“Do what, Lourdes?” she frowns, shaking her leg so hard that the table follows its up and down motion.
“How you keep them all separate—Ace, Javier, and Cheyenne? I saw you with her on the jumbotron at the game after you left my clothes at his place.”
“I lie! Are you satisfied? I lie to them. If they knew that I was still friends with Ace, how would it look?”
The truth of how she feels is in the way she arranges her words. It’s the tiny things that Ace and Angie have taught me to pay attention to because people never spell things out. I have to read between their words and actions.
“They think I have some high paying client here, but really it’s Ace. I—I can’t hop on the 105 and race to his condo to check on him or—or pick him up from the bathroom floor after a bad night anymore. I had to get on a fucking plane to come meet this girl who he said would take care of him just as good as I do because he says she looks like the girl of his dreams... and has the same name his Mom was obsessed with.”
Her eyes are wild and big and angry like I asked for her firstborn, but I guess it must have been exhausting stretching herself between so many lives and then having to explain it all.
“When she died, he fell apart and wasn’t nobody there to put him back together but me. I couldn’t leave him. He was too fragile, but I couldn’t leave Cheyenne either. She said it happened and who was I to challenge it? I couldn’t blame or shame her. My brother loves her and I have to respect that.”
The last of her words sound like a mantra somebody drilled into her head over and over. It doesn’t even sound like it ever came from her brain but from somebody else’s and she has to keep reminding herself that Cheyenne deserves that respect.
“What happened that night, Cree?”
“I don’t know. I wasn’t in that cabin with them,” she hisses back.
“I’m askingyouwhatyouremember from that night.”
Tears fill her eyes and for the first time since I woke up, I have an “oh shit” moment. I’m messing in estranged relationships, police investigations, and opening doors people want to keep closed, but I can see the weariness on her shoulders that there’s one door she’s been dying to open—she just never had anyone nudge her toward it.
“He’s always getting on to me, telling me how I should be nice to you,” I mutter. “I never got it until now because I was confused and I still am. I just wanna make sense of all this for him... and especially for Angie.”
I owe it to her and all the mothers like her who would never be able to do something so important.
The tears stream down her face and she looks over at the nosy party next to us, studying them like they did us.
“Sometimes I still dream about that day.” She swipes at her face. “Aunt Angie sick in Ace’s cabin all day while he’s getting fucked up because Uncle Ason still hadn’t shown up. Javi trying to keep Chey’s attention on him and not on Ace.”
Her eyes dart back over to me. “It was always like that—always.”
I swallow the details of that night without asking which part she’s referring to. Somehow, I know she’s talking about all of it.
“What else do you remember?”
She narrows her eyes and then looks away again. “I remember Ace disappearing for hella long, but nobody noticing except me because everybody was wasted by then. I was too, but I told you Ace was fragile—even before Aunt Angie died, he was. I remember running up, down, all around that boat looking for him until somebody told me they saw him wandering over to the promenade.”
“Was Cheyenne there with him?”
“No,” she chokes out. “No, she wasn’t.”
“Tell me what you saw.”
“Phat...no. I—I don’t think—”
“Tell me.” I reach over and grab her hand like Granny does mine when she wants to feel what I’m feeling.
It’s hot and moist with sweat that sticks to mine, but I squeeze it anyway. I squeeze it hard until she spills the rest.
“Ace was dangling off the side of the boat with Dough holding him up by his waist. Sometimes I question myself and whether what I saw was real because I know it’s no way that Ace would leave us like that—especially not with Aunt Angie so sick, but he was there with the wind whipping his shirt around talking to Dough like his body wasn’t halfway off that ship. Our brains are real funny, you know?” I squeeze her hand again, losing myself in the blue of her eyes. “I was for sure it was an accident, or—or just him playing around until I watched the Grammy’s this year and saw Dough up there with the same look on his face, talking about that day like it hurt him just as bad as it hurt me to find them like that. He ain’t come out and sayitthough—it’s like we’re all waiting on Ace to say it. To tell it in his own words.”
I think I see Ace, Dough, and that boat swirling in her eyes. The warmth from her hands makes me feel like I’m there in Malibu, swallowing the same air as him while he tries to find me over the side of that boat.
“He told you, didn’t he?” she mutters.
I can’t answer because I’m too far gone now—too in love with a man that’s impossible to hate. I’m supposed to keep our secrets close to my heart—even the painful ones he admits while diving inside me.
