33
Damian feels the sun baking his naked skin, soothing his tired muscles, drying the pool water in his damp hair.
He’s vaguely thirsty, and he wonders where Bianca is with his beer, but he’s too relaxed to look for her, too content.
This is the life he’s always wanted. It’s the life he’s always deserved.
He slips into the fantasy that this is his house, that he and Bianca are alone in the hillside haven.
It feels comfortable and right. Soon, their reality will rival the dream.
It’s not that their life back in the States was terrible; it was just mundane.
They had decent jobs. They rented a cute little house.
A lot of people would be satisfied with what they had, but not Damian.
He’s known since childhood that he was destined for more, a bigger, bolder existence.
And then he fell in love. He put his partner first. He’s been patient and devoted.
He’d kept the promise he’d made to Bianca in that field on prom night, and he’d waited.
After high school, Damian attended community college.
Tech was where the money was, so he studied computer programming.
It didn’t take him long to realize that he wasn’t cut out for it, so he switched to a psychology major, worked at a big-box appliance store part-time.
He moved into a house with a bunch of guys he’d found in an online rental group. It was filthy, rowdy, fun.
Bianca still lived at home then. She was going to design school, running interference between her mom and her little sister.
Bianca stayed with him on weekends, and sometimes Lyric came, too.
She was a cute kid then, silly and goofy.
He didn’t mind playing grown-up for a few hours a week, but he worried about Lyric.
His roommates regularly came home wasted, smoked grass on the back deck, and brought various sex partners home.
It was no place for a kid, and he told Bianca that.
“It’s fine,” she said. “It’s still a healthier environment than my mom’s house.”
One day, shortly after he’d finished college, he went to pick Bianca up at her mom’s battered bungalow.
He rang the bell, but no one answered. He knocked loudly, but no one came.
A crash came from inside, followed by a screech.
The door was locked, but he rattled the handle, banged on it with his fist. Finally, Bianca opened it.
Her face was flushed, and she had a duffel bag over her shoulder.
“Lyric and I are moving in with you,” she stated, only the slightest tremble in her voice. “She’s packing her stuff.”
“Uh… okay.” He wasn’t sure how that was going to work, but it didn’t appear up for debate.
Yvonne staggered into view then. She was clearly drunk or on drugs, perhaps both. She wore a silky robe and nothing else, her thigh slipping through the fabric. “Damian, why are you with this little whore?” She slinked toward him. “You could do so much better.”
“Leave him out of this, Mom,” Bianca growled.
Yvonne was close now. He could smell booze on her breath. “If you ever want to be with a real woman, you know where to find me.”
It turned his stomach, made his skin crawl. Damian’s parenting bar was fairly low, but Yvonne Richards was on another level.
“Lyric, hurry up!” Bianca cried.
“She’s not going with you.” Yvonne’s smile was triumphant. “She loves her momma. You can’t turn her against me.”
“I’m not going to let you destroy her,” Bianca said. “Lyric, come on!”
The girl appeared then. She was about thirteen at the time, and while her heavy makeup made her look twenty, her coltish body and the innocence shining in her eyes betrayed her real age. “I—I can’t go,” she stammered. “All my stuff is here.”
“See?” Yvonne crowed, eyes on Bianca. “She doesn’t love you either.”
“Lyric, come with us,” Bianca pleaded. “You know it’s not safe here.”
“I’ll be fine,” the younger girl said. “I promise.”
Yvonne moved to Lyric, draped an arm around her shoulders. “Get the fuck out, Bianca. You’re not welcome here anymore.”
So they left. Bianca never talked about it, never shed a tear, but it hurt her. Her emotional callus thickened even more.
Soon Damian and Bianca moved out of the party house and into a decent modular home.
It had two spare rooms, and they rented one to help with costs, kept the other for Lyric.
At first, she came around often, but Lyric was growing up, changing.
Damian had been fond of her when she was a kid, but she’d become a pain in the ass.
She had attitude in spades, not that he could blame her.
He knew what Yvonne was like. He knew what it took to survive in that house.
But Lyric could be rude and condescending to Bianca, treated her like an annoyance instead of a savior.
The kid didn’t want rules and boundaries.
She wanted the freedom of Yvonne’s indifference.
Damian and Bianca were busy. They worked their nine-to-five jobs; they had a network of like-minded friends who were open-minded, sex-positive, and uninhibited.
There were parties, blurry nights when he’d wake up next to another woman, find Bianca in a different room with another lover.
He was okay with it, most of the time, but sometimes he’d feel insecure, and they’d argue.
But they always pulled it together, provided a wholesome environment for Lyric, who came over every Sunday.
One weekend, they waited for Lyric to arrive. When she didn’t show up, Bianca texted her, but the message wasn’t delivered. She tried calling, but it went straight to voicemail. “Something’s wrong,” she said to Damian.
“Your sister’s seventeen. She’ll be off with her friends. Or maybe her phone died.”
“No,” Bianca insisted. “Something’s not right. I can feel it.”
She couldn’t call her mom. Yvonne had blocked Bianca’s number years ago. There was no option but to go to the house. Damian had offered to go alone—Bianca would not be welcome—but she was adamant that she accompany him. She stood behind Damian as he rang the bell.
Yvonne was dressed and appeared sober when she answered. “If you’re here to see Lyric, you’re too late.”
“What do you mean too late?” Bianca pressed forward, pushed her way past her mother and through the front door.
“She’s gone,” Yvonne said as Bianca peered around the cluttered house.
“Gone where?”
“She moved. To New York City.”
Damian had snorted in disbelief. Lyric was a teenager, a small-town kid. How could she pick up and move to the biggest city in America? He’d had big dreams at her age too, but reality had set in, had kept him here. Bianca wasn’t laughing.
“She’s seventeen,” she said. “She hasn’t even finished high school.”
Yvonne rolled her eyes. “Who cares? She wasn’t exactly academic.”
“What will she do there?” Bianca asked. “How will she support herself?”
“Not my problem,” Yvonne sniffed. “Lyric thinks she’s something special, but she’ll end up a whore or dead in the gutter.”
Bianca hit her mother square in the face with a closed fist. Damian heard the crunch of bone and cartilage, saw the blood spurt from Yvonne’s nose. Yvonne bent double, hands covering her face. Blood seeped between her fingers and dripped onto the floor.
“You fucking cunt!” she screeched. “I’ll call the police! I’ll have you charged with assault!”
Bianca launched herself at Yvonne, and they tumbled to the floor.
Bianca straddled her mother, grabbed her by the throat, and squeezed.
If Damian hadn’t been there, if he hadn’t ripped her off, dragged her kicking and screaming out to the car, Bianca would have killed her.
He saw the cold determination in her. He saw the rage and the hatred.
“This is bad,” Bianca said, nursing her bruised knuckles as he drove them home. “Lyric is a na?ve kid. How could my mom let her move to New York?”
“Lyric’s wise in a lot of ways,” he tried to assure her. “She’s a pretty girl. She’ll be fine.”
But she wouldn’t be fine. Because she was about to meet Curtis Lowe.