“Excuse me?”
Ruben flinched at Dez’s sharply hissed words but didn’t stop stuffing clothes into his duffel bag. “I said I’m leaving. Caitlyn is waiting for me in the car.”
Dez backed up and crossed her arms, a precaution against the sudden urge to choke the shit out of him. He was leaving her. For another woman. If this wasn’t some surreal, fucked-up shit. She focused on her anger. It kept her attention away from the pain that started a few seconds ago when she had walked in on him dragging clothes out of the closet and flinging them into his bag.
Their argument yesterday hadn’t prepared her for any of this. He was spending too much time with that girl, the stranger they picked up in Santa Fe a week ago on a whim. Yesterday, nothing was said about leaving, about dumping Dez in the middle of the desert like trash.
This was coming way the fuck out of nowhere. Wasn’t it just three days ago that they were trading body fluids on the stairs leading up to this very room, their hands tight over each other’s mouths to stop their noises from waking the people down the hall? The whole time when they were fucking was he thinking about the other one—Caitlyn—as his dick moved inside her, as Dez’s fingers moved inside him, making him shudder and quake and almost bite her fingers off when he came?
She took a deep breath and fought for calm. “Why are you doing this to me, Ru?”
“Dez, what we had was casual. Neither of us wanted anything permanent so I’m not doing anything to you. I’m just giving you the room you need.”
“Room? Are you fucking kidding me? For two years you were ten feet up my ass looking like you wanted to stay there for life and now you’re talking about room.”
“She doesn’t know.” That, too, came out of nowhere. He made his voice soft as if Caitlyn could hear him through the walls.
“Doesn’t know what? That you’re as much of a queer as I am? That I fuck your ass every night and you love it? Shit.” Her voice rose in a wail, dragging out the last word until she clamped her lips shut over it.
He didn’t have anything to say. Dez watched him finish up, zip the bag closed, then rush into the bathroom for something that sounded like his toothbrush and the oversized Ziploc bag full of condoms. The bag that Dez had just filled. He came back into the room and looked at her briefly, his eyes skittering over her stone face.
“Sorry.” Then he was gone.
She squeezed the bridge of her nose. Fisted her stinging eyes. Breathing deeply, she tightened her eyelids until dark spots danced behind them, but when she opened them the pain was still there. Beyond the window, the taillights of Caitlyn’s powder blue Ford Thunderbird flashed to life. Ruben jumped into the convertible and they coasted down the drive.
Dez turned away from the window in disgust. There was no point in staring after them like some lovesick little bitch. There were things to be done. But when her gaze raked the room, she couldn’t think of a single fucking thing that she wanted to do. Not one. At the desk near the door lay a scattered heap of letters she’d gotten from the mailbox in Albuquerque earlier that day. With relief she grabbed the one with her mother’s handwriting, the rectangular business-sized envelope with the pink valentine stamp. She ripped open the letter, needing comfort badly. She glanced at the sheets of paper with their flowing green script, then blinked when the print blurred before her eyes. Shit. Dez flung the letter down and grabbed her jacket. She had to get out of here. As she tugged the jacket on and headed for the door, her cell phone rang.
“Hello?”
“Ms. Desiree Nichols?”
“Yes. Can I help you?”
The official-sounding voice on the other end asked politely if she knew where her mother was. She battled her impatience long enough to be courteous in return and kept walking. Then the woman mentioned a biopsy and test results and Dez stopped walking. All thoughts of Ruben and his red-headed fucktoy disintegrated and blew away on the breeze like ashes. She paused in the middle of the hallway. Her hand lifted and fell against the pink and green floral wallpaper.
The hardwood floor seemed to stretch out for miles beyond her feet and suddenly the white banister leading downstairs seemed very necessary for her to stay upright. Dez cleared her throat. She pressed the phone to her ear, listening carefully for anything that would tell that this was some sort of stupid prank, that she was on Punk’d or something.
The voice continued. No one jumped out from behind the wallpaper to tell her that it was all a joke. The woman wanted to change Claudia’s appointment and needed confirmation that she would be there. She wasn’t answering any of her numbers in Miami, and Dez was listed as next of kin on her forms. It was very important that Claudia show up for the appointment. Could Dez guarantee her presence? Through the pounding in her ears, she said yes, finessing more information out of the woman until all she could do was hold the phone against her ear and stare at the closed door at the end of the hallway. Ovarian cancer.
As soon as the woman hung up the phone, Dez called home.
“Ma, your doctor’s office just called. They need you to come in on the second of next month instead of the eighteenth.” She stumbled over the rest, unable to maintain coherence with the unresponsive voice mail. After she hung up, Dez turned abruptly back to her room to start packing.
A Taste of Sin, Available now.