I look around anxiously. “Where is she?”
Marie turns and looks at me, taking note of the flowers. Her perky smile disappears, and she suddenly is wearing a sympathetic gaze. “Oh, I’m so sorry, Mr. Trial, but she’s not here. She went to grab herself some breakfast while you were here.”
I should have known she wouldn’t want to see me. She had packed up all of my clothes just so I wouldn’t have to rummage through the house. She had probably told Marie to let me in and to watch me to make sure I didn’t go exploring. “Here,” I say and hand Marie the pot of flowers, “You can have them.”
She stands there, holding the pot of orchids. “I will give them to Brandi,” she assures me, “I’m sure she will love them. She loves orchids.”
“Yeah,” I say softly. I head into the den, and there are a crazy amount of boxes. I’m actually surprised she didn’t try to keep some of my clothes because it looks like she must have packed every single clothing item I owned –probably so I wouldn’t have an excuse to come back. “Look, all of that is not going to fit in the little car I have. Would it be okay if I called Marty and had him bring his truck?”
“I will have to ask Brandi,” Marie says and scurries into the kitchen to locate a phone and to put the pot of flowers down.
While she is getting permission from Brandi to have Marty come by to help, I go ahead and start carrying boxes out. I have way more clothes than I thought. I’ll probably try to sell some of it because all of this is not going to fit in Tyler’s apartment –plus, I doubt I’ll be going anywhere fancy enough to where I need fifty different suits. After about three trips to the car, Marie informs me that it’s okay for me to call Marty. I had figured as such; Brandi doesn’t want me using any excuse to return.
After calling Marty, I finish loading down the Volkswagen and then take a seat in the den –staring at the vast number of boxes left. I see that she has taken our wedding picture down from the mantle, and it really stings. I can’t blame her, though; I wouldn’t want to see that picture of my drunk ass hanging over the fireplace either.
Suddenly I have to piss, and I stand up to leave the den. Marie catches me and blocks me from leaving. She pretends like that is not what she’s doing. “Where are you going, Mr. Trial?” she asks. This pretty much confirms that Marie had been tasked with keeping an eye on me.
“I just got to go to the bathroom, Marie,” I say as kindly as I can. “Is that okay?”
“Oh, yes, that’s fine,” she says and steps aside.
I head towards the hall bath, and I see her dip into the kitchen for a moment. I can’t help myself; I hurry up the stairs to our old bedroom while Marie is not paying attention. I guess I just wanted to see what all she had changed. Not much is different, and I feel like I can confirm she’s been sleeping here alone; I just wanted to know if a new guy had already made it into her life, and from the looks of things she is still single. There’s no other man’s shirt lying around, at least. I see her ballet shoes lying on the far side of the floor. Weird –she had always been very particular about where she put those…. it looks like she had thrown them. I frown, realizing she probably had done so in frustration because she’s still in rehab for her elbow from what I have heard. I really messed this woman up.
Recalling that I still had to use the bathroom, I slip into the master. I had almost forgotten how huge the bathroom was. I think of Tyler’s toilet that is smack dab in the middle of his kitchen and cringe. There is nothing more uncomfortable than taking a shit in the morning and then having Tyler coming out of his bedroom to make himself some coffee. It makes it feel like a prison.
I take a moment to relish the large bathroom, and I piss in the nice, clean toilet. As I am washing my hands, I notice a few pill bottles sitting out on the counter. What is Brandi taking? I pick them up and discover that they’re prenatal vitamins, and my stomach drops. “No,” I say under my breath and drop the bottle into the sink in surprise. Brandi’s pregnant.
My knees shake, and I wind up sitting on the floor of the bathroom in complete shock. “Mr. Trial!” I hear Marie’s voice as she darts into the bathroom. “You can’t be in here,” she sees what I’ve found, and she looks completely mortified.
I stand up and stare at her, “Did you know?”
Marie starts crying. “She’s going to fire me if she finds out I let you back here, and you found that!” She starts pushing me out of the bathroom.
We wind up back downstairs, and poor Marie is pacing in the kitchen. I’m just sitting on the couch in the den, completely dumbfounded. She’s pregnant –she’s pregnant, and she doesn’t want me to know. What was she planning on doing? Hiding my kid from me? I think I might throw up. My mind goes back to when Marty had told me he thought Brandi had gained some weight, and I start shaking.
How could she not tell me? Marie eventually works up the courage to come join me in the den, and I glare at her slightly. “You weren’t going to tell me, Marie?” I ask.
“She threatened to fire me,” she says. “Please, you can’t tell her that you know.”
What am I supposed to do? Just pretend that I don’t know? “How far along is she?” I ask.
“Almost four months,” she says and then shows me a slip of paper she had had in her hands. It’s an ultrasound.
It takes my breath away. I hear a buzzing noise coming from the kitchen; it’s probably Marty, and Marie hurries off to go buzz him in. I sit there staring at the photograph. You can’t tell much from it, but the little thing is holding its little fist up –that much I can see clearly. I can’t seem to pull myself away from the picture. I know Marie is not going to let me keep this, so I snap a picture with my phone.
I wonder if she had been showing any at our court dates? Probably not; most women don’t stop showing until a little later, but Brandi is so skinny. Any little bump would have been evident on her. Thinking back, I can recall her wearing this oversized sweater once. She had been hiding it even then. How could she do this to me?
Marie takes the ultrasound photograph away just as Marty is entering into the house. I don’t really hear him; my ears are ringing as I stare at the picture on my phone. “Hey man, I got the truck,” he says as he is standing over me. “Jonathan? Hey man, you all right?”
I can’t even function. I’m going to be a father, and the mother of my child seems hell bent on keeping me away. I just don’t know what to do.
“Earth to Jonathan!” Marty snaps his fingers in front of my face. “Man, what the hell? Are you getting sappy being back here or something?”
I shake it off and shove my phone into my pocket. I don’t know if I’m ready to tell the guys about this one just yet. The two of us load up his truck and head over to Tyler’s. I drive in a slight haze, still thinking about the picture of my unborn child and the way the little baby had held that tiny fist up like a boxer.
31
I feel my heart starting to race. The car lights in the background are blinding, but it’s not nearly as blinding as the stinging headache I have after the violent crash. There is blood splattered all over the shattered windshield; I’m hanging upside down, and I can feel the blood rushing to my head. “Gabriel, are you all right?” I turn and look towards the passenger’s seat where my friend is hanging.
He groans, and I feel a slight sense of relief to know that he is still alive. “My head…” he grumbles, and I suspect the blood is his.
A black shadowy figure is slowly coming towards us. “Gabe!” I snap, “he’s coming,” and I grab at my seatbelt, but it jams. My fingers feel numb, and I feel panic starting to take over. Blood mixed with sweat drips down off my head into the ceiling of over turned car.
I hear a clicking sound –it’s a gun. My heart skips a beat before it starts pumping so hard that I swear it’s going to burst out of my chest. The shadowy figure walks towards the passenger’s side of the car. I shouldn’t have been drinking. Maybe if I hadn’t been drinking I wouldn’t have cut this lunatic off and pissed him off to the
point he would run us off the road. I feel Gabe’s hand reach out and grab my arm. “Jonathan!” he shrieks, and his voice wreaks of desperation. I’m so helpless. There’s nothing I can do –what can I do? The gun goes off, and Gabe’s blood splatters all over me and his arm drops.
I scream and cry, and I suddenly feel someone shaking me. Had I been dreaming? I open my eyes, and despite it being pitch black in the apartment I can still make out Tyler’s face. I am on his couch in his shitty apartment, and I had apparently woken him up. “Jonathan, man, wake up!” his voice calls me back to the present moment.
I jump up, and I can feel my fists clenched. I’m not thinking straight, and I go to swing at him. I’m glad I don’t hit him; as a former boxer I have a pretty mean punch. Tyler has a bit of training as an amateur boxer, so he is quick to react. “Jonathan!” he shouts, “It’s me, man, chill!” Tyler turns on the lamp that is right next to the couch on an old end table Tyler had picked up at his second job at the dump.
I throw my legs over the side of the couch, knocking the blankets and pillow to the floor when I do this, and I rub my eyes. I’m drenched in sweat, and I feel like shit. It had seemed so real. “What time is it?” I groan.
“It’s four in the morning,” Tyler says, and I can see he has a mix of emotions etched on his tired face –he’s worried about me, sure, but he also looks pretty pissed for being woken up at this hour.
“I’m sorry,” I say and take a deep breath to calm myself down; I still feel like I’m in that damn car.
“You were calling out for Gabe,” he says, “man, you were screaming like crazy. Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” I say, but Tyler is not buying it.
“I’m going to make some coffee,” he says and turns on the lights. The one room I’m in is a den, a bathroom, and a kitchen. The toilet is in the middle of the kitchen, and I have to piss –but I’m not going to kick him back into his bedroom, so I keep my mouth shut about it. “Listen, Jonathan,” he says once he’s got the coffee brewing, “I know you were there when Gabe died… you never really talk about it. I know it had to be rough. He was just a kid. If you need to talk about it, it’s cool. You can talk to me.”
I nod. “Thanks, but I don’t know if I really want to talk about it.” I stand and head towards the little bar that was the kitchen table. I sit on one of the bar stools, and he plops a cup of coffee in front of me. I’m glad he threw on a robe; the dude sleeps in his underwear, and he’s forgotten I’m here a couple of mornings.
It’s been a rough couple of days. Tomorrow is supposed to be my first day back at the gym after my unpaid leave. I had told some of those bitchy boxers about my almost-sexual encounter with the MMA fighter chick, Laurel, and Laurel had lost her mind and gone to my boss about it –calling is “Sexual harassment.” So I’ve just been lounging around trying not to spend what little money I have on alcohol. Then there was finding out that my ex-wife is hiding the fact that she’s pregnant from me; I still haven’t told Tyler or Marty about that.
“So you want to head out tomorrow night?” Tyler yawned, “Marty was saying something about grabbing a bite when we get out of training.”
“Weren’t you supposed to have a date or something?” I ask.
Tyler rolled his eyes. “That hoe dumped me. She was kind of a slut anyways.”
“Sorry,” I say, and Tyler just shrugs his shoulders.
He then grins, “Hey, I got you. You’re my little house-wife.”
“Shut up, man, I got a job now,” I say, but I manage to chuckle slightly.
“Yeah, training soccer moms in self-defense courses and cleaning up after female athletes. Way to go,” he jokes. He takes a more serious tone then, “How is that going?”
“It could be better,” I say, “that psycho Laurel is still giving me hell. She wants me to get fired. I guess I can’t blame her. We almost slept together and then suddenly I show up working at her gym, and she’s pretty insulted that I was hired to help train them. I didn’t tell you that there was a giant blow up of my face in the boxer’s room that they had been using as a dart board, did I?”
Tyler laughs. “Man, that’s cold.”
“Yup,” I nod and take a big swig of coffee; I’m definitely going to need a few cups to wake myself up if I’m going to be any good at the gym today. It had been a pretty restless night, and I feel bad for waking up Tyler. He’s been pretty awesome letting me stay here. I’ll admit I would have rather had stayed at Marty’s mansion, but since Marty’s girlfriend had moved in with him that pretty much went out the window. I’ve learned a lot about Tyler since moving in with him; for one thing, I had no idea he lived in the ghetto. I had no idea he had a younger sister who had died. I had no idea that Gabe had known his sister. I had no idea he had to work a second job at the dump to keep afloat. He’s never made any indication that he was not as well off as Marty and me, so it was kind of strange stepping into his world all of a sudden. I got to love the guy though; he’s really had my back these past few weeks.
The two of us finish our coffee, and Tyler heads to the shower –thank God that’s not in the kitchen, at least. I couldn’t imagine showering in front of him while he ate his breakfast. It’s weird enough taking a piss in his kitchen. Whoever designed the layout of this place should have the shit beat out of them. I shake my head slightly and change into my work uniform, getting ready for a long day the women’s only gym.
32
It’s my first day back at the gym after my required, unpaid leave, so I want to try to make a good impression with the boss-lady, Alex. I get there early and open the place up, clean out the locker rooms, and put out any fliers Alex has laying out on her desk that I know need to go up. I stock up the smoothie bar before the attendant gets here and clean off a bunch of equipment. By the time Alex is walking in, the place is completely spotless. This former rich, pampered professional boxer isn’t afraid of getting his hands dirty. Alex whistled as she walks in; I’m sweeping up around the boxing ring as she comes in through the back door.
“Someone is trying to make up for his little slip-up, huh?” she asks. Alex is an older woman, but you wouldn’t really be able to tell. She’s aged well –probably due to being a serious athlete and health nut.
I grin slightly. “Come on, you know I wasn’t really sexually harassing Laurel.”
“I think you and I have different definitions of what that means,” Alex said, rolling her eyes at me. “I don’t care if you almost banged one of my fighters, Jonathan –if she wanted you to keep your mouth shut about it, you should have. Her friends, and her, can’t stand you. She definitely didn’t want them to know about that.”
“I know, I know,” I say, “She’s just so-”
Alex holds her hand up to let me know she doesn’t care before she sashays over to her office. I shake my head; I can hear the ladies coming in from the back entrance; the female fighters all have keys that let them in through the employee’s only entrance so that they can get here before the gym opens. I guess they’re all buddy-buddy with Alex. They all ignore me despite my somewhat friendly, “good morning,” and head to the ring. I just shake my head and continue cleaning up, doing my best to ignore their snide comments about being a washed up boxer turned janitor. I resist the temptation to get into an argument about what my job actually is; I’m a trainer, but I am also responsible for clean-up duty.
Becky, the tiny little secretary, comes scurrying into gym with her arms loaded down with paperwork. She’s a weird one. Cute, but weird. She’s always wearing a pants suit like she’s got some high end secretary job. I mean, I know this place is for professional female athletes and rich women willing to pay the extra buck, but it’s still a damn gym. This girl shows up with heals every day –even her boss, Alex, is always wearing yoga pants and a sports bra. Becky’s ankle turns under her enormous heals and all of the papers go flying. I shake my head and then hurry over to help her. I gather the papers as she spits out a hundred different apologies for inconveniencing
me.
For a moment, I think she blushes under those big red glasses of hers. She’s not exactly my type, but I’m a pretty notorious playboy –and old habits die hard. For the rest of the day I put on my charm, chatting her up whenever possible. I teach my training lessons to the soccer moms and do my best to avoid the boxers –especially that bitch Laurel and her even bitchier friend, Brittany. I continue slipping away on occasion to charm the secretary though, and I can tell it’s working. A part of me realizes this is a bad idea, especially after Laurel has already attempted to pin me with sexual harassment. I almost decide that I’m not going to pursue anything with Becky until she tells me she’s leaving Alexis’s Place because she’s moving next week. I grin; that means I won’t be seeing her around here, so I decide it’s a safe gamble.
By the end of the day, Becky is so overwhelmed with my compliments and sweet talk, that I catch her intentionally sticking around longer today to “catch up on some paperwork” so that we can be alone in the gym. As I am cleaning up for the day, I make my way over to her desk. “So, Becky, do you ever take advantage of the gym after hours?” I ask casually.
“Oh,” she blushes as though I have said something really charming instead of just making small talk, “no, not really.”
“Really? Not even the pool?” I ask.
“Well, I just work here. I don’t really care to,” she says and then her face turns completely bloodshot. “Although, I suppose, I wouldn’t mind going for a swim sometime.”
“How about right now?” I ask, “I could go for a swim. I’ll go with you.”
Filthy Desires: A Romantic Suspense Collection Page 137
