Preach to me Baby

by Hazel Parker

  “Peter is my son. I just met him,” he looked at the car clock. “About an hour ago, sir.” The man once again repeated the news to the room, which was once again met by mixed feelings. “I don’t see why any of this is something that should concern you though, sir.” There was a short pause before the man responded.

  “Nick. A story went live this morning about how the youngest member of the Senate has been hiding a secret family in home city and that there’s the question of how many secret families does he have. Is this an isolated case or are there more illegitimate kids running around, Nick?” Nick could barely contain a laugh.

  “Sir, I assure you this is the only child that I have. I was too busy in college and grad school to worry about any of that. I dated while on the campaign trail, but that was just for the PR people. They wanted me to have a pretty lady standing by me. Kelly though, she’s different.” The man audibly sighed over the phone.

  “So how much money is she asking for?” Nick stared down at his phone in surprise.

  “Sir, she’s not asking for any money. I was at my high school reunion and we caught up.” The man repeated the news to the room. “I reconnected with a lot of people last night.” The man absently acknowledged him.

  “Nick, we need to nip this in the bud. I need you to make sure that no one goes to her for comments. She needs to not say anything negative about you. This could get you in a lot of trouble during your next election.” Nick shook his head confused.

  “Sir, she would never-” The man cut him off.

  “Handle it, Nick.” The phone clicked and he was left staring down the road, defeated.

  ******

  Nick pulled over at the next rest stop and looked at his phone. He stared at Kelly’s contact page which still had a picture of the two of them from when they had been at prom all those many years ago. He looked at the expression on his face and couldn’t imagine being with anyone else at that moment. So, he got back on the highway, but going back towards his hometown.

  Another hour in the car and he arrived at the school where he waited for Kelly to arrive and pick Peter up from school. He sat and waited and waited until finally cars began to file in. He stared out the window until he saw Kelly pull in and park. He threw his car into park and jumped out, nearly getting hit as he crossed the street.

  He finally made his way to her car and he knocked on her window. She jumped in fright and Nick noticed that her eyes were red and bloodshot. He knew that she must have been crying and was ready to make her feel better. If she would let him.

  “Kelly, we need to talk.” She turned away from him and locked the car door as he went to go and try to open it. “Come on, let me in so we can talk.” Kelly flicked him off and answered.

  “If you’re here to make sure I don’t say anything to the papers, don’t worry, I’ll keep my mouth shut.” Nick laughed and continued to knock on the window. Maybe if he annoyed her enough she would open the car for him.

  “I’m not worried about any of that. I think I have a way to keep it under control.” Kelly looked up at him confused. “Open the window so I can tell you my plan. I don’t like having to yell through the window.” Kelly looked around and noticed that there was a small crowd forming, including students who had just been gotten out of school.

  “Dear god, Nick, you’re making a scene.” She covered her face when she realized someone was filming the whole thing on their smartphone. “Let’s do this somewhere else.” Just then Peter walked up to the scene.

  “What the hell is going on?” He reached the passenger door and tried to open it, but it was still locked. Nick responded before Kelly did, but they both said the same thing.

  “Watch your mouth, young man.” Kelly looked at Nick and he noticed a small smile creep across her face. She leaned across the car though and unlocked the car door for Peter. Nick looked at her and pleaded for her to open the window. She cracked under his puppy dog eyes and rolled down the window slightly. “Thank you.” He turned his attention to Peter who sat in the front seat confused.

  “Hey, Peter. My name is Nick and you don’t know me, but I love your mother very much. I’ve been a fool for fifteen long years and I plan to start making things right, starting with this.” Nick knelt down next to the car and the crowd audibly gasped. “Kelly, will you marry me?” Kelly’s hands shot up to her mouth where she took in a quick gasp. Nick looked at his hand and commented on the lack of the ring. “I didn’t want to miss you, so I didn’t have time to get a ring, but I know just where we can go. And if you say yes, we can go right now.” Kelly was still silent, and it was Peter who prompted her to say something. Kelly took a deep breath and opened the car door.

  “Yes, of course, Nick.” He stood up and they embraced. Their arms wrapped around each other and they kissed passionately. The crowd began to cheer and Peter groaned at the sight of his mother kissing someone. “I’ve been waiting fifteen years to hear that question.” Nick laughed and responded to her.

  “I’ve been waiting fifteen years to ask it.”

  ******

  Nick followed Kelly and Peter back to their house and while he was driving he called up his assistant who answered very cheerfully.

  “Nick, I’m so happy for you,” his assistant exclaimed. “We just heard the good news. The party leader is very pleased. It’s looking great for you in the press as well.” Nick shook his head in surprise.

  “Really? I figured I would be booted out for sure.” His assistant laughed and answered him.

  “Not at all, it’s looking like they want you to take on more leadership roles now. People love you and want to see what else you’re doing in politics now. This is great for us.” Nick talked to his assistant for a few more minutes and said goodbye to him as he pulled into the driveway behind Kelly. She and Peter got out of the car and walked over to him as he got out.

  He looked at both of them and at the house. He looked at the neighborhood and remembered all of the great memories he had here. Then, he looked back at Kelly and asked her a question. After he asked she nodded enthusiastically.

  “How about we start over in D.C?”

  *****

  THE END

  Double Obsessions

  I felt like something was just missing inside me, you know? I'm sure that most people feel that way at some point in their lives, and in reality I don't really think there's any sort of reason to think that I was abnormal or anything for it. And especially since things were sort of at a point where things were calming down for me, settling in, and all that jazz.

  Reasonably, there was nothing that should have directly made me so unhappy, I guess... It was just, I dunno. Feeling like things had gotten too stuck in place now that I was in my late twenties. I had moved in with my boyfriend, I didn't have a job because he pulled in quite the income himself, and so there really wasn't all that much to keep me compelled throughout the course of the week.

  And, well, that isn't to say I was depressed, or anything like that, exactly. Most of the time I was really fine. I had hobbies, interests, once in a while I volunteered. It really wasn't that hard for me to find meaning in life, so much as it was that, in spite of all that meaning, there was still something lacking hovering just above my head...

  I really couldn't seem to put my finger on just what it was, no matter how honest I tried to be with myself or in how straightforward a fashion I attempted to assess the course of my life. Things were, quite reasonably, how they should be, and the source of this inner nagging, this inability to be at peace about things was... Well... It was inexplicable, really...

  Like most people do, I'm certain, I tried to put it out of my mind. Whether it grew worse or intensified because of it, I just decided that it was better left buried in my subconscious than allowed to be out in the open and grow into something that interfered with my life.

  One day, I decided that such thoughts were getting to be entirely too much to avoid that particular afternoon, and accordingly, I chose to flee them more dire
ctly using two of my favorite remedies: my best friend Clarissa, and alcohol.

  God, this was a coupling that went well together...

  God love her, Clarissa and I had been best friends since high school, and had remained in touch over the years because of how very, very strong our bond had always been. Honestly, if I hadn't been so emotionally invested in a guy, she herself could have been my lover (or at least we joked that this could be the case,) and on many levels the two of us shared emotional connections that I'd never really been able to exchange with any other human being.

  I didn't really intend on telling her what it was that was bothering me, of course, particularly given the fact that I didn't honestly know what that something was myself. But it would be great to just unwind for a while in her company, I knew, to forget about all of it and just act like a stupid dumb teenage girl all over again, when things had all seemed so much simpler than they were in the present.

  I knocked on her door, and she answered it beaming at me, always glad to have me around, I knew. “Hey loser,” I said, stepping inside without waiting for an overt invitation. “I thought we could get drunk, pull out our old high school yearbook, and make fun of everyone in it.”

  “Oh God yes, come on in,” she said, without giving it another thought, and she ushered me inside. Bear in mind, I had not even let her know ahead of time that I was coming over, I'd simply appeared out of thin air and she'd been absolutely cool with it. That was, thank God, exactly the type of friendship the two of us had.

  It didn't take long at all before the two of us had downed our first glass of red wine, and already we were giggling like wild and cracking jokes fairly regularly about what morons everyone had been during high school.

  “Oh God, look at our hair in this one... What the hell was I thinking? I mean, come on, pink highlights? I look like a clown or something...”

  “Oh come on,” I said, “you looked cute in that... It wasn't like were walking around with eighties hairstyles or anything... Not like, oh, what was her name... God, that girl from that really conservative family who always wore her hair in a perm... Damn it, what was her name?”

  “Polly?”

  “Yeah, Polly- no, wait... No, not Polly... Pauline that was it. Pauline Goodman.”

  “Oh yeah, that was it. I wonder what ever happened to her?”

  “I'm not really sure... I think I heard she either became a lawyer or a nun...”

  “Probably a nun...”

  “Or a nun lawyer, possibly.”

  “Do nuns need lawyers?”

  “No, I mean a lawyer who is also a nun, not a lawyer who represents nuns.”

  “Oh, right. Yeah, probably. Oh God, do you remember Ricky Simmons?” Clarissa just about spit her drink out coming across Ricky's picture in the yearbook, and she promptly pushed it into my lap so that I could look at it, even though I knew perfectly well just who Ricky was- a thin, hyper serious guy who had always walked around the school dead-eyed and like he didn't give a damn about anything.

  “Yeah, I remember him... He always gave me the creeps.”

  “I heard he went to jail, like, just a few months ago...”

  “Really? I would say I'm surprised, but that really doesn't seem that odd somehow. What did he do?”

  “I heard he robbed a gas station at gunpoint... And then he killed a guy by accident with his car trying to escape. God, how awful... People are just... Ugh...”

  “Yeah... But hey, I came over here to drink my troubles away, not get hung up on the tragedy of the human condition. Keep filling me with happy thoughts, not this tragedy B.S.”

  “Sorry,” Clarissa laughed, downing the rest of her drink. “Refill?”

  “Hellz to the yes,” I replied, and had my glass promptly filled back up to the brim.

  “Easy there, killer! I want to at least be able to drive home, you know...”

  “Maybe I'm trying to seduce you,” said Clarissa, giving me joking bedroom eyes and peering over the rim of her refilled glass as she sipped it. But then I started laughing, and she cracked up in return, ending up spitting out the wine back into the glass and having to wipe her lips off with her arm.

  We turned back to the book, then, in silence for a moment, looking for our next victim/source of comedy.

  “Oh hey,” she said suddenly, lighting up like a lightbulb, and clearly excited about something or other. “There's Danny Evans... You remember him, don't you? You two went to senior prom together, and then started dating for a while... Whatever happened between you two?”

  “Oh yeah, Danny... Well, nothing really happened I guess. He was a nice guy. Fun to be around and everything. Just, I don't know, college and everything came around and we ended up parting ways. No real story behind it or anything. Things just fizzled out.”

  “Ah, okay. I was just being nosy.”

  “Yeah you're good at that,” I said, grinning. “It's ancient history, though. Nothing to really be nosy about. Water under the bridge and all that jazz. I wonder what ever did become of him though? I know he moved, like, across the country or something didn't he? I can't remember what he said he was majoring in, but the last time I heard from him he'd changed what he was studying in college...”

  “Oh, no- well, I mean, yes, he did move, but he's back in the area now I think. I heard he just moved back into town and is starting up a business or something. I can't really remember what kind, but I've heard he's pretty doing well for himself... And of course, he's just as damn fine as he ever was...”

  “Ohhhh, Lordy Lord... he was pretty damn sexy, wasn't he?”

  “Yes, ma'am, he certainly was... M'm... Did you ever get any of that action while the two of you were-”

  “Hey now... A good girl doesn't kiss and tell,” I said, but blushing all the while, so that I'm certain it gave me away quite shamelessly in spite of my denial. And at any rate, the thoughts of Danny were now lodged in my brain, and I seemed incapable of dislodging him from his place in there. What the hell was it about him that suddenly had me so captivated?

  Maybe it was how young we both were back then, I thought, as I gazed long and hard at the photograph of the two of us dancing under the prom section. That was, more than likely, exactly what it was I was missing, my youth, even though I still wasn't really all that over the hill or anything.

  God, the two of us looked so young, though... Both eighteen at the time, and then the reality of the fact that that had been almost ten years ago by now, an entire damn decade, seemed almost too awful to fathom. Ten years... Ten years... It sure hadn't seemed like that long at all, not by any means.

  Suddenly, Clarissa spoke up again, tearing me from my thoughts of lust and longing.

  “Hey, how's Mark doing?”

  “Mark?” I asked, a bit dumbfounded at first, and then repeated the word, as though his name belonged to some complete stranger, and as though I'd never before heard that single syllable in my life. “Mark...” I then stared for a moment at my wine glass, noticing suddenly that I'd emptied the damn thing again, without even really realizing I'd done so.

  “Oh, uh, Mark's good,” I said, snapping myself out of it to at least a moderate degree, and trying to get my brain back in gear. “I uh... Well, he works a lot, I guess. He keeps busy... Bringing home the bacon and everything you know...”

  “Oh, yeah, Steve's the same way... I've been thinking about getting a job of my own, you know, just to keep myself from going completely crazy throughout the day. But, I mean, we don't really need the extra money or anything, either, so I don't know... I really shouldn't be complaining about having all this free time, but it really gets a bit tedious day in and day out... I need some excitement now and then, you know?”

  “Yeah, really,” I said, smiling and pretending like I thought this was funny somehow, but at this point my mind was in another realm entirely from that which I had intended it to be in upon my trip to come and visit Clarissa to begin with.

  I was, in spite of myself, traveling down a mental
road that I didn't genuinely care to explore, one that would only make things more difficult for me in my already boggled state of mind, that would challenge my own happiness with my day-to-day existence and force me to ask questions that were far beyond anything I was comfortable in exploring.

  As much as I tried to resist it, I thought about Mark.

  Him, and myself, all those years ago, two fresh-faced and hormone crazed eighteen year olds sowing their wild oats like there was absolutely no tomorrow.

  I remembered the back seat of his car, our lips locking and sliding against one another. Our tongues pushing into one another's mouths, our techniques slightly clumsy in our young adult years, but more adept, I thought, even then, than any of the other partners I'd had. I wondered, in the ensuing years, just how much more talented he'd become in the bedroom?

  It was none of my damn business, now, of course, but I couldn't deny how deeply the thought titillated me as it passed through my mind...