Chapter Four
This Is Meant to Be
Rock Chick Rewind
Still some time ago, but now even less…
“Okay, does doing crazy, stupid shit run in
you all’s family?” Toni asked.
“Shh!” my sister Lena shushed her.
She was looking through a pair of binoculars.
Toni was in the middle of the back seat of my car. I was in
the driver’s seat. Lena on the passenger side.
And Lena was spying on her boyfriend, who she was certain
was cheating on her.
We were parked across the street from his place, so the
binoculars were overkill.
She put them down, turned to me and announced, “I’m going in
for a closer look. Cover me.”
I opened my mouth to stop her, but she was out the door
before I could.
“Cover her?” Toni asked.
I smiled, trying not to laugh because this wasn’t funny, not
really.
And it wasn’t because I was pretty certain my sister was
right. Michael was cheating on her. The dude was shifty as all heck.
But still.
We watched as Lena tiptoed across the street, looking every
which way, her long braids swinging along her back (causing me to wonder if I
should make an appointment at the salon, those braids looked good on her),
making it so obvious she was somewhere she shouldn’t be doing something she
shouldn’t be doing, in broad daylight no less, I no longer felt like laughing.
Instead, I groaned.
“She’s terrible at this,” I stated the obvious.
“One of us should stop her,” Toni noted.
She was right.
“And that someone isn’t gonna be me,” Toni went on.
Ugh.
I started to open the door to go fetch my sister but stilled
when Toni muttered, “Holy crap.”
Holy crap was right.
This was because, out of nowhere, Eddie Chavez and Lee
Nightingale were there.
Lee was heading to my car.
Eddie was heading off Lena.
“Oh boy, that man grew up f-i-n-e,
fine,” Toni declared, eyes glued through my windshield. “Both of them
are fine. But seeing as I’ve already taken in the grown-up fineness of
Eddie’s fine, and I’m just now witnessing the same from Lee, I can tell you the
two of them together is too much fine. I might not be able to handle this. And
I got experience with fine, since Tony is right now at home, waiting to get the
call to bail me out of jail. He said I better make this a misdemeanor, since he
isn’t pawning our new flat screen for your foolishness.”
Lee rapped on my window with his knuckles, and when I hit
the switch to roll it down, he bent over to look in at me.
And, um…yeah.
He was a good-looking kid.
But now he was fine.
“Hey, Lee,” I greeted. “Long time. Are you home on leave?”
“Yeah,” he grunted.
“Hey, Lee. Lookin’ good,” Toni
greeted, pushing in between the seats to peer around me at Lee.
“Toni,” he returned, his lips twitching in a ghost of that
famous Liam Nightingale smile. Then, with no further ado, he got serious and
said, “Eddie’s gonna put Lena in the car and you three are gonna get the fuck
out of here.”
I noted his mouth had not cleaned up since back in the day.
And it was still hot.
“Sure, sure, good,” I babbled.
“She thinks her man is cheating on her,” Toni told Lee.
I lost his face when he looked over the roof of my car.
He came back into the window when I heard the door open
beside me and the car bobbed when Lena’s bottom hit the passenger seat.
The door closed again.
Lee pinned me with his eyes.
“Go home,” he ordered.
I nodded, because he said two words, but other words were
unspoken. How I knew that, I couldn’t tell you. I just knew.
He disappeared from the window. I heard his knuckles rap on
the roof, his macho-man reminder to get the eff out of there. I hit the button
for the window, started up the car and we rolled out.
It was a miracle I didn’t plow into some cars considering my
eyes were fixed to my rearview mirror, watching Eddie walk through my now
vacant parking space to join Lee on the curb, both of them watching us leave.
Toni was right.
That was too much fine.
“Did you see that?” Lena’s voice was breathy.
“Oh, I saw it all right,” Toni answered.
“Eddie was a cutie in high school,” Lena started, and I
snorted, because “cutie” was not how I’d ever describe Eddie Chavez.
A baby shark was cute, it was still a shark.
“But…whoa.” Lena finished.
“You got that right, sister,” Toni agreed.
“He was so whoa, and Lee was so oh man, I
forgot what I was doing,” Lena said.
I could totally see that.
“And now I don’t know if Michael has a girl in there with
him or not,” she concluded.
“Let me put my ear to the ground,” I said.
“What ground?” Lena asked.
My eyes found Toni’s in the rearview.
She knew.
But I hadn’t told my sister.
If Lena knew I was holding out on her, she’d be ticked, but
more hurt.
It was just…I couldn’t tell her. I couldn’t tell anyone, but
Toni.
And I wasn’t even sure I should tell Toni, but I had to tell
somebody, and I trusted her not to do anything I wouldn’t want, like tell my
parents, or Lena, or get up in someone’s face who wouldn’t appreciate it.
This being the fact that three years had passed since Liam
and I had moved back from Fort Collins, and in that time, it wasn’t a habit,
but it wasn’t infrequent, and the fact Eddie and Lee showed up when I was doing
something stupid with my sister wasn’t a surprise.
Because, first, Darius Tucker kept an eye on me.
And second, Darius Tucker found reasons to visit me.
It was always at night, when Liam was asleep, and it was
always when we needed him.
Like when someone plowed into my car in the grocery store
parking lot and didn’t leave a note. Thus, in order that I wouldn’t have to
claim it on my insurance, Darius showed with a loner car that very night, had
my car taken away and brought back, not only fixed, but detailed.
And when Toni and Tony moved in together, and were in the
market for a new couch, and I’d gone with her to look, and oohed and aahed over
the furniture. Darius was at my place late that night, telling me I was going
to get a delivery in three days, and someone needed to be at my townhouse
between noon and four to accept it.
That “it” being entirely new living room furniture, all the
pieces I most oohed and aahed over.
So out went the ratty, secondhand furniture I’d scrounged
from relatives and friends, and in went classy, expensive stuff I probably
would be able to afford only after Liam finished college.
A week later, he was back, sharing someone had to be around
for another delivery, and that one was our flat screen TV.
Of course, there were three Christmases and Liam’s three
birthdays, when Darius brought wrapped gifts for his son, but all the cards
said they were from Santa…or me.
How he knew Liam’s birthday, I didn’t know, because he
didn’t ask me.
He also didn’t give me the opportunity to ask him.
In all that time, with all those visits, he never clapped
eyes on his son (that I knew). He never asked to see him, not so much as to
walk upstairs and watch him sleeping.
And he never hung around enough for us to have a
conversation.
He told me what he was going to do to take care of me, of
us, and then he vanished.
Okay, not vanished, he wasn’t a superhero. He walked out.
But he made no bones about it and took great pains not to be waylaid, those
pains being my pains, since he gave me a wide berth and exited,
pronto.
I was confused by all of this.
Toni was confused by all of it.
But the only person who could explain it was in my life, in
my son’s life, in very real ways.
Except he wasn’t.
And the way he was, he gave no explanation.
It had occurred to me I could probably track down Eddie and
ask him, but something stopped me.
Not something, I knew what it was.
I loved Darius.
This was all he felt he could give.
And since I loved him, I was letting him give what he could
how he could give it and not push for more.
I suspected Toni knew I was doing this, but in that
scenario, she loved me. So she didn’t push it either.
By the way, that five thousand dollars was still on my
kitchen counter the first of every month, and my rent was paid, and never by
me.
In fact, I had enough (actually, more than enough) to make a
down payment on a house, and I was considering it because Liam was going to be
in school next year—real, big-boy school, first grade. And I needed to settle
into a school district that was good for him in a home he could count on.
“What ground?” Lena pushed, cutting into my thoughts.
“I’ll just…ask around,” I said lamely.
“Me too. And Tony too. He knows everybody. He’ll get the
skinny,” Toni added.
This mollified Lena because I had no ground to put my ear
to. My life was my job, my kid, and every once in a while, going out with Toni
and/or Lena, but always getting home before nine so Mom or Dad or one of the
aunties or cousins could go home after babysitting Liam.
But Toni did not lie. Her man knew everybody.
“Okay, now that I’m over that one-two punch of Eddie and
Lee, um…does anyone but me think it’s weird they showed up?” Lena asked.
Again, I glanced at Toni in the rearview.
“Maybe Eddie lives around here,” Toni said, giving me guilt
eyes in the mirror, since she was lying for me.
“Lee said he was home on leave,” I added.
“I kinda hope Michael’s cheating now because I sure had cheatin’ thoughts when I clapped eyes on Eddie when he
grabbed me,” Lena muttered.
She was lying too. She’d fallen for Michael.
I saw in him what I saw in a lot of the attorneys who tried
their cases in the courtroom I worked in.
Narcissism.
So I hoped he was cheating on her too, because I’d rather my
little sister be in a bit of hurt after scraping off a cheating boyfriend, than
live her whole life with a man who thought the most important person in the
world was him, and everyone should agree.
“I’m hungry,” Lena declared. “Brother’s for a sandwich and a
beer?”
“I could do a ticky turkey,” Toni
said.
I could always do a ticky turkey.
I pointed the car toward My Brother’s Bar.
I knew he’d come. I just didn’t know he’d come that
soon.