Alice's Wish Read online

  Alice’s Wish

  By Kay Harris

  COPYRIGHT © 2019 by Kay Harris

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  Contact Information: [email protected]

  Cover Art by Marianne Nowicki

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.

  For more information about Kay Harris’ books go to http://www.kayharrisauthor.com

  Prologue

  Six years ago…

  Anger, hurt, frustration, and the beginnings of fear all tore through Alice at once. Her muscles bunched, her heart sped, her palms, slick with sweat, were clenched into fists. She couldn’t run, so her fight or flight instinct was preparing to do something impossible.

  Four giant men towered over her, all football players, all massive bodies with corded muscle. Her small frame was sinewy. Sleek power, honed by martial arts, Yoga, and Tai Chi flowed from her shoulders to her toes. But it still amounted to five foot two and one hundred ten pounds.

  She was no match for the behemoths surrounding her.

  “What should we do with her now?” Greg’s voice was rough and amused, adding to the threat. He reached out and ran a hunk of her long, straight black hair through his thick fingers.

  Alice’s eyes flew to Derek. She’d once thought him attractive. She’d believed he liked her, maybe even loved her. He’d kissed her and touched her, and talked her out of her virginity at sixteen.

  That was just two weeks ago. Today was her seventeenth birthday and all hell was breaking loose.

  Now her boyfriend, his eyes glazed with liquor, was the worst of the four men surrounding her. The sleeve of his jersey flopped against his wrist as he tapped his finger against his chin, pretended to debate. “Send her into the party, I guess.”

  There would be no help from any of these men. The other two, Freddie and Joe, were just as drunk. She’d assessed their moods. They were mean, all right, and intended to hurt her, but it would be emotional, not physical. Humiliation was on the docket for tonight.

  That was the point of the spray paint across her chest. The blue and white sweatshirt that bore the logo of the high school football team was now smeared with red paint that read “homo.”

  She’d nearly choked to death on the fumes when they’d sprayed it directly on her chest, and she could feel the slick paint on her neck, where they’d overshot with the nozzle.

  They weren’t going to harm her any further. But they planned to carry her back to Derek’s house, packed with people celebrating the winning game, and tell everyone the secret she’d told Derek two days ago: she loved him, but she was also attracted to girls.

  Alice had no intention of suffering that fate. So she took stock of her surroundings. It was something she’d learned in her martial arts classes. They were a good fifty yards from Derek’s house and the road in front of it. The streak of woods behind the neighborhood held good sturdy Michigan oaks and maples. The ground was coated with a thick layer of fresh leaves.

  No one at the party in the house would hear her scream. Not that she wanted that. It would hurry the show the boys planned to put on anyway. She shouldn’t run. As fast as she was, with their powerful legs and strict training discipline, they’d catch her and it might be worse.

  That left only one option, pretend to go along with them until they were distracted enough to get away. It was by far the least appealing option, but at this point, getting out of this as unscathed as possible was Alice’s only goal.

  She uncurled her fists and slumped her shoulders. Her lips pulled into a shy smile. “I’ll be good.”

  Derek grinned. He liked to be in charge. They’d fooled around hundreds of times and had sex twice, and she’d learned quickly that he was rough and dominating. Letting him manhandle her while they were intimate had gone against all the instincts she’d been taught. But she’d repressed them to make him happy. Now she would have to do the same to get away from him and his vicious prank.

  The behemoths took another step toward her, making her human cage smaller. “That a girl.” Derek put a meaty hand on her upper arm.

  A sound bounced through the trees. All four men turned their heads. It wouldn’t have been enough time for Alice to run, except that the sound came again and their focus on it increased.

  Derek’s fingers around her arm relaxed. Alice slipped out and ducked down, sliding her thin body between Derek and Joe, then pushing herself into a flat-out run. The ball of her foot slipped on the leaf cushion layering the ground and she went straight down. She caught her fall, the impact stinging her palms.

  She felt the huge hands on her at the same time she heard the laughter. “Little rabbit having some trouble?” Stupid Derek and his stupid cartoons.

  Done with any pretense, Alice kicked and squirmed and incoherently screamed as they pulled her up to standing. Derek was going to pick her up and carry her into the house. She could see it in the way he bent his large frame over, arms held out. So she ripped the sweatshirt off her torso and flung it as hard as she could into the woods. Derek stopped mid-motion, gaping at her with surprise.

  “What the fuck!” Again, her tormentors turned away from her and looked toward the owner of the voice.

  Alice didn’t. She used the distraction to attempt another escape. But Derek’s athlete instincts were good, he stuck out a hand, grabbing her wrist. Greg did the same, and she was stuck. She grunted in frustration.

  “For fuck’s sake, get your god damn hands off her!” The voice had been deep, harsh, and completely in command. Alice knew that voice, but her brain didn’t have the luxury of pulling up the memory.

  The hands reacted immediately, releasing her. The men all took a big step back, giving Alice room. Clad in just her jeans and a bra, red paint streaming down her neck in little rivulets, she ran through the opening and bolted toward the road.

  The fall night bit at her bare skin, but she ignored it, laser-focused on getting to the street. Having come to the party with her friend Gail, she didn’t have a clue where she would go once she got there. Coming out of the woods half-dressed and covered in paint didn’t leave her many options. So she made a quick plan to get down the road a ways and try to find a stranger to help get her home, maybe a middle-aged lady with kids or an older couple.

  She didn’t get that far. A hand touched her arm and pulled her to a stop. She screamed.

  “Please. Let me help you.” It was that deep voice again, the one that belonged to the interrupter.

  Alice whirled around and looked into the eyes of Darius Fleck.

  SEPTEMBER

  Chapter 1

  “One year until you turn twenty-four! We should start dating now.”

  Alice read the text, took in a hard breath, and shoved her phone back into her purse. She looked in the grimy mirror and sighed. Sure, nobody actually ever kept marriage pacts. Once adulthood hits, a pact made at the age of seventeen usually becomes nothing but a joke.

  But this was different.

  Alice combed her hands through her impossibly straight hair. She’d had the same haircut since the age of five. The same fashion sense too, it would seem. She’d chosen a bright yellow sweater to compliment a turquoise blouse. The sweater was long and covered her butt, which was clad in black and white striped leggings.

  Alice straightened her sweater and turned away from the sink, marching out of the all gender bathroom and back to her friends.

&nbs
p; All three women followed her with concerned eyes as she made her way back to their round table. They’d commented several times that she wasn’t her usual bubbly self tonight. While the others were thrilled to celebrate their shared birthday, for Alice it signaled a certain doom.

  Alice plastered on a big smile to prevent another round of probing questions about her mood and slid into her seat at the table. Their birthday cupcakes had been delivered by their server, and one fat cupcake sat at each place.

  Julia’s was a yellow cake with thick vanilla frosting piled on top. Maya and Amy both had chocolate with chocolate icing, and Alice had a beautiful, rich red velvet cake perched in front of her.

  They each made a wish and then blew out the candles at the same time. Alice’s wish was the same as it had been since she was eighteen. She didn’t think twice before telling her friends. “I wish to get married by my next birthday.”

  Her friends were shocked, of course. Just today, Alice had turned twenty-three. She was the youngest of the group of four, the oldest, Julia, being fifteen years her senior. And none of them were married. And none of them had vowed to get married by their next birthday.

  Amy wanted to figure out her career. Alice wasn’t worried about that. She was perfectly happy in her position as sales rep at E.E.R. Tranquility Candle Company. She loved her job, her boss was okay, and she was fiercely loyal to the company’s owner, Everett Evans.

  Maya’s wish was career-oriented as well. She wanted to quit the candle company and make it as an artist. Alice didn’t have any other pursuits, at least not something she could make a career of. She loved Yoga and Tai Chi, and she taught martial arts to kids in her spare time. A couple of the other teachers at the studio had made that their sole career. But Alice couldn’t do that. She had to stay at E.E.R.

  Julia’s wish caused a massive WTF moment. She wanted to have a baby. Thirty-eight, unmarried, and wanting a baby was something that would make Alice’s conservative parents back in Michigan go ape-shit. They’d be gossiping and badmouthing Julia for weeks if they’d heard about it.

  Alice felt that ingrained sickness for a half second before she threw it away, smiled, and told Julia she wished her luck in her search for a baby daddy. Alice would not, could not, internalize her parents’ bullshit.

  When she told her friends her wish, they tried to get an explanation from her, but Alice wouldn’t relent. She loved these women, but there were so many things they didn’t know about her. And they weren’t alone. A handful of people knew important things. Everett Evans knew a big one. The sender of the text she’d just read, Kyle Ross, did too. But neither of them knew all of it. Neither of them knew about everything that went on exactly six years ago tonight—the whys, the hows, the whos. Only one person in the world knew all that. And Alice had strict plans to never see him again.

  A few hours later, when the rideshare delivered Alice to her quaint little apartment on the outskirts of Richmond, she stumbled a bit getting out of the car. Steadying herself, she climbed the eight concrete steps to the shared entrance of the old Victorian and used her key to open the door. It was late, and the hallway and stairs were quiet as she made her way past the six other units on the first two floors of the mansion and headed to her attic apartment, which sat alone at the top of the house.

  She struggled a little more with the lock to her own place, but managed to get inside and reset it without too much trouble. She flicked on the overhead light and threw her keys on the scarred wooden table beside the entrance.

  Alice stood with her back against the painted blue door for a moment to clear her blurry eyes. She took in her home. It was a long, wide rectangle from the kitchen on one end, through a cozy living room, to the bedroom at the far end. Because the space was segmented by low walls, it appeared a little bigger than it actually was.

  She didn’t love this place, but it was all hers. When she left her parents’ house she owned nothing and claimed only one friend in the world. She moved all the way across the country alone at the tender age of seventeen. She’d lived with a lot of people, some nice, some not too terrible, and some downright garbage. Now she had a job that supported her and a place to herself. She’d also made new friends. One of which had saved her life.

  She kicked off her shoes and left them sitting on the mat beside the door. She shuffled across the carpet to her second-hand store couch and sunk into it, sighing with pleasure at the fluffy suede cushions as they enveloped her.

  Alice pulled out her phone. She hadn’t wanted to see Kyle’s eager message earlier that night, but by ignoring her texts she’d also missed some she did want to see. Smiling, she scrolled through messages from friends she’d met at the LGBTQ center, fellow teachers at the martial arts studio, and her Yoga instructor.

  She listened to the voicemail from Everett. He sang happy birthday in his deep baritone, tone deaf and disjointed. She laughed, and the joy of it got her through listening to the tight, uncomfortable message from her mother.

  But it was the final voicemail that changed the course of her night. She stared at the caller ID for long minutes before pushing the playback button.

  “Alice. Hi. I know I do this every year. And every year you don’t respond. And I know I need to stop. But I’m having a hard time letting this go. I really want to know that you’re okay. I heard you were living in the Bay Area. And I would be lying if I said I hadn’t hoped we’d run into each other. But it hasn’t happened. I have something coming up…You know what? Never mind about that. I just called to wish you a happy birthday. I hope you had a great night and if you want to talk, you have my number. Goodbye.”

  It was the same way he ended the voicemail every year. “If you want to talk, you have my number.” He’d been making that call for six years. She’d been ignoring it for six years.

  No. That wasn’t right. He’d been making the call for five years. The first year he said the same thing in person as he entered his number into her phone. He’d said it as she got out of his car, wearing his college football jersey to cover her paint-stained chest.

  Darius Fleck had said it when he dropped her off at her house after he’d saved her from being bullied by his own brother.

  ****

  “I don’t want to organize your bachelor’s party, Derek. Get one of your bar buddies to do it.” Darius huffed into the phone. This was the third time he’d said exactly that in the last thirty minutes.

  “But you’re my fucking brother.”

  “And Greg is your fucking best man.” Darius copied Derek’s tone, which he knew would irritate his little brother. “Why don’t you have him do it?”

  There was a deep sigh on the other end of the line. “Dude. I told you about him, right?”

  Darius rolled his eyes. It had been four years since Derek’s lifelong best friend had come out as gay. And he still had trouble saying the words. So Darius did it for him. “Just because he like dudes doesn’t mean he can’t put something together that involves strippers and beer, idiot.”

  There was a pause as Derek gave in. Darius grinned. He knew his brother better than anyone. And he knew he’d just won. Greg coming out had been a big debacle. But in the end, Derek, the stubborn ass, had stood by his friend’s side. It was too bad the understanding and compassion had come too late for someone else.

  “But you’re coming, right?” Derek whined.

  “Of course. I promise I’ll show up a few days before the wedding so we can do all that shit together.”

  “Do you have your flight booked?”

  Sometimes, Darius’ younger brother, as big, hairy and muscle-bound as he was, sounded like the insecure little boy he’d been all those years ago when they’d almost lost any semblance of a relationship.

  “Dude, the wedding is nine months away. Relax. I will be there.”

  “Mom wants to know if you’ll be home soon.”

  Darius had come to dread going home. It felt wrong, and guilt swamped him every time he acknowledged it to himself. But it was the
truth. His relative fame in the Bay Area meant he got recognized regularly and asked for autographs and selfies pretty often. But he was used to it. It was the life of an NFL player in the town he’d played in and won a championship for.

  But at home, in the small Michigan town he’d been born and raised in, it was supposed to be different. It wasn’t. It was worse.

  Darius rubbed the knee that had taken him out of professional football and tried not let his ambivalence come through in his voice, even though Derek probably wouldn’t notice. “I’ll be home for Christmas. Just like I promised.”

  “What are you doing out there now that you’re not playing anymore? Why don’t you just come home?”

  Darius had this conversation with one of his family members at least once a week. “I’ve got things going on out here.”

  “I saw that underwear ad you did,” Derek snickered.

  “Look. I gotta go.”

  “Okay. Try to keep your clothes on in front of the camera, big brother.”

  Darius slammed his thumb on the little button on his screen.

  ****

  Everett Evans was a big man, almost as big as Darius himself. He could definitely pass as a football player, but as Darius had discovered in their first ten minutes of conversation, he was into soccer.

  Both Darius and Everett were comfortable in the large leather chairs situated around the oak conference table. This intimate meeting room had obviously been designed for the company owner. Which meant the third person at the table looked small in her seat.

  Julia Wall was an undeniably beautiful woman. She was taller and broader than little bitty Alice Bando, and Darius wondered idly what Alice would look like sitting in one of the fluffy black chairs.

  Even as he chatted with Everett and Julia, his mind roamed the halls of the building. Alice was in here somewhere. How far away was she from him at this very moment?

  This was his first time in the E.E.R. Tranquility Candle factory and office complex. Julia had met him in the lobby and ushered him immediately up to the third floor and into this conference room, so he hadn’t seen much of the building.