CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Thia
Mosquitos the size of small birds buzzed around my ears like small vultures circling the air above its intended prey. I don’t know how long I sat out there, but by the time I figured out how to move and trudged back to the garage, Bear wasn’t there.
He didn’t come back that night, or the next morning. It was for the better, anyway. The door knob had been replaced at some point but it wasn’t locked anymore. I wasn’t a prisoner. He wasn’t keeping me there anymore.
He was telling me to leave.
He WANTED me to leave.
He didn’t have to tell me twice.
I hated Bear. And not just because he left me in the dark without a backwards glance but because I didn’t want to hate him. I didn’t want to like him either, but like an idiot I let down my guard and invited myself to be his joke once more.
What happened the night before was never happening again. My life might have been some cruel joke, but I wouldn’t let myself be made into one at his expense.
I took a shower. A real shower without the barrier of my shorts. The soap stung as the water rinsed it down my body and into my crevices, but it didn’t last long and after a minute I was able to wash and dry without feeling like I was suffocating.
I wiped the steam off the mirror, my stomach flipped when I heard the door to the apartment open.
He’d come back.
I hated myself for hoping it was him.
He didn’t deserve my hope.
“Thia?” A female voice called out, slowly opening the bedroom door. “Oh, there you are.” Ray appeared with a bright smile. “I brought you some fresh clothes,” she said, setting another shirt and pair of shorts on the bed.
“Thank you,” I said, moving toward the stack. “I really haven’t had much of a chance to tell you how much I appreciate…”
“Don’t worry about it. Trust me, I know it’s not easy to be the new kid around here,” she said, her voice full of sincerity. “I had someone to help me back then, and now I’m just glad that I’m here to help you.” She looked at the floor and then to the ceiling like she was suddenly trying to fight back tears. “Anyway,” she said, shaking away whatever had crossed her mind, “I was just wondering if you wanted to come up to the house for a bit? Have some lunch? I see that you really haven’t eaten most of the food I’ve been bringing you, so maybe you just need a new setting for a while? A little reset?” I stood there without answering because I didn’t really know what to say. I needed to come up with a plan, not have a lunch date, but I also didn’t want to disappoint her. “Maybe you can help me not strangle the kids?”
Searching my brain for reasons why that wouldn’t be a good idea, her words suddenly registered with me. “Kids?” The girl didn’t look old enough to have one kid never mind kids with an ‘s’ on the end. I’d seen her almost every single day in one way or another for brief periods of time, but this was the first time I felt like the fog had cleared long enough to actually be able to think about her as more than the bringer of clothes and food.
Ray’s hair was so light blonde it was almost white. It was long too, hanging straight over her shoulders, ending just under her breasts. Her one shoulder was covered with colorful, yet feminine tattoos that turned into a quarter sleeve. While Bear’s tattoos gave him an even harder edge, they seemed to do the opposite for Ray, the light pinks and blues made her look soft. More feminine. She was definitely young, maybe my age or a little older, but had an odd air of maturity about her that made me think that she could be nineteen or she could be thirty. “Get dressed, you’re coming. They love terrorizing newbies,” she said, patting the pile of clothes.
I held onto my towel, wrapping it even tighter under my arms. “I’m not really a kid person,” I lied. I’d always loved kids and I was practically a mom to Jesse, but she didn’t need to know that.
Ray winked like she could see right through me and I knew there was no way she was letting me out of lunch. “Good because neither am I,” she said, throwing me a shirt off the pile. “But within the last year I’ve acquired three of them, so hurry, before the two oldest ones knock the house off its pillars.”
Ray was in the living room when I emerged from the bedroom. She looked me up and down and tossed a pair of brown flip-flops onto the ground in front of me and I shimmied my feet into them. They fit perfectly, and so did the shorts. Although the black tank top she’d given me was a little tight over my boobs, but it was clean and comfortable and I was grateful to have clean clothes. “How do you get your hair that color?” Ray asked as I followed her out of the garage and into the wet heat. She crossed the lawn the same way Bear had the night before when he’d taken me to the fire pit.
My traitorous skin tingled, the hair standing on end when I remembered how he first pressed his lips to mine. When he washed me gently, when he used his tongue…
“You in there?” Ray said, nudging my shoulder.
“Yeah, sorry. Just zoned out,” I admitted. “I don’t do anything to get my hair this color. When I was born my dad said it was fire engine red but as I grew up the blonde started to take over. From the age of five to twelve it was practically pink, I’m just glad it’s faded a little bit. Kids at school didn’t think it was so awesome,” I answered.
“Yeah, kids can be assholes,” Ray said. “I’m so glad those clothes fit you. At least someone can get some use out of them right now. I tried squeezing my ass into those shorts this morning, but it was a no-go situation, they were so tight I think I damaged my lady parts trying to button them,” she said with a sigh.
Ray was seriously beautiful and in the light of the sun her bright blue eyes looked like huge glaciers. If she’d gained weight, it was probably for the best, because she wasn’t overweight by any stretch of the imagination and I found myself envying her curves.
The main house was a three-story stilt home that at night looked dark and menacing, but in the light of day was anything but. It was old and in need of some repair, but it was beautiful, sitting proudly in the center of a large grassy piece of property like a manatee emerging from the surface of the river.
The smell of paint grew stronger as we passed THE fire pit that I avoided looking at entirely. “We’re having the house painted, what do you think? I’m having trouble choosing a color.” She pointed to where a ladder was leaning up against the side of the house. A pretty dove grey color had been painted into a large square against the faded siding with several other smaller squares around it, all in varying shades of greys. Some more blue, some with a lavender tint. “I did that this morning, but I keep going back and forth. I think these kids are rotting my brain.” The second she opened the back door the screams and squeals of kids assaulted us.
It sounded like home.
When I still had one.
“Mama! Mama tell Sammy to stop!” Squealed a cute little girl with blonde pigtails who jumped into Ray’s arms, nearly knocking her back into the wall.
“Sammy stop chasing your sister.” Ray warned the little curly haired boy who ran circles around her feet all the way to the kitchen.
Big windows lined the far wall next to the front door. The kitchen, living room, and dining area existing in all one big, light and open space. “Come in, come in, it’s a work in progress in here too, but we just finished putting in new wood floors. Sammy dropping his paints was the end of the old carpet, but it was for the best, it had already lasted ten years past its shaggy expiration,” Ray said, setting the little girl down on the floor. She took off again, her little feet running midair before her feet even hit the ground. Immediately Sammy started his chase all over again screaming, “Maaaaaaxxxxxxxy come here,” after her as they took off down the hall in a tornado of yips and yells and laughter.
“Don’t wake the baby!” Ray called after them in a whisper yell that was impossible for them to hear across the house.
Just when I was wondering if Ray had left the kids in the house by themselves when she had come to the apartment I heard a throat clear and spotted a little old woman with white hair sitting at the dinette set in the center of the kitchen. Next to her was a pitcher of some sort of green drink and an empty glass filled with ice which she was lazily tracing her index finger around the rim. A digital monitor was leaning against the wall, and on the screen was a tiny sleeping baby wrapped in a pink blanket.
That’s why Ray was being so critical of her weight.
She’d just had a baby.
“Grace, I swear to god if you let them eat all the popsicles again, I’m sending them home with you,” Ray said, opening the lid to the trash can.
“I admit to nothing,” Grace said, licking her thumb and turning the page of her newspaper. Ray reached into the garbage can and picked out a box of popsicles, rolling her eyes as she shook the empty box before tossing it back into the can.
“Are all these kids yours?” I asked and upon hearing my voice Grace finally looked up.
“Yep, the whole lot of them,” Ray said, plopping down onto the chair across from Grace and pointed to the seat next to her. “It’s a long story but, technically Max is King’s, and Sammy is mine, but we’re all a family now. Nicole Grace was born last month.” She might have been complaining about the kids but the way she looked down the hall where the little girl and boy had just disappeared down made me think that Ray was more than happy with her current family situation.
“Am I off duty now?” Grace asked, grabbing the handle of the green pitcher and looking to Ray like she was asking her permission.
“Go ahead,” Ray said with a roll of her eyes.
Grace smiled and poured herself a glass. She took a long sip making an exaggerated ‘aaaaaaahhhhh’ sound. “That’s better.” Shifting to her side with her legs crossed and an elbow propped up on the table she turned to me. “Mojito?” she asked, raising her glass and shaking it, clinking the ice from side to side.
“No thank you, ma’am,” I said.
“Oh hush now, you can call me Grace, and it’s fine with me that you don’t want one because more for me,” she said downing half of her drink. “So you’re the girl…”
“Her name is Thia,” Ray interrupted. “Thia, this is Grace.”
“Thia is such a beautiful name, Abel told me it’s short for Cynthia, is that right?”
“Yes,” I said. The name Abel sounding oddly familiar, although I didn’t know who Grace was referring to.
“Welcome, welcome. I am so happy to meet you. I wanted to come pluck you out of that dark garage, but I was warned to give you some space and that you’d come out when you were ready, and HERE. YOU. ARE.” Grace reached over and with a strength I didn’t think the frail older woman had, plucked me from my seat and pulled me in for a hug that threatened to crush my lungs. “It’s a pleasure to finally meet you.”
“Likewise,” I said out of the side of my mouth, my cheek pressed up against her clavicle as she smushed me to her boney chest.
Ray chuckled. Grace pulled back and set me back down onto the chair. She sat and recrossed her legs, taking another sip of her drink. “Thank you for bringing my boy home,” Grace said.
“Your boy?” I asked.
“Abel,” Grace said.
“Who?”
“Bear,” Ray said.
Abel.
Bear was Abel. I’d known that. He’d told me that when we first met but I’d always thought of him as Bear and almost completely forgot that he’d told me his real name.
Abel.
“I didn’t bring him home. I needed his help and, I didn’t know where else to go…” I said, unsure of how much I should be telling her. “It’s a very long story.”
One I didn’t want to talk about. Not then.
Not ever.
Grace waved me off. “No need to explain. You’re here now and so is my boy and that’s all that matters.”
“Are you Bear’s mom?” I asked.
“No, but I’m the closest thing he’s got to it. Someone has got to look after these boys. Before Ray here came along all they had was me and I did my best to make sure they knew that my home was their home,” Grace said. Ray twisted a silver ring on her left hand and I wondered if it was an engagement ring or a wedding band. “And now that you’re here I won’t have to worry so much about Abel.”
“I’m sorry, but I’m not staying,” I said. “I’m leaving. Really soon, actually.”
They didn’t have to know how soon.
Grace tossed the newspaper she had been reading onto the table in front of me and I caught it before it slid right off the table. The headline on the front page was the same as the one from Bear’s phone a few days earlier. Except this time there was a picture of a girl under the headline.
A picture of me.
“Well, it doesn’t look to me like you’re going anywhere, anytime soon.” Grace sighed and leaned back like it had been settled, and I was staying regardless of my argument to the contrary. Which I noticed was a pattern with Grace. Ignoring anything she didn’t want to believe was true and settling for her own skewed version of what was going on.
“I’m so happy my boys have found you girls,” Grace said, despite my argument that Bear and I were not together. I wanted to argue but Ray shot me a look like she was telling me that I was fighting a losing battle. “I’ve loved Abel like he was my own since the very day Brantley brought him over to the house.”
“Brantley?” I asked.
“King,” Ray corrected. “My King. My fiancé.”
“Abel had ridden his motorcycle right up on my lawn after a downpour, leaving deep valleys all the way up to my plant beds, then he left a grease stain the size of North Carolina on my love seat.” She cupped her glass with both of her hands and looked into the ice like it was replaying the day she’d met Bear right there in her drink. “He was too young to be driving that damn thing, told him so myself, but by the next time he came to the house he was a natural. That boy was born to be on a motorcycle. The man and the machine.”
I’d only seen him on a bike once and it was driving away from the gas station and even though I was just a kid at the time I knew exactly what Grace was talking about when she said he was born to be on a bike.
“He was a funny one too,” Grace said.
“Funny?” I asked. Bear was a lot of things. Rude. Crude. Sexy as hell. INFURIATING. But funny was a side I hadn’t seen.
“Very. Used to tell me a new joke over my mama’s meatloaf on Thursday nights. The most ridiculous jokes that he probably heard around the club. Most of them the filthy kind you couldn’t repeat louder than a whisper and couldn’t say within ten miles of a church, that’s for sure.” She shook her head. “As he got older, slowly but surely, the light in that boy’s eyes grew dimmer and dimmer, by the time he rode off a few months back, there was nothing left in them. Broke my damn heart.” Grace wiped a tear that spilled from her eye. “He deserves better than to walk around this world alone and with his own broken heart.”
Ray stood up when the baby stirred on the monitor. “I’ll be right back,” she excused herself, and headed down the hall, emerging a few minutes later with a tiny little baby wrapped in a pink blanket.
“Isn’t my grand baby beautiful?” Grace asked proudly.
“Yes, she really is,” I agreed. She was a tiny little thing with a headful of chestnut curls. She yawned and opened her eyes, and I had a strong urge to want to hold her, but I didn’t want to ask. Ray didn’t know me very well and I’m pretty sure there was some sort of Mom rule out there about how long you have to know someone before they let you hold their babies.
Ray must have seen my warring expression, because she asked, “Would you like to hold her?” Before I could answer she gently placed the baby in my waiting arms. Her itty bitty hands and feet were wrinkly, her cheeks so chubby they pushed up into her huge eyes making them appear much smaller than they really were and slightly slanted.
“Not a kid person huh?” Ray asked, leaning against the counter, calling me out on my earlier lie.
“When it’s your turn I think Abel will be a really great father.” Grace chimed in. “Just like my Brantley is.”
“Grace,” I said, unable to take my eyes off the tiny little one in my arms, “I’m not just denying it for the sake of denying it. Bear and I aren’t together. I’m a problem for him, not any sort of solution.”
“Grace used to tell me the same thing and I used to deny it too. But it turns out I was wrong,” Ray said, leaning forward on her elbows.
Grace brushed her finger across the baby’s cheek, the contrast of old and wrinkled hands against plump and innocent skin was a beautiful sight that made my heart sing a little.
Just a little zap like a mini heart reviving machine.
“What’s her name?” I asked.
“Nicole Grace, but we’re going to call her Nikki,” Ray said, looking proudly over the baby in my arms. Grace beamed at the mention of her name as part of the baby’s name.
“I saw Abel this morning for the first time since he’s been back,” Grace locked eyes with me. “He still looks angry as hell, but I can tell that something is shifting and I just know the light will be coming back soon. Mark my words, my Abel will be back for good. So I’m gonna say right now that you’re wrong too, you just haven’t realized it yet.” She smiled at the baby and then up at me. The wrinkles around her eyes changing shape as her lips curled upward in a knowing smile. “I’m not a well woman, Thia. I’m feeling good now, but my time on this earth is limited.”
“I’m so sorry…” I started, but Grace cut me off.
“Oh hush now. Don’t be sorry. Just don’t hurt my boy and I won’t have to spend my remaining time alive hunting you down and making you pay.” She leaned back in her chair and I glanced up to Ray to see if maybe I’d misunderstood the meaning behind Grace’s words but Ray just stood there hiding a tight-lipped smile. “Now who wants lunch?” Grace asked, popping out of her chair and heading over to the refrigerator.
Ray stood on her tip toes and opened a cabinet, taking out some plates and setting the table, while I just sat there, baby in arms, with my mouth agape. “What the hell just happened?” I whispered to Ray.
She shrugged. “Congratulations, you’ve been threatened by Grace.”
“What does that even mean?” I whispered, not wanting Grace to hear me and not wanting to wake the little girl who had drifted off to sleep in my arms.
“In a way,” Ray said, setting a plate down in front of me, “it means welcome to the family.”
Grace had brought over some sort of cheesy potato casserole and a big leafy salad. Although Ray had been bringing me food for the last few days it was the first meal that I actually remember tasting.
And it tasted fantastic.
Grace fell asleep shortly after lunch on the couch and the kids went down for a nap after refusing to eat anything but salad dressing and chocolate milk. “Thanks for dragging me up here. It actually felt pretty good to be in the land of the living again,” I said as Ray walked me to the back door. “It’s nice to know that no matter how much horrible stuff happens in life that the world still manages to keep turning.”
“Listen Thia, I know you’re going through a lot, and I know it’s really hard, but you have to remember that you’re not the only person who has lost family, and you’re certainly not the only person here who has gone through some seriously horrible shit. I don’t know what Chop did to you at the MC, and wondering about it makes my skin crawl, but you have to know that you’re not the only one in this house who has been through something awful like that.”
“You?” I knew there was more to Ray and her story then the beautiful young mom before me.
“Yeah, and I’ll tell you the entire tale some day, but it’s actually not me I’m talking about.”
“Grace?” I looked over to where she was sleeping on the couch. Her deep snores growing louder and louder with each inhale. “Who would hurt Grace?”
Ray shook her head. “No, not Grace.”
“Then who?” I hoped to God she wasn’t going to say one of the kids.
Ray looked out the door toward the garage and then back to me. “Bear.”
It was the last person I expected her to say, but after she said it, it made sense. Why he hated that I’d been hurt. Why he wanted to heal me. Why he hated me all at the same time.
Why he wanted me gone.
I was more than just a burden. I was a reminder. No wonder he walked away from me last night. He was dealing with his own shit.
He didn’t need to deal with mine too.
If I wasn’t sure before, I was definitely sure now.
The second I could figure out how, I would be gone.
Consequences be damned.