In the Nick of Time (25 page)

“So, did you just let him walk out of there? Not say a word?”

He shook his head. “Not quite. That man was filing a report, worried about his fucking car being stripped but not about where the fuck his son was, or how I was doing… Shit.” He looked away. “He filed a report about his fuckin’
car
, Taryn. Was mad as hell, too, isn’t that something?” He clicked his tongue against his teeth, and braved through the hurt. “He cared more about that hunk of metal than his own flesh and blood. Let me uh…” He leaned back in his seat for a spell, and looked up at the ceiling. “Let me move on from that… Yeah, so, this happened, and right after that … is when I first tried cocaine. I didn’t take it again until many years later though.” At the mention of the word, he sniffed, his nostril identifying with his past, wanting to partake just one…more…time…

“I stole his information before I left work, the documents. And I looked at his number and address, memorized them, but then threw it away,” he said, fading away from himself. “I threw away his report, too, as an act of revenge. It was petty, but I did it anyway. Because I couldn’t punish him, and because it was just too much for me to take, I got high that night… Matter of fact, it was less than twenty-four hours after that encounter that I got lit the fuck up. The alcohol didn’t cut it that evening, so I ventured out and looked for a pain reliever…

“I wasn’t thinking clearly…but it happened.” He shrugged. “I grew up around drugs; most of my friends either used or sold them, so it was a part of my life in some shape or form, from an early age. Ironically, seeing all the homicides I had viewed and investigated up until that point hadn’t made me shy away. I’m sure that didn’t help, all the mayhem and craziness, but it hadn’t pushed me over the edge just yet. My life became like a sea of colorful, wooden building blocks.” He raised his hand in the air, emphasizing his words. “Some were larger than others, but they were all toppling over on top of me. And I lay right there underneath them, suffocating, my life slowly fading away…disappearing.”

“And yet here you are.” She smiled wide at him, patted his back. “Alive, breathing, and making it.”

“Hmm, making it?” He sniffed and smiled as he leaned forward and looked down at the ground. “You messed me up. I came outside to talk to you, flirt a little bit, get a hug or two and this is the thanks I get!” He cracked up, tossed her a glance from over his shoulder.

“Yup, it
is
the
thanks
you get, because you just gave yourself a gift. Unwrap that shit and try it on, honey. I bet it will look good on you…”

“C
an I talk
to you about something you mentioned the other day in group?” He picked up his glass of pink grapefruit juice, the pulp swimming atop it, and took a small sip. Then, he set it back down on the table as the sound of forks and spoons clinked and clanked against plates and bowls and mixed with swirls of discussion, and small bursts of chatter erupted throughout the small cafeteria.

“Yeah, sure.” She ran her hand along the edge of her napkin, sat a bit taller.

“You’re so young to have had breast cancer.” The man picked at his spicy sausage link while glancing down at the butter-drenched grits, two slices of crisp bacon and small pancake on his plate. He then looked back into her eyes. “It struck me as a rare thing, you know? I mean, like, what are you, twenty-seven? Twenty-eight, tops?” They’d been sitting there, huddled up close in the modest cafeteria, as they ate their first meal of the day.

“Well.” She turned away and folded her napkin over a time or two, toying with the thing. “I’m actually thirty-one but there are a lot of misconceptions about breast cancer. It is more common than some may realize. For instance, there is about a one in eight chance that a woman under the age of forty-five will develop the disease. Unfortunately,
I
was that one.” She sighed as she casually looked back up at him. “Also, that one in eight is usually a minority, despite the fact that white women are more at risk for the disease. But there are other risk factors that contributed, not just my race.”

“Such as?” He plucked his carton of milk from the table, opened it, and took a generous gulp without bothering to pour it into a glass.

“I have a family history of it. My grandmother and aunt had breast cancer, too.”

He nodded in understanding.

“You’re a survivor.” In that moment, he scanned the beautiful creature up and down, and her strength made her all the more sexy in his eyes.

“Nah, I’m a warrior.” She grinned before popping a biteful of thick French toast into her mouth. The damn thing was drenched in sweet syrup and a dollop of the light brown sticky stuff adhered to her lower lip. She quickly swiped it away with a slow glide of her pink tongue, and he watched the entire episode, turned on by the imagery of it all.

“I like that.” He laughed lightly, leaned back a bit as he focused even more on her. “You’re a warrior…Yeah, that’s nice… real nice.” Just then, Frieda walked past and gave them both a gentle, ‘Hello,’ accompanied by a nod of her head. They simultaneously returned the greeting, and he could’ve sworn a slight smirk lined the lady’s face before she’d finished her trek.

“I don’t trust her…” He watched the woman move about the cafeteria, then finally exit the area.

“Why? You don’t like Frieda?” Taryn said in astonishment behind a hard swallow of scrambled eggs.

“No, it’s not that I don’t like her; it’s just something about her.” He looked back at the door from which she’d exited, then faced Taryn once more. “I can’t put my finger on it quite yet. I just get a vibe from her that rubs me the wrong way, you know? I mean, I think she’s sincere in some regard… but, I dunno.” He shook his head. “You know that I should’ve been kicked out.” He paused, looked at her. “It clearly states in the handbook that there is no tolerance for physical violence in this facility. It’s almost like she
wanted
me to kick Oliver’s ass… Strange.”

“Not strange to me, and other people have gotten into fights in here and not been kicked out, either. Trust me. I’ve seen it. Also, you didn’t punch him. You shook the living shit out of him, but you didn’t punch him.”

They both burst out laughing.

“Anyway, we were talking about something else.” He took another gulp of his milk. “Sorry for my ignorance. You’d think I’d know more because of my mom’s death but her cancer came and happened so quickly, that uh, we didn’t have time to research, get educated. It was ‘BAM!’” He clapped his hands, imitating the sound of a lightning strike. “She was sick, then in the hospital for a few weeks, then gone.” He hung his head for a spell or two. “I never got to really say goodbye to her, at least not in the way I wanted to. It happened so suddenly, like it wasn’t even real. I couldn’t even catch up to what was happening, you know?”

“Yeah…that had to have been hard,” Taryn said solemnly as she sipped on her cranberry juice. She lightly patted his hand, then stared off into space. “I suppose it is a bit easier if you know in advance, can prepare and deal with it. Sounds like you had time for none of that, making it all the worse. It’s quite obvious that you loved her very much.” She offered him a sad smile.

Nodding, he turned away, not wanting to travel too far down that miserable road again. The damn thing was covered in overgrown weeds, creepy crawly things, and alarming apparitions that threatened to call him by name. No, he needed to stay right in the here and now, devoted to getting to know this woman he found himself clinging to more and more each day.

“I bet you have a lot of her qualities, Nick.” Her voice broke his tranquility, pushed the grief back into the forefront.

“Yeah? I hope so.” He picked up his fork and played around with his now cold scrambled eggs. “She was a good woman…a real good woman. I miss her each and every day.” He thought about his mother so much while in treatment as of late, it seemed as if she stood right there in the mornings, shouting his name to get up and get ready for school…

Lo siento, Mamá…
He would prefer to say sorry in person, though…

“Good; those memories will keep you whole. Do you believe she watches over you?” She pushed her plate away and began work on her sliced strawberries neatly piled into a white bowl.

“I don’t know.” He shrugged. “I kinda hope not.”

“Really?” She laughed lightly, slight confusion in her expression. “Why is that?”

“If she saw the shit I’ve been doing, Taryn, she’d crawl out of her grave and try to beat me over the head with some footwear.”

They both burst out laughing again.

“I’m serious. She had this old shoe, right? Brown and chunky.” He chuckled. “I don’t even think it was hers. She’d hit me on the ass with it sometimes. Damn, that thing hurt. She was a little woman but could beat the green off a blade of grass.”

That had them both in stitches again; and then, he felt her brush against him, ever so subtly. A brief touch that filled him with indescribable elation.

“I was
always
getting into trouble. She’d say, ‘Nicky’ a million times a day. It was my nickname from her.” He took a quick sip of his juice and drifted in the land of mother-laced memories, an unbreakable smile on his face. “She’d say, ‘Nicky, es un pequeño muchacho malo.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means I was a bad ass little boy; that’s what the hell it means!”

After another bout of laughter, they quieted down, and found themselves staring at each other…

You’re the most beautiful woman in the motherfucking world, Taryn…

“I wouldn’t have guessed you to be Puerto Rican, but after you mentioned it, I can see it. Yeah, now that I look at you up close…” Her eyes narrowed as she scanned him with a keen eye, apparently going over his features with a fine-toothed visual comb. “I can
definitely
see it.”

He shrugged and wiped his hands onto a napkin. “Yeah, I get mistaken for white more times than not. Most people think I’m just Italian ’cause I have my father’s last name. Like I said, he signed the birth certificate. Why he did, I’m not sure.” He slumped further into his seat. The woman reached for him, then retreated. He knew why, and he hated it.

…I need you to touch me right now, Taryn…. I really need you close to me. I want to feel your lips against mine as I run my hands along your back…smell your skin and press your body close to mine… I just want to lie close to you, breathe, then you breathe…heart to heart… Just touch me baby, please…

He could see it in her eyes. The woman wanted to reach over and hug him, squeeze him real tight, but she couldn’t. Far too many people around…

“I guess I’ll have to deal with that too, ya know?” He shrugged again, twisting his lips to the side. “Anyway, I got this assignment from Frieda, and I gotta talk about family, write another damn letter.”

“Yeah.” Taryn nodded. “We all have to do it. It’s part of the process. It’s work, a way to heal, to deal with the reasons we’ve arrived where we have. It can be unpleasant, downright terrible at times, but you know in the end, if you can just face the shit, it will get better. Day by day, it
will
get better…” Her voice trailed as she looked around the place, seemingly falling into a fantasy.