by JA Huss
What the fuck is going on? Who lives here that Fletcher knows?
I stop in my tracks when I hear the squeal of a little girl. Fletcher’s gruff voice echoes back, also laughing. I duck behind a tree when they come into sight.
“Hey, baby,” Fletcher says. He’s talking to a little girl, about eight years old, clinging to him like she never wants to let go. And then… and then…
And then he leans into a tall, pretty woman who looks so much like the child, there is no mistaking who she is. And he kisses her on the cheek as he pulls her into a hug.
I turn away.
Holy fuck.
Of all the things I expected to see here, a woman with a child was never even in the running.
I look back and he’s got the little girl in his arms, twirling her around as her blonde hair fans out from the spin. She laughs and giggles, and I see that smile. That same smile that I’ve seen on Fletcher the few times he’s flashed it in front of me.
There is no mistake who these two people are to him. It’s written all over their happy smiles.
Fletcher Novak has a family.
I run back to the guardhouse, burst through the gate, and then yell at the guard, “Can you tell Mr. Silverman I had an emergency and had to leave?”
I don’t wait for an answer. I just run all the way back to the cab, get in, slam the door, and say, “Take me back to the hotel.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
“Hey, Sea Shells, when we going to the Seychelles?”
Shelly laughs that little eight-year-old laugh that picks me up and makes my day every time. She’s in love with the tongue-twisters. I have to shake off a mental image of me holding a shotgun at the door when her first boyfriend comes knocking—trying to twist his way into her life like the words that are twisting out of her mouth.
“I can’t say it!” She giggles, still trying as she hugs my waist.
I pat Shelly’s head and then look up to Samantha. “How’d your week go?”
Her smile is fake. I’ve known her since she was fourteen, so I can tell. She swallows hard. “Walker called a little while ago.”
Fucking hell. With all the shit going on, I’d forgotten about my piece-of-shit older brother. “What’d he want?” I growl. But I know what he wants.
Sam shrugs. “Just to talk, I guess.”
I squint my eyes at her. “You talked to him?”
“I hung up on him. I can’t do it again, Fletch. I’ve been over and over it in my mind and we didn’t do anything wrong. Walker and I broke up.” She looks up at me, pleading. “You and I didn’t do anything wrong. Right?”
I pull her in close for a hug. “Of course not. Forget about him.”
“He says he’s coming over. Says he’s got things to say. Things he’s been wanting to say for a long time now. But I told him you weren’t coming home today.” She looks up with watery eyes. “He didn’t believe me.”
“Did you tell him about—” But I don’t have time to finish, because I can hear the rumble of the car he’s been driving since he got his license. A twin of my own nineteen-sixty-nine Camaro, but in blue, and received one year earlier. Our grandfather was a collector and we each got our pick the day we turned sixteen.
If he took the blue, then I’d take the red. It’s always been like that with Walker and me. One-upmanship. Jealousy. And rage. We were competitive to the end. But the end came sooner rather than later. And I stayed when he left. I got Sam and then, later, Shell. And he got… well, I have no idea what he got. I hadn’t seen him in almost a decade before last week. But whatever it was, he came out on the wrong end of that deal.
“Where are the Seychelles, anyway?” Shelly asks, tugging on my shirt sleeve. “And when can we go there?”
“Indian Ocean, Shells. Go inside with your mom. I’ll be just a second.”
Samantha nods and takes Shelly’s hand. “Come on, baby. Let’s get lunch ready.”
“I’m starving,” Shelly says, as they walk up the front steps of the eight-thousand-square-foot beachfront mansion. It’s the biggest house on this end of Lakeshore. Been in the family for three generations. And it’s mine now. Everything in there is mine now.
Walker slides his sunglasses up his forehead and opens the car door.
“Don’t come any further, asshole.”
The pause is short-lived, and a second later he steps out anyway. I knew he would, but I figure he deserves a warning. And that one sentence was all he’s getting.
He’s wearing clothing that gives him the appearance of acceptable. White dress shirt, sleeves casually rolled up his forearms. Tight black slacks tailored for his athletic form. And fancy leather shoes that could probably put Shells through a year of community college. He looks well-bred and rich. And I guess he is. I guess we both are. But some of us just know how to wear that good breeding better than others.
My fists are clenching before he takes his first step on the stone-paved driveway and my feet are in motion before he takes the next one. “I’m warning you, Walker.”
He holds his hands up, palms out, to calm me or piss me off, I’m not quite sure. “I’m not here to start trouble, Fletch.”
“The fuck you’re not. Why come here then? You need money? I don’t have any left over for you. You need somewhere to stay and you figure this place is your home? You’re wrong, brother. I bought you out and I will kick you out. I don’t care if you’re sleeping in your car at the state park tonight. You’re not walking into my house.”
He lets off a fake sigh. I’ve known him a lot longer than Sam, so I peg that fake shit right out of the gate. “I just want to talk to her, man. That’s it.”
“If she wanted to talk to you, she’d be outside right now.”
“I heard you, Fletcher. Ordering her around like some kind of boss. Still insisting on calling the shots, eh? Some things never change.”
“Some people either,” I spit back.
“Those who live in glass houses, Fletcher. Does she know what you do for a living?”
“Why would I lie about that?” She does know. She doesn’t like it, but she knows. And Walker can see the truth in what I said. He’s not gonna win her sympathy with that he’s-a-no-good-stripper bullshit.
“Because you lie about everything else.” He shoots me a smile that says he’s got something on me. I recognize it from all the fights we had growing up. All the times we tangled over girls, or cars, or hell, the attention of our parents. “I know all about you, Fletch. More than you think.”
“Good for you,” I say, ratcheting down the urge to punch him in the face. “Now get the fuck off my property.”
“I traced you all over this country, Fletch. First New York—”
I see red.
“—then LA. You sure get around for a hometown boy. Even found some girls who were more than willing to tell me all about your—”
My fist crashes against his jaw. His lip splits and then I take one in the same place. The blood rushes into my mouth as we start brawling. Samantha is yelling and I catch a glimpse of her running across the well-groomed lawn as Walker and I roll on the ground. I get him in a headlock, ready to choke the life out of him, when he breaks out of my hold with a knee to the stomach. We roll again, and then Sam is grasping at my red-stained shirt.
“Fletcher! Stop!” Sam screams. “Please!”
I push Walker away and we get to our feet, circling each other. He wipes a trickle of blood off his lip, looks at it on his fingers, and laughs. “Yup, some things never change.”
I spit out my own blood, and the crimson saliva finds its way to his fancy-ass black dress shoes.
He looks down at that for a moment, like he cannot believe I’d fuck up his two-thousand-dollar shoes, then turns his attention to Sam. The reason he’s here. The reason he’d start a fight after all these years. The reason he cannot come one step closer.
I step between them, forcing him to look at me instead.
He speaks directly to Sam at my back. “I’m n
ot here to cause trouble, Sam. I just wanted to make peace with this shit. That’s all.”
And then he turns away, walks to his car, gets back in, and backs down the driveway, screeching his tires the whole way out.
It’s a goddamned miracle he didn’t kill someone on the sidewalk with that move.
“Who was that?” Shells asks from the top step of the house porch.
“No one you ever need to worry about, Sea Shells.” I spit out some more blood, wipe my mouth with the back of my hand—hoping there’s no blood on my lips—and feel relief when Sam smiles and lets out a deep breath. I take her hand and turn her around. “No one important, baby.”
I walk them back inside and clean up in the bathroom as Sam and Shell make us some sandwiches. I wait for the adrenaline to seep out of me like sweat, and then I go upstairs and change my shirt, pulling on yet another plain white t-shirt that came out of the same four-pack as the one I just took off.
Fuck him and his fancy clothes.
At least I earned what I have.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
I get a text from Katie halfway through lunch and I feel the disappointment in Shelly’s face before I even look at her. “You have to go?” she asks from across the table, her mouth still full of the roast beef sandwich.
I force a smile. “Yeah, but I’ll be back soon.” I get up from the table and squeeze Sam’s shoulder as I walk over to Shelly and bend down to let her kiss my cheek.
“You always say that, but you leave for days.”
“I gotta work, baby. You know I’d rather be here with you, right?”
She puffs up her lip and pouts. But she nods. She knows the drill.
“I’ll call ya later, OK, Sam? If he comes back—”
“I know, Fletch. Don’t worry. I called the guardhouse and told them not to let him in again.”
I let out a sigh and a little bit of the tension I’ve been wearing all week slides down my shoulders.
“Thanks for understanding.”
She gives me a weak smile and I figure that’s all she’s got right now, so I take it and make my way to the front of the house.
It’s a spectacular house. It’s not my accomplishment, so I’ve never had any reason to be proud of it. But I do love it. And I love that Shelly is growing up here. Just like me and Walker, only without the rivalry.
I don’t know why my brother hated me. First child syndrome? Jealousy of the new baby? But it doesn’t make much sense. How much jealousy is a one-year-old capable of anyway?
We are sixteen months apart in age. A fact that definitely contributed to the demise of my mother’s social life, and then later, her interest in life. She’s not even dead, like my dad. Just cut out of the family for lack of ambition after he passed.
I guess I can’t blame her. I see first-hand what having one kid does to Sam. Imagining her with two little ones that close in age is enough to make me cringe. It’s nothing against Sam at all. It’s just a lot of work taking care of one infant, let alone two. I know. I’ve been there.
So I can cut my mom some slack. My dad was more like Walker than me. Transient would be a good word to describe him. Ask any kid if that’s a good quality in a father and even an eight-year-old like Shells will tell you no.
I imagine her thinking that of me as I drive south along the lakeshore. It’s late afternoon now. I didn’t even get to stay an hour before I got called away. Does Shelly think I’m transient because I stay down in South Tahoe most nights?
I hope not. I do my best.
I lose myself in thought as the miles pass and the minutes tick by. I barely see the beauty of the landscape around me anymore. Tahoe is part of me. I don’t leave often. And the fact that Walker knew about my trips to New York and LA has me unsettled.
Does he know who I am?
He might. It’s not like I’ve been super-secretive about any of it. I just figured no one much cared.
But apparently someone does. And it figures it would be Walker. I imagine all the reasons why he came back. Money tops the list. But I don’t owe him shit and he’s not getting one dime out of me.
Sam is second on the list. And that’s the more realistic one, considering that the outfit he was wearing today must’ve cost him about five grand alone. He’s not out of money yet.
I try to imagine a scenario where she’d choose him over me and come up short. Sam would never do that. Never. She’s the most loyal person I’ve ever met.
But… she could. She could still love him.
And if she does, Fletch, then she does. You can’t change the way people feel about each other.
And that line of thought brings me back to Tiffy just as I pull onto Lake Parkway and wind my way past the golf course towards the Landslide, their bright copper towers gleaming in the late-afternoon sun. Blinding, almost. The perfect metaphor to describe what goes on inside.
Name your poison—gambling, drugs, stripping, sex—you can get it inside. Those guys at the tables tell themselves it’s their lucky day. They snort coke in the bathroom and stuff tips in the bras of the cocktail waitresses. Hell, I tell myself that shit too. It’s my lucky day every night I go out on stage and come back with a pile of money.
I pull up to the valet and leave my delusions in the backseat when I get out. It’s a job, Fletcher. Nothing more.
But Tiffy didn’t feel like a job last night. Tiffy felt like a possibility.
Just your delusional mind, trying to justify why you’re not a no-good piece of shit.
Whatever.
I stop by the front desk and smile at Kristen. She’s not too bright, but she tries hard to please and she always smiles. I like her for those reasons alone. “Hey, Kristen, you got a package for me?”
“Oh, yeah, hey, Fletch. One sec.” She finishes typing on her keyboard and then slips behind the partition that separates the front desk from the office. She appears again, barely a minute later, and hands me a thin box with my name on it.
“Thanks, babe. Oh, hey,” I say, turning back to her. “Have you seen Tiffy today?”
“Earlier,” she says, going back to typing on her keyboard. “Maybe a few hours ago?” She looks up and gives me a smile. “Not since then.”
I nod. “OK, well, thanks.” I head off for the elevators, barely registering her answer of, “No problem,” and push the button when I get there, anxious to see what’s in the box Katie left.
It can’t be good. Well, it can, in a way. But ultimately, everything about this request I had her do for me will turn to shit.
I tap my foot as I wait for the elevator to take me up to fifteen, and then get out and find my keycard in my back pocket as I walk down the hall. When I get to the door, I pass it over the lock and the light flashes green at me.
I push the door open.
Tiffy Preston is sitting on my couch with a stack of papers in her hand.
My mind races as I figure out what might be on those papers. “What the fuck are you doing in my room?”
“Your room?” She laughs. “This is the hotel’s room. And I’m the legal representative of the hotel. So this room, Fletcher Novak, belongs to me. You don’t even pay for it.”
“You better have a damn good explanation for this, Tiffy. I’m not even joking. And those papers in your hands, they had better belong to you, or I’m going to be one pissed-off guy.”
“You think you have the right to be pissed off? Ha!” She looks down at the papers in her hand and begins reading. “‘Dear Sexy Man’”—she snorts—“‘I have a problem with a girl. She’s rich and I’m not. She comes from a very prominent family and I work for her father. It’s difficult to relate to her, and I’m sure she feels the same way about me. But there is something there that makes me want to try harder. What can I do to close this money gap? Signed, Rich Man, Poor Man.’” She shakes the letter in her hand. “What is this?” Her voice rises a little at the end of that sentence, making me cringe. “Why do you have these letters?” She flips through the pile, dozens of the
m in her hands. “I’ve read them all, Fletcher. The one from Self-Loathing in Saratoga where the guy complains about how his girlfriend has such a low opinion of herself, she can’t see that he really loves her? What is that?”
I clear my throat, unwilling to say nothing, but not sure how I can soften the blow. In the end, I decide I can’t. So I just tell it like it is. “I’ve been using our conversations to write the letters.”
“Obviously,” Tiffy snaps. “Are you this… this… Sexy Man? Do you write that column?”
I nod. “I am. I do.”
“And you make those letters up?” It’s an accusation. One she already knows the answer to, she just wants confirmation.
“Come on, Tiffy. The whole world is scripted. You know this.”
“You know what? Yesterday I almost thought that I had misjudged you. That I was pegging you unfairly. That I came here with an expectation that you deserved to be fired. Because you have this smooth voice. And your words are like candy. Soothing and sweet. But you’re poison, Fletcher Novak. Nothing but poison.”
I give her a sidelong glance. “How would you know?” I growl. “You have no idea who I am.”
“I have an idea,” she snaps back. “Cole sent me to the spa today to relax. Because he had meetings all day and we weren’t going to meet until dinner.”
I cringe at the dinner part, just like I did this morning. She’s finally wrangled him into a date. Got just what she wanted.
“But I wasn’t into it, so I left and went up to the restaurant. And do you know who I saw up there?”
“I can guess,” I say evenly, letting out a breath of air.
She stares at me for a moment, looking like she might explode. But then she lifts her chin and steels herself for the next confrontation. “You set up your client with my possibility.”
I shake my head no.
“You liar,” she seethes. “You liar. I saw you today too.”
“Saw me where?”
Tiffy crosses her arms cross her chest. “That mansion you have up in Incline Village? What the hell was that? You’re rich? You’re married?”
