“I pretended you were the guy from the ice cream parlor,” I said quickly.
He looked at me weirdly for a second, and then it started to dawn on him, I think.
I continued, “When you came into the ice cream parlor, when you flirted with me, I fell into total crush mode. I thought, wow Tia, imagine if this gorgeous man, not a boy, a man, took you on a date? What would that be like? I imagined what I wanted it to be like. A nice restaurant instead of fast food. All dressed up. Romantic. I thought about you for days. You were on my mind right up until I graduated. When I met you for the second time, you shattered that image, that fantasy. Shattered it. Tonight, it felt like my life was on the line and I couldn’t lie, couldn’t pretend to like you, not after everything that’s happened. So,” I took a deep breath, “I tried to rewind things. I pretended you were him, the guy I first fantasized about, how I’d thought you might be.” I swallowed and then continued in barely more than a whisper, “and the date was kind of like I’d imagined and you kind of were like that,
too.”
His expression dropped. He was two inches from my face and he just stared at me. He stared at me for the longest time. I didn’t look away. I just leaned against the door. I finally spoke,
“Tommy, please don’t hurt me tonight.” It came out in a flurry of words, almost like two words, his name and then the rest.
He dropped the shirt on the floor and slowly backed away from me, palms up, like I might shoot, then he was at the bar, pouring whiskey in a glass and then he drank it straight in one gulp and slammed the glass on the bar. I flinched but stayed put. He poured another few inches in the glass and downed that, too. Then he was staring at me and I couldn’t get a read on him. Finally, he slammed the glass down again and strode over to me.
Here we go. I felt sick to my stomach. I felt like I was gonna throw up.
“Go to bed, Tia. Your reward for this evening’s exemplary behavior is that you don’t have to sleep with me tonight. Excuse me.”
Startled, I stepped away from the door and he left. I stood, gob smacked, for a moment, then I walked over to the bar, and poured a bit of whiskey into a glass and I downed it. It burned like a sonofabitch. I got ready for bed, washing the remnants of my ruined make-up off and putting on his dress shirt from the floor and then I tossed and turned almost all night.
I thought about Cal and Rose, I thought about the Carusos’ apartment, thought about my friends, about school in the fall, and most of all I pondered the enigma that was Tommy Ferrano. I didn’t know what to make of him, of the events of the evening. I laid there, lost in thought, torn between stressing about my future and remembering the way that kiss on the beach at sunset felt. Wearing his shirt with his scent on it felt so intimate; it was almost like he was beside me and that scent was Ice Cream Parlor Hottie to me. Not the gangster, the abusive jerk, the guy who’d kissed me like I’d never been kissed in my life, who’d smiled at me, who’d laughed at the puppy, held my hand while we walked down the beach, carried my shoes.
I fell asleep probably just before dawn so slept late. I glanced at the small clock on Tommy’s nightstand and it was 11:30. I sat up and stretched. I got up, used the washroom, took a shower, and put on his bathrobe, which was hanging up on the back of the bathroom door. It was just the tiniest bit damp around the collar, telling me he must’ve used it today. He must’ve showered in here while I slept. It felt too intimate wearing it. I got out of it and stayed in just the towel while I brushed my teeth and then dressed in more of Sarah’s clothes and then made my way downstairs and found Sarah on a stool at the kitchen island doing something on her phone and laughing.
“Hi,” I said, hesitantly.
She waved me over and showed me a picture of a bunch of old men in speedo bathing suits with some silly caption below it. I didn’t even read what it said; I just scrunched up my nose at the image and backed away from her.
She cackled all the way to the single serve coffee maker and brewed a cup for me and then I watched her put in two full and then three quarters of a spoonful of sugar. Yep, the weaning off had begun. She stirred it and passed it to me,
“Today, I’m going grocery shopping. Anything you fancy let me know and I’ll add it to my list. Tell me what you like to eat. What do you want for breakfast today?”
“Nothing, I’m not hungry. And ummm…” I so did not want to have this conversation. It would mean I was settling in here.
“I’ll get you cereal, at least, so you have something in your stomach. I’ll get you some more clothes to wear. What do you like to eat in the mornings? What are your favorite foods? What do you like to drink?” I was about to tell her that Tommy said my belongings were downstairs so I didn’t need any more clothes but her phone rang and she picked it up, “Yes sir?” she mouthed the name Tommy at me. I backed away from her and walked through the kitchen to the dining room where there were patio doors. I took my coffee out to the patio.
A moment later she came out, “He says I should bring you grocery shopping. We’ll go after your coffee and breakfast. He had this delivered for you.” She passed me an Apple iPhone box. The shrink-wrap was loose. I put it on the table and held my lips tight together.
“What do you want to eat? I’ll make you something. At least have some cereal? Open it. There’s a message.” She disappeared into the house.
“Cereal’s fine; thanks.” There was a black iPhone and when I turned it on, there was a text message alert. I opened the text, which said it was from “T”.
“Keep this phone with you at all times in case I need to reach you. It only dials to me and won’t make any other calls. I’ll be home @10-11. Behave.”
I said ‘Whatever’ aloud then I put it down. I liked my phone. My Blackberry. I didn’t know where my Blackberry even was. Why did I have to use this phone? I wanted to throw it in the pool accidentally on purpose.
Sarah came out with a bowl of cereal for me.
“Sugar Crisp?” I asked.
She smiled, “Is that okay?”
I hadn’t had a bowl of Sugar Crisp since my Mom walked the earth. I started to bawl. Like ugly cry hard. She sat down and wrapped her arms around me and let me howl it out. Damn but it felt good to wail. I think I went on for 15 minutes until I was doing that stuttered breathing thing. She just let me. She just sat with me and patted my back and stroked my hair and let me cry it out. She was about the age my Mom would’ve been if she hadn’t died. God, I missed having a mother. Rose was amazing and I’d had some other amazing women help raise me but I really really wanted my Mom. Mom wouldn’t have let Dad sell me to the mafia. If that’s what he’d done.
By the time I let her go my cereal had gone soggy. She got me another bowl, telling me that she always kept it on hand because it was Tommy’s favorite. I told her through the last of the tears that I wouldn’t hold that against the Sugar Crisp and she laughed at me and rubbed big circles around my back with her palm. Mom used to rub my back like that.
Tommy
My phone rang, interrupting a meeting --- a meeting that was dragging on enough as it was and I didn’t need something else slowing it down. It was Sarah. I declined the call. Then I got a sinking feeling about Tia. I had seen her in my bed that morning and it’d stirred something in me that I couldn’t put my finger on. She’d been asleep in my shirt, the blankets kicked off, giving me a raging hard-on.