3. The Present
The Present
Carla
I double-checkthe directions on my phone and turn onto the next street. The GPS shows two minutes remaining. I cannot wait to get out of this car and stretch. A cold beer would be nice too.
A flash of light reflects off my rear-view mirror. Did someone just high-beam me? I glance in the mirror and the red Dodge pick-up behind me flashes its lights again, this time accompanied by a blaring horn.
Crazy New York drivers. The speed limit is 25mph but he’s all over me. So I do what any normal person would do. My foot eases off the gas. My speedometer now reads 10mph. “How’s that, asshole?”
And there’s the horn again.
The hotel comes into view. I signal and wait for the oncoming traffic to pass. I’m in the middle of making a left turn when the psycho behind me whips around me—on my left—causing me to slam on the brakes so I don’t crash into him.
“Are you crazy?” I scream out my window. Who passes someone on the driver’s side when she’s trying to turn? Is this really how people on Staten Island drive?
His truck is lifted so high I can’t see his face. “Learn how to drive!” he shouts.
“Good luck with your small penis, you overcompensating douchebag!”
He speeds away, massive tires kicking dust and gravel into the air.
I whip into the lot, park, and shut the engine. Loosening my grip on the steering wheel, I try to slow my breaths and calm down.
Welcome to Staten Island.
After I check in at the front desk, I ask the clerk to point me toward the nearest bar.
“I’ll take a Corona, please.”
I hand the bartender my fake ID and settle against the back of my stool. She pops the top off the bottle and slides it my way. I take a long swig.
“You don’t strike me as the beer type.”
I hold my hand up without looking at who the deep voice belongs to. “Save your energy for someone else, please.” Can’t a girl sit alone at a bar without being hit on?
“It doesn’t really take much energy to have a conversation, but thanks for your concern.”
I roll my eyes and take another few gulps of my beer. I pretend to watch the TV above the bar, though I can feel the stranger’s eyes on me.
“Who are you rooting for?” he asks.
“What?”
“The fight you’re staring at so intently. Who are you rooting for?”
“I’m not rooting for anyone. MMA is a barbaric sport. How these guys get paid mega bucks to beat each other up is beyond me. Just another testament to our Neanderthal society.”
“Those guys aren’t just beating each other up.”
I gesture toward the screen. “Those two dudes are throwing punches at each other. That guy is bleeding profusely from his nose. They certainly aren’t doing ballet.”
The stranger chuckles. “Okay, so they are fighting. But there’s more to it than that. It takes skill and training to do what they do.”
“Oh, look. Now they’re on the ground. That guy’s going to lay on top of the other one for the next five minutes. You’re right. Looks like they’ve had a lot of training.” I drain the rest of my beer and stand. So much for enjoying a drink alone.
“You should stay and watch the fight. I’ll prove to you just how much skill these guys have.”
I spin around to face the annoying stranger, allowing myself to look at him for the first time.
Holy muscles.
I clamp my mouth shut to keep it from falling wide open. Brawny. Strapping. Muscular. Built. None of the words coming to mind seem adequate enough to describe the Herculean god sitting before me. It’s almost a sin he covered himself up with all those tattoos. Almost. The intricate pieces of art twist around his muscular arms, all the way down to his knuckles. A tease of ink pokes out of the neckline of his shirt, stopping halfway up his neck. Every inch of his body has trouble written all over it.
His face though … his face is a different story. It’s so handsome it looks like it doesn’t belong on his body. The icy-blue of his eyes is warmed by his smile, which is complete with a set of dimples. A backwards baseball cap covers his hair, but his thick brows and scruff peppering his chiseled jawline are as dark as a cup of coffee.
He’s an oxymoron. The face of an angel with the body of Satan himself. A dark ray of light. A friendly nemesis. The man is menacingly beautiful.
And I’m gawking.I clear my throat and try to remember what it was he’d asked me. “I’ve had a long trip. I’m going to call it a night.”
“Where you coming from?”
“Florida. Just arrived.”
“And the first place you come to is a bar?”
My eyes narrow and I prop my hand on my hip. “Don’t judge me. You don’t know a thing about me.”
His hands shoot up. “Hey, I wasn’t judging. I was just making an observation.”
“Well, don’t do that either.”
I turn to leave, but I’m stopped by his large, tattooed hand around my arm. It’s a warm, gentle touch, and my skin sizzles. I yank my arm away, angry at my body for having such a reaction to this man.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I didn’t mean to offend you. Sit. Let me buy you another beer.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
He’s waving the bartender over before I can stop him. “Corona for my friend …” He looks at me expectantly.
“I’m not your friend.”
He grins. “Corona for my not-a-friend.”
His smile is so warm and inviting. It doesn’t go with anything else on him. He looks unlike anyone I’ve ever seen. Or maybe he doesn’t, and I’d just been too preoccupied to notice anyone else. Being in love is what I now refer to as preoccupied. It hurts less when I say it that way.
I’d been preoccupied with someone.
I’d been preoccupied with planning our future.
I’d been preoccupied with naming our unborn baby.
Now, I’m just preoccupied and alone.
That thought makes me want another beer, so I reclaim my stool. The bartender replaces my empty bottle with a new one and I tap it against the stranger’s glass. “Cheers.”
“So, how long are you here for?” he asks.
“A week.”
“Are you visiting family?”
“Nope.”
“Are you going to continue to give me one-word answers for the rest of the night?”
“Probably.”
He smirks and returns his attention to the fight.
I tip my bottle toward his full glass of what looks like whiskey. “You haven’t touched your drink.”
“Wow. That was a whole five words.”
One corner of my mouth turns up, but I stop it before it goes any further. This guy doesn’t need any encouragement.
“I’m TJ by the way.”
I shake his extended hand. “Nice to meet you.”
“You’re seriously not going to tell me your name?”
“You’re seriously going to make me watch this fight?”
“You seem convinced of this notion that fighting doesn’t take skill. As a fighter, I feel compelled to convince you otherwise.”
“Ah, you’re a fighter. That explains the muscles.”
“You’re checking out my muscles?”
“I’m not checking them out. I’m just … making an observation.”
TJ chuckles and I steal another glance at him out of the corner of my eye. Those dimples should be illegal. His entire body should be illegal, really. He even has long, dark lashes that frame those striking eyes. It almost hurts to look directly at him. A muscular eclipse.
He points to the screen. “Watch this guy’s next move.”
I tear my eyes off TJ and watch as the man on TV with the bloody nose twists his legs around his opponent’s arm. I cringe as the poor man’s elbow is bent to its limit.
“Why doesn’t he tap out already?”
“Because he’s thinking of a way out.” TJ’s head whips to the left. “Wait. You know about tapping out?”
I nod, still waiting for the man to tap before his arm breaks.
“You’ve watched MMA fights before?”
“I had a boyfriend who was into this garbage.”
He clutches his chest. “Words hurt, you know.”
My lips twitch. “You said you wanted to prove me wrong.” I cross my legs and tap my foot. “Let’s hear it.”
TJ swivels on his stool to face me, exposing his tattooed legs. “Any kind of fighting takes skill. It’s more than size and throwing your fists around. It’s more than how strong you are. Your mind needs to be sharp. You need to know your opponent, assess his skills, and calculate how you’re going to counter those skills. You need to figure out your next attack while you’re in the trenches taking fire.
“On the other hand, you can know all the technical moves in the world and still lose the fight. You need heart, too. You need the tenacity to stay and fight.”
I might not be into fighting, but the way TJ talks about it is the most passionate I’ve heard anybody talk about anything in a long time. It makes me want to hear more. Or maybe I just want him to continue talking so I can keep staring at him.
“So what would you do if you were that guy on TV right now? Your opponent is on top of you. He’s clearly stronger than you, and he’s about to snap your arm like a twig. How do you get out of that?”
“Sometimes, you don’t get out of it,” TJ says. “One of the skills you need to have is the art of losing.”
I raise my beer. “Now there’s a skill we could all use.”
“Oh, yeah? What’ve you lost?”
My stomach twists at the reminder. I take a few long swigs of beer instead of answering. One of my skills is the art of ignoring the things I don’t want to talk about.
His eyebrows lift. “I’ve hit a nerve.”
“To be fair, you’ve pretty much been standing on it this whole time.”
TJ blinds me with another smile, and I allow my mouth to curve a little higher than before.
The few patrons inside the bar shout in unison. The guy whose arm was about to break manages to get out of his opponent’s grip and begins pummeling his face. The referee stops the fight. The underdog wins.
“That,” TJ says, leaning in closer, “takes skill.”
My heart rate kicks up a notch as he lingers inches from my face. He smells clean and cologned, though he looks as if he should smell like whiskey and bad decisions.
I lean away from him because I’m pretty sure my deodorant stopped working somewhere around the sixth hour of my drive. The Taco Bell sweating through my pores probably isn’t helping either.
“How come you’re not fighting on TV?” I ask.
“I’d rather help other fighters make their way.”
“Is that what you do?”
“I own a gym. I train people who need me.”
“You don’t want the fame and fortune?”
TJ sloshes the liquid around in his glass. “That life doesn’t interest me.”
“What interests you?”
“Lots of things.”
“Like?”
“Sexy travelers dressed like secretaries.”
My heart squeezes and I reprimand myself for it. “Like I said before: Save your energy for someone else.”
“I bet you’re a secretary.”
“I was before I got here.”
“Why’d you quit?”
The million dollar question. “I … I don’t know.”
“Was your boss an asshole?”
“Not at all.”
“Then what?” TJ’s head tilts, appraising me while he waits for my answer. When I don’t have one, he signals for the waitress. “Can I see a menu, love?”
The waitress blushes as she twirls her long ponytail around her manicured finger. “You always order the same thing. Why do you even bother with the menu?”
“I like to keep you on your toes. Maybe one day I’ll change it up and surprise you.”
She giggles. “Cheeseburger with fries, then?”
TJ nods. “You hungry, my not-a-friend?”
I hadn’t planned on staying for dinner, but a meal outside a drive-thru sounds enticing right about now. “I’ll have what he’s having. Well-done, please.”
TJ quirks a brow. “You like eating hockey pucks?”
“You like your burgers still mooing on the plate?”
There’s that cocky smirk again. “Why don’t you tell me your name, since we’re about to have dinner together.”
I hold up my index finger. “We are not having dinner together. We’re having dinner … simultaneously.”
“What if I guess it? Will you tell me?”
“The odds of you guessing my name are highly unlikely.”
“I’ll take my chances.” TJ squares his shoulders. “Jessica.”
“Nope.”
“Rebecca.”
“No.”
“Michelle.”
I shake my head.
“Is it a southern name, like Sara Lee? Or one of those fancy millennial names, like McKenzie?”
“I’m not giving you any hints.”
“There’s a billion names to choose from. Narrow it down for me, at least.”
“Knowing my name won’t make a difference.”
“Of course it will. I’d be able to put a name to that beautiful face of yours.”
“Still won’t matter.”
“Maybe you have a name that matches your uptight personality. Barbara? Josephine?”
My skin heats. “I am not uptight! Again, you don’t even know me.”
“Just making another observation.” TJ makes a show of surveying my body from head to toe. “That outfit couldn’t have been comfortable driving all those hours in.”
“Let me guess: You’re going to feed me a line about how my outfit would look better on your bedroom floor.”
“See? I knew you were uptight. Who says we have to have sex in my bedroom?”
I roll my eyes. This is why he’s so hot. He has to be, with such an irritating personality.
When the waitress places our plates in front of us, I scarf my burger down in silence, order a third beer, and polish off my fries. Either I’m starving, or my best friend was right when she told me New York food is way better than the food in Florida.
TJ pushes his plate toward me. “Want the rest of my fries?”
“You’re not going to finish them?”
“You look hungry and I’m a little scared. You attacked that burger like a scene from Animal Planet.”
My smile breaks through and I duck behind the thick curtain of my hair.
“Hey, don’t hide that smile. I’ve been waiting to see if it would show.”
Honestly, I was waiting for it too.
“It looks good on you. You should smile more often.”
“I used to.”
TJ stretches his arms out on either side of him, resting one on the back of my chair. “And does that have something to do with your MMA-watching ex-boyfriend?”
“Do you always ask this many personal questions to people you don’t know?”
“People find it easier to open up to a stranger. It’s like going to confession. You lay out all your sins and feel better when you’re done.”
“You don’t feel better because it’s a stranger. You feel better because you believe the priest absolves you of your sins. Huge difference.”
“Why don’t you ask me something, then? I’ll tell you a secret.”
I set my empty beer bottle on the bar. “Fine. Why order a glass of whiskey if you’re not going to drink it?”
“I used to be an alcoholic.” TJ shrugs like it’s no big deal. “I come here to celebrate what I’ve overcome.”
“Or you just like to torture yourself.”
Though he doesn’t respond, TJ’s eyes meet mine and tell me I’m right. In their glacial depths, pain reflects back at me.
My stomach clenches. “Why are you punishing yourself?”
“I guess I like the pain. It’s a reminder that I’m still here … in the fight.”
“Do you use fighting metaphors for everything in life? I bet you quote Rocky on the regular.” I drop my forehead into my palm and groan. “You have Eye of the Tiger as your ringtone, don’t you?”
“Alright, smartass. My turn, and you have to answer. What’s your story? Why are you in New York?”
“No story. Just here to visit my best friend.”
His eyebrows lift, prompting me for more.
I sigh. “My best friend moved here after she graduated high school. I haven’t seen her in a while and I miss her.”
“So why aren’t you with her right now?”
“She thinks I’m arriving tomorrow.”
“And she thinks this because …”
“Because that’s what I told her.”
“Why are you here now?”
I breathe in and out several times, picking apart the crumpled napkin in my plate. I haven’t talked to anyone about this. Maybe TJ’s right. Maybe opening up to someone, anyone, would make me feel better. Besides, it’s not like I’d ever have to see him again.
“My ex and I were together for four years. We were engaged. Everything was going according to plan. Then I got pregnant. We were careful, you know. I was on the pill, but they always warn you about that small possibility. Joe didn’t want me to keep the baby, but I couldn’t kill it. I couldn’t just pretend like it never happened. So he broke up with me.”
“You’re pregnant?” TJ asks, his eyes darting from my empty beer bottle to my stomach. “You know that could hurt the baby.”
I shake my head and tell him, “There is no baby.”
TJ’s eyebrows collapse. “What do you mean?”
“I had a miscarriage.” I shrug, trying to seem as nonchalant about my devastation as TJ was about his addiction. “I lost everything.”
“You didn’t lose everything. Plan A didn’t work out, so now you move on to Plan B.”
“I don’t have a Plan B.”
“As long as you’re alive, you’ll always have a Plan B.”
“What if I don’t like Plan B?”
“Plan A wasn’t meant to be. You’ve got to let it go.”
I let go of Joe. My uterus let go of the egg. I let go of my job. I pretty much let go of my sanity. I’ve let go of so much, I could change my name to Elsa. An ice fortress of solitude does sound enticing right now.
I signal for the bartender. “You know, I used to believe in things being meant to be. Now I realize it’s just a way to comfort ourselves. When something doesn’t go our way, we claim it wasn’t meant to be and that helps us cope. Maybe bad things just happen. Maybe there isn’t a reason for any of it.”
“Does it matter if there’s a reason? The bad shit still happens either way.”
I nod as I pull out my wallet to pay my tab.
TJ intercepts and slips the bartender his card. “Dinner’s on me.”
“Oh, no. No. That’s really not necessary. You don’t have to do that.” I reach over the bar to hand the bartender my cash, but she winks and walks away with TJ’s card.
So much for solidarity, sister.
I stand and smooth out my skirt. “Thank you. You didn’t have to do that.”
“I wanted to,” TJ says, signing the credit card slip. “It was a pleasure meeting you … Sarah?”
“Still no.”
He walks out with me into the parking lot. “Do you need a ride?”
“I’ve got my own.”
TJ stops beside his vehicle and swings the door open.
My eyes go wide. “It was you!”
“What was me?”
I wave my hand at his truck. “The douchebag in the red truck who cut me off before I got here. It was you.”
TJ’s head falls back as he barks out a laugh. “You’re the one who told me I was overcompensating for my little dick?”
“I called it a small penis, for the record.”
One thick brow arches. “Don’t I get a chance to set the record straight?”
“Let the record show he drives a red, lifted truck.” I point to his tires. “With rims. Seems like an open-and-shut case to me.”
“Tough jury.”
I shake my head, raking my eyes over him. “It’s surprising, someone of your size having a small penis.”
TJ steps into my personal space until he’s so close I have to crane my neck to look at him. “Oh, it’s surprising. Just not in the way you think.”
Energy pulses at my veins with his large frame towering over me, but I don’t budge. I can’t. TJ’s intense gaze pins me to the ground. I’m an ant under his magnifying glass, and all I can do is burn.
“When’s the last time you did something spontaneous?” he asks. “Something you didn’t plan. Something you didn’t see coming.”
“I just quit my job.”
“Before that.”
Never. I hike a shoulder. “I don’t know.”
“And how did that feel, walking out without a plan?” His fingers trail up my arms, leaving goosebumps in their wake.
My chest heaves with ragged breaths. “Scary.”
“And?” He drags his knuckles along my neck.
My throat’s dry, voice a whisper. “Freeing.”
“Getting warmer.” His thumb strums my bottom lip.
Every cell in my body screams, drawing me closer to him. “It was … exhilarating.”
“There she is.” His tongue slips out and wets his lips, like a hungry wolf who’s about to devour his prey. “It’s good to feel like that once in a while. Don’t you agree?”
I shake my head, then I nod. I have no idea what he’s asking anymore. All I can concentrate on is his massive presence, his touch, those velvety lips. He’s scrambling my brain.
Without asking, TJ covers my mouth with his. His lips are so plush and warm, I melt against them. He tugs my hair as his tongue slides out, begging for entrance. I should push him off me. Instead, I open for him, eager and willing. The kiss is slow, full of passion, and I feel it all the way down to my toes. I can say with absolute conviction: I’ve never been kissed like this before.
TJ exudes such confidence and it feels like it’s all transferring to me. Like in this moment, I’ve become someone else. Maybe it’s the alcohol, or maybe I left the old me back in Florida. Either way, I can’t seem to care that I’m kissing a stranger in a parking lot outside a bar called Big Nose Kate’s.
One night. I just want one night.
I want to forget.
I want to be free.
I want to let go.
That’s why, when TJ asks me if I want to go back to his place, I say yes.