Page 71 of Alonzo

After our sexy shower Tara and I were both wiped out. We dried off, crawled into my bed, and were asleep within minutes.

But when I pass by the clock in the living room, I notice it’s barely eight in the evening. I missed dinner but apparently there’s an after-party in Luke’s old cottage.

Sure enough, when I step outside and glance to my right, the porch is filled with people.

Rosalie-slash-Belinda. Vann. Jesse. Luke and Zach. Tony. And a few others I only vaguely recognize as Luke’s friends.

There’s also a little bundle of clothes on the chair next to the door. Jesse Boston comes through. I pick them up and take them inside, but Tara is still asleep so I just place them on the bed next to her and go back outside to the porch, then hesitate, trying to decide if I want to go over to the porch and sort things out with Rosalie, or just go back to bed with Tara and let it wait until tomorrow.

But then Vann catches my eye and yells, “Where’s Tara?” loud enough to shut everyone up and make them look over in my direction.

“Sleeping.” I redirect my gaze to Rosalie and say, “You got a minute to talk to me, Rosie?”

Then I catch Tony’s gaze. Also directed at me. I send him a psychic thought to shut his mouth and let me handle this, but I’m not psychic. And Tony never picks up on my silent brother language. So when Rosalie skips down the porch steps of the Old Luke Cottage, Tony jumps over the side railing and then jumps up onto my porch before she even gets over here.

I growl at Tony. “Let me handle it.”

“Handle what?” Rosie says, walking up my porch steps.

Tony sneers at me. “I don’t give a fuck about her. I don’t like this Vann kid. He needs to go.”

“You don’t have to like him,” Rosalie says. “Your mom said we can stay. And if you’ve got a problem with that, you can go back across the street to your own house. How about that?”

“Newsflash, Rosie. They’re all my houses.”

“Don’t call me Rosie.”

“Excuse me,” Tony says. “Rosalie.”

“My name is Belinda. How about you call me that, huh?”

Tony opens his mouth, intent on keeping this little former lovers’ quarrel going. But I put up a hand before he can make things worse. “Just… let me handle it, OK?”

“Whatever.” Tony skips down my porch steps and heads across the street to his own house. Done with us.

I turn to Ros—err… Belinda. “Look, Belinda. I know we didn’t part on the best of terms—”

“Fuck you, Alonzo.”

“—but bringing Tara here to try to ruin what we have—”

“What you have?” She snorts. “What you have is a lie. On both sides.”

“We’ve worked it out. So it’s really none of your business, OK?”

“No? Well, you’re the reason I had to leave town eight years ago. I had a life here and you ruined it.”

“I didn’t do that to you. And you know that.”

She looks across the street at Tony’s cottage. He’s already inside. Curtains closed. No lights on. So there’s nothing to see.

But I don’t need to see him to know what she’s thinking. “It wasn’t him, either. It was you… Belinda. You stuck your face into things you had no business knowing.”

“You were using our motel to run your little operations.”

“Little operations?” I almost laugh. “First of all, what we do is not little. And if you had any idea of what you were talking about right now, you’d know that. So here’s what I’m gonna do for you—”

“What you’re going to do for me? Can you get my mother back? Where is she, by the way? I went to the motel. It’s a fucking hostel now.”