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I lock up and step around him. He doesn’t try to stop me. I get into the Honda, irritated that he will probably call Mick to head me off at the pass. But the key card in my purse is insurance that Mick can’t avoid me. I stew the entire drive to the Gold Coast address.
When the driver pulls up to the front, I thank him and turn to find someone opening the back door. Stiles. I ignore the hand he extends. I get that he’s just doing his job, but I’m not in any mood to be gracious to someone aiding and abetting Mick’s protection of me.
Securing the clutch beneath my arm, I climb out and notice the doorman from the night of the storm.
“Good evening.” He smiles, recognition dawning on him as well. “It’s nice to see you again. Better weather this time.”
“Yes, it is.” I return his smile.
“I’m George.”
“I’m Dee.”
Stiles glowers as if I had just divulged national secrets.
“I’ll ring Mr. Peters for you.”
“That won’t be necessary, George.” I flash the card from my purse. “I’ll show myself up,” I add before Stiles tries to accompany me.
Micah
Whiskey was never my drink. Yet sitting in my darkened living room, slouched on the couch with the bottle in my hand, I intend to get drunk enough for the taste not to matter.
I know better. I know it’s nothing more than an escape, a crutch, a one-way trip to Hell. And I don’t give a damn.
Malcolm had given me my first glass of whiskey before I was Dwayde’s age. I remember the fast burn down my throat and the way I’d gagged and my eyes teared up. He’d called me a pussy and made me drink the whole thing. I remember that the harsh bitterness eventually mellowed out and warmed my belly. Mostly, I remember the gratifying sense of numbness.
Nevertheless, when I began drinking in my teens, I stayed away from whiskey and most of the hard stuff at first, thinking that would make meless like my old man. I believed in tainted blood and the sins of the father. But could never quite reconcile that when I met Dwayde and started up Papa’s Kids. Those boys had come through horrors worse than mine, yet they had so much good in them.
I rationalized that all the bad I had gotten from Malcolm must have been diluted by the decency and compassion of my mother for the first eight years of my life and by the Torreses after that. But it didn’t change what was in me.
I flex my knuckles where the skin is split and swollen. It’s the first time I’d ever hit him. Wasn’t nearly as satisfying as I’d expected it to be. I contemplate the alcohol. Studying it like a fucking book when what I want is to get drunk enough for the thoughts to stop. I’d already made my decision. There is no price I wouldn’t pay to protect Dee. Money’s the easy part. Living without her…Christ! But that was a problem for tomorrow. As for tonight, I’m going to drown out my bleak future in the rest of this Jameson.
ChapterSeventeen
Dee
As soon as I getoff the elevator, my determined steps slow to a halt. My momentum lost to stunned surprise. There’s a woman outside Mick’s door. I recall her immediately as the same strawberry-blonde who had shown up at his place the last time I was here. Lisa. She’s not easy to forget.
Her attire then had been a tight, cropped tank with jean cutoffs. Tonight, it’s a silk kimono that stops short at her crotch, showing off tanned, toned legs. Her toes, encased in high-heeled slippers, are painted to match her boosted lips. Glossy bloodred.
She stares a moment longer before she slips on her bitch face and regards me in the way of a high school mean girl. A look I remember well. My instinct is to flee as my teenage self had done many times. But I refuse to give in to the feeling of being that scared, fat girl hiding in the back stairwell.
Proving I’m past that, I make the walk forward under the scrutiny of her judgey blue eyes.
“Mick’s neighbor, right?” I resist tugging at my dress. “Liza.”
“It’s Lisa.” She smirks. “And you are?”
“Here to see Mick.”
“Oh, this is awkward.”
When I don’t take the bait, Lisa gives her hair a little flick and leans in, giving me a whiff of cloyingly sweet perfume. “I’m not usually one to kiss and tell, but woman-to-woman, I’m lucky I can still walk.”
My smile is indulgent. “I don’t know which is sadder, your repeated attempts to get Mick’s attention or your ridiculous effort to make me jealous.”
“No, honey…” Her tone turns nasty. “What’s sad is you coming here in that cheap dress thinking Micky could really be into someone like you.”
