by Misty Simon
But Ben wasn’t even looking at me as he stared at something on the counter in front of him. I couldn’t really see what it was other than a continuous page of long numbers with some kind of symbols next to them. For all I knew it could as easily be a random hunting and pecking by a kid, like the ones my sisters sometimes sent me from their spawn—I mean children. Or it could be a bank statement. Or something else entirely, since I’d never seen a bank statement similar to this one.
But I would have to wait to find out what it was because right then a strobing light came through the window. My heart sped up like I had just come running across the room, or finished messing around with Ben. It looked like someone was outside looking in at us. Crap.
Chapter Fourteen
“Should we duck?” I whispered to Ben as I pulled him down next to me behind the counter. I knew it was probably dumb; this house had a bunch of windows. The light had definitely come over across the window where we had been standing a moment ago. I figured we had maybe two seconds before someone either called the police or came crashing in through the door.
“What should we do?” I whispered when Ben still hadn’t said anything. I was a hairbreadth away from running from the room screaming.
Ben pulled my arm and crept toward a door I hadn’t seen before. If he thought I was going to get into the pantry, he seriously did not know me. Nothing good ever came of me being in a closet. Take the one time I almost peed myself in the closet in the back of The Masked Shoppe when someone locked me in there.
“I’m not going to go in a pantry.”
“Yes,” he whispered back at me, continuing to tug me along toward the door.
“No. I’m serious. I’m not going in another pantry. I can’t stand it.” I pulled back, trying to keep out of the dreaded small room.
“Okay!” he said so fiercely it almost came out at normal voice level. “It’s a freaking back door. Will you please hurry up?”
I started moving about that time. Then I ended up almost smacking him into the door because I was now pushing him. The light swept right in front of us. I skittered back to stay out of it.
“I can hear you in there, Ivy. Why don’t you come out and save us all some time?” The light flashed along the back window as Jared’s voice came through loud and clear.
Ben and I looked at each other, then looked at the small square of window covered by only a thin piece of curtain. What were we going to do? Was Jared here in an official capacity, or had he just happened to stroll by, catching us in the act? Did we stand up to say hi while we tried explaining our way out of this? Or should we brazen our way through? Argh!
Ben didn’t give me a chance to make a decision because he opened his mouth before my poor brain could process the options.
“Hey, Jared.” Ben got up from the floor, pulling me with him. He opened the door to a very haggard-looking Officer Jared in plain clothes. His hair was sticking up all over his head at odd angles, but not in a good way. Bella would have been appalled to see the state of his hair alone, not to mention the way his eyes were bloodshot and his cheeks sunken. In short, he looked like shit. My softy heart went out to him. But what was I to do? I knew where my loyalties lay. I couldn’t change them, no matter how sad he appeared.
“Hey, Ben.” Jared ran a rough hand from his forehead to his chin. It looked like a move he had done a million times and was as weary now as when he started. “What are you doing here?”
He looked so pathetic I wanted to give him a hug and tell him it was going to be all right. But I couldn’t promise that at all. Plus, it would be terrible to give him false hope. I really wished Bella would talk to him.
“Just checking around,” Ben said, holding the door open, looking left and right over Jared’s head. “Why don’t you come in so no one calls your department to say someone is breaking in?”
But Jared was shaking his head before Ben was done talking. “You all need to come out. You’re done here for the night. Someone already called the station complaining about Trev’s ghost flickering lights over and around the house. If you come with me now, I won’t take you in. But if you’re going to resist, I’m going to have to write a report.” All of this was said in an almost monotone voice. My heart broke all over again.
But I wasn’t so focused on Jared that I didn’t notice the way Ben’s hand clenched around the doorknob until his knuckles turned white. Were we about to get in trouble? That’s all I needed right now. I finally had permission from one end of the police department, so of course I was about to get in trouble from another. That’s the way things went in my world.
I turned pleading eyes to Ben, then shot them back to Jared. Jared looked completely unmoved. His resolve seemed entirely firm despite his pinched features. I turned the eyes back to Ben. Crap! They didn’t appear to be working there, either, since no one was actually looking at me. Ben and Jared were locked in a stare down. They had nothing for me. Dammit!
Then Ben said words that seemed to put the life back into Jared. “What do you want to make this go away?”
“I’d overlook it all,” Jared said quickly, as if he’d been thinking about this for days, “if you’ll make Bella at least talk to me.”
Ben’s hand unclenched from the doorknob. He looked over at me, raising his eyebrows in question. It was on the tip of my tongue to say we already had permission to be here. Little would be gained by making a deal when we weren’t technically out of bounds. But the question communicated in Ben’s eyes was more urgent than that. I sighed. Apparently, I was going to have to tell Bella the only way to keep my ass out of jail was if she would come out of her self-imposed silence with Jared. Just freaking peachy.
Yeah, I didn’t think it was going to turn out well either. But I didn’t know how badly it was going to go until an hour later. Stay tuned. You’re going to want to witness this.
****
“Bella, I need your help. Right now.” It was almost exactly the same thing Bella had said to me less than a week ago. I hoped she would pick up on the same urgency the way I had when she’d called from jail.
“I don’t have anything more to give,” Bella answered over the phone, sounding very un-Bella like, dull even.
“No, no, no! Don’t say that. I need something from you. You have to help me, or I’m not going to be able to help you.” I gave her a minute to process my words, waiting for her to say, or do, something. But she waited me out, not saying anything at all. All right. Where did I go from here? I had expected her to jump to my assistance the way I had hopped-to for her. Well, then. I guessed I was back to square one.
“Okay,” I said, starting again. “I’m just going to blurt it out. I’m also going to assume you’re still listening as long as I’m not treated to the wonderful sound of the dial tone. You know how the continuing buzzing noise makes my brain shake.” I was babbling, stalling to not say what I really wanted from her. My confidence in our best-friendship was a little shaken with her continued silence.
She gave me no other choice. I blew out a breath, then went for it. “I told Jared you would talk to him so he won’t file a report about finding us at Trev’s house wandering around and sticking our noses in where they don’t belong.”
The silence on the other end of the line was ominous (great word, no real desire to savor it). I gulped, waiting for the dial tone to irritate me.
A loud blaring sound hit me square in the inner ear, throwing me off balance. I yelled and pulled the phone away from my head. Good God! Was she trying to make me deaf? She was blowing one of those air horns directly in my freaking ear.
I was a second away from hanging up when the blaring stopped, to be replaced by sobbing. The click of the phone being turned off greeted me next, followed by the dulcet tones of the dial tone softly whispering to me.
I knew what I had to do but dreaded it nonetheless. Yes, a few months ago I had waded right into the middle of some messy family stuff when Martha was having issues with relatives and my dad. And yes, I had
survived the encounter. But this was different—totally different. I’d been through a lot, but nothing like this before. And the freeze she’d given me when another of her friends had come back into town months ago and showed an immediate dislike for me hadn’t left my mind, either. Oy!
But there was a plan, if I had the cojones to follow it.
And surprisingly I did. I know. Go me!
“What?” Bella said, whipping open the front door of her house. She stood staring at me with her hair sticking up from her head at odd angles. Surprisingly, it reminded me of Jared’s hair. Now, that’s a real couple, when your hair starts resembling your partner’s. I would have snickered at my own little internal joke, but Bella looked so miserable I couldn’t fully enjoy it.
I stepped in through the doorway, skirting around her before I said anything. I was a little surprised she let me over the threshold, but I certainly wasn’t going to question my good luck at this point. I was just thankful she hadn’t greeted me at the door with a punch in the nose.
She closed the door behind me. The sound of the lock engaging rang like a death toll. Thank goodness I knew her well enough to be sure she wasn’t particularly violent. At least not toward me, I amended as she yanked open the refrigerator, took out a bottle of Kahlua, and slammed it onto the counter next to her. She snatched a glass from the cabinet, then slammed that down, too. Her hair went flying around her head. Her eyes narrowed when I gasped at her.
“Don’t say a word.” She slammed another glass down from the cabinet and cranked the cap off the bottle of coffee-colored liquor. I wasn’t exactly in the mood to get my drink on, but I certainly wasn’t about to tell Bella that.
I clamped my lips together, the urge to sit on my hands overwhelming. I followed the instinct as I took up a place at the table in her immaculate kitchen. At least I knew the whole world hadn’t gone to pot, since her house didn’t resemble her appearance. My faith in my safe world was not completely restored, but it was getting there.
She sloshed the liquid into the two squat glasses, nearly threw them onto the table in front of me, and then did throw herself into the chair across from me. Apparently, she was not having a good night.
“So, you talked to Jared, did you?” she said, anger edging her words. Her eyes were puffy, and I still couldn’t get over what a bird’s nest her hair was. I mean, I didn’t think even mine had ever been that bad, and I wasn’t a hairdresser, to say the least. But that wasn’t my immediate problem, so I put it aside to concentrate on what to say to her now.
“I couldn’t help but talk to Jared; he caught us at Trev’s. Someone had called in flickering lights as possible ghosts to the police station. He must have been the one sent out.” Though now that I thought about it, he hadn’t been in uniform. Hmm. Something to mention to Ben. Perhaps it was significant. Who the hell knew anymore?
“And you had to talk to him?” She shot a beady-eyed stare my way and swirled the contents of her glass.
“Well, what else was I supposed to do? It wasn’t like I could stand there and stare over his shoulder while he was talking about possibly throwing me in jail.”
“He actually did throw me in jail,” she said. I watched the stark sadness cloud her eyes. I couldn’t imagine what that must have been like, though I doubted he’d enjoyed putting his girlfriend behind bars any more than she’d enjoyed being there. Why couldn’t they just talk about it? Get it cleared up? But then I thought about the imbecile I’d been a few months ago about women throwing themselves at Ben uninvited. I could clearly see how an incident turned into a chasm with very little help from the two people standing on either side.
I put my hand on top of hers to keep her from taking another sip of the dark liquor. It was time to pull off the kid gloves and give it to her. There wasn’t going to a better opportunity to talk to her. Also, I didn’t want to have to pour her into bed if she got sloshed.
“Look,” I said, and she raised bleary eyes to me. “It must have been a total bitch to have Jared put you in the clink.” One little corner of her mouth lifted at my terminology; it was at least a miniscule sign of hope. “And I know things have been hectic down at the shop now that everyone seems to want their hair done by you.”
She nodded while her eyes drifted back over to her drink.
I moved it a little farther away, bringing her attention back to me. “I think you need to let go of some of this anger, Bella. Yell, scream, swear—like you told me to do a while ago. Let it all out, then talk to the people who are important to you. Talk to Jared.”
She snorted, cutting me off.
I tried again. “No, I’m serious. I didn’t think it was possible, but he almost looks worse than you do. How do you think he felt having to put you in handcuffs—outside of one of your kinky sex games—and put you behind bars? Have you looked at it from his perspective at all?”
I knew from the way she turned her body away from me she hadn’t. She avoided all eye contact, fiddling with a loose string on the hem of her T-shirt.
“Hey, a WHAM! T-shirt,” I said. “I totally remember my sisters wearing those. They had the serious hots for George Michael until that whole fiasco with the hole in the bathroom wall and stuff.”
A peal of laughter split the air, and it hadn’t come from me. I was still unsuccessfully trying to get the mental image of the bathroom stall divider out of my head. But at the sound, I whipped my head up to stare at Bella. She laughed and laughed, until I thought she was going to fall out of her chair and land on the floor, where she’d probably roll around on the tile. At least it looked clean. And the chair was low enough so she wouldn’t hurt herself.
I got up anyway, then knelt next to her chair, just in case. “What can I do to help?” The laughter was good to hear, but it had a slightly hysterical tinge to it. I had no idea what to do for her. I was a split second away from calling Ben over to the house when the laughing stopped. At that moment, the crying began.
I did call Ben. He and Bella had been friends on and off for years. I couldn’t understand word one of what she was saying through her sobs. I’m not ashamed to admit I hoped Ben could be a translator. I didn’t mind helping, but I couldn’t do a damned thing if I had no idea what was going on.
Ben showed up two minutes later, immediately snagging me for a brief kiss before going straight to Bella and holding her on his lap. I’ll admit here to a brief second of jealousy. I had never even tried to sit on Ben’s lap for any length of time, unless we were getting it on, because I was always afraid I would squish him. But in his arms Bella looked like spun cotton candy, and about as light.
I dumped the contents of both our glasses into the sink, then wiped down the counter. As I turned back to the pair, Ben smoothed Bella’s hair off her forehead and gave her a kiss on the temple.
“It’s going to be okay,” he said.
I almost believed him until a loud crash came from the front of the house and someone bellowed, “Bella!” like that deranged guy in A Streetcar Named Desire.
Chapter Fifteen
“I told you to wait outside,” Ben said, running an agitated hand through his hair.
Jared stood in the kitchen doorway simply drinking Bella in. His eyes were hungry, his hands clenching and unclenching at his sides. “I couldn’t. There’s been another burglary involving picture frames, and I got called in. I have to talk to Bella before I leave.”
So he hadn’t been on duty when he came swooping down on us at Trev’s. Hmmm. But I didn’t have enough time to fit this info into the overall scene. Bella was trying to back out of the room. She didn’t seem to care that she was treading all over my feet in her quest for freedom.
I held her arm firmly and thanked God I was a big girl. Bella might be strong, but she was still skinny, therefore no match for my bulk. “Give him five minutes,” I whispered. “And remember how you regretted being so judgmental toward me when you didn’t have all the facts and jumped to conclusions.”
The terror in her eyes did nothing fo
r my insides. I wanted to shelter her from all of this angst. Since that wasn’t possible, I decided to solve this fricking mystery right now to get Jackson off her back. It was the one tension I felt I could definitely help alleviate.
I motioned for Ben to follow me into the living room, leaving Bella with Jared in the kitchen. They would work it out, or not. Either way, I hoped Bella at least gave him a fair hearing, as she hadn’t done for me several months ago. She could be harsh when she wanted to be, especially if she felt someone had betrayed her. I hoped she’d put that aside to work through their troubles.
In the meantime, Ben was whispering things in my ear that I hadn’t caught because I had my internal monologue going. I caught him saying he had to go as he dashed a kiss on my cheek.
I was too stunned to move. He was leaving right at this moment? Leaving me with those two in the next room? No buffer between us? Oh, he was so getting the little towel after his shower in the morning.
****
After it had been quiet for about twenty minutes in the kitchen, I decided to peek my head in. If they had killed each other it would make my job a little harder, but the anticipation was more than I could handle.
I shouldn’t have worried. When my head poked around the corner, I got a brief glimpse of Jared kissing Bella. His hands were splayed along her neck and cheeks as he kept her in place. The intensity of the kiss, the heat, could almost be felt by yours truly over here, all the way across the tile. Yowza!
I backed out quickly. Sincerely hoping they would remember I was here and not start going at it on the kitchen table, I sat down on the couch. After five minutes and a desultory (woo-hoo! fantastic word) look through some star rag from the coffee table, Bella and Jared emerged from the kitchen into the living room. They were holding hands, which was sweet. And their hair was miraculously fabulous again, which was simply too weird for words. Bella’s sleek mahogany hair framed her face, falling down her back in gentle waves. Jared’s hair stuck up in all the right places, looking as if he’d finally mastered the gel.
