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He never answered me, but by the time the sun crept into my bedroom, I was pretty sure I got my reply.
I woke on my stomach, wrapped around an oversized pillow. Pushing the dried, sweaty red mess of hair off of my forehead, I turned to see I was again alone. It did little to stop the smile on my face.
In the shower, I went over my loss of control and the way I’d handled myself with Daniello. He might have found my lack of etiquette amusing, but I found it disgusting. Last night I’d lost order and to a complete stranger.
“Act like a lady, you’ll get treated like one.”
It had been years since I’d even thought of the voice that belonged to the man who had groomed me to become one of Tennessee’s finest debutants. Squeezing my eyes tightly shut, I cleared my head until the image of him dispersed, forcing thoughts of Daniello and our night together to take their place.
Washing between my thighs, I felt the delicious ache, burning, and Daniello’s absence. He’d been gentle last night. I assumed he’d sensed my vulnerability. He was good at reading me and yet he’d commented more than once that I was acting like a crazy person. Pressing my forehead to the shower wall, I groaned in embarrassed agreement.
If having Daniello near me aided in helping me abandon my good sense, maybe the whole situation needed to end. At the same time, I was having way too much fun to stop our charade. In the end, it was up to me to get my shit together. This wasn’t about emotions or the possibility of falling in love. This was about him seeing behind more than a decade old façade and wanting to uncover what lay beneath.
And once again, it was up to me to make sure that the poor piece of Tennessee white trash laid dormant to the woman I’d evolved to. A force to be reckoned with, business owner, and woman of means.
“Keep it tight between the ears and between the legs, and you become every man’s fantasy.”
“Ray,” I whispered as if anyone could hear me. It seemed all the ghosts of my pasts were making an appearance these days. While turning the shower off, I had expected ghost number three to show up in the reaper’s cloak and tell me to change my wicked ways before it was too late.
But this wasn’t A Christmas Carol, there was no Tiny Tim, and the only family needing more compassion were whispers, images, faces of my past that took residence with the rest of the ghosts in the audience while my life played out on the screen. I’d left them all behind, but it seemed these days I wasn’t trying hard enough.
It had been months or longer since I’d thought of Ray Tyco. Turning off the shower, I wiped away the moisture from my skin and cleared a visible path across the mirror to take a good look at the woman across from me.
“If you intend to play with the big boys, kitten, you have to keep your emotions in check at all times. The only time a man shows any sort of emotion in the business world is when he’s screwing or being screwed, and even then he may be hard pressed to reveal it. The world you are about to enter has no place for quivering lips and a weak mindset.”
I owed everything to that man, and yet he’d collected. He’d collected a piece of me I would never get back.
An involuntary shiver drifted down my spine as I gave myself a stern internal lashing.
Maybe it was thoughts of Laz and Ray or the fact that I knew it was time to try to reach out to Amber again. Either way, my past had nothing to do with my present or my situation with Daniello.
I sat down on my couch and texted Cedric.
Me: It’s time.
Cedric: I’ll make the call.
The last time I’d seen Amber, I’d just graduated from Harvard. I barely had enough money to get us by, but I was determined to try to get her away from my parents. My mother intercepted our reunion as Amber remained locked in our house, peeking out the window behind the same tattered curtain that I’d been forced to hit with a broom daily. Her face haunted me as it looked so much like my own, a younger and far more burdened version of myself.
The confrontation on the front porch that day had been a long time coming, and I recognized the fear in Amber’s eyes as she stared at me through the window. I hadn’t seen her in several years, but I could see the itch in her posture, the constant movement of her eyes from me to the front door. She was thinking of fleeing as my mother screamed at me in her meth-induced state. Though I tried to barrel past her, she pushed me hard on my back and began tearing at my clothes. I managed to get her off me as I watched Amber fall apart before my eyes, her indecision to leave showing in the agonizing look that painted her features. I’d gone back later that night to find her window nailed shut. My mother kept watch through the living room, pacing continually like a rabid guard dog to keep me at bay. She had her drugs to thank for her watchdog abilities.
Amber was fifteen then, and as I looked at her through the window, I saw myself so clearly. The resemblance was uncanny. And also, I knew her life, and I knew her need to escape. I wanted nothing more than to give it to her, and though I wasn’t exactly in the position to be a parent, I couldn’t help but linger.
I waited for her after school, as we’d agreed through hushed whispers through the window glass the night before, in vain. Maybe it was out of fear that she hadn’t shown, or maybe she resented me for leaving her all those years ago at my mother’s heavy hands. Either way, this time she’d left me. I’d waited for hours knowing she’d had a chance to break free at least once in the day and fought hard to respect her decision, though the urge to rip her away was debilitating.
Forced to leave town due to the danger of Laz finding out I had returned, I fled back to Boston, no closer to getting my sister out than I had been when I left. With me, she’d had a chance.
She’d never left Dyer, this much I’d found out through Cedric, who still kept up with a few people in town. She was nearly the same age that I was when I went to see her. I’d spent so many years buried in my career and working hard to get myself into a better situation, I’d abandoned he
r altogether.
I’d hoped she’d do the same for herself. I’d hope to have to track her down one day and find her married, happy, and successful. What burdened me was the fact that she hadn’t left, which almost guaranteed all my hopes for her were for nil. Dyer wasn’t a place to build a life. It lacked life, lacked oxygen, period. The town was a dead end cloud of dust that could only suffocate.
And I was sure my future would bring me back to it sooner rather than later. I jumped on my couch, deep in thought as my phone vibrated.
Cedric: She has your number.
I’d reached out. That was all I could do. It was up to her at this point. Deep down, I’d hoped for a reunion of two.
