Suddenly, I’m nineteen again, serving ice cream at Raven Swirls, my mom’s summer pop-up shop, and getting painfully shy when the best-looking man on earth shows up twice a week.
He always tips more than the cost of his cone. He makes me laugh with his crazy, antiquated mustache and his backward ballcap that says “Give A Damn.”
I’m twenty, my heart racing in his arms, listening to him tell me he loves me and he’s sorry if it hurt when he took my virginity. He just needs it “a little rough” to get off.
I’m almost twenty-one, and he’s outside my apartment, hurling a rock at my window. It scares me when it hits and cracks the glass. Tellingme how “fucking brain dead” I am to get worked up over something so stupid. He always gets black-out drunk on his father’s yacht with his friends because he knows “how to live,” and I need to just deal with it.
I’m twenty-two and still anxious. I’m expecting to come home to his ridiculous mustache twitching as he screams at me and breaks another plate in my house, even though he’s long gone.
I find one of his old shirts in the back of my closet. It still smells like him.
I burn it in the old grill out back, crying.
The full force of emotion almost makes me slam the door in his face, and I have to remind myself to breathe.
He doesn’t have that hold on me anymore.
I’m not the same dumb college girl, and I’m sure as hell not his little “doll.”
“Dr. Ezzie,” I mutter, playing dumb. “What about her?”
“She told me you want to buy her out. At first, I laughed my ass off. Then I realized she was serious.” He spreads his hands and inhales sharply. “So, yeah. Let’s not make this personal, okay? I bet you weren’t planning on dropping your life savings on that dump until I showed up with the funds and an actual plan.”
He would make the bet. Harry never saw a pull tab machine at a dive bar he could turn down.
Then he’d bellow and kick the machine when it inevitably ate his cash until they threw him out.
But I don’t remind him what a spoiled, raging demon he is. I don’t say anything.
My feet stay glued to the floor. My heart jitters in my chest like a trapped bird, desperate to break out of its tiny cage.
“I’m serious about the buyout, Harry. Frankly, you’re better off moving on. You must have other projects?”
“Serious.” He snorts loudly. “Yeah, sure you are. So am I. C’mon, why don’t you let me in so we can sit down and talk like civilized people?”
Oh my God.
I can’t help my face turning red.
But finally, when I can take a step forward, I block his path more firmly, staring him down in his dead green eyes. The only way he’s getting in here is if he shoves me to the floor.
Which I wouldn’t put past him.
But then I can nab him for assault and maybe breaking and entering. It’s a quiet neighborhood. Someone will call the cops if I scream.
Only, he just falls back, throwing his hands up. “Fine, we’ll have it your way. But listen to me, LeeLee, and listengood.”
I wince.
Out of all his pet names, that one’s the worst. I can’t hide the disgust contorting my face.
“I’ve heard enough,” I throw back. “If you want the clinic, make another bid and let Dr. Ezzie decide. Isn’t that how this works?”
“Fuck no. You might know animals, but you don’t know real estate.” He smirks. “Just hear me out—five years of your salary in exchange for dropping your offer. That’s six figures, easy. You can walk away and go back to Mommy in Port Townsend. You never were a big-city girl at heart.”
Until now, I always thoughtvibrating with angerwas just a phrase. But suddenly I’m living it.
Is this man for real?
