28. SKYE
SKYE
I woke up with the ghost of his hands still on my hips, my body a live wire that hadn’t been switched off since Sunday night.
I’d been thinking about him since I ran out of that theater.
Thinking about his hands on my body. The way he felt deep inside of me.
It was unlike anything I had ever experienced. It was a line I shouldn’t have crossed.
Right behind the wanting, same as always now, came the dread.
The wine loosened my tongue and made me mention my sister.
Why would I tell him that? It was the partial truth of what happened between my ex-husband and me.
After all of the abuse and the set-ups, he eventually ended up with my sister.
I suspect they plotted to be together for a while before they finally ended up together.
And she was with him in DC. This bitch had taken so much from me. What was she doing here with him? I’d gotten away from them. I’d done the work to set up a life far away. And there they were in the casino together.
When I mentioned her to him last night, I was so overwhelmed with hurt. I rarely thought of the role she played in my demise. But between that wine, his comfort, and the low lights of the theater, I opened up about some shit that I had been holding in for a very long time.
It was so damn reckless of me. My background didn’t hold up to scrutiny. It was a matter of time before Justice started to pull at the threads and I had to be out before that happened.
I was running out of days to be careless like that.
I’d started counting them for real. Some nights I lay in my room above his and did the math like a woman doing time, how many more weeks until I’d saved enough to disappear clean, how many days until Roman either forgot my face or found it again.
I used to count down to freedom. Lately I’d caught myself counting down to the day I’d have to walk away from a man I had no business wanting in the first place, and that math hurt worse than anything Roman had ever put on my body.
I was still doing it in my head when Rita called for me from the sunroom.
“Everly.” Her voice carried down the hall, warm and certain. “Everly, girl, come here and sit with me.”
“Ms. Rita, it’s Skye. Not Everly.”
“Ev, you’re always playing games with me.” She patted the cushion beside her, not the least bit troubled by her own mistake. “You got such a good heart, you know that. When the time’s right, you’ll get him back. You will.”
“That’s what I’m working on,” I said, because there was no use arguing a woman out of wherever her mind had gone that morning. You met her there instead. Or perhaps she had a sixth sense about things. There was someone I was trying to get back.
“But then you’re gonna leave me.”
“I’ll always care about you, Ms. Rita.”
Two different conversations, running in the same room at the same time, and only one of us knew it.
She reached over and patted my hand like she’d settled something between us, then her face lit up with a memory only she could see.
“Remember when Jo-Boy hit you?” She let out a laugh, sharp and delighted.
“Ooh, I didn’t know pretty dark skin could bruise up that ugly.
I was so mad at that man. Told you to boil them grits hot and fry up that bacon.
And he laid up in that bed hollering about wanting breakfast in bed.
” She slapped her knee. “And you carried it in there and threw the pot and pan at him! Lord, Ev, I didn’t think you had it in you.
But you got away from that man, didn’t you.
You got away.” Her smile faded down into something quieter.
“And you left me once. Don’t you do it again. ”
I sat there with her hand in mine and let a stranger’s life settle over me like a blanket that didn’t belong to me, and it took everything I had not to let my face show what that last line did to my chest.
Rita coughed then, hard, a deep wet sound that doubled her over, and I was up and back with a glass of water before she finished the second round of it. She drank it slow, her hand shaking around the glass, and when she looked up at me again some of the fog had cleared.
“Thank you, chile,” she said, and this time she said it like she knew exactly who I was.
The driver dropped the girls off a little after four. Dream came flying up the walk and threw herself into Rita’s lap without breaking stride. Storie came in behind her at her own pace, backpack over one shoulder, and walked right past both of us without a single word.
We settled around the kitchen island with a bowl of fruit and some crackers between us, and for a minute it was quiet enough to almost feel normal.
Then Dream, swinging her feet off the barstool, looked over at her sister’s wrist. “I want something of mommy’s too. Why did daddy give that to you and not me?”
Storie didn’t even look up from her phone. “Well, mommy loved me more. She knew me longer. Duh.”
“Storie!” Rita and I shouted it at the exact same time.
Dream’s face fell in on itself.
“What? It’s true.” Storie set the phone down, entirely unbothered.
“She did know me longer. And when you know someone longer, you will obviously grow more love for them. Also, Daddy already said when I’m older I get to pick whatever I want of hers first. Dream gets whatever’s left over that I didn’t want. ”
“Storie.” I said it flat. “Stop being mean to your sister.”
“What?!” She rounded on me like I’d swung.
“Stop being mean to your sister,” I said again, slower.
“You are not my mother,” she said, “no matter how much daddy likes putting his thing in you.”
The kitchen went dead silent.
“Little girl!” Rita’s hand shot out and closed around Storie’s arm, and Storie ripped it away hard enough to knock a cracker off the counter.
She stomped up the stairs without another word, and slammed the door hard enough to rattle the light fixture in the hallway.
Dream, small and still processing, turned her wide eyes up at me. “What did Daddy put in you?”
I changed the subject so fast I nearly gave myself whiplash, something about ice cream and whether we had any left in the freezer, and Dream’s face brightened right back up like the last two minutes had never happened.
Over the top of her head, Rita caught my eye.
And winked.