Chapter 2
James turned off the ignition and hit the garage door button on his visor in the car. He let his head fall back against the headrest as he watched the garage door slowly descend in his rearview mirror. He hadn’t meant to get home this late.
He shifted in his seat, wincing at the way his thighs ached and lower back hummed with tension from his long day at the garage. Fuck, he was only thirty-five, but he felt like he was pushing forty-five.
He worked too much. He knew it. Even when the garage was closed over the weekend, he often could be found there. He wasn’t hiding from anything. He just had a lot of work to do.
But every night when he pulled into the garage after a long day, he felt like shit. He knew that if he were a better man—a better dad—he would come home earlier and hang out with his son.
Cade was seven years old, and instead of going to a park or a Cubs game with his old man, he was home playing video games under the watchful eyes of Abel, who’d lived with James and Cade for the past six years.
James glanced at the clock and sighed. It was a little past ten.
He’d started work on Megan Dempsey’s Accord. The thing was a disaster. He was still confused as to what the hell she was doing driving that car, but it wasn’t any of his business.
He’d lost track of time going over the vehicle after Janie had yelled from the front office that she was leaving and that he needed to lock up. Over an hour later he was still elbow deep in the Accord’s engine.
He’d actually had plans to meet a woman for drinks this evening, but he’d cancelled on her like he normally did. Michelle had just laughed when he gave her his normal excuses earlier in the day. He never felt right about going for drinks after work, especially when he could be home with his son instead.
He’d known Michelle for a long time. In fact, he’d met her through his ex-wife. She and Holly had been college roommates at the University of Illinois at Chicago. When things had gone south with Holly, James and Michelle had remained friends. The truth was, everything in Holly’s life crumbled at the same time—her marriage, her friendships, her career—thanks to her new best friends, heroin and cocaine.
Her drug use had started right after she’d had Cade and quickly sped out of control. James had tried to stick it out with her. He’d loved her madly, and they had a son together. But he’d reached his limit when he came home from work one day and found six-month-old Cade screaming in his crib, Holly passed out on the kitchen floor with her jeans and panties down around her ankles, and a half-naked junkie with track marks up his arms passed out right beside her.
After the ambulance had taken her to the hospital, he’d watched as police confiscated all the drug paraphernalia that she’d hidden all over their home, even in the nursery. James moved himself and his son out of their house that same night.
He’d visited Holly nearly every day in rehab immediately after the incident, hoping to see signs of recovery. The facility released her after a couple weeks, and James had thought they’d be able to put her dependency behind them. Her treatment hadn’t stuck, and she’d started using again. James and Holly finally divorced a few weeks after Cade’s first birthday.
Michelle had been along for the entire roller coaster. She and James mourned the loss of their best friend, because the Holly they used to know was long gone. A few years ago, Michelle had hinted that she was interested in taking her and James’s relationship to a more physical level, but James just couldn’t. There was too much history there.
They’d kept in touch off and on, occasionally meeting for drinks or meals. But he was careful that he didn’t send any sort of mixed signals. Although he knew he had to take care of himself and his needs, his first priority was and would always be Cade. He never brought women home because Cade didn’t need that type of confusion.
James slowly got out of the car, taking a moment to stretch his spine before walking into the house and up the stairs to the townhome’s main level. After tossing his keys into the basket on the kitchen counter, he headed for the refrigerator to grab a beer. He could hear the Cubs game on TV in the living room.
“That you, son?” his father called.
James took a pull of his beer before grabbing another one for his father. Abel was stretched out on his suede recliner in the dark living room. He accepted the beer from James without so much as a thank-you. Abel Foley was a man of very few words, but when he spoke, James always listened.
“What’s the score?” James asked, sinking down onto the couch.
“All tied at four in the bottom of the ninth. How was your date?”
James huffed. “I cancelled. And it wouldn’t have been a date even if I had gone. It was with Michelle.”
“She’s the only woman you ever have drinks with. That is, when you don’t cancel on her,” his father said, not taking his eyes from the TV.
“Yeah, well, I’m busy and it’s hard to find time to make new friends, Dad.”
He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been on an actual date. Probably Erika over a year ago. In fact, she’d been the last woman he’d slept with.
Talk about a dry spell.
“Cade gave me a pretty hard time about hitting the sack. Wouldn’t be surprised if he was still playing on those damn video games of his.” Abel took a long pull of his beer as the game went to commercial. He finally turned and looked over at his son. “How’re things at the shop?”
“Good.”
Abel just nodded before turning toward the TV. James threw back the rest of his beer, and after a quick trip to the recycling container, he climbed up the stairs to Cade’s room. Sure enough, there was a blue glow coming from underneath his son’s door. He never should have gotten him that TV for his room. But the things Cade wanted had a way of finding a place in their home just because James felt so goddamn guilty all the time that he wasn’t doing enough for his son.
He paused for a moment to listen and could just hear the sounds of Mario Kart coming from the bedroom. He rapped on the door before going in.
Cade whipped around in his chair, his eyes wide. “Dad. Hi.”
“Isn’t it past your bedtime?”
His son rolled his eyes. “Dad, don’t be lame. I don’t have school or anything tomorrow.”
School didn’t start for a few more weeks. James just remembered he had a meeting with Cade’s new teacher next Thursday. He hated those meetings. He hated to sit there and listen to someone judge his son. And every time he had to do one of these parent-type things for Cade’s school or go to a little league game, he silently cursed Holly for picking heroin over them. James would gladly do anything for Cade, but he wished that when his son looked over at the bleachers during his games, it wasn’t only his dad that he saw.
“I think the Cubs are at home on Saturday. You wanna see if we can get tickets?”
Cade’s smile shined through the darkness of the room. “Really? You think you can go?”
The guilt dug a little bit deeper.
“Yeah. I’ll look online for seats. Maybe we can peel your grandpa out of his recliner and we can all go.”
“That would be awesome, Dad!”
James nodded. “But seriously. It’s bedtime. Game off and in bed in five minutes. Got me?”
“Yes, sir!” Cade saluted happily.
James shut the door and could hear his son moving around in his room. The blue light flickered off, and he heard the springs of Cade’s mattress moan as he crawled in.
Smiling, he continued down the hall toward the master bedroom. He might feel guilty about not being Father of the Year, but he wasn’t above some good old-fashioned bribing.
###
Megan double-checked the address on the apartment listing. Yep, she had the right place.
The apartment was on the top floor of a five-story building in Greektown. The bottom floor was—big surprise—a gyro shop.
She hit the intercom for apartment 502. After a moment of ringing, she expected to hear Calli’s voice. Instead, she heard a loud click, and Megan was able to open the door. Between the one elevator in the tiny lobby and an old staircase that wound its way all the way to the top, Megan decided to wait for the elevator.
There looked to be only two apartments on the fifth floor. Apartment 502 was toward the back of the building. Megan was about to knock on the door when it swung open. A slender, scantily clothed woman stood in the open doorway. Her short, dark hair was spiked into a Mohawk.
In the quick second Megan had to assess the woman, she counted an eyebrow piercing, a stud in her nose, two rings in the corner of her mouth, and black gauges in both ears. The woman had colorful tattoos on both shoulders and a long black arrow tattoo on the inside of her right forearm. She’d never met someone so…decorated before.
The woman smiled. “Megan?”
Slightly embarrassed to be caught gawking, Megan smiled. “Yes. Are you Calli?”
“That’s me. Callista, actually, but the only person who calls me that is my mom. Come on in.” Calli stepped back and let Megan pass into the apartment. “So, like the listing said, the lease is for a one-bedroom. What the listing didn’t mention is that it comes with a roommate. Me.”
Megan stopped her perusal of the small, tidy kitchen and looked at Calli. “So it’s a two-bedroom apartment?”
“Yep,” Calli replied, walking into the living room. “My room is that way and the available room is there. It’s an ensuite so we don’t have to fight over the bathroom. But we would be sharing the kitchen, living room, and balcony.”
The unit was small, with the living space in the middle and the bedrooms on either side. Old narrow-planked hardwood floors that needed refinishing ran throughout the place.
Megan walked into the available bedroom and felt a little claustrophobic. A double bed and a nightstand would just fit into the tiny space. Maybe a tall chest of drawers against the opposite wall next to the only window.
She moved toward an accordion door, which screeched when it opened. The closet was barely big enough to hold her coats, let alone her entire wardrobe.
The ensuite was compact and clean like the rest of the apartment. It had a pedestal sink, a toilet, and a shower. Megan walked to the window in the bedroom, which looked out along Halsted Street. The view wasn’t great, but it wasn’t horrible either.
“A few rules that go along with the lease,” Calli began from the doorway. “No drugs, no séances, no orgies. Oh, and I’m deathly allergic to shellfish, so if you want shrimp, you’ll have to eat it outside the apartment.”
Megan looked back at the woman and blinked. Not that she wasn’t on board with the house rules, but she was particularly relieved to hear her potential roommate wasn’t into the items on that list. Judging from her looks alone, Calli was definitely a free spirit. Megan silently reprimanded herself for assuming the worst of the other woman just because she decorated her body with ink and metal. She lectured her students all the time about not judging a book by its cover, and here she was doing the very same thing.
Note to self: stop being such a goddamn hypocrite.
“Do you have any questions?” Calli asked.
“Um, not really. It seems very nice.” And it was, except it was smaller than any place she’d ever stayed before, including her college dorm. It would take some adjusting, but it was definitely doable.
“Come on, let’s chat in the living room. You want a drink?”
Megan followed her out and moved to the red upholstered couch opposite the flat-screen TV on the wall. “No, thank you. I’m fine.”
Calli shrugged and grabbed a bottle of red wine from on top of the fridge. She was wearing a torn and stretched-out black racerback tank top over a black bra. Megan saw the colorful tattoos covering most of Calli’s back. They stood out against her pale skin.
“So, Megan, what do you do?”
“I’m a teacher. Second grade.”
“I didn’t know teachers made enough to afford Jimmy Choos and Burberry handbags,” Calli said as she poured herself a glass of wine.
Megan shrugged, looking down at the purse on her lap. “They don’t.”
The other woman grinned as she turned to put the bottle away. She came into the living room and sat on the couch, tucking her legs underneath her. Calli was trying hard to figure her out, but Megan wasn’t getting into her sordid past and why she was able to have such nice things.
Before Calli could say anything else, Megan asked, “What do you do?”
“I’m a piercer at Diesel Tattoos off Randolph. I work five days a week, including Saturday and Sunday. Usually, I work nights so you’d have this place to yourself a lot.”
Megan couldn’t say she was surprised. Calli was gorgeous with her dark blue eyes, thick lashes, pale ivory skin, and delicate facial features. The piercings and the tattoos actually worked for her. So did the heavy eye makeup and the blood-red lips. She had the edge for them.
Megan smiled. “I’m up early and done by late afternoon. I don’t work weekends, and I’m at home during the summers. I’m not a very exciting person, and my favorite thing to do when I’m not working is read, so you wouldn’t have to worry about me being a loud roommate.”
Megan was just about ready to say her lifestyle was pathetically boring but she stopped herself. Not saying it out loud didn’t make it untrue, but it was self-deprecating. She’d found herself doing that a lot lately, and she didn’t like it.
Calli laughed. “I wasn’t worried about that.”
Maybe her crushed self-respect was written all over her face. Lovely.
“How soon is the room available?” Megan asked.
“It’s ready anytime.”
“Well, in that case, I’d love to take it. I’m not sure what you would need from me in order to consider my application, but I’m ready to move in as early as tomorrow.”
Calli pursed her lips and looked Megan over before taking a sip of her wine. “The apartment is yours. Rent is due to me on the first of the month. Since it’s almost the end of August, how about you just give me September’s rent tomorrow and you’ll be good until October. Does that sound okay?”
“Yes,” Megan said. “And just to confirm, the rent is 950 dollars a month?”
“Yep.”
Megan extended her hand to the other woman. “You’ve got yourself a new roommate.”
Calli shook her hand and smiled, her lip rings drawing Megan’s attention for a second. “I have a feeling we’ll be great friends.”
Megan smiled back before standing. “When can I come over with my stuff?”
Calli walked with Megan to the front door. “Day after tomorrow’s my day off and I’m here all day.”
“Noon?”
“Sounds good. See you then.”
Megan said good-bye to Calli and stepped into the small elevator. When she pushed out of the dark lobby, the warm August air greeted her and blew her long hair back off her shoulders. She stopped at the bank on her four-block walk back to her hotel.
Sticking her debit card into the ATM, Megan punched in her pin code. She needed to check the balance in her account before writing a check for rent tomorrow. The ATM spit out her receipt and Megan frowned.
The balance was one thousand, one hundred, forty-seven dollars and sixty-five cents.
She didn’t get her first paycheck for another two weeks. She was going to have to buy a mattress for her room at the very least, and she’d have to use her credit card. The balance on her card was growing by the day. Maybe this and the size of her new closet was God’s way of telling her she needed to sell off some of her clothes.
Her earlier relief of finally finding a place to stay was dampened by her dire finances. A lack of money was something she’d never experienced before.
Megan had never wanted for anything. Her parents made a decent living when she was growing up, and her disposable income only skyrocketed when she’d married Niall. Now, she was completely on her own for the first time in her life, and it made her feel so vulnerable.
She could call her parents. Explain to them that she needed money. But as quickly as that thought came into her head, she shook it out. She couldn’t call her parents because she still hadn’t told them about her divorce.
She’d thought about it, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. Her entire life she’d had nothing but successes. Her parents thought she hung the moon. The whole family thought she was the poster girl for the perfect life. Perfect job, perfect husband, perfect house.
After crawling from underneath the crushing failure of her divorce and her own disappointment, she just couldn’t bring herself to live through theirs. She’d tell them eventually. But she was going to postpone it for as long as she could.
Stuffing the bank receipt deep into her purse where she wouldn’t have to look at it, Megan walked to her hotel.