Sweet Talk Me (8 page)

He lifted her hair and placed a kiss on her neck, and his lips were hot and dry, like a man with a fever. “Now hurry up out of that shower. And you’d better lock the door. I’ll watch ESPN in the meanwhile.”

“And maybe talk to Weezie when she comes in?”

“Sure.”

So all was well. A little glitch here, a blip there … that was what real relationships were like. And when True got herself ready for the party, she reminded herself that she had only two weeks to go before the wedding. Surely she could manage that.

But all night long in Charleston, while she sipped champagne with Dubose’s arm around her, she couldn’t help wishing that she’d said yes to breakfast with Harrison.

It was a good thing he was leaving.

CHAPTER EIGHT

From Maybank Hall, Harrison headed to a mobile home park called Sand Dollar Heaven, his childhood home. There weren’t any sand dollars. You needed a beach for that. But they had fiddler crabs, pluff mud, and Biscuit Creek, which were way better. And it sure wasn’t heaven, at least for the grown-ups. If it was between May and December, some of them, like his father did in the old days, got up before dawn to drive their pickups down a skinny two-lane road to get to the wharf and the trawlers to work the shrimp trade. Sometimes they didn’t come back for days.

And then there were the ones who worked at the restaurants, at the dry cleaners, or at keeping people’s houses clean and making ’em dinner, like his mother used to. Most of the adults came back way after dark, when the locusts were buzzing hard.

“You sure you don’t want me to stop and get something to eat?” he asked Gage on his cell. He really wanted to turn around, take True out instead, and catch up on what had happened to her since she’d been on her own.

“I’ve got a mess of crabs,” Gage replied in his sandpaper southern drawl.

Harrison would like to kiss True again, too, to see if the old spark was there. Strip her clothes off and make love to her. Sing her a good song afterward. And maybe before, too, because she was always his best audience.

In your dreams, boy
.

“Got beer?” he asked Gage.

“Michelob. And crackers.”

“I’ll bet you’re working on a puzzle.”

“Yep. A Tuesday one for the
Times
.”

“Got a theme?”

“James Bond Disco.”

“I can only imagine what that’s about.” Harrison felt like an idiot when it came to crossword puzzles. Although he did have a gift with rhyme and song lyrics. So somewhere back in their gene pool was a writer or poet. “See you in a few minutes.”

He clicked off and pretended, as usual, that the short conversation with Gage was just the way guys talked.

The trailer park still had the old painted plywood arch over the entrance. It was so faded, the giant sand dollar had lost all its details and looked like a faceless moon. The rutted dirt road snaked between tall yellow pines, and Harrison could swear each pothole was in the same place. He evaded them without thought, like Luke navigating the Death Star.

On the well-tended lots, sturdy mobile homes with attached porches nestled discreetly between old oaks. A thriving vegetable garden or a bright new swing set advertised a happy family inside, or at least one that got outdoors to enjoy the abundant Carolina sunshine.

Other lots looked as if a zombie apocalypse had swept through and wreaked havoc: old cars strewn everywhere, storage sheds falling down, tires in piles beneath trees. Gage’s lot was one of these minus the flotsam.

Harrison got out of the car in front of their parents’ ancient trailer and slammed the door. Hell and damnation. His brother had lied. He’d said years ago he’d gotten a new mobile home.

The same old latticework at the bottom that Harrison remembered as a kid was still there, warped and broken in places. God knows what was lurking underneath. A familiar dent above the kitchen window reminded him that he’d had once thrown a football wildly off target after he’d consumed too many beers with a friend in high school.

He knocked. Just to be safe. Wouldn’t want to offend Gage, who was particular about having everything in its place. There was the whine and scrabble of dogs charging toward the door. Everyone around here kept dogs, and that was one thing Harrison really missed. His old mutts Private and Sergeant were buried out back.

The door finally opened, and two hairy canine faces about a foot off the floor pushed out and snorted and snuffed around his legs, getting particularly enthusiastic when they picked up the scent of Weezie’s dogs. They looked like some sort of combination of boxer and Jack Russell with a little bit of Pikachu, a Japanese anime character, thrown in.

Gage stood frowning above the dogs with a pair of reading glasses on the tip of his nose. He looked like Keanu Reeves might if he were a college professor. They’d had a beautiful blond mother, but their father had in him a trace of Sewee, a Native American tribe that had lived in these parts long before the white man came. Gage was a throwback—short ebony hair swept off his forehead, dark brows and coal-brown eyes, wide cheekbones. He was in his usual white buttondown, Levi’s, brown leather belt, and Sperrys.

“
Entrez
.” A Lowcountry accent and French didn’t mix too well, but Gage was always dropping short foreign words and phrases. He probably dreamed them all the time, those and the names of rivers, countries, rare breeds of animals, ancient leaders, and whatever other words a crossword constructor couldn’t escape in his profession.

“Hey.” Harrison reached out and slapped his shoulder. Hard as a rock. The military training had stuck with him. “Glad to see me? You wouldn’t know it from that zombie stare. Your ear gonna drop off next?”

“
Ergo?
” Gage’s tone was dry as he lifted a hand to touch his left ear.

Ear go
. Harrison grinned. “Damn, you’re clever.”
If a bit odd
, he didn’t add. But that was Gage for you.

Gage’s mouth tilted up on one side, as if he had a stomachache, his version of a welcoming smile. He turned and went back inside, the marble-pattern vinyl floor protesting loudly beneath his feet.

Harrison followed after him, uninvited, into the main living space, and was instantly depressed. The trailer was neat as a pin. But almost everything inside was from another era.

To his left was a sitting area with an ancient TV with a channel dial, a banged-up black metal desk, a file cabinet, a vinyl couch—puke green—a nubby red-and-orange plaid armchair, and cheap canned track lighting above an Ikea bookshelf with sagging shelves. On his right was the kitchen—vintage ’80s with faux wood cabinets, faded red-flowered curtains with ruffles up top, and a laminate counter of indeterminate color with the edges worn away.

The walls were a dreary beige. Gray-black water stains loomed on the ceiling like threatening storm clouds. And in the corner by the TV, a piece of plywood stuck out from under Mama’s oval rag rug.

“What’s that?” Harrison asked, his heart beating a fast tattoo against his rib cage.

“A piece of plywood.”

“No shit.” Harrison glared at his brother. “What’s it for?”

“A hole in the floor.”

“You gotta be kidding me.”
You trusted him. You stupid, dadgum fool.
He scratched his ear to buy himself some temper-cool-down time. “I believed you when you told me you got a new trailer.”

Dammit, he should have put the concerts and studio time aside and come back to check on Gage in his own space. He shouldn’t have made up all those excuses, that Gage was a grown man, that he pulled in seventy-five thousand dollars a year with his puzzles. He’d seen the world with the navy, and he could cook and clean and didn’t have any dangerous vices that Harrison knew of.

So what? He obviously needed a friend.

Or a brother.

When Harrison felt guilty, he was like a pacing lion in a cage at the zoo. Ready to roar and shake something to pieces. Anything but focus on the guilt.

Gage shrugged. “I knew you’d be worried. So why not stop that from happening?” He walked into the kitchen. “Now, what would the famous country music singer from South Carolina like? Coffee or a beer?”

“Darius Rucker’s not here. Is that the best clue you can come up with for me?” Harrison sauntered into the kitchen, looking for further evidence of his brother’s overwhelming aversion to change. “Speaking of which, why haven’t you put me in any of your puzzles? Or at least one of my song titles?”

Gage held up a K-Cup, his face smooth and untroubled. “This?”

Harrison knocked it out of his hands. “I’m pissed.”

The little plastic cup rolled across the floor until it came to a slight depression and got trapped. He’d been angry for years—his whole life—because he was confused. And worried. He hated being either one. But around Gage, he was always one or the other or both.

“I didn’t know you had a fragile ego,” Gage said without any heat. “I haven’t put you or one of your song titles in a puzzle because neither your name nor those song titles have ever come up during the construction process.”

Harrison ran both his hands down his face. “I don’t care about
the goddamned puzzles.
I know you see them in your head—not the whole thing at once, but corners. And you use those mental images as inspiration.”

“Exactly.” Gage opened the refrigerator. “So what’s the problem?”

“This place, man.” Harrison lifted his hands and let them drop like heavy weights against his thighs. “Sorry I went all cyborg on you. But I can’t believe you’ve been living here. Except for college, and a couple years on a ship, you’ve been in this trailer your entire life. It’s time to move on.” He walked a few steps—
squeak! squeak!
went the floor—bent over, scooped up the K-Cup, and stuck it on the counter.

“I have new things, too. Like that Keurig machine.” Gage angled his head at the compact machine on the counter.

“Am I supposed to be impressed?” Harrison tried not to inject too much scorn into his voice. “I wouldn’t let my worst enemy live here.”

“It’s Mom and Dad’s trailer.” Gage took a beer out of the fridge, pried off the cap with the old-fashioned bottle-cap remover screwed under a cabinet, and shoved the bottle in Harrison’s hand. “I’m fine here.”

Harrison took a long swig. “Change is hard for you, I know. But this place should have been condemned when I left it. I sold it to the owner of the park for fifty bucks, did you know that?”

“No.”

“He said he’d use it as his man cave. Emphasis on
cave.
”

“He made a profit then. I bought it back from him for a hundred dollars.” Gage, unperturbed, as always, went back out to the sitting area. “The couch still pulls out.”

“Oh, God. I can’t even imagine what the mattress must be like. Let me see the rest.”

If his old bedspread was still there—

Yes. It was. Red ribbed cotton from Sears. Mom had bought it at Goodwill. The other twin had a blue quilt with little moons all over it. That had been Gage’s.

“Don’t tell me you kept Mama’s floral bedspread.” Harrison stalked to the bigger bedroom where their parents had slept. Yep, nothing—nothing—had changed. Except for the fact that half the rear wall of the trailer, not visible from the driveway, was covered in a plastic tarp and duct-taped down.

He turned. “You really have to move.”

Gage looked unfazed. Then again, he always did. “I sleep in our old room. I don’t come in here.”

“The place is clean, I’ll grant you that,” said Harrison. “But it’s uninhabitable.”

“That’s a relative term. If we were on
Survivor
right now and ran across this trailer in the jungle, we’d be celebrating our great find. We’d move in out of the elements and win the competition.”

“We’re not in a jungle. You could own a home, a nice one, and you could invite people over. No one’s gonna want to visit. You definitely can’t bring your girlfriend here.”

“She’s moved away, and she wasn’t a girlfriend. She lived next door, and we were friends with benefits.”

“The benefits obviously took place at her house.”

“Yeah, so?”

“What about other friends? Don’t you need some?”

“I have plenty. I see them every year at the National American Crossword competition and I talk to them online every day.”

“That’s awesome. But what about having people over? An honest-to-goodness girlfriend, maybe? You can’t do that here.”

It was the first time since he’d crossed the threshold into the trailer that Gage’s face showed some change in expression. His mouth opened a fraction, and he got crinkles around his eyes. It was a genuine wince.

“See?” Harrison got closer, in his face. “
See?
You know you want a girl around here. Someone you can cook a romantic dinner for.”

Gage’s mouth thinned. “I have little chance of that. Biscuit Creek’s population is minuscule, and single women, ages twenty-five to forty, number less than fifty.”

“Oho.” Harrison chuckled. “So you keep track.”

“Of course. I’m a bachelor. I try to stay attuned to the social scene.”

“That’s staying attuned? I call it sitting back and missing out. You need to join in.”

“How?”

How?
Did he ask
how?
Harrison took a subtle breath. “By getting your ass out of this trailer,” he said in a tight voice, his arms crossed over his chest. “You’re moving out, Gage. And I’m not giving you a choice.”

There went his long weekend in the Hamptons. He’d have to stick around here a few days and help Gage find a new place.

“
No.
I’m staying.” Gage walked ramrod-straight back into the sitting room. The TV came on. ESPN. His second favorite love was baseball.

Harrison was desperate for something to kick. His brother was so smart—a genius—yet the simplest things just went right over his head.

His phone chirped. “What?”

It was Dan. “I drove this woman’s piece-of-crap car all the way back from Atlanta.” His Boston accent was thick. “The AC doesn’t even work. She could’ve warned me.”

“Sorry. Google Maps got you to the right place?”