Chapter 18 #2
“Can we go play at the arcade, Tia ?” Josh asked as we wound our way through the crowd, heading toward the exit after the end of the movie. “Please?”
“Yeah, Dad, can we?” Dean asked Trip.
I wasn’t the one driving; I glanced at Dallas who shrugged. “I don’t have anywhere to be.”
“Are you sure?” I asked.
He blinked down at me.
“All right. Sure, go. But once I run out of money, that’s it.
I have a bunch of change….” I trailed off as we made our way to the giant arcade by the front doors.
The entire movie complex was packed with people going to see the brand-new movie, but there weren’t more than maybe fifteen kids hanging around, playing games.
Feeling around the bottom of my purse, I scooped out a handful of coins.
“You got a vending machine addiction I don’t know about?” Dallas joked.
I crossed my eyes as I picked out the quarters and handed an equal amount to all three of the boys.
“I would if any of them carried Pop-Tarts. Hold on a sec, guys. I have more.” One more scoop of change from my purse, three five dollar bills from Trip, and a twenty-dollar bill that Dallas gave Dean with the promise that he’d get change and split it between the three of them, and the boys were gone.
“I’m gonna take a piss while we’re waiting,” Trip announced. “I’ll be right back.”
“I think Dean’s having problems with the change machine, let me go see,” Dallas said too, disappearing into the cavern of the arcade.
All right. Keeping an eye toward the front doors, I watched people come inside.
I hadn’t thought too much about Anita in the last few weeks, but with hundreds of people coming in and out, I couldn’t help but remember how she’d shown up to my house unannounced.
I had no idea where she was even living now, and a part of me was worried it was Austin.
I was looking around when something caught my eye on the other side of the doors by the ticket counter.
It was something about the golden-brown hair that triggered a memory in my brain and stole the breath right out of my mouth.
From one instant to the next, my stomach started cramping as the man took a step ahead in the winding line of people waiting to purchase tickets.
My head started pounding. My hands started sweating. I was dizzy.
It had been three years since I’d last seen Jeremy, but it felt like days.
My right hand started shaking.
I dropped my head forward and tried to take a deep breath. I was fine. I was fine. I was fine.
I glanced back up to process the sight of the man again. He looked shorter… and no, this man had facial hair. Jeremy had never been able to grow facial hair.
And what would he be doing in Austin?
It wasn’t him. It couldn’t be him, I told myself, but still, I couldn’t ease the knot in my stomach or the way my hands were trembling and slick from sweat. It wasn’t him.
“We got it sorted—Diana, what’s wrong?” came Dallas’s voice going from his normal voice to a low, distressed one.
I was fine, I repeated to myself, trying to steel my spine, to stand up straight and catch my breath. It wasn’t him. On top of that, it had been three years. Three long years, and I wasn’t the same person I’d been back then.
“What is it?” Dallas asked again, stopping directly in front of me; his body long and wide, inches away. His voice was low as he noted, “You’re pale.”
When I raised my head and focused on the triangle of brown ink right above the collar of his faded brown T-shirt, I fisted my hand at my side, even as goose bumps spread out over my arms. “I’m all right,” I mostly lied.
“I know you’re not. What is it? You feel sick?” He dipped his face closer to mine, those hazel eyes finding my own even though I didn’t want them to. His eyelids dipped over his irises and that pale pink mouth formed the shape of a frown. “What’s wrong?”
I couldn’t help but look away, biting the inside of my cheek as I let out a breath that was a lot shakier than I would have wanted it to be.
“Someone say something to you?” he asked, his voice getting more worried by the second.
Shit. Shit . Reaching up, I scrubbed my hand over my eyes and met his gaze again. I was fine. What happened had been a long time ago. I wasn’t that person anymore. I wasn’t . “I thought I saw my ex,” I told him, as my throat burned.
Dallas’s expression dropped instantly, and I’d swear his shoulders did too. “Oh.”
“No. It’s not like that. We—” I glanced to my side to make sure the boys were still in the arcade.
All three of them were together, hovering by a big game.
“Things didn’t end well. I….” God. How could I still feel like such a fucking idiot after so many years?
How? I was ashamed of myself for what had happened.
How could I tell this man I respected so much that I had been a complete dumbass?
His eyebrows were knit together as he watched me. “You can tell me anything.”
I bit my cheek and tried to swallow my giant pride that had gotten in my way so many times in the past. “I’m not proud of myself, okay?” These stupid-ass tears that were becoming way too common in my life lately filled my eyes but didn’t go any further. “I was an idiot back then—”
“Diana,” he ground out my name, his forehead becoming more lined. Those shoulders that had fallen a second ago came back into position, tight and taut and broad. “You’re not an idiot.”
“I was back then.” I needed him to understand as I glanced toward the doors again, but luckily couldn’t see that familiar color of hair anymore. At least for now. “He… hurt me toward the end of our relationship—”
If Dallas was tall every day of his life, on this day, he seemed to grow half a foot taller.
His spine extended, his posture turning into one that would belong perfectly on a statue.
His Adam’s apple bobbed and his nostrils flared.
And in the deepest voice I’d ever heard, he asked, “He hit you?” His question was pulled out like each word was its own sentence.
“Yeah—”
Those big hands fisted at his sides, and his neck went pink. “Which one is he?”
“Dallas, stop, it isn’t him,” I said, reaching for his shirt and grabbing a handful of it. “It was a long time ago.”
“A lifetime wouldn’t be long enough,” he ground out. “Which one is he, Diana?”
“Please don’t. I’m not lying. I swear it’s not him. He doesn’t even live in Austin. That happened back when I lived in Fort Worth.”
“Is it the guy over there in the green shirt?”
“No—”
“In the red shirt?”
“Dallas, listen to me—”
Was he shaking?
“Stop being stubborn. It isn’t him . And even if it was, I pressed charges against him. He went to jail for a few months—”
“Jail?” He turned around slowly to face me. His face… I’d never seen anything like it before, and I hoped I never did again. He was shaking. “Tell me what his name is, and I’ll put him six feet in the ground.”
I sucked in a breath and couldn’t help but smile at him, even with my eyes all teary.
“It’s like you’re purposely trying to get me to love you, Dallas.
I swear to God. You don’t even want me to stick my hand down your pants.
You want me to want it all,” I laughed, trying to make a joke but failing awfully.
He blinked. Then he blinked again. He grew another two inches it seemed as he stared down at me, that angry face morphing into a serious but somehow slightly softer one.
I smacked him in the stomach with the back of my hand and then reached for his wrist briefly before dropping my hand.
“I’m joking. I promise. Just listen to me, all right?
I told myself a long time ago I never wanted to see him again, and the boys don’t know about that part of my life.
They’ve been through enough shit in their lives.
If you don’t let it go for me, let it go for them. ”
He stayed quiet, staring down at me for so long, a shiver shot down my spine.
It wasn’t until we both seemed to spot Trip about fifteen feet away on a path toward us that he dipped his face closer to mine, his fingers going to my wrist in the same way I had gone for his, but he didn’t move away or let go of me.
Our eyes were locked on each other, staring, intense, as he said, “Tell me what his name is, and I won’t say another word about it. ”
Trip was even closer.
Shit. I whispered his name. “Jeremy.” And then his last name as Trip’s voice reached us.
“Goddamn that line was long.”
Dallas dropped his hand and took a step back, and if it wasn’t for the fists he had at his sides, I wouldn’t have thought anything was wrong.
But I knew, I knew as he glanced around the movie theater that he was looking for someone.
He was looking for the man who I had let get too rough with me.
Who had squeezed me a little too hard while he was mad over a story I’d told him about me cutting a male client’s hair.
The same man who didn’t like the way I smiled at our waiter at a restaurant and had reached under the table and squeezed my thigh so tightly it left bruises.
The same person who called me a whore and slapped me and punched me when I had gone out with my friends without him.
No matter how much I smiled at the kids when they came back out of the arcade, I still couldn’t push aside those memories of Jeremy.
If Trip thought the silence in the cab of Dallas’s truck was weird, he didn’t say a word.
He was too busy typing on his phone’s screen as we dropped Dean off and headed home.
I didn’t know what to say, and I didn’t know what Dallas was capable of saying.
I didn’t think he had it in him to be so mad.
Hadn’t Trip said something along those words before? How he didn’t get mad?
He had barely parked his truck in his driveway, when he told his cousin, “Help me move those boxes on Diana’s lawn into the backyard.”
“You guys don’t have to do that,” I protested.
Trip walked by me. “Take the help, Miss Independent.”
I couldn’t help it, despite everything going around in my brain, I shook my head at him. “Fine. Help me then.”
Between the two of them, and with one, “What the hell is in these? Lead weights?” from Trip, they carried both boxes into the backyard, holding them high above the four-foot fence with only a small amount of grunting to get them over.
The moment the second one was set in the backyard for Mac to bark at later, Trip wiped his hands on his pants. “I’m gonna get going. There’s some business at the bar I need to handle before it closes. Di, we’ll have a play date again, I’m sure.”
“As long as you don’t ever say ‘play date’ again.”
He laughed and gave me a hug. “See you later, honey. Tell the boys I said bye. See ya, Dal,” he called out, closing the gate behind him with a wave of his fingers as he headed toward his bike.
Josh and Louie had gone straight inside, and it was only us two in the yard with the light outside the kitchen door illuminating the space for us.
There wasn’t a specific emotion on Dallas’s face; in fact, he looked so detached and unemotional, part of me felt like I’d fucked up telling him about who I’d been to let that happen to me years ago.
Maybe he saw me different now. He saw that Diana instead of the one I was today and didn’t like her.
I couldn’t blame him. I didn’t like that Diana much either, honestly.
He was looking down at the crates when he finally spoke to me for the first time in almost an hour. “I wanna take a look at the inside so I can see what tools you need. You have a hammer by any chance?”
When I had started rubbing my palm on my jeans, I had no idea. “I have tools. I have a hammer. Let me grab it. It’s inside.”
Dallas still didn’t glance up as I went into my kitchen and grabbed my toolbox from one of the cabinets, lugging the colorful, metal container against my leg as I headed outside with it.
“God, this thing is heavy,” I told him as I walked down the steps with it. His attention was still on the ground as I dropped it right beside one of the crates, admiring the paint job my best friend had given it.
But as I looked up at the man who I thought was my friend and had just, barely an hour ago, offered to go kill someone for me, I frowned.
He was staring, really staring, down at my toolbox.
And as furious as his expression had been when I told him about my ex, it was nothing compared to the one that he had right then.
What was wrong with my box?
I toed it, glancing back and forth between it and him, not understanding.
“It was my brother’s. I kept it after we sold most of his stuff, but it made me too sad and my best friend painted it for me.
I thought it was fun. They look like those Giga Pets I used to have when I was a kid,” I explained.
“They’re puppies. Who doesn’t like puppies? ”
The exhaled, “Jesus fucking Christ,” had me frowning at Dallas.
I watched as both his hands went up to his head and he cupped each side of his skull, interlacing his fingers at the top.
“What is it?” I asked, suddenly getting a little frustrated at his reaction.
He didn’t seem to hear me as he sighed, the sound distraught and almost furious.
“What the hell did I do?” I asked him, not understanding but wanting to.
Dallas was still focused on the toolbox when he answered me, his voice thick and strained. “I can’t do this tonight, Diana. I can’t fucking do this right now.”
“Do what?”
“You’re—” He closed his eyes and covered them with his palms for a moment before dropping his arms at his sides. He finally raised his gaze to mine, something in those hazel irises looking pained as he said, “I’ll help you build it. Don’t ask your dad. I just can’t do it right now. Okay?”
“That’s all right.” I took in his stricken features all over again. “Are you okay?”
He lifted a hand but didn’t confirm yes or no. “I’ll see you tomorrow.” He took a step back and eyed my toolbox one more time, his chest taking a big inhale and a bigger exhale. “Night.”
“Goodnight,” I called out to him as he turned and headed out of the backyard through the gate, closing it behind him. Then he was jogging across the street and disappearing up his pathway to his deck.
What the hell had just happened?