Heart Thaw (5 page)

“Our mothers have the biggest mouths in the world.” I say it before I remember I’m using the wrong tense for his mother.

Shut up, Sadie. Shut your damn mouth, you idiot.

I’m glad that the moonlight hides the flush of my embarrassment. “You know what I mean,” I mutter, staring down at my shoes.

“Yeah. I always gave everyone a lot to talk about, didn’t I? Trent, the fuckup. That’s kind of my modus operandi, right?” He grabs his hood and pulls it back up and tighter around his face.

“No!” I put a hand out and press it against his chest. He glances down, eyebrows raised high. “But, I mean, you were on probation, weren’t you? I mean, are you still on probation? Because, technically, what you’re doing is graffiti. So if you get busted…”

“
Graffiti
. You say it the same way you’d say
porn
.”

He brushes the tips of his fingers, darkened from paint, I assume, over my hand, and body parts entirely unrelated to my hand tighten and tingle.

I shrug one shoulder in an attempt to appear careless because I hate the fact that he’s so willing to take these crazy risks. If he wants to make this gorgeous art, why not get a studio space? Enroll in an art class? Why does Trent need to make it a risk?

“Not all that different right? Both are kind of perversely beautiful? Taboo expression?” I could write a thesis on this. I think I actually
did
, a few semesters before.

“‘Taboo expression’?” He gnaws on the side of his bottom lip in and shakes his head in disgust. “It’s not just jerking off for me. It’s not just fucking the man.” He lifts his eyes and his jaw pinches with the tight clamp of his teeth. “Of everyone, I thought
you’d
get it, Sadie. I thought
you’d
see what I was doing.”

I glance back at the art that seems like it’s moved since I last looked at it. I want to stand here and soak it in, but I have to let Trent know this is
not
a good idea. That I give more of a shit about his being safe and on the right side of the law than I do about his art, no matter how breathtaking it might be.

“What? Making yourself a target for the local law enforcement?”

I drop my hand, but he leaves his on his chest, pressed over the spot where mine rested. His eyes are narrowed with pain, like I stabbed him in the heart.

My guilt snakes up and makes me lash out. “Georgia can hardly keep it together, and you’re out on the fucking trestle waving down trouble with a neon can of spray-paint? Grow up, Trent!”

“Grow up?
Me
?” It’s dark, but not so dark that I can’t see the black swirl of hurt in his eyes. He gives a cold laugh. “Right, because
I’m
the one who can’t face shit like an adult. You know what? Fuck off, Sadie.”

He takes a few steps away from me, stops short, and shakes his head again. He grunts with frustration, whirls back, and grabs my upper arm hard, dragging me towards my mother’s house.

“What the hell are you doing?” I snatch my arm away.

“Getting you home safe, that’s what I’m doing. Damnit, you piss me off like no one else in the fucking world can, but I can’t leave you here. I never can manage to walk away from you,” he mutters, reaching for my wrist.

I pull away, my feet almost slipping out from under me when I careen on the edge of my equilibrium.

“Seriously? I’ve been on my own for four years. I walk back and forth to work at night. I’ve been on a dozen road trips alone. I navigated my way to Tennessee and back all by myself. I’m not an idiot, and I don’t need my best friend’s baby brother to take me home.”

Shit. Shit, shit, shit
.

I pushed it too far, and I know it. I try to find the words to fix it, but I don’t know what they would be, where to even start. So I just stand there, mouth hanging half open.

I’m an idiot.

Trent’s hands fall to his sides. He blows out a long breath and shrugs, but doesn’t say a single word before he stalks into the dark and disappears among the tipped barrels and weaving, bobbing weeds.

Ella’s voice bounces into my head. 

You take him for granted.

It was sweet of him to bring her home. He had to do, what, ten hours on that bike? And I bet Sadie didn’t even thank him.

“Thank you,” I whisper into the cold, bright light, too little, too selfish, too late.

Chapter Three

I have a fresh pot of tea waiting when Mom bustles into the kitchen, a full face of makeup already on, even though we don’t have any plans to leave the house today.

“You look tired.” She catches me under the jaw and moves my head back and forth, examining every line and blemish on my face. “Damn that fucking motorcycle.”

“I’m okay, Mom.” I hold out her special Mrs. Claus mug, filled with tea sweetened with two spoonfuls of sugar and lightened with a drop of milk. “I went to bed too early, and I couldn’t go back to sleep once I woke up.”

“You need to relax, maybe have a girls’ day. You should ask Georgia over. I don’t like the idea of her living in that apartment all by herself.” Mom sips her tea and leaves a sticky half-moon of fuchsia lipstick on the rim. “Eileen wouldn’t like it.”

“Eileen helped her pick that apartment after Georgia graduated dental assisting school. I’m sure she’d be okay with Georgia living there.” I pick up a cookie, but my stomach isn’t in the mood. “I get that you want to make sure they’re okay, but Mrs. Toriello would have let them grow up, Mom.”

My mom clinks her coffee mug on the counter and puts one manicured hand on her generous hip.

“Sadie, I know you have a college education and all, but you don’t know everything, okay? Especially when it comes to mothers. Eileen worried about those kids like you wouldn’t believe. And, to tell you the truth, I’m a little surprised that you haven’t been more worried about Georgia. I can remember you running in that door so you could kiss me hello before you ran right back out to see her. What happened?”

“Nothing.” I flick the sprinkles off a cookie, irritated by so many things my mother said, irritated by my lack of sleep, irritated by my run-in with Trent last night. “I don’t think I’m better than everyone because I’m in college. You would have done well in college if you went. I mean, it’s not like I’m smarter.”

“You
are
smarter. When it comes to books.” She reaches for her tattered blue-checked cookbook and flips through the yellowed pages, spotted with grease. “When it comes to life? Sometimes I worry, sweetheart.”

I sigh and jump down from the stool. “Okay. I’m going to see Georgia.”

“Good girl.” She twists and grabs her keys, tossing them across the kitchen to me. “Pick up sour cream on the way back.”

“Is anything open today?” Out the window, a light dusting of snow sifts down in powdery white bursts.

“Everything is open. People have no fucking respect for the holiday.” Mom sighs, turns Elvis up, and scrubs the counter so it’s ready for another baking fiasco. “I guess it’s a good thing for us, though. The mashed potatoes don’t taste right without sour cream. Oh, and see if you can get some of those big bulbs in green. I put them on the tree this year, but all the damn green ones keep blowing out. Pieces of shit.”

“Okay.” I lean over and kiss her powdery cheek. “Love you.”

“Love you. Drive safe. If it gets too shitty, come home. And call Trent to remind him to come by for dinner tonight with you girls. It breaks my heart to think of him eating some TV dinner all alone.”

At the sound of his name, I startle, wanting to tell my mother...what? Trent is always welcome at our house. I don’t want him alone during the holidays either. It’s just complicated.

Which is exactly why it has to be hands-off between me and Trent, no matter what.

I’m about to ask my mother if Ella can maybe call Trent and remind him, but I know that will just arouse suspicion. Mom’s already turned her full attention to her cookbook, so I head into the prickly cold and resolve to do what I need to like a mature adult.

Her old Lincoln is a boat, and I feel like I should have had to go to nautical school before I’m allowed to attempt to drive it. I take out my phone to call Georgia, but that feels so formal. I decide to just show up like I always did before…before I just stopped showing up at all. And I’ll sweeten my welcome with food.

I pull into Dunkin Donuts and am about to get two of the biggest, creamiest, most delicious coffees and a dozen sticky donuts when I see the orange Home Depot sign behind me.

I drive into the deserted parking lot and trek through the quarter inch of slippery snow that clings to the pavement before I come to the swishing automatic doors. There’s some terrible, moony cover of “White Christmas” being butchered by a generic pop prince I can’t identify. The store is cavernous, and I flag down a rushed woman in an orange apron.

“Do you have bulbs for a Christmas tree? The big ones?”

She juts a thumb over her shoulder. “Electrical.”

I wind through the maze of fluorescent lights, extension cords, and ceiling fans until I come to the seasonal light bulbs. The shelves are stocked with bulbs in every bright, cheerful color.

Except for green.

Of course
there’s no green.

“Bastard,” I curse.

There’s no orange-aproned associate in sight, but there
is
a box marked “Xmas Bulbs” on the overhead shelf and a big orange ladder a few short feet away.

The ladder is very clearly marked “Not For Customer Use.” But my mother needs these green bulbs, and I need to get away from this idiot ruining “White Christmas” and to Georgia—my best friend who I’ve possibly been ignoring to the point where we
may
be fighting.

God, I hope we’re not fighting.

Instead of worrying, I focus on getting this task done.

There are metal clamps on the bottom of the ladder that screech in protest as I drag it, so I try to do it as quickly as possible.

“That is only for associates to use, ma’am.”

The familiar voice comes from the racking above me. If it’s possible to pull your neck out of socket, I do it looking up in shock.

Trent’s head sticks out of the overhead bin, which I realize is a long metal shelf that a person, if he were a total maniac, could stretch out on. A paperback, cover folded back, dangles out of one of his hands.

“What are you doing?”

I crane my neck further to look into his face. His eyes have the sleepy/unconcerned look that I’ve only seen on Trent and well-fed jungle cats at the zoo...when they daydream about pouncing. I remember the dip of his shoulders when he walked away from me the night before, and wonder if he’s still pissed.

I also remember the feel of his hands on me and wonder if he still thinks about things we’re both better off forgetting.

“Reading.” His eyes run over me slowly, head to foot. He holds the book, cover out, for me to see. It’s
The Winter of Our Discontent
by Steinbeck. I’ve never read it. “Can you bring my ladder back?”

The muscles of his jaw are bunched back by his ear because he’s clenching his teeth. So I’d say he’s definitely still pissed at me.

Shit.

“Um, I need it. Just for a second.”

I drag it a few more feet and try to figure out what I should do to make it stop screeching, but abandon that line of thought pretty quickly. Right now my main prerogative is to get the damn bulbs and hurry the hell out of this store where I’ve been ambushed by the guy I can’t seem to stop thinking about or running into.

“You’re really not allowed on it.” He folds his arms over each other and rests his chin on them.

“And you’re probably not allowed to read Steinbeck in the shelves.” I hop on the first orange step and the entire ladder sways and vibrates. I jog up five more steps, then reach into the box and pull out orange, red, white, more white bulbs.

“Shit.” I sit hard on one of the steps. The circular cut-outs in the metal bite through my jeans.

“You’re on a quest for green Christmas bulbs?” Trent guesses, his voice secret-clubhouse-quiet.

I climb up the last few steps and lean on the little balcony-like top platform, close enough to him that I can see the spokes of gray in his eyes. We’re so close and so impossibly far away.

“How did you know?”

“I’m the oracle of electrical. Green Christmas bulbs are like the Holy Grail around here. Bring that ladder over, and I’ll get you some.”

He blinks so slowly, he looks three seconds away from a nap.

“Are you pissed about last night?”

Now that he’s trapped up there, I realize I can ask anything I want and wait out his answer. It’s a power that makes me strangely giddy.

“Forget last night.” He flips the words out like stones skipped over a lake. “Anyway, that was personal, and in no way impacts my current performance as a Home Depot sales associate. So pull that ladder over here and let me wow you with my bulb-procuring skills.”

His smile is a showman’s, and my heart aches for the real thing.

Not that I deserve it.

I skip down the steps and the whole ladder rattles and sways under my feet. When I grip both bars to push it, Trent calls down, “There’s a release lever by your right foot. Step on it.”

The bottom step pops up and the wheels roll with quiet obedience. I maneuver it right in front of Trent and press on the bottom step to lock the ladder into place.

Trent’s long body slides out of the overhead and shimmies onto the platform. He half-jumps, half-steps down, hands in the pockets of his grimy, paint-stained jeans, orange ladder swaying and dancing with every hop. I can’t take my eyes off the long line of his body, the wide stretch of his shoulders.

I know how that body feels pressed against mine, even though I shouldn’t. The memory of being twined with him, naked on the floor of his torn-apart kitchen, nothing but the heat of our bodies to keep us warm, floods my brain and makes my breath catch.

He tips his head to look down at me and his overlong black hair falls forward around the five o’clock shadow of his jaw. I feel like prey being stalked by a particularly beautiful predator. He stands a few inches away from me, but the stiff set of his body makes it feel like he’s a few feet away.

“Follow me, please, miss.” It should be a joke, his formality, but maybe it’s not. He has good reason to keep me at arms’ length.

He gestures with his chin to the back of the aisle, and I walk past switch plates, dimmer switches, electrical boxes, breaker boxes, and fuses. It’s all dark, twisted, bare wires and over-bright primary-colored wire coating, intense blue plastic against fluorescent orange shelving, misshapen cardboard boxes cut haphazardly and set up to display plastic, sickly cream socket covers.

The ugliness is palpable. I can taste the cheap plastic tinge in the air, and the colors are whipped into submission, forced to work the way they need to without any chance of expression.

My memory flashes back to last night at the trestle, where Trent made intense clashes of color and subject harmonize. If this environment makes me blanch, I can only imagine how Trent feels surrounded by it all day.

It explains the Steinbeck in the overhead.

“Barbie.” Trent’s voice is a smile.

A real one this time.

I peek around his arm and register a tiny shock over the fact that ‘Barbie’ isn’t a twenty-year-old with big boobs and long hair. She’s fifty, at least, with piles of freshly dyed jet black hair twisted in a complicated updo and blue plastic glasses with beaded croakies.

When she turns and sees Trent, her eyes bat like she’s a seventh grader gliding by her crush at the lockers. “I didn’t even know you were here today, honey.”

He points up with one index finger, then pulls the finger to his lips. Barbie winks and a little puff of topaz eyeshadow flies off her eyelid.

“And who’s this lovely young thing?” she asks, and follows her question up with another wink and a poke to Trent’s ribs through his falling-apart orange apron.

“Barbie, let me introduce Sadie.” Trent’s hand comes out of his pocket and glides along my back, coasts over the sliver of skin between the hem of my shirt and the waist of my jeans, and tightens on my hip.

My entire body goes still, and every thought, every ounce of energy is focused on the press of his fingers against the jut of my hip. The words that come out of his mouth are icicle-laced, meant to jab straight through my heart.

“She’s just my big sister’s best friend.”

“Lucky you to have a sister with such gorgeous friends.” Her smile is negated by the narrow slide of her eyes.

Just like practically every other woman on earth, Barbie champions Trent, and the fact that I’m not making obvious googly eyes at him raises her suspicion. If only Barbie knew…

“Well, you kids look like you’re on a mission.” She smoothes her apron and adjusts her glasses. “Can I be of service?”

“I hear you know where there’s a stash of green Christmas bulbs?” Trent leans over, so they’re eye to eye. “Sadie needs a Christmas miracle, and I knew exactly the angel who could make it happen.”

Barbie giggles and pinches Trent’s cheek. “Stay right here. I know Dee has some in the back that didn’t officially get received in yet. I’ll grab them for you.”

Trent puts both hands in front of him like he’s praying. “I owe you big. Seriously.”

Barbie waves his words away and marches off, pushing her sleeves up as she goes.