Burn For You

22

“I’d rather talk to a bill collector,” I interrupted angrily. “At least I know it’d be an honest conversation.”

Then—hand to heaven, I could not make this up—the man got a tear in his eye. A big ol’ crocodile tear that sat there and glimmered and trembled like a makeup artist had just run over with a bottle of glycerin in between film takes.

He said roughly, “I’m sorry. That’s all I wanted to say. I treated you badly, and you didn’t deserve it. I didn’t want to stalk you after we broke up, but I kept hoping I’d run into you somewhere. And here you are. So . . . I’m sorry. I really did love you, even though I did what I did. It just took losing you to make me realize it.”

He looked at his shoes, took a breath, and then met my gaze again. Very quietly, he said, “Actually, I still love you, bumble bee. I think I always will.”

I admit it. My heart did a major flip-flop. I got a serious case of butterflies in the stomach. Who doesn’t want the ex she was madly in love with to do a bit of groveling after he treated her like a disposable napkin?

Unfortunately for him, the girl I was then and the girl I am now are two different Biancas altogether.

I took a breath, squared my shoulders, and lifted my chin. “I can’t say it was nice to see you, Trace, but it was definitely interesting. Good luck to you.”

My head held high, I walked briskly past him. I didn’t look back. I kept walking—my gait was almost a power walk it was so fast—until I got to the restaurant. Then I threw open the front door and ran inside to hide because I wasn’t 100 percent sure he wasn’t following me.

“Um, whatchya doin’, boo?”

Eeny’s confused voice came from behind me.

“Making sure I wasn’t followed,” I said, peering out to the street through the blinds on the windows.

“Followed?” She chuckled. “Your meetin’ with the werewolf went that bad, huh?”

Satisfied Trace wasn’t about to burst through my front door, I let the blinds fall back into place and turned to look at Eeny with a sigh. “Ugh. That was a whole other disaster. Remind me to have a shot of liquor before I talk to Jackson Boudreaux again. Maybe he’ll make sense if I’m tipsy. But I wasn’t talking about him. I was talking about Trace.”

At the mention of his name, Eeny made the sign of the cross over her chest.

I’m not even sure she’s a Christian, but she likes to keep all her bases covered.

“Trace! Lawd! What on earth you doin’ talkin’ to him?”

“Believe me, it wasn’t my idea.” I walked past Eeny on my way to the kitchen. Huffing and excited, she followed right on my heels.

“Well what did he say? More importantly, how did he look? Does he still have all those big ol’ muscles in all the right places, or did he let himself go?”

I snorted. “The day Trace Adams lets himself go is the day the earth stops spinning.”

“So he looked good? What was he wearin’?”

I stopped and turned to look at her. “Eeny. Focus. The man is a liar and a cheater. It doesn’t matter how good he looks.”

She pursed her lips. “Can you just tell me if he was wearin’ those tight jeans like he always used to that accentuated his nice big package and tight butt?”

I sighed and turned away, headed for the kitchen. “No. He was wearing a pair of sweatpants.”

Hello, white lie. Trace had actually been wearing jeans that accentuated his bulge and tight butt, but I wasn’t about to tell Eeny that. She’d get nothing done for the rest of the day. And I wasn’t admitting to myself that I’d noticed, anyway.

Only I had, which was pathetic. Trace was the last man I’d had s*x with, and he knew what he was doing in bed. I wasn’t sure if my lack of attraction to anyone since was due to how badly he broke my heart or a terrible suspicion that no other man would be able to make me scream the way he had.

Either way, my dry spell had gone on so long the inside of my v****a probably looked like one of those old Western ghost towns, all tumbleweeds and abandoned buildings, mean-looking vultures picking over dried-up bones.

“Sweatpants!” exclaimed Eeny. She made a clucking sound, like a hen. “Lawd, what a waste. That’s like hangin’ curtains on the statue of David.”

Even though I wanted to, I couldn’t disagree. Trace might be all kinds of wrong, but I’d never seen another man as beautiful.

If only the inside matched the outside. But, as Mama always told me, beauty is as beauty does. Some of the prettiest faces hide the meanest hearts, and smooth talk is no substitute for good character. The only way to judge a person is by his deeds.

Like caring for a special needs child who isn’t your own, I thought pensively.

Then I pushed the thought aside and got to work.

Three days later I was sitting in a hospital room that smelled like antiseptic and desperation, holding my mother’s hand as poisonous chemicals dripped into her veins from a clear plastic bag elevated on a metal pole.

My mother treated the whole thing like it was an outing in the park, chatting with the nurses, flirting with the doctor, reading gossip rags, and laughing.

I, on the other hand, was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Mama was being filled with poison!