Spiked Lemonade: A Bad Boy Sailor and a Good Girl Romantic Comedy Standalone (29 page)

I slip into a pair of black satin leggings and top it off with a maroon, low-cut shirt. I’ve kept these babies hidden long enough. Over it now.

I grab my shoes I had on from last night and head for the front door where I wait patiently for Cali to peel Tango off the couch.

“Uh, hey, so, did you just raid my closet?” Cali asks. “And what did you just do with my best friend?”

“Fuck your best friend,” I tell her.

Cali’s jaw drops. “I feel like I missed something, but also think I kind of like it. It was the whisky last night, wasn’t it? I told you whisky makes you frisky. I just figured it would wear off when the alcohol did.”

“Whisky makes you what?” Tango repeats Cali’s nonsense.

“Frisky, you know, something you won’t be taking part in for three to four months.”

“You still have a mouth, and I still have a working dick, so three to four months is really three to four hours, or whenever we get back home. And here I thought we’d all get a break from the animalistic cries of mating season.

“Nice. Tyler’s right behind you,” Cali says, pointing over his shoulder.

Tyler looks up at both of them, curling her lip with confusion. “Forget everything you just heard, kiddo,” Tango says to her.

“I don’t know what I just heard,” Tyler says.

“If you’re both done, I’d like to get the apologies over with and start my first wonderful day at work,” I say.

“And the new Sasha comes with an attitude?”

“I learned from the best,” I say, grinning like an asshole.
Asshole
. I like that word too. These words make me feel alive when I say them, even in my head, it’s like magic. No wonder Cali cusses so much.

“You’re walking into a body shop like that with hopes of apologizing to Jags and then getting to work on time?” Tango asks.

“Well, yeah?” I answer, shrugging at his question.

“Okay,” he says, laughing quietly. “Let’s get moving.”

“Let’s get moving?” Cali argues. “You mean, put all of your two-hundred-fifty-pound weight on my shoulder and expect me to move you?”

“This is why I’ve stressed that we need to stay in shape. We don’t know what tomorrow might bring. Today has brought your heavy husband to lean on your shoulder. So, you’re welcome for keeping us prepared.”

“You’re lucky I love you,” Cali says, punching him in the shoulder. “You’re still going back to the hospital after we handle Sasha, before you end up breaking your other leg.”

“I don’t need to be ‘handled,’” I pipe in.

“Yeah, Jags did that enough this morning,” Cali snickers.

“Wait, what?” Tango follows.

“They totally—”

“Stop it!” I shout. “Tyler is right behind you.”

“I knew you weren’t turning into me,” Cali says. “I was just testing the waters. If you were, you would have let me finish my sentence.”

JAGS

SASHA IS THE EXACT
reason why I avoid any sort of commitment, that and I usually end up scaring chicks off long before I’ve seen them more than three days in a row.

Now at the body shop, I throw the gear of the only real woman I need in my life into park. I see the bike Bambi asked me to fix and realize I haven’t touched it yet. Thanks to the storm, we’ve had an influx of repair jobs this week, and I haven’t had much extra time to do anything.

“You’re here early,” Bambi says, walking out from the back door as she tosses her cigarette to the side.

“Yeah, I am.”

“Last night didn’t go over so well for you?” she laughs. She’s laughing because she’s just another person in my life who wanted to tell me how dumb it was to force Sasha into getting laid by another dude. I was confident with my plan at first, but it’s not like any of it matters now.

“It went well. It just didn’t end well.”

“Did she get scared off by your one-eyed monster?”

“Must have been it,” I say, walking past her and up to the bike.

But as I kneel down to check out a part, Bambi’s hand rests on my shoulder. “Hey, can I talk to you for a minute?” It’s probably the sincerest I’ve ever heard this woman sound so I’m guessing whatever it is she wants to say must be serious.

“‘Sup?” I ask, holding my focus on the bike.

She reaches a piece of paper out to me. “Read this first.”

I wipe my hands off on my pants and look up at her. I hadn’t looked at her face since she greeted me out here but now that I am, I see a web of red veins lining the whites of her eyes. “What is it?”

She reaches it out further, placing it against my chest so I take it from her and stand up. I unfold the paper and read:

Dear Aunt Greta,

I’m sorry I haven’t spoken to you in years. My parents haven’t allowed me to contact you. But I’ve managed to find a stamp, and I Googled you until I found your address. I hope it’s okay that I’m sending you this letter. I hope you don’t hate me as much as my parents hate you. Every day, I feel alone. Alone with my thoughts and my memories. I see Danny in my head, and I see your face and the way it looked after the explosion. When I bring it up to my parents, they tell me to not mention it again. It’s like they’ve tried to forget about Danny completely. But I can’t. He was my brother, and he was trying to save me so he told me to leave the grocery store. I fought him on it because I was only eight and he was telling me to go get something from your car. I didn’t know why he would tell me to do something like that, and while I still don’t know for sure, I’d like to believe Danny knew something bad was about to happen.

Aunt Greta, I don’t blame you at all. I wanted to thank you. You were very protective of Danny and me, and I can’t imagine what that day has done to you or your life. I miss you a lot, and I wish you were still around so I could call you when I needed to talk. I wish I had your phone number.

The thoughts in my head have been hurting me for too long, and I’m not sure I can keep living like this. I’m sorry to hit you with all of this in a letter, but I couldn’t make my next decision until I had a chance to send you this. I just hope it finds you.

My point to all of this is to tell you that I don’t blame you, and I thank you for trying to save Danny. While I wasn’t in there when it happened, I know you, and I know you would have given your own life for Danny.

I wish it had been me in the supermarket that day instead of Danny. It’s not fair that he doesn’t have to live with the memories. It’s not fair that my parents, your own sister, pushed you away! I don’t understand. I would give my life to see Danny again and if he were alive, I couldn’t imagine going years without talking to him or seeing him.

I hope your life is okay despite our past. I need you to know I love you. I need you to know you were the best aunt I could have asked for. I need you to know I miss you and I will miss you. I need you to know that I had the chance to say goodbye and Danny didn’t. I need you to know it’s not your fault that I have to say good-bye.

Goodbye, Aunt Greta.

Ella-Beth

When I finish reading the letter, I’m scared to look up at Bambi’s face. I’m scared to hear what she’s thinking or what she wants to do. Being who I am, I’d fly or drive out to wherever this kid lives, and I’d lock her up until the thoughts of suicide went away, but that’s not how this world works. This world watches. This world sits down with a bucket of popcorn in front of the news and watches the world blow up around them. I’m just not part of that world. I’m part of the world that’s in the explosion. Or at least I was.

As I swallow my thoughts, I look over at Bambi and see that she has her hand cupped over her mouth, and her eyes are squeezed shut. Her body is shuddering, and quiet sobs are breaking through her clenched jaw. I wrap my arms around her and place her head on my shoulder, letting her cry, letting her get her pain out. She’s taken the blame for everything that happened that day, and now I realize most of that is because of the blame her sister has put on her. How could anyone do that? I haven’t lost a child, so I don’t know what must be going through her sister’s head, but I know there’s no way someone as innocent as Bambi was that day should be blamed for this.

Bambi wraps her arms around me and squeezes tightly. This cold ice-cube of a person is breaking down, and it’s tearing at my heart. “We need to find her,” I say softly. “I’ll help you. We’ll do what it takes to save her.”

“We don’t have to find her,” she says through quiet cries. “She’s here. In the office. She found me this morning. I got this letter two days ago, and I’ve been trying to find a way to reach her, but she found me first.”

“She’s here?” I ask.

Sniffling, Bambi breaks away and points behind me. I turn and find Sasha climbing back into Tango’s truck. What the hell is she doing here? All of them for that matter. “One sec, don’t go anywhere,” I tell Bambi. I hand her back the letter and jog over to Tango’s truck.

From a few feet away I hear Sasha yelling at them to drive. What is going on? Since Cali’s driving and hasn’t put the truck into gear yet, I pick up the pace and approach the truck, poking my head into the window where Sasha’s sitting. Tango’s sitting sideways across the back bench, and for the life of me I can’t figure out how the asshole got back there with his leg like that.

“Don’t,” Sasha says to me.

“Don’t what?” I snap back. “Really, Sasha? Don’t…give a friend a hug who just received disturbing news? Because that’s what I was just doing, so I’m not sure what you’re telling me not to do right now, but I’m not sure it’s necessary.” Sasha looks at me for a long minute with confusion and anger swimming around in her sky blue eyes. “You’re being ridiculous.” I can’t help saying what I’m saying. It needs to be heard, though. “Look, I don’t know what kind of guys you’ve been around in the past, but this whole thing isn’t flying with me. I’ve told you I wanted to be with you. I wanted to start something and see where it goes. Evidently, that means nothing because I had the nerve to climb into your bed this morning without telling you about Landon because I wanted to handle it first before I scared the shit out of you. And for your information, Bambi and I go way back because I pulled her ass out of an explosion in a supermarket four years ago. So if you’re going to tell me ‘don’t’ maybe you should be a little more specific.”

“The one in Candlewood?” Sasha asks with hesitance, ignoring everything else I just said.

“Yeah,” I tell her. “Want to know more? I’ll tell you everything you probably don’t want to hear if that’s what you want.”

“I thought you lived in Boston?” Judging by her simple response, it’s as if my anger isn’t affecting her at all.

“I grew up in Austin and then got stationed a few miles from here for a while. But that doesn’t really matter right now,” I snap. This conversation has me so heated, I consider walking away, respecting her “don’t” demand.

“Oh.” Sasha looks down to her painted fingernails and then back up at me. “Is that what happened to her face?”

“Yeah.”

I hear Bambi walking toward us. I have no clue what’s about to come out of her mouth but it can’t possibly make this situation with Sasha any more complicated. “Hey, Sasha?” Bambi says from over my shoulder. “Just to ease your mind, I’m not really into relationships or anything of the like right now, so you don’t have to worry about that, hun. I needed a friend this morning because my niece wants to commit suicide, and honestly, I don’t blame her, so I needed someone to talk it out with while I have the kid sitting in my office right now.”

I think every one of Bambi’s words just stunned the four of us, even though I sort of already knew everything. Sasha has her mouth hanging open, and Cali’s brows are an inch higher than normal. As for me, my heart hurts for her, for what she must be thinking about her niece. For what she’s thinking she might say to make her want to go on living.

“I’m—” Sasha says, clearly speechless.

“Are you going to stay here or do you want us to drop you at work?” Cali speaks up. Why would Sasha want to stay here if she has work?

Whatever the case and regardless of my anger, I hate the way things ended this morning so I open the truck door, lean over her and unlatch her seatbelt. Sasha looks over at Cali and Cali nudges her head for her to go. Taking Sasha’s arm, I gently pull her from the truck. Once she’s outside, I close the door and lean back in. “Thanks, guys. I hope you’re taking him back to the hospital now.”

“Yeah, that’s where we’re heading,” Cali says. While she’s saying so, Tango is in the back seat shaking his head with a smile.

“Dude, should I point out that you’re still in a gown?”

Tango looks down at his lap and tugs on the material, yanking it off his shoulders as the material fall across his lap. “There, now I’m wearing nothing. Better?”

“Put your damn gown back on,” Cali yells back at him. “No one needs to see that besides me.”

I clap my hand down on the windowsill and salute the two of them. “Later, weirdos.”

As they take off, I realize I’m standing here with Bambi and Sasha.
So this is fun
. “Have you talked to her yet?” I ask Bambi. Her issues are more time sensitive than whatever issue Sasha has with me.