Page 8 of Vipers & Roses

“You do that and message me with a time we can convene tomorrow,” he says. “Do you need a ride?’

“No, I have a car. I’ll Google the location before I leave. Tomorrow,” I repeat under my breath and turn to walk away from him.

“Yeah, tomorrow. It's a pleasure doing business with you, Rae,” he calls after me, and I don’t dare look back to see if he’s watching me go. It’s not until a woman walking her dog by the playground smiles at me that I realize I am smiling like a goofball, and she thinks I am grinning at her and her delightful little dog.

Once back inside my yellow speedster, I check myself in the mirror to see how bad I look. Hair pulled from my face in a tight ponytail, blushing cheeks making the soft sprinkling of freckles stand out, lively green eyes, and smiling rose lips.

Oh hell, I’m blushing over a thief.

5

Zara: Paypaled $750 into your account from Smiler. How R U?

Me: Thanks. I’m good. I met Blake.

Zara: I know. You left a mark.

Me: I did? He wants to teach me to shoot the gun. Is he trustworthy?

Zara: lol. About as trustworthy as a thief.

Me: I mean, am I safe alone with him?

Zara: He’s a decent guy with extra-curricular activities. It’s nice that he’s going out of his way for you. Must be love ♥

Me: Piss off. lol

Zara: lol

The boy down the hall is practicing on his trombone, and even though he’s way off-key, I still find the foghorn soothing and therapeutic in a strange way. I guess it’s a reminder that there are other people close by and that most people are good, whereas evil people are few and far between.

My therapist once told me that most people are good but do bad things sometimes. I stopped going after that because I felt she was reading from a script and probably told all her clients the same thing, regardless of why they were there.

My apartment is…well, tiny, but it has everything I need. The living space is also where I sleep, with a little kitchen and bathroom, and my luxury item is a small balcony large enough for a single beach chair and two garden pots - one growing cherry tomatoes and the other a pineapple experiment. My plant biology tutor said if you buy a pineapple from the store, chop the leafy top off and place it in water. When it starts producing roots, plant it in fertile soil. It takes 2 to 3 years before it starts producing fruit, but it’ll be worth the wait.

I plant my backside in the beach chair, and my eye finds the sliver of turquoise between two tall buildings where I was earlier today. Blake the thief, and I’m smiling again. What is it about him? Mr. Super Cool, his laid-back attitude, and his devilish smile.

I pick a ripe cherry tomato and take a bite, and the juice and pips squirt all over my dark blue Pixie’s T-shirt, but I’m too consumed by the evening traffic to worry. Everyone is rushing to get home to their families and wives, husbands, and pets. In contrast, there is no one to greet me when I get home, and it’s better that way—being free of other people’s hassles and no one to dictate to me. Yep, freedom is a quiet apartment built for one with a tiny lake view.

Resting my feet on the side of the tomato pot, I place my laptop on my bare, tanned thighs and enter Micheal Lyons into the search engine. His nickname is The Lion, coined from his surname and because he relentlessly and ruthlessly gets results from his swim team. Yeah, I know that fact all too well.

The results from the search are the usual garb – his bio, accolades, his most famous prodigies, and where he resides, which is here on Torres Island, between the lake and the river.

Then, his personal information – married with two teenage children and as an automatic, psychosis response, my fingers find my arm, and before I realize it, my nails have dug into my skin, leaving a mark. Yep, scratching my skin raw is what I used to do when emotions were overwhelming. But these days, I’m aware of my unhealthy habits and retraining to do something else with my hands.

Squeezing a stress ball, drawing flowers, or digging my fingers into the soil works, but the remedy I chose today is to light a joint. Luckily, I have one only an arm's reach away, sitting on the edge of the pineapple pot with the lighter right next to it, strategically placed there from yesterday.

I light my joint and take a deep draw, blowing out smoke away from the tomato plant since they shrivel up and die from smoke before I’m ready to continue my research on Mr. Lyons, the rapist.

Married with two teenage children. I’ll be killing a husband and father, so what do I do? Let him get away with it and try to continue with my life…or stick to my plans. In my rational mind, I justify this by telling myself that if I went through hell of a court trial and they were found guilty and imprisoned, then Mr. Lyon’s wife and kids would lose a husband and father anyway.

“It was his choice to do that. Not mine.”

I scroll through the faces of the swim team and the prodigies under The Lion. What do you know? There is the handsome face of the swimmer who threw his message to the wrong girl. Now, I wonder what that message said. I guess I’ll never know.

Cormac Bernardi. Bernardi? Where have I heard that surname before? I take another drag from my stunted joint as my body relaxes into the seat. I know my limits, and if I take a third drag, I start to feel weird and heavy in the head. So, I use my fingertips to douse the joint and place it and the lighter back on the side of the pineapple pot.

“Bernardi?” I say aloud as a lint of dried weed that escaped from the joint tickles my tongue, and I remove it with my fingers. “Bernardi.”

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