Bottom Feeder (16 page)

“
No.”

“
Liar.”

“
I’m jogging.”

“
Let me call you a
cab.”

“
No.” If I showed up at
the house in a cab, Daddy would ask too many questions I’m not
ready to answer. I’m too tired to think of a good lie.

“
Let me take you
home.”

I swing around to face
him. “Abso-
freakin’
-lutely not.”

Jackson

“
You’re crazy, Maddy. It’s
two a.m.!”

She narrows her eyes. Oh
crap. “I am
not
crazy.”

“
Look, we can share a cab.
I want to know about the best part of your day.”

“
Jackson, please.” Maddy
squeezes her eyes shut. Opens them. “For the love of God
please
stop pretending
you are interested in anything about me. I respect that you are
working for my father, but you are not my minion. You don’t have to
pretend
to like me.” She exhales a
cleansing breath and adds quietly, “Because it kind of hurts, okay?
Please just stop.”

“
What?” I ask
stupidly.

“
There are no security
cameras here. My father is not around. Take care of Lamont and make
sure Janelle gets home
safely
.”

She walks to the edge of the parking
lot and changes pace to a perfect runner’s form.

On the way up to the seventh floor I
call a cab. A suddenly-sober Janelle is attentively watching a
semi-sober Lamont, who is on the floor staring blankly at the
Pentagon Channel.

“
I’m not feeling too hot,”
I mumble. “Can I get you a cab, Janelle?”

She glances at Lamont. “Is he going to
be okay?”

I change the channel to a workout
infomercial. “You good?”

Without blinking, he replies,
“Oo-rah,” like a true Marine.

Janelle and I ride to her house in
silence. She looks out the window while I text Maddy to see if she
has made it home.

Almost
is her reply.

“
I’m sorry,” Janelle says.
She swipes at tears rolling down her cheek. “I really—I’ve liked
Lamont for a long time. He wouldn’t talk to me.”

I laugh. “Did you play me tonight?” A
sad smile splays across her face. “Look, Janelle, you’re beautiful.
I hope you know that, okay? I’m sort of an asshole so coming on to
guys like me to get at their best friend is not the best idea in
the world. You have to handle Lamont at a time when more blood than
beer is running through him.” I grab her phone and add Lamont’s
number to the contacts. “Give him time to sober up and call him. He
deserves to have something good in his life.”

“
You don’t seem like an
asshole,” she says.

“
Most of us
don’t.”

After Janelle is safely inside her
house, I call Maddy.

“
I wanted to make sure you
made it home safely,” I say when she answers.

“
Yes, thank you for
calling.”

And that was that.

The smell of sweet potato
pancakes and bacon frying spring me out of bed a few hours later.
I
never
sleep
through bacon. Ever. I saunter into the kitchen where Mama is
pouring a cup of coffee. She points to the counter. My face lights
up at the expectation of food.

Instead of perfectly cooked pancakes
drizzled with homemade pecan syrup, my eyes land on the wallet I
left at Laney’s house.

I avert my attention to stare at
anything except Mama’s scrutinizing face. Apparently she knows
about Laney’s game, too.

After breakfast I wash dishes and work
in our small backyard, pulling weeds and fixing anything that needs
to be fixed.

I learned to fix things around the
house early in life. Michael, the sperm donor, left when I was six.
He met an amateur model on a business trip to Los Angeles. Mama and
I were history as soon as he returned to Georgia.

I was thirteen the last time Michael
came here. He threatened to kick us out of the house if we didn’t
let him stay. Since the house is technically his, she had no other
choice but to allow him.

From the moment he suggested that Mama
sleep on the couch while he took the bed, I hated him. This was
after I overheard her refusal to sleep with him. He never said a
word to me the entire weekend, which was fine. His silence fueled
my hate. The thing that pissed me off the most was how he acted
like he did us a favor by allowing his presence in the
house.

Mama received an email from him three
years ago. He was in London on his fourth model.

And I still hated him.

I save the worst chore for last:
cleaning up the mess karma made in my room yesterday. I drag the
pieces of cheap laminate to the curb, trying to clear all thoughts
of the one person who has invaded my life for the past two days.
The person who is everything I need and nothing I want.

I cannot help but wonder if maybe I
keep hurting her on accident, or if being selfish comes
naturally.

I walk to Mrs. Brenner’s house Monday
afternoon after a failed attempt to Facebook-stalk Maddy. Mrs. B
offered to pay me for the work, but she is doing me a favor by
keeping me busy. I was ready for the odd jobs and errands until I
the list she handed to me was a mile long.

“
I’m working that
aggression right out of you,” she said when I protested against
repainting the exterior of her massive house.

She was right. After working all day,
my mind is too tired to think distracting thoughts. I call Lamont
to join me the next morning. I have a feeling he could use a little
help, too.

For the next two days, Lamont and I
work from before daybreak to hours after sundown. We don’t talk. We
listen to music on our iPods and pound nails into wood, uproot
dying trees, prune, trim, paint, pick flowers and vegetables, plant
flowers and vegetables, power wash everything that can be washed
and clean every nook and cranny inside and outside Mrs. B’s
house.

At night I sleep through the
nightmares. I wake up feeling sick, but rested.

I am out the door by four a.m.
Thursday morning to drive a truckload of vegetables from Mrs. B’s
garden to a farmer’s market a couple towns over.

I come to a stop at a red light and
spot Maddy waiting on a bus stop bench.

I pull a U-turn.

“
Need a ride?” I ask,
smiling at her
Free Hugs
t-shirt. Cute.

Maddy glances down the street. “Are
you dropping those at the market in Statesboro?” I nod. She settles
on the passenger seat of Mrs. B’s Ford pickup. “Thank
you.”

“
No problem. Who are you
waiting on at this time, anyway?”

“
A friend.”

Not much else is said on the hour-long
drive. I search for songs on the ancient radio while Maddy sends
texts on a cell phone that doesn’t look like the same one she had
last weekend. I spot that phone peeking out of her
purse.

Why does she need two
phones?

“
I’ll be back in thirty
minutes,” she says when I pull to the market’s front loading dock.
I watch her disappear down Main Street, noticing the back of her
shirt reads
(Restrictions
Apply)
.
Feisty.

While unloading bushels of vegetables,
I notice a man exit the market. He is dressed in a
not-very-practical-for-a-South-Georgia-summer black suit and
talking on a phone similar to the one Maddy was texting on five
minutes ago.

“
How far?” he asks over a
mouthful of Granny Smith apple. “Uh-huh. Black sedan. Romeo Alpha
November One Niner Seven.” I glance at this guy spouting off the
phonetic alphabet outside a small town farmer’s market like it’s a
war mission. He eyes me suspiciously before adding softly, “Get in
the back. There in two.”

Instincts tell me the man is talking
to Maddy. When a black sedan drops her off at the end of the street
exactly twenty-three minutes later, my suspicions are
confirmed.

“
You’re not fooling me,” I
say when she enters the truck.

“
Jackson . . .”

“
I’m serious. What’s going
on?”

“
I’m not fooling
anyone
, Jackson.” She
turns to look out the window. “I’m in over my head.”

“
Cordell Carrington for
Jackson Monroe,” the formal female voice said after my
greeting.

I sighed internally. “This
is Jackson.”

“
One moment,
please.”

“
Jackson, my boy, how’re
things?” Before I could respond, he continued. “Good, good. I hear
your plans were to take Maddy out tonight.” Huh? “I have an
overnight business trip to the Everglades that sprung up. If you
don’t mind I’d much rather she stayed home. If you could move your
date within the confines of the property, I’d be much obliged.”
Huh? “Instead of eight o’clock, six would be better.”

After a moment of silence,
I realized I was supposed to speak. “No problem, sir.”

“
All right, son, I’m glad
we had this chat. Take care, now.”

Weirdest. Conversation.
Ever.

I received that call a few hours ago.
It is now ten minutes to six o’clock and I am ringing at Cordell’s
gate, wondering what he has in store for me tonight.

I lift my face to the sky, allowing
the warm breeze to seep as much fresh air into my lungs as
possible. The distant sound of soft music drifts on the wind,
carried by the massive oaks surrounding the home.

“
Jackson?” Maddy’s faint
voice calls. I look up to see her leaning over the rooftop. “I’ll
be down in a few. Let yourself in.”

When the gate glides open, I walk up
the pavers to the front porch. I swing the door open and see Maddy,
dressed in yoga shorts and a tank top, rushing down the
stairs.

“
Hey,” I greet awkwardly.
“Um, so our date is here tonight, I suppose?”

Maddy furrows her brow. My face is
possibly mimicking hers.

“
My father?” she finally
asks. I nod.

“
What were you doing on
the roof?”

“
Are you
hungry?”

“
No, thanks. I was eating
when Cordell called.”

She turns to lead me to the back of
the house. Her hair pulled up in a messy bun and the back scoop of
the tank top shows me a range of deep, white and red angry scars on
her back. A fresh red gash runs half the length of her right thigh.
What the fu—

“
Oh!” She suddenly stops.
“Wait here. I’ll be right back.”

I take in my surroundings, trying to
get the site of those scars out of my brain. I focus on a large
table sculpture of a Cherokee rose. I run my fingers over the five
vivid white petals. The feel of the matte finish makes my skin
crawl, like when you hear nails scrape a chalkboard. I continue
tracing across the yellow-gold stamens, down to the prickly
bristles of the stem.

My first day here, I admired the
architecture, the art, the marble, the hardwoods. Everything. I
wanted these things, felt like I needed them. The blood money it
took to furnish this multi-million dollar home makes me sick. It’s
funny how only a few days of bad experience can change a
person.

“
The bristles represent
protection,” Maddy says behind me. “The flower is delicate,
beautiful. It’s like it knows everyone wants to touch it, to pick
it, to place it on display for the world to see its quiet beauty.
It has one defense mechanism to help keep its form intact.” She
runs her fingers down the stem and back up. “But that defense
doesn’t keep people from uprooting and moving it to fit their own
selfish wants.”

Something tells me she’s talking about
more than Georgia’s state flower.

“
I’m really sorry he
called you,” Maddy says. She has thrown a hoodie over her tank top
and changed into a pair of black yoga pants.

I shrug. “It’s not your place to
apologize.”

“
Would you like something
to drink?”

I follow her to an enormous game room
and settle on a bar stool. Maddy walks behind a fully-stocked bar
and begins to pump syrups into tall, slender glasses. She adds ice
then pulls out a liquid siphon and fills the glass to the brim with
club soda.

My tastes buds dance a little jig when
I take a sip of the sweet red liquid. The drink is an exact replica
of my favorite soda.

“
You don’t have to stay,
Jackson.”

“
Is Dixon coming over?” Or
does she not want me here?

“
He’s in Tennessee for a
few days.”

“
Do you have other plans?”
Maddy shakes her head. “Good. We can be each other’s plans. What
were you doing before I arrived?”

Instead of answering, she asks, “Would
you like to watch a movie? Go out on one of the boats? We have over
an hour of sunlight left.”