Page 45 of The Impact (Parachutes #3)

“Admit it. You’re lonely, right?” She accused. Vin checked the time on his new Hublot watch.

“I miss her,” he admitted. “That’s not going away.

Tahli was my best friend.” He shook his head.

“Not was. She’s still here. Thank fucking God.

But she’s the first person to love me by choice.

The first person to take a chance on me.

Since birth, the world had my expectations and worth wrapped up in a box.

I went to prison at 18 carrying it, and came home with even more stigmas placed in it. ”

Bianca’s lids flexed at his slip.

“Tahli took the biggest gamble on me. Built me up way past my potential. None of the shit I’ve accomplished I would have without her. For that, she deserves the world. For that…she deserves to be happy. For me to allow her to be happy.”

Even if it’s not with me , Vin finished in his mind.

“You know who else deserves to be happy?” Long, slender fingers crept over his inked ones. “I’ll give you a hint. Someone who needs to stop punishing themselves.”

His eyes flared before he pulled back. Too vulnerable. Too quick.

“You want anything else? Maybe something for later that you can heat up? Is it this weekend your son is coming home?”

“Thank you for paying attention to detail,” she grinned. “Yeah, he comes home from school this weekend. My God…I can’t believe it sometimes. My baby is a freakin’ freshman at college.”

“How’s it going for him?”

“He likes it, Dalvin. He met a girl.”

“Aw, shit,” Vin shook his head. “That’s how the story starts. I met a girl.”

Vin met a girl once. They boarded a parachute soon after.

“But no. I have to cook for him. That’s the exchange for being in school. Homecooked meals and clean laundry.”

Homecooked meals. Vin missed the fuck out of those.

“And what do you cook well? What’s your signature, nobody’s fucking with me , dish…if I had the pleasure of you cooking it for me?” Vin asked, rubbing the back of his neck. He always enjoyed conversing with women. They were just better conversationalist. Nice to listen to. Nicer to look at.

“Um…” Bianca searched the restaurant ceiling for her answer. “Let me think, ‘cause I feel like you gonna clown me if I say Alfredo or spaghetti or something.”

“I would never clown a woman for whatever she takes the time to prepare for me. I don’t care if you chef ’ng up a hotdog, darling. Might be the best damn hotdog I ever tasted.”

Bianca giggled, gaze on him. “It’s not hotdogs.”

“Good, I fucking hate hotdogs,” Vin admitted, smiling eyes on hers.

“Hm… Well, if I were to cook for you…if you had the privilege of me cooking for you,” her breathy voice warbled, “and I was trying to impress you…I guess I would cook you my blackened trout or haddock, with like red beans and rice.”

Vin nodded his approval, making her laugh some more. He signaled the check with a finger.

“You sure no dessert or anything? Something to climb in the bed with and rub your feet together later tonight?”

Surprise widened her eyes and smile. “I love that. That is like the perfect visual of late-night dessert.”

Vin smiled tight at the white tablecloth, debating divulging.

“I can’t take the credit.”

“…Tahli?” Bianca picked up.

Vin raising his eyes from the table was his answer.

“Tell me. She sounds like a great woman.”

With her elbows on the table and hands folded under her pointed chin, Bianca waited, seemingly genuinely.

“Tahli always thought dessert was better in bed. She said it tasted better in there.”

Bianca’s eyes smiled, urging for more. And Vin immediately felt something he rarely felt in the fifteen months since he’d lost her—relief. When he spoke to the therapist, it helped. But his busy schedule didn’t allow for as many visits as he certainly needed.

“Actually, maybe like a week before…” Before his life blew up .

“…we had come home from her favorite restaurant with her favorite dessert. And we had just gotten our dog, right? So, Tahli goes in the shower. I do the normal…heat up her towel, lay out the table tray on the bed, set up the dessert, her little espresso ‘cause she gotta have fucking coffee with dessert even if it’s 1am,” he snickered.

“So, I set her up. I go take a call. I come back and she’s in the bed…

tight . Like fucking mad and I’m like, the fuck did I do? ” Vin chuckled.

“I’m like, ‘you wanna put on the show?’ ‘Cause we were watching this little show together. Well…she was watching that shit, I was pretending to. But anyway, she’s like ‘no!’ mad as hell.

Arms crossed. Heated. And I’m lost ‘cause the plate is cleared, she’s in the bed, I didn’t think I was gone that long.

Anyway…fast forward, next day she still got this fucking attitude.

So finally, I’m like ‘ yo, what the fuck’, right?

Like ‘what the fuck is wrong wit’ you, Tahli?

’ She’s like ‘ you ate my fucking dessert, Vin! You knew I wanted it, and you ate it!’ Whole time the fucking dog sitting there, wagging his tail and shit. ”

Bianca laughed hard, throwing her head back.

“No, the dog did not eat her dessert, and you got blamed for it!”

Louie cost him some pussy that night, but Vin wouldn’t add that part.

“Yeah, man. He was sick, too. Almost fucking died. Had to take him to the emergency vet.”

“Oh my God.”

“Yeah, that got dark real quick. My bad.”

They shared a laugh. A laugh that quieted to snickers. Then silence.

“This was nice.”

“It was,” he agreed. His phone rang. Business. So, he ignored it.

“We should do it again,” she suggested, and Vin took the leap.

“We should.”

Tahli

Tahli parked across from her old house because Vin had the curb lined with trash and tools. Obviously, he was working on some home maintenance project his male ego wouldn’t let him outsource.

Tahli took her umpteenth exhale since starting her voyage there, fresh off a screaming match with her almost 16-year-old.

Why weren’t mothers granted the same grace as fathers?

Because Vin had led a double life and Dali’s forgiveness was waiting for him.

But six weeks since her accident…six weeks since Tahli almost lost her life…

and Dali had no problem ripping into her.

“How fair is that? I can’t go to Wildwood with my friends.

But you left us for some self-help, me-time getaway when you divorced Dad?

” Dali used mocking finger quotes for her mocking words.

“You didn’t think maybe the divorce affected us, too?

Then you were going away again! I heard Pop-Pop talking you out of it. ”

“Baby, I was broken,” Tahli pleaded, over the choices she made more than a year ago at her lowest, still crushed by the effects those choices had on her baby.

“So was I! I was broken, too! I had the most time with you two. But I’m a child. You’re the adult!”

Stepping out of the BMW truck gifted by Drew as a replacement for her mangled Jeep, Tahli crossed the quiet, sunbathed street to her old mailbox. Vin had a tall ladder parked near the front door, likely springtime gutter cleaning.

As Tahli flipped through the envelopes, annoyed by the amount of mail still being delivered there for her, she saw, as usual, the lazy mailman had placed a few of the neighbors’ mail in Vin’s mailbox.

Luckily, Erica was right there fiddling with her sprinkler system, so Tahli wouldn’t have to ring the bell.

As Tahli approached, she noticed Erica had her cell phone wedged between her shoulder and ear. Erica yanked on the sprinkler, her back still to Tahli and unaware of Tahli’s presence.

“Keisha, girl, you just gotta get back from Sam’s Club right now.

I just set up my lawn chair and put on my tiniest shit because baby, he is out here with one of them undershirt tank tops.

.. Muscles dripping sweat, just digging in them gutters.

And I need him to come dig in my gutters, if you know, you know,” Erica cackled.

Crossing her arms, Tahli eavesdropped and waited with Erica’s mail in hand. And stewed. Tahli stewed a little because, bitch…I always knew you wanted my husband back when he was my husband.

“I done called out ‘ Hey Mr. Hayes!’ too many times, and you know he’s gonna shed that shirt soon,” Erica rolled in laughter, inauthentic country accent in tow. “Girl, let me casually turn and see if he’s back on that ladder so I can ask him to come look at these sprinklers.”

Erica was still giggling in her pageant pivot when her laughter transformed into a choking cough, discovering Tahli instead.

“Um…Keisha…gotta…gotta go. Buh bye.” Phony smile ensued. “Tahli! What a surprise. My goodness... Little Milo told Jaden about the car accident. How are you? You know you’ve been in my prayers.”

“I’m here,” was Tahli’s simple, seething response. “And here’s your mail. In the wrong box. Again.”

They held eye contact, and Tahli could tell Erica was sizing up how much she had overheard.

“I sure do miss seeing your face around here,” Erica lied.

“Do you? ‘Cause it seems like you’re okay as long as you’re seeing my ex-husband’s. I think his face is the only one you’ve been concerned with,” Tahli called her out.

“Well, now,” Erica clicked her tongue, smoothing spandex shorts even smaller than her sports’ bra. “You know Mr. Hayes is a sight for sore eyes, but I mean no harm. One woman’s trash is another’s eye candy, or whatever they say,” she tried to jest, while Tahli’s heart rate went wacky.

“Erica, I know our kids trick-or-treat together. I know we’ve had block parties and bake sales and all of that cute shit. But make no mistake. You and I are very different women. You don’t want to see how different.”

“Now riddle me wrong, Ms. Tahli, but the grapevine juice is spilling and what trickled down into my cup was that you asked for the divorce.” Erica’s butterscotch forehead lined.

“So why all the uproar? Hi, Mr. Hayes!” Erica went all bubbly, waving her flabby arm, and Tahli tossed her mail in the grass.