“Don't do the Altoids thing,” she said. “You know, where you eat the mints and then you-know. He'll be screaming, all right, but for the wrong reasons.”
“Honestly, Lana, we're not at the props stage.”
“Ice cubes?”
“Three words: what, how, and why?”
“You just rub the ice up and down the body to make the skin cold, then you lick off the water with your hot mouth. Cold and hot. As for why… I gotta say why not?”
Imagining ice cubes melting on Sawyer's chest made me have feelings. Feelings I didn't want to have at work, around people who were not Sawyer.
Lana made a shaking gesture with one hand. “First the ice cubes, then ring the dinner bell.”
“Or we could go for a long walk.”
She seemed to consider this for a moment. “Curtis and I made love in Stanley Park once. I didn't want to get all-the-way-undressed on account of all the squirrels watching. They weren't even the healthy-looking squirrels, but the ones with the skinny little tails like pipe cleaners, and missing patches of fur. It wasn't very romantic, but if you do decide to go for it in a park, under the nice trees, remember to bring a blanket, and also some of those Wet Naps to clean yourself off with after.”
“Not gonna happen. Outdoors? No way.”
“It's natural. What did people do before houses?”
“They had sex in huts.”
She looked at me like I was stupid. “What about before huts?”
“I don't know, caves?”
She grabbed me by the shoulders and stared into my eyes. “Honey, does he make you happy?”
“I hardly know him. You worked with him. You probably know him better than I do. Actually, there's something I've been meaning to ask. Does he have… a violent streak, you think?”
Just then, I noticed a table full of people in my section, looking around with their necks long and their heads popped up like gophers. I excused myself and went to take their order.
When I came back, I asked Lana again about Sawyer's temperament. “If he's going to be around Bell, I need to know he's not going to be a bad influence.”
Looking down as she sliced some limes behind the bar, she said, “I never seen him hit nobody.”
“Except for when he punched out that redneck who grabbed me?”
She looked embarrassed. “Right. That happened. Yeah, besides that, I guess.”
My phone buzzed in my pocket with another message from Sawyer, and I felt guilty for asking around about him.
Some new people came into the bar, and as I glanced over, I saw something that made me feel like I'd been punched in the stomach. My throat burned and I could barely breathe. I held very still, motionless, and watched as the man crossed in front of me, mere feet away, and took a stool at the bar.
My eyes were playing tricks on me, making me think I was seeing Damion when I wasn't. It wasn't him, but this man could be his brother. Did Derek have other offspring running around? Same strong nose with the hump on the bridge. Same dark hair and eyes, same cruel edge to his mouth, like he was always on the verge of spitting.
This guy wasn't Damion, because his eyes were set too close together, but a part of me still felt his presence, as though I was being watched, and the real Damion was nearby in the shadows.
Damion's betrayal wasn't like a regular memory, that faded with time, but like a hot fire poker jabbing into me.
We had sex in my little unheated bedroom the first time, and then the second time. He kept coming by when my mother and Derek were out, and after seven times, I lost count and it just became a regular weekend thing. This went on for over a year, and we did all of the things I'd heard about from people at school or seen in movies.
Apart from that first time, he never hurt me.
I knew some girls who'd been raped by family members and they said they were ashamed, even though it wasn't their fault.
My shameful secret was that I enjoyed ha**ng s*x with Damion. I looked forward to his visits. I never asked him to make it official and have an actual relationship that people knew about, because I didn't want to scare him away. Sex was just something we did, and pretended we didn't.
Even though he was my mother's boyfriend's son, he wasn't my brother. He was six years older than me, and had never lived with us, or even in the trailer. He'd barely even known his father until he was twenty.
Sometimes, though, he'd come over for dinner and we'd all sit together, and he'd tease me the way I imagined brothers did. I'd look over and imagine him naked, on top of me, saying those dirty things to me that he loved to say, and I'd feel so hot and so guilty.
What scared me was not knowing how it was going to end. I was pretty sure he'd get a girlfriend and stop coming over. Then one weekend he brought a girl by for dinner to meet his father. He'd been seeing her for months, and I never knew.
Later that night he came back, on his own. I hadn't been expecting him, since my mother and Derek were home and sleeping just down the hall. Plus I'd met his girlfriend.
I woke up with him lying on top of me, grinning down at me in the dark.
And then, without a word from either of us, we f**ked. Just like that. And I'm not gonna lie. It was really good.
Ever since then, half the time when I had a really bad nightmare, that was it. Me waking up with Damion on top of me, and then us f**king, even though I knew it was wrong and dirty.
I wished I'd had the sense to end whatever we had, but his father, Derek, was the one who put out the fire.
At first, Derek made a few comments around the house that made me suspicious. I thought maybe he'd been reading my secret diary—not the dummy one, but the one hidden in the ceiling.
Then he got the new tattoo.
My mother always pretended to hate Derek's tattoos. She said they were creepy and satanic, but I'd seen her staring at the red and black swirls on his forearms like she was in love with the tattoos themselves.
In amidst the flames on his arms, Derek had images of na**d women of all types. There was a red devil girl with horns, and a pin-up girl posing on a chair, her hair on fire. The new tattoo he got was different. Brighter. All blue tones and a light ink that was close to white. The new tattoo was an angel, with her halo held in one hand, and her knee in the other hand, spreading her legs wide open to show her white panties.
Not long after he got the tattoo, Derek and I were alone in the house together, because my mother was visiting a friend of hers. We were sitting on the same couch, at either end, and he had pulled the plastic wrap and tape off his arm to show me his newest tattoo.
The angel on Derek's forearm was vivid, shiny and slick under a coating of Polysporin.