“My god. What happened?”
I pause. I’ve never told this story, not to anyone, not out loud. Maritza’s hand lifts to my back and she scoots closer.
“I told him the truth,” I said. “And he left. We don’t know if he was walking down to the Conoco to get his car or if he’d just had enough … caring for his sick wife and trying to support his six kids … but he never came home after that. The next day, we got a call. Someone found his body in a ditch off the highway a few miles from our house. He’d been mugged, assaulted, left for dead. He died for a Timex watch and the twenty-dollar bill in his wallet.”
My hands form a bridge over my nose and I take a few moments to compose myself.
“Isaiah …” Maritza nudges her cheek against my shoulder. “I’m so sorry.”
“My whole family blamed me for a long time. Now they don’t talk much about it,” I say. “Ma doesn’t know exactly what happened of course—she doesn’t know about the car keys thing and me trying to get back at Ian. But everyone else does. Ian made damn sure they all knew.”
“So when your brother said you had demons and that you ruin lives … is that what he was talking about?”
“I imagine so, yeah.”
Her hand lifts to cup the side of my face and for a moment we just sit and breathe, her warmth mixing with mine.
“I hope someday you’ll be able to let that go,” she says. “I hope you’ll be able to stop blaming yourself.”
“Yeah,” I say. “Maybe someday.”
Sitting up, she rests her palm on my face and her eyes lock on mine. “Thank you for sharing that with me.”
A moment later, her pillow soft lips graze mine and she breathes me in, but before we kiss, I have to say one more thing.
“I’m not a perfect man,” I say, my voice low and soft. “And I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life. But letting you go? Letting you walk away without a fight? That might be the biggest one of all. And I can’t do that, Maritza. I can’t let you go.”
Pulling her into my lap, I hold her stare and reach for her face, guiding her mouth closer, until I taste her familiar strawberry lips and peppermint tongue.
“Then don’t,” she says a moment later, coming up for air. “Don’t let me go.”
Forty-Four
Maritza
* * *
It’s crazy how much life can change in an instant.
One minute I’m serving pancakes, the next minute I’m spending a week with an Army corporal who makes my stomach somersault every time I look at him.
One minute I’m writing him letters, the next minute I’m writing him off.
But now we’re here—in the present moment.
And all those minutes have added up, turning into days and nights and weeks and months and now that same broody Army corporal is standing in my grandmother’s trophy room listening to her wax poetic about her Hollywood golden years.
“And that’s how I knew Richard Burton was going to go back to Elizabeth,” Gram says with a melancholic sigh, twisting her pearls around her fingers. “They were just meant to be. But it’s all right. Everything worked out. Had I not met my husband, I wouldn’t have had my two boys or my two beautiful granddaughters.”
Isaiah turns toward me and I give him a wink.
“Everything always has a way of working out, doesn’t it?” he asks.
“Always.” Gram smiles. So far she seems to be quite taken with him, at least judging by the fact that she’s been leading him from room to room ever since breakfast this morning, showing off her awards and movie props and costumes. Isaiah seemed to take a particular interest in the white bikini from the Davida’s Desire poster, even going so far as to jokingly ask if she ever loaned out any of her costumes.
I smacked his arm when she wasn’t looking.
Sicko.
“We should probably get going, Gram,” I tell her when she attempts to lead us to the room where she keeps her framed posters and the actual baby grand piano she danced on in 1968’s Sunset Sonata.
“So soon, Lovey?” She pouts, turning to face me. “But you two just got here. And I wanted to show him my posters.”
I check the time on my phone. “We’re catching Splendor in the Grass at the Vista. Starts in an hour.”
Gram’s eyes shift between the two of us and she wears a knowing smirk. “Well, all right. Some other time, then, Isaiah?”
“Of course, Mrs. Claiborne,” he says.
She bats her hand. “Please. Gloria’s fine. And I do hope I’ll be seeing more of you around here. It’s good to see the sparkle back in my granddaughter’s eyes. It’d been gone for so long.”
I saunter up to Isaiah, sliding my hand into his and grinning at him the way I haven’t been able to stop doing since yesterday, when we had our heart to heart.
“Pretty sure it’s here to stay this time, Gram,” I say.
She hooks a hand on her narrow hip before pointing at Isaiah. “But if she ever loses it again—”
“She won’t,” he says, giving her his full attention. “I’m not going anywhere. I can promise you that.”
“Have fun at the movies, you two …” Gram sashays down the hall in her fur-lined, white satin robe, disappearing into her master bedroom and closing the door.
“You want to hear something completely insane?” I ask him when she’s gone.
“What? You think you love me?” he asks.
My jaw falls. Of all the things that could come out of that gorgeous mouth of his, I wasn’t expecting that.
“I was going to say that this week is my parents’ twenty-fifth anniversary and that my mom had to choose between my father and my uncle but …” I draw in a deep breath, “yeah, I do think I love you.”
His lips curl into a slow smile, the very same one he wore this morning in my bed as he peeled the sheets from my naked body and climbed over top of me for the third time in under twenty-four hours.
With his hands cupping my waist, he pulls me in and crushes my lips with his. My body surrenders and I’m having second thoughts about going to that movie because suddenly I’m thinking spending the afternoon in bed with this guy sounds like a lot more fun.
“You just going to leave me hanging, Corp?” I ask, my mouth brushing against his as he kisses me again. “I just told you I think I love you.”
“I heard you,” he says, stopping to stare into my eyes. “I just wanted to let it soak in first before I said it back. I want to remember how this feels for the rest of my life.”
Isaiah’s fingers lace up the back of my neck, his palm cupping my jaw, and he brings his mouth onto mine once more.
“I love you, Maritza,” he whispers. “And I’ve known it was going to come to this since the day I left LA with your picture in my pocket. It just took losing you completely for me to finally accept it that my feelings were real and they weren’t going anywhere.”
Forty-Five
Isaiah
* * *