Page 49 of The Deals We Make
“They must have followed me home and I never noticed. I didn’t tell them, so maybe they made a lucky guess or followed me to your place and heard me talk to your mom. Maybe they wired something, and I didn’t notice it. My jacket. I took it off the moment I arrived and only put it back on when I left. Shit, I don’t know. I wouldn’t have thought them capable of that, though. They were tech neanderthals when I arrived.”
Calista flops back on the sofa and looks at the ceiling. “I don’t care how it happened. Just that it did. Mom was so shaken and furious. She told me all that ‘computer business’ was going to get me into trouble one day. She told me if I was going tobring trouble to her door, that I should leave. I’d given most of my money away. So, I used Malik’s old laptop, which was easy enough because he’d set it up for you, but you hadn’t cleaned it up properly to give it to me.”
“Rookie mistake,” I say.
Calista smiles softly at that. “Yeah. It’s amazing what we’re both capable of now. But to pay you back, I took all your money to help me leave.”
I think briefly of the Sicilians. I want to know if it’s her, but honestly, I don’t want her to look me in the eye and lie.
History could be repeating itself all over again, yet this time, I feel like Calista is more than my friend.
It feels like history is being re-written. Like I’m being given a second chance to map out how our story ends.
And I’m determined not to fuck it up again.
15
CALISTA
“Come on,” Vex says, tugging me up by my hand.
“What are we doing?” He leads me to his bedroom, a restful room in dark greens and light wood with a huge king-sized bed that is unmade. The white bedding sits in a rumpled mess that looks like only one side was slept in. “Vex…Ti…what…?”
“This way.” He opens a door into a beautiful bathroom, grabs a fluffy dark green towel off the shelf, and hands it to me. “I’ve seen the state of your mom’s bathroom. Shower here while I make some food.”
I look around the bathroom with absolute envy. The gorgeous deep emerald tiles that remind me of a forest. The large overhead shower. And a long vanity with two sinks that is absolutely to die for. It’s more welcoming and intimate than my master bath in California.
But no matter how beautiful it is, or how clean and pristine it is, or how much steaming hot water it can likely provide, I feel like the best course of action is to get home. “Ti, I feel like I should go.”
He looks at me. “Things linked to the club are obviously still traumatic for you. I get that. Until we resolve that, I don’t want the Outlaws to come between us. That happened once before. I don’t want it to happen again. We need to finish working through this so both of us can find some peace to move forward.”
He’s harder to read than he used to be. Ti’s face was always so expressive. Now it’s hard to get a read on what he’s thinking. “I don’t know that there is an us in the present, though, or that it’s appropriate to accept your help.”
He raises an eyebrow. “Top knob turns to the right for the shower, to the left for the handheld. The lower knob turns anti-clockwise to get hotter. I know it was hard to be honest with me, and you did real good telling me all that.”
A trickle of warmth runs through me at the praise. But it doesn’t change things. “I can take care of myself at home.”
“Cal.” The way he says my name is one of exasperation. I’ve heard it a million times. When I wouldn’t sit to do my homework. When he wanted to read, and I wanted him to go outside with me. “You’re having a shower and eating some fucking food. You’re burning a lot of emotional energy right now, and you’ll take my help when I fucking offer it.”
The door closes with something just shy of a slam.
The storming off is new.
For the first time in what feels like hours, I take a breath. I place the towel on the hook and sit down on the lid of the toilet. “What the hell, Calista?” I whisper as I rub my hands over my face.
Somehow my life turned into something bordering on a telenovela.
I built a stable and fun life in California. Sure, my friends are more like business associates, but I’ve built a business. Funded it all myself. I’ve dated but keep finding the same terrible men whofeel a woman like me is too much. Too capable. Too powerful. Too wealthy. Too independent. Too opinionated.
And the sex was rarely anything to write home about.
And yet, here, in Ti’s bathroom, I feel like a young girl again. I feel the whisper of teen love and angst rubbing up against the visceral slap of what happened that night. When Ti looks at me intensely, there’s something more to it than there used to be before.
I left all this behind, like a skin I’d shed. But I realize I’ve been fooling myself with that narrative all along. I buried all of it deep inside me and have never spoken to anyone else about it properly. Not even my therapist. I haven’t returned here since I ran. And my mom always refused to get on a plane to come see me. I don’t have anything in my apartment from back then save one thing: a Christmas card Ti gave me when we were in fifth grade. I don’t know why I keep that one and not others, but I eventually threw away every other last thing that reminded me of Asbury Park.
But being back here, with my mom, with Ti, is showing me that I never got over Mom kicking me out. That I never forgave Ti for doing what he did.
That I haven’t forgiven myself for any of it.
