Roxy Sings the Blues

by Ellie Mack

  He wanted Roxanne to be happy, he just wished it would be with him. If only he could go back and explain to Roxy that his break up was meant to give her the chance to pursue her own goals. However, he had blown that chance. This was his own making. He let out a deep sigh. “Want another?” He lifted his empty bottle shaking it slightly.

  “Sure. I could go for another.” Luke eased back in the patio chair, resting the back of his head against the cushion. He tried to remain calm, but Devon’s case sounded remarkably like the file he had come across. He would have to go through the file thoroughly, see if there was anything about their identity; maybe drop the information subtly to Devon somehow.

  Luke stared up at the stars wondering what kind of a mess he had gotten into. A sense of foreboding came over him that he could not shake. If this was related to the case Devon was working, he might be in danger. Anyone around him might be in danger if he shared the information. He’d have to be extremely cautious about what he said. He would have to hide the evidence if it turned out to be something. A sick feeling started growing in his gut. He needed to find out as soon as he could what, if anything this information had to do with. Maybe he was overreacting. Maybe it was nothing.

  A cold bottle was pressed against his arm startling him out of his train of thought. He nodded his appreciation towards Devon.

  “So tell me, if someone was to have evidence or witness anything pertaining to these crimes, how do you find out?”

  “We’ve been questioning people in the area where the bodies are found. We’ve checked all of the street cams in the surrounding area, asking around the warehouses in the area if they have been having trouble with anyone, particularly the homeless. It has become a real problem down around the factories and warehouses. You know, it is weird. A few years ago, the average homeless person was forty-five or older. A lot of them lose their jobs and have trouble finding another one. Then before you know it, they lose their lease and end up in their cars or on the streets. I wonder what happened to these people’s families, you know?”

  “Yeah. I can’t imagine. My Mom is always up in my business. Most of the time I feel that she is being overly nosy, but I have moments when I realize how lucky I am to have a parent that cares.” Luke took a swig and motioned through the patio doors. “Like seeing their dick of a father.” He shook his head, his jaw working in a tense manner as he replayed the conversations from earlier. “What a self-serving jerk.”

  Devon harrumphed. “You have no idea.” He glanced towards the patio door. “I remember when they would come home after spending a summer with him. When school ended in May, they would be happy cheerful girls. I couldn’t wait for them to get back before school, but every time, I mean every, fucking, time, they would come back sad, mentally defeated, feeling like they weren’t worth shit.”

  “The few times that Roxy has talked about her dad, it was always laced with tension.”

  “That’s an understatement.”

  The two men stared off into space for a few minutes in silence. Luke had to say something about the file. He cleared his throat, leaning in motioning Devon to move closer just in case the girls came out. “Look man. I was nervous about meeting you, you know with you and Roxy’s history but I see you’re cool. I need you to do something for me.”

  Devon did not like favors. He did not like owing anyone a favor. “Yeah? Like what?”

  Luke exhaled slowly, choosing his words carefully. “If anything happens to me, would you look after Roxy? I mean, make sure she’s safe.”

  “Safe?”

  “Yeah. I got a bad feeling about this project I’ve been working on. I uh, well I came across something that I don’t think I was supposed to see.” He stood, pacing the small space of the apartment’s balcony. Leaning over the rails, he finished the beer before turning to Devon. “After my first win, Roxy gave me this little bear, called me her Nino Diablo. If anything happens to me, she needs Nino Diablo. She needs someone there that believes in her and will protect her.”

  “You got it, man.” Devon thought about the damage their father had done over the years, and this last bomb that he wasn’t even going to be there for his daughter’s wedding. He would offer both of them whatever support they needed and looking after Roxy would certainly not be hardship.

  CHAPTER 12

  I sat on the sofa to unwind and relax. It felt good to slip my shoes off and put my feet up. As I propped my heels on the glass coffee table, I could hear Mom’s voice telling me “get your feet off the coffee table”. Glancing around the room to see if there was any reaction from Tara or if I had imagined it, I swung my legs around to lay sideways on the sofa. She had snuggled into the comfortable chair with one of her textbooks and a blanket. Her head bobbed on occasion, as she struggled to stay awake. I was not about to wake her, it had been an exhausting couple of days.

  I laid my head back over the arm of the sofa, closing my eyes for a moment while taking a deep cleansing breath. The adrenaline had waned about halfway home during the drive and it was a struggle to stay awake in the car. These past few days had been exhausting both mentally and physically. My body ached from packing up what we managed to fit into the car.

  I found it odd that as an athlete, being in top form I still felt sore from an activity that was out of the ordinary. I thought for a moment that it might serve as a good lesson to use as Luke’s trainer, maybe take a day and have him change up his routine for something different.

  I had been contemplating taking on some new clients at our gym. There were three more people wanting to train with me throughout the week and they weren’t balking at the prices. It was worth considering at least.

  I lifted up, finishing off my beer then setting the glass bottle on the coaster. Mom was always a stickler for coasters and it was something I had bought for myself the first day of getting my own apartment. Silly maybe, but now the connection to Mom made it an important decision. I leaned back again with my eyes closed, glad that I had listened to Mom for at least one thing.

  *****

  Luke and Devon went back in the house after finishing their second beer. Quietly they entered the kitchen area seeing that both of the girls had fallen asleep in the living room. Devon cleared the trash from the kitchen island and placed the beer bottles inside the bag quietly.

  “Hey, I’m going to get going. Let Tara know I didn’t want to wake her. I will take this out with me. See you on Friday?”

  Luke nodded. “I won’t be here on Friday, but I’ll be around. I’ve got to head back up to CyberPro Thursday evening. I was hoping that Roxy could come with me this time, but I don’t know now. I don’t want to pressure her.”

  “Ask her. Let her make her own decision. She’ll probably want to.” Devon glanced between Roxy and Tara. They were beautiful. He should consider himself lucky to be with Tara, but he could not get past more than kissing her. His heart still longed for Roxy. Now was not the time to break up with Tara, but eventually, he would have to tell her that he didn’t care for her in a romantic way. It didn’t seem to matter who he dated, it still wasn’t Roxanne. He sighed, glancing down at his keys. “Alright well I’m going to take off.”

  “Take care man. I hope you solve the case soon!” Luke meant it more than Devon would know. He hoped that somehow, Devon would get to the bottom of this, solve the case, and arrest the guilty parties even if it meant that he wouldn’t have a job. No job was worth his soul and he felt like this was stealing his soul to think that he might be part of a company that was killing people like lab animals for experimentation. He watched Devon quietly move with a catlike stealth through the darkened room. Neither of the girls stirred when the door snicked shut.

  Luke moved to the sofa where Roxy was stretched out, her legs propped up on the cushions, her arms tucked under her head. She was beautiful. Her dark features contrasting her clear light skin tone gave her a somewhat exotic look. He had always favored brunettes. Some of the world’s most beautiful women were brunette. Sure, there were
plenty of beautiful blondes, but they all seemed to have the same features so that none of them stood out to him as remarkable. However, the ones that caught his attention were strikingly beautiful with dark hair and eyes.

  He swiped a lock of Roxy’s hair behind her ear as he bent down over her, lightly kissing her lips. They were velvety soft.

  He knelt down on the floor in front of the sofa admiring her. She was solid muscle, not an ounce of fat anywhere. She had shown him pictures of herself much plumper, and she was still beautiful. He watched the slow rise and fall of her chest in a stage of deep sleep. He recalled when she had opened up to him.

  From the first day he had worked up the nerve to ask her to train him until now, he was still amazed that she was with him.

  They had easily fallen into a routine. She began to spend more time at his apartment than hers, but she kept her own for those days of hard studying, test preparation, and when she needed private space.

  After just one month of training, he could see a marked improvement in his agility as well as stamina. Their first match was looming just six weeks away. It was time to get stricter on their diets. He remembered every detail of that time.

  “Roxy, I can’t. You’re killing me babe. I know I asked you to train me and get me in shape but damn woman, you’re killing me here.” He stretched his long legs out on the sofa, with his feet in her lap. It was his reward for finishing the sprints in record time, a foot massage. He wiggled his toes as Roxy rubbed the lotion into his in-steps and the arch of his feet. The way she would use pressure with her thumbs and knead his feet was amazing. It would hurt at first, then he would feel incredibly relaxed and refreshed. She worked wonders with her hands and thought she could be a masseuse if she had desired.

  “You want to win, right?” Well, we have to make some changes in our diets. Not drastic. Trust me in this, OK? When I dropped” She was instantly overcome with panic. He could see it in her eyes, that fight or flight urge that suddenly gave her pause. “Hang on, I’ll be right back.”

  She practically ran to the bathroom as he stared after her with a puzzled expression. She glanced back offering him a weak smile just before ducking inside the bathroom.

  He couldn’t know what she felt at that Moment, but when she opened up a little later, he could imagine quite well from his own experience how she felt. Worries about what he would think of her knowing that she had once been heavier.

  She had wrestled with the pros and cons of sharing the intimate details of her past, deciding that total honesty was the best route, and if he rejected her then she wanted to know up front. How on earth she would doubt how he felt about her still seemed ridiculous, but he supposed that was part of accepting someone to love you forever and given what he now knew about her dad, it all made sense.

  “What is it Roxy? Did I upset you?” His brow was scrunched with worry and concern as he stepped towards her.

  “Um, no. Sit down Luke, we need to talk. There’s some things that, well, I’m not proud of but you should know.” I sat nervously as he took my hands in his.

  “What is it Roxy? I will try to change my diet, really. I was just giving you grief.” He lifted her chin to look into her eyes. When he saw the tears welling there, he squeezed her hand. “Tell me what’s bothering you. Is it something I said?”

  “No, Luke you’re fine. It’s not . . . Well” She let out a huge sigh. He could see that she was shaken, thinking that whatever it was, that he would dump her. Unless she had been sleeping around or had been secretly seeing her ex-boyfriend Devon, there was nothing that mattered so much that he would reject her. Even if it were those things, he was already in love with her. Sure, it would hurt, but unless she was breaking up with him, he would be there for the duration.

  She took a deep breath and exhaled slowly before beginning. “OK, I wasn’t always fit. In fact, I was quite large. I was fat all through high school, until the summer before my senior year.” She watched his face for reaction, determining whether to continue. When he showed no revulsion, she continued. “I uh, well I started training with a guy at a gym that my dad knew when my sister and I stayed with him over that summer. Dad pushed me to work out and paid for the gym membership because he didn’t want me to be fat. Between working fifty hours a week at a physical job and going to the gym, I dropped nearly fifty pounds. Then throughout the school year I dropped another fifteen.” She waited for his reaction nervously chewing her lip.

  He sighed. “Wow, Roxy. I had no idea.”

  Immediately she began to move away from him until he gently clasped her hands in his, looking into her eyes as he sat silent in his thoughts. Since she had opened up, so did he.

  “I uh, well when I graduated from high school I weighed over 300 pounds.”

  She froze, not expecting that. “You? Really? I have a hard time seeing you heavy.”

  He raised his brows giving her a smirk. “You’d never have looked twice at me then Roxy; I was just a fat geeky nerd kid. Then, in March of my senior year, my dad had a heart attack. My Mom had to buy a special casket for him because he was obese. I was obsessed with the size of the casket because I knew that I was nearly the same size as him, and he was fifty-four. This is sick, but when my aunts and uncles were all there in the room distracting my Mom, my cousin and I snuck back through the doors we had gone through to pick out the casket. We were being quiet, you know? So, I come to the first display that we had looked at and I climb up into it, and I barely fit. I Know it’s weird, don’t look at me like that.”

  “You actually climbed inside a casket?” I was shocked and a little amused.

  “Well, I tried. I barely fit though and I was stuck. My cousin tried to help, but in the process, we knocked the casket off the stand, and when it fell, I fell out of it. We ran out the outside exit door and around to the front of the funeral parlor. I didn’t want to explain to anyone what I had done or why. But, you see? I was as fat as my dad was and he died. That meant I could die and I didn’t want to die. I’d dropped thirty pounds by graduation, putting me right at three hundred and another twenty over the summer. When I started as a freshman, I was at two hundred and fifty-six. I’ve spent a lot of time doing cardio and trying hard to get myself into shape.”

  He reached over to a dog-eared yearbook he kept out so that he could always remind himself how far that he had come and opened it up for Roxy, showing his picture.

  She had to look close at his face and back to the picture. It was definitely him. “Wow Luke, I had no idea. What did you do to lose it? You look amazing and I never would have guessed that you were ever heavy.”

  She pulled up a couple pictures from her cell phone. She had destroyed most of her fat pictures but there were a few that she kept for reminders and for sentimental reasons. “This was me, my junior year, just before a party. There was a guy there - and we started dating that night. Then this one” she fingered through the pictures to the one of Chad and her when she was at her heaviest. “This is me tipping the scales at two hundred and fifty-four pounds.”

  “Who is the lucky guy?” He looked a little disappointed.

  “Ugh. That’s Chad Ramsey. When I came back home from my dad’s after my senior year, that fall Chad tried his best to fatten me back up. He had a thing for fat chicks, which it took me discovering that he was cheating on me to get that it wasn’t me, it was that I was a fat chick. Then I found out he had recorded us having sex and blasted it all over the internet. I kicked his butt when I broke up with him, but I threw a cheap shot at him, one that would get me banned from any dojo. I decided then he wasn’t worth my time.”

  Luke pulled her close. His lips were on hers, with soft, gentle, caresses. “Roxanne. You are beautiful whether you are thin or heavy. I’m glad you chose to be fit or I would never have met you so you can whip my ass into shape. But most importantly, I love the woman you are on the inside.”

  Their kiss deepened. Talk of our pasts forgotten as his palm brushed over her nipple, her fingers combing through hi
s thick hair as they forgot all else. Nothing else mattered at that point.

  He desired her. Thinking about that intimate time stirred his passion into flames. He bent forward kissing her more firmly, gently caressing down the side of her face with his finger.

  *****

  Slowly my eyes opened as I responded to his kiss.

  “Luke” it came out in a hoarse whisper. Offering a sheepish grin as I reached up, combing through his hair with my fingers.

  “Shhh. Tara is sleeping. What’s say we go into your bedroom so we can talk?”

  “Just talk?” I pushed my bottom lip out in a pout as I said it.

  “Talk first then we’ll see.” He offered his hand to lift me from the sofa.

  Quietly we tiptoed towards my room. While Luke locked the door, I slipped off my jeans and tossed them and the grungy shirt into the hamper.

  Luke came up behind me, wrapping his arms around my waist as he kissed the side of my neck. “I was admiring your beauty as you slept. Hated to wake you, but we haven’t had much time alone for several days.” He turned me in his arms so that I faced him, then lowered his lips to mine. Gently at first, breaking when he wanted to push forward because they did need to talk.

  “Roxy, I’m afraid I’ve gotten myself into a real mess with this company.” He guided me to the bed and laid down facing me, propped on one elbow with me on my back. He let his fingers play over the exposed skin of my torso as he continued. “When I was doing the Quality Control job that Mr. Reinholz instructed, which I still think is ridiculous but they are paying me a ridiculous amount so I do it without argument. Anyway, I was on the catwalks above the production floor and I saw one of the techs below watching a video of test subjects.”

  He let his fingers play a little lower on the concave indentation at my hipbone. “I’m not exactly sure what it is, I will have to go through the file completely, but I think they are using people as test subjects like they are lab animals.”