His For Keeps: (50 Loving States, Tennessee) Page 9

  “Probably not, so you might as well tell me, since you keep claiming we're friends.”

  “I am your friend,” I say. “But you don't have to be mine. I've got my cousin Bernice on speed dial for girl talk.” Plus, Josie-but of course I don't tell him that, since he still has no idea I'm working for Josie.

  “How is Bernice these days?” Colin asks.

  “Good,” I answer.

  Not real approving of my current phone friendship with the country star who has no idea how I really know Beau or that I'm currently working for him, but other than that… “Her grandma, my Aunt Beulah Mae-really my grandma's cousin, I just call her Auntie, because she's older than me-anyway, Auntie Beulah Mae just hit her five year cancer free mark, so that's a blessing. Especially for my grandma, because she and Auntie Beulah are best friends like Bernice and me are best friends.”

  I keep on waiting for Colin to stop me when I tell boring stories about my various Tennessee relatives, but so far he's yet to act anything but truly interested. And this time is no different.

  “That's real good to hear,” Colin says. “I'm glad.”

  “Me too.” I spot some ground beef on sale and throw it in the basket, thinking I'll give Beau a choice of burgers or spaghetti for tonight's dinner.

  My heart thrills as it always does at the prospect of cooking something he'll really like. Not exactly the relationship I envisioned with him while obsessing over him all these years, but close enough that I could close my eyes and pretend it was what I really wanted.

  Colin interrupts my reverie with another question. “Speaking of your grandma, you talk to her today yet?”

  “No, I was planning on calling her before dinner. Why?”

  “Had to send you something in the mail to her house, since you still won't give me your new address.”

  “I told you…”

  “I know, I know. You're my friend. But you ain't sure yet if I'm yours.”

  It isn't the first time he's thrown that line back at me. But just like all the other times, I notice that's all he does. Throw it back at me. He still has yet to deny that he's not feeling any actual friendship feelings toward me. Even though we've been talking on the phone literally every day for over two months.

  “So what did you send me?” I ask him.

  “You'll find out,” he says in a tone that's half amused, half gravelly threat.

  “It's a cease and desist letter, ain't it?”

  “Nah, you got to have those delivered in person, and I don't know where you are,” he answers. “This is just your standard restraining order.”

  I laugh, thinking not for first time that Colin is a surprisingly funny guy. Josie, who had to help women get restraining orders day in and day out as the new director of the Ruth's House Domestic Violence Shelter, wouldn't have thought so, I know. But I can't help but laugh.

  “You won't be laughing when the police come to your door with a warrant for your arrest,” he tells me now.

  “If they can find me,” I shoot back.

  “If they can find you,” he agrees.

  “I'll call my grandma and tell her to burn the letter as soon as I get off the phone. That way I can keep on harassing you. What's that thing they're always saying on those lawyer shows? Ignorance is nine-tenths of the law?”

  “That's not even nearly how it goes, Red.”

  “Purple,” I tell him.

  “What?”

  “I dyed my hair purple a few nights ago, so you're going to have to stop calling me Red.”

  “And what does your employer think of that?” Colin asks.

  I shrug and grab a gallon of milk to put into my basket. “He doesn't care.”

  It's the truth. I'm driving Beau to UAB's Callahan Eye Hospital to get pre-tested for a possible neural stem cell transplant trial he might be taking part in late the following year. But other than that, he's still blind. I'm not sure Josie's bothered to tell him my hair's purple now, or that it was red before.

  Speaking of which, “I've got to drive my client to an appointment in about twenty minutes, so I better get off this phone and pay for these groceries. When do you want me to call you tomorrow?”

  “Don't forget to check in with your grandma about that restraining order,” Colin answers. “And it's a travel day tomorrow, so I'll call you.”

  I'm still chuckling as I go through the check out. Life, I have to admit, has been good lately. I'm working at a job that not only allows me to see Beau every single day, but also let's me get to do things like talk to him and help him. I'm closer to Beau now than I ever could have imagined back when I was a teenager.

  And on top of that, I get to talk to Colin every single day, which is… truthfully better than I thought it would be. The first time I called him, it had been awkward. A balls-to-the-wall sales pitch I was pretty sure wouldn't work. But over the last two months, I've become used to talking to him every day. Sometimes just for five minutes. Sometimes for an hour or two. Now talking on the phone with Colin feels simple to me. Like the best part of my day.

  As I walk out of the grocery store, I'm not only still thinking about our latest conversation, but also looking forward to the next one.

  Which is why I don't notice Mike Lancer until my basket crashes into his.

  “Sorry,” I start to say. But then I stop, because even though the man glaring at me is wearing a UAB hat low on his head, and is about fifty pounds heavier than the nineteen-year-old I knew, I still recognize him. All too well.

  13

  “Sorry,” I mumble. Then I duck my head and start to go around him. Colin didn't recognize me. Neither did Beau. So maybe Mike Lancer won't either.

  “Kyra. Kyra Whatshername.” He bangs his cart into mine again. This time on purpose. To stop me from going any further. “I thought that was you I saw coming out of Beau Prescott's house the other day, but I didn't recognize you with the purple hair.”

  He's slurring his words, and even though it's the middle of the day, he smells like a bottle whiskey. And unfortunately, I have enough experience with drunks to know when one's not going to let you by without some kind of scene.

  “Hi, Mike,” I say, guessing we were bound to run into each other sooner or later. Forest Brook is a small town and he still lives right down the street from Beau and Josie, since both he and Beau took over their family homes. I was just hoping it would be much later or maybe never at all, since he and Beau don't seem to be friends anymore.

  Mike smiles at me, but it's fake as patent leather and it don't go anywhere near his weasely eyes. “So you're the one who replaced that bitch Josie as Beau's housekeeper now she's wormed her way into his bed.”

  My eyes narrow. No, he did not just call Josie, one of the nicest, most giving women I'd ever met, a bitch.

  But before I can come to Josie's defense, Mike leans over his basket and says, “I want you to give that uppity bitch a message. Tell her she better stay out of my marriage, or else I'm going make her sorry. Real sorry.” Then he says in a low voice only I can hear, “I should have known she'd hire somebody like you. Guess you black sluts like to stick together.”

  For once I don't have a quick come back. I'm so shocked he'd even dare speak to me like this out in public, I stand there with my mouth hanging open.

  This time it's Mike who maneuvers his basket around mine, walking into the grocery store like he didn't just say what he just said about Josie and me.

  And suddenly the day, which seemed so bright and full of blessings a few minutes ago, turns dark and ugly.

  I rush back to Beau and Josie's home, the same Tudor style mansion Beau grew up in, which I had to pretend to have never seen before when Josie showed me around on my first day. I do a sloppy job of putting all the groceries away, promising myself I'll come back later and fix it. Part of my job is to make sure everything is placed logistically so Beau can find what he needs without any help from Josie or me.

  I poke my head into Be
au's study. He's on his computer, typing slowly on a special braille keyboard that talks to him as he types out certain words.

  “I've got a couple of calls to make, but then I'll be right back down to take you to your appointment at the hospital,” I tell him.

  Beau gives me a thumbs up without looking up from his computer, and I rush upstairs to my attic room, far away from where he can hear. My first call is to Josie.

  “Are you all right? How are you doing right now?” is the first thing she asks me after I finish telling her what happened with Mike, minus all the backstory about how he knows me, of course. In my version of the story, he saw me coming out of their house and decided to approach me at the grocery store.

  “I'm fine,” I tell her. “But he was off the chain, Josie. I'm more worried about you.”

  “We both need to be worried about his ex-wife. We're in the middle of helping her change her name and move to another state because he's made things so bad for her since they divorced and she was rewarded full custody of their children. But the process of moving out of state without opening her up to legal ramifications is really tricky-especially with children involved. And unfortunately, he's got friends in high places. He can't find her, so now he's coming after Ruth's House. We've had just about every sort of surprise state and city inspection you can think of visited on us in the months since we've been helping his ex-wife escape. Luckily, she was smart enough to keep meticulous records of all the times he put her or their children in the hospital, or we'd have to be dealing with visitation rights, too.”

  It's a chilling story for sure, but not one I can say I'm all too surprised to hear. I'd long suspected that the Mike who'd so casually destroyed Colin's violin just because Colin “got in his way,” was closer to the real Mike than the one who had sweet-talked me that summer.

  “I wish there was something I could do to help.”

  “This helps,” Josie assures me, but she sounds wrung out. Like Mike Lancer is drying all her energy up, when this should be the happiest time of her life, what with her engagement to Beau and all.

  “Is there anything else I can do?” I ask her.

  “Yes, but you might not like it.” I can practically hear Josie chewing on her lip on the other side of the phone. “I'm going to need you to not tell Beau about any of this. He's got that big event for his new charity coming up, and I don't want him worrying about me.”

  Now it's my turn to chew my lip. The thing is, Beau wouldn't just worry about Josie. She's his whole world. There's no doubt in my mind if he knew Mike Lancer was threatening her, he'd do something about it.

  “I don't know, Josie. I don't want to be the one to tell you how to handle your personal business, but don't you think Beau's going to want to know about this?”

  Josie lets out a weary sigh. “Yes, but I don't want him to do anything that would get him in trouble. Or the shelter. Please, I know it's a lot to ask, but can you keep quiet about this for a little while longer, just until we can get his wife out of town?”

  “Okay, yeah, I guess I can do that,” I say. Not because I necessarily think it's right. More because I don't think somebody who's keeping as many secrets as I am should force the woman who'd been nothing but generous to me to tell her husband that the wife abuser down the street has been talking all sorts of trash.

  Still, it's a relief to get off the phone with Josie and then back on it with my grandma.

  “It's my best grandbaby!” my grandma says when she picks up.

  I smile. My grandma is old school. She has ten grandchildren, and even more great grandchildren, but she'll call me her “best grandbaby” in a room chock full of them. And if anyone tries to tell her you're not supposed to play favorites, she'll say, “Any of you want to move in here with me and take me to all my appointments on your day off?” Then she uses the quiet that follows that question to call me her best grandbaby again.

  I answer her like I always do. “It's my best grandma!”

  “What you up to, child, calling me in the middle of the week? You ain't trying to cancel on this Friday are you? Because I got three appointments scheduled.”

  “No, no, no, Grandma. I'm still coming up, and I can't wait to see you, but I was wondering if I got a package.”

  “You sure did,” she says. “But I didn't open it. Because I didn't want to have to put up with your tall ones about it being against the law to open my own grandbaby's mail.”

  “It is against the law,” I tell her. “I wish you would stop acting like that's a story I made up. But in this case, I'm going to let you go'on ahead and open it.”

  My grandma doesn't have to be invited twice. I immediately hear the sound of ripping paper, then a “Hmmph…”

  “What is it?” I ask.

  “It's a book with some white woman on the cover…” Grandma answers. The sound of pages flipping. “It's got a signature on the front page. Let me get my glasses. Looks like an autograph, but I can barely read the name. June… Cortes… Cosh, I think?”

  “June Carter Cash?” My whole heart floods with warmth, and suddenly my good day turned bad turns right back to good again.

  “Is that the white woman on the cover? I guess it could be-hey, a card just fell out of the book. Let me bend down here and get it…” Rustling sounds and then my grandma says, “All it says is 'From C'? Who's 'C'?”

  “Um…” I answer.

  “And why's he sending you a book with June Carter Cash on the front of it?” she asks me.

  “Um…” I say again, feeling almost as uncomfortable as I did on the phone with Josie. “It's a long story.”

  “A long story?” My grandma repeats, suspicious as Halloween night in a big city. “Best Grandbaby, do you need to bring this 'C' person round to see me?”

  14

  “Do you know how hard it was to explain to my grandma about the June Carter Cash autobiography?” I ask Colin the next day, when he calls me while I’m putting together Beau’s lunch.

  “What, she don’t like Mrs. Carter Cash?” Colin answers. He doesn’t sound remorseful at all. Just amused.

  “She’s more a ‘Go Tell It on the Mountain,’ sort of grandma. Even Kirk Franklin’s a little rowdy for her,” I answer.

  “Well, pass on my apologies, then,” Colin says. “I hope I didn’t upset her too bad.”

  “You didn’t upset her at all,” I say, throwing two chicken breasts into a pan with a little olive oil. “But she’s nosier than a bloodhound, and I know she’s going to be asking me to bring you around to see her on every phone call from now on.” Only after grumbling all this do I remember my manners enough to say, “And thank you by the way. That was a nice gift. Real thoughtful. I can’t wait to read it when I go home on Friday.”

  “Let me know if there’s anything in there that wasn’t in the Lifetime movie.”

  “You did not watch the Lifetime movie!”

  “Why are you always trying to tell me what I did and didn’t do, Purple? Lifetime ain’t just a woman’s network anymore, you know.”

  I do know, but at this point, I’m laughing too hard to answer. I do that a lot with Colin, I notice. Laugh.

  “How about you?” he asks. “You like your grandma?”

  “Nosey? A little bit, I guess. But I’ve got a ways to go before I get as bad as her.”

  “No, I meant religious.”

  The question startles me, and I answer carefully. “Well, I believe in God, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Me too,” he says. “But I’m talking about the other stuff. Like saving yourself for marriage and all that.”

  “Um…” To say I’m surprised by this turn in the conversation is an understatement. But I go with it. Colin and I have had some pretty heated conversations about politics over the last few months. Why not religion, too?

  “I guess that’s fine for some folks, but I’m not really one to wait until marriage to find out if the sex is bad or not.”

  “Me either,” Colin s
ays with a wry chuckle. “So when’s the last time you had sex, good or bad?”

  I blink, nearly choking on my own spit. “Excuse me?”

  “Okay, I’ll go first,” he says, like I’ve just won some sort of negotiation I didn’t remember having with him. “It’s been a while for me. Since the beginning of the year, and I got a full check-up before starting this tour. So I’m clean. How about you? Had a check up with the lady doctor lately? Did it come back clean?”

  “First of all, I don’t think anybody calls gynos ‘lady doctors’ anymore. Second of all, there’s no way I’m telling you that!”

  “Because you’ve got something embarrassing you don’t want to tell me about?”

  “No, because it’s none of your damn business!” I flip Beau’s chicken breasts.

  “Okay then, I’m going to take that answer as a ‘Yes, Colin, my STD panel came back clean, but I’m too much of a wise-ass to just go ahead and tell you that.’ Same goes for whether you’re on birth control or not?”

  My mouth falls open, I’m so outraged. “I’m not telling you that.”

  “Look, Purple. Let’s both be adults here? I’m okay with condoms, but I think we’ll have more fun finding out if the sex is bad between us if we don’t have to bother with them. So I’m asking you to either keep on taking your BC or get on it right now. Your choice.”

  My heart stops, and I just stand there at a loss for words, as the chicken sizzles in the pan.

  Eventually I say, “You seriously want to find out if the sex is bad between us?”

  His answer comes after his own bit of silence, quiet and grave. “Yeah. Yeah, I seriously do.”

  More shocked silence on my part. Honestly, I have no idea what to say, or how to deal with this out-of-the-blue proposal for possibly bad sex.

  “You still there or did you hang up on me?”

  “I’m… still here.” It feels like the words are struggling to climb out of my throat. “I’m just… surprised.”