Fade In:
SLIP INTO CAMI’S SKIN
Holy hell, it’s great to be out, shopping for fun with friends. You don’t get to go clubbing often. Money’s tight. And even if it wasn’t, the people you used to hang out with currently live very different lives.
Married life does have benefits, like you know whom you’re sleeping with every night, which is good and bad. Good, because you don’t have to work so hard at being impressive. No worries about daily makeup or shaved-to-baby-smooth legs. Bad, because there are a whole lot of men in the world, and you’ve only seen this one small island of it. Who knows what kind of guy could be just around the bend? And while you love little Waylon with every ounce of your being, parenting is damn tough, especially when you’d rather party.
It would be nice if you had more friends who shared your mind-set. Most of your old ones have gone on to college or settled into full-time jobs. Not one is a housewife/mother combination. You like the playgroup moms well enough, but they’re not exactly your type. The only things you have in common are your kids and the activities you entertain them with.
Nobody understands what you need, Cami.
No one really cares.
You wish you had more support.
But you’re not even sure
Rand’s got your back.
You can barely consider tomorrow. Decades from now might not ever even come to pass. But even if they manage to, you don’t want to think about having saggy boobs and time-etched skin and scraggly hair. You are a live-in-the-moment kind of girl, and that’s exactly how you want to be.
In this moment, you lean across the front seat, kiss Rand, who’s just parked the Civic—the great, safe family car that neither of you wanted, but it was the best you could afford.
“Love you, baby.” You underline the promise with a longer, deeper kiss, one to make him believe his effort to take you out tonight will be justly rewarded at its end. That’s so much fun that you go a little farther, dipping your tongue lightly into his ear before dropping your lips to his neck, where you lock them in place and suck gently at first, then a little harder. Hard enough to raise a telltale bruise.
“Stop already.” He steers your hand into his lap, where it’s happy to admire the impressive bulge behind his button fly. “I won’t be able to walk, let alone dance. Jesus, what you do to me!”
“Hey. Jesus didn’t do that. I did, and don’t you forget it.”
Hedging his bets, he invites, “Want to do more?”
The offer is tempting. Parking-lot sex might be a kick, with or without people walking by. “Let me text Grace. See where she is.” It takes only a couple of seconds to get a reply. “They’re almost here. So tuck it back in and chill.”
You’ll have to follow your own advice. Not the tucking-it-in part. The chilling part. Well, at least you’ve got a new goal. They say the only way to keep married sex interesting is experimentation. You’ll have to play researcher soon.
Rand tucks it in, exits the car, circles around to your side, and opens the passenger door. He offers a hand, helps you out, pulls you close, and you remember again how you took one look at him and decided to try him on for size. He isn’t the perfect guy (is there any such thing?), but he’s borderline. At least in the Tucson corner of the planet.
As you wait for Grace and Daniel, there’s plenty of parking-lot action to entertain you. The club allows minors, but only in one fenced-off section, so the over-twenty-one set can get blotto. A few stumble to their cars, most of the way to shit-faced already.
You poke Rand, point to a guy bent over beside his beater car, heaving. “He got an early start. It’s barely eight o’clock.”
When it comes to obvious drunks, your patience is in short supply. They remind you of Rand’s mother, Pam, whose best friend in the world is named Gin. Start to finish, she’s a total embarrassment, especially at family gatherings, which is why you prefer to avoid them.
Thank God Rand doesn’t seem to have the same driving need for liquor, or any other substance, for that matter. Not even weed. Okay, you are a little sorry about that. Things would be so much easier. Marijuana has been your favored coping mechanism for a very long time.
You started smoking in eighth grade, courtesy of your then best friend’s big brother. At first he acted all generous. “Have another toke. Plenty more where that came from.” You were young enough, naive enough, that you barely noticed the way his eyes crept over your body.
Once your growing taste for a decent buzz became obvious, there came his demand for oral. You were a total blow job novice, but he taught you everything you needed to know. The first time, you almost puked. The nausea was as much about how you felt about yourself as about the actual act. Despite your disgust, however, you kept coming back for more.
You were a sophomore when he ran off and joined the army, and by then weed was a regular habit. In high school, you fell right in with the stoner crowd, where you felt welcome and, strangely, successful.
For your entire childhood, you could never measure up to Noelle, who excelled at everything without even trying, and she was the younger sister. Honor roll? Noelle. Blue ribbons for art? Noelle. Spelling bee trophies? Noelle.
After the accident, she struggled. It’s hard to admit, but the truth is, you took a fair amount of pleasure in that. But still, necessarily, everyone’s attention laser focused on her. Everyone but your weed-loving friends. You learned how to deal to cover your overhead and, good sense or good fortune, or a combination of the two, you’ve managed to avoid unfavorable attention.
Fortunately, your current supplier does not expect sex in exchange for the dope he provides. All he wants is payment on time. As long as you don’t overindulge, you’re always able to make a fair profit on what you move. Getting buzzed is cool, but the end game is saving enough to dress Waylon in firsthand clothes, keep the cable bill current, and maybe put together a future trip to Disneyland. By car. Cheap motel. You’re a realist.
Rand will want to know where the money came from, but you’ll figure out what to tell him when the time comes. Until that becomes a necessity, you keep everything on the down low—as low as you can manage, especially because sometimes you have to bring Waylon along on your runs. On one hand, he’s good cover. On the other . . .
Nope. Won’t happen. You’re way too careful. Only deal to people you know well. In fact, there’s one now. But he picked up smoke yesterday, so he can’t be looking for you. And besides, he wouldn’t know you’re here.
He pulls over across the street from the parking lot, just as Grace’s car, with Daniel at the wheel, turns in to find a spot nearby. Silas must have been following them. But Grace told him off months ago. Better file him away as a stalker.
Truth be told, Silas is a creepster, and the alt-right crowd he runs with is downright . . . disturbing, with their crazy white power bullshit. You wouldn’t think someone so young would get caught up in that crap, but he’s chest-deep, and a couple of his buddies, too.
Yeah, you’re taking a chance, selling to that crew, but your customer base is limited. Not like the playgroup moms sit around toking dope. Nope, you need dudes like Silas. So you play the game, and play it smart, offering bottom-line pricing on excellent weed. No reason to mess with that. At least, you hope not.
But seeing him here, under these circumstances, weirds you out. If Silas is following Grace, whatever he has on his mind can’t be good. You want to believe his goal isn’t mayhem, but how can you be certain? He beat the crap out of Daniel, for no other reason than he hates the color of his skin.
Now, with Daniel and Grace together, both of them could be in danger. This is a tough line to straddle. You nudge Rand. “Check it out. I think your sister has a stalker.” That was a mistake, and you realize it immediately.
Rand takes one look at Silas’s truck, balls up his fists. “If he bothers Grace, I will kill that son of a bitch. I should’ve already dealt with the—”
“Stop!” You clamp a hand over Rand’s ample bicep, tug backward. “Tonight won’t be much fun if you wind up in jail.” Or if Silas suffers a bout of temporary insanity, forgets the value of bargain-basement weed purchasing, and outs you to your obviously enraged husband.
Grace and Daniel spot you, and by the time they join you, Silas has dematerialized, leaving nothing behind but a belch of Ford smoke. You should probably say something.
Rand beats you to it. “What’s up with Silas? He’s not threatening you, is he, Grace?”
“He was across from the house earlier,” she admits. “Why?”
“Because he was just parked over there.” You point toward the approximate spot. “And he got there right as you pulled into the lot.”
“What?” Grace scans the street with worried eyes. “He followed us?”
Daniel stiffens, on obvious edge. “That dude is a serious sicko.”
“If he bothers you, I’ll kick his ass. I wish I would’ve done that already.” Rand’s hand alights on Grace’s shoulder.
The simple gesture stirs something in you. Something unsettling. Perhaps tinted green. Something hard to ignore. You choose the sensible approach, which is to bury that something for now.
“No ass kicking tonight,” you declare. “Tonight we celebrate Grace’s birthday. Tonight we dance!”
You extend your arm and are mortified when Rand ignores the hand you offer him, instead slips an arm around Grace’s shoulders. “Happy birthday.”
Rand kisses Grace easily on the cheek, proceeds to escort her toward the entrance. When he leans over to whisper into her ear, icy tendrils of jealousy snake through your veins, grasp your heart, squeeze tight.
It’s an odd sensation because you aren’t ordinarily the jealous type, and consider Grace a decent friend.
Maybe she’s not so decent.
But it’s hard not to be at least a little envious of someone who everyone else undisguisedly loves.
Maybe even worships.
You’ve never witnessed Grace invite flirtation from Rand, but sometimes his interest seems more than brotherly.
Maybe even more than stepbrotherly.
They didn’t live in the same house very long. Grace was thirteen when her father was killed, not quite fifteen when her mother married Rand’s dad. That’s how you met Rand, in fact, at a family barbecue Grace invited you and Noelle to.
The two girls tried to maintain their friendship for quite a while, and that day they were still pretending like it was working. As they chattered and giggled about everything and nothing, your and Rand’s eyes kept connecting across the patio, then across the table. And as the hamburgers and potato salad were passed, divvied up, and consumed, Rand’s knees closed in on yours, closer, closer, until they were touching. You didn’t pull away.
Instant attraction, that’s what it was, the kind that begins in the pit of your belly, a flutter of nerves like breeze-worried leaves. Your fingers touched and your heart hiccuped faster, and you fleetingly wondered what, if anything, would come next. But then you knew something would because you were damn sure going to make it happen. Rand felt the same way, his smile told you so, and you found a way to sneak a kiss poisoned with lust and promise.
He asked you out the next day, and your second kiss was fireworks. Neither of you tried to fight the heat. Neither of you thought twice about it leading to sex, and a couple of times unprotected sex because he forgot the condoms. But when that resulted in your pregnancy, a lot of thought was required.
You confided in Grace first, hoping to borrow a few dollars for an abortion. “Have you told Rand?” she asked.
“If I can scrape together the money, I won’t need to.”
She shook her head. “He has the right to know, don’t you think?”
Mulling it over, you had to agree. But the last thing you expected was for him to suggest a wedding. “A kid deserves two parents. I’ll work my butt off for both of you. We’ll be okay.”
That didn’t worry you, and neither did the way other people, including your family, might look at you, knowing there was a wriggly thing living inside of you. No, the biggest question to cross your mind was: Do I love him enough?
But then he bought you a ring, and it was beautiful. And so were the wedding gowns on that TV show you binge-watched. Your parents couldn’t say yes to one of those, but the affordable one Grace and you found at an outlet made you feel like a princess. Walking down the aisle of Grace’s church was a fairy-tale dream come true. For once, all eyes were on you.
Rand has kept his promise to work his butt off for you and Waylon, who amazes you every day. And love, you’ve found, continues to linger long after the fireworks have fizzled.
Which brings you right back to your husband acting a little overfriendly with his stepsister, your best friend. For some reason Daniel doesn’t seem bothered by Rand’s protectiveness, if that’s what it is.
Protectiveness? It’s called flirting.
You can play that game, too,
and you can play it better.
Clearly, Daniel’s crazy about Grace. Every time he looks at her, his eyes downright glitter with adoration. Probably not healthy to love someone like that. Especially someone so different. Daniel and you aren’t exactly close, but you’re aware of the fact that, unlike his girlfriend, who lives in a lovely house with supportive parents, he has no permanent home or family to speak of.
Grace has confided as much and besides, you’re acquainted with Daniel’s half brother, Tim, who’s a racist jerk just like Silas. You tread lightly around him and, in fact, have taken to carrying a weapon in your bag, along with the weed you sell to that crowd. Daniel, however, seems decent enough, despite his challenging circumstances.
You fall in beside Daniel, hook his elbow with yours—hey, what’s good for the gander is fair game for the goose. “You worried about Silas?”
He exhales a huge sigh. “It’s hard not to be, although this is the first time I’ve noticed him prowling around Grace. Hope it doesn’t become a habit.”
You want to add, Or isn’t one already. Instead, you say, “You really like her a lot, huh?”
Cue the eye glitter. “No, man. I worship her. She’s amazing.”
Amazing. Everyone thinks so.
Might be fun to knock her down
a couple of pegs.
“Grace is amazing. But everyone has faults, not to mention a ghost or two stashed somewhere.” Everyone, you’re pretty sure, is possessed.
Perhaps it’s time for an exorcism.
Fade Out