by Brent, Cora
Aiden answered on the second ring. “Taylor?” He sounded so much like my father. I’d forgotten that and it jarred me for a second.
“Yes, that’s still my name.” I swallowed and took a deep breath. “How are you, Aiden?”
“Jesus, I’ve been trying to reach you for months. You ignore my calls. I went to your last known address and some horrid girl claimed she didn’t know where you worked or where you were living now and that you skipped out on rent.”
“Ugh, she’s such a hair flipping two faced liar. I never skipped out on rent. She got pissed when I caught her stealing my underwear and then trying to sell it on Offer Up so she threw me out and said her boyfriend was moving in.”
“Oh.” A noise that sounded like a snort of laughter followed.
At least this conversation was going better than our last one. The last time we talked, Aiden accused me of playing dumb. He and Sierra assumed I was holding the map to the Briggs’ family buried treasure and I was just biding my time before I used it.
“Have you talked to Sierra lately?” he asked and I had a feeling he already knew the answer. My defenses rose. I remembered whose side he was on. Sierra’s husband and his gargoyle-faced brother were two of Aiden’s oldest pals.
“We haven’t spoken,” I said, choosing diplomacy for the moment.
“Why don’t we make plans for you to come to dinner?” my brother said and he didn’t sound like himself. He sounded fake and plastic. Like he was talking to one of his clients. “You haven’t seen the girls in a while. And I bet Sierra would want to be there.”
A cold finger of alarm tickled my spine. “And Peter too?”
“Sure, Peter will probably be there if his wife is. Why?”
Forget diplomacy. It was overrated. “Aiden, you know damn well Sierra hates my ever loving guts.”
My brother sighed. “She thinks you were always Dad’s favorite. His little princess. Everything was always for Taylor. She’s resentful.”
I couldn’t deny the fact that my father had favored me. Especially not when he’d told me so himself.
“I always loved you best. I’m so very sorry, honey. Goodbye.”
“What about you? Are you resentful too, Aiden?”
He took a long time to answer. “Was there a reason you called today, Taylor?”
My mouth was dry. I wished I had some water. “Yes. I was wondering something. I’ve run into some problems and I was curious whether you’d had any lately. Problems, I mean.”
“Problems.” His voice changed. The word sounded like a growl. “Yeah Taylor, I’ve got plenty of problems. My real estate business is in the toilet because people are reluctant to trust the son of a notorious embezzler. Ella had to stop working because of her fibromyalgia and she keeps getting denied disability. I’m six months behind on my mortgage payments. The girls had to switch schools because I couldn’t afford tuition anymore. Regan’s medication costs a small fortune every month. My stomach ulcers keep me awake every night. I guess you could say I’ve got some problems.”
“Look on the bright side, at least you’re not living in your car and eating beef jerky for dinner,” I muttered.
“What?”
“Nothing. Bad joke.”
He wasn’t in the mood for jokes. “Let’s set aside all the phony politeness, shall we? You’ve got to come clean sometime. What the fuck happened that day, Taylor? What did he tell you? Where is the money? Where is the fucking money?”
I threw the phone on the passenger seat as if it had echoed a fateful shotgun blast. I hated remembering. My hands shook so I squeezed them around the hot surface of the steering wheel to make them stop. The connection with my brother hadn’t been severed and I could hear his voice from here.
“Taylor? Taylor! I didn’t mean to say that.”
I gingerly picked up the phone by its edge, pressed the button to end the call and stowed the phone in my purse. A bead of sweat trickled down the side of my face. I’d shut off the engine when I parked and in spite of the open window the temperature inside the car was getting pretty toasty. I flicked the key in the ignition and blasted the air conditioner. The shiver that coursed through me had little to do with the cool air.
My phone rang again. I turned up the radio to drown out the buzzing noise and pulled out of the Target parking lot.
The weekend stretched ahead with an ominous number of hours to fill. I’d taken today and tomorrow off from work because I assumed I’d be busy getting situated in my new place. And Closet Exchange was always closed on Sundays. Given the fact that I had no idea when my bank funds would be restored I had to pinch what few pennies were in my possession.
Then I remembered my boss. Cynda was a kind person. So many times she’d asked me if all was well and so many times I’d flashed a fake smile and lied. If I went to her now and told her my predicament she might have some advice.
“There’s no shame in accepting help when it’s offered.”
Kellan had said that. In spite of all that had gone so very wrong today, the thought of him made me smile. If he was here he would surely know what to say to make me laugh.
I’d forgotten that Cynda had gone to a retreat in Sedona. Her sister Greta was managing the store in her absence. Greta was the diametrically opposed version of Cynda. Her signature color was olive drab and she radiated the warmth of a meat locker. I might have been insulted that she scowled at the sight of me but I’d learned that was just how her face looked. She was moodily sorting a pile of paperwork at the counter when I arrived.
“Did Cynda mention if she’ll be back in town on Sunday?” I asked. “I really need to talk to her.”
The papers shuffled. “Does no one here know how to organize a damn thing?” Her voice resembled a foghorn.
“I’m sorry, I don’t handle the invoices.”
She looked at me. “Why are you here? You’re not working today.”
“I was hoping to talk to Cynda.”
“She’ll be back next Saturday.”
“Next Saturday? Like a week from tomorrow?”
Greta regarded me as if I’d just asked her how to spell the word cat. “Yes, that’s what next Saturday means.”
I smothered my attitude. Greta was my surrogate boss for the next week and I couldn’t piss her off. “I don’t suppose there is any way I can get in touch with her, is there?”
“Of course not. She’s on some kind of crackpot cleansing retreat where no technology or plumbing is allowed.”
“Oh.” That was not good news. I’d been planning to ask for a small advance of my paycheck since the cash in my wallet would only stretch so far. Fat chance Grim Greta was going to cooperate.
I swallowed a thick lump of pride. “Listen, I was supposed to have the rest of today and tomorrow off but my plans have changed so is it okay if I come in and pick up some extra hours?”
“No.” She didn’t even hesitate. The hair on her chin mole vibrated. “We’ll be closing in less than two hours and tomorrow I have all the staff I need.”
I bit down sharply on the inside of my lip so I wouldn’t say something obscene. “All righty then. I guess I’ll see you on Monday.”
“Be on time or don’t come in.”
She was just a bowl of sugar, this Greta.
I left. If Alyssa was working I would have stopped to talk to her. We weren’t great friends or anything but she didn’t look at me like I was a wad of street gum and I could use the positive reinforcement right about now.
Rather than return to my car and indulge in a panic attack I walked to a nearby convenience store and carefully selected ten dollars worth of food. I passed Sol on the way and suffered a twinge of longing as I remembered having lunch there with Kellan. Sometimes, especially in the very late hours when I was alone and clutching my only steak knife in case someone was unwise enough to bother me, I tried to guess what Kellan say if he was there. I thought of it like a game. What Would Kellan Say? Kellan would definitely be amused to hear that he’d won a
job as my imaginary friend.
Not that I was obsessing about Kellan Gentry. I wasn’t remembering how good his body felt against mine.
Well, not more than a few times a day at any rate.
It’s just that Kellan was a much more pleasant topic than anything else in my head.
Such as inconvenient banking debacles. And furious and possibly homicidal relations.
Or the blast of a shotgun.
The way it tears out your soul as it reverberates though an empty house.
There are things that people never think about when they have homes to go to. They never think about the difficulty of filling time. To ordinary people, time is something there is never enough of. But now, when I wasn’t at work, time had become something of an inconvenience. I knew I was luckier than some. No one would guess I was homeless by looking at me. I’d never been kicked out of a restaurant for lingering too long or urged to move along if I sat on a bench in the mall for hours.
I decided to go to a movie. A small theater just south of campus showed second run movies on smaller than average screens and admission was only three dollars. I lounged in a nearly empty row, ate the small container of corn flakes I’d purchased at the convenience store and tried to figure out who had which superpowers in the film’s enormous cast of characters.
Three hours later the movie ended and I was feeling a little claustrophobic so I decided to go sit by the lake until it was late enough to go park on a quiet residential street for the night. I never parked in exactly the same place twice and I always looked for houses that had no lights on and no cars in the driveway, figuring they’d be less likely to form any curiosity about a strange car by the curb. It was a good theory that worked most of the time.
There was a moment of panic when I turned my key in the car’s ignition. A hideous mechanical noise growled at me from somewhere unseen and my blood ran cold.
“No,” I told the car, as if I was speaking to a dog that could be trained. “I don’t have the time or the money to take care of you right now.”
After a deep breath I tried the ignition again.
And the car, in all its inanimate sympathy, decided to start.
I relaxed and drove two miles to park in the same lot where I’d been the night of The Outpost. Being there again reminded me of Kellan. For a second I fantasized about running into him. I wouldn’t have minded at all.
The lake looked pretty in the twilight. I strolled beside the low wall that bracketed the water and pretended it was the ocean. When my mother was alive we used to rent a house on Balboa Island for two weeks every summer. I hadn’t seen the ocean in years.
An empty bench beckoned and I took it. I wished I had a book. In my old life, reading hadn’t been a hobby since my grade school years but now my genre of choice was horror. The more dystopian the better. Somehow it was encouraging to read stories where people had much bigger problems than I did, where zombies might eat your face off if you turned the wrong corner. Tomorrow morning I’d visit the library. I’d spend the day hopping between coffee houses and reading. Not a terrible way to kill time. Not as good as curling up in my own place but there was nothing to be done about that right now.
And as I watched the distant traffic zoom over the bridge I tried to cheer myself up. At least this awful day was nearly over. It certainly couldn’t get any worse.
I was wrong.
Very wrong.
Catastrophically wrong.
Chapter Ten
Kellan
“Imma tell you a story,” squawked the guy at my back before he lurched into me.
“Sorry, bro,” he said, swiveling his head around to see who he’d inconvenienced. He was obviously wasted, inexplicably accessorized with mirrored sunglasses after dark, and his shaggy hair peeked out from underneath a black and white baseball cap that said ‘YOU WISH’.
In other words, he was precisely the kind of guy you could expect to be elbowed by on a crowded balcony at a college party.
“No worries,” I told him and returned my attention to what I’d been doing. Which was grazing my boner against the navel of the girl whose hands were exploring my back pockets.
“We could go inside,” Aimee purred, tickling my ear with the tip of her tongue. “And talk there.”
“Even more loud and crowded inside,” I warned, rolling my hips and enjoying the way she bit her lip and stifled a moan when I hit a good spot.
“We’ll find a quiet place.” She was breathing hard, hands still in my pockets and urging me to grind harder. “God, Kel, I’ve wanted this for a while. You have too, right?”
Sure, the thought had occurred to me before. I’d known Aimee for a few years and even though we’d teased each other with smiles and banter she’d always had a boyfriend.
She no longer had a boyfriend.
And I had no reason to turn her down.
“You sure do have an answer for everything.”
Taylor’s voice taunted me inside my head. It wasn’t the first time. Whenever I came across a few quiet moments I couldn’t stop myself from replaying our conversations. I wished she’d given me her number. I wished I knew where she was tonight.
“Kellan?” Aimee was uncertain now, biting the corner of her lip and staring up at me, perhaps sensing that my mind had committed treason and strayed to another girl.
I slipped my arm around her shoulders. She wore a tight red top that offered me a good view from here. I wouldn’t complain about seeing that shirt on the floor before the night was over.
“Let’s go,” I said and kissed the top of her head to let her know that at this moment I was all about her and only her.
I hadn’t come to the party with plans to get trashed in the conventional sense. I’d seen the damage the bottle can do and a light buzz was as much as I was willing to tolerate. Anyone who said that a good time couldn’t be had without mind altering help was a jackass. Tonight I’d consumed less than half a beer and already I was imagining all kinds of creative things to try in the very near future. Aimee had always struck me as a feisty girl. She’d be game.
We wove through the crowded room with my arm still around her while her right hand snuck beneath my shirt and one sly finger slid inside the top of my jeans. Yeah, this should be fun.
“You really do seem like a good guy.”
Fucking hell.
Get out of my head, Taylor!
“Fucking hell.”
Wait, that wasn’t me.
Aimee inhaled sharply after she swore. She’d gone rigid beneath my arm.
“What’s the matter?” I asked her over the pounding music. It was a miracle no one had called the cops yet. Someone shouted my name. No surprise there. I’d taken the summer off from the social scene but in regular times I was a fixture at parties at The Palms. I held up a hand and waved without knowing exactly who I was waving to.
“Absolutely nothing is the matter!” she shouted in my ear and threw her arms around my neck. Our mouths connected. The kiss was sloppy and not especially sexy but hey, they were still soft lips and her tongue felt good and my hands were finding interesting places to hang out.
Aimee moaned and dug harder. She drilled her tits into my chest and shifted the position of my arms until her ass was in my hands. We were actually making quite a spectacle and even in this tumult of bodies people were starting to pay attention.
“You were thinking about it.”
“Thinking about what, Taylor?”
“The night we fucked each other raw less than an hour after we met, Kellan.”
God. Damn. It.
All I wanted to do was put a happy ending on the evening.
Was that really so much to ask?
Chances were high that nothing meaningful would come out of messing around with Aimee. She was just getting out of a relationship and anyway, we didn’t have that vibe between us. The unspoken understanding was this would be a one time thing.
Even as these thoughts ran through my mind while Aimee sucke
d on my neck and prodded me to keep squeezing her ass, something felt off and not just on my end. She took a break from trying to rub one out in the middle of the packed living room. That’s when I took notice of how she kept craning her neck to see something specific.
Or someone specific.
There he was. Her ex boyfriend. His name was Franco and he liked to shoot his mouth off about how he had mafia connections back east. All the surveys said he was just full of noise. He’d been in some of my classes, always arguing with the instructor and wasting everyone’s tuition dollars with his bullshit. I’d always thought Aimee was too good for him and wasn’t stunned to hear they’d broken up over the summer.
Now, in a blatant Fuck You move, he’d shown up at Aimee’s party with another girl on his arm. From the way he kept smirking in Aimee’s direction he was clued in to the fact that his appearance was royally pissing her off. Maybe I should have offered to hustle him out of here. He probably weighed a buck fifty and his arms resembled hairy noodles but sometimes those wiry guys could be more of a pain in the ass than they appeared.
And besides, I hated fights. In my experience, fists were favored by neurotic dickheads with macho delusions of grandeur. And they usually had the brains of your average jackrabbit.
So instead of puffing out my chest I did Aimee a favor. I fisted her hair in my hand and pulled her in for a lengthy kiss. No doubt Franco’s blood was boiling ten feet away.
She smiled at me when we came up for air. “Thanks for that.”
“My pleasure.”
“Should we go get something to drink?”
“Yeah sure, let’s go get a drink.”
Getting to the kitchen was tougher than it sounded. As we threaded through the mass of humanity some asshole started flicking the main light switch on and off. This building was in the oldest part of the complex, constructed when open floor plans were not in vogue, and so the kitchen was an entirely separate space. Since the room was also the source of all the alcohol there was a revolving door of activity. Additionally, a game of strip poker was being played at the table.
