Love Me Not (7 page)

She smiled a little, the forced, nervous kind. “Right, of course.”

Penny finally appeared and handed Kimber her phone. “Here you go. I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Thanks,” Kimber said. She walked back through the shop and out the door.

Penny said something about my having an early appointment. I barely listened. Kimber walked down the sidewalk. Just before she made it past the shop’s front windows, she wiped a tear off her cheek.

I walked away from Penny, midsentence. I liked it better when Kimber hated me.

Chapter 11

Best Friend

The next few days, I lived exclusively in my room. I survived off some pretzels I had stashed in the closet and read
Oliver Twist
between appointments. When I finished
Oliver Twist
, I started on the book I’d bought for Kimber. This one I hadn’t read since high school.

And at night, I scribbled in my notebook. I tried to write about my daily conquests, but my attention wouldn’t stay centered. So, I continued with my story of the schizophrenic man. The ending kept shifting in my head. Does he beat his sickness or realize the battle he’s been fighting was already lost a long time ago?

Penny continually tried to talk to me. I slid a note under the door that asked her not to schedule any appointments for Saturday through Monday. I needed to get the hell out of here for a few days.

Friday night, Elizabeth was my last appointment.

“You’ve lost weight,” she said as she zipped up her skirt.

“Not where it counts.” I couldn’t quite manage my cocky grin.

She looked up from straightening her skirt. “Are you all right?”

“Perfectly fine.” I sat up, my knee bent with the sheet barely covering me. “How’s your daughter?” I hoped it didn’t bother her that I asked about Rachel right after we finished having sex. There wasn’t any other time to talk to Elizabeth. I hadn’t seen her in over a week, and she refused to call.

“She already received her college acceptance letter.” She smiled. “University of Florida.”

I didn’t mention that I’d gone there, more out of habit. My education was not something my clients were generally interested in. “Nice.” I hadn’t pegged the cheerleader for having the grades to get in someplace like that. “But I bet you’ll miss her.”

She tucked in her blouse. “It’s only a couple hours away. She said she’ll come home every weekend.”

“She’s a good daughter.” I wasn’t sure how to ask what was really on my mind.

She slipped on her shoes, and I stood and pulled on my jeans. She moved toward the door.

“Elizabeth.”

She looked back.

“Would you tell me if you needed anything?”

“Would you let me help you?”

I didn’t answer.

She moved closer. “Don’t worry about me.”

“I can’t help it.” I fought the words, but they jumped out of my mouth anyway. “You’re my best friend.”

She grinned. “Is that what you say to all of them?”

A pause.

Seeming awkward, she reached to kiss my cheek. That was how I knew they weren’t interested in anything more than sex—when it was done, they kissed my cheek, not my lips.

“I hear you’re taking a few days off for Christmas,” she said. “I’m glad. You deserve it.”

I hadn’t realized when I decided on the days that they were Christmas Eve, Day, and the day after.

She shifted away from me.

“Promise me,” I said, “that you’ll come to me if you need anything.”

She hesitated. “All right.” She turned and walked toward the door. Before she opened it, she added, “Friendship works both ways.” Then she left.

I finished dressing and then grabbed my bag from the closet, the backpack I’d used in college a million years ago. I filled it with some clothes. Then I noticed the bag from Barnes and Noble on the shelf. I stuffed it into the backpack with no idea what I was going to do with it.

I patted my back pocket to make sure I had my wallet and then slipped out the back door.

The hotel was down the street, just shy of a mile away. The sun fell as I walked, first through the throngs of busy shoppers and then alongside of the busy road. There was no sidewalk. I probably looked like a vagabond.

The hotel was huge, new construction that sat next to the onramp for 295. The lobby was all marble and dark woods and dramatic lighting. As I approached the front desk, I wondered if the jerk who’d bothered Kimber would be here. I was surprised that time I’d met him that he was working the front counter. Perhaps it was his daddy’s way of trying to teach him thankfulness. It obviously didn’t work.

He was nowhere to be seen. I wasn’t sure if that was good or disappointing. I wasn’t in a patient mood. Beating the shit out of him sounded nice. I hadn’t fought in years, but I handled myself well. It was mostly about confidence. That was easy.

I paid for a room. Luckily, they had space. I hadn’t thought to make a reservation.

It wasn’t until I was in the elevator that I realized the girl who’d checked me in was very attractive. Something was seriously wrong with me.

I had three days to figure it out. I wondered if I could make it three days without sex, if I
would
make it. Perhaps I’d visit the young lady in the lobby. I hadn’t had sex just for me in a long time. Part of me wanted to do it just to defy Penny.

The extra money I spent to be on the top floor was worth it. I opened the door to the room and headed straight to the balcony that looked out to the lights of the mall. The people on the sidewalks blended together like water in a stream. Christmas lights twinkled as they wrapped lampposts—I hadn’t noticed them as I walked right by.

The view was nice, calming, far away.

I turned and went back inside, dropped my bag on the bed, and looked around the room. The colors blurred with the lack of light.

I wasn’t sure what to do with myself. I hadn’t really thought about it. I wasn’t
used
to having to think about what I was doing. My days were structured by appointments. I’d just wanted to get out of there for a while—to think, I supposed. The question was, to think about what?

I lay down on the bed and folded my hands behind my head. Cotton sheets. I missed how they felt, soft but not so slick, more substance to them than silk.

The ceiling had an orange peel kind of pattern on it. I tried to find pictures in it, like Penny used to do with the clouds when I was a child. She’d take me on picnics at the park down the street from her apartment. I loved those picnics. She’d let me run around all I wanted. I couldn’t do that in her small apartment. It had only one tiny bedroom, which she gave to me. She never let me realize how much she sacrificed for me, for a child who shouldn’t have been her responsibility.

I took a deep breath and sighed.

She deserved better. As soon as she turned eighteen, she fought to gain custody of me. I remembered how happy I was to be out of the foster homes, to be with my sister. Even with how little I was able to see her, she was my favorite person, the one person who treated me like she cared. She was my best friend. I missed that.

I used to tell her everything, about school and my friends and how mean or funny the teachers were.

And now I wasn’t talking to her—all because she hired someone who was difficult for me to be around.

I was an asshole.

Still with my backpack at my feet and without bothering to get under the sheets, I drifted off to sleep.

My dreams were erratic and fuzzy, like trying to see thorough a waterfall.

When I woke, the sun was falling through the windows. I turned my head on the pillow and looked out to the mall. It was still bustling with people and cars, as if they had been going all night.

I pulled myself out of bed and headed for the shower, my one shower for the day. A full day without appointments sounded like a lot of time to fill. I had an idea of what to do with a little of it. I was going to go shopping on Christmas Eve. Yes, there was definitely something wrong with me.

Chapter 12

My Sister

I left my backpack in the hotel room and walked back toward the mall. I wasn’t sure what to get for Penny. I usually gave her something nice, but this year, I wanted it to be special. I just wasn’t sure if I knew her well enough anymore to be able to make it special.

Careful to stay clear of her shop, I browsed the mall. The outer edges held the bigger stores, the places where I bought my jeans and shave cream, but not where my clients shopped. I delved deeper into the mall, into the barrage of high-end specialty shops.

I stopped at the window of a jewelry store whose name I couldn’t pronounce, always a clear sign it was expensive. I could read some French but had never learned proper pronunciation.

In the window display, there was a ring. The cut and setting sparked a memory. I was maybe seven or eight. Penny had a friend over to the apartment. I remembered liking that she was having a nice time and was trying to stay out of the way. I passed through the living room into the kitchen. She and her friend were sitting on the couch flipping through a catalog that had come in the mail.

Penny looked up, a smile on her face. I liked her smile. “Do you need something, Heath?”

“No, I just wanted some water. I can get it.” I’d have to stand on a chair to reach the cups, but I was perfectly capable now of doing it myself.

“Okay, sweetie.”

She stopped calling me that shortly after this memory. I guessed she thought I might be embarrassed by it or something.

She went back to looking at the catalog. I wished she could buy something out of one of them for once. She never bought herself anything.

I came back through the living room just as she flipped the page. She gasped and pointed at one of the pictures. “That’s the one I want,” she said to her friend. “If a guy ever wants to marry me, he has to give me this.”

Her friend leaned closer, surely looking at the price. “When you meet him, introduce me to his brother.”

They both giggled.

Penny never did get married.

She hardly ever dated. I hoped when I left home for school she might loosen up and have some fun, but that was when she opened her shop. She worked just as hard at it as she had at being a mother to me.

The next day, I’d found the catalog in the trash. I hid it in my room and decided one day I’d get her a ring like that.

But when Cassie died, I threw out most of my things, including the old catalog. I was so pissed when I realized.

This ring in the shop window, I swore it was exactly like the one in the picture—platinum and a square cut diamond surrounded by rows of diamond chips.

I went inside and bought it. I barely paid attention to the price.

The sales girl wrapped it for me and put it in a fancy little bag, all while looking at me kind of funny. I probably didn’t look like their usual clientele, old jeans and a T-shirt, and I hadn’t bothered shaving this morning. It felt nice to be a little ratty-ass.

I took the long way around to the back of Penny’s shop. Christmas Eve was always nuts—I knew she and anyone else who was working would be busy out front with costumers. I could sneak in and out unnoticed.

As quietly as possible, I closed the heavy metal door behind me and slipped into Penny’s office, a tiny room barely big enough for a desk.

I flipped on the light, closed the door, and grabbed a piece of paper from the printer. I should’ve stopped and bought a card.

Dear Penny,

Please take it. I’ve never given you enough—I could never give you enough.

I love you.

Heath

I folded the note and set the box on top of it on the desk. Then I slipped out of the office, down the hall, and out the back door.

My walk back to the hotel seemed longer than last night. A carload of teenagers honked and jeered at me as I traipsed through the grass at the side of the road. I laughed. It’d been a long time since someone treated me like that, not since I beat the hell out of John Stevens in high school. That was when Cassie seemed to decide I wasn’t a nerd, or at least not completely nerdy. All of the guys wanted her, oftentimes the center of locker room talk. She was half Filipino, exotic, almost mysterious—you could never know for sure why she was smiling.

I was back in my hotel room before I realized where my thoughts had gone. I turned on the TV and sat on the end of the bed. I hadn’t watched TV in years.

The channels flipped, and I couldn’t seem to control my mind.

It was strange to me that I was attracted to someone so different from Cassie. Though I supposed they both had that mysterious smile. Kimber’s was just more implied, like a Cheshire cat lived in her expression, tweaking the corners of her mouth. She didn’t actually smile all that often. I wondered why. I loved her attitude, that she didn’t take shit from people, but now I wondered if there was more underneath that, something hidden.

Like I’d seen last Friday. She took my shit and didn’t fight back. She’d lain herself open to me, let me see a glimpse of that something hidden, and I stomped on her. When did I become such a monumental prick?

I clicked the damn TV off.

I managed not to hurl the remote at the screen and stood to pace the room instead. The urge to do something to make it up to her crawled up my spine, but what was I supposed to do? I couldn’t allow myself to get close to her. I’d get sucked in completely and then be damned to hell for wanting her, just like with Cassie. I couldn’t go through that again.

But I couldn’t hurt Kimber anymore, either. Usually, I was superb at keeping a boundary in place. I could be friendly with women, even regular sexual partners, and still not get attached. Perhaps the simple barrier of money was what made it easy—they paid me for a service. That was it.

Kimber confused me.

Maybe if I offered my services for payment, it would be easier. But I had the feeling sex with Kimber wouldn’t just be sex, not for me.

Son of a bitch.
She was getting under my skin. I needed to shove her away.