Some Came Desperate: A Love Saga (5 page)

Jules shook her head.  “Fine.  Don’t be like that.  Don’t ever dream of being like Miss Horrible me.  But look what
being like that
got me for my birthday.  What did you get for yours?”

Simone stared at her sister, amazed that she could be so cruel, but she also knew exactly what was going on.  Divide and conquer, that had always been Jeremy’s way.  Get Jules to hate her, too.  But Simone didn’t sweat it.  She was sixteen now, still too young in the eyes of the law, but when she turned eighteen they’d better look out.  Because nothing was going to stop her then.

She got up and left her sister’s presence.

Later that night, when her shift at Burger King ended way earlier than she had expected (the manager had over-booked the staff), she returned home, went into the kitchen to get her a glass of water, and was about to retire to her bedroom when she heard loud noises coming from Jeremy’s room.  She became immediately concerned, because Jeremy was supposed to have taken Jules out on the town tonight and neither should have been home, but when she heard Jules voice too, and Jules started screaming, she dropped her glass of water and ran to Jeremy’s room.

She slung open the bedroom door and nearly fell back in shock at what she saw.  Jeremy, naked and on top of Jules, pumping on her. 

Simone covered her mouth in a devastating shock, trying to scream but no sound would come.  When Jules looked up over Jeremy’s bare, white shoulder and saw her sister, however, it was Jules who screamed, prompting Jeremy to look, too. 

What he saw frightened even him.  Simone, already too emotional in his view, was beyond emotional now.  She stood there, almost catatonic, staring with a look of disbelief in her stunned, innocent eyes.  Jeremy, knowing how out-there Simone could get, quickly jumped off of Jules and tripped down as he hurriedly tried to slip into his pants.             

“It’s not what you think, Simone,” he said anxiously as he dressed, growing more uneasy with her stare.  “And stop looking at me like that!”

Simone shook her head, looking from him to Jules and back to him again.  “How
could
you,” she finally managed to say, albeit in a whisper.  “How could you do this, Jeremy?  How could you ruin my family like this?”

“What are you talking about, girl?  This has nothing to do with you or your family!”

“We were supposed to be a family again,” she said in a voice so pleading that it caused Jules to shutter.  “She’ll get Shay back, I know she will, if you’ll leave her alone.  But you don’t want us to be a family.  You just want Jules all for yourself.”

“Just get out of here, Simone,” Jeremy yelled, “and I mean now!”

“You go to hell!” Simone yelled back.  “You don’t tell me what to do!  You won’t ruin me too, I don’t care how much you put me down and try to turn my own sister against me!”

Jeremy laughed.  “Girl, you’re crazy.  Nobody’s thinking about your crazy butt!”

“I’m crazy?”

“Yeah, you’re crazy!”

“Okay,” Simone said, nodding her head, and left the room hurriedly. 

“Check her out!” Jeremy said to Jules, still shaking his head.  “What is wrong with that sister of yours?”

“She’s in shock, Jeremy,” Jules said angrily, snatching her clothes from the floor as she put them on.

“She’s nuts,” Jeremy replied, buttoning his pants. 

Jules had already had major misgivings about going this far with Jeremy, knowing that it would change their relationship forever.  She cared for him deeply, maybe even loved him, but she wasn’t at all certain that she was ready to take this turn.  But he was so insistent, and so charming, his wonderful bright white smile making her feel as if he was the sweetest man on earth.  And he begged her.  Just this one time, Jules, he begged.  Just this one time.  So to please him, and to satisfy those growing yearnings she’d been having herself, she did it.  But now, seeing Simone’s reaction, seeing Simone’s pain, she felt dirty, not satisfied.   And deeply ashamed.

Jules was still feeling the shame when Simone returned to the bedroom.  Only Simone wasn’t back to apologize, or to make any amends.  She was back with a vengeance.

“So I’m crazy, Jeremy?” she said as if she was continuing a conversation that had not ended.  “I’m crazy?”  She said this and started hurrying toward Jeremy.  Jules didn’t see the knife until Simone had lifted it from her side and lunged at Jeremy.  He was just pulling on his shirt, and it was covering his face at that very moment, but Jules screamed such a blood curdling scream that he nearly lost his balance. 

Simone, however, kept her aim and lunged for him, that big butcher’s knife burrowing an inch into his bare stomach before he was able to knock Simone down and sling it out.  The blood that gushed out took him to his knees, and Simone, who had fallen against the wall, was so transfixed, so stunned herself by the sight of the blood, that she could do nothing but stare at him and breathe in and out in hyperventilation. 

Jules called 911, as Jeremy had screamed for her to do, and after hanging up the phone she looked at him.  He was wrapping his shirt tightly around his wound and still yelling at Simone, calling her all kinds of colorful names.  Jules looked at Simone, who looked just as confused as Shay had looked the day they left her behind.  And Jules was in the middle.  Caught between Jeremy and Simone’s visceral hatred of each other.  Caught between their stubborn inability to even appreciate the position they were always putting her in.  But she had to choose.  Finally, she had to choose.  And she did. 

She hurried to Jeremy’s side.

FOUR

Six years later

“I still need a BLT, ham on rye, cheeseburger on the board, Gert, and I still need fries all three.”

“And I still need a million dollars,” Gert, the cook, replied to Simone as she shoved a plate of spaghetti onto the counter cut-out that separated the kitchen from the eating area of the diner.  “Spaghetti’s up.”

“What about my liverwurst?” Simone asked as she grabbed the plate of spaghetti.

“Liverwurst, BLT, cheeseburgers, it’s all coming up, Simone,” Gert said in her normal exasperation.  “I ain’t like you.  I’ve only got two hands.”

“Is that right?” Simone said with a chuckle as she hurried the spaghetti to a table near the back. 

Simone Rivers, now twenty-two, was the head waitress at the Sky Diner near what was then Joe Robbie Stadium, and she loved her job, the people she worked with, and every talkative customer that came through that door.

Including Bellini, her boss, who was coming through the door clapping his hands.  “All right people,” he said to his workers the way he always said, “let’s get a move on!  I see empty tables.  I see people waiting for food!”

Simone and the other waitresses ignored him, the way they always did, and he’d usually get distracted by a customer talking to him or asking him what he thought about their beloved Dolphins.  But this time, as Simone passed by him, he grabbed her by the arm and slipped a letter into her apron pocket. 

“This came for you, Simmie,” he said, his blue eyes looking deep into her green ones, letting her know, just by his look alone, the seriousness.  Simone nodded.

“Thanks, Mr. B.,” she said and hurried for the counter to grab her order of liverwurst.  Her heart, however, was pounding against her chest.  She only allowed one kind of mail to be delivered at her job, and that was the mail that dealt with her getting custody of her sister Shay.  Since she was always at work, often pulling double shift on a daily basis, she used her work address as her mailing address.  And as soon as she delivered the liverwurst, and the BLT, ham, and burger orders, she asked for “ten” and was granted the break by Bellini.

She went out of the back kitchen door and sat on the stone step near the garbage bins.  She took a deep breathe when she saw, as she had expected to see, that the letter was from the state of Georgia, and then quickly opened it.  And she exhaled.  The news was the same.  A resounding no.  No to custody of Serita Rivers.  No to visitation with Serita Rivers.  No for the fourth time in four years.  Simone leaned her head against the screen door frame.

Six years ago she was arrested for stabbing Jeremy Druce in his stomach, a wound that only needed some stitches and no hospital stay, but was enough to place her in juvenile detention on an assault with a deadly weapon charge pending her trial.  If he would not have pressed charges, she would have been immediately released back into his custody.  But he did press charges, with Jules having no choice but to testify and tell the truth, which added up to her testifying on Jeremy’s behalf.  And against Simone.  Found guilty, although her public defender tried to claim self defense, she was remanded into the custody of the juvenile division of the judicial system for two years, until her eighteenth birthday. 

Her first year of incarceration was filled with bitterness and rage, against Jeremy, against Jules, against the world and everybody in it.  But by her second year she resigned herself to her fate.  She even began attending Bible studies and church services and soon became what she had never thought about becoming: a born-again Christian.  Jules, while visiting her one day, said she was simply having one of those “jail house conversions” that never lasted, but Simone didn’t argue with her.  All she knew was that she used to have a deep-seated anger and bitterness that wasn’t destroying anybody but herself, that same anger and bitterness that got her incarcerated in the first place, and now she felt free.  She didn’t argue with Jules at all.  She simply kept urging Jules to do something with her influence in this life as the girlfriend of a doctor, since she loved to mention it, and try and get Shay back.

Jules, however, never tried, her college career and life with Jeremy was more than enough stress for her.  But as soon as Simone turned eighteen and was released from confinement, she tried.  Every year for four years she tried.  But the answer was always no.  They wouldn’t even allow her to have visitation with Shay, believing that it was too late in the game for her to try and “disrupt” her sister’s life.  Besides, the state of Georgia stated on this last petition, Simone was far too young and way too unstable herself to adequately care for a “high-strung” teen like Serita.

***

The bus stopped two blocks from where Jules worked and Simone, with her backpack that contained all of her letters and correspondences with the Georgia courts, and all of her research on custodial rights, hurried off of the bus and ran to her sister’s office.  It was nearing five o’clock, and the street traffic as well as the sidewalk traffic began to converge into a controlled chaos that found Simone bumping and sliding her way through the throng as she entered the large office complex in downtown Miami Beach.

Jules Rivers was seated behind her executive desk reviewing the pitch she and her staff had to make tomorrow morning to win a consulting contract with a local brewery, when her younger sister came bounding into her office.

Jules secretary, hurrying in behind Simone, looked flustered.  “I told her you couldn’t see anyone right now, Miss Rivers,” she said nervously.  “But she wouldn’t take no for an answer.”

“I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t important, Jules,” Simone said and Jules, already swamped with “important” matters, exhaled.

“It’s okay,” she said to her secretary.  The secretary, still upset, nodded politely and then closed the door as she left.

“It’s really a bad time, Simone.”

“I know.  And don’t blame your secretary because she did try to stop me.  But this won’t take but a few minutes.”

Jules removed her reading glasses and motioned for her sister to sit down.  Simone, Jules knew, was one of a kind, a person who’d been through so much but still had managed to blossom into a smart, beautiful Christian woman who wasn’t bitter or angry at the world, but hopeful.  What hadn’t changed, however, Jules also noticed, was that crusader spirit deep within her, that obsession of hers to somehow make amends for a decision she made when she was only fourteen.  Which was probably the reason for this visit.

“You have five minutes, Simone,” Jules said after Simone had sat down and slung that ridiculous backpack she was always carrying off of her small shoulder.  Simone then unzipped the backpack, pulled out a stack of papers, and handed them to Jules.  Jules put back on her glasses, leaned back, and began reading the letter on top. 

Simone leaned back, too, and watched her sister read, one of her legs shaking so nervously, so impatiently, that she had to cross it over the other one to keep it still.  Jules, she thought, was nothing like her, but had grown into a graceful twenty-four-year-old who looked so incredible now, with her long, straight black hair, her big, cat eyes, and her tall model’s body.  She wore Prada head-to-toe, or some other Italian designers whose names Simone couldn’t pronounce, and was the epitome of a professional woman on the rise.  Especially as compared with Simone, who barely passed her GED and whose dreams tended more toward having her sisters together again and maybe someday owning a business together with them, like a beauty salon.  And as for her clothes, Prada would never make the cut.  Simone, in fact, looked down at her attire, a pair of jeans and an oversized Miami Dolphins jersey, and there was no comparison, she thought.  Jeremy Druce, that snake, had set Jules up too well.

When Jules finished reading the letter, she removed her glasses and looked at her eager sister.  “Why are you still doing this?” she asked her.

“Because we left Shay behind, Jules.”

“That was eight years ago!  Shay is fifteen years old now.  You saw what that letter said.  She’s a high-strung teenager now.  There’s no way they’ll turn over custody of a teenager to somebody who’s barely able to take care of her own self.”

“That’s why I came to you.”

“Not again, Simone.”

“If you’ll only try!  I’ll take care of her.  She’ll live with me.  You’ll only have custody of her on paper.  I know they’ll grant an upstanding citizen like you custody.”

Jules shook her head.  “It’s not gonna happen, Simone.”

“But why not?”

“You know why not.  I’ve got too many irons in the fire as it is.”

“All in the name of climbing that social ladder.”

“What’s wrong with that?  I wanna get ahead, darn right I do.”

“Even if it means never seeing your own sister again?”

“Oh, for goodness sakes!” Jules said with more than a tinge of impatience in her voice.  “Will you get off of that high horse of yours for two minutes?  You know what position I’m in.  Jeremy—”

“Jeremy?  It’s always about him!”

“He paid my way through college, he got me this position with Melbright, he’s done everything in his power to help me, Simone.  And I love him, yes I do.  I love him.  And one day, if God sees fit to bless me like that, I’m going to be the first and only wife of Dr. Jeremy Druce.”

“Yeah, right.”

“He will marry me!”

In your dreams
, Simone wanted to say.  “Why can’t you just try it, Jules?” she said, instead.

“Because you, better than anybody else, knows how Jeremy is and you know he’s not about to go for that.”

Simone frowned.  “Go for what?  Go for somebody trying to help her own sister? Bump him!”  Then Simone stood up and grabbed the stack of papers off of Jules desk.  She began stuffing them, one by one, into her backpack.

“We’re not disturbing our lives, Simone,” Jules said, “and I’m sorry if you disagree with that.  You work in that little diner and go to your little church and you’re satisfied.  But I’m not.  I have to have more.  And Jeremy, yes, Simone, the man you despise, can give me more.  He’s a doctor whether you can deal with that or not.  A surgeon at that.  How many females come from a background like ours can boast that they wrangled themselves a surgeon, girl, now you tell me that?” 

Simone shook her head.  She wasn’t even trying to hear that nonsense.  Jules leaned back, staring at her sister.  “Just look at you,” she said so disgustedly that Simone was almost tempted to look down at herself.  She, instead, looked at Jules.

“Will you look at yourself?” Jules asked again.  “You don’t even know what it’s like to be held by a man, do you?”

Simone stopped stuffing her papers into her backpack, that wave of loneliness she’d felt almost all of her life sweeping over her again.  It was a subject she’d always avoided, the subject of men, and Jules knew it.  Especially if these men Jules thought so highly of was anything like the ones Simone had ever run across. 

“You heard me, Simone.  Have you ever been held by a man?”

“You’ve been held by one ever since it was legal for him to do so, and what has it gotten you?”

Anger flared across Jules face, but she held it in.  “Just answer my question,” she said tightly.

Simone looked at her sister, who was so pretty and smart, who could have any man she wanted but chose a dog like Jeremy Druce.  She continued stuffing her papers into her backpack.  “What difference does it make?” she finally said, a frown creasing her smooth, almond skin.

“It makes a huge difference, Simone, don’t you realize that?  All you do is run around town with that ridiculous backpack trying to get your sister back as if that will be the answer to all your troubles.  You’re trying to reclaim a family that never was.  We were never a true family, Simone.  Not like everybody else.  And you were treated worse than all of us.”

“That’s not true,” Simone said halfheartedly.