“Mrs. Caselli?” Rocco asked.
“Yeah. Who are you?”
“I’m Rocco. This is Craig and Florrie, and of course, you know your husband.”
She narrowed her eyes at him.
“We’re just asking for a few minutes of your time. Perhaps we can solve the issues now instead of involving an assassin.”
“And not a very good one at that,” I muttered.
“How would you know?”
“Well, he’s had three attempts on your husband’s life and he’s still alive. I would say you’re not getting your money’s worth. Now, if you don’t change your mind, and you still want to go through with this, I could put you in contact with someone that will do the job right.”
“Hey!” Milo said from behind me.
I turned and stared him down. “Do you want a bullet to the head or ten all over your body?”
The woman eyed us warily. “And you’re sure he’s better?”
I nodded. “Oh, he’s the best.” I shoved my shirt to the side, showing off my bullet wound. “That’s courtesy of him.”
“You’re not dead,” she pointed out.
“Well, that wasn’t the point. See, I was trying to prove my undying love to my girl. This was just proof. His aim is spectacular, and you should see what he can do with a knife—”
Rocco elbowed me. “We’re trying to avoid bloodshed,” he muttered.
“Oh, right, well, we should definitely talk this out. See, we think what’s going on here is that your husband isn’t truly listening to what you need. See, when I was in counseling with my partners, we really learned to listen to each other.”
“Your partners?”
“Florrie and Alec. They were in love with each other for years, but Florrie wouldn’t admit it. We ended up in therapy together, and then this therapist suggested we try some exercises together, like the three of us. We’re totally not into that,” I emphasized. “But the therapist—“
Florrie’s hand covered my mouth and she smiled at the woman. “I’m Florrie. Don’t listen to him. He rambles nonsensically like all men.”
“Ah,” the woman nodded. “Well, you might as well come in. I just have to put a pause on the hit. I don’t want to be shot up in my own house.”
She walked away as we entered the foyer and Milo leaned over to whisper, “See? Psycho.”
“Yeah, I wouldn’t go throwing around terms like that. They’re mean and hurtful. Chances are, she just needs you to really listen to her.”
“Since when did you become a therapist?” Rocco asked.
I shrugged. “After therapy with Florrie and Alec, and then learning from my mistakes with Reese, I’ve just learned the language of love.”
“Christ, you sound like Sinner now,” Rocco muttered.
We walked into the living room and I took the opportunity to look around. It was neat and orderly, and not a single thing about Milo still showed in here. That wasn’t a good thing. When she walked back in the room, my hope died just a little that we could help this guy.
“So, you wanted to talk. You seem to think that this can all be worked out somehow.”
“Well, we think maybe he’s just not understanding what the problem is,” I said, taking a seat across from her. “Maybe if he knew the problems, he wouldn’t piss you off so much.”
She pursed her lips at me. “Like when I ask him not to run over the cord of the vacuum, but he does it anyway?”
“Hey, I told you I’m not good at vacuuming!” Milo cut in. “And the cord is so long.”
“The cord is long?” she snapped. “That’s why you can’t figure out how to pick it up?”
I chuckled nervously. “It just takes some of us longer to learn than others.”
“I’ve been through ten vacuums in the last five years. At first, I just replaced the cord, but eventually, I got tired of taking them in, so I would buy a new one.”
“See?” Milo grinned. “It was like you were getting new presents all the time. That’s a good thing!”
His wife turned her head slowly toward him, her death ray eyes boring into him. “Two vacuums a year isn’t what I would consider a good present.”
I turned and glared at the idiot. “Right, well…what else?”
“Instead of taking out the garbage and putting it in the trash can, he throws it down the steps, and the next morning, animals have torn the bags apart. Then I have to pick up all the garbage.”
Damn, this guy wasn’t leaving us much to work with. Still, it wasn’t the worst that had ever happened with us. I had stories that rivaled this.
“Hey, you know, you stay home. You could take the garbage out. I’m not sure why this falls on me.”
“Because you walk past the garbage can every day. Is it really that hard to pick it up and take it out with you?”
“Oh, so I earn the money and I have to do the chores?”
“Shut up,” Rocco muttered under his breath. “At this rate, she’s going to tell the assassin you’re here.”
Milo sighed. “Look, I just don’t get why this all falls on me. It’s like everything around here is my fault.”
“Because it sounds like it is,” I said to him. I turned to his wife. “Look, I understand that…your husband is an idiot. We’ve all been there—“
She turned her glare on me, immediately shutting me up. “When I was sick last year, I told him how miserable I felt and asked if he would pick up a thermometer for me.”
“Please tell me you did,” Rocco grumbled.
“He did. A meat thermometer.”
“You didn’t specify. How was I supposed to know you wanted one for checking your temperature?”
“Because I was sick!”
“Yeah, but you could have been making a roast for dinner too! And if I had shown up with a regular thermometer, then you would have been pissed at me too. Tell me I’m wrong.”
Rocco dropped his head in his hands, while Florrie pinched the bridge of her nose. Me? I just stared at Milo’s wife, wondering why she was stupid enough to marry the guy in the first place.
“We’ve all been there,” Rocco said weakly. “Marriage is rough.”
“Are you married?” she asked him.
“Uh…not yet, exactly,” he cleared his throat. “I’m sort of working on the logistics of it all, you know, making sure all the paperwork is in place,” he nodded.
“Do you want to know what rough actually is? He farts all night long in his sleep. He snores like a freight train. He’s constantly quoting The Office! When we go to the store, he skips all the spots close to the store and parks as far away as possible.”
“For safety reasons!” Milo shouted.
“Yeah, I gotta agree on that one,” Florrie shrugged. “There are too many idiots that might hit your vehicle.”
“Or you!” Milo said quickly, pointing to his wife. “I was looking out for you, and our future babies. I just love you so much! A random truck could run you over,” he fumbled.
Rocco nodded. “Yeah, that does happen.”
The lady was practically fuming across from us. “I bought a mirror last year and asked him to hang it for me. When he was done, I could only see the top half of my head!”
“Hey, you never specified where to hang it.”
“Well, being able to see myself in the mirror that I bought for myself would be nice.”
“You always said I wasn’t very good at reading your mind,” Milo chuckled.
Florrie leaned forward and squeezed his shoulder. “That’s not funny. Just shut up.”
Christ, it was like this guy was asking to get shot. At least the stuff we did was actually worthy of getting shot.
“Ma’am, I know marriage can be hard, but think back to when you first met him, when your eyes met his, and you just knew that it was meant to be. Hold onto that feeling. Marriage can be a beautiful thing.”
She pursed her lips at me. “Well, let me tell you what marriage is really like. Marriage is giving up your lif
e so your husband can watch TV whenever he wants. It’s always being ready on time when he refuses to get ready until ten minutes after you were supposed to leave. It’s doing all his laundry, his cooking, his cleaning, only to have him leave his shit all over the house right after you’ve cleaned. Marriage is a soul-sucking black hole that becomes your life, where you never find enjoyment in anything ever again. And the entire time you’re married, you’re wishing he would die just so you could go find someone to fuck that knows how to do it properly.”
I swallowed hard, not knowing what to say. I looked over at Rocco with wide eyes, but he looked just as lost as I did. Florrie flicked her gaze toward the ceiling, then grabbed both of us by the collar. “Excuse us just a minute.”
We stumbled into the foyer, Florrie dragging us the whole way. “Obviously, you two suck at this. What we need is not for you to tell her how wonderful marriage is, but how badly you’ve both fucked up. She needs to know that there are way worse men out there than the dipshit in the other room.”
“Wait, you want us to tell her what we’ve done wrong?”
She glared at me. “Yes, genius. You both have enough material to ensure that she doesn’t go through with the hit on her husband. Now, get your asses in there and do your job.”
As I turned, she actually kicked me in the ass. I rubbed it and glared back at her. Like she was perfect. I could write a whole fucking book on her relationship with Alec. People would think they were so twisted and fucked up that they would never regret their choice of spouses ever again.
I cleared my throat uncomfortably and stared at the woman in front of me. I could do this. I could save this. “You know, when I was trying to get the woman I love to be with me, I went about it all wrong. I mean, in everyone else’s eyes. I think what I did was totally normal.”
“It really wasn’t,” Florrie interrupted.
Narrowing my eyes at her, I continued. “I was trying to show her I loved her. See, we met at this coffee shop, and these guys tried to hold the place up, so I took care of them. Not dead, dead, but you know, not in danger of harming anyone. And I swear, the one guy was able to speak again with proper physical therapy.”
“So, what you’re saying is I should hire you to kill my husband.”
I shook my head wildly. “No, that’s not— No, what I’m saying is…I mean, I sort of stalked her, if you want to call it that—“
“Everyone calls it that,” Rocco muttered.
“But it was just because I wanted to see her. See, I brought her this big wreath because I didn’t know what flowers she liked.” I stared at the woman with a big grin on my face, thinking she would totally love it, but she just stared at me like I was an idiot. My smile fell and I cleared my throat. “Well, anyway, I thought it was totally awesome. But she had me sort of arrested because I showed up at her house for our date, which I told her I was going to be there at seven. And then she got pissed at me. I was trying to be romantic.”
“Was there a point to this?” she asked frustratedly. “Because you’re just making yourself sound like an idiot.”
I shrugged slightly. “I did get the girl,” I muttered.
“How did you manage that?” she asked incredulously.
“Well, it wasn’t easy. I mean, she didn’t want to see me. So, I had to be creative and come up with ways to see her. The first time was a bit of a bust. See, the plan was for me to run into her in the park, but then some guy attacked a woman, and I had to shoot him. She didn’t like that too much.”
“I can’t imagine why not.”
“I know, right? I mean, I was being the hero.”
“I was being sarcastic.”
I frowned, running that through my head again. “Right, well, anyway, I needed ways to see her, but since she wasn’t cooperating, I found other ways. I was originally going to kidnap her, but then someone beat me to it and I had to kidnap her to save her. Then, I tricked her into marrying me, which wasn’t the easiest thing to do, let me tell you—” I snorted. She just stared at me, so I continued. “I sold her house out from under her when she found out that our marriage wasn’t necessary at all. Now, if you want to talk about things that you want to shoot someone for…I think we all know who wins that contest.”
“Clearly, my husband isn’t the biggest idiot in the room.”
“Hey, I resent that. I’m still happily married. And if you think what I did was bad, you should hear what Rocco did, and he’s about to get married. I mean, assuming he can get her to sign the marriage contract.”
“You’re making her sign a marriage contract?” she asked incredulously.
“Hey, it’s for our mutual benefit,” Rocco said in defense.
“So, what did you do that was so terrible?”
“I mean, it wasn’t that bad. My killer robot tear-gassed my girlfriend, and my floor electrocuted her,” Rocco nodded. “Not to mention that the security system was tied into our security company, and everyone was watching us have sex.” He winced slightly. “It wasn’t the worst thing that could have happened,” he huffed. “I mean, thank God that I got to her before the robot enacted the nerve gas. That would have been bad.”
The lady stared at us incredulously. “I can’t believe it.”
“See?” I nodded. “I bet your husband isn’t looking too bad right now.”
“You’re all insane!” she yelled. “I don’t know why you would think that I could talk it out with him. You’re worse than he is.”
“Yeah, but that’s the point. I mean, none of us are divorced. That must say something about our methods.”
“But he’s not you!” she shouted.
Florrie stood, holding her hands out to the woman. “Look, I’ve been there. Men are pigs, am I right? They expect you to clean up after them, they can’t do anything for themselves, and they smell half the time.”
“Hey!” I said indignantly, but she shut me up with a look.
“But, we still love them, as smelly as they are. What you really need is a relationship manual.”
“A what?”
“Rocco, here,” she said, slapping him on the shoulder, “is writing a relationship manual for men. It’s so they know how not to fuck up. My suggestion to you? Let him finish it, and he’ll send it over to your husband. If at that time he still can’t manage to do things right, you do whatever you want.”
“Florrie, I don’t think—” Rocco started.
“Just take the hit off him for now. That’s all we ask.”
She looked at us suspiciously. “And you think this will work?”
“I have a copy of it on my phone,” Rocco said, pulling it out.
“You keep that on your phone?”
He glared at me. “You never know when a situation will come up when you might need it. Like now.”
He passed his phone over to the woman and watched as she scanned through it. Milo looked like he would pass out if she didn’t accept the terms. After a few minutes, she handed it back over.
“Fine, I’ll agree to your terms.”
“Thank you.”
“In the meantime, he stays away from me, until he can read through that and figure out how to behave.”
We all stood and walked for the door. Milo breathed out a sigh of relief as he stepped outside with us. “I can’t thank you enough. I really thought I was going to be dead by the end of the week.”
I grinned at him. “That’s what we do.”
“Actually, that’s what the manual does, saving relationships one bad decision at a time.”
Chapter Ten
Storm
“Babe?” I walked in the house and stopped to listen for her. I wasn’t sure what she was up to tonight, but I was hoping for a little space to work on my portion of the manual. I wasn’t having much luck getting anything done with it at work. I was too keyed up. Jessica had been talking recently about having kids, and since everyone else had rugrats running around, it looked like it was time for us to start a family. Not to mention that my p
arents had become like her parents since we reconnected. They were always talking on the phone, and my mom was always whispering in her ear about having grandkids. Hell, just getting her to marry me was hard enough.
When I didn’t hear anything, I slipped off my shoes and tossed my bag on the ground, taking out my notebook. After grabbing a beer from the fridge, I sat down at the kitchen table and dug in. I tapped the pen against my lips as I thought about what I would put in the manual.
1. Don’t tell your woman you want to eat her like a mangy dog eats garbage.
That should be pretty self-explanatory. Actually, that shouldn’t even be advice. Who would actually say that? Me. I scratched out that line. It really didn’t need to be in the manual.
1. Don’t tell your woman you want to eat her like a mangy dog eats garbage.
However, there was something related that did need to be in there.
1. Do not under any circumstances ask women for advice on how to seduce your woman when they’ve been drinking, or when they’ve been reading romance novels.
I grimaced, thinking about the shit advice they gave me. Those women had me such a nervous wreck that I completely screwed up everything. Of course, that could have just been Jessica. She was a knockout. I took a deep breath and focused again.
2. Trust your woman. If you don’t believe what she’s telling you, no matter how crazy, she’ll never want you.
I had plenty of experience with that, and while I still wasn’t ready to admit that what we saw were ghosts when we “cleansed” the house, I wasn’t going to tell her she was wrong either.
I rubbed my now throbbing forehead as I tried to come up with anything else that would be useful. It was just so damn hard. My relationship with Jessica was based on a damn thumb war gone wrong. However, there was also the fact that my old buddy had been trying to tell me on his deathbed to take care of her. I just hadn’t wanted to believe it. I thought he was hallucinating and spewing bullshit, but it turned out he was right.
3. Listen to the ghosts of your past.
I glanced at that one again and scratched it off. It was too specific to me. Nobody else had ghosts that spoke to them. And the only person that knew was Becky. I’d like to keep it that way as long as possible.
The Reed Security Relationship Manual: A Reed Security Romance Page 7