I pretended to wipe a tear away. “Thanks, Mom.”
He kicked me under the table and finally grinned back.
All this solemn talk stopped when David returned to the table. There was a mutual decision that not enough high calorie food had been consumed and so the next time the waiter came around we ordered a giant platter of street tacos. An hour later the dining room was preparing to close and David yawned that his bedtime had passed so we called it a night.
The guys dropped me off at my apartment complex and after I waved goodbye I stood in the courtyard for a minute, listening to the echoes of laughter and music. There was always a party happening around here on Friday night. Chances were high that if I walked around for a few minutes someone I knew would hail me from a balcony or patio. There would probably be an opportunity for a second chance to get naked and sweaty before dawn.
I went home instead.
Taylor and Kel had fallen asleep on the pullout couch while watching television. They were all spooned up together and my brother’s arms were securely wrapped around his dream girl. Staring at them for a few seconds raised a strange feeling. It was almost jealousy. It had never before occurred to me to scratch my head over the fact that I’d never been in love.
I shut the television off and crept quietly to my room. I wasn’t even slightly tired, still running off the adrenaline from my race wins. Brecken was right. I drove with reckless abandon, cutting corners and pushing hard without a care about crashing. That was why I always won. The lump of cash in my back pocket, handed to me as my share of the winnings, remained uncounted. I tossed it on the dresser. The money wasn’t needed. I’d probably donate it to one of the youth sports foundations I contributed to whenever I had some cash to spare.
I hadn’t started racing for money or for anything else remotely practical. I raced because I craved the powerful rush of being the best. This would never be baseball. It would never be something I loved and couldn’t wait to do every day. It was something to fill a void. And sometimes it was kind of fun.
Speaking of fun, now that I was on my own and stripping down in the dark, it was time to deal with an urgent situation. I flipped the lid of my laptop and clicked the bookmark to my favorite porn site. Watching other people act their way through a fuck was a distant second to getting fucked myself but it would have to do.
Immediately I found one featuring a threesome that included two sleek blondes, reminding me of what I was missing tonight when I refused the Julia/Robin proposal. Yet somehow watching it play out on screen wasn’t doing much for me so I gave up, shut the laptop and spanked it out real quick with my eyes closed while thinking about girls I’d kissed before, girls I’d fucked before and girls I wouldn’t mind fucking right now. I was not ashamed that my resume was full and the variety impressive but as I rubbed my dick in my palm and started to ride the tidal wave I kept seeing the face of the girl who ran away when I asked her to lunch.
Even with no makeup, hair stuffed into an ugly hat and dressed in faded work clothes, Gracie was cute as hell. But so what? The world didn’t suffer from a cute girl shortage. No, it was more than the fact that she was nice to look at that kept her on my mind. She was a puzzle. She was a mystery. She managed to be sweet and defiant and nervous and stubborn all at once.
“You don’t even know me.”
With a thick groan I came all over my hand, casually wiped the mess on a discarded shirt swiped from the floor and then headed to the shower.
No, I didn’t know her.
But I wanted to.
Gracie
“Viktor!”
My shout caused him to flinch where he stood beside the couch.
My uncle became defensive. “The remote fell off the table.”
With a sigh I tossed the bag filled with bottled prescriptions into the seat of a green armchair and rushed to his side. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be loud. But after this morning’s dizzy spell you need to take it easy.”
He allowed me to help him reclaim his well worn spot on the couch. I fluffed the throw pillows surrounding him and located the television remote under the wobbly coffee table.
Viktor gave me a wan smile as he accepted the remote. I fussed over the position of his water glass and surrounded him with a few more comfortable pillows.
“How’s your pain?” I asked him.
He breathed heavily but shook off my concern. “I’m fine.”
“Should I call Embeth?” The retired nurse who had been hired to help care for Viktor as he recovered lived only a few streets away.
“No.” He kept pressing remote buttons. “Did you delete my Family Feud episodes?”
“I didn’t delete anything.” Gently I took the remote from his hand and selected the menu of recorded shows. “They are all right here.”
A film of perspiration shone on my uncle’s forehead as he settled in to watch Steve Harvey joke with the contestants. Satisfied that he was comfortable for the time being, I sat down at the breakfast counter and removed the pill bottles from the white paper pharmacy bag. The container with flip top lids for each day of the week helped keep track of Viktor’s medications. Though I had already memorized the pharmacist’s instructions, I read the dosages listed on the labels once more before carefully dropping the correct quantities into each tiny bucket.
I was nearly finished with the task when Viktor made a distressed noise. I looked up in time to see his features contorted into a grimace.
“What’s wrong?” Anxiety bubbled in my chest. “Do you have pain?”
He gestured. “Your hands.”
With a flash of guilt I stowed my hands beneath the counter. Band aids were looped around three fingers where blisters had risen. “I forgot to wear gloves the other day.” I forced a smile. “Guess I should learn not to brandish the clippers so energetically.”
Viktor did not smile at my semi-joke and although his gaze slid back to the television a deep worry line between his brows did not disappear. “Sonya would be furious with me.”
I could think of nothing to say. There was no way to ask Sonya how she’d feel about my hands or anything else. She’d died five years before I was born. A framed photo of her hung on the living room wall. I knew all the details of that picture and I looked at it now.
The setting was a dark stage. The only light shining fell on the grandmother I’d never met. Her eyes were closed, her chestnut hair was piled atop her head, and her hands were occupied with her beloved violin. It was taken the year she’d fled from the Soviet Union with her parents and younger brother.
Viktor would shrug whenever anyone asked about his childhood. As far as I knew, he’d never returned for a visit, not even after the invisible Iron Curtain was lifted. Viktor would also shrug when anyone asked why he hadn’t picked up a cello in decades. I could not fault him for that. After all, I never acknowledged that I’d ever played the violin. The fact that my fingers would sometimes idly move in time to the endless scales I played as a child was meaningless. It was just muscle memory. It was the vanished past. Like the priceless instrument I’d pawned in a seedy Phoenix thrift shop for a fraction of its value in order to please the violent boy who enthralled me. That might have been the last straw, the final unforgiveable misdeed that had turned my own mother’s heart to stone.