Dream Chaser - SETTING

by Ashley, Kristen

  He nodded, some tension I didn’t notice leaving his face.

  He didn’t want to lose me, freak me or land any unwitting pressure on me to do something I didn’t want to do.

  I might have failed to mention, I totally loved my boss.

  “We go this way, we’re gonna invest in a few things that’ll allow you to be more creative,” he continued. “Dorian and Lottie have brought me ideas for lights and lasers, sets and props and other shit. You got anything you need, depending on the cost, I’ll consider it.”

  “Can I Flashdance this mother?” I asked.

  “Girl, you dump a bucket of water on you and kick around wearing a wet teddy, I’ll give you a bonus,” he answered.

  Finally!

  My life was looking up.

  “I’m totally in,” I said.

  Smithie smiled at me.

  “Have you asked Pepper or Hattie?” I queried.

  “Pepper, last night. She’s in. Hattie’s up when she gets here.”

  “Smithie, I think this is a great idea,” I declared.

  He looked to Dorian.

  That message was clear.

  I turned to Dorian.

  “Ian, I think this is a great idea,” I told him.

  He tipped up his chin, cool as shit, but I saw his dimples popping.

  I smiled at him.

  And made a mental note to go out the next day and find a kickass red teddy.

  * * *

  The next morning, my phone rang, waking me up.

  I saw my alarm said eleven o’clock.

  That meant a solid seven hours of sleep.

  Things were looking up.

  I peered at the screen of my phone.

  It said MOM.

  Okay, that could mean things were going back down, if Brian and/or Angelica got hold of her.

  Or it could just mean she wanted to have Saturday lunch with her daughter.

  I reached out, grabbed my phone and took the call.

  “Hey, Mom,” I greeted.

  “What in the blazes is going on?” she asked.

  Yup.

  My luck.

  Things were going back down.

  “Mom—”

  “Now, Brenda called me, told me she had one helluva time calmin’ Angie down, she was beside herself, cryin’ and carryin’ on because you confronted her about finding a job and told her she wasn’t being a good mother.”

  Ohmigod!

  That woman was the worst!

  How had this escaped me for nearly ten years?

  “And Angie was in such a state, Brenda had to take the kids for the weekend, and she had plans this weekend she had to cancel so she wasn’t real thrilled you chose this time to share your thoughts with her daughter,” Mom kept going.

  I opened my mouth.

  But Mom wasn’t finished.

  “Now, between you and me,” she said, “I been thinking a lot, and not just lately, but for some time, that Angie needs to take a good hold on her bootstraps and pull those babies up. But you think maybe you and me, and maybe Brenda, and also Brian, could sit down and have a chat about it and how we’d approach it without you bein’ pissy about Angie calling you a morning after you had to dance to help out and you laying into her?”

  You know?

  Boone was right.

  It supremely sucked.

  But he was right.

  I was enabling this shit.

  By either not extricating myself, or not telling it like it was, I was part of the problem.

  No more.

  I had no reason whatsoever to shield Angelica from whatever shit was going to befall her because of her own actions.

  None at all.

  “Angie gets bi-monthly massages. She’d called me about a migraine which meant she needed my help with the kids, but she really just wanted to sleep in. She was having a facial that day. She goes out to lunch with her girlfriends, has food, wine, a good time. And she does it wearing designer flip-flops that cost over three hundred dollars that she hides from us because if we saw them, we wouldn’t give her money for her massages, her lunches, her facials and her designer shoes.”

  Mom said not one word.

  She didn’t even make a noise.

  So I kept going.

  “That morning, I came to the house and Portia had made breakfast for her and Jethro. Cereal. She also helped Jethro pack his lunch. And she stuffed his book bag. While Ang had a lie-in. The house was a mess. There was little food in the kitchen. But she had a facial planned.”

  Mom remained silent.

  “When I looked in on her, she asked me for money for a field trip for Jethro that I’m assuming she either already paid for, since this month you’ve given her a couple hundred, Brenda has given her a couple hundred, I’ve given her more than a couple hundred and Brian has given her two thousand.”

  That brought a gasp.

  I kept going.

  “Or she made it up, and that money was for her facial. It doesn’t matter. When I found out about all this and went back not an hour later, she was up, in the shower, had already stuffed my money in her wallet, but the laundry on the couch had not been sorted.”

  Mom finally spoke.

  “This can’t be true.”

  “It is,” I confirmed. “I have pictures. So yes. I went there and I confronted her for swindling thousands of dollars from me, you, Brenda, and I got in her shit about taking care of her kids and getting a job. And outside the fact both Angelica and Brian have now cut me off from the kids, I don’t regret it.”

  “Brian?”

  “She’s been on to him too. And he says she needs ‘me time’ after all that’s befallen her. But no one had a gun to her head to date Brian, move in with him, get pregnant by him, get pregnant again by him, and then do shit about it when he started drowning himself in a bottle. That’s not on her. That’s on Brian. But the rest, that’s hers. She needs to own it. I can see being twenty-two and suddenly facing a life with two kids, no man, little work experience would be scary as hell. I might be wrong, Mom, but when you have two kids, you don’t have the luxury of taking years to sort your shit out. You lick your wounds on the go and keep motoring. And I doubt you’ll think I’m wrong, because you might not have been that young when it happened to you, but you licked your wounds on the go and kept motoring.”

  It took a sec for Mom to speak again.

  “How did you find out all of this?”

  “Lottie’s friends, the commandos. I don’t know why one of them got curious,” that was a lie, obviously, but Mom didn’t need to know that, because Mom never needed to know about Boone, “but he did. He found it out and he shared it with me.”

  “That’s a little…invasive, sugarsnap.”

  I loved it when my mom called me “sugarsnap.”

  She called Brian “honeycrunch” and I loved that too.

  It was sweet.

  In this instance, I wasn’t about to take her careful admonishment softened by a “sugarsnap.”

  “You’re right. It was. But that’s negated by the fact that Ang has been playing all of us for years. Mom, she wears three-hundred-and-fifty-dollar flip-flops and the kids are eating Cap’n Crunch for breakfast.”

  I had silence again from Mom.

  I’d said my piece, so I waited through it.

  She sounded a whole lot different when she spoke again.

  “Do you still have those pictures?”

  Um…

  Hell.

  I knew that tone.

  Mom was again pissed.

  No, she was morally outraged.

  No, that wasn’t right.

  She was grandmotherly outraged.

  Crap, Ang was in for it.

  “Mom, I told you this so you wouldn’t be grifted by her anymore, and straight up, so you wouldn’t be pissed at me. I think we need to let Ang and Brian and Brenda, if she doesn’t cotton on, handle this how they handle it from here on out.”

  “I think Brenda should know that
she’s had to cancel a weekend up in Estes Park because her twenty-seven-year-old daughter was throwing a tantrum,” Mom stated firmly.

  I drew a long breath into my nose, but I said nothing.

  “May I have those pictures?” she requested.

  “Mom—”

  “Kathryn,” she snapped.

  “You can have those pictures,” I muttered.

  “What? Speak distinctly, Kathryn Rose Jansen.”

  “Yes, Mom. You can have those pictures.”

  “I’ll be over in an hour. I won’t invite you to come along as I go have my chat with Brenda. You’ve had enough drama. But would you like to have lunch with your mother before I set out on this delightful task?”

  I fought back laughter but didn’t stop my smile because she couldn’t see me.

  I totally dug my mom.

  I got my toughness from her.

  I also got my sarcasm from her.

  And it was only my niece and nephew lately who got it from me, but I got my mushiness from her too.

  “I’d love to.”

  “Are you dancing tonight?” she asked.

  “No,” I answered.

  She sounded surprised. “A Saturday off?”

  “I asked Smithie for a rotation of them. Tips are the best on the weekends, but sometimes I just want to pretend I’m normal and have a weekend night off.”

  “Normal, sugarsnap, I fear I’ve failed at instilling in you, is not what you should be shooting for. You’re one of a kind, Kathryn. And there’s little I’m proud of in my life, but I sure am proud of that.”

  Okay, again, I totally dug my mom.

  “Stop being gushy,” I demanded.

  “Whatever,” she said. “See you in an hour.”

  We hung up and I was getting out of the shower, when I heard my phone buzz with a text.

  I dried off, wrapped up in a towel, padded down the hall and snatched my phone up to look at the screen.

  From an unknown, it said,

  Now you have my number.

  For a second, I didn’t know what the hell that was.

  Then came,

  Program it.

  And next time you’re kidnapped…

  Use it.

  Ohmigod.

  Boone!

  Why was he texting me?

  Why did he want me to have his number?

  Okay, so that kiss the other night didn’t seem like a good-bye kiss.

  But he’d just acquiesced to me saying there would never be anything between us.

  And after he’d laid that phenomenal kiss on me, he’d walked out.

  So maybe it was a parting-shot kind of kiss that said, “We’re not going anywhere, all right, but that’s what you’ll be missing.”

  Which kinda wasn’t nice.

  Then again, if I’d lived my whole life never having experienced that kiss, that would totally suck.

  And in the end, we were still acquaintances. We had shared friends.

  There would be times when we wouldn’t be able to avoid each other. Lottie and Mo’s impending wedding, for one. The Memorial Day barbecue Mag and Evie were having, another.

  So maybe this was a kind of badass olive branch.

  We had our thing, we had it out, we’re moving on, but since we can’t avoid each other entirely, we should try to get along.

  Bearing that in mind, I programmed him in and texted back.

  Roger that.

  You’re programmed and my first call

  after my next abduction.

  I’d gone back into the bathroom (and yeah, I took my phone, just in case he texted back, because we were moving on, but I couldn’t just turn off how I felt for Boone, it’d take time) when he texted back.

  I was mid-swipe of toner when I stopped toning altogether, grabbed my phone and read,

  Not funny.

  He was wrong.

  Because reading his text, it hurt just a little bit, having to give a go to this possible “friend” thing with Boone.

  But I still laughed.

  Chapter Five

  By a Mile

  Ryn

  That night, I sat scrunched up in the corner of my couch, wearing a pair of short-short cutoffs I’d fashioned from a pair of jeans I owned way back in high school (so they were uber faded, uber soft, and uber cool). On top I had on a hugely oversized black-and-white-striped long-sleeve tee that was so OTT on the oversize, the shoulder drop went to my elbow (but the sleeves were designed shorter to allow for it, they still hugged the apple of my palms).

  I had the shades down and the ID channel on (the better to freak myself out with all the deliciously creepy true crime stuff I was gonna watch that night).

  In other words, I was settled in for an awesome evening.

  I was hungry so I should be thinking about food.

  But I did not have my eyes to the TV.

  I also did not open up DoorDash and order food.

  I had my knees to my chest, my feet in the cushion, my phone to my face, and what I was doing was scrolling through and rereading the weirdly long text string I’d accumulated in one day with Boone.

  Now you have my number.

  Program it.

  And next time you’re kidnapped…

  Use it.

  Roger that.

  You’re programmed and my first call

  after my next abduction.

  Not funny.

  Kinda funny.

  Hawk was taken once.

  You can ask his wife Gwen how she felt when

  she was texted the pic of him hanging from

  a hook.

  Eek!

  Yeah.

  Okay.

  I give in.

  Kidnappings are not funny.

  She can be reasonable.

  I try not to be. There’s no fun

  in being reasonable.

  Great.

  I will point out, you joked about it first.

  I was being serious.

  Eek! X2.

  What are you doing?

  What?

  Now?

  No, in 2038 when the AI cyborgs take over the

  earth.

  Yeah, now.

  He can be sarcastic.

  This observation is not an answer to

  my question.

  I’m having lunch with my mother and

  she’s giving me the evil eye for texting.

  Sorry, let you go.

  Thanks. Later.

  Boone?

  Yeah?

  Done with lunch with Mom.

  Let me guess. Your sister-in-law was the

  main topic of convo.

  They never got married. Just lived in sin.

  But yeah. Angelica dominated discussion.

  You tell your mom about her?

  Yeah.

  And?

  She’s ticked.

  Appropriate response.

  This is kinda the worst.

  I bet.

  Brian called yesterday morning. He’s

  backing Ang’s play of cutting me off

  from the kids.

  Fuck, Ryn.

  Yeah. That phone chat was really

  not fun.

  I’m sorry. That sucks. But if you think

  about it, it’s not unexpected.

  I hear that. I guess you can be addicted to

  alcohol *and* being a selfish bitch.

  Dysfunction is hard to shake.

  This is bumming me out.

  Done, except they’ll figure it out, Ryn.

  It won’t be easy losing you.

  Thanks, Boone.

  They’re cute.

  What?

  Your niece and nephew. Saw you walking

  in the school with them. They’re cute.

  They’re the best.

  Names?

  Portia and Jethro.

  Jethro?

  Shut up. It’s making a comeback.

  Says the doting aunt.

  Of course.r />
  Gotta go. At the store.

  Right. Later.

  And that was it.

  Though when he cut it off, I buried deep how disappointed I was that I was no longer engaged with him.

  Connected to him.

  It wasn’t like the texts came fast and furious. That exchange lasted hours.

  But his last was definitely a shutdown.

  And I wondered if he had plans with his other chick and didn’t want me texting while he was with her. If, say, he was at the store and buying the ingredients to make her dinner, or she’d sent him a list for her to make dinner for him.

  Yeah, he’d told me he was taking me out that night.

  But I’d again shot him down, so it would not surprise me he made alternate plans.

  He was clearly all in for this friends thing.

  And I was not.

  But I had zero willpower to stop myself replying to him.

  And right then, it could not be denied, I was scrolling through my phone, reliving our sharing, at the same time kinda hoping another text would come through.

  I nearly dropped my phone when I jumped so bad because there was a knock at my door.

  I stretched in order to arch over the arm of my couch to look through the doorway toward my front door, which had an oval of glass in it, a filmy curtain over it, and Boone’s long body could be seen through the curtain.

  “What the hell?” I whispered, my heart beginning to rap a hard tattoo in my chest, my palms feeling funny, my skin feeling shivery.

  I uncurled, put my feet to the floor and moved to the door.

  I unlocked it, opened it and was assaulted with the one-two punch of deliciousness that was the sight of Boone free of a filmy curtain and the smell of fried chicken.