Intentions
By Airicka Phoenix
The card gaped at me. A single word and a series of numbers marred the rectangular cardboard. They called to me, pouring reason into the black void blanketing all hope.
Outside, fury boiled the heavens into dark cyclones of vengeance. Fat raindrops plummeted to the ground, shattering like glass across the pavement and bursting against the windows. The storm raged as though feeling the injustice prodding on me. I had no choice.
My thumbs, nails jagged, skin torn and bleeding from hours of abuse beneath my teeth, moved over the buttons on the phone. I held my breath.
Please don’t be there! My head begged, too sensible, too rational to believe such an impossibility existed.
Please be there! My heart begged, too weak, too scared to take another beating.
Bile roiled in the pit of my stomach. Cold sweat gelled on my spine, pooled beneath my arms and slicked the plastic clutched desperately to my ear—dialing… dialing… dialing. My grasp trembled.
Please God… please…
“This damn well better be good!” A female voice lanced through the rope tethering my tongue to the roof of my mouth.
Even though I’d memorized everything on the card, I glanced at it. I wet my dry, stiff lips. “I’m Tessa Haines. I’m looking for Kieran. Is he—?”
There was a grunt, the rustle of fabric, the squeak of a bed frame, and I winced. My eyes darted to the clock above the stove — 11 a.m. — an acceptable time to call a person on a weekday… wasn’t it?
“I didn’t sign up for this shit…,” the woman griped, sounding unusually distant from the receiver as if she were carrying it away from her. “Kieran… Kieran! Some girl’s on the phone!”
The phone struck something. It sounded muffled. There was more rustling, more squeaking, an exchange of words too far away to be heard and then… the voice.
It was male, thick with sleep and power. It sliced through the line separating us with a husky moan that rocked me to the core. I momentarily forgot where I was or why I was even holding the phone. That single guttural sound caressed the walls of my skull, rich and smooth like melted chocolate, and I wanted to drown in it. I wanted to bathe in it, sleep and die in it. I wanted to close my eyes and beg him to do it again.
“Hello?” So beautiful. So… hot! God how could a single voice be so dangerous?
Words I’d learned from infancy melted away and poured from my ears. I couldn’t even remember my own name.
“Hello?” Bed springs jingled. Sheets whispered, and I had an unexpected image of pale skin, cut and carved from ivory into defined lines of muscle, broad shoulders, tapered waist, gorgeous abs and bulging biceps draped lazily by yards of silk. “If you’re wondering, the answer is yes!” his voice dropped to a torturous purr. “I am naked.”
The phone struck the linoleum with a deafening clutter and spiraled under the table.
I was swearing and diving in after it before it even had a chance to stop spinning. I prayed it hadn’t hung up. I prayed it had.
“Hello?” My voice hitched, torn from my lungs, breathy and anxious.
“There you are.” The words were low… dreamy, edged with amusement.
The floor was a melted pool of lava and I was sinking fast. “I—I’m sorry. I…”
His chuckle reverberated through my soul. “No worries. I get that reaction a lot. What’s your name?”
This is a bad idea! The voice in my head cautioned. A better solution would have been to hang up, burn the card and scatter the ashes.
“Tessa,” I heard myself whisper, hypnotized — could a person even be hypnotized over the phone? I shook myself free of the spell he’d woven around me like a shroud. “Tessa Haines. I—I got your number from my neighbor, Tammy Lachey. She said you could help me.”
There were several minutes of agonizing silence so sharp I felt it poking holes in my resolve. I wondered if he’d forgotten; if I’d made a mistake. If this had all been a waste of time.
“There’s a coffee shop between Alice and Dunbar. Do you know it?”
“No,” I whispered, my heart cracking loudly in my chest. “But I’ll find it.”
“Meet me there tonight at nine,” he paused, then finished with, “Be sure this is what you want, Tessa. Be very sure.” With his warning hot in my ear, the line went dead.
I set the phone down on the counter with an unsteady hand and wondered what I’d gotten myself into, wondered if it was too late to take it back.
No. I couldn’t take it back. I couldn’t. I had to do this. Whatever he asked, whatever he wanted, I would pay it because I had no other choice. I was weak and desperate and willing to do anything—everything to save the only person who had ever meant anything to me.
My hand came away wet when I rubbed at my face. I swiped quickly at the tears, streaming without my knowledge down my cheeks, disgusted with myself; crying wasn’t going to change anything. I had to be stronger. I had to take charge of the situation.
“Focus, Tessa!” I scolded, bracing myself as I left the kitchen.
Beams of pale gold slashed through the windowpanes, holding the darkness at bay. Bits of dust clung to the shards, sparkling and swirling like tiny dancers when I passed through them on my way to the stairs.
Great-grandmother, the only family I had left, lay in her enormous four-poster bed, looking like a small child lost in an ocean of blankets. She sat propped against pillows, skin so white it was nearly translucent. Machines bleeped from the hidden cabinets cut into the mahogany walls behind her. As much as I hated the sound, hearing it came with a sense of relief.
“Grandma Lou?” I edged quietly into the room soaked with the pungent stench of medication and sickness.
“I ain’t dead yet, child,” she croaked, eyelids as thin as onion skin still closed. “You can speak louder.”
I tiptoed across the antique carpet to stand at the foot of her bed. “Did I wake you?”
She shifted, worming her frail body higher. Eyes that had once been a flawless blue opened. Like everything else about her, they too had faded with the passing of time, becoming a dull gray against the sallow of her face.
“Wasn’t sleeping,” she said. “Got plenty of time for that when I die.”
I hated when she talked like that. I never could understand how she could take death so lightly. How she could be so welcoming for it to come. A part of me hated her for it. Didn’t she know she’d leave me behind when she finally left? Wasn’t she a little sad about it? It seemed to me as though she couldn’t wait to be rid of me. She wouldn’t have been the first. I never knew my father and my mother, when asked to choose between their only child and drugs; they decided crack didn’t pee itself or cry. Grandma Lou raised me since I was one, after my mother dumped me on the doorstep in a battered car seat and said she’d be back. That was sixteen years ago. Never saw her once. It was the kindest thing she’d ever done for me. But Grandma Lou was nearly a hundred. She’d never see my eighteenth birthday.
“I might have found someone to help make you better,” I told her. “This guy helped Tammy’s mom after they found out she had cancer. I think—”
“Cancer ain’t age, child,” she interrupted, voice crackling like paper under careless hands. “You can’t stop age. It’ll come for you whether you’re expecting it or not.” Her child-like chest shuddered with her sharp intake of air. Her eyes squeezed closed. The machines bleeped a little louder, a little faster. Then calmed. Her eyes opened again. “You shouldn’t be worried about me anyhow. I’ve made peace with my maker. It’s time you do the same. You need to stop finding ways to keep me here. I need to move on, and you need to start thinking about your own life. Maybe even fall in love—”
“I don’t want to fall in love,” I said as I always did. “I don’t—I can’t lose you, grams!”
“Bless you, child! Don’t—” She succumbed to a fit of coughing that seized her entire body. The machines went crazy. I was around the bed at a run, snatching
up a glass of water off the nightstand and pressing it to her thin lips. She took a sloppy sip. Water trickled down her chin, dampening the front of her nightdress. I didn’t pull away until she sat back and looked at me. “Don’t let life slip past you, girl. You’ll regret it when you get to where I am.”
I set the glass down and perched a hip on the mattress next to her. “Do you have lots of regrets?”
She closed her eyes and leaned back against her pillows. She was quiet for so long I nearly thought she’d fallen asleep.
“I only regret I don’t have more to regret,” she said at last.
“I don’t understand,” I said.
Her faded blue eyes met mine. “Make mistakes, Tessa. Seize every opportunity. Don’t let yourself walk away wondering what if. You’ll never get that chance again if you waste it. And when it’s your time, accept your next chapter with grace.” Her fingers were brittle twigs wrapped in tissue-paper-like skin when she took my hand. “I don’t want to stay. I am ready to go.”
It was as if she’d reached into my chest and torn out my heart. The pain was staggering. I couldn’t get to my feet fast enough. I couldn’t move away far enough.
“Tessa…”
I didn’t stop. Like a coward, I fled.