by Kelli Walker
God, that man had always been the voice of reason, and in any other lifetime I would’ve told him he needed to pursue psychology or have his own television show or some shit.
“Kev, we all know about you and Tina. We all know you’re practically grinding against each other on every surface of the house. And that’s cool and all, except we can see in your eyes that you’re starting to care for her again. And she doesn’t have that same look. She never has, and she never will.”
Fuck you, Brady. The fuck kind of bullshit is that. I’m completely capable of falling back in love with Kevin! He’s a great guy! He’s smart, tall, dark, handsome, and he’s squishy cuddly bear that knows how to eat some damn good pussy in the sack!
What the fuck was everyone ganging up on me for!?
“I’m just enjoying the time I have with her before we head back to the real world. And honestly? Tina’s a wonderful woman, and if all I get with her is this week and the memories it holds, then that’s fine. I’m not gonna push Tina into doing something she doesn’t wanna do, and neither should any of you guys.”
“We’re all just worried about you,” Brady said. “And as for you, Spencer, what you did was a shit thing to do. As a man, you don’t ever kick a woman out. Ever. Quit being a pussy, own up to why you’re actually mad, then learn and keep on truckin’.”
I looked down and spotted the woman’s shoes beside door I was standing at and I leaned in to pick them up. I wasn’t really sure if they were hers, but I knew that neither myself nor Brit owned any disco ball-colored 6-inch heels, so I made a safe bet and started back for the boat. My mind was reeling and my stomach felt like it was going to force feed my dinner to me again, and when I slowly approached the dock the woman jumped up when she saw my face.
“Hey, you alright?” she cooed.
I stared at her and handed her the shoes I was holding, and then my eyes gazed out beyond her shoulder. I saw the lights of Italy beginning to flicker on, and soon the shoreline was illuminated with the lights of the small towns that decorated the Italian coast. Kevin’s words swirled around in my head and I slowly though back to college. How I always needed my sunglasses and buttered bread for classes every Monday through Friday. How our weekend were always filled with parties and shots and beer pong. How our late-night love making sessions always ended with me vomiting into a cup nearby before I passed out so he could finish.
I was a functioning alcoholic in college, and Kevin distanced himself because I was a crapshoot.
“Fuck,” I breathed.
“Hey…” the woman cooed. “It’s alright. It’s gonna be alright.”
“He left me because I always drank,” I breathed.
“Girl, we all need a drink every once in awhile,” Tits McGee said.
“I’d puke in a cup while he was plowing into me on a bed,” I deadpanned.
“Maybe that’s a bit too much to drink, but hey. How are you doin’ now?” she asked.
I panned my gaze over to hers and looked at her for the first time, and she really was a beautiful woman. She had these stormy hazel eyes that sat in this big almond features. Her hair was dyed a platinum blonde and her skin was milky and smooth. Yeah, she had a nice rack and sure, she had a big booty, but she also had a very kind smile and a very soothing-- albeit, high pitched-- voice. I could see why Spencer would be physically attracted to her, but when she opened her mouth to say what she had to say next I could also see why Spencer would be intimidated by her.
“You know,” she began, “in my experience, you can play this two ways: you can hold your chin high knowing you are better than the you from college, or you can prove him right and drown yourself in wine tonight before you pass out. Vacation isn’t always about letting go and reversing, sometimes it’s simply about taking the time to reflect and plan where you’ll go from here.”
The confusion must’ve been evident on my face, because she threw her head back and laughed at me.
“I have a double doctorate in Philosophy and English,” she giggled.
“Holy shit, that’s why,” I breathed.
“Why what?” she asked.
“Why Spencer threw you out. It’s got nothing to do with his money.”
“He thought I wanted his money?” she asked.
“Nevermind. The point is: Spencer is a hell of a worker when he’s not here. When he’s here, he likes to be the dominate force because, back home, he’s seen as a bit of a quirky guy who keeps to himself. He’s intimidated by you because you’re apparently very smart.
“Thanks…?” she questioned.
“I’m just saying, he comes here and he enjoys getting with dumbass women because he feels superior then. With a smart woman, he feels weak. It’s why he threw you out. Not that it’s any excuse, because you don’t fucking do that to women. But if you wanted an answer, there’s a very plausible one.”
“Alright, I don’t mean to freak you out or nothin’,” she began, “but there are guys running towards the dock. If we’re leaving, we gotta do it now.”
I looked behind me and saw Kevin and Spencer starting for the dock, and my heart leapt in my chest. I was not ready to address this yet, and there was a good chance that if they saw that woman’s shoes missing, that they knew I had been standing there and listening.
I reached around and felt for my wallet, and when I was sure I had money on me, I turned towards the captain and began to yell.
“Take us to the mainland, Captain!”
“Aye aye, ma’am! Full steam ahead!”
The boat lurched off the dock just as the guys started to get within yelling distance, and the two of us made our way to the front of the boat. Tears were rising in my eyes and I kept my gaze hooked on the Italian coastline, but Kevin’s words poured over my ears as we sailed off into the nighttime sky.
“Tina! Come back! Just let me explain, please!”
“He sounds desperate…” the woman trailed off.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“Madeline,” she smiled.
“You hungry Madeline? Because I’m hungry.”
“Sure, I could eat,” she said.
“Alright. Food it is, then.”
#Chapter Thirteen: Tina
I took Madeline shopping for a decent outfit and then we headed on to dinner. The woman looked absolutely spectacular in the dress she had picked out, and it was big enough so she could actually shove her tits down into it. We ordered several virgin drinks and ate our weight in pastas and breads, and I decided to get to know her a little bit.
“So, Madeline, what do you do?” I asked.
“Well, I tried getting a few of my business ideas off the ground,” she began, “but I settled on adjunct teaching and creative writing.”
“Oh! So, you’re an author,” I said.
“Yep! Not a big one or anything, but enough to get me by. I’m actually on this trip because one of the books I wrote boomed for some reason, so here I am.”
“What’s the book called?” I asked.
“The Rhymes And Adventures Of William The Nut,” she said.
I almost choked on my drink when she said that. That book had become the hottest sensation of the summer. The author had taken many conventional English literature classics and paraphrased them, then wrote them back to an audience through the eyes of a character called ‘William The Nut’. He was literally a little nut that was child-friendly, so teachers around the world were using it in their classrooms. But, adults were buying the book as well because some of the boiled-down interpretations of classics written by Shakespeare and Tolstoy were hysterical.
“Holy shit, you’re Gabby Marie?” I asked.
“Yep,” she beamed.
“That book was ingenious,” I said.
“Oh! So you read it!” she exclaimed.
“Of course I read it! Every single person in that house at the island read it,” I whispered harshly.
“Yeah… I told Spencer. He didn’t seem too impressed. I thought he would�
��ve been…” she trailed off.
“Lemme tell you somethin’, sweetheart,” I began, “he is. That man is a book writing and producing fiend, but he gets all his money through multiple revenue streams. That boy’s jealous, and he’s bein’ a dick about it.”
“Ya think so?” she asked.
“Yep.”
“So, what do you do?” she shot back.
“I live in DC and make a living helping politicians fix their public image.”
“Oh! You're a P.R. person for politicians.”
“Correct. But lemme tell ya, the papers and minutes of meetings and hours of footage I have to go through with clients sometimes in order to get things right is grueling. You gotta make sure you say what aligns with their values, which means you gotta go all the way back through all their political shit and figure out how their values morphed. There’s meetings and public footage and shit said in Congress and all this crap… it takes forever.”
“Man, I bet you wish you could speed-read,” Madeline sighed.
“Or hire someone who could.”
“Well, I can!”
“Wait, what?” I asked.
“I can speed read. It’s how I got both my doctorates at the same time.”
I stared at the woman in shock before I finally swallowed the swig of drink I was holding in my face hole.
“You speed read,” I stated.
“And I can watch multiple streams of footage at once and take them all in. It was very handy for when I got sick and had people record classes for me,” she smiled.
“Dear jesu-... are you lookin’ for a job, because I’ll give you one,” I said.
“I guess I could help!” she said.
I pulled out one of my cards from my wallet and jotted down my personal information on the back. I gave her my cell phone as well as my personal email, and I told her to completely bypass my secretary when calling me to come see me.
“I don’t know where that ingenious book is gonna take you, but if it isn’t as far as you want it to, let me know. I’ll fucking hire you full time if that’s what it takes. I’ll keep you as busy as you’d ever wanna be.”
“Thanks!” she chirped.
We continued talking and she told me how her and Spencer met on the island. Apparently, the three of them had gone drinking that day and they had met Madeline at a vineyard tasting wine, and Spencer was all over her. He chased her through the grapes and bought her all the finest foods for dinner, and then there was apparently a party a few towns over that they all caught a bus to.
“It was magical,” she sighed. “Then, he asked me to come home with him, but I didn’t realize he meant the home on the island. Everyone around here knows about it, but no one really understands what happens on it.”
“Good, we like to keep it that way,” I said.
“Anyway, he’s a hell of a man in the sack. Best lay ever.”
“I could’ve done without knowing that,” I smirked.
“I just wish he wouldn’t of reacted the way he did. I really did enjoy myself. I was even prepared to pay for the play I invited him to!”
“Like I said, jealous, intimidated, and acting like a pussy. He’ll come around, don’t worry.”
“Ya think?”
“Mhm,” I hummed.
“So, what about you and the guy you came back with? He’s handsome,” Madeline smiled.
I sighed and closed my eyes and decided, if she had been that open with me, then I should probably be that open with her. So, I threw it back to college. I told her about how we dated in college and how he was the first boy I’d ever fallen in love with, and I told her about the drinking. I divulged the parties we went to and all the times sunglasses and buttered bread were my morning routines, and I even told her about the fight I overheard at the house.
“It was the first time I’d ever heard why Kev actually pulled away like that,” I murmured.
“I mean, you don’t drink like that now, right?” she asked.
“Sometimes when we come on this vacation. We all do it three times a year. We make it a point to get together, but I never drink unless they are. I’m not gonna get back into doing it alone like I did a lot of the time in college.”
That was an admission I hadn’t been prepared to make, and yet it had been so easy to spit it out with her.
“Anyway,” I said, “the day I broke up with him in college-
“Wait wait wait wait… you broke up with him?” she asked.
“Yeah. I knew he was pulling away, so I decided he probably didn’t wanna be in the relationship anymore so I let him off the hook.”
“So, even though you were drinking like that he pulled away, but didn’t leave. And you decided to just end it instead of talking to him?” she asked.
“Why do I get the feeling I’m now suddenly in your mental health office?” I smirked.
“Do you think he would’ve left had you just talked it out with him?” she asked.
“I-... I don’t know,” I said honestly. “I guess, deep down somewhere, I was… probably scared that if I talked about it, that he…”
“... would leave anyway?” she asked lightly.
“Yeah…” I breathed.
And there it was. The real reason why I left him in college. I wanted to scorn him before he scorned me. Deep down, I knew I had an issue and I knew what it stemmed from, and I was scared that if I talked to him about it-- if I was honest about it-- that he’d run like a scared little bitch and I’d be all alone and feeling like an idiot because I got dumped first.
“Eat or be eaten…” I trailed off.
“What?” Madeline asked.
“It’s something my mother always used to tell me: ‘eat or be eaten’.”
“Sounds like terrible advice.”
“It’s not in the business world, but she never did stipulate if it was strictly business advice. It was the last thing she said to me before I headed off to college.”
“Not ‘I love you’ or anything?”
After I was done laughing at the ridiculous statement, I told Madeline about my mother. I told her about how cool and removed she was when I was growing up and how she always had these random tidbits of information that always seemed to lodge themselves in my brain. I told her about my issue with touching my food with my fingers and how that was supposedly important for my mother to drill into me, and I told her that-- in the 18 years I lived and breathed around her-- I never once saw her cry. I told her about how my father was in his hospice bed at home, and I still hadn’t seen her cry.
Not once.
“Jesus fuck, if Kev was in a hospice bed anywhere I’d be a wreck,” I breathed.
“Sounds a lot like my mom, actually,” Madeline offered.
“Really? An emotionally removed sociopath?”
“Yep. Sounds about right.”
“Well, you seem pretty well-adjusted with your emotions.”
“Hardly,” she giggled, “I wear them on my sleeve constantly, just hoping one day she’ll take ‘em.”
I looked at Madeline in a different light for the very first time. I didn’t see her as some bumbling blonde-headed idiot with big tits and no brains. She was a smart, intelligent woman who was simply running from the same type of mother I was. She was mentally struggling with the same types of insecurities ingrained into her by a mother who-- no matter what she did-- would probably never show her the emotion a little girl needed from her mommy.
“We’re fucked up,” I snickered.
“To being fucked up!” she exclaimed.
“To being fucked up!”
We clinked our glasses and got an ocean of dirty looks, and when our giggling finally died down she asked the infamous question.
“You and Kev hooking up?”
“Is it that obvious?” I groaned.
“Not really, until you mention his name. Your eyes light up, so I was curious if you were letting your hair down in that department on this vacation of yours.”
“W
e are, and before you ask, I don’t know where it’s going after this vacation.”
“I wasn’t gonna,” she smiled. “How do you feel about hookin’ up with him?”
“Honestly? It feels wonderful. The man eats a hell of a taco and has a pretty decent dick to boot. Knows how to wield that meat of his in bed.”
“Oh, Spencer’s given me stories to take home.”
“I’m not drunk enough for those yet,” I giggled.
“And if we’ve done our job right tonight, you won’t be,” she winked.
“I really do love being with him. There’s something familiar and homey about him that I just don’t feel anywhere else. But, fucking college… it just looms there and he’s got so many questions and I just… get overwhelmed when he starts to bombard me with him.”
“Then tell him to take it one at a time. He’s a big boy. I’m sure he can take a simple command.”
“I like you,” I winked.
“I know,” she smiled. “You know why I’ve never tried to change wearing my heart on my sleeve?”
“Mm? Why’s that?” I asked through a mouthful of pasta.
“Because good guys like Spencer and Kevin get away if I don’t. Yeah, sure, the bulk of them are dickheads that only wanna hook up, but it makes it worth it when you come across guys like them.”
“Spencer kicked you out of the house and you still think he’s a good guy?”
“It was how he kicked me out. He didn’t yell or anything like that. He simply slumped his shoulders like a wounded puppy and told me to leave. I tried to fight it, and that’s when he raised his voice. I guess I was more crying and waiting for the boat because I was embarrassed.”
“Why were you embarrassed?” I asked.
“Because I really did like him. I slipped my number back home into his robe pocket and everything. I guess I was just embarrassed because I had a little girl’s fantasy like always and it bit me in the ass.”
“And what fantasy was that?” I asked.
“You know, meet a nice, hot, rich guy while you’re on vacation not looking for anything. Have a whirlwind tryst that we can’t get out of our heads. We call each other two weeks later and meet up and have hot sex in a hotel somewhere before declaring our undying love and getting married.”
