Chapter Six
Blinders
Rock Chick Rewind
Still some time ago, but now even less…
Toni threw herself in the lawn chair beside
me, doing this without sloshing even a drop out of her mojito.
The girl was good.
“I am not feeling this,” she declared, gaze aimed across my
parents’ backyard to Lena and her new fiancé, Kenneth.
“Hmm…” I replied.
She turned her head to me, lifting her drink to her mouth,
but before taking a sip, said under her breath, “Darius get the skinny on him
yet?”
“He’s not a fan,” I said under mine.
“Is that an understatement?” she asked.
I gave her big eyes.
“Shit,” she said, turning back to Lena draped on Kenneth.
“He got anything like those photos he got on Michael?”
“He’s working on it.”
“You know, Tony is a construction foreman,” she told me
something I did, indeed, know.
I confirmed I knew it and drew it out. “Yeeessss.”
“He’s not a master sleuth. He can’t keep coming up with the
dirty on Lena’s boys. She’s gonna start thinking it’s weird.”
“It only happened that once.”
“We pinned nasty pictures on him knowing someone who knew
someone who could look into things, which wasn’t a total lie, since he knows
you, and you know Darius. And you know, Denver’s a big city, but it’s also a
small town. To her, Darius was your past, but everyone knows Eddie Chavez is a
cop, now he’s made detective, and it wouldn’t be hard to put those two together
to get what you need to keep your sister from making shit decisions about the
men she lets in her bed.”
Uh-oh.
She’d been keeping my secret for a long time now.
Years.
And I had a feeling she was getting fed up with it.
“I won’t pin this one on Tony.”
“You need to tell Lena what’s going on with Darius.”
“Are you high?” I screeched.
Everyone looked at me.
I hid behind my mojito.
Toni let it die down before she said low, “I think more, you
need to figure out what’s going on with you and Darius.”
I hated to admit it.
But she wasn’t wrong.
I knew it’d take patience, but this was crazy.
And nothing I was doing was working.
Sure, we had great sex that never got old because it could
be a month, even two, between times we could get together.
And no, it wasn’t just sex. We talked. He ate up everything
I could tell him about Liam like my words were mana from heaven. He asked about
my new job at the law firm now that I’d finished my degree and landed a
position as a paralegal. He asked about Mom, Dad, Lena, Toni.
He did not talk about himself.
He was a master at avoiding it.
Half the time, I was kissing him goodbye before I realized
I’d had him again and gotten nowhere.
Liam was now nine. Toni and Tony had gotten pregnant and had
a baby girl. Lena had been through five new guys before she latched onto this
one.
And although I had Darius’s number, and I texted him every
day, and spoke to him just because on occasion, and he always took my calls and
never left my texts hanging, we were no closer to the important things.
Like telling his family he had a child.
Like telling my family he was in my life.
Like introducing him to his son.
Oh sure, I had excuses.
First, it was having a kid and studying for my degree and
having a full-time job, and those were all good excuses.
Then, it was my kid growing up and getting into activities,
while I was still studying for my degree and having a full-time job while
shuffling him to peewee football and junior basketball and piano lessons (don’t
ask me, my mom made us do it, Liam hated it, but we both promised her two
years, and he was closing in on the end of year two, so we just had stick it
out).
Then it was interning, and a full-time job, and a kid, and
activities. Then having a new job and needing to put in the hours, which were
extensive, to make myself part of the team.
In the mix of all that was keeping a house, groceries in the
cupboards, good, cooked food on the table, time with my boy and his homework,
laundry, the oil needing changed on the car, yadda, yadda, yadda.
I mean, life was life. It was full. Things got away from
you.
But this was getting ridiculous.
“They’re worried,” Toni said.
I mentally shook myself out of my thoughts and asked, “Who’s
worried?”
“Your mom and dad,” she said, eyes across the way on her
hubby, who had little Talia on his hip.
“Worried about what?”
She looked to me. “That you don’t date. That you work and
hang with Liam. Hang with Tony and me. Hang with Lena. And go home alone. And
you do it like it’s all good for you, when they don’t know it is all
good, because the man you love is in your life in a super weird way, but still,
he’s in it. And I gotta say, they know you took a big pay bump when you got
your new job, but you were living pretty large on a court reporter’s salary,
and they aren’t dumb.”
Oh boy.
She kept at me.
“Then you put the money down on that new build in Stapleton,
whomp! Down payment on a brand-new house in a cushy development, and
you didn’t even blink.”
Maybe I hadn’t been as smart as I should have been about
using Darius’s support to take care of Liam and me.
On the one hand, if I’d made us go without to keep it from
them, Darius would lose his mind.
On the other hand, no way was I going to accumulate tens of
thousands of dollars in my panties drawer and make my boy go without.
Okay, so maybe that was the same hand.
But I probably should have pretended I won the lottery or
something.
“I think they’ve figured it out,” she muttered.
“Oh my God,” I whispered, horrified. “You think they have?”
Slowly, she turned her head to face me. “I respect them,
Malia. And I’ve been lying to them by omission for years.”
I bit my lip.
“I love you,” she went on. “And I gotta trust you know what
you’re doing, but something’s going to break on this, and your family is good
people. They don’t deserve this deception.”
I felt badly, I truly did.
But I knew what I was doing.
I hoped.
“I bought a nanny cam,” I told her.
“Say again?” she asked.
“I bought a nanny cam. It’s Eddie who breaks in and gives me
the money.”
“Whoa,” she said.
“I left a note for him last time and told him to stop
breaking in and stay for a beer. He wrote back, ‘We’ll see.’”
Toni’s gaze was far away, keeping company with her thoughts.
“Love my man, but I could do a beer with Eddie.”
Yeah, via the nanny cam, I learned he just got better with
age.
But we needed to focus.
“I can tell them that,” I suggested. “If I tell them,
they’ll know what I know. It’s from Darius. And maybe, when the time comes,
they won’t…have a problem with him.”
“When the time comes for what?”
“When the time comes we can be a family.”
A guard slammed down on her face, but her mouth didn’t quit
moving.
“Are you holding out for that, sis? Because, sure, I can see
that. You love the guy. But also, no. He’s got it made. He comes and gets his
business, then he goes, no strings, no commitments.”
Oh no.
Now I was getting mad at Toni.
Or maybe I was getting mad at the situation because it was
dragging on forever.
But still, I was getting mad at Toni.
“You don’t know how it is.”
“Do you?”
That was the ten-million-dollar question.
I looked away and took a sip of my mojito.
“Unh-hunh,” she mumbled.
“That envelope I get every month doesn’t say no strings, no
commitments,” I sniped.
She got to the meat of it.
“It also doesn’t say Dad,” she told me. “He’s even
pulling away from Tony, have you noticed?”
I had.
Liam and Tony were tight, now it was like…not like he didn’t
love his Uncle Tony, just like he didn’t need him like he used to.
Like he was getting accustomed to it being him and me and
that was going to be all he had.
I looked around the backyard, trying to locate my son.
When I didn’t see him, I knew where he was.
In the front drive, shooting hoops at the basketball goal
Dad had mounted for him.
Shooting hoops alone.
I stood, saying, “I need to find my son.”
Toni caught my hand. I looked down at her.
“I’m worried too,” she said. “You were a teen mom, lost, but
not alone. You found your way. Now you’re twenty-six, living your life for a
man who shows in your bedroom one night every couple of months for nookie with
no promises.” She shook her head and squeezed my hand before I could say
anything I’d regret. “No, I’m not being cruel, I’m being real, because I’m
worried. Don’t say anything and don’t get mad. Just think about what I had to
say.”
“I’ll think about what you had to say,” I said between my
teeth.
She gave my hand a squeeze and let go. “That’s all I ask.”
I took off, trying not to feel all I was feeling, something
that was getting tired.
Because I’d been feeling it now for years, along with
putting in the effort not to feel it.
Mom and Dad were worried, I shouldn’t be surprised.
Toni too, also not a surprise.
But I was too.
Because I’d had patience.
And it wasn’t working.
I heard the dribble of the basketball before I made it to
the front, the bang of it hitting the backboard, more dribbling.
When I got there, I saw my son setting up for a shot, and
even with my thoughts in turmoil, my heart hurting—because if I allowed myself
to admit it (and I wasn’t there yet), I knew Toni was right, something had to
give with Darius—I loved that even at Lena and Kenneth’s engagement party, Dad
wouldn’t let anyone park in the driveway so Liam could shoot hoops.
“Hey,” I called.
“Hey,” he called back and let fly.
It whiffed the net.
I winced.
He needed to be taller, stronger, keep practicing, he’d get
there.
Liam didn’t show any emotion to the whiff. He just went
after the ball and kept dribbling.
“I bet Tony would play horse with you if you asked,” I
suggested.
“Nah, he’s got Talia with him,” Liam answered, stopped,
planted his feet and let fly.
It hit the hoop and bounced to the side.
Damn.
He went after the ball.
“I could confiscate Talia, no skin off my nose,” I said.
Liam grinned while dribbling. “You spoil her more than her
own momma does.”