Chapter 9

Andrew

People think that living in a town like Pelham is the same as never graduating high school, never growing up. It’s a small town, and when a lot of your high school friends stay, it seems like you should be able to always hang out and see each other, but that’s not the case. The true story is that old friends get demanding jobs and get married and have kids and then those kids get the flu, and somehow, even though they only live a few streets away from you, you end up only seeing your best friend once during all of 2016. I needed this wedding just to reconnect with myself.

But when I glanced up from the invigorating game of touch football and saw Michelle sitting by herself at our assigned table, my heart gave up a little ache and I swallowed, leaving myself wide open for a tackle.

I just wanted Michelle to have fun, to let go and stop worrying about everything.

But it was okay. This was just our first time. Things would get better. We would keep trying.

“Our first time”? a little voice doubted me, incredulous at my audacity.

Shut up, I told the voice.

“We will keep trying”?

I said shut up.

Connie took a seat next to Michelle and I relaxed a little bit. Good. I wanted Michelle to have someone to talk to, and I wanted Connie to have someone to talk to, too. Maybe they could bring each other out of their shells.

After the speech, I scanned the clusters of folding tables for Michelle again but I didn’t see her anywhere anymore. My brow furrowed and I scouted for Connie, thinking that Michelle may have told her where she was going.

I felt a little hand slide into the pocket of my suit coat and I logically assumed that it was Connie. “Ace.” Lola’s voice startled me, and I jolted, glaring down at her. It had literally been as many years as Connie had been alive since Lola had slid her hand into my front pocket like that.

“What are you doing?” I wondered, just a touch accusatory.

“Nothin’.” Lola’s hand slid out of my pocket again and she beamed up at me. “Nothin’ at all.”

“Hey, have you seen Michelle?” I asked, since Lola was right here, but she made a face like she wasn’t sure what I was talking about. “My date,” I clarified.

Lola blinked. “Oh, no. I haven’t. Do you want me to help you look?”

I sighed. Not really. Then again, Michelle was a little bit of a wild card. Being shy didn’t make her easy to control. She could have been anywhere here. What if she felt overwhelmed and folded? Shit. She hadn’t tried to socialize with anyone; I only saw her smiling a little bit during my speech. Maybe she had left. Maybe she was balled up in the restroom, crying into a napkin.

She could be anywhere, and Lola’s help meant that we could cover more ground—even if her attention span wasn’t really conducive to helping me for more than a few minutes.

“All right,” I said.

“You’re the one who knows her so well,” Lola told me, eyes gleaming with something strange. She looked more engaged than I had seen her look in a long time, even when she was with Connie. “Where do you think she would go?”

“She’s really shy; she almost didn’t come,” I said. “I think she might have left.”

“Shy?” Lola’s eyebrows twisted in a sardonic kind of arrogance and she scoffed. “Oh, my god, you’re dating a wet mop.”

I rolled my eyes. I didn’t have time for Lola’s shit. “Help me or not,” I grumbled, striding toward the church. If she wasn’t in the chapel, she would have to be in the parking lot, or the worst possible scenario, walking home.

My gut clutched at the thought. Should I have made her play football with us? Had I scared her away with the speech? I hadn’t meant for my eyes to fall across hers at some key points in my delivery, but when they rested there, it just felt right. There was a click, and I almost forgot I was in the middle of a speech. The moment became real, even inside of some sentences I rehearsed a dozen times before tonight.

Before I even knew her.

I was halfway to the church when Lola jogged up alongside me, grinning at me in a weird way. “I like the dress-I-got-from-the-trash look on you,” I told her.

“Back atcha,” Lola said with a wink. She watched me for a few seconds, but my gaze was pinned to the church, and I didn’t know what her problem was. She seemed to be working up her nerve, which was great. What? Did she want to pump me for some child support? Was there a field trip she didn’t want to chaperone because it would mean getting up too early on a Tuesday? “So,” she said. Here it comes. “I have something to tell you.”

She slowed to a stop, knowing she had me hooked, and damn it, she did. I glanced over my shoulder at her and saw that her body language had shifted into a stance of sincerity and totally uncharacteristic sobriety. It was almost penitent. I scowled and turned fully to face her. This would probably be worth turning for. “I actually talked to Michelle a little while ago, actually.”

I took a step closer to her and reined myself from jumping to any conclusions. “Okay. Did she say anything of note?”

Lola swallowed and her eyes crusted with real tears. My scowl deepened. This was bad. Lola can cry on command, but the fact that she felt like she needed to was disturbing. “I just wanted to talk to this girl you like so much, you know? I wanted to see what it was that finally got you to move on.”

I scoffed. “Aaron Hershel is the one who finally got me to move on,” I reminded her. I found Aaron Hershel sinking his face between her legs in the backseat of a 1962 Studebaker I had rebuilt myself over the course of years. I had to sell that damn car afterward. No amount of upholstery conditioner could cover the stench. “Look, Lo. Please don’t do this.”

“Do what?” Lola demanded. “Have emotions? Care?”

“It’s 2017!” I barked at her, hating myself for the bull that she could bring out of me. I didn’t like myself like this. “If you were going to care, you should have started in 2012.”

“Your stupid girlfriend told me that she was leaving,” Lola sniffed, marching toward the church. Now it was I who followed after her.

“What? Why? When?”

“You could have told me you were going to bring a date!”

“Why would I do that?” I genuinely wondered. “Lola…” I tried to employ some sympathy here. “I think even you realize that you don’t love me. You just want me, and you only want me because I’m with someone else. Ask yourself why you suddenly feel this way after five years. Why didn’t you feel this way when we were together? I think you’ll—”

“I want you because you’re Connie’s real father!” Lola burst, breaking into a run for the church or the parking lot.

“What?” My heart leapt at the words. Was I? Could it be? Did she send a paternity test off without telling me?

I stood in a stunned pillar for about five seconds, and that was enough time for Lola to get a good lead. I followed her, but I didn’t run because I know Lola. She wasn’t really running away; she was just being dramatic. I’d never met a woman who lived so much like her life was a play. She stopped at the threshold of the church and looked at me longingly from over her shoulder, then pushed the doors open and let herself into the chapel.

I grimaced but I followed. I wasn’t in love with Lola. I wasn’t looking forward to this little scene. But I had to know if Connie was my biological daughter; I had to know if Michelle abandoned the party, and why. She had me hooked and she knew it. So I followed through the church doors and into the quiet, dark chapel where our friends had been wed just a few hours ago.

Lola stood at the altar, staring right at me and waiting for my approach. I hated how confident she was whenever she played with a man.

“You really did the paternity test?” I asked her as I strode down the center aisle, still strewn in flower petals. “And Connie is mine?”

Lola nodded solemnly and advanced to meet me in the middle. Her tears had mysteriously vanished somewhere between the field and the church. “That’s right,” Lola whispered. “And—you know—it made me realize that I’ve been holding back from you ever since I thought I had tricked you, and that Connie was Mike’s. I never let myself be real with you, so I had to hide.” She pursed her lips and gazed up at me, imploring. “I had to go be myself with other men.”

My mouth slanted to one side and I rolled my eyes by complete impulse. “You think your infidelities were all part of some coping mechanism?”

“Yes, Ace... they were. I love you. I’ve always loved you.” She gave up a little gasp, as if she needed air between sobs, but her eyes were as dry as deserts now. “I just couldn’t let myself be with you when I thought that everything between us was a lie. That our daughter was a lie.” Alarm bells went off in my head as Lola’s hands stretched up to her shoulders and she slid one green strap down to her elbow. She didn’t break eye contact with me, but I still saw her bare her breast in my peripheral.

Lola bit her lip and gazed up at me with this girlish, bashful face that I remembered from her every seduction.

But Lola was not bashful. It was just a face she put on.

“But our daughter isn’t a lie,” she whispered. “We have a daughter together, Ace.”

She took a step toward me, and I took a step back. I knew where this was going, and it might have been a tempting offer long ago. But there’s been way too much water—and men—under the bridge since then.

And I didn’t know Michelle back then.

Lola’s other hand stretched up to her other strap and was halfway through pulling it down when I intervened, stepping forward and seizing her hand in mine. She grinned, probably satisfied to ensnare me. “Don’t,” I commanded, gentle yet firm. “This isn’t what you really want, Lo. And it isn’t what I want either. You’re just... jealous. And a little drunk. And it’s a wedding. I get it.”

“I’m not talking about one night,” Lola hissed, glaring up at me. Nothing made her drop her masks faster than not getting her way. “I’m talking about the rest of our lives, Ace!”

“You had that option eight years ago, Lo!” I yelled back at her. It’s difficult for me to restrain my temper when someone else is yelling up into my face, even if it’s my now-topless ex in the middle of a goddamn church. “I was there. I remember what it was like. You can say whatever you want.”

“Are you telling me you don’t want this?” Lola asked, stretching one hand down between her legs, pressing it into the dirty fabric of her sundress. Her eyelashes drooped heavily over her lustful eyes. “Just one more time?”

I was as flaccid as an earthworm right now.

Lola leaned forward and whispered into my ear, “I’ll let you come inside me.”

One of my nostrils reflexively curled, and I wondered how many times she’d said that, to how many of my friends, my customers. I took the opportunity of her closeness to slip my hands under her straps, pushing them back up over her shoulders.

The sound of the back hall entrance clapping shut tore my eyes off of Lola and to my left.

My pulse hammered in my throat. It was Michelle. She wasn’t even trying to look at me; she had her arms bound around her midsection, like she felt sick, and she was rushing toward the exit.

Fuck. Fuck!

“Michelle!” I cried after her, untangling my hands from Lola’s top. Goddamnit! If she just saw us, it must have looked so bad! Fuck! My hands were under Lola’s straps, but it probably looked like I was pulling them down, not up. She was crowded against me with her damn hands buried between her legs.

I bolted after Michelle, who broke into a jog in her high heels, her gown hitched up around her knees. She looked like Cinderella in gold, fleeing the ball.

“Ace!” Lola called after me, but I didn’t turn.

Michelle hit the chapel doors and spilled into the foyer. She was against the exit door when I caught her, gripping the handle so she couldn’t let herself out without addressing me.

“We have to talk about this,” I said. “You can ask Lola. Nothing happened.”

“Let me out,” Michelle said through gritted teeth, shoving at the door. I held strong on the handle. There was no way she could open this door if I didn’t want her to.

“Lola just told me that Connie is my real daughter,” I explained.

Michelle looked down and her thick dark hair fell into her face. “Congratulations,” she whispered, jiggling the handle again. “Please let me out.”

“She wants to be with me.”

“Someone help me!” Michelle cried, pounding her fists on the door. “This asshole is keeping me trapped in here!”

I spread my hand over and down Michelle’s shoulder, down her back, twisting her to look at me.

“Hey,” I said, gazing into those chocolate eyes. “I don’t want to be with her.”

“Let me go,” Michelle said, flat and certain.

How could I convince her that I meant what I said? How could I keep her from walking out on me? Didn’t she feel this? Did she get chances like this every day? Because I didn’t.

I raked the knuckle of one finger down her soft cheek and I saw the way she inhaled, a sudden, soft inhale. I knew she felt what I felt and I came down, crushing my mouth against hers. She was so soft against my hardness, and I coaxed her sweet tongue out of hiding with my own. My palms ran up and down her back, pressing her deeper against my chest, and her neck flexed with the pressure of the kiss, letting us bind together. She loosened as I bound her against my chest and blood thrummed down to my cock and inflated him instantly. I knew she felt that, too.

Our lips parted and I stared down at her, waiting to see her reaction. My heart pounded and my chest rose and fell. It was only about five seconds of a kiss, but my body reacted like I ran up two flights of stairs.

Michelle’s eyelashes fluttered up and she held my gaze as she twisted the doorknob behind her back, spilling out into the open air, beneath the night sky.

My heart gaped open around the wound of her rejection.

She turned her back on me and scooped the gathers of her skirt into her hands, hobbling in her heels. She hobbled down the shallow cement staircase, down the sidewalk, and toward the parking lot.

“How are you going to get home?” I called after her, reluctantly following. I knew that this was over, but I followed anyway. I still cared about her, damnit. I’m flesh and blood, not all machine. I’m not as simple as everyone likes to think.

Michelle paused, and my heart leapt. Maybe she would let me drive her home. Maybe that kiss wasn’t my last chance.

Then she delicately drew one leg up and pulled off her high heel. She did the same with the other and held them together in one hand. Barefoot, she continued. “I’ll walk,” she called over her shoulder.

“It’s six miles to Withers from here!”

“I can walk that,” she called again. “Thanks, anyway.”

She sounded like she really meant it and my lips pursed. Jesus, I wanted her. Even in the worst possible situation, where she had every right to turn into a screeching harpy, she tried to be decent and humane. My throat tightened. I can’t believe you fucked this up. You should have known Lola was going to make a play. She’s not unpredictable, Ace.

I watched with a lump in my throat as Michelle became a silhouette, strolling along the side of the road, her high heels in her hand.

The chapel doors lightly opened and shut behind me. I twisted to gaze over my shoulder and grimaced. Lola picked her way down the stairs to join me, fully dressed again.

“Hey,” she said.

“Hey.” I exhaled through my nose and slanted a look down to her. I wanted to hate her, but I couldn’t. I knew Lola too well to hate her anymore. This was my mistake. Trusting her had been my mistake. You can’t hate a snake for biting you, can you? It’s the nature of the snake, and you should have known better. “Is Connie really my daughter?” I had to ask. “Did you really get back those paternity results?”

“Do you really want to know?” Lola asked.

My chest ached. That was answer enough. “Yeah,” I rasped. “I really want to know.”

Lola swallowed and nodded. “She might be yours. It’s possible that she is yours. But no. I never sent off the sample.” She shrugged and bound her arms around herself. “But it is possible.”

I guess she didn’t want to know for sure. Maybe I didn’t, either.

“Let’s just say that she is.” I put my arm around Lola’s shoulders and nodded toward the reception. Someone had lit tiki torches and the distant sound of laughter seemed to come from another world. “Come on,” I sighed. I gave her back a pat and dropped my arm again.

As we strode toward the reception, I scanned the dark road for Michelle, but she was gone.

Lost to me now, I was sure.