1985: Careless Whisper (Love in the 80s #6) Page 2

  And damn him, he doesn’t look as good as I remember. Oh no. He looks better—he’s James squared, James dialed all the way up, a James dessert—now that he’s a full-grown man. That rat bastard.

  His hair still does what it wants, like it always did, but now, instead of it making him look thuggish, the way the thick stem of it plumes over his right eye, he looks sultry and mysterious. His leather bike jacket is unzipped and he’s wearing a dark blue t-shirt underneath. The tail of a flannel pokes out above his old Levis, frayed at the edge of his combat boots. James was grunge before the fashion trend ever surfaced, so he’s always worn it better than anyone else. He makes designers and their fashion magazines look clueless.

  My muscle memory kicks in at first glance. Even under all his layers, I can tell his body is just as powerful and exciting as it ever was. It’s a Princess and the Pea thing—he can try to hide it away all day long, but I rub my fingertips together and it’s like I can feel every ripple, every dimple of definition. He was my high school sweetheart. I’ll never be able to forget.

  In the moment that this all occurs to me, the second feeling—the last one I ever had about James—stomps out the zip. It obliterates the delicious, genie-type beckoning of memories from my fingertips. Just remembering what James did makes me go hollow inside.

  He smiles at me through the glass in the storm door. Without the zip, it’s almost cruel. The rain flattens his hair to his head, and although it doesn’t drown out how good he looks, it doesn’t rekindle the zip either.

  His voice is muffled through the glass. “Can I come in?”

  I’m an executive in a cutting edge company, for God’s sake. I’m flying up the corporate ladder in a runaway elevator. I have two dozen employees that answer to me. There’s no reason I can’t handle a short discussion with an ex-boyfriend. But, as I open the screen door for James, I feel like it’s opening my soul.

  I get a surge of claustrophobia as soon as he hits the rug. Stumbling backward, I bang my head against one of the coat hooks and have to duck away as Gada’s jacket falls. I let out a curse, rubbing my head.

  “You okay? Let me get that.” James swoops down to retrieve the jacket. He drops the garment on another hook and reaches out to me, laying a hand on my forearm. I am about to drop my hand when he pulls away. The whole thing is about as awkward as it can get.

  He clears his throat. “I’m really sorry to hear about Gada.”

  “Thanks.” I can’t bring myself to look him in the face. Discouraging. I’m not his weak girlfriend that bugged out for the Big Apple that summer anymore. It’s 1992, and although I’ve never really gotten comfortable as a bonafide New Yorker, I’m doing great there. I’m on a swift projection toward making CEO at a cutting edge company, for God’s sake. I yank down the edges of my blazer, smoothing out any chinks he created in my corporate chain mail.

  “Are you okay?” He points to my head. I know his question covers more than my head, more than Gada, way more than I’m willing to get into with him.

  “I’m fine. Thanks for stopping by.” I reach alongside him for the handle to the storm door. He’s said his condolences and now I just want him to go.

  “Grace,” he says and his voice drops to that beautiful octave that could put babies to sleep. That beautiful, deep rumble once stirred the heartbeat that I believed belonged to only me. “I’d like to talk with you, if that’s okay. We never did talk and it’s been seven years.”

  “There’s nothing to talk about,” I tell him, my hand still on the door latch. “It’s water under the bridge, James. Has been for years. I haven’t thought of it in forever.” What a liar I am.

  “God.” His voice still soft, his tone is filled with awe. “I still think about it all the time. I can’t stop thinking of it.”

  “I’ve learned to let things go,” I say, a faint smile tipping across my lips. It took a wild depression that ended up in a series of unrelated sessions with a therapist, but I learned. “You should too, James. I don’t blame you for what happened anymore.”

  “Blame me?” he cocks his head, his hands pushing aside his layers of flannel and leather to rest on his narrow hips. He leans in slightly, as if he’s going to spew out whatever garbage he’s been piling up all these years. Excuses—that’s all he can have in his arsenal—because there’s no other way for him to justify cheating on me with my ex-best friend, Lisa, and knocking her up without ever mentioning it.

  A shadow at the door interrupts us. The glass is fogged up, so I push past James—the proximity of his body to mine setting me in a weird, sad spin. My stomach jumps like it did whenever I used to touch him, but my mind reminds me that I should be retching.

  I pop open the door. Any interruption is a welcome one, as far as I’m concerned.

  Oh crap.

  Lisa

  “Let me in already, it’s pouring out here,” Lisa gripes as she grabs the door handle. She swings open the door and crowds into the tiny hall. I step back to make room and run into James, but step away as the zip shoots into my heart where it is dutifully smothered by the memory of what the two of them did behind my back seven years ago.

  “Hey, Cult Jam,” James greets her with a smile that makes me cringe.

  Her nickname has deep roots. Gada called my group of friends The Band because we once had plans to be a band—even though not one of us knew how to play an instrument and nobody could sing worth a damn. The closest we ever got to being a band, in any shape or form, was nicknaming each other after popular singers. I was Grace Jones, sometimes just Jones, and, eventually, it deteriorated to Jonesy.

  I look away, hating that I have to hear the familiar affection of the nickname. How things have changed. I used to love that the two of them got along—my best friend and the love of my life. It seemed very plausible that we would always live in the same neighborhood, raising our kids like cousins and remaining as strong as family forever.

  But now, it’s too intimate. His greeting alone makes me feel like it’s them against me, and what happened years ago now seems like it happened just last week. It’s like they’re stabbing the wound that took so long to heal. I tug down the hem of my blazer again and force myself to look at Lisa.

  She looks like she’s wearing a disguise. Her glossy Italian mane, which she used to curl and pile up on one side of her head like a really tall girl-version of Prince, has been replaced with a bottle-blond, little bit fried, Meg Ryan. Lisa’s signature wardrobe of tube tops is gone too, along with the second-skin jeans that she used to zip by laying flat on her bed and yanking up the zipper with a wire coat hanger. Now she’s wearing a blooming, A-line shirt and mom jeans. Her skin is paler than her usual summer-brown, probably since we’re getting into fall and she hasn’t spent every day swathed in baby oil and laying out on her adjustable, woven-rubber chaise.

  She returns James’s smile with something more like a grimace. They probably see each other all the time, since Gada said neither of them live far from here. From what I heard, James has a place that’s pretty close, and Lisa took over her mother’s house when her mom decided to move into a brand new trailer with a brand new boyfriend.

  “Well, I’m here now. Let’s get this over with.” Lisa plunks down the stuffed backpack I hadn’t noticed before. “I call the basement.”

  Panic, confusion, and anger swell up inside me. Why is she coming into my house and taking over like she’s queen of the place? I haven’t spoken to her since I left home either. And, God, even though I used to love that take-charge attitude Lisa always had, things have changed.

  I push my hair back behind my ear and cross my arms over my chest, plastering my best diplomatic smile across my lips as she leans out the front door and I catch a glimpse of another suitcase on the porch. This is my I’m about to play hardball with you corporate smile and it never loses because the men I deal with never expect me to be any good at their games. But, oh…I am.

  “What the hell are you talking about?” I ask pairing a you’re crazy squint
with the aching, diplomatic smile. “You’re not bringing your junk in here.”

  “Oh, hell yeah I am,” Lisa fires back, dragging in an ancient, brown suitcase with a small, frayed puncture near the bottom. Shiny, hot pink material peeks through the hole. Underwear, no doubt. Lisa drops the suitcase on the runner with a grunt. “Gada wanted me here, so I’m here.”

  I squint at her harder. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Gada’s lawyer guy—Sharles—he said that Gada left The Band something in her will, but we have to spend a week here together to get it.” Lisa turns to James for back-up. “That’s why you’re here, isn’t it, Jamie?”

  Jamie. Fuck her. He was always Brown to her, and that was it. No one ever called him Jamie but me and I only did it once or twice because it never fit. But that she’s pulling that out of her arsenal now…it’s hard to believe we were ever friends at all, let alone best friends.

  James takes care of it himself. He clears his throat with a frown and a nod. “Yeah, that’s why I’m here,” he says. “And quit with the Jamie shit.”

  Lisa throws me an I told you so smirk. Skeezy bitch.

  “You’re both whacked out and got something wrong,” I say. “Sharles never said anything to me about you guys staying here and I would know.”

  “Oh no, Miss Power Suit,” Lisa wrestles a piece of paper from her purse. There’s a coffee ring on the wrinkled sheet that Lisa reads from. “This is to notify Ms. Lisa Camelia of her stake in Adelaide Goldgelb’s will. A portion of the estate will be awarded to Ms. Camelia following fulfillment of Ms. Goldgelb’s last request, the request being that Ms. Camelia spend — consecutive days at Ms. Goldgelb’s home located on blah blah blah…here…in the presence of Ms. Grace Goldgelb, Mr. James Stryker, Ms. Evelyn Daddle, and Mr. Paul Stryker.”

  “This is bullshit,” I say, pulling the paper from her hands. I skim the print, but damned if it doesn’t say exactly what Lisa said it did. The minute I look up, Lisa snatches the paper back between her thumb and first finger.

  “That’s mine, thanks.” She folds up the wrinkled paper and stuffs it back into her purse. “It’s proof that I’ve got my share coming.”

  “Your share?” I launch myself at her, grabbing for what always mattered most to Lisa: her hair. All I want is seven hunks for the seven years of grief, and one extra for her share. My manicured nails dig into her scalp and she shrieks.

  But it doesn’t take Lisa long to recover. She throws an expert punch that hits me square in the chest and knocks the wind out of me. I forgot how good Lisa was at fighting. I hang onto her bleached shag, gasping for air as James wedges in between us, prying my fingers loose and pushing Lisa away. I remain bent over, sucking for air, as James blocks me from another attack.

  A minute passes with no sound but our panting breaths from the corners of the entryway. I finally stand upright again, tucking my blouse back into my slacks and straightening my blazer.

  “Jeezus, fuck!” Lisa snarls, dabbing at the bleeding cut over her eye. “You still fight like a bitch!”

  “You still are a bitch,” I shoot back.

  “Hey,” James says, standing sideways with his hands raised to each of us. “We’ve all got to be here for a week, so you two better get over this fast. It’s been years. I think we should all be moved on from anything that happened by now.”

  Oh really? Easy for him to say, even though it should be true.

  “You don’t get to come in here like some vulture,” I growl past James’s profile at Lisa, “talking about getting a share of something you have no right to. Nobody’s staying here but me, so you two can both get out.”

  Lisa is still dabbing and checking her scalp. “I’m not leaving. Gada’s lawyer guy should’ve told you all of this. Call him up and ask him yourself.”

  If I thought I could get past James, I’d kill her, but he’s staring me down like he can read my mind. He always could, but I like to think that ability was revoked years ago.

  Maybe Mr. Sharles did say something. After I heard that Gada died and he told me I had to come home for a week, I tuned everything else out. He couldn’t have expected me to be coherent in all my grief and obviously I wasn’t.

  The knock at the door startles me, since I’m closest. The door is steamed up, so all I see is a dull haze of red plaid. I swing open the door without hesitation. It could be an axe murderer but that wouldn’t make what’s happening inside any worse.

  What’s outside isn’t worse.

  Not worse, but it is way more shocking.

  It’s Evelyn, but it’s not the Evelyn I used to know. Not even faintly.

  Evelyn Daddle was my and Lisa’s D'Artagnan. The woman standing on the porch, hair ruined in the rain, is barely recognizable.

  Every year at the local high school, everyone in our neighborhood attended but me, since I went to a private school. Evelyn reigned as homecoming queen and, in senior year, prom queen.

  It wasn’t any surprise. She was a tiny blond with the face of a buttercup—delicate and innocent. She was also the girliest girl in the neighborhood, who wouldn’t allow sunlight to hit her skin if her hair hadn’t been curled and kicked up into a perfect, jaw-dropping, layered halo that required a solid, half aerosol can of what we used to call The Aqua.

  Evelyn Daddle was the poster girl of expertly applied blue eye shadow and starched up preppy collars, she was the prime authority on double studded belts and excessive Madonna wrist bangles, so she sounded like wind chimes when she walked. Evelyn wasn’t fashionable. She entrenched it. Evelyn was an up-and-coming icon just waiting to be discovered and assigned her own trend.

  But, now, here on Gada’s porch—there’s this other version of Evelyn. A reflection of all Evelyn wasn’t. Before me is a miniature, plaid-sheathed lumberjack in shitkickers and Tuff-Skin jeans, sporting a drastic shock of locks, which might’ve been amputated with a dull knife.

  All I can do is blink at her.

  “That catfight would’ve gone so much better for both of you if you had your old Aqua helmets on.” She clunks into the entry and the three of us press back, giving her room, as if she might detonate. It’s that shocking to see this butched-up version of Evelyn. She shakes the rain from her hair like a dude, or a hound dog. The spittle sprays my face. She drops a duffle bag off her shoulder and it hits Gada’s rug like a dead body. “So, I heard there’s a party all up in here this week.”

  “Evelyn?” Lisa’s asks, her mouth wide open as she leans in, scanning Evelyn up and down.

  Evelyn lets out a very un-Evelyn snort. “I go by Eve now, or Evie, to friends.”

  “What are we?” James asks.

  She turns to him. “You and Lisa can call me Evie, if you want.” She turns to me. “And Grace—‘Eve’ will be just fine.”

  “What the hell?” I say, moving out from the corner. “What’s that supposed to mean? I was always your friend, Evelyn.”

  “Oh, really?” Evelyn says, pulling off her boots and dumping them beneath the coat hooks on the wall. She dismisses me, turning away. “Anyway—where do I put my stuff?”

  “In the driveway would be great,” I say, pointing toward the door.

  This time, it’s not a knock at the door that interrupts us. It’s James’s brother, Paul. He opens the storm door and sticks his head in the same way he did when we were kids.

  Since James was always at our house, Paul used to just open the door and yell in for his brother. Gada would throw shoes at Paul’s head when he did it. She told him a thousand times to come in like a civil human being and ask for James instead of shrieking like a madman from the door. Paul has finally learned. Seeing us all standing there, he shuts his mouth.

  Instead, a smile curls across his face. James’s little brother always had that little boy kind of face, innocent and sweet. His smile carves dimples into his cheeks, similar to James’s, but Paul’s dimples elicited a whole different response. While James’s dimples were charmingly handsome and even sexy, Paul’s dimples had, c
ategorically, more of a puppies-and-baby-bunnies impact on us. Lisa, Evelyn, and I considered Paul to be baby-brother-adorable.

  “Hey everybody,” Paul says, jumping into the crowded entryway with the rest of us. I smoosh into the corner while James, Lisa, and Evelyn—or whoever Evelyn is now—step back to make room.

  Paul is two years younger than James, and he was just sixteen when I left, but he sure did get taller. And a lot more built. Someone’s been working out.

  Paul turns to see me in the corner. “Hey, Jonesy. Sorry to hear about Gada.” I give him a nod of acknowledgment and that’s enough for Paul to turn back to everyone else. “Well, guess the band’s all here, huh? Looks like we can get this party started. Who’s calling Sharley to get the countdown going?”

  I am the first one on the phone, stretching the receiver cord from beside the fridge, around the corner and beneath the door that closes off the landing to the basement stairs and door leading to the backyard. I shut the door and sit on the landing, staring down into the darkness of the basement as I wait for Mr. Sharles, Gada’s attorney, to answer his phone and tell me just what the hell is going on.

  Unfortunately, Mr. Sharles answers. In his monotone drawl, he tells me everything I don’t want to hear. I ask him to repeat it.

  “One week,” he says, with what sounds like a dull yawn. “The six people you’ve mentioned that are in attendance must remain together for the full week, after which, I will be at liberty to share the details of Adelaide’s will and disbursement of properties.”

  “The house?” I balk.

  “Not necessarily.” Mr. Sharles pauses, rumbling some junk out of his throat as I hear papers shuffling on his end of the phone. “The other properties, however, refers to possessions and/or assets of the deceased’s estate. It could refer to substantial belongings, as much as it could entail sentimental knick-knacks.”