Feverish (Bullet #3)

by Jade C. Jamison

  She almost snarled. “How exactly am I supposed to take it?”

  He shrugged, resisting the urge to display himself like a trophy. “Consider yourself lucky. Not a lot of women can say they’ve slept with a rock star.” Add to that, Clay knew he was well endowed and good in bed—one groupie had dubbed him fucktastic. This woman had no idea how lucky she was.

  Except Clay felt like a skeezy slimebag even thinking that.

  No way would he let her in on that secret, though.

  She rolled her eyes and stood up, buttoning the sleeveless leopard-print blouse up the front. “Whatever. I’ve had better.”

  He doubted that, even though it still took him down a peg. But he couldn’t let on. “Oh, really?”

  She snarled. “I don’t kiss and tell, but I’ve fucked some of the best.”

  All right. He couldn’t let it go. “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. Guys from Deftones, Five Finger Death Punch, Black Veil Brides, The Last Savior of God, Fully Automatic, Kytten Punched, Em—”

  He felt his eyes narrow. He was pretty sure she was full of shit about at least half of the bands she’d named. “Fully Automatic?” He’d toured with those guys more than once. At this point, he figured she was just trying to get under his skin, and if he wasn’t careful, she would. Still…he knew the guys in Fully Automatic quite well.

  “Yeah. You know Ethan Richards?”

  Oh, of course. And he could actually believe that one. Not nowadays, but earlier in Richards’s career. If she said she fucked him last week, Clay would start laughing. Ethan’s girlfriend had just had a baby recently, and Clay was pretty sure the guy had been clean for a couple years. He was convinced the dude was still a prick, but that was beside the point. “You should know the answer to that, considering our bands have toured together.”

  “Yeah, well, I’ve tapped that.”

  God, Clay was going to make her launch into another pummeling streak if he wasn’t careful, but he just couldn’t stop himself. “You and half the groupies on the planet.”

  She reached under the coffee table for one of her thigh high boots and snarled at him. If he couldn’t control himself, she was going to deck him again. “Fuck you, you fuckstain.”

  He had it coming, but she was losing her creativity. He would just shut up and smile and lock the door behind her when she left. He leaned against the wall and crossed his arms over his chest while she zipped up her boot. Then she got on her hands and knees to look for the other shoe. He hoped she didn’t get splinters from the end table, because then he’d never get rid of her.

  Then he spied the top of the boot behind the chair next to the fireplace. He walked over to the chair and pulled the boot out. He walked over to her, still on all fours but on the other side of the coffee table, and held the boot in front of her. She stopped and looked up at him, a scowl still on her face. She reached out and tugged hard on the boot. She got up and stormed back to the couch where she finagled it on. Clay managed to keep his trap shut and just enjoyed hearing Judas Priest rattling around in his head.

  When she finally stood, she pulled on her blouse to snug it down and then stomped over to the other chair in the room, scooping up her tiny black purse and throwing the strap over her shoulder. She licked her index fingers and rubbed them under her eyes. She must have known she had a lot of caked-on makeup there, and she looked a little better after she did that. She walked over to the front door and unlocked it. She opened the door, but before she walked through it, she turned around and looked at Clay. He could barely make out her face because of the afternoon sun streaming in, but he could guess the expression. She said, “I hope you rot in hell, Jet Smith, and if you see two middle fingers up at a concert, you’ll know they belong to me. Have a great life, fucker.”

  He wanted to tell her he was sorry. He almost invited her back in to share a Tombstone pizza and flat Pepsi but thought better of it. Better for her to leave like a bandage ripped off a wound—quickly and, therefore, as painlessly as possible—rather than drawing it out like a woman in labor. It had been excruciating enough.

  Still, part of him had to try to end it on a nice note. “Have a nice life.” He wished he could remember her name. Maybe he really was a grade A asshole.

  She paused and considered him. Oh, no. The jig was up. “You don’t even remember my name, do you?”

  He sucked in a deep breath. “What makes you say that?”

  She walked back in the door a few steps, leaving it open, and Clay could feel the warm air breezing in. “Okay, then, what’s my name?”

  Aw, shit. Well, maybe the first name that came to mind was the right one. “Uh…Carmen sounds about right.”

  “You motherfucker.”

  He panicked. “Lucia? Anja!”

  “It’s Tatiana, you cocksucker!” She grabbed the doorknob but turned around, glaring. “You know what? You fuck like a girl!”

  She turned around again and slammed the door behind her. He felt his brow furrow as he tried to decide if her last sentence had been meant to be an insult. Exactly how would a person fuck like a girl? What exactly was that supposed to mean?

  He wasn’t about to follow her outside to find out.

  Less than a minute later, he heard her car backing out of his driveway. He hadn’t remembered how they’d gotten to his place last night, because he frequently called a cab when he was as fucked up as he’d been the night before. He walked over to the door and locked it, then leaned his back against it and let out a long breath of air. His shoulders relaxed, but his cheek still stung where she’d slapped him. He could especially feel the bite of the metal of her rings.

  A small price to pay. At least she was gone.

  He ran his palms down his chest and stomach. He was torn. Did he want to shower first or get something to eat?

  The decision wasn’t too difficult. Much as he’d enjoyed the evening before, it was now leaving a bad taste in his mouth, just as many encounters did anymore. A shower would signal a fresh start and then he might have an appetite. He walked back through the living room to his bedroom. He stopped at the long dresser where his stereo sat next to stacks of CDs. He’d put in some music and crank it first so he could hear it in the master bathroom while he showered.

  Part of him really wanted to listen to the old Judas Priest CD Screaming for Vengeance, since that was the album that had the song that was rolling through his mind, but he’d have to go through his larger collection in his music room, but because there was no order to the chaos in there, he didn’t even want to attempt it. He’d always wanted to arrange the CDs in alphabetical order but would get distracted every time he tried, wanting to listen to each one he picked up. Maybe he could sweet talk Mary into doing it sometime.

  Instead, he looked through the stack of CDs next to the stereo. These were newer purchases and albums he hadn’t grown used to yet. He picked the top one of the stack, the latest by Avenged Sevenfold, and put it in the stereo. Once it started playing, he turned it up loud and made his way to the bathroom. When he got there and took his jeans off, he set them on the counter, considering he’d only worn them for a few minutes.

  But then he changed his mind. He needed to wash all of Tatiana off him, and new jeans and new bedding were in order. Seeing her in the morning coupled with her foulness made him realize he had to stop doing this.

  He turned on the water in the shower, running both hot and cold until the temperature was perfect. He got in and smiled. He always told himself the same damn thing the morning after, but he just couldn’t resist some of these chicks. Of course, the booze and drugs didn’t help.

  As he lathered up, he belted the song along with M. Shadows. As the suds washed down the drain and he screamed aloud, he felt clean and ready to face the day…or afternoon, as it were. Just as he started shampooing his brown hair that was now down past his shoulder blades, the music cut out. He got a little worried at first but then wondered if maybe Mary came a day early. He stuck his head out from the shower curtain. “Mar
y? Is that you?”

  There was no answer, so he washed the shampoo out quickly and shut off the water, grabbing for the towel hanging next to the tub. Stupid. Someday he’d quit showering with the door open. He was seriously vulnerable. He wrapped the towel around his waist. It was probably psycho Tatiana ready to exact some revenge. “Who’s there?” Still no answer. He had to find something to use as a weapon, but he didn’t think he had much of anything in the bathroom to use. The toilet plunger maybe—at least he could use it to keep a little distance between him and someone else. First, though, he slammed the bathroom door and locked it. Then he dried his legs and worked his dirty jeans back on. He was going to unleash his motherfucking wrath on whatever asshole had made him put those goddamned jeans back on. He dried his hair off some too to keep it from dripping, but he had to get out there and find out what the hell was going on. He got in the little closet in the bathroom and pulled out the plunger. Then he walked to the door and quietly unlocked it. Strange—he couldn’t hear anything in the other room, even though it was obvious someone had to be there.

  He took a deep breath and yanked the door open, hoping to use the element of surprise to his advantage. He waved the plunger around, taking in the entire sunlit room, but saw nothing. He looked at the CD player. Someone had turned it off. He felt all the more resolved to find out what was going on. It could still be Mary. Maybe she’d already gathered up some laundry and was in the basement washing some clothes. That would explain why he couldn’t hear her. It had to be her. She bitched constantly about his music.

  Hah. How’d she think he could pay her fucking salary?

  He smiled. He thought part of her actually liked it. She was a sweet little thing, and if she wasn’t married and ten years his senior, he’d consider sweeping her off her feet. They had a playful banter. They both acted irritated with each other, but it was evident they liked each other immensely. He took a deep breath and considered setting the plunger down, but he wasn’t convinced his housekeeper was here yet. He took tentative steps through his bedroom, then the living room and the kitchen, and then he opened the door to the basement, expecting to see Mary’s short round body down there. “Mary? You there?”

  But she wasn’t. In fact, he was starting to think there was no one anywhere in his house. He walked halfway down the stairs to the basement, just to be sure, but she wasn’t down there. She usually turned the lights on down there anyway, even when she didn’t need them during the day, but they were off. When he walked back upstairs, he checked the rest of the rooms and the locks on the door. Nothing, nobody.

  So maybe it was a breaker problem. Where the hell were the breakers? Oh, yeah, downstairs. He walked back to the basement door and went downstairs again. The breaker box was located in a corner past the dryer. He flipped the light switch so he could see the breakers in the corner and no light came on.

  Hmm.

  The basement light surely wasn’t on the same circuit that his stereo was on. That made him wonder if the power was off. He walked back out the door and flipped the light switch to the kitchen. It didn’t turn on either. Just as a last reassurance, he opened the refrigerator door and found confirmation. No light, no fan.

  He needed to call the power company and see if there was some weird electricity outage in his neighborhood. He couldn’t remember where he’d put his cell phone, so he looked all through the living room, on end tables, under furniture, inside cushions. He’d never had a landline put in, much to Mary’s chagrin, and this was the only time since he’d moved here that he wished he’d done it. He considered walking to a neighbor’s house, but they weren’t huge Jet fans.

  Finally, Clay went back in his bedroom and looked around, but it wasn’t there either. Then he remembered. It had been in the back pocket of last night’s jeans, and they were still in his music room. He hustled to the other end of the house to the most important room in it—the one that held his prize possessions—his guitars, amps, pedals, and everything else that went with his musical life. Carm—er, Tatiana had asked to see some of his guitars, and she’d attacked him shortly after he’d started playing a riff from Last Five Second’s first single. And there they were, in the middle of the floor. Please let it be there.

  And it was. It was even halfway charged. Then he realized he didn’t have the phone number to the power company. So he pulled up the browser on his phone to search the internet. He couldn’t remember the name of the power company, though, anymore than he’d been able to remember Tatiana’s name. In his defense, however, the power company had been taken over by a new company just a few months ago.

  He sighed, feeling frustrated. He knew he had a phone book somewhere, but damned if he knew where it was. He knew Mary would have put it somewhere that seemed logical to her. Then it dawned on him. Their phone number would have to be on his bill. So he’d have to go into his office where all that crap was.

  He walked farther down the hall to the small room he’d converted into an office. It had a desk and chairs, some bookshelves, and a filing cabinet. That was it as far as furniture went. He opened the door and spied the rather large pile of mail on the desk. When the hell had it grown so large? This wasn’t good.

  He forced himself to walk all the way inside and sit down. Caring enough to pay bills had never been Clay’s forte. It used to be that he didn’t have enough money to stretch, and he’d do the best he could. Nowadays, he had plenty of money but wasn’t organized enough—didn’t give enough of a shit, even—to make sure they got paid. Sure, there were also flyers and magazines and letters in the pile, but it was mostly bills.

  Shit.

  He started sifting through the pile. Mary used to stack the mail neatly but realized that as soon as Clay got his hands on it, it would crumble into a mess anyway, so she stopped bothering. As he started looking at one envelope after another, he was pretty sure the stuff on top was newest. Visa, cable, water (he was starting to feel relief that he’d bought his car outright), gas, and aha! The electric bill. Oh, that wasn’t good. The envelope looked normal, except on the front it said, “Important Notice.” He’d been here before. Paired with the fact that the bill peeking through the plastic window was printed on yellow paper meant only one thing: the bill was overdue.

  Fuck.

  He opened the bill and let out a long sigh. He felt like cursing, but it wouldn’t do any good. Sure enough, that damned bill said that if they hadn’t received payment by April nineteenth, his power would be shut off. It went on to mention that he’d have to pay fees to reconnect, late fees, and the original amount, blah, blah, blah. But maybe he still had time. He couldn’t remember what day it was.

  He pressed a button on his phone and read the date. Well, that had been wishful thinking. Today was April twentieth, which meant he was officially fucked. He sighed. He’d have to get a shirt and shoes on and drive to the power company before five o’clock. He shook his head and shuffled to the bedroom so he could comb his hair and finish dressing. Time to play grownup for a while.

  Chapter Two

  EMILY BRINKMAN TWIRLED her straw in the glass of iced tea, trying not to tune her dad out. The man meant well, and she was very lucky to have him in her life. She should have been putting the finishing touches on her capstone project for school, not chewing the fat with her dad. Well, she knew damn good and well she would have been hanging with her boyfriend Bryce if she hadn’t been with her dad. The project was good to go. She was just fretting over it now.

  Her dad had been waxing poetic over the chicken wings, telling her how proud he was that she was going to be graduating with her MBA in just a couple of weeks. He knew how hard she’d worked on it and, even though she was going to have a pile of student loans (and he also promised to help her pay them), he hoped she’d felt as though her education had been worth the hard work and sacrifice. Yeah, it had been. She knew that degree was going to be worth every penny. She already had several companies fighting over her, but she didn’t know that she wanted to go straight into th
e corporate world after graduation. She instead wanted to play a little, kind of like Bryce was going to do. Bryce would be working for his father’s corporation beginning August first, but before that, he and three of his closest buddies were going to travel Europe.

  Emily knew she could have pushed the issue. She could have made Bryce feel guilty about not taking her, but she knew she didn’t want to be the one female surrounded by all that testosterone. Really, this was Bryce’s extended bachelor party. No, they hadn’t set a date. He hadn’t even given her an engagement ring. Their first goal had been to get through school, and they were almost there. It was a done deal, though. Every time Emily visited his parents’ house in Cherry Creek, his mother grilled her for details about what she wanted their wedding to be like. Emily didn’t have the heart to tell the woman that her own father was firmly rooted in middle-class finances. He wouldn’t be able to afford the kind of wedding Bryce’s mother envisioned. So she imagined she and Bryce would live together a year or two and save up enough so they could pay for that wedding.

  In the meantime, though, Emily’s dad was still talking. She managed to tune back in. He said, “Em, I know it probably doesn’t make much sense to you, but I won’t worry about you as long as Bryce is in your life.”

  “Oh, come on, dad. I don’t need a man.”

  “I know, honey, but you’re all I’ve got, and I worry about you.”

  She smiled and patted his hand. “I survived college, didn’t I?”

  His mouth turned up at one corner but he nodded. Her father had been her anchor her entire life. He’d never remarried after her mother had passed away. Passed away made it sound so peaceful, but it really hadn’t been. Her mother had been in a horrible car accident, a tiny car in the middle of a stack on the highway between Monument and Denver one snowy January. Emily had been eight, so she’d missed out on all the things her friends got from their mothers—the talks about menstruation, pimples, and boys. Fortunately, her friends’ mothers understood that and included Emily in on their talks. It wasn’t the same, though, but Emily didn’t fault her dad for that. He’d done the best he could.