“I think that’s my cue.”
Matt lightly chuckled. “I see you and Melanie have reacquainted yourselves.”
“Yeah. Good times,” I sassed. He watched with amusement as I pulled a twenty from my wallet. “Good to see you, man,” I said, slapping him on the back of the shoulder again.
“You too,” he replied, but his eyes were back on the blonde.
On the bright side, coming here gave me a new lead. On the not-so-bright side, I couldn’t do anything about it until the hospital records room reopened on Monday. At least I could go home for the weekend and sleep in a real bed though. One that was in a room that didn’t have stagnant air that ripped my stomach linings a new one. One far away from a girl who was infesting herself too deeply within my mind.
3
“So why did we just pull the old dishwater trick on that man candy? ‘Cause there ain’t a whole lot of guys in town that look like that.”
“You want him? You can have him. He prefers the noncommittal type.”
Her eyes lit up as she said, “Ooh. That is my type. Just sex and none of that emotional crap.”
I chuckled as best I could. “Chelsie, are you sure you don’t possess a Y chromosome somewhere in your DNA? You can be such a guy sometimes.”
She just laughed and ambled off, already exaggerating her hip sway in tight faded jeans before passing through the kitchen door. She knew how to bring in the tips, I’d give her that. I followed her in, offering the male customers zero sway with my hips. I made my way to the back room, which was a small office I shared with Sully on the two days he actually came in each week. Sully was mostly retired, a big old man that had earned his weathered appearance through the years. He actually blamed each wrinkle on a different woman – and the scars on their boyfriends. I gathered the paperwork on the desk and stacked them neatly off to the side. I could deal with them tomorrow since it was one of my twelve-hour shift days. I grabbed my purse, made sure my cook, Marcus, and my bar hands, Chelsie and Tracey, had everything they needed for a Friday night, then hightailed it out of there.
My air-conditioner was still on the fritz on my ten-year-old Toyota Camry, but luckily, my house was only a three minute drive away. Still, summer was just a few months away, and in the state of Texas, you didn’t want to be without. I really needed to take on an extra shift each week to get that repaired before the heat began to stick. I pulled into the driveway of my twelve-hundred foot cottage, grabbed my purse and headed next door to Susie’s. For some reason her four cats preferred my yard to hers, and I clicked my tongue and cooed, trying to get the two calico furballs I saw to follow. Damn things kept eating my lizards and leaving dead birds on my porch.
Jogging up the cement steps, I knocked loudly on the metal screen door before passing through. “Coming!” she called from the back end of the house. Next thing I knew, my little guy was skipping down the hallway towards me, the front of his shirt damp, a red cape tied around his neck. I couldn’t help but smile at his eager face, blond hair bouncing with every bound. I bent slightly at the hips, knowing I was about to be slammed into.
He smashed into me, hugging my waist for a split second and crying out, “Mommy!” before skipping continuously around the living room sofa. Susie was right behind him, drying her hands.
“Hi,” she greeted, flashing a tired smile. I knew that exhausted look well, but neither of us carried it well, I feared. “Sorry. Chocolate milk incident. I tried but I couldn’t get it all out, so you’ll want to treat his shirt tonight if you want to salvage it.”
“It’s alright. Everything he owns is stained with one nasty thing or another.”
Lightly shrugging, she said, “Yeah, well, boys will do that.” She sat down at the steel diner’s table that looked like it was from the 1950’s and laid the towel aside. Susie was looking more worse for the wear these days. She was only in her forties but her constant sickness made her look more like fifties. I wasn’t sure what she had because she was such a private person, but I suspected some type of immunodeficiency disorder.
“You doing okay, Susie?” I asked. “Because if you need to take a break from babysitting, I’m sure I could take on more hours at the bar and be able to afford daycare.”
By the look on her face, I was actually worried I might’ve offended her. “Don’t be silly. That little boy is what keeps me going each day. Besides, I’d never get my exercise without him.” She patted my hand as if I were the one who needed consoling. “Don’t you worry about me, Melanie. I may be a tired, old cat lady but seeing that smile of his gives me a reason to get out of bed every morning.” She stood up, her hand supporting her back, her face fighting the pain, and made her way to the counter to pour herself a glass of sweet tea. “Besides, you don’t get to spend enough time with that little cutie as it is. Now go on,” she instructed, waving me off. “You and Superman go make a night of it.”
I wasn’t about to argue with a woman that tended to go rescue a cat every time she felt a little moody – the eco-stability of my flower beds were suffering enough as it was. So I said thank you and goodnight and chased my little superhero all the way to the bath, readying myself to spend another night on the sofa watching yet another round of superhero cartoons.
4
Alright, I wasn’t ashamed to admit that since I finished school last December and wasn’t going to qualify for student housing again until the fall, I was crashing with my parents in Dallas. Yep. I was twenty-three and still living with my parents. Sure, it put a damper on my sex life, but the home cooked meals more than made up for it. However, it also put me on the front line, and I suffered from my mom’s constant attempts to know every little detail of my personal life. Helping her clear the table and clean up the kitchen, I knew it was just an ambush waiting to happen.
“So, tell me honey. Why do you have to go back? Didn’t I hear you tell your father that you found the lawyer for Brad?”
“Yeah, but it turns out Brad isn’t the last of his family line. There’s someone named Jake that’s still alive and he got everything.”
My mom paused to face me, surprise painting her face. “Everything? Really? That’s unusual. Your father and I have everything split down the middle for you and Jenny.”
I handed her the stack of dishes from the dining table. “Yeah, well, Brad and his grandmother didn’t really get along. Can’t say I’m surprised she gave him the shaft.”
“Well, some families are like that. I’m just glad ours isn’t.” As I pulled some tupperware from the bottom drawer, she added, “So did you recognize anyone in Berryville?”
I saw quite a few as I drove around town, but none of who I was all that eager to stop and talk to. “I ran into Matt. He’s still there, working at the factory.”
“Wasn’t he on your team in high school?”
“Yep. Just baseball though. He didn’t play the others.”
“Anyone else?” she probed.
I don’t know why I mentioned it. Maybe I just needed to talk about her, let it vent a little. “I saw Mel.”
My mom silently gasped with excitement. She dropped whatever she was cleaning in the sink and shut the water off, turning to face me. Not even caring that she dripped water on the rug beneath her, she eagerly replied, “Melanie? Such a nice girl. I always liked her. How is she?”
Cheater. Liar. Manipulator.
I couldn’t take her excitement for a girl who didn’t deserve the positive attention, so I directed all my focus to putting the leftovers into their containers. “She’s good I guess. Never left for college though.”
“Oh, no! Why not?”
Don’t know. Don’t care.
“I don’t know. She manages a bar now.”
“Well, I guess that’s probably the best she’s going to get there. But now that she has managing experience, she could find a job rather easily anywhere she goes.”
“I guess, but I don’t think she has any desire to go or she probably would’ve done it already.”
“Brad was a fool to let that one get away. So pretty and sweet.”
I choked down the witty remark I had lined up for that, but I let my eyes roll since my back was turned. I knew the things Mel had done, and I could get my mom to dislike her within a few sentences, but I wasn’t going to be one of those people who spread dirty deeds just for gossip’s sake.
I carried the leftovers to the refrigerator and kissed her on the cheek. “I’m going to go up. I’m a little wiped.”
“Alright, honey. Night.”
“Night,” I replied, never more ready to bail.
As I lay in bed, I couldn’t keep my thoughts off Mel, constantly scanning through the memories, trying to decide when it all went wrong. On the surface, she seemed the perfect girlfriend. The way Brad always talked about her, he sure as hell didn’t see her betrayal coming. Guess I was lucky it wasn’t me, because through the years, she was the only girl I ever wanted to take seriously. Even though she wasn’t mine.
God, I wanted her to be though. All that time stuck watching Brad get to be on the receiving end of her kisses, the playful smiles and suggestive commentary only said when she thought no one was close enough to hear. Of course, I was always near, my ears solely focused on her voice no matter my efforts to thwart them, endlessly punishing me for not asking her out before it was too late.
I wanted to be mad at her, wanted to hate her. She deserved it. But no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t quit thinking of her, keep from smiling every time I pictured her on Lake Palestine, floating lazily in circles on an inner tube, wearing one of those strapless bikinis, her cheeks flushed and spotted with summer freckles that made her scrunch her nose with annoyance.
Seeing her brought it all back, made that yearning feeling I used to have for her resurface. Something was seriously wrong with me. I wanted none of the girls I could easily have, but that one girl, the one who I knew wasn’t trustworthy, who would probably rip my heart to shreds the way she did with Brad’s? Hell, last night I was two seconds away from bending her over one of those barstools, and it wasn’t to give her the spanking she surely deserved. To this day I still wanted her to want me.
I groaned and shoved the pillow over my face. I had inadvertently put the image of her bending over in my head, my hand trailing up the outside of her bare thigh, slowly lifting her skirt to get a peek of the curve hidden beneath, making my damn dick twitch to life. I pounded and pounded my head through the pillow, but suffocating myself with darkness only made it that much easier for my imagination to sock it to me.
I hadn’t experienced a weekend like that in a long time. Utterly and miserably endless. And it didn’t help that my damn mind kept shuffling through all these memories of Mel. There was nothing to do here but watch TV, talk with my parents or go to the gym. Since I only had a few months left of my senior year when my family moved here to Dallas, I really didn’t have time to form lasting friendships, so I didn’t have anyone to hang out with. All my college friends were back in Austin, or currently picking up new jobs across the country. I considered hitting up a bar each night just to get out of the house, but I knew I’d probably end up leaving with some random girl to just to fill the void. I’d admit my relationships had been a bit sketchy at times, but even I wasn’t a huge fan of screwing some girl I’d never see again. Call me what you want, but I preferred the girl to be a repeat customer – even when the strings weren’t attached.
I just wanted to get back to Berryville, hit the records room at the nearest hospital, find what I need, try to get paid for my time, and get Mel Peterson the hell out of my head so I could get on with life again. And if I didn’t get something out of this fiasco, I was probably going to have to find a job for the next few months to get the bank account padded a bit more.
Oddly enough, even after all the sleeping I did over the weekend, I woke up late Monday morning, so I didn’t roll into Berryville until midday. The nearest hospital was in the next town over and I prayed it would be the only one I’d have to search. When I got there, a silver-haired woman sat behind a steel rectangular desk, her head behind an enormous outdated computer that took up more than a third of her workspace. Great. Another town that was way behind in technology. God help me if I actually had to thumb through paper copies in a musty, old basement.
She had yet to notice me, but the brass nameplate on her desk told me she was Mrs. Florence DeAbo. “Mrs. DeAbo?” I asked. A pouf of thinning hair dipped into view, followed by a large pair of eyes behind a set of reading glasses that were secured around her neck with a chain. “Yes? May I help you?”
“I certainly hope so, ma’am. My grandmother died recently – God bless her soul – and she’s left some money to a family member none of us seem to know.” Florence’s eyes narrowed at me and I began to wonder if I had a tell. Hopefully not – it would screw me in the courtroom for years to come if I did. I hated lying to her, but I knew enough about the law to know the only chance I had in seeing this record would be if I were a family member. “We’ve searched genealogy and ancestry sites and have come up empty. In all honesty, I think this is a last ditch effort, but I’d feel guilty if I didn’t at least attempt to search the birth records. I’d hate for this person to lose their inheritance since my grandmother seemed to think they were important enough to include. Anyways, she and most of her family members were all raised in Berryville and most likely would’ve been born in this hospital.”