t gotten a deep breath since she ran off, but damned if I don’t feel that way. She’s playing with the straw of her half-empty frozen Coke.
“I was just gonna get one of those,” I remark and then feel stupid for saying it instead of asking how she’s been.
She blinks at me in the doorway like she can’t decide what she should do. Suddenly, she holds out her cup to me. I dip my head, capture the straw between my lips and take a drink, eyes meeting hers.
“Just like old times,” I say. That startles her back to awareness.
Daisy looks at the cup in her hand like she can’t understand it. Her shoulders go up, just a fraction, enough I know she tensed up. Her eyes dart to either side of me, looking for an exit.
“How have you been?” I ask, not because I want to talk about that, but because it seems like the obvious thing to say right now. It’s better than, why didn’t you answer my texts, calls, and emails for a year?
“Good. Busy,” she falters. “How about you? I didn’t expect to run into you here.”
“I was over at Gino’s for a cookout. They just had a baby, him and Molly,” I tell her. Gino and Molly used to double date with us back in the day. I wonder if she’s thinking what I’m thinking—that could be us. If things had been different, it could be Daisy and me sitting on the patio talking to aunts and cousins who can’t wait to get a look at our new baby. I let the words hang there, resist the PR impulse to back track in some way.
“That’s great,” she says, half-heartedly.
“How long you back in town?” I ask since she’s not offering information.
“I’m not sure yet.”
“I didn’t change my number. If you want to give me a call, I could give you the ten-cent tour of everything that’s changed since you left.”
“That’s nice of you but I’m going to be pretty booked up. I’m here to help my mom.”
“Oh, that’s right. The accident. She doin’ okay?
“Not really or I wouldn’t be here,” she says a little sarcastically. Warmth floods my chest. That’s the Daisy I know, with a mouth on her and no time to suffer fools.
“Easy, tiger,” I say, half a grin stealing onto my face as I say it.
I watch her step forward, weight on the balls of her feet like I taught her so long ago. Girl is ready to square up because I teased her. I don’t laugh because it’ll piss her off, but I barely keep from it.
“You gonna take a swing at me?” I say, hands casually in my pockets.
Her cheeks turn red. “Why would I bother? If nobody taught you any manners since high school, it’s not my job,” she says. Damn , I think. Still a mouthy little savage.
“How many times did your mom wash that mouth out with soap growing up?” I ask slyly.
“I don’t know. How many times have you been shot?” she snaps back. I chuckle.
“Shot or shot at ?” I say, lifting a shoulder, “There’s a difference.”
“Not unless you got better at running in a zigzag pattern like they said in PE,” she snorts. “That slow ass never made cross country.”
“Maybe not, but I’ve got moves.”
“New ones? Or the same three?” she says, a little grin on her face because she’s enjoying the shit out of this even though she won’t admit it.
“If you want to find out, you know my number.”
“No, I don’t. Lost my phone a couple years ago. I don’t have it memorized.” She’s lying and she knows I see it.
“Look, I’m just here to get Mom some new coffee. Hers sucks.”
She turns to go back in the store and I trail after her. I have this idea if I take my eyes off her she’s going to vaporize like an illusion.
“You need something?” she says.
I reach over her shoulder—she always hated being short, I think with amusement, and get the can of coffee off the top shelf.
“Italian roast espresso. It’s the best.” I offer it, see defiance flare in her eyes. I’ve missed her so much, I realize, that the strange feeling I have is the loosening of that knot, that pain I still carry.
She shakes her head decisively, chin jutting out a little.
“No thanks. I’ll stick with domestic,” she says and tries to grab a Seattle brand off the shelf by standing on tiptoe and grappling at it with her fingertips.
I pick it up and hand it to her. She barely hides the tiny scowl at being helped. I grab a frozen Coke, offer her a drink. She shakes her head, but she’s walking around with me instead of leaving with her coffee. At the check-out stand, I reach for the can of coffee.
“Allow me,” I say, “A get well for your mom. She was always—”
“Hating you with the fury of the sun?”
“Pretty much, but I hope she gets better anyway.”
“I don’t want any favors, thanks anyway,” she says. I shrug it off, buy my coke, and wait for her at the door.
I should have ignored her when I saw her, instead of stopping traffic. It turns out I can swallow my pride every day of the week and twice on Sundays if I have the slightest hope of it getting me what I want. Ego is nothing compared to the chance to get my mouth between Daisy Cooper’s thighs again. I damn near black out when I think of it.
The salty taste of her soft skin, the musky heat of her scent filling me as I breathe her in. Wanting her is an electric jolt, the spark I can’t ignore that rips through me with the force of a craving, the kind addicts get where the need for a fix blots out everything else. Who needs to sleep or drink water or go to work or take a shower when nothing matters but that craving that shakes me to my bones?
This minute, she’s exactly what I want. Not Daisy when she was nineteen and things were good between us, not a trip down memory lane. This is a lot more potent than nostalgia. Overwhelming hunger consumes me, so powerful I nearly stagger and lose my balance. Let me taste you , I want to say. It’s on the tip of my tongue.
I could do this, too. It’s not just a fantasy. I have the kind of power that would buy me privacy and discretion . I could give Mrs. Santino a hundred bucks to close the store and leave. All I’d have to do is step over to the counter and offer her a bill, say in a low voice, why don’t you go home, and I’ll lock up when we’re done? She’d wink at me and tuck the money in her apron.
I know exactly what I’d do. It’s an impulse as fundamental as the urge to cross myself when I walk into church, to put my cart back when I’m done at the store. Instincts bred in my blood. Say please and thank you, tie your shoes, tuck in your shirt, put the lid down on the toilet, and the cap on the toothpaste. If you lay eyes on Daisy Cooper again, never let her go. Fall on your knees and eat her out till she doesn’t remember the word no.
Daisy meets my eyes.
“Are you gonna get out of the way or what?” she says, exasperated.
I grin at her and step aside, “It was good seeing you again,” I say.
“It was unexpected,” she says, slipping back into a neutral accent. It probably took her years to talk like she was doing a pronunciation video for people that don’t speak English, cause that’s what it sounds like to me.
“Tell your mom I hope she gets better,” I say.
“Thanks,” Daisy says, holding her grocery bag.
“I could walk you home.”
“Oh, please don’t,” she blurts out, maybe a little embarrassed and it makes me want to laugh.
“Maybe next time,” I say with a grin, using my best PR smile on her.
I step aside and she brushes past me. Forget my pride, I watch her walk away. Things have changed, she’s been away a long time. We’re older, maybe even wiser. But that girl has the same switch in her walk she always had. Watching her, the familiar set of her shoulders and droop of her head as she looks at her phone, I feel something click in place for me. Like the piece I’d been missing found her way home.