The Time in Between Read online

  So I was giving it my all because people didn’t stay long at the Sip and Save. The last manager had bolted after being there less time than me. The new manager would bolt eventually because this one was the third one we’d had since I’d been there.

  If I showed loyalty, learned as much as I could, I might actually be manager before I’d given it what I thought it appropriate to give to show better forms of employment that I had job loyalty—this being a year and a half. If I made manager, I’d make that term two years, just to show gratitude (and more loyalty to prospective future employers).

  So yeah, I had been on the right path.

  I also didn’t want to be at the rally because Lonnie and Maria were there.

  After Tony pointed out some things that had not been sinking in, it sucked, but I was avoiding them. This wasn’t hard seeing as I was now assistant manager and they knew I went for overtime as much as I could (and got it), so they were cool about me doing my all to achieve my goals.

  And anyway, they were both getting into their own things. They just weren’t, I feared, good things.

  But they were there and I was there, and I didn’t need to be there when I did need to be at work at seven o’clock the next morning.

  I still needed it, though. I needed Wild Bill’s Rally. I needed to get fucked up. I needed to let loose. And I didn’t care I was probably going to call off (or not call in at all) because I was still fucked up or passed out or whatever.

  Because really, I was learning it didn’t matter how hard you worked, how loyal you were, how smart you were trying to be, life was just going to suck.

  Life sucking for me in that moment was the fact that my car had broken down out of the blue the week before.

  I needed my car, as people do, and even though I had some money in savings, it wasn’t near enough to buy a new one (that being a new used one, even a junker). It was enough (just barely) to fix the old one. So I did.

  But it left me broke. No savings, wiping out even the little I had in checking.

  And then, two days ago, I got a letter from my landlord that they were evicting all the tenants. They’d sold the building, it was going to be razed and a parking garage or something put there, so we all had thirty days to vacate.

  My apartment wasn’t much but it wasn’t in the worst neighborhood imaginable and the rent didn’t cripple me (it just maimed me a little).

  However, the listings I’d seen available at my rent were in the worst neighborhoods imaginable and they weren’t as clean or relatively okay as the one I had. They were gross and totally not okay.

  Furthermore, I didn’t have any money for a security deposit. I’d used the money I got from graduation to get into the apartment I had, and to buy some yard sale stuff that I actually kinda liked to spruce it up, but they weren’t returning security deposits for thirty days after we vacated.

  This meant I either had to crash with Lonnie and Maria (not a good option for obvious reasons). Or I had to ask Mom and Dad if I could move in with them for a few weeks (also not a good option). Or I had to ask them to float me money for a security deposit so I could move to a new place (not a fun option).

  As much as I didn’t want to do it, what with Mom and Dad being clear about how they felt about Lonnie and Maria (since I first started hanging with Maria). And how they felt about me not going to college (I didn’t get a scholarship like Caylen did and they told me I had to pay my way myself—with no job or savings, how was I going to do that?). Also how they felt about my lifestyle, and how I spent my time, the list went on. Still the only real option I had was to go to them.

  Although Dad seemed kinda excited I was promoted to assistant manager and had held down a job at the same place for ten months, Mom wasn’t all that impressed. And Caylen, home for a family dinner (this devised, I guessed, by Mom, who liked having her son around mostly because I thought she got off on how they could gang up on me), shared in his Caylen way he thought all this proved I was still a fuckup.

  Even if I didn’t make my car break down.

  “It’s called regular maintenance, Cady,” he’d sneered. “You might look into it.”

  Like I didn’t know about oil changes. I did and I got them even when it bit into my bank account to do it. My car didn’t break down because of oil changes and switching out plugs and filters. My car broke down because it was old and mostly a piece of shit.

  And even though I didn’t kick myself out of my apartment.

  “You live in a place like that, those things are gonna happen,” Caylen had said.

  Like he knew what happened when you lived in a dump. He’d bought his first condo, and it was a nice one, a year out of college.

  I thought Dad was going to help out, but Mom put the kibosh on that right away, stating, “This is the life you chose, Cady. If you’re on the outs with those friends of yours, it’s bad manners to say I told you so, but I did, actually, tell you so. But when you choose a life like that you have to learn to handle it when things like this happen. So no, you can’t have a loan. But you can come back home if you enroll at least in community college for some kind of advanced education. At this point I don’t care if you become a nail technician. At least it’ll be a skill. You can continue to have that job, pay us rent, and we’ll be fair about that so you can use the rest of your salary, as it were, on your tuition and to save up so you can move out, for good the next time.”

  I didn’t want to be a nail technician. I wanted to be a clothing buyer. I wanted to learn about fashion. I wanted to travel, go to trade shows and fashion shows and artist shows. I wanted to discover new trends. I wanted to beautify people (not just their nails). Find awesome shit for them that would make them feel they could take on the world.

  I was willing to work at it. Learn it. Live it. Give it time. I didn’t expect it to be handed to me, to walk into Neiman Marcus and have them yell, “Thank God you’ve finally arrived! What had we ever done without you?”

  And I was twenty-three, not thirteen.

  My mom telling me I could “continue to have that job” then telling me what I was going to do with the money I made in it and with my future was totally uncool.

  Unfortunately as bad as I wanted to be an adult and prove to them I was, instead of taking a deep breath and communicating calmly, Caylen was his normal conceited, superior asshole and Mom was Mom and she tripped all my triggers, so I lost it.

  Which meant I lost any support I might have had from Dad.

  In fact, they’d kicked me out.

  So now I had a car that might run for the next few days, weeks, months or I hoped years, but I had twenty-eight days to move out of my apartment and my only choice was Lonnie and Maria, who I hadn’t talked to about any of this and they didn’t have a huge place either. I’d have to sleep on the couch. And they might not even say yes.

  To all this I did what I often would do because my brother was right.

  I was a fuckup.

  So I might as well embrace the fuckup that was me.

  I decided to screw it all, so I screwed it all.

  Therefore I was hammered and I was in The Trench at Wild Bill’s Rally, the music loud, the crush of bodies undulating around me, the bottle of beer in my hand long forgotten as I swayed with the music and sang it at the top of my lungs.

  It felt good.

  No, it felt great. To be around people who didn’t care I didn’t have a college degree. To be around people who lived life, they didn’t strategize every move in it. To be there and feel alive. To be there and not to be alone.

  To be there and feel free.

  That was, it felt great until they moved in.

  They being two guys, who either knew each other and didn’t mind crossing swords or who were silently vying to get the drunk chick out of The Trench and into a tent so they could have their way with her.

  I wasn’t in the mood to have anyone have their way with me so I decided to make that clear.

  My first couple of maneuvers, letting the m
ovement of the crowd suck me in and pull me away, didn’t work.

  They followed.

  My second maneuver, saying, “Hey, uncool!” when one touched the side of my tit then I twisted around, saying, “Hey, stop that!” when the other one positioned behind me and started to grind into my ass also didn’t work.

  And pushing off, grabbing their wrists and pulling their hands away didn’t work either.

  “Stop it, you assholes!” I screamed, dropping my beer without a thought and moving more violently now that they had me fenced in, one at the front, one at the back, pressing closer, eyes to my body, hands to my body, bodies to my body, squeezing in.

  My scream was swallowed by the music, the buzz, the flesh, lost in a haze of people gone on booze and drugs and the vibe.

  No one was paying any attention to me.

  Such was The Trench.

  It could be awesome (but mostly only if you had a least a girlfriend taking your back, which stupidly I did not).

  It could be not awesome at all.

  Like now.

  I tried to yank sideways but the guy behind me shoved me back between them.

  They were working together.

  Shit.

  They wanted a gang bang, and as Wild Bill’s Rally was an annual get-together for a lot of motorcycle clubs, this gang bang could be more than just three, they were just the ones sent in to find the prey.

  That thought made the anger that had killed my buzz rocket straight to panic and suddenly it was a lot of hands, arms, shoving, pressing, grinding, grunts and shouts from me and low chuckles from them.

  They were getting off on this.

  One of them bit my shoulder and I cried out, turning around with effort in the small space they’d given me and cupping a hand under his chin to push him off.

  He jerked away, and when his wild, bright, fucked-up eyes came back to me I realized he liked it like that.

  Shit.

  The other guy reached around and grabbed tight on my breast.

  I whirled the other way, forcing both hands between us and pushing with everything I had, shrieking, “Fuck off!”

  The guy now behind me was sliding a hand from my hip around to the front, down, almost there, and terror ran thick in my veins when suddenly I was slamming into the people beside me.

  “Hey!” and “Watch it!” were shouted at me but all I could do was stand there, not looking at the stage, not struggling, not running, instead watching Tony land a fist solidly in the face of the guy who’d ended things behind me.

  The guy didn’t even get the chance to lift a hand. One punch and he was out, sinking down and hitting bodies who just shuffled away and let him fall to the turf.

  The other guy tried to get the jump on him but Tony instantly readjusted, putting the guy in a headlock and squeezing, squeezing—the guy kicked and spat and tore at Tony’s arm—but he kept squeezing until the guy lost consciousness and floated to the ground.

  He barely hit before Tony turned to me, grabbed my hand in an iron-tight hold and started dragging me through the crowd. Using how he walked now in a practical way, he shouldered through people both stoned who didn’t notice it or stoned who didn’t like it but took one look at Tony and didn’t say shit about it.

  In no time, an almost impossible occurrence with The Trench—you went in understanding it spit you out when it was done with you and no sooner—we were at the edges, but Tony didn’t stop there.

  He dragged me through people, campfires, tents and pop-top campers to what seemed in the dark like a sky-blue with a thick stripe of baby-blue, old Chevy pickup.

  He stopped me at the tail and turned while yanking me around and almost into his body.

  He lifted up my hand beside us, shook it and gritted out, “Jesus, fuck, Cady. Fuck!”

  I stared at him, not at a loss to what had just happened—not the part where he downed two dudes in probably two minutes, not the part where I was in a serious situation no woman wanted to find herself in—and I did it speechless.

  He stared back and he did it seriously pissed.

  He dropped my hand but only to jab his finger toward The Trench and clip, “That was not gonna end well.”

  “I know,” I whispered.

  “Where were your friends?” he demanded to know.

  “I-I don’t know,” I stammered, swallowed and finished stupidly, “Lonnie and Maria are hanging with Chaos. A local MC. I went in alone.”

  I could feel the bite of his eyes at that admission before he growled, “All your signals contradicted each other, but guess my thought you were mostly clueless was the signal that held true. Not thinkin’ that you had it goin’ on, you just had shit friends.”

  I flinched at that, but suddenly he straightened up and lifted a hand to drag it through his hair, looking away and taking in a visible breath.

  When he dropped his hand and looked back to me, he muttered, “None of my fuckin’ business.”

  “My car broke down,” I told him.

  “Yeah?” he asked, like he didn’t much care.

  “And I was evicted. They’re dozing my building. They’re making it a parking garage.”

  His eyes narrowed on me.

  “And?” he pushed.

  “My parents want me to be a nail technician,” I shared idiotically.

  “So fuckin’ what?” he bit. “You’re tellin’ me that’s a reason to wander alone into the fuckin’ Trench at fuckin’ Wild Bill’s Rally and nearly get yourself raped?”

  That was what I was telling him but it was so lame it was humiliating, so I didn’t answer.

  Tony got closer and tipped his chin down so he could hold my eyes in the dark, lifted only by moonlight and not-very-close campfires.

  I was still mesmerized.

  “Not my job to look after you but I’m not walkin’ away from you right now without tellin’ you, girl, you gotta clue the fuck in real fuckin’ fast. You gettin’ me?”

  Oh, I was “getting him.”

  About a variety of things.

  And I felt them coming. I didn’t want them to come but this was too excruciatingly mortifying to bear at the same time hold them back.

  So I didn’t and that was why the tears spilled over and my voice broke when I answered, “Yeah, To-tony. I’m g-g-gettin’ you.”

  Then, to save face when they came full force, I turned, trying to fight back the sob but it burst forth anyway, and I started to run away.

  But I got not a step before I was hooked around the belly and hauled back into a solid frame.

  I shoved with both hands against his arm and demanded unevenly, “L-let go.”

  “Shh, Cady. Just . . . I don’t know,” he said like he really didn’t know. “Let it out, I guess.”

  “I-I-I can do that so-so-somewhere else,” I told him, still pushing at his arm.

  “You can also do it here,” he said in my ear, his other arm coming around me.

  “Let me go, Tony.”

  “Just shut up and get it out, Cady.”

  I decided to do that, but as useless as it was, I did it letting my hands flop to my sides and turning my head away from his mouth at my ear like that was any form of escape from him.

  He gave it a minute before he pulled us back. I heard the almighty loud squeak as he yanked the tailgate down and then he sat on it, hefting me up to sit beside him.

  I made a move instantly to jump down but with an arm across my front, fingers digging into the side of my hip, he held me there at the same time ordering, “No. Sit your ass here, stay there and pull your shit together.”

  I supposed I owed it to him not to be more of a pain in the rear than I’d already been, so I kept my ass there but also kept my head turned away.

  He let me go with his arm.

  When the crying jag was just sniffles and deep abiding mortification, Tony murmured, “I don’t have any Kleenex.”

  “That’s okay,” I murmured back, lifting the hem of my tee at the same time bending over to wipe my cheek
s and my nose.

  I straightened and kept my gaze to my knees.

  “You all right now?” he asked.

  No, I wasn’t all right.

  I had no money. I soon would have no place to live. It would take another ten months to save up what I’d saved to give myself something better (eventually) and in all likelihood, that would be eaten up by some other life shit that would come along and hit me. A hot guy I was attracted to just saved me from being gang raped. And he was right.

  I was clueless.

  My best friend’s boyfriend was into me and had been since around the day we met.

  I could work at the Sip and Save until I was forty and have stellar performance evaluations but still, Saks or Neimans or Nordstrom or Anthropologie were never going to hire me then set me on a career course to see me sitting beside Alexander McQueen’s fashion show in London (or however they found their clothes).

  I couldn’t even hold my temper long enough to talk my parents into a loan.

  I was probably going to end up hooked up with some dude who treated me like dirt, knocked me up, and I’d be working at Sip and Save for the rest of my life.

  In truth, the world needed folks working at Sip and Save. If they didn’t, how would they grab a cup of joe or snatch up that bag of Corn Nuts for their road trip or pick up that set of wipers they needed?

  I just . . . I just . . .

  Didn’t want that person to be me (forever).

  “Cady,” Tony called.

  I looked right at him. “I’m sorry. You’re right. I’m being stupid. I have to be at work at seven and I don’t even know what time it is now but—”

  “It’s past two thirty.”

  Great.

  “Cady—” he started.

  I cut him off. “I’m sorry. I had a bad day, a bad couple of weeks and I didn’t handle it well and you had to . . . had to wade in and deal with it and I’m sorry. But I appreciate it. I really do. I’d make you cookies but I’m not going to have a kitchen for long and my car broke down and it took all my savings to fix it, and I don’t have flour, or brown sugar, or butter, definitely not chocolate chips or vanilla extract. So—”