She took her spoon and pushed it through her stew of rice and peeled crawfish tails. I grabbed my fork and knife, ready to cut into a meal I wasn’t the least bit hungry for, but I stopped, seeing her take a small piece of bread and dip it into the stew. She brought the bread up, dripping with creole sauce, and caught it with her mouth, sucking the tip of her thumb before starting to chew.
Glancing up, she caught me staring. “What?” she asked more as an accusation.
I cut into my food. “You’re only allowed finger foods when we go out to eat,” I deemed.
I heard her snort. “If we go out again,” she corrected.
She picked up her spoon and we both started eating. I ate the fish with the sauce and all of the rice, quickly realizing I was hungrier than I’d thought. I rarely just sat and ate, unless it was with Christian, and more often than not, we were both interrupted by phone calls or texts at the dinner table.
Business dinners were a lot of talking and drinking, so Mrs. Giroux’s home-cooked meals were much appreciated. It was my fault I chose to eat them at my desk as I worked.
I raised my eyes, watching her eat and loving the sight of her sitting there: her dark hair spilling over her shoulder, her skin glowing in the light of the ostentatious chandelier hanging above her, her downcast eyes as she licked her lips after taking a drink.
I wasn’t thinking about work or home. At the moment I wondered only what she was thinking.
“Why do you want to go into politics?”
I stopped, looking up. She watched me silently, waiting.
I shrugged slightly, setting down my silverware and relaxing into my seat.
“I have money,” I pointed out, picking up my drink. “Now I’m bored, and I want power.”
She set her spoon down, sitting back and crossing her arms over her chest. She cocked her head, unamused.
My chest shook with a laugh before I took a sip and set down my drink. She didn’t take any bullshit, did she?
“I’ve been on top of the world my whole life,” I told her, fingering the glass. “I grew up attending private schools, and my father made sure I had everything I could ever want. College was a blast. Being on my own, money I didn’t earn or question where it came from sitting in my pocket…” I trailed off, staring at the table and narrowing my eyes.
“I didn’t concern myself with anything that brought me down,” I confessed. “I was arrogant.”
I stopped and smirked at her. “Well, more arrogant than I am now,” I added. “I was self-serving and selfish.”
The waiter stopped and set down the drinks, leaving just as quietly when neither of us looked at him.
I raised my eyes, meeting hers. “When I was nineteen I got a girl pregnant.” I swallowed the lump, remembering that day I’d wished so many times I could go back and redo. “She wasn’t even really my girlfriend,” I added. “It was new, and it was casual, and then all of a sudden my connection to her was permanent.”
Easton’s expression was emotionless as she listened.
“And you know what?” I continued. “I still didn’t change. I threw money at her so she’d go away, and after a year or so, she married someone else.”
I looked away, feeling ashamed. “A great guy who wanted her even though she had another man’s kid, a guy who was there for my son.”
My throat tightened, and I forced my breathing to slow. I’d worked very hard over the years not to think about Christian waking up in the middle of the night or having stories read to him by someone else. Times when he was small and helpless and needed me and I was nowhere around.
I was never there.
“I thought I was a man.” I spoke quietly. “I wasn’t even close.”
She dropped her eyes, looking saddened, and I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing. Did she think less of me now?
Of course she did.
“When I was twenty-two,” I went on, “I was in my last semester of college and ready to be done. I had to take this social science course to fulfill a requirement. I forget what it was called,” I told her, “but I remember, very well, arguing with the professor one day. He was giving us some prison statistics. Percentages of the inmates’ races, percentages of repeat offenders…”
I tipped back the drink, finishing it off, setting the glass down, and clearing my throat.
“Everyone thought that the inequalities in prison culture were shocking, but I didn’t care. It didn’t seem like a big deal.”
A smile escaped me as I remembered that day. “The professor got in my face and told me to look harder.” I looked at her point-blank, imitating his deep, gruffly voice. “ ‘Mr. Marek, if you’re not angry, then you’re not paying attention.’ And I shot back with ‘Well, I don’t want to be angry all the time. Ignorance is bliss, and I don’t care about fuckups who got sent to prison for their own mistakes’ and all that bullshit. I thought I was so smart.”
I felt utterly ridiculous, quoting my twenty-two-year-old self. Back when I thought I knew everything.
I continued to explain. “He wanted us to question the how and why, and I couldn’t have cared less. I wanted to make money” – I shrugged my shoulders – “go to parties, and have fun.”
She continued listening, not moving a muscle.
“And then,” I continued. “I remember like it was yesterday. He looked me in the eye, and he said, ‘Tyler, if you’re going to be a burden on the world, then just die now. We don’t need you.’ ”
She blinked, looking a little shocked. “Wow,” she whispered.
“Yeah.” I nodded. “He shut me up. And he made me open my eyes,” I added, remembering the moment my outlook on life changed.
“I was a nobody,” I explained. “Expendable and useless… I was a loser who took and never gave.”
I glanced up, seeing the waiter approach, and waited for him to take the plates away.
“Would you like coffee?” he asked.
I shook my head, waving him off.
“And so” – I looked at her again after he’d gone – “in my last year of college, I finally started studying. I read books about prisons, poverty, religion, war, gangs, economics, even agriculture,” I explained, “and the following fall I went back to school for my graduate degree, because I wanted to make more than just money. I wanted to make a difference and be remembered.”
Her eyes dropped, and a small, thoughtful smile peeked out as if she understood just what I was talking about.
“I realized that if I wanted to effect change,” I told her, “and be a person others could count on, then I needed to start with my own kid. He was two years old at that point and had seen me…” I shook my head. “Very rarely,” I confessed. “Brynne, his mother, didn’t want to have anything to do with me, though.”
I took in a hard breath, the weight of regret making it hard to talk. “She took the money my father sent every month for Christian’s sake, but I’d burned my bridges with her. She told me that our son had a father who loved him already and I’d only confuse him.”
“And you agreed with her,” Easton ascertained.
I nodded. “I was scared off,” I admitted. “I was working hard to contribute to the rest of the world, but when it came to my kid…” I dropped my eyes, shaking my head at how easily I’d talked myself out of his life back then. “I was too afraid of failing.” I raised my eyes, meeting hers. “So I didn’t even try. I saw her husband with my kid, and I didn’t know how the hell I was going to compete with that. I wanted to be in his life, but I’d still just be the weekend daddy.”
At the time, it had made sense.
I’d wanted him to know me, but what if I didn’t live up to his expectations? He’d already had a full-time father and a life that was familiar.
What if he still hated me?
No, there was time. Later. When he’d grown up enough to understand. Then I could be his father.
“As he grew, I tried to keep in contact with him,” I consoled myself o
ut loud. “I never pressed for any kind of custody, because my traveling was sporadic and unpredictable, and Brynne let Christian go with me from time to time as long as that’s what he wanted,” I explained. “But he started having friends, sports, extracurricular activities, and so I let him have his life. We grew even further apart.”
“But he’s with you now,” she pointed out, sounding hopeful.
But I couldn’t summon her optimism. Under the same roof, I felt more distanced from my son than when he wasn’t there.
“I was supposed to pick him up for dinner one night last June,” I explained, “and he stood me up. He went to a baseball game with his other father.” I accentuated the word “other.”
“I got pissed and went to collect him, and Brynne started yelling at me on the phone to leave them alone,” I went on. “I was just making everyone unhappy, she told me, but he was my son, and I wanted him with me that night.”
I blinked away the burn in my eyes, remembering how fucking sick I’d gotten of her telling me he wasn’t mine.
“And I was pissed, because I had no right to be pissed,” I told Easton. “Brynne was right. I was the outsider. I’d given him up. And I was making everyone unhappy.”
The waiter brought the bill, and I dug my wallet out of my breast pocket and handed him a couple bills.
“Keep the change,” I said, and didn’t watch him leave.
Easton leaned her chin on her hand, her eyes never leaving me.
I picked my napkin off my lap and dropped it on the table.
“When she said they were going to Egypt for a year,” I continued, “and that she was taking Christian, I said no. I told her I wasn’t letting my son leave the country, and we fought. A lot.
“But I was done being a coward. I wanted my son with me.” I didn’t know why, but I wanted Easton to understand that. “I thought it was too late when he was two. I thought it was too late when he was ten. And now that he’s fourteen I’ve finally fucking realized that it’s never too late,” I told her.
I swirled the brown liquid I had yet to drink, knowing that I was still failing with my son and wondering what Easton was thinking of me. Maybe she’d learned too much, and I’d fucked up.
I’d gone to her apartment tonight because, after what I’d seen online, I didn’t want to bring her any unhappiness. I wouldn’t be so arrogant as to think I could make her life better – she seemed to be doing pretty well – but I was reminded that what others let us see is very little. There’s a lot I didn’t know about her, but I did know she was hiding something.
She deserved to smile, and for some reason, I wanted to give her that.
But telling her my own shit might’ve pushed her away.
Women didn’t tend to like weakness and mistakes in men, but when she’d looked so interested, something compelled me to spill everything.
I guess I hadn’t really told anyone all of that before.
She sat there, watching me, and I tipped my drink at her, blowing off the whole thing with a smile and suddenly feeling like I’d made a huge mistake in telling her.
“Anyway,” I joked. “That’s why I want to be in politics.”
ELEVEN
EASTON
W
hat is he doing to me?
I’d sat there, silent nearly the entire time, and listened to the things that had brought him to where he was now. The mistakes of his youth, the teacher who’d pushed him, the son who thought nothing of him, and all the things he didn’t know how to fix.
And all I wanted in the world was for him to keep talking.
I liked how his experiences had shaped him and how he was committed to succeeding. He didn’t give up. When I saw the moments he’d looked away from me or heard the hesitance in his voice during his story, I knew he still felt like that twenty-two-year-old kid down deep.
The midthirties construction mogul who dominated conference rooms and crowds still didn’t think he was a man.
I had no doubt that Christian’s mother had every reason to be angry and not to trust him. She’d been young, too, I was sure, and he’d left her holding the bag.
But I could see the regret and pain Tyler tried to hide on his face at all the lost years with his son.
And he wouldn’t give up again.
A man who endeavored to be better was already superior to the men who claimed to be great.
He took my hand, leading me out of the restaurant, and I threaded my fingers through his, holding back the smile at the chills spreading up my arms.
We stepped out of the restaurant and onto the sidewalk, stopping to take in the sight of the rain pouring down in buckets and yet doing nothing to deter the party in the street.
The heavy drops hit the ground in sheets upon sheets, and I had to squint to make out people’s faces, dancing in the midst of the celebration.
Trumpet music played off to my left, and I looked over, seeing an older man with graying hair swaying to and fro under the canopy as he played “When the Saints Go Marching In.”
Peering back out to the crowd in the streets and lining the sidewalks, their black and gold football jerseys glued to their drenched skin, I realized that it was Monday-night football. The Saints must’ve won.
I couldn’t care less about football, but I envied how something so insignificant in the scheme of things could make people so happy.
Women adorned with beads around their necks clutched the long green necks of the Hand Grenade drinks in their fists and twirled, kicking up the water that had accumulated on Royal, while men smiled, nearly tripping over their own steps. All laughing and probably enjoying one of the best moments of their lives, because they felt truly free right now. Chaos lost in chaos. Liberty in being a small part of a larger madness.
When you weren’t seen, you weren’t judged. There was a desirable freedom in that.
“You think less of me.” He spoke at my side, still watching the rain. “Don’t you?”
I narrowed my eyes on him and shook my head. “No.”
“I’m not the same man I was back then, Easton.” He looked down at me. “I take care of what’s mine now.”
His hard stone eyes held mine, and there was nothing that I didn’t want him to prove. Would he be rough but never hurt? Get me to want more?
Make me never want to leave?
I turned away from him and stepped off the sidewalk, instantly pummeled with heavy raindrops as I walked into the street.
Water filled my flats, and my skirt and shirt instantly stuck to my skin. I closed my eyes, feeling him behind me, watching.
The cool rain soaked my hair, and I threw back my head, letting it cool off my face.
Why him? Why had he been the one to push his way in, and why had I allowed it?
A wall of warmth hit my back, and I felt his hand take my hip. I turned my head, and he caught my face in his hand and covered my mouth with his.
Tyler.
I darted out my tongue, brushing it against his and feeling my breath catch in my throat. My skin buzzed, desire pooled between my legs, and I snaked my hand up, holding the side of his face as I dived in, kissing him greedily.
I flicked his top lip with my tongue and dragged out his bottom lip between my teeth, taking time to let him do the same to me.
His hands fell down to my stomach, pulling me back and holding me to his body as his lips worked mine, leaving me breathless.
The rain spilled over us, plastering our clothes to our bodies, and his tongue darted out, licking and sucking the water off my jaw and chin.
“Tyler,” I gasped, squeezing my eyes shut, because he felt so good it almost hurt. “Tyler, this is wrong.”
I pulled away from him and turned around, breathing hard.
It wasn’t easy to say no to something you wanted, but I was taught that while some mistakes can be overcome, others should never be made. In our hearts, we always know what’s right and wrong. That’s not the struggle.
The struggle is wanting what’s
wrong for you and gauging whether or not the consequences are worth it.
“I like your kid,” I told him. “And I love my job. You’re in the public eye. We can’t do this.”
By now my arms hung at my sides, weighing a thousand pounds. I wasn’t tired, but for some reason I felt exhausted.
He tipped his chin down at me and inched forward.
“Easton, you’re coming home with me,” he stated as if it were a done deal.
My weary heart pumped harder, begging me to agree. If you don’t give in, you’ll always want him.
Go home with him. Get in his bed. Self-destruct, because some rides can’t be stopped.
But I couldn’t.
What if things turned bad? I couldn’t just not see him.
And New Orleans might be a large city, but there were almost no degrees of separation from you and the stranger on the street. Someone – anyone – was bound to see us together, and it would be only a matter of time before we were found out.
No.
I looked up at him, speaking softly. “Take me home, please,” I told him. “To my house.”
His eyes narrowed and his jaw hardened, but I didn’t wait for an argument. Spinning around, I dashed across Royal and continued walking down the quieter side street, toward the parking garage.
The rain had drenched my clothes, and I folded my arms over my chest to ease the chill seeping through my skin.
I could hear his footsteps behind me, and I walked quickly to avoid any further discussion, speed-walking past a hotel entrance and continuing down the sidewalk.
If he pressed me further, I knew I’d be tempted to give in.
But he hooked my elbow, bringing me to a stop as I twisted around to face him.
“I like you, okay?” he said, letting his gaze fall and looking like it was hard for him to admit that.
He stepped closer. “I like you a lot, and I don’t know why, because you’re fucking miserable to me half the time,” he mused. “You rarely smile. You never laugh, but you love to argue, and for some reason I want you around. I want you to know things about me, and I like telling you shit. Why do I feel like I’m in the wrong here?”