Hard Time Read online

  On the other hand, ten years meant Eric Collier was not in for shoplifting or selling weed, or for unpaid parking tickets.

  But he is in for another five years. Minus parole, if Jake hadn’t been factoring that in, and if Collier was eligible. And even if he was, I really didn’t like Darren, so I’d surely have moved on to another city and job in the next couple of years myself, and I wasn’t going to encourage and beguile him so badly he’d come after me . . . Was I? Was he the coming-after type? How long a sentence did stalkers get?

  But the whole wear-red thing . . .

  He’d designed this so I was in control.

  Or he designed it so I’d think I am.

  I tried to do as Jake had suggested and listen to my gut, but the lust and anxiety had me so edgy, it was hard to know what I was hearing aside from my pulse beating hard, everywhere.

  He robbed a bank, I decided as I turned my key in the ignition. Done. Decreed. A desperate, ballsy crime, but the only thing that got shot was the ceiling, to prove his gun was loaded. He never intended to hurt anyone, and didn’t. In fact, I imagined, he’d only loaded that one round, as a fail-safe against an accident. And he surrendered peacefully when the jig was up. He’d needed the money to get his brother out of trouble with the mob.

  No, no mafia stuff.

  He’d needed the money to pay for his grandma’s hip surgery.

  Perfect.

  I spent the drive mentally filming Collier’s thwarted heist, and by the time the cops stormed the bank’s lobby, I was rooting for him. The fantasy was what I’d need to let myself open his letter, but I caught myself as I pulled up along the curb.

  This really is some fucked-up, bad-idea imagination game to you. But to him . . .

  To him, whatever this was might be the realest thing that had come along in five years. This infatuation that kept me awake nights might be this man’s only reason for getting up in the morning, for all I knew.

  No. I was giving myself way too much credit.

  Just read what he wrote. Could prove the creepiest thing I’d ever laid my eyes on, and all this energy I was spending, writing him into some redeemable script, would prove a complete waste.

  I slammed my door and eyed the bar. Though I lived two floors above it, I’d only been in for a drink once. After I’d finished unpacking from my move I’d gone down, hoping maybe the place would prove more charming than it looked, that I’d forge some friendship with the bartender or magically run into a fellow displaced Southerner. Nope. Lola’s was a dive, frequented by dead-enders and career alcoholics, folks with too much free time, few-to-nil prospects, and just enough cash to drink themselves insensate for a night.

  I used to drink a little in college, at parties. Then Justin had ruined all that for me. Alcohol wasn’t fun anymore, wasn’t the socially acceptable vice it had been. Slurred words weren’t funny. Shots didn’t punctuate a good time—they counted down to detonation.

  But tonight . . .

  I walked past the side entrance that led to the apartments, heading for the front door.

  A Friday at Lola’s looked like any other night. Almost all the seats at the bar were taken, but I wanted privacy, anyway. I stood behind a vacant stool until I caught the bartender’s eye. He was young, maybe thirty, with tattoos on his arms and a pristine white Tigers cap over his buzz cut.

  “Do you have iced tea?” Or what passed for it, up here.

  He checked an unseen fridge below the bar. “Yup.”

  “Iced tea with lemon and ice with a shot of bourbon, please.”

  He looked skeptical, but filled a pint glass with a can of Nestea and mixed it all the same. I paid and took my drink to a two-seater booth in the quietest corner. I didn’t want any people or windows at my back, no possibility of anybody reading over my shoulder. I was acting an awful lot like a criminal, I thought, settling into my spot. I took a sip and winced. Goddamn. And I’d thought my grandpa mixed these strong.

  I hadn’t eaten since twelve, and I felt the drink almost immediately. Felt good. Tasted like family barbecues, not all those nights I wasted with Justin.

  I waited until my blood was hot, then drew my notebook from my bag. I smoothed my fingers over the folded paper, felt the lines where Collier’s pencil or pen had pressed. I peeked inside, just enough to see blue. I pictured him pinching the ink stem of a stripped Bic—the staff removed the outer plastic tubes because the cons could use them for God knew what. Collier’s big fingers around that skinny implement, carefully transcribing his thoughts from the word processor’s screen.

  What on earth had he wanted to say to me?

  I got a plan to bust myself out of here, but I’m gonna need your help. There’s twenty grand in it for you—I got profits coming to me from my buddy’s meth racket.

  Please no. Though that certainly would scare me straight.

  Just read it.

  What was I so terrified of? Everything. That he’d seduce me further. That he’d prove me an idiot for getting drawn in so deep, so fast, with so little bait.

  No. That he’d somehow wreck this infatuation I’d come to treasure far too much. That he’d take away what he’d given me, these past couple of weeks—that thing I’d thought I’d lost. My ability to crave a man.

  I took a deep drink and unfolded the paper.

  His writing was as stiff and mindful as a grade schooler’s, peppered with dark patches where he’d scribbled words out to fix or replace them.

  Darling,

  I took another deep drink, sweat breaking out under my arms and between my breasts.

  You probably read lots of books. With way better words in them than I could ever write. I don’t know how to make the stuff in my head sound good. But I’ll try.

  You don’t know me. I don’t know you either. You’re probably one of those girls who needs to respect a guy before you feel something for him. Where I come from people don’t think that way. We all just drink and fuck and call it love for however long it lasts. But I want you to think I’m better than that. To be someone you could maybe respect. Crazy as that sounds. So I need you to know I didn’t hurt a woman to get locked up. I wouldn’t ever hurt a woman.

  Anyhow. I don’t know you. You seem real nice and it was good how you cared enough to get me this machine. You’d probably do that for anybody who needed it but I think it’s real nice all the same. You’re pretty too. I meant what I said when I got you to write that letter. All those things. I haven’t been with a woman since I got locked up. That’s a long time. Saying those things is the closest I’ve felt to sex in five years. But I don’t want to say things you don’t want to hear. Maybe I got a chance to say about you wearing red next Friday. I’ve got lots of things I want to say to you and way more personal stuff than this. Saying it feels good. Like I’m a man again in a way you don’t get to feel on the inside. So wear red next week and I’ll tell you some of what I think about. If you don’t I’ll leave you alone.

  Yours,

  Eric

  PS If you’ve got a man already I apologize. I don’t mean any disrespect to him. If you tell him about this tell him I said he’s real lucky.

  I refolded the page and set it before me, pulse pounding everywhere. In my feet and temples and throat, heart thumping against my ribs and echoing between my legs. All the places that tell your body run, and all the places that tell your body fuck.

  As I took another drink, a fat drop of condensation fell from the glass and hit the paper, and I jumped like I’d toppled an entire pitcher onto a watercolor masterpiece. I dabbed at the spot with the hem of my shirt, unfolded the page, and blew on it until it dried.

  Jesus, what was he doing to me?

  All at once I didn’t want to be alone with those words.

  I wanted to call my mom . . . only I so couldn’t. After what happened with Justin, no way she’d ever sign off on some clandest
ine convict romance. She was married to a state trooper, for Christ’s sake. My closest friendships from back home had mellowed in the years since I’d moved north, and the ones I’d forged in Ann Arbor had never matched the intensity of those bonds you make in your teens. There was no one I could confide in about this. Not without it being treated like a mental health crisis, anyhow. Hell, maybe I ought to talk to somebody at Larkhaven. Maybe they had a whole ward just for crazy women who fell hard for good-looking prisoners.

  I tucked the letter in my bag and moved to the bar, suddenly needing to connect with someone, even a stranger. A couple of people had cleared out, and I took a seat at the very end, open to the bartender but with a wall close to my back. Damn Cousins, training me to think this way.

  The bartender came over, eyeing my half-empty glass. “That okay?”

  I nodded. “Perfect, thanks.”

  “Nobody’s ever asked for that before. What’s it even called?”

  “I don’t think it’s called anything. Just what my grandpa always drank.”

  “You’re not from around here.”

  I shook my head, sucking a long pull through the straw. “South Carolina. I started a job at Darren Public Library this summer.”

  “College girl,” he teased, all grandiose.

  “Grad-school woman,” I corrected, warming to him.

  “Right on. And here I thought you must be somebody’s parole officer, dressed like that.”

  He tidied the bins of lemon wedges and cherries and I watched, feeling the whiskey buzz. He had a round face, making him look younger than he probably was. Softly muscular, like a high school football star whose glory days were solidly in the rearview. He reminded me of some guys I knew back home. I leaned my elbows on the bar and caught his eye.

  “Need a refill?”

  “Nah. But do you . . . Do people really do what they do in the movies—get drunk and tell you all about their romantic problems?”

  “People get drunk and tell me all kinds of shit.”

  “When it’s romantic stuff, is it always totally doomed, do you think?”

  He looked thoughtful. “Yeah, probably. But everybody around here is kinda doomed. Why? You got romantic troubles?”

  Knowing half the bar was probably eavesdropping, I told him, “I dunno what I have.”

  “Is that the trouble?”

  “Maybe. Probably.”

  He stole my glass and cracked open another can of Nestea, but I stopped him before he could add the bourbon. He poured a generous shot in a tumbler instead and slid it to my elbow.

  “People tip me better after they unload,” he said, one side of his lips hitched in a smile.

  I smiled back. “Well, there’s a guy.”

  “There always is. What’s good about him?”

  “Well,” I said, eyes rolling up to the neon signs above the bar as I thought about it. “He’s awful handsome. And he makes me feel special. And he’s kind of . . . I dunno. Mysterious, maybe.”

  “Mysterious ain’t good,” said my bartender. “Mysterious might as well mean he’s got a secret family in the next county.”

  Oh. Jeez, he could, for all I knew. And maybe he hadn’t been with a woman for five years, but how many girlfriends might come see him during visiting hours? How many might think he was theirs, once he got released? I grabbed the shot and emptied it into my glass.

  “What else is good about him?” my bartender asked.

  “I dunno. That’s it, really. He’s handsome and he makes me feel special.”

  “What’s bad about him?”

  He’s kind of incarcerated. “I don’t know much about him, but I know he’s been in some trouble before. Plus I can’t really be with him.”

  The bartender nodded. “Married.”

  “No, he’s not.” Is he?

  “Totally married. Secret wife. Twelve kids.”

  The man on the nearest stool nodded now, a slender black guy with salt-and-pepper hair, dressed in a tradesman’s jumpsuit.

  I shot them each a frown. “It’s not like that. He’s just . . . It’s kind of long-distance. We talk mostly in letters.”

  “He deployed?” asked my nosy neighbor.

  “No. He’s just . . . He’s in one place, and I’m in another. But I think I like it, for what it is.”

  “Say you found out he was married,” the bartender said. “Would it break your heart?”

  “I dunno . . . It’d make me real mad, I guess. And I’d feel awful guilty.” I was feeling sort of mad and guilty now, wishing I hadn’t asked for an outside opinion. I’d been enjoying my delusional, epistolary fling. They were ruining it with all their perfectly reasonable questions.

  “Don’t lend him any money, whatever you do,” said Jumpsuit.

  “I’m not stupid.”

  “Nah, just horny. Same thing.”

  I glared at him, but only because he’d pretty much nailed it there.

  “Say you had a baby sister who was in your position,” said my bartender. “What would you tell her to do?”

  I took a drink, and gave it some serious thought. “I’d probably tell her to be careful.”

  The bartender put his hands up like, There’s your answer, and my neighbor thumped a concurring fist on the counter.

  I shook my head and drained a huge gulp. “Y’all are no fun.” Shit, I must be drunk. My y’alls were coming out. I left a ten on the bar and sure enough, I felt the shots as I slid from the stool.

  The bartender grabbed the bill, snapping it between his fingers. “If I’d known you were such a good tipper I’d have lied to you. Said this guy was the best idea ever. Earned myself a twenty.”

  “That’s for the double I didn’t order,” I said snottily. “Not your opinions.”

  “Well, I’ll lie to you, anyhow. This guy sounds like an awesome idea. I’m sure whatever it is he’s not telling you, it’s all good stuff.”

  “Yeah,” offered Jumpsuit. “He’s just real modest. Doesn’t want you to know he’s a volunteer firefighter.”

  “And that he reads to orphans on the weekends,” said the bartender.

  “Doesn’t want you to know he’s actually a millionaire.” Jumpsuit again. “He’s keeping it a secret ’til he knows you love him for who he is.”

  The bartender lost it on that one, laughing as he said, “Man, that’d be the goddamn best-kept secret. If I wanted to hide a millionaire, I’d sure as shit stick him in Darren fucking Michigan.”

  Try Cousins Correctional Facility.

  “That’d be like hiding a diamond down a porta-potty.” Jumpsuit just about doubled the bartender over with that. “Last place you look, man.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Good night, boys. Thanks so much for your sympathy.”

  As I headed for the door the bartender called, “Hey!”

  I turned and raised my brows, faking annoyance.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Anne. Annie,” I corrected, for no good reason.

  “Annie, I’m Kyle.”

  “And I’m Rodney,” said Jumpsuit.

  “Come back and let us know what happens,” Kyle said as he ran a towel over the bar, sounding sincere.

  “Yeah. We wanna see the engagement ring,” added Rodney, and Kyle whapped him with the towel.

  “Seriously,” Kyle said. “Let us know.”

  “It’ll cost you a shot,” I told him, wanting to leave with the last zing.

  “Deal.”

  “Y’all have a good night.”

  I headed out and up the side entrance to my apartment, flipping three bolts and switching on the weak overhead light to illuminate my little living room. I dropped my bag on the couch, grabbed the remote, and switched on the TV.

  I was wiped. Thoroughly buzzed. I ought to be excited for the weekend, but in truth
I wished I were working. The last thing I needed was time to think too hard about everything. Everything Collier had written, and every decent question the two perfect strangers downstairs had thought to ask about him. Questions I’d somehow managed to avoid confronting on my own.

  I pulled out his letter and read it again.

  If you got a man already . . . tell him I said he’s real lucky.

  It was things like that, and his promise to leave me alone if I chose not to wear red next week, that made this dangerous. I had no way of knowing if these scraps of deference were sincere or not. All they told me was that he was smart enough to know I deserved them, which could either make him a gentleman or a con artist.

  “Who are you?” I murmured, staring at those careful, measured letters. Then I snatched my compact out of my purse and stared at my own face, flushed from the heat or bourbon or from Collier, maybe. “And who the fuck are you, anymore?” I squinted at myself. “You’re drunk, that’s who. Eat some dinner, stupid girl.”

  I tossed the compact on the coffee table and flopped along the cushions with a sigh.

  “I don’t own anything red,” I told the room. “I look awful in red.”

  Did I? I wouldn’t even know. I’d never owned anything red aside from maybe socks or a hair band.

  “Whores wear red,” my grandma had told me once—she’d walked in while I was watching Pretty Woman. I must have been fifteen. I’d told her, “She is a whore, Gram.” And she’d nodded sagely and said, “Stands to reason.”

  I’d thought about it and realized my mom and my aunt never wore red, either, not that I could remember. Funny how mandates you don’t even agree with can still chisel themselves across your subconscious.

  If I wanted to hear more of whatever Eric had to say to me, the decision couldn’t be made without a concerted effort, a mindful purchase. A premeditated crime.

  Shopping with the intent to seduce a dangerous felon.

  Staring up at the ceiling, I told the fan, “He wants me to be his whore.”

  It didn’t reply.

  “I think maybe I want that, too.”

  Chapter Five