Me and Her (Always Her, Book 2): Lesbian Romance Read online

  “Like what?” Melissa said, when I shared my worries. “It’s not as if she has any money. And it looks like he has plenty of his own.”

  “I know. I don’t want to be a killjoy,” I said.

  “You’re right to be cautious, but the one thing with mom is that what you see is what you get. Chances are Ricardo just likes her for herself.”

  “True,” I said, with a grin.

  It didn’t take long for my sexuality to emerge. Ricardo had cooked a French casserole for dinner, and we were sitting around his huge kitchen table. The table looked like it had been cut from a single tree trunk, intricate with knots, but smoothed over from years of use.

  “It’s at least 150 years old,” Ricardo confirmed. “I hope you girls don’t mind not going out for dinner, but I love to cook, and it’s not often that I get the chance to cook for several people these days.”

  “Ricardo has an adult son and daughter,” our mom said. “He’s divorced from their mom, and the kids are working and at college.”

  “Amicably divorced,” he added. “Estella has remarried and we all go on vacations together.”

  Mom asked Melissa how things were going with her boyfriend, and then asked me how things were going with Jared. I paused, with my fork half way to my mouth.

  “Actually, we broke up. And I have a girlfriend now,” I said, and carried on eating. My mom’s eyes widened and she missed a couple of beats.

  “That’s great, honey. What’s her name?” she said.

  “It’s Jack. She’s an English major. She’s really cool. You’d like her,” I said, in a rush.

  “I can’t wait to meet her,” she said.

  “I’m sure you will soon.” We carried on eating, and I shot a glance at Melissa. She shrugged. Everything seemed fine.

  “So you’re a dyke now?” my mom said suddenly. I dropped my fork on my plate.

  “What?”

  “Oh, I didn’t mean anything by it, sweetheart. That’s what we used to say, back in the day. I meant are you just into girls, or are you bisexual?” My stomach flipped. It wouldn’t have taken much more for me to run off to the bathroom and throw up, but somehow I stayed put.

  “I’m into girls, mom. I always have been. I just wasn’t ready to accept it before,” I said at last.

  “That’s a shame, honey. I’m not the judgmental type. I’m sure you know that.”

  “I know, mom.” I patted her hand. “It wasn’t just you.” Silence descended as we continued eating.

  “I always suspected you preferred girls, Elise,” mom said. I let out a burst of strained laughter.

  “But how?” She took a swig of wine, then held the glass, swirling the liquid around, her eyes growing dreamy.

  “There was that time, when you were about five. You were always holding hands with your little girl-friends, and making them play doctors and nurses. And you were always the doctor.”

  “That’s some great gender stereotyping right there,” Melissa cut in.

  “Well, that’s how it was in those days, honey. Anyway. One day you just came out and said to me and your father, I wish two girls could get married. Well, your father had a fit, as you can imagine. I told him, it’s the kind of silly thing that kids say. It doesn’t mean anything, but I always wondered. So it’s kind of nice to see that that little seed, which was planted all those years ago, has blossomed.”

  “Aw, mom, that’s a really sweet thing to say,” I said, not far from tears.

  “Of course, honey. I mean, as long as you provide me with grandkids, I’m happy with whoever you choose to be with.”

  “Mom! Kids are the last thing on my mind now!” I said, shaking my head.

  “I’m sure you’ll change your mind later,” she said, a knowing look on her face.

  “I think this calls for a toast,” Ricardo said, softly. We all raised our glasses, toasting my new partner, and their new relationship, and Melissa’s ongoing happiness in hers. I thought that I was getting to really like Ricardo, and his gentle, unassuming way.

  *

  The next morning, Melissa and I went to mom’s old place to help her separate her stuff from her old boyfriend’s. The contrast with Ricardo’s place couldn’t have been sharper. It was a small clapboard house in the suburbs on the opposite side of town, reflecting an entirely different style of real estate. There was junk on the lawn and assorted car parts in the driveway.

  “Eddie’s not going to be around, right, mom?” Melissa said from the back seat, as my mom rolled up to the mess in the driveway.

  “No, he’s long gone. I don’t know where, but he’s gone,” mom said.

  Inside, the house was in disarray. It looked like it’d been looted. Drawers were pulled open, the contents spilling out. Clothes were spread all over the bedroom, the kitchen was piled with dirty plates and pans, and a trail of books and magazines ran from the front door to the back of the house. Mom burst into tears.

  “That son of a bitch! He’s done this on purpose!” she wailed.

  “Has he taken anything of yours?” I asked.

  “I don’t know!” she sniffled, wiping away her tears on the back of her hand. She went up to the bookcase and started rooting in some boxes on the shelves. “Maybe.” Putting them aside, she hurtled up the stairs, and we followed her to the bedroom. She started going through her drawers, then she looked under the bed, and in the closet, in an increasing frenzy. She came to a stop, groaned and sat heavily on the bed. “There’s a box with some of your father’s things in,” she said. “It was the only important thing that I didn’t take with me when I moved in with Ricardo. But there was nothing really of value, just his old watch and a couple of knick-knacks. I always hid it away because I couldn’t stand to have it around, to be honest, so I forgot about it when I left.” She was on the point of crying again, so Melissa and I sat next to her and put our arms around her. “I’m so sorry, girls,” she quavered. “It was all stuff I was saving for you, as mementos of your father, and it looks like that asshole has robbed us.” Melissa rubbed her back.

  “Maybe we can get it back, mom? We can find him and get him to give it back to us?”

  “I don’t think so,” mom said, her head drooping. “He’s probably hocked it all.” My heart sank.

  “He’s an artist, and he’s broke, and needed the money. Of course he has,” I said.

  “Artist in inverted commas,” Melissa said, unusually savagely. “He’s a good-for-nothing prick.”

  “Maybe we can find out from him where he pawned it, and, at the worst, we can buy it back?”

  “That’s an idea,” Melissa said. I had a thought.

  “Hey, mom, where’s our stuff? I haven’t seen it yet.” She pointed at the ceiling.

  “It’s all up in the loft. I stowed it safely away there, so nothing would get to it.”

  “Nothing, or no-one. God, he’s like vermin,” I muttered as I pulled the loft ladder down. “Mom should’ve set up some rat traps in her closet.” It was very dusty up in the loft, but there were plenty of recent hand and shoe prints in the layer of dust that covered the ladder. A similar scene greeted Melissa and I as we pulled ourselves up into the roof space. Every box and container seemed to have been opened, and the contents thrown into a jumble on the floor.

  “So he’s looted up here too,” Melissa said. “Unbelievable.” I stooped and picked up an empty box with ‘Elise – high school’ written in market pen on the side. I groaned.

  “What the hell has he done with our stuff?” We started looking through the heap of things. The books and papers at the top of the heap had weird scorch marks around the edges, and the pages were all stuck together, as if they’d been wet and then dried again. “This is really weird.” We looked around the room. The rafters looked kind of sooty, and then Melissa saw a fire extinguisher at the edge of the pile.

  “So, this doofus thought about making a bonfire out of our stuff, and then thought better of it?” she said. We picked up the scorched books and looked at them
more carefully. “It can’t have burned for very long though?”

  “My guess is, he lit a fire, panicked as soon as he saw the flames, and put them out,” I said.

  “But the fire extinguisher can’t have been up here. He would’ve had to go downstairs for it, by which time the flames would’ve been way bigger, probably out of control.”

  “Oh – what’s this?” I said. I picked up a piece of fabric and opened it out. It was – or it had been – a plaid shirt, but it was badly burned, with a large hole in the middle. “No way! He used his shirt to put out the fire?”

  “And then he went and got the fire extinguisher to make sure it was out?”

  “What a fucking freak.”

  We started taking things out of the heap, putting the books into piles. The further we got, the wetter things were, and a moldy odor rose up.

  “Urgh, they’re still wet,” I said. We stared at one of my old art projects in dismay. The paint had run badly, ruining the image.

  “Hey, let’s take everything downstairs and put it outside. It’ll dry in the sun in no time,” Melissa said. We went downstairs and found some suitable containers, took them up to the loft, and piled everything in carefully, trying not to damage it any further. Then, with a lot of grunting and straining, we hoisted the containers down the ladder, down the stairs and out into the backyard. There was a patio area that we could lay things out on, and we gathered up some stones from the front yard to weigh our papers down so they wouldn’t blow away in the wind. As I was grubbing around in the dirt, my phone rang. I retrieved it from my back pocket. It was a local number. Weird. I hit ‘accept’ and said hello.

  “Hi, beautiful!” Jack’s voice said.

  “Jack! How – where are you?” She laughed.

  “Where do you think I am?”

  “Well, my phone tells me not far away. But that can’t be true, because I know that you’re busy studying at college.”

  “Maybe I felt like a change of scene from the library,” she said, her voice full of fun.

  “Oh my god! I squeaked. “You’re here, in town! I can’t believe it!”

  “Yes I am,” she said. “I just arrived from the airport. My mom picked me up, and I thought I’d give you a call and see if you needed any company, whatever you happened to be doing.”

  “Yes, I do! Please come over,” I said, bursting with excitement.

  “Are you sure I won’t be intruding into anything?”

  “No!” I almost shouted. “I would actually love some help right now.”

  “Why, what’s happened?” I sighed.

  “Can I explain when you get here?” I said.

  “Of course. Where are you?” I gave her the address, and she said she’d be over in twenty.

  “Is it ok if Jack comes over?” I asked Melissa, suddenly worried she’d feel like it was an intrusion.

  “Hell yes,” she said. With just the three of us laying these papers out, we’d be until midnight!” Mom wasn’t being much help either. She was mainly mooning over the damaged things, while alternately apologizing and cursing her rotten taste in boyfriends.

  Distractedly, I started separating out old certificates, notepads and paintings, and laying them on the patio, edged with stones. The sun was blazing hot, and I fizzed with excitement to see Jack.

  Before long she called to say she’d arrived. I dropped what I was doing and ran out the front. There she was, in gray jeans, a white t-shirt with rolled up sleeves, heavy work boots, and a brilliant smile lighting her face. I ran up and threw my arms around her, peppering her face with kisses.

  “It’s good to see you too!” she said, laughing.

  “Thank you for coming!” I said. Then, I drew back, suddenly uncertain. “Did you fly back home to see me, or for another reason?” I asked, in a low voice. She ruffled my hair.

  “To see you, silly. You seemed so stressed about being here, that I wanted to do something to make you feel better.”

  “Oh.” I laughed. “Good. I didn’t want to be presumptuous.” She pulled me into a hug.

  “Elise, I’d fly to the end of the earth to see you if it would make your life any easier for you,” she said. I closed my eyes as she kissed my forehead, emotion bubbling up inside me and threatening to spill over.

  “Come through to the back,” I said. “You can meet my mom.”

  I introduced them, and my mom greeted her affectionately, as if she knew her already. I let out a long breath of relief.

  “So, should I ask what’s going on here?” Jack said, shading her eyes as she squinted at the mess on the patio. I told her about mom’s ex-boyfriend and her expression turned to anger.

  “What a piece of shit!” she said. “And what a complete dumbass. I guess we should be grateful he had enough brain cells to operate a fire extinguisher.”

  Jack got to work helping us straight away, and soon everything was laid out on the patio and any every other flat space in the garden.

  “So, this is all your stuff from your childhood,” Jack said, looking from one thing to another. She paused at a family photo: mom, dad, Melissa and me, smiling in front of a blue sky and clouds backdrop. We looked happy together. I remembered the day. We’d been on vacation someplace, and dad had spontaneously decided to have the photo taken. I was little and chubby, with bright blue eyes and angelic curls.

  “It’s a lovely picture,” Jack said. “And you haven’t changed at all.

  “Hey!” I said, swiping at her. “Not funny.” She laughed and kissed me on the cheek.

  “If we’re finished here, maybe we should try and hunt down this shitbag, as soon as possible, to stand the best chance of getting your father’s stuff back?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think it’s going to yield any results,” I said.

  “Shall we at least try? Even if we only get a little bit back, at least you’ll have some of your father’s things.”

  “You’re right,” I said. Let’s speak to mom.”

  Mom was sitting on the step that led into the garden in a trance, looking at all the things spread around.

  “Mom, we need to find out where Eddie is,” Melissa said, squatting down next to her.

  “I don’t know. I don’t know where he’d go,” she said.

  “Will he still be in town?” Jack asked. Mom nodded.

  “Yeah. He’s lived here all his life.”

  “D’you know who his friends are? Is there anywhere he hangs out regularly? A bar, maybe?” Mom nodded, sniffing. I realized that this had broken her. It seemed like her eyes had finally been opened to the bad situations she’d got herself in, and how they’d affected both her and us.

  “It’s ok, we’ll find this stuff,” I said. “Just give us some names and addresses, and, if you can, a list of the things that are missing.”

  As she dictated, I wrote a list in my phone.

  “Melissa, I’ll go with Jack. Do you want to come as well?” I said. She glanced at mom.

  “Yeah, I think the more of us looking, the better.

  “Mom, are you ok to stay here and watch that none of the stuff blows away?” I asked, squatting down next to her.

  “Yes of course, honey,” she said.

  “Maybe you could call Ricardo, have him keep you company?”

  “No, it’s ok. I think I want to be alone for a little while,” she said, flashing me a brave smile.

  Jack and I drove to a nearby deli to pick up a sandwich for mom, and then we left her to her memories.

  “Ok, what do we have on the list?” Jack asked. I looked at my note.

  “There’s a guy who has a workshop in the squatter district, the home address of another guy, and a bar where Eddie drinks sometimes.”

  “What’s the bar called?”

  “Kathleen’s.”

  “I’ve never heard of it.”

  “There’s probably a reason for that,” I said. “What do you think?” I asked Melissa.

  “Uh, maybe start with the workshop, since it’s neare
st?”

  “Ok, left here,” I told Jack.

  “I know! I have been around here before,” she said.

  “Sorry, I kind of forget,” I said.

  The workshop was in a row of abandoned and converted garages. We found it by a wooden sign saying ‘Freakfish’, hanging over the entrance, as my mom had described.

  “I’ve never actually been here, though,” Jack said, climbing out of the car. There was an unease about the place. A couple of abandoned and boarded up shops sat at the end of the row, and some lanky teens loitered outside, aggressively passing a basketball between them. Through the open front of the workshop, I could see a male figure working at a bench with a blowtorch. As we stepped inside the workshop, he looked up, put the tool down, and walked out to meet us. He was a little over my height, with a bald crown and a spray of rust-colored hair above his ears.

  “Yeah?” he said, pushing the front of his full-face mask up to reveal wide-set, roundish eyes with pale blue irises that spilled into the whites, a short pug nose, and a row of pointed, discolored teeth. Freakfish, of course. I was itching to point out my discovery to the others.

  “We’re looking for Eddie Wallace,” I said. He rolled his tongue around inside his mouth, seeking out something – gum? Tobacco?

  “And who are you?” he said, chewing.

  “His daughter,” Jack said, without missing a beat. Freakfish’s eyes bulged, making him look fishier than ever.

  “Whooh!” he said. “Didn’t know Eddie had offspring and all.”

  “That’s reassuring to hear,” Jack said.

  “Oh, I didn’t mean nothing by it. He’s not a man to say much about himself, as I’m sure you’re aware.” He stepped closer to Jack and scrutinized her features. “Come to think of it, I can see the resemblance between the two of you.” Jack’s face remained expressionless, while I could barely restrain a giggle.

  “Yeah, looks like I took after him, rather than mom,” she said, with a woeful tilt of her head.