Inside Out (10 page)

Garrett walked into the room, and his sister went silent. Tension marked every stiff movement and there was a tick in his jaw. His eyes held hers.

Tracey had never been as quick as she wanted to be in these situations. She was always that person who thought of something brilliant and life-changing to say three days later. She wanted to ask him about what Angie had said. That or to kick him out of her life because if there was a time to end this cleanly, this was it. But, sadly, she was not quick and she would not break up with him in front of his sister. Tracey felt angry, pathetic, and alone, and still he watched her. She wanted to believe he was not the way Angie described him.

He remained silent, watching her.

“How long have you been dating?” Angie asked.

“We've been friends since August,” he answered without shifting his gaze.

“How long have you been sleeping together?”

“Now, that really isn't your business,” Tracey mustered up the spirit to say.

Angie smiled Garrett's smile at Tracey. Then looked from Tracey to Garrett and back again. In the silence, she left the room.

The pair stared at each long enough for Tracey to feel a tear in the corner of her eye and for Garrett to come forward to wipe it away.

“Don't.” She stepped back and away from him.

He moved forward again and grasped her upper arms gently in his hands. “Tracey, I love you.”

More tears slipped from her eyes.

“Angie knows me for sure. I don't know what she said to you, but she's honest to a fault. I can't say she wasn't right about the… the convenience of keeping this quiet. But
you
didn't want anyone to know. That wasn't me alone. And she's right, I can trust her with any secret, but who better to start opening up to? Who better to be the first person to know us,
together
?”

Tracey didn't say a word. It amazed her that she was so eloquent internally.

He came forward once again. His arms slipped around her and held her tight. He held her so tight that she felt a sob deep in her chest.

“I love you,” he whispered.

Tracey hugged him back.

* * *

“Hmmm. So my brother's dating a black woman. I think I'm going to lay down and die.” Those were the first words out of her mouth when they went, hand and hand, back into the living room.

“You got practice in the morning?” Rett asked his sister, ignoring her comment. Angie nodded. “I'll tell you what. You can take the truck back and drive it to practice in the morning. Just come get me when you're done. Really, any time tomorrow is fine. I'll be here all day.” He turned to Tracey. “If that's all right with you?”

“Actually…” Actually, she wanted him to stay there and tell her he loved her again while he
made
love to her and exorcised her of reborn insecurities. “I still have some things to sort out. I think I'd rather be alone tonight.”

He sighed deeply.

Garrett led Angie towards the door. Even then, Tracey chose to believe the girl just didn't know her brother as well as she thought, that the fact that he loved her—and she knew he loved her—would overcome any bad behavior on his part. Tracey would find out later that you didn't grow up in a house with someone for twenty-plus years without knowing him almost better than anyone else ever could.

“Just one thing.” Angie glanced back and forth between the two of them as she stood to leave. “Can I see you kiss?”

“No,” they both said at once.

Angie crossed her arms in front of her as her brother escorted her out. They stood on the porch staring each other in the eye. “So?” she challenged him.

“So what? So you're going to tell me why you just tried to ruin what I have with that girl?”

“I didn't try to ruin anything.”

“I brought you here just to prove to her that I wasn't hiding you and that I didn't
want
to hide you. I'm not saying you didn't make a point, but I brought you here to put her fears to rest. And what did you do?”

“Yeah, what did I do?” She got in his face to ask the question.

“You went in and tried to ruin it.” He shrugged his shoulders the way he always did when he was trying to make her feel childish.

“How in the hell did this all start?”

“I don't know. We met and kept running into each other and one thing led to another.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Uh-huh.” Garrett started to hand her the keys to his car.

Angie didn't take them. “Rett, I don't think you should hurt that girl.”

“Why do you think I would?”

She cocked her head to the side. “I mean, you know what Momma always tells you about you and Kim. ‘Don't play house if you're the only one who knows it's a game.' ”

“This is not a game to me. I'm in love with her.”

“Well, I hope to hell not.” She cocked her head to the side.

“What do you have against this? Aren't you the one who wanted to date that boy with all those dreadlocks?”

“Yep, but I'm also the one who doesn't give a damn what anybody thinks about me. I date who I want to when I want to, I just don't take them home to Momma and Daddy. And usually I don't even let my brother Rett meet them 'cause he's just as bad as Momma and Daddy. But you can't do what I do. You're the Golden Boy. I don't know if you're in love with her, or if she is in love with you. But I do know she's not Juliet, and you sure aren't Romeo.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“I think you know what it's supposed to mean. Even if you love her, in order for you two to be a real couple, your
whole
life has to change. I'm not being dramatic, Rett. You can't hang out with the same guys. You can't go to the same places. You
can't
bring her home. Momma only tolerates me in the house these days because Dad makes her. But she can barely stand me.”

“That's not true.”

“It is.” She put a hand to her chest. “But
I
have come to accept that. I've had to build a whole other network of people who care about me to make sure I stay happy.”

“Dad cares about you, no matter what.”

“I know.”

“I care about you, no matter what.”

“I know that, too.” Impulsively, she hugged him hard. “Clay knows somethin's up. So does Charles, he said.”

Rett ignored her comment. “Just take the keys. Come get me in the morning.”

“She said she wanted to be alone.”

“She'll change her mind. See you tomorrow, Angie.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Garrett
.”

Rett waited until Angie pulled off to take a deep breath and go back into the house.

Tracey was still sitting in the same place and she looked up at him as he entered. She had a look on her face that was like…like…it was just horrible.

“What are you doing back?”

“I wanted to talk to you.”

“So you ignored me.”

Rett couldn't help himself; he grinned and nodded. Tracey rolled her eyes. But he saw a little smile, which meant he was just this side of home free. He sat down on the sofa beside her. She crossed her arms over her chest. He put his arm across her shoulders and pulled her close to him. She was nice and warm and soft. At that precise moment, talking was the last thing he felt like doing, but he couldn't get to point C from point A without hitting point B first. “Tracey?”

“What?”

“We're both adults who care about each other—”

“You don't understand. There's more to it than that. Angie knows what kind of person you are. She knows how potentially bad this could be.” She paused. “And, Garrett, I need to know. Do you have a problem with me? I mean, who I am. Do you have a problem with me being black?”

“If I did, I wouldn't be here.”

“Not necessarily true.”

Okay, not as home free as he'd thought. “Well, do you have a problem with me being white?”

“I don't—”

He didn't let her finish that thought. It was either going to be “I don't think so” or “I don't know,” neither of which he wanted to hear right then. “Or maybe you're just tolerating me because I'm so talented in bed?”

He nipped at her neck, and Tracey squealed a little, trying not to laugh. “Don't do that. I told you I need to sort things out. “ Garrett took that opportunity to pull the front of her shirt down, along with her bra, exposing one plump breast, which he seized with his mouth. He heard her moan above him and knew that no matter how much she fought, they were done talking for the night.

* * *

The very next day, he tackled changing their relationship.

“Hey, Trace, read this sheet and let me depose you.” Garrett handed her a piece of paper. She sat up in bed to take it. Tracey had been lying down all day because she hadn't been feeling too well. Granted, that hadn't prevented him from forcing her into rigorous physical activity just moments before. He said he didn't care if he caught her cold. He was so affectionate, his hands and lips everywhere. When they realized they were out of condoms, he nearly went into apoplectic shock, until Tracey reminded him she was on the pill, and they had established that they both had clean bills of health—despite her perpetual cough. The sex had been, well,
yummy
.

“Hmm.” Tracey studied the paper. “Depositions.” It had been an interesting case minutes ago, but she didn't remember at all what it was about.

“Tracey?”

“Yeah, Garrett?”

“I don't know how to say this.” He leaned against the wall.

“Tell me what?” Tracey glanced up from the page.

“I don't want us to see other people.”

She lowered the paper in her hands and looked up at him. “What?”

“I mean, well, just what I said. I don't want us to see other people.”

“I didn't know that we were seeing
each other
,” she countered.

“Well, what do you call it, Tracey?” His jaw flexed as he clenched his teeth.

She didn't answer. Instead, she changed her tactic. “Besides, I'm not the one who's in a relationship.”

“Well, babe, neither am I,” he said pointedly. “If you'll recall, I broke it off with Kim.”

“Then it's settled, isn't it? I'm not seeing anyone, and you're not seeing anyone.” Tracey tried again to focus on the case but found it impossible—especially with him standing there deeply studying his coffee, obviously dissatisfied. She sighed impatiently. “What is it, Garrett?”

“Tracey, listen. I see you almost every day out there on the lawn with your girlfriends, and there's always some guy or some guys standing there talking to you, looking at you the way I look at you. I can't stand it. I know that some of them probably put the moves on you, and it just drives me crazy.”

“What are you saying? I mean, guys always hit on girls.”

“Including Dr. Burke? It looks like he's got more on his mind than Legal Action in Labor Disputes.”

Why, oh why, was it so obvious to everyone in the world that Alex was interested in her? Tracey hadn't noticed any real change in his behavior when he was around her. He hadn't once offered to do her thesis for her, which certainly would have been an excellent come-on. At dinner that same night she saw Garrett at the movies, Alex hadn't so much as tried to hold her hand. She wouldn't have let him, but he didn't even try. The majority of their conversations revolved around what was happening at school. Granted, he held her coat for her, opened the door for her, and afforded her the random long look, but it all just seemed routine. To Tracey, he just seemed like a really nice, somewhat lonely man, despite going out to dinner with a female student.

“Whatever, Garrett,” she gasped. She wished she could come up with something wittier.

“It's true, Tracey. I saw you at Rachel's.”

“You saw me at Rachel's when?”

“That doesn't matter, but I saw you and Burke having dinner at Rachel's. I could tell it wasn't just business just by the dress you were wearing.”

“Since I've had dinner alone with Alexander exactly once, I can only assume that the time you saw me with him at Rachel's was the night before you came over and forced yourself on me.”

“When did he become ‘Alexander'?”

“Don't worry about it. My question is this: Did you come back after those two weeks just because you saw me having dinner with Alex?”

“Oh, it's ‘Alex' now, is it? You don't even call
me
Rett.”

“Do not change the subject,
Garrett
! I asked you a question. Does ‘I couldn't stay away from you' really equal ‘I couldn't stay away from you if somebody else might want you'?”

“Jesus, Tracey!”

“Answer me!”

“I didn't have to be jealous of Burke to come back to you. But, yeah, I wanted to know why you were dressing up for him like that.”

“I wanted to.”

“Why? You don't show that much cleavage and leg even here, when we're home. Did you plan on sleeping with him? I mean—”

“What does it matter? You had a girlfriend. It's not like—”

“Tracey!” he growled at her. She jumped.

“No, Garrett, I didn't sleep with him, okay? I was mad at you for not coming around, and sure I wanted some male attention, but I didn't have any interest in letting anything happen.”

He was silent for a moment, then gave her a lopsided smile, “Hell yeah, I was jealous, baby. But I didn't figure it was going anywhere. I saw you yawn that night and stare into a drink you never finished. I watched you giggle, and Tracey, you don't giggle. You full out laugh, at least you do when you're with me. I knew, sure as I'm sitting here, you weren't going to sleep with him. I mighta been a little jealous, but I won't worry about you and another man until that changes.”

“You're so cocky.”

She put a hand over his mouth to prevent him from saying something perverted and incendiary. “I'm trying to figure out what your point is. If you're so confident you're the only person in the world I could be interested in—stupid, I know—then why would it matter if—”

“It's a man thing.” He chuckled and leaned over to kiss her.

“Whatever that means.” Tracey rolled her eyes, trying to stop him from charming her out of her mood. He snuggled next to her in the bed but was pensive again. “I'm really just saying that…ah—” Garrett hardly ever had a problem saying what was on his mind. That worried her.

“God,” she breathed, exasperated. “What is it, Garrett?”

“I just want people to know.”

Tracey had been walking underwater for those past few weeks. She was admiring the view, calm but holding her breath all the while. This was her inevitable resurfacing. She ran her tongue over the front of her teeth. “What's to know?” she asked.

“What I mean is that I don't want to be strangers every time we leave this house. We spend all our time together; I practically live here. You are my best friend, Tracey. Besides, Angie knows and nothing terrible's happened.”

“Angie's not like the rest of the world,
obviously
. You know that. She took care to give me a whole diatribe about that very fact the first night, remember? She doesn't care. Apparently, she does and says whatever comes to mind and somehow seems to get away with it. We're not like that.”

“Yeah, but still, she knows.”

Tracey swallowed hard, but could not rid herself of the guilt growing into a knot in the back of her throat. She wiped the sweat from her forehead. She was panicking, “What are you saying? What happened to ‘we won't say anything; it's our business'?”

“That was just a ploy to get you into bed,” he said, laughing. She whacked him in the stomach. “I want us to be together. You know, not seeing anyone else, showing each other some respect. And I don't want any other men wasting time with a woman who can't stop thinking about me.”

She punched him squarely in the chest. She did it again. She did it once more for good measure. Then she grabbed her mouth and ran.

Tracey found herself in the bathroom losing every bit of food she'd had over the last couple of days. She heard him come to stand outside the door. “You could really wreak havoc on a man's ego, you know.”

“Oh, no! Not yours! It's completely safe and sound,” she assured him. Tracey rinsed her mouth, brushed her teeth, and gripped the sheet around her body, which was suddenly cold. She opened the door. “You know, I haven't been feeling too well for the past couple weeks. I've been on and off antibiotics since forever.”

He drew her into his arms and held her. “I'll take care of you, girl.”

Tracey sighed at the way they fit, at the way he smelled, at the way when he held her; she felt like she had everything she ever wanted or would want in the world. “Do you think I could just have a little time? I promise it'll happen, I just need some time.”

“Okay, Trace,” he agreed. Tracey liked the way she could feel his voice when he held her, feel it come all the way up from within him. “Anything if you'll just let me…” His voice trailed off but it wasn't necessary for him to go on. He held her there forever.

* * *