Nobody's Girl

by Love, Michelle

  I lift her up and place her on the seat of the truck. She slides all the way over.

  I look over at her and can’t help but to feel awful. “Eden knows it’s not really happening, Ally. I’ll have a talk with him.”

  Ally’s car is still not back when I pull into the garage. “Laura is probably fuming by now,” I say.

  I take Ally by the hand again. “Come on, All. Let’s face the wrath of Laura together. Maybe that way it won’t be so bad.”

  “I know we’re in trouble,” I tell Laura as we enter the kitchen.

  “No, you just missed breakfast,” she tells us, rinsing the dishes and putting them in the dishwasher.

  “Let me help you, Laura,” Ally says.

  “No, Ally. Where the hell did you go?” Why didn’t you take me?” she asks us.

  I realize I still have Ally’s hand in mine. I let go and move towards Laura, holding my arms out. She isn’t having any of that, though. “No hugs!” she snaps as she moves away from me. “Not right now. I’m mad at you two.”

  “I guess you had better get a dog today. You’ll need company in the dog house,” Ally tells me.

  “Oh, he’ll have plenty of company because you and Eden will be in there with him,” she snaps at Ally.

  Eden opens the front door, holding a box. “I found baby ducks,” he calls out happily.

  Ally almost bounces over to him. He lifts a little black duck up out of the box. “I’m naming mine Daffy,” he says as he cradles the little duck.

  “That’s where you were? Buying ducks?” Laura asks.

  Eden looks at her. “Yeah, why?”

  “I made my first ever breakfast in my first ever house and no one showed up for it. Just me and the garbage disposal had any,” she whines.

  Eden sets the box down on the bar, then reaches in to get a cute little yellow duck, taking it to her. “Please just hold this little duck, Laura. It’ll make you feel better and I promise we’ll never ever miss another one of your meals again. If you should ever decide to cook for us again, that is.”

  Laura holds the little duck for a minute. A smile spreads over her face finally. She reaches out to hug Eden. “Thanks for the duck, Eden. I love it already.”

  Eden brings the box over to Ally. “Would you like to choose a duck, Alyssa?”

  There’s one yellow one and one black one left. “I like the little black one,” she tells him as she picks it up and holds it close to heart.

  My eyes roam over her breast for a mere second before I regain my control.

  We have got to get this shit under control, before we hurt everyone who’s important to us.

  CHAPTER 63

  EDEN

  The girls wait by the fire we built near the pond so we could let the little ducklings swim. Kyle and I are in the woods, searching for more wood for it. My mate and I had a conversation about the two of them earlier and I think it’s time I had a talk with him.

  “Alyssa told me about your dream,” I say. “Seems the two of you are having some fun.”

  Kyle looks up at me as he reaches for another log. “Fun?” he asks. “I’d not call it that, Eden. I’d call it torture.”

  “So making love to Alyssa is torture to you?” I ask.

  Kyle turns his back to me as he reaches down for another piece of wood. “It’s not real, Eden.”

  “My mate tells me it felt like it was,” I say. “Please, Kyle, I’d like us to have an honest relationship.”

  Kyle stops looking for more things to pick up and looks me in the eye. “What do you want to know, dude?” he asks. “You want the truth?”

  “Of course,” I say.

  He shakes his head. “No, man, you don’t.”

  I look away and watch a silk spider’s web blow in the breeze.

  He’s right.

  “So are we supposed to pretend it’s not happening?” I ask.

  He finds a pine cone and picks it up. “Don’t ask me. This is new to me. I can promise you only one thing. I’ll never be able to get physical with your wife. Not in real life.”

  “Can I ask you something?” I ask.

  He nods.

  “If you could and if it wouldn’t hurt anyone, would you?” I ask.

  He puts down his arm full of wood and comes to me. His hand lands on my shoulder. “I love her, Eden.”

  His words feel like a hammer to my heart. “I know you do.”

  He gives me a quick pat and turns away. “There’s no reason to go into scenarios where we get to have our cake and eat it too,” he says, then turns back. “I mean, even if you gave us your blessing to screw the hell out of each other, we could never do that. It isn’t in any of us to hurt each other in any way.”

  “I could never give my blessing for that anyway,” I say.

  “Of course you couldn’t. I’d wanna whip your ass if you did,” he says with a chuckle.

  “I’m sorry, you know,” I say. “I’ve told my wife plenty of times how sorry I am about not following advice which was given to me to have her brought to me when she was thirteen. Yet I’ve never told you.”

  “Sorry?” Kyle asks. “What in the world is there to be sorry about? What you see as a mistake, I see as great luck for me. I’m something I could have never been, thanks to you.”

  “You don’t feel mad about this in any way?” I ask.

  “I did,” he says. “At first. She’s in my life forever, yet I can’t have her physically and I long to. Then I think about people who have it worse. Real victims, real disabilities, real sorrow, and real pain. What do I have? Super powers, no worry over money ever, and great people who have my back while I have theirs.”

  “You’ve found the bright side,” I say as I pick up a piece of wood. “It’s a hard life I’ve made for us all.”

  “No, man, it’s a great life, Eden,” he says. “Look, we can’t help what happens in our damn dreams. I’m sure plenty of other shit will be worse than Ally and I leading a dream life together. Hell, I don’t even sleep eight hours a day. So you get her all the waking hours.”

  I laugh and he laughs too. “Well, at least I have her more.”

  “Yeah,” he says. “And what about me? Sure, Ally and I are having a dream baby, but you and she will have actual babies, ones you can hold and watch grow up. Our dreams could end today. Your life together is real and tangible, dude.”

  I nod and look up at the darkening sky through the tall pines. “Our Creator must be quite the jokester.”

  The bay of a hound dog sounds out in the tall, piney woods which surround the pasture. I look at Kyle as he picks up another piece of wood for the fire. “They sound close.”

  He nods. “We better get back to the girls.”

  CHAPTER 64

  ALYSSA

  The sound of dogs prompts Laura and me to gather up the ducklings and put them in the box in the back of Kyle’s truck.

  “We need to cover the box with something, like a rag or something. It’ll make them stop quacking and go to sleep,” Laura says as she reaches into the truck, retrieving a small towel.

  I wink at her. “Such a good mother you will make.”

  She laughs. “I can’t have kids. I have to take care of you two.”

  My jaw drops. “Laura, you can have kids. When I get pregnant, you should too. That would be perfect.”

  Her eyebrows go up, as do her hands. She speaks with them often. “Ally! I’m not married. I can’t promise you that.”

  The tilt of my head lets her know I know better than that. “That boy would make an honest woman out of you, Laura.”

  She gives me her no-nonsense look she’s so good at. “Al, I don’t know for sure that he and I will end up married. I won’t marry him just because of our commitment to you two, or if I managed to get knocked up by him either.”

  “I see. Looks like this guardian thing has both of you feeling the same way. Kyle said just about the same thing to me earlier. I’ll tell you what I told him. I don’t want you two to feel like you have to
be together because of this situation. Be together, or don’t. It will change nothing.”

  She tucks the ducklings in and pushes the box up into the bed of the truck. “I’m glad to hear you say that. Kyle and I had a talk earlier this morning. We might give our physical relationship a break for a while.”

  My eyes go wide, because who would agree to that nonsense? “Why in the hell would you do that? Whose idea was that? What are you thinking?”

  “Okay, Ally, slow down on the questions,” she says as she turns to face me. “We both came to that conclusion. Kyle told me about you knowing he had trouble choosing between the two of us all the way back when he was fifteen.”

  “That should help you to see he’s liked you from way back. That shouldn’t make you question how you feel about him or he feels about you now.”

  Her foot kicks at the dirt as she looks down at it. “The problem is the physical aspect of it all. He never thought about me in any other way except the physical way. He wanted my body, not my mind.”

  Taking her by the shoulders, I say, “He loves your mind now, though. It takes a little while to find things like that out, you know.”

  She smiles at me. “You know I had started to like him about the same time he started to like you.”

  “I saw things from your perspective too, Laura. I don’t know if he told you about our kiss—the one that started it all. Honestly, Laura, it was barely a kiss. His lips touched mine for a fraction of a second.”

  “Well, that fraction made him decide you were the one.”

  I shake my head. “No, Cody did. He told Kyle he would lose us both if he tried anything with you after that. Cody did that because he wanted to start seeing you.”

  “Prick! Anyway, all Kyle and I did for the month we went back home to Cloudcroft is a lot of nothing. I hung out with his mother, as he constantly asked me to take her here or there. He stayed in his room, moping over you. The day you asked him to come to New Orleans, he perked right back up,” Laura says and looks up at the night sky. “I broke up with him for all of five minutes. Then he said the words, ‘I love you,’ and I fell back onto the Kyle train with no hesitation.”

  “Then getting to know each other better will help you to develop a deeper relationship,” I say. “It may just take some time.”

  “We were back at it, Ally. Once he said the magic words, we got right back in bed together and haven’t stopped, until last night. After the ceremony, he was different. He was all about you again. Not out loud, mind you, but internally. When I touched him, he ever so gently pushed me away, claiming he was tired. Just like he did when we went back home.”

  Telling her about our dreams is a no go.

  I send Kyle, ‘Do not under any circumstances tell Laura about our dreams. She’s not going to take it well.’ Then I send the same message to Eden.

  “Have you seen us together, in the future?” she asks me.

  “I haven’t seen the future that far in advance. I just saw that we would all be here and have that ceremony. Nothing past that.”

  She peers at me from under her thick lashes. “Could you try to see it?”

  “I don’t know how to do that, but I want you to know I think you would be crazy not to keep your relationship going just as you have been.”

  “It isn’t all up to me, Ally. He has to want it too. He stayed away from me as we talked—the little that we did—about not being physical with each other for a while.”

  “I think that will pass,” I say. “The commitment ceremony has him confused. I can tell. He hasn’t ever made such a commitment before. He doesn’t know what he’s feeling right now.”

  “Honestly, Ally, I know he’s feeling a lot more for you again. I heard him in his sleep last night. He said, ‘Say my name, Ally,’ then a little later he said, ‘Who do you belong to, Ally.’ This was accompanied by a few groans,” she says as she rolls her eyes.

  Good Lord! At least she’s not aware of what we’ve got going on. She’d have a shit fit, and leave. I’d never blame her either.

  “Did he say anything to you once he woke up?” I ask.

  “No, and I couldn’t bring myself to ask him about it. I guess I don’t really want to know.”

  “Yeah,” I say. “He probably doesn’t even remember the dumb dream. I wouldn’t bring it up to him. That’d just be a really dumb argument, you know?”

  She nods. The guys come back out of the woods with more wood for the fire, stopping our conversation. “We can talk more about this later, Laura.”

  “This dude has eagle eyes,” Kyle says as he motions towards Eden. “It’s so dark out there and he just kept finding one piece of wood after another. I couldn’t see a thing.”

  I look at Eden. “The bird thing?”

  He shrugs his shoulders. “I don’t think so. I’ve always been able to see well in the dark.”

  The sound of several hound dogs barking gets closer. “Did you see those dogs when you were out there?” Laura asks them.

  “No, they seem to be getting closer,” Eden says. “I’m sure someone’s hunting raccoons or something like that. They use dogs for that type of hunting.”

  The sound of one of the hounds baying comes from the tree line. Then the dog appears in the pasture, followed by more dogs and more barks.

  “Um, guys, is that how they normally hunt, by coming up to people?” I ask.

  Eden and Kyle turn to see the pack of around twelve dogs coming towards us from across the pasture. “Maybe we should go back inside,” I say.

  The dogs start running as fast as they can towards us. I move farther back into the bed of the truck, as does Laura. The dogs are not slowing down and they begin to bark differently, like they’ve caught something.

  “Eden, get in the truck,” Kyle tells him.

  Eden looks at him for a second, but then does what Kyle said to. He sits on the tailgate, but has to move back quickly as one of the dogs jumps at him. Suddenly all the dogs have surrounded the truck and are barking like crazy. Kyle stands where he’s been standing all along. They don’t seem to even notice him.

  “It’s the dogs from last night,” Eden tells me. “They know it’s us, Alyssa.”

  A shot rings out from the edge of the pasture as several men come out of the woods. They begin to come toward us. “Laura, please climb through the back window of the truck. There’s a handgun underneath the driver’s seat. Stay in the back seat and use it if you have to,” Kyle tells her as quietly as he can over the noise of the barking dogs.

  She moves quickly through the open back window, making it into the truck before the men get up to us. “I found it, Kyle,” she says.

  “These your dogs?” Kyle asks the men as they approach us.

  “Yep,” one of the men answers him.

  “You might want to get them outta here. They’re kinda fuckin’ up our night,” Kyle says.

  “They sure are barking like they treed something,” another one of the men comments.

  Kyle offers an explanation, “Well, we have some baby ducks in the back of the truck, so they must think they have something, but they don’t.”

  An older man asks, “Y’all are new around here?”

  Kyle nods. “Yes, sir. We just moved here from Cloudcroft, New Mexico. Me and my wife are going to UT in the fall. Our friends are visiting us for a while. They helped us move in.”

  “You had a big party last night,” the older man says.

  “A housewarming party. Where abouts do you live, if you don’t mind me asking,” Kyle asks.

  “Oh, about twenty minutes up the road. Did you people notice a loud jet airplane flying around last night?”

  Kyle nods again. “We did. The noise from it broke up our party last night. Does that type of thing happen a lot around here?”

  “No. I have a police scanner at home. The plane was watching something fly and lost it about right here,” the man says.

  “We were all outside. We saw nothing but the loud jet plane. If he had seen somet
hing, we should have seen it too,” Kyle tells him.

  “Quiet them dogs down, Jimmy!” the older man yells.

  “I can’t get them to quit, Bob,” the one who must be Jimmy answers.

  “I tell you what, boy. What did you say your name was anyway?” he asks.

  “I’m Kyle Stevens.”

  The old guy’s eyes narrow and he starts wagging his finger at Kyle. “Well, let me tell you what I think, Kyle Stevens. I think you did see something and I think you’re hiding whatever them things is.”

  Kyle laughs. “Sir, I don’t know how you’re used to doing things down here in Texas. Where I come from, no one comes onto another person’s property and accuses them of such ridiculous things. Now you and your friends and this pack of dogs need to leave my property now, or I will call the police.”

  “Oh, I must have forgotten to introduce myself to you, son. I am the police. My name is Sheriff Hardy. Two of these guys here are my deputies and that man over there is Judge Picket.”

  Oh my God, what have we gotten ourselves into?

  We’re getting off on the wrong foot immediately with the law here. I find I’m standing up before I realize what I’m doing.

  “Shhh,” I say to the dogs and miraculously they all stop barking. The men all look up at me, astonished.

  Kyle is dumbfounded, but somehow finds his voice. “This is Kat. She’s an animal trainer,” he offers for my feat.

  “It’s a pleasure to meet such distinguished members of this community,” I say.

  I walk to the back of the truck, holding my hand out for Kyle to help me down. He takes my hand and helps me jump down. The dogs all sit at once as my feet hit the ground.

  “Who taught you to train animals, young lady?” the sheriff asks me.

  “My grandfather back in New Mexico. He was a full-blooded Navajo.” I lie, and then I reach out to pet one of the dogs on the head.

  “He might bite ya,” the guy called Jimmy cautions me.

  “I highly doubt that,” I say as I stroke the top of the dog’s head, making him wag his tail.

  “Would you look at that?” one of the men says under his breath.