by Kylie Parker
“James?” she calls out, and I swear she sounds almost sad. Éclair never sounds sad. She never breaks down that tough exterior of hers. She always puts up a wall, and it makes it difficult to read her emotions. This time, maybe because she’s on the other side of a door, she is showing it quite clearly. I stand there, staring at the door –still unwilling to make it known that I am there. “I know you’re home. You weren’t at the hospital.” She says, “We need to talk. I know what this is about –why you’re being so distance. Just open the door. Please.”
I keep my mouth shut, and I feel like a real tool. Did she go all the way to the hospital to see if I was there? Now she’s here? She really is desperate to talk to me. I’ve never really seen this side of Éclair before. I just can’t bring myself to open the door. “James,” I hear her voice again, “You have to know that I would never hurt you. Or your brother. I wouldn’t. I care about you, James.”
She is making it really hard to not open that door. I just can’t move. I bite my lip, not wanting to say anything back. At least this way we can go on pretending that I never heard anything she is saying right now. There is a long pause before she continues. “And whatever is going on between you and that other woman you’re seeing… I respect that. I know I have just been writing it off as if it was nothing, but if it’s something more than that –that’s okay. I’ll back off. I just wish you would tell me. Tell me so I know. So I’ll stop because… because I don’t want to lose you James. I don’t want to do something that will make you hate me. Make you lose her. You’re my best friend. I know I’ve never said that, but it’s true. Would you please just open the damn door?”
I can’t. I can’t open the door. Not now. I hear her walking away, and I feel like shit. How could I just let her walk off like that? I just can’t trust her right now. I’ve never felt like that about her. It’s too damn confusing. A part of me wants to chase after her and apologize for being such an ass and to tell her she won’t ever lose me –to tell her she’s my best friend too, but I just can’t. Not today. Not now.
56
I think I’m starting to become a hermit. I have skipped out going to the office for the past two days –not a huge point in going anyways. Unless I’m at the hospital visiting with Eddie, I am at home slumping around my flat. Sylvia has been really busy with work, and I’m still avoiding Éclair, so I’ve pretty much just been acting like a bum. The last two times I’ve gone to the hospital Eddie has slept through the entire visit. They let him try some Jell-O recently –the first semi-solid food he has had since his assault. It did not really work out, so he is back on an IV for his nutrition. Still, he is occasionally awake and alert, so that’s a good sign. It just kind of hurts to see him like that. The last visit I had had with him while he was actually awake had been rough. Turns out, the doctors had some fucking how missed a fucking spinal fracture –which would explain why Eddie was not able to feel his legs. When the doctor had hinted that being able to walk again was suddenly in question, Eddie had broken down.
Growing up, my dad had been one of those “boys don’t cry” kind of guys, and it had definitely rubbed off on Eddie and me. Seeing Eddie with that tear-soaked face and so full of agony had really screwed me up in the head. I’ve never seen that side of Eddie, and I don’t care to ever see it again. I had squeezed his shoulder and assured him that we were going to figure something out, and I could tell that he had appreciated the gesture before his latest dose of pain medications knocked him out again. It’s a weird feeling… I am finally really honestly and truly there for Eddie. We are talking in ways that we never had before. I would even dare say that we are close. The thing that is weird, or rather unsettling I should say, is that it took something like this to make us that way. It’s shameful, really.
My phone goes off. I am lying down on my couch under a large, thick blanket –being lazy as hell. I sigh. My phone had gotten tossed to the floor. I make a game of it –trying to reach the phone without actually getting up. I wind up in this awkward slouched position, my toe touching my phone, and I slide it towards me. It’s my lawyer, so I know I got to answer it. “What took you so long to answer your phone?” she snaps. She really hates me now after the little threesome I had with her lesbian ass and her bisexual wife.
“Sorry. I was a little… preoccupied. What’s up?” I ask.
“Mediation you fucking idiot!” she screams into the phone.
I jump up, sitting straight up in my seat, “Shit! That was today?”
“Yeah –it was!” she shouts, “You weren’t here, and the judge took it as a bad sign, dumbass. Now you’re going to have to go to court because I couldn’t get him to throw the lawsuit case out. He’s agreed to hear those idiot out.”
“Mother fucker!” I snap. “Damn it, Lillian, I’m sorry. I don’t know what got into me. I got my days mixed up.”
“I’ve been calling you for hours!” she screams. I had been asleep.
“Man… what are we going to do now?” I ask.
“Now I have to prepare a case. I mean, I wouldn’t freak yourself out or anything because this lawsuit is not going to hold any water, but now you’re going to be stuck with me for a while. I hope you’re happy.” She hisses.
“I’m so sorry.” I say, “How bad did I just fuck up?”
“It’s on the fucking news, shit-head. And the media is eating it up that you didn’t show up. It shouldn’t hurt your case any, but if the media keeps playing this shit it’s going to hurt your company.”
“I can’t keep my head on straight.” I say, and she picks up on the shrillness of my voice.
There is a long pause before she continues. “I get it, James.” Wow, my real name and not an insult. Progress. “I know you’re going through a rough time right now, but you have got to keep your head on straight.”
“I know. I know.” I say. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” she says, her demeanor entirely different now. “We will figure this out. I will call you later.”
She hangs up, and I burry my face into my couch cushion and scream. What the fuck is wrong with me? I do not dare to turn on the news to see what they are saying about me. There is a knock on my door. I’m so mad at myself that I am more than happy to take it out on Éclair if she thinks she can just keep dropping by like this when she knows I don’t want to talk. She must be really desperate if she keeps walking up the stairs to knock on my door since you have to have a passcode on the elevator to reach this floor. I storm over to my door, ready to yell at her to leave me the hell alone. I fling it open, “Éclair, I swear-” there is a gun in my face. My stomach flips. Before I can react, the guy grabs hold of the collar of my shirt and pushes me back into my apartment, the gun at my forehead. It’s Tommy. I’m starting to think that this guy is Eddie’s evil twin. “Please, don’t shoot me,” I say, my voice shaky. He came storming into me so fast that I trip over my own feet mid-sentence and land on my ass in the middle of my den.
“Geeze, don’t be such a bitch,” he says and puts his gun away into his black biker jacket. “I was just worried you weren’t going to let me.”
“So you put a fucking gun to my face?” I snap and start to stand, he pushes me back over with a palm to my face, so I stay down on the ground. I try not to shake, but he’s got me pretty freaked out. He’s just a big question mark. I don’t know him. I don’t know what he’s here for or what he’s going to do.
He glances around and snorts. “Nice play. Eddie shacked up like this too?”
“Damn!” I hear a woman’s voice from my kitchen. I had been so freaked out by Tommy that I had not even realized he had brought someone with him. This skinny ass woman, also in a biker’s jacket, is snooping around in my kitchen. “This asshole’s got Gouda cheese in his fridge. I can’t even get you to buy me real cheddar. Fuck it. I’m making eggs.”
“You’re such a dumbass,” Tommy hisses her way as she proceeds to dig through my pots and pans to apparently make Gouda cheese covered eggs.
“Sure.” Tommy says with an eye roll. There is this long, awkward silence. He glares down at me, “You gonna answer her or are you gonna be a jackass?”
“Um…” I look back in my kitchen, “Yeah, sure… I guess…” I slowly make a second attempt at standing up, and he doesn’t knock me back over this time. “I’m sorry… but-”
Tommy waves his hand towards the kitchen, “Awe, sorry, my bad –yo, Becky, this is James, Eddie’s brother. That’s my wife, Becky.”
I awkwardly raise a hand and say, “Hi,” because what the fuck else am I supposed to say to some random bitch who prances into my home and starts making eggs while her husband waves a gun in my face? She thinks I don’t see her stuffing silverware in her jacket, but I do –but I’m not saying shit about it. I turn to look at Tommy. “I’m sorry, but why are you here?”
“I tried to go visit Eddie at the hospital, but those assholes wouldn’t let me back to see him.” Tommy said.
“Then why not just ask me to take him to see him instead of scaring the shit out of me!” I shout.
“Do you have milk?” I hear Becky ask from the kitchen.
“No, I don’t have any milk, bitch!” I snap, “Fucking make the eggs and take whatever fucking silverware you want. I don’t give a damn!”
Becky awkwardly removes the silverware from her jacket and lays it all on the counter as she finishes making the scrambled eggs. “Hey man, don’t call my wife a bitch.” Tommy shoves my arm, but he does so as though he is suddenly acting friendly.
I glare at him. “This is not how normal people act,” I say, and Tommy just laughs at me. This is by far the most ridiculous interaction I have ever had with anyone in my life.
Tommy holds up both of his hands, “All right, easy man. Simmer down. You’re right. I’m sorry. I just wanted to fuck with you, that’s all.”
“I’ll add your name to the visitation list at the hospital if you want to see Eddie,” I say, “But please, for the love of God, don’t go waving your gun around there just because you want to fuck around with someone.”
“Will do,” Tommy says with this grin that reminds me of Eddie. Tommy looks more like Eddie than any of them do.
Despite this terrible initial interaction, I wind up sitting down with Tommy and his weird-ass wife around my kitchen island enjoying the Gouda cheese coated eggs. It’s actually really good, and I think I might put Gouda cheese on my eggs more often. Tommy tells me that he and Eddie had only just recently met a few months ago. In fact, Tommy was in a somewhat similar boat as Eddie –he had no idea he had all of these other siblings out there. Ricardo had actually married Tommy’s mom and had somewhat raised him, but it sounded like Ricardo was rarely home growing up. Tommy’s mother had raised him in a motorhome out in Arizona up until he was twelve when she had thrown him off on Ricardo so as to enjoy her own personal drug habit, killing herself less than a year later. He had joined his father’s motorcycle gang when he turned sixteen, and he had always been afraid to leave it. “The others don’t know how lucky they are that their momma’s kept them away from him,” Tommy said eerily, and I couldn’t help but to think that he was alluding to some various forms of abuse he had likely experienced.
I am not going to say that Tommy seems like a nice guy because he doesn’t. He seems like an asshole, but he does seem to care about Eddie –that much I’ll give him. Becky, apart from being a complete and total kleptomaniac with personal space issues, does actually seem like a sweetheart after an hour of sitting around and talking to the two of them. By the time they are leaving, I’m not really sure what to think about either of them, but a small part of me is glad to have gotten the chance to talk to them. It’s weird. I really like Eddies’ family. I look at the time and decide to call Nick and see how he is doing in rehab. It’s the first time we’ve spoken since I left him there, and it’s a strange feeling that I have talking to him –the same feeling when I talk to Kate or Max or even Tommy. It’s like I have always known them. It’s a good feeling.
57
I’m still hiding out in my hermit hole a bit. It’s been probably five days since I’ve been anywhere but the hospital. Éclair has not called me once today, so I wonder if she has given up on me or if she is just giving it a break for a while. There is a knock on my door, and I hesitate to move because if it is Éclair I’m worried I might would actually answer it. I slither off of my couch and quietly make my way over to the door –quite confident that it’s not Éclair before I even get there because the first knock was not followed by yelling or angry banging on the door. I peep through the hole, and I see Sylvia standing patiently outside of my door. I smile.
I open up the door, not realizing how much I must look like a bum right now, and she immediately grins and shows off her perky personality. “All right, you look like shit,” she says, laughing as she enters inside and runs her fingers through my obviously unwashed hair.
“Oh… well, sorry,” I say, “I was not exactly expecting company.”
Her eyes dart over to the kitchen where several days’ worth of delivery dinners are still scattered all over the place. “I suppose I should have called,” she says and spins herself around. She is wearing a bright pink running top and white tennis skirt with a bit of pink bedazzling down the leg line along with some matching running shoes. She doesn’t look like she’s been for a run, so my guess is she was headed that way and decided to stop by. “You need to get out of the house,” she says and crosses her arms.
“I’m not really in the mood,” I admit.
“Well, get in the mood –because from the looks of it you have been sulking around your apartment all day… days?” Sylvia rolls her eyes. “Besides, I have planned a date.”
“Oh?” I question.
“Go on, go get on some running shoes.” She waves me off towards the bedroom, remaining behind in the den so I don’t get any kinky ideas.
I roll my eyes and go and get dressed. She is about as easy to argue with as Éclair, so I don’t bother. Once I’m dressed in a tank, gym shorts, and my best running shoes, I exit the bedroom ready to go. I guess athletic women is just my thing. It was always the same with Éclair –although our idea of athletic activities mostly consisted of weird shit we would do in the bedroom –but I’m pretty sure if Éclair and I had ever actually dated, going for a run would probably be something we would have done. I like running and pushing my body to new limits through activities like rock-climbing or boxing. I also enjoy being with a woman who enjoys doing those sort of things with me –well, running and rock-climbing that is, I don’t know if I would ever want to throw punches with a chick.
Sylvia and I head out, and we enjoy a nice evening run. She leads the way, and the next thing I know we are arriving at an unopened skate park. The place is brand new and is still off-limits due to the fact that its grand opening is not for another couple of weeks, but Sylvia has a key to let us in through the gates. Apparently she is testing out the new equipment, and she has invited me along to see her in action. “Can you skateboard?” she asks, locating two boards she had stashed away earlier. She has all sorts of top of the line gear for us to use –stuff that hasn’t even hit the market yet, and I got to admit it’s kind of a turn on for a guy who is into this sort of stuff like me.
“It’s been a while,” I admit.
“Pussy,” she teases once she has put on her knee and elbow pads and helmet. She doesn’t give me time to think or give an adequate response before skating off towards one of the half-pipes. I go after her at about the half the speed she is going, and by the time I reach her she is doing some pretty impressive maneuvers that I know if I attempt I will land on my ass.
“Nice.” I say and skate around half-ass on the ramps, showing her that I do k
now a little but lack the confidence and the ability to attempt her more experienced tricks. She zips around me on a ramp and goes up on a handrail, gliding with ease and landing with perfect grace. I grin, “You know, that is something I could never figure out.”
“What? Handrails?” she asks.
“Yeah. I would always fall on my ass.” I grin, not sure if I should try it or not.
“Show me what you do, and maybe I can help you out,” she says.
“I’m not twenty anymore. I don’t want to break my damn leg,” I say.
As if to further the taunt, she proceeds to go back and forth on the handrail. I roll my eyes. “All right, all right –fine, but if I break my leg, you’re paying for the emergency bill.” As predicated, I trip up as soon as I get my board up on the rail, and I fall and straddle the fucking rail, collapsing over in a heap onto the concrete ground beside the rail. Damn, my balls!
She is laughing at me, but she hurries over concerned. “Are you okay? I’m so sorry! I shouldn’t have made you do that!”
“Nope. I’m fine. I’m fine… my pride is hurt more than anything,” I say, although a lot more than my pride is throbbing now.
We wind up skating around for a while longer before Sylvia takes me to the parks corner offices –they’re empty, and there is a little loveseat inside. I grin, suspecting where this is going but not too hopeful just yet. “There’s a private shower in here for park security and for any future professional skaters who come here for competitions,” she says and proceeds to strip down, “And I think I could use a shower after all that.”
Geeze, woman! I smile and tell her that I think I’m in need of one too. She makes a cheesy joke about saving water, and we both hurry into the private shower after dropping out clothes in the office. I stare excitedly as the water runs over her, and I lack all patience in this moment. I push her up against the tile wall and kiss her lips and her breasts. I nibble at her neck, and she laughs as she drapes her arms on my shoulder. Water splashes in my eyes, but I’m only blinded by it for a moment. I push my dick up inside her, and then I wrap my arms around her, lifting her up off her feet and pinning her against the tile wall as she wraps her legs around my waist. “Oh, God, James!” I hear her shout excitedly. Her breasts are at the perfect height for me to kiss and gently bite.
