RECKLESS — Bad Boy Criminal Romance (7 page)

              “Cosmopolitan,” Maya says.

              “And a J&B for you, right?” Jen grins and turns away from us to order the drinks at the bar.

              “Is everything alright?” Maya asks.

              “Yeah, fine.”  My face feels flush and my stomach ill.

              Jen turns back and hands us our drinks.  “So Maya,” she starts.  “What’s something you don’t like about Tom?”

Maya exhales a giggle, surprised by the question, and says, “Um … Nothing, really.  I love him.”

“Really?”  Jen asks.  “Not a single thing you don’t like?  Wow.”  She turns to me.  “I guess you’re just the perfect man.  Or at least that’s the way you present yourself.  Maybe you can tell us.  What’s a flaw of yours that neither of us knows about?”

I look at Maya.  She looks back, confused by what’s going on.  “I don’t know.  Maybe sometimes I can be too consumed with my work.  But since I met her,” I say, nodding to Maya, “I love being with her so much that I haven’t let anything distract me from that.”

“The perfect answer,” Jen says.  “How did I know that was coming?”

              “Take it easy.”  I stare at her.  “How many of those vodkas have you had?”

              “Not nearly as many as that night we met.”

              “We met in a bar,” I mention to Maya.  “Right after I got to town I stopped in for a drink.”

              “I was responsible for getting you some free drinks that night too,” Jen adds.  “I guess you don’t like ever paying for drinks, huh?”

              I smile, shrug.

              “Is that your flaw?” she questions brazenly.  “Are you cheap?”

              “He’s not cheap,” Maya counters, genuinely offended by the question.  “He bought me these earrings as a gift a couple weeks ago just because he felt like it.”

              Jen only now takes a close look at Maya’s earrings.  Her eyes widen as she almost immediately recognizes them.  “I know those!”  She steps closer to Maya, towering over her, trying to further inspect them.  “Those are my roommate’s!”

              “What?!” Maya asks, taking a step backward.

              Puzzled, Jen looks at me and tries to compute the circumstances, but she’s unable.  She looks back at Maya and demands, “Take those off.”

              “No!” Maya refuses.

              With her right hand Jen reaches for Maya’s left ear.  I stop Jen, slightly pushing her backward.  Jen staggers a step back from Maya and drops the vodka glass from her left hand.  It shatters on the floor.  Enraged, Jen looks at the shards of glass on the floor and shouts, “Fuck!”  She lunges again for Maya.  I drop my glass of J&B and it too shatters.  I grab Jen’s arms, holding her from moving any closer to Maya.  “Let go!” She tries to thrash her body away from me but she doesn’t budge.  Within seconds two security guards are separating us.

              One pulls me aside and asks, “What the hell’s going on?”

              “That crazy bitch tried to pull off my girlfriend’s earrings.  She’s drunk out of her mind.  And on pills, I think.”

              He glances over at Jen, who is being questioned by the other guard.  Her footing is wobbly, the alcohol she’s consumed plus the adrenaline from the confrontation having gotten to her.  She belligerently ignores the guard’s questions, demanding she have the earrings.

              “Look, that girl’s pretty fucked up,” I say to the guard holding me.  “She’s in bad shape.  And me and my girlfriend can’t stay here after this whole scene anyway.  Just hold her here and we’ll leave.  Maybe after we’re gone you can calm her down and get her some help.”

              The guard thinks quickly, then nods and says, “Alright, man.  We’ll take care of her.  Thanks for cooperating.”

              I grab Maya by the wrist and drag her to the parking lot before she can say a word.  In the car speeding out onto the street she says, “Oh my god, that was embarrassing!  What was that?!”

              “I have no idea.  She’s out of her mind.”

              “How do you know her?”

              “I don’t really.  Like I said, I met her briefly one time.  I had a feeling she was unbalanced and I had no desire to ever see her again.  Her being here tonight was just pure bad luck.”

              “Why was she so obsessed with my earrings?  What was she babbling about?”

              “Who knows?  I’m sorry.  I’m sorry you had to go through that.  I feel horrible.”

              Maya looks at me and sighs, still perplexed but without any idea what else to say or ask me.  Gradually she calms herself but the vibe between us for the next several days is strained, different than it’s ever been before.

              On a Wednesday morning, I roll out of bed.  I’m not very hungry.  I think about eating an orange before getting dressed and going out for the day.

              Maya stirs and stretches.  “Can you put on some coffee?” she requests sleepily.

              I open her bedroom door and walk into the living room.  On the living room sofa sits her father.

              I stand before him completely naked.  I stare at him a moment, not saying anything, dazed, not believing this can be reality.  “I should probably go get Maya,” I finally muster.

              “Yeah,” he responds with gravity to his voice.  “You probably should.”

              I return to the bedroom and announce his presence.

              “What?!”  Her lethargy evaporated, Maya jumps out of bed.  “Are you kidding?  What is he doing?”

              “Uh, I’m not sure.  Just hanging out on the couch?”

              “Oh god.”  Maya speedily dresses herself and steps into the living room.  Irritated, she asks her father, “What are you doing here?”

              “What is your boyfriend doing here?”

              “None of your business.”

              “Excuse me?  Remember as long as you’re living in an apartment that I’m paying for, then it is my business.”

              “So he slept over.  So what?  I know you like to have this idealistic vision of me as your perfect little girl.  But that’s not reality.  Alright?  We slept together.  Is that what you want to hear?”

              “When I visited you last week his car was here.  Since then I’ve stopped by the parking lot each morning.  And every morning his car is there.  And every morning it’s parked in a different space.  So I know he’s been coming and going.  But he’s always here in the morning.  Which leads me to think he goes to work every day but he comes back here every night.  And he always stays until the next morning.”

              Maya doesn’t say anything.

              “Is there anything I have wrong?”

              “You’ve been spying on me?” Maya asks, revolted.  “That’s unbelievable.”

              “What about you lying to me?  What do you call that?”

              “I can’t believe this.”

              “How long has he been living with you?”

              “I don’t know.  A while.”

              “And you thought this was okay without asking me?”

              She exhales a laugh.  “Well, it wasn’t hard for me to imagine what you might think about it.”

              “What’s the point?  Why does he need to live with you?  He could visit any time.”

              “I wanted him to.  I wanted to be with him as much as possible.  I love him.”  I hear Maya begin to cry lightly.

              Her father’s voice changes.  Reacting to her tears, probably feeling like a bully, he attempts to comfort her.  “You can love him without having him live with you.  And if he really loves you, he can ask you to marry him and then you can live together.”

              Maya’s tears subside.  She composes herself.

              “And besides,” he father adds.  “If you’re living together already, what’s his motivation to marry you?  He already has all the benefits.”

              Maya doesn’t respond, but I can feel her disgust with him.  “I’m going in the bedroom to talk to Tom,” she says.

              “I want him out immediately,” he says.  “I want him to pack right now.”

              “He has work,” she says, exasperated.

              “Well, he can take the morning off.  I have.  Not that I should be, but I’m as angry at him as I am with you.  I want to see him out.”

              She enters the bedroom and closes the door behind her.  I stand in the middle of the room and she walks up to me.  Her face contorts and she buries it into my chest and cries.  “I’m so sorry,” she whimpers.

I put my arms around her.  “It’s fine.  We’ll be fine,” I say, the only thing I can think of.

“He wants you to pack now.  I’ll help you,” she offers.  “Where will you go?”

“I’ll find a hotel.  Don’t worry.”

I have two suitcases.  In her closet most of clothes are on hangers.  She helps fold them.  “You know,” she says, her spirits rising.  “Everything should work out.  Our relationship has moved really fast.  And even though I want you to stay, this will give you a chance to find your own place and finally get settled.  My dad will cool off and get over this in time.”

I nod.

“What are you thinking?”

“I … I’m thinking that I really don’t want to go.  Being here with you was all so perfect.  And … I like you a lot.  Really, I do.  Fuck.”  I sit on the edge of the bed and rub my brow.

She sits beside me and takes my hand.  “It’s okay.  We’re still perfect,” she says.  “You’re the guy I was waiting to find.  I knew we were going to be together from the first time we met.  And I still feel it.”

I sigh.

“Do you?” she asks, tenderly nudging me.  “Do you still feel like we’ll be married someday?”

I think a moment.  The closeness and feelings I have for her I wish didn’t exist.  I shouldn’t have let my emotions get involved.  I became too comfortable and complacent.  This is the last time I’m ever going to see her.  I feel awful.  I decide to never let this happen again.  “Yeah,” I finally say.  “I think so.”

Maya returns to the living room and speaks with her father.  I brush my teeth in the bathroom.  I grab my two suitcases off Maya’s bed and walk into the living room.  At the front door I say goodbye.  Despite her father standing nearby I kiss her for the last time – softly, deeply.

I take the elevator to the parking lot.  In a space near the front I see a black Lincoln Navigator, Maya’s father’s car.  After I load my suitcases in the trunk of my car, I walk back over to his.  On the edge of the lot is a rock garden.  I pick up a rock and hurl it through his driver’s side window.  I reach inside and unlock the door.  I swipe the GPS off his dashboard.  It’s stupid and impulsive, I know.  But sometimes when I’m upset I can be stupid and impulsive.

I start up my Toyota and leave Miami.

Chapter Five

MEMPHIS, Tn. — Seventeen minutes after I was born, so was my twin sister Ariel.  The following five years we lived in an apartment with our mother and father.  Our father was German-Irish.  Our mother was half-black, half-French.  Both Ariel and I had dark hair, though straight, and our skin had only a touch of color.  We both looked white.  If anything, we were occasionally mistaken as part Italian or Spanish.

Our father was home at odd hours, during which he would usually have loud and sometimes violent confrontations with our mother.  At age six, Ariel and I moved out with our mother into a tiny two-bedroom, one bathroom house in the Binghamton area.

Ariel and I were always close.  While still with our father, she and I would run away and hide together once any arguing began between our parents.  At our new house, we often played together in our backyard, a smallish square plot of patchy grass.  We made that our home in late summer and started kindergarten shortly thereafter.

Lester Elementary was only blocks away.  Following the first day, our mother allowed us to ride our bicycles to and from school.  She worked two jobs at the Oak Court Mall in the heart of the city – one as a restaurant hostess and one in a clothing store – so picking us up wasn’t an option.  Ariel and I had a house key and always remembered to lock the front door upon our mother’s insistence.  However, we would play in the backyard until dark or until we simply exhausted ourselves.  Sometimes I would pretend to be a superhero and chase Ariel who pretended to be the villain.  Other times I’d be the bad guy being chased.

At Lester, we were placed in the same kindergarten class and were fast learners.  However, we struggled to fit in with our classmates, socializing almost exclusively with each other.  Our teacher noticed and held a conference with our mother early one morning before school began.  That weekend our mother sat us down on the couch and explained that I was being moved to a different class so that we each could make new friends more easily.  Ariel and I cried, our mother attempting to comfort us in vain.

I was mostly a good kid, though I always had a thing about cops.  Ever since I was young I was terrified of them and would scream at their sight, much to my mother’s embarrassment.  When I got older and could talk, I would see them and yell, “The cops are coming!  They’re going to kill us!”  Around our neighborhood I would find discarded soda cans and fill them with rocks and throw them at cop cars.