Cherry Girl Read online

  Ethan snickered and leaned back in his chair, the cigarette hanging off his lip. “Are you all right, Neil?”

  “No,” I said, dropping myself into a chair opposite his desk.

  We sat there in silence for a bit, him smoking, me breathing it in second hand, the smell reminding me of Afghanistan, taking me back to other times and other places. Places where I’d been with Ethan, a long time ago when things were different. He was very quick, and I imagined he’d puzzle it all out in another moment or two.

  “Elaina’s the girl, isn’t she? The one from years ago, that you…lost, right before that last tour.” He lit up another Djarum.

  “Yes. It’s her.”

  I put on my coat and peered out the window from the forty-fourth floor.

  Well, shit.

  Late leaving work tonight and it was already completely dark outside. The fall weather had arrived in full force, too. The temperatures were dropping and the rain was falling.

  The ride home on the train didn’t worry me, but the walk to my house from the station most certainly did. Maybe I could call Mum to come pick me up in the car.

  But I didn’t like to do that. It was a risk I really couldn’t take and I knew very well why. Mum would be well into her G&T’s.

  I was pondering calling my brother on the small chance he wasn’t already committed to Friday night happy-hour somewhere, when Neil stepped through to reception.

  He wore a solemn look on his face and his coat on his back. With his briefcase in his hand, he appeared to be leaving work for the night, same as me.

  “I’ll take you home,” he said, walking ahead of me toward the lifts.

  I stared at him in surprise. This was the first time he’d really spoken to me since that first day, and it made me wary.

  He stepped into the lift. I stayed rooted in the hall.

  After a moment, he poked his head out, his hand holding the door open. “Well, are you coming?”

  “What? No. I’ll take the Tube like I always do.”

  He shook his head slowly at me. “You’re not walking home in this pissing rain in the dark, Elaina.”

  “I’ll ring Mum from the station to come and collect me.”

  “No, you won’t ring her, and we both know why. Get in.”

  I paused, unsure how to respond, tempted by his direct command but afraid to be so close to him again. The inside of a lift was very small quarters. And Neil was such a big man. And, he would be in it with me. Intimidating as hell was a good descriptor for him at that moment.

  “The lift, Elaina?” He cocked his head impatiently. The lift bell dinged and I saw the G lit up in red on the panel, indicating he was heading down to the parking garage.

  “No, thank you.” I shook my head at him. “I’m taking the Tube home.” I let the doors close Neil inside the lift where he was still frowning at me from behind those beautiful features he’d been born with.

  Relief spilled through me and I closed my eyes for a moment.

  With a steady hand, I calmly pressed the button to call another lift. When it arrived, I made sure to select the street level because I had a feeling Neil might insist on taking me home tonight.

  He knew too much about me. He knew the station and how far I had to walk from there in order to arrive at my home. He knew my mother’s drinking habits and that she couldn’t drive to come for me. He knew Ian was busy somewhere as it was a Friday night. Neil knew everything.

  Elaina was living proof that it was very possible to want to protect someone and strangle them simultaneously. Metaphorical strangulation, of course, along with some other things I could think of doing to her.

  Christ in heaven, I was going to lose my mind if I didn’t spot her in the next minute or two.

  Once she ditched me at the lifts it’d been a race across town to beat her train to the station. Not easy to do in Friday evening London traffic. Throw the rain in on top of it and it was a bloody mess. The strangling still seemed a viable option to me at the moment. That, or kiss her until she couldn’t breathe.

  I had a trump card though. I’d called her mum and tattled; right before assuring her I would find Elaina and bring her safely home. Mum Morrison still loved me even if her daughter didn’t.

  Yeah, it would make Elaina spitting mad but I didn’t care. She could join my fuckin’ hell club. I’d spent the past week in a continual state of madness from this whole cocked up situation. She’d have to just deal with it. And me.

  There she was, slogging through the sideways rain with her head down. I could spot those legs of hers anywhere. A hundred years could have passed and my brain would still have remembered exactly how she was made.

  I flashed my headlamps at her and pulled up beside the pavement.

  She lifted her head in surprise as her eyes went wide.

  I pushed open the passenger door.

  “Get in.”

  She just stood there, her rain soaked hair plastered against her face, challenging me.

  “Did you call my mother, Neil?”

  “I did indeed, now get in the car,” I barked, ready to jump out and drag her in if I had to.

  “That was stupid of you, then,” she yelled, throwing her arm out.

  “Not nearly as stupid as walking home in a torrential rainstorm in the middle of the goddamn bloody night!”

  She turned away and started walking again.

  I saw red and it was all reaction after that. The Rover was up on the pavement blocking her path and she was looking at me like she wanted to slice off my balls and feed them to her pet alligator. “What is the matter with you, Neil?” she screeched.

  “Right now, it’s your stubbornness,” I bit out. I pointed to the empty seat. “Now get your defiant arse into the MOTHERFUCKIN’ SEAT OF MY CAR!”

  She did it.

  The interior of the Rover was silent except for the pounding of the rain. The earthy smell of water filled the air and mixed with the scent of her hair and wet coat. I think we were both in shock.

  I’m sure I’d never shouted so loudly before to any person. These extreme emotions were starting to get to me. I was the guy who kept his cool and a level head. I didn’t even recognize myself anymore.

  I looked over at Elaina sitting beside me, her arms folded across her chest, hair dripping, eyes straight ahead, and so utterly beautiful even in this bedraggled state, that it hurt to have her so close. It hurt because she was still so far away from me and I didn’t know how to make her let me back in.

  Her mobile rang from inside her coat pocket. She rolled her eyes as she pulled it out and answered the call.

  “Yes, Mum. I’m with Neil right now and he’s bringing me home.” She paused listening. “I’ll tell him. Okay. Bye.”

  I couldn’t imagine what she was thinking. She wasn’t talking and she wasn’t fighting me either, she just sat there in the front seat of my Rover, so very still.

  I reached over her for the belt to buckle her in and could see she was shivering.

  “You’re cold.” I cranked up the heat and backed off the pavement, straightening out the wheels and parking it up against the curb. The windscreen wipers methodically passed back and forth between us.

  “M-mum w-wants you to s-stay for dinner,” she chattered blankly, still staring forward out into the dark rainy night.

  But what about you, Elaina?

  “I’m sorry for screaming at you,” I said softly.

  I wished she’d look at me, but she wouldn’t…or couldn’t after our terrible shouting match.

  And so, I just sat there and watched her, the heater inside the car working overtime, making the air warmer by the minute.

  “It’s okay,” she said finally, wiping one side of her face with her fingers. Was she crying?

  “Elaina…look at me, please.” I waited while time seemed to slow down to a crawl.

  She turned her head toward me, her chin up and trembling like she was guarding herself from falling apart.

  “I didn’t know you
worked there. I wouldn’t have taken the job if I’d known. They tricked me into applying, and I just don’t want you to think I did this on purpose—”

  I cut her emotional ramble off with two fingers to her lips. “I know. I know it was them and not you. Don’t you worry about it.”

  She froze when I touched her, looking fragile enough to shatter at any second.

  I dropped my hand away, but I didn’t want to. I wanted to run it around the back of her neck and draw her up against me. I still wanted her. Despite everything that had happened between us, all of the betrayal and abandonment—my heart just didn’t care about any of it. She was here. My Cherry Girl was here right beside me.

  18

  Neil drove me home. I was numb and it wasn’t from the cold rain. Subdued was a good word to describe how we both were after that blow up on the pavement. I’d never seen Neil lose his temper like that. So angry. He’d driven his car up onto the pavement for Christ’s sake.

  He pulled into the drive of my house and I found the courage to ask him.

  “Are you coming in? Mum wants you to stay.”

  He turned and met me head on, his big hands still gripping the steering wheel. “What about you, Elaina? Do you want me to stay?”

  “Well, is it—is it all right for you to be here?”

  He looked puzzled by my question.

  “What?”

  He wasn’t going to make this easy on me apparently. I swallowed and went for it.

  “Are you married?”

  His eyes widened for an instant. “Come again?”

  “Don’t make me ask that again, please.”

  He paused for a minute before responding, as if he really needed to choose the right words. “I’m going to chalk that one up to the fact you’re not yourself right now. You’re soaked through to the skin, and we’ve had a row that’s upset both of us—but did you just ask me if I’m married?”

  “Yes,” I whispered.

  He scoffed and shook his head, looking away from me now and out the window. “No. I’m not married.”

  “So you and Cora didn’t stay together?”

  He flipped back toward me. “Umm, no,” he said slowly, shaking his head again, his lips slightly parted.

  “Why didn’t you, Neil?”

  “I didn’t want to, Elaina.”

  Fear had started to bloom in the pit of my stomach and I suddenly felt ice cold again. “But the b-baby…I saw Cora after you left. She was pregnant and showing. I saw with my own eyes.” While Neil sat glaring at me, a thought rushed through my mind. Oh no. “Did she lose it?”

  “No, she didn’t lose it. She had a son.” Neil had turned away again, as if he couldn’t stand the sight of me. He was answering my questions while speaking to the window and looking out at the rain.

  “Oh. What’s his name?”

  “I don’t know. I only saw him one time and she didn’t tell me.”

  “You don’t—you don’t see your son?” This wasn’t the man that I knew. I didn’t understand any of this. Why didn’t he see his son or even know his name?

  He turned back to me once more and told me why, his eyes full of sadness I could read clearly even from the dim light inside his car. “I don’t see him because he is not mine.”

  I shuddered as a chill rushed through my whole body and froze me. I was speechless for a moment, unable to speak, afraid to look at him. Terrified for what else I’d see in his eyes.

  I don’t see him because he is not mine.

  “But—but she said—I saw you with the doctor scan…You never denied it…

  I don’t see him because he is not mine.

  “I wrote you a letter. I told you I understood why you had to be with Cora…”

  Neil didn’t react at first. He just looked at me, his expression growing darker and darker as understanding dawned for both of us. I realized why he was so angry.

  I don’t see him because he is not mine.

  “Oh, God.” I slammed a hand over my mouth, trying to quiet the rising panic flooding me.

  As if that would work.

  Involuntary reactions, nothing more.

  He still hadn’t said anything. Neil was letting me do all the talking, giving me plenty of rope to hang myself on.

  “If he wasn’t your baby, then why…why didn’t you say something? You let me go and didn’t tell me…Neil—please say this wasn’t all for nothing.”

  I could feel the hysteria letting loose. The truth dawning on me with such brutal force I could barely breathe.

  I don’t see him because he is not mine.

  He leaned in very close and grabbed me by the shoulders, forcing me to own up to my horrifying mistake, gripping tightly and shaking me a little with every sharp bite of each word he spoke.

  “Why did you leave without ever giving me a chance to tell you anything? You just left me there on the eve of my deployment. You let me go. Didn’t you love me enough to even listen at all, Elaina? Was I not worth even that much to you?”

  I closed my eyes as my heart collapsed in on itself. My tragically grievous error now apparent, I had nowhere to escape. What had I done? I’d been the cause of so much needless pain for the both of us, all because I’d been afraid to listen and to share any part of him with anyone else.

  Silent tears poured out of me as I tried to find the words. “No, no, noooo.” I sobbed, “I saw her pregnant—we all believed it was your baby…even you believed it…” I lost the ability to say any more. What could I say to him, anyway? What words were there to offer?

  Very few. Actually none at all.

  I’d not stayed around to find out the truth back then, why should he believe anything I said to him now. I couldn’t fathom why Neil was even beside me at this very moment, giving a thought to my needs and seeing me safely home at night. I didn’t deserve it from him. He must be doing it only out of a sense of devotion to my family, after all, they’d never let him go. I had been the only one to do that.

  I spoke. The words came out of me and they were all I had to give to him. Words. Bitter sawdust in my mouth—that gave no comfort, only more pain—in the realization of what all this really meant about me and him, and our long years apart.

  “You were worth it, Neil. You were. I wasn’t though. I—I—I am so sorry…”

  He closed his eyes, still holding onto me, as if he couldn’t bear to hear the confession of my regret.

  From somewhere deep inside me, a source of adrenaline started pumping because I pulled out of his tight grip and got the hell out of his car. I bolted.

  Running was something I was really good at.

  I managed to stumble inside the house, ignoring my mother’s comments about trying to walk home alone in a storm, her inquiry about Neil, and wasn’t he having dinner with us? I don’t know what I said to her.

  I reached the safety of my bedroom, somehow. A sanctuary of sorts. A place where I could weep in solitude, and in peace. I’d figure out what to do tomorrow.

  I just wanted to sleep and grieve for what I had done to him. To us.

  To even accept it, hurt so much, I was afraid to close my eyes for fear of what my dreams would be like once I finally slept.

  ****

  I had to see for myself. There are some things a woman cannot take on good authority and this was one of them. I had to see her and ask her why she’d done it. She may not tell me, and more pain was surely coming my way for my efforts, but I had to ask.

  I stood on a street, looking at a house in a Barnet neighbourhood, the address of which I’d pried out of my brother. The house where Cora lived with her husband.

  Just as I was about to cross the street, the door opened and out came a mother with two small children. A little boy holding her hand, and a younger girl in pink, riding in a pram. It was her. Cora looked mostly the same, maybe not quite as fit as before she’d given birth to two kids, but it was her.

  I followed them to the park.

  It didn’t take long to understand how appar
ent it was that Neil was not the father of her son. The children were very dark with skin that couldn’t have come from Neil and his Anglo DNA. At one point, the boy came over to where I sat on my bench and dug around in the sand pit with some toys. He was a handsome little lad, but not Neil’s son. This little boy’s father was Black.

  “I thought it was you sitting here.” Cora had spotted me and made her way over. “I heard you’d returned to England.”

  I stared up at her and asked one word. “Why?”

  She sat down on the bench beside me.

  “Why did I tell Neil that my little Nigel belonged to him? That’s a story that you won’t like to hear I’m afraid.”

  “Tell me anyway,” I said, numbly. Here it was. The truth behind everything I’d sacrificed on the back of a lie and my fear of losing my heart.

  “I’m not proud of what I did to him. Having children of your own changes your perspective on things though. I’ve learned a lot since. But basically it came down to survival.”

  “Survival, Cora? Who’s survival?”

  “I needed money and Denny Tompkins came along at just the right moment for it. He hated Neil for taking you away from him. I told Denny I was knocked up and without any good prospects, and that you and Neil could just sod off together in lover’s land. He offered me a tidy sum to show my scan to Neil and tell him the baby was his. I did my part and Denny made good on the payment.”

  “So, I left Neil over a lie.” It wasn’t a question I was asking. Just greater understanding of what I had done.

  Cora was still beside me. No harsh words or gloating, she only shared the bare simple truths.

  “Denny didn’t make out so well though. You wouldn’t take him back and a few months later you went away to Spain.”

  “Italy…I went to Italy.” Even the sound of my own voice was nearly unrecognizable to my ears.

  Cora kept talking. “Wherever you went, you were gone, so Denny didn’t ever get you back. I owed it to Neil to tell him though, and I did that as soon as I could. He even saw us in the market once and gave his regards. It all worked out. Nigel married me and we had little Allison not two years after Nigel Jr., so yeah, it all worked out in the end.”