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Xavier peers at the storefront as we drive past. “It looks great. But why didn’t you name it, ‘How the Cookie Crumbles,’ or something like that?”
“OK, can we not try to redesign my entire business, please?” My lips clamp shut in a grumpy pout as my mind is drawn back to the almost constant anxiety about the looming rent-increase and the overdue truck payment and—wait, Xavier just said he’s got a few hundredthousand dollars stashed away, didn’t he?
But that’s his money not yours, I tell myself as we enter the dark alley that never gets any sunlight, is always cast in shadow. Now suddenly my thoughts darken as we slow to a stop outside my closed back door and the real world full of practical considerations floods me until I’m drowning in a million questions about how Xavier and I are actually going to deal with things like living together and sharing money and running the store . . . and . . . and ohmygod, will I evenhavea store if we’re together?
Because won’t we have to leave the Boston area? Ohmygod, will we ever be in one place long enough for me to actually do what I love? And why is Xavier so calm and cool about it? Does he expect that I’ll just give up my passion and go on the run for the rest of my life?
I mean, Iwoulddo that, comes the strangely certain response. It’s not that I wouldn’t. It’s just that he hasn’t evenaskedif I would do that. In fact he’s talking about how to fix my business like it’s all settled, likewe’reall settled, that somehow the whole escaped-convict thing is just going to fuckingdisappearand—
“You all right, baby?” comes Xavier’s voice through my racing thoughts that are going downhill alarmingly fast. “Hey, look at me. Remember what I said. It’s all going to come together. I promise. I promise it’ll all—”
“Don’t promise something you can’t control!” I shriek, my fingers still gripping the steering wheel tight even though we’re stopped in the alley and my engine is turned off. “Andnoneof this is under control, Xavier! You’re going to be running for therest of your life, and you haven’t even asked me if I’m willing to run with you, and you say that my debt is no problem because you’ve got money stashed away, but that’s your money not mine, and it’s stolen drug money anyway, and besides, there’s no point in keeping my business afloat if I’m going to have to shut it down to go on the run with you, and maybe there’s no point at all, Xavier, maybe there’s just no fucking point to anything at all.” The despair that’s lived in me for so long comes screaming back like a demon, sinking its cruel claws back into me, dragging me back to that dark lonely place with cackling glee, reminding me that I’m stupid to believe that what I’m feeling is love, stupid to think that it’s going to magically solve problems that are unsolvable, fix things that are unfixable. “It’s just how the cookie—”
“No!” Xavier shouts, pounding both fists on the dashboard, his face peaked with dark frustration, like my despair is digging its poison claws into him too, pulling us both away from this ridiculous fantasy that it’s all going to come together, making him see that he can’t promise what he can’t control, that it’s a pointless promise and it’s never going to come true no matter how badly we want it to come true.
“No!” Xavier roars again, and I can see the frustrated rage burning in his brutal body, and suddenly I’m sobbing in my seat, fumbling to release my seatbelt so I can get out of this claustrophobic truck. “Itwillcome together, Connie. You’ll see. There’s no way we got put together like this without there being a way out. The way out is coming, babe. It’s coming for us. Just wait and see. It’s coming for us.”
“Well, it better fucking come soon, Xavier,” I sniffle. “Because I’m at the end of my rope. There’s just so much going on. The police will be here in a couple of hours. It’s Valentine’s Day and there’s going to be a rush of customers around that time too. Oh, and Patrick or Padraig or whatever he likes to be calledis somewhere out there, and you want him to make a move so you can . . . so you can do what, exactly?”
My fingers fumble with the seatbelt buckle as I sniffle and sob, hating myself for crying. I can’t get it unbuckled, and I huff out a childishly frustrated breath and cross my arms over my boobs and sit there still buckled up as Xavier shrugs coolly in the passenger seat.
“So I can kill him,” he says with an unsettling calmness. “Kieran had it coming even before I found out that he’s stalked you for years. He put out a hit on me in prison, made sure it happened right after he was released, so if I survived, I couldn’t get to him. Well, I’ve got to him now. And he’s going to get what’s coming to him.”
I’m about to say something, but now Xavier’s unbuckled his seatbelt and is squeezing between the seats, reaching to open the hatch to the back, presumably to get his orange prison jumpsuit out of there before the cops come and search my truck. Once again I struggle with my stuck seatbelt, muttering to myself, something about everything coming together and everyone getting what’s coming.
Then suddenly I hear something coming.
Coming for us.
Coming from behind us.
Glancing in panic at my side-view mirror I just about glimpse Patrick’s car speeding towards us from behind, hurtling down the dark alley like a torpedo that’s about to sink our ship!
“Xavier!” I scream when I realize Patrick is about to ram us from behind and that although my seatbelt is still on, Xavier is halfway between the front seats, his body twisted around. “Xavier, get—”
The sentence stays unfinished.
The dark missile of fate hits our pink cookie-truck of destiny.
My seatbelt locks securely as my body lurches forward.
The airbag explodes in my face as my scream is drowned out by the horrific crunch of my truck’s rear-end being smashed.
My vision blurs and then goes dark.
But not before I get a sickeningly vivid glimpse of Xavier’s unprotected body go flying into the front windscreen, missing both airbags, his head smashing into the thick glass with a gut-wrenching crack, sending streaks of blood along the splintered glass, his neck twisting in a cruelly unnatural way, his body going limp even before it crumples to the sugar-stained carpet of my blood-pink cookie truck.
8
XAVIER
The carpet tastes like blood and sugar.
Wait, why the fuck am I tasting the carpet?
Oh, right.
I’m dead.
