I feel a hand lay over my arm, and I look blankly to my left. Rose is imploring me, lifting from her chair. I glance across to Danny. He’s silent, studying me, quietly taking in the scene, which is basically me losing my shit, speaking shit, and causing shit.
Furious with myself, I stand and walk away. Rose is soon beside me, taking my hand and pulling me toward the back of the terrace. “Take your shoes off,” she says, stopping us at an opening in the old brick wall, leaning down to unfasten her heeled sandals.
I do as I’m told, looking back as my fingers fiddle with the tiny buckle. Black is handing James a fresh vodka. I sigh, kicking off my shoes, and let Rose lead us barefoot onto the sandy path that’ll take us down to the beach. The silence between us is awkward, and I hate that I’ve created it. I hate myself. James might be a killer, but he’s my killer, and he’s done nothing but take care of me. Indulge me. Give me something to finally live for.
“How can you love someone and hate them at the same time?” I ask absentmindedly, watching my toes sink into the sand with each step I take down the path beside Rose.
She laughs, but it’s sardonic. “Were you at the table earlier?” she asks, inhaling and looking up to the hazy sky, smiling. “I love to hate my husband. I know he feels the same.”
I think I can relate. I love James’s persistent passion to right so many wrongs. I hate that it might break us. Already has to an extent. I swallow, forcing my hand away from my tummy when it instinctively reaches for it.
We step over a rock, hitting the beach, and Rose takes the hem of her dress and inches it up to her thighs. She casts a smile my way, and it’s significantly more friendly than her half-baked attempts earlier. “Come,” she says, dancing off across the sand toward the shore, pivoting when she reaches the water, walking backward. “Just stand here and stare out at the burning horizon. It feels like you’re on the edge of the world.” She turns and looks at her feet, the water lapping at her ankles. Her attempts to pacify me are commendable. She didn’t ask for any of this, but it seems she knows her place, to an extent. I’ve known her only an hour or two, and I’ve fast learned that she keeps Danny Black on his toes. He adores her. She him. She accepts who she’s married to and backs down when she knows she needs to. I can’t help but think that James hopes I might learn a thing or two from Rose Black.
I pad down and join her, standing silently beside her, the sound of the ocean calming me.
“You were pregnant,” Rose eventually says, reaching for my hand and squeezing, keeping her gaze on the water.
“Only a few weeks,” I murmur quietly, an ache developing in my stomach. “Completely unplanned.” I look across to her, and she smiles mildly before returning her attention to the ocean.
“Because who could possibly want a baby with a cold-blooded killer?” she muses, her hair whipping in the breeze. She releases my hand and pulls her locks from her face, looking almost sad. “I would.” Her arms drop, her head tilting, as if waiting for the ocean to react to her statement.
“But you can’t,” I reply quietly, reading all the signs. And more than that, seeing nothing but devastation past the semi-strong façade.
She inhales and exhales slowly, gathering herself, and when she looks across to me, I see with perfect clarity the grief in her wildly blue eyes. This woman is fierce. Strong. How could she be anything else being with a man like Danny Black? She’s absolutely my kind of people. More so because of the fragility hidden behind the armor. The beauty. The stunning dress and impeccable, flawless makeup. “I had a baby when I was fifteen,” she says. “He was stolen from me. It was a pretty stressful birth and . . .” She swallows. “Well. That was that.”
I have no idea what to do. What to say. I’ve never felt compelled to comfort anyone. But my recent loss, how it’s unexpectedly made me feel, gives me a good sense of what Rose must live with daily. My chance of being a mother hasn’t been stolen completely. Rose’s has.
I move into her side and do what any compassionate woman would do. I put my arm around her, and she relaxes against me. It’s now, here, dipping our toes in the ocean on the edge of the world, that I realize I’m not completely broken. Not so cold and damaged that I can’t grasp another woman’s struggles. “I won’t try to dream up words in an attempt to make you feel better,” I say. “It would be horse shit. Life isn’t just a bitch, is she?”
“No, she isn’t.” Rose kicks the water. “She’s a scorned whore.”
I laugh, and it’s pure and real. “Is Danny enough?” I ask.
“More than.” Breaking away, she laces her fingers through mine, gripping hard, and tugs me farther into the water. “And James?” she throws back. “Is he?”
“Does it matter?” I ask, the bottom of my dress sticking to my thighs. I focus on the straight line of the horizon, breathing in the clean, salty air, filling my lungs. “He would never let me leave him anyway. So he has to be.”
“But is he?” Rose murmurs.
“Of course he is.” I turn a smirk onto her, and she throws one right back at me. “We bagged ourselves murderers. We’re living the fucking dream, Rose.”
She laughs, head tossed back, and I’m there with her. Because what the hell else can we do, except cry rivers of hopeless tears?
Tears that are fucking pointless in the world Rose and I have chosen to be a part of.
5
DANNY
* * *
“Sounds like we’re both in the doghouse.” I take a cigarette from my packet and light up, relaxing back in the chair as James watches the women head down to the beach. A solo singer is setting up behind us, and the sun is close to disappearing completely into the ocean. It’s been a surprisingly pleasant evening, domestic spats aside. Mine and Rose’s was resolved quickly in the ladies’. A failed attempt to slap me. A successful attempt to fuck her hard over the sink. I’m probably still dripping out of her now. I smile, exhaling.
“Beau’s not the kind of woman that appreciates being told what to do.” James rips his eyes away from the beach and sets them on the glass of vodka the waiter just placed down.
“So why don’t you get yourself one?” I land the question like a bomb, taking another hit of nicotine and exhaling it over my glass. “Another woman, I mean.”
James turns his tumbler left, right, then picks it up and downs the lot. “Because it wouldn’t be Beau,” he says, turning a stoic face my way. “I know I’m talking to a man who hears me.”
I smile lightly, nodding mildly. “Loud and clear,” I muse, thoughtful. I’m looking at a man who’s walking in the shoes I once did. And it seems I’ll be walking in them again soon. Except this time, I have my reward already. If she doesn’t leave me.
“What’s the latest in Miami?” James asks, circling the conversation back to what we’re actually here for.
“I don’t know,” I flick my ash in the ashtray. “But I hear there’s a shitshow of epic proportions about to go down.” Part of me resents having to return. Another part of me, the sick motherfucker who’s been dormant for a few years, cannot wait to see the faces of many men when they learn I’ve been resurrected.