Dynamite (Stacked Deck Book 10)

by Emilia Finn

  “Yes.” I stop at the water tower and grab a sparkling crystal glass from the tray to the left. No plastic here. Sonia is much too dignified for that. “Yes, I did. And it was amazing and magical and so, so good.”

  “You dirty girl. And this morning?”

  “We kissed goodbye, and made plans for tonight. But that’s not why I called.” I frown when the sound of wind rips through our call. “Where are you?”

  “On my way to work. I’m running late, because I spent the night with a man too.”

  “Mother.” I roll my eyes and finish pouring Jason’s water. “He was your husband. And it’s nice you visited with him. Did you tell him I said hey?”

  “Of course, darling. Now tell me why you called.”

  “Oh! Right. Er… I feel like I may be having a mini crisis, so if you have any words of wisdom, I’m all ears.”

  “Okay… what’s your crisis?”

  “Well, I can’t exactly explain it. There are ears close by, if you get me. Plus, client confidentiality issues to consider.”

  “Oh… okay. A client, gotcha. Hmm… It’s hard for me to comment if I don’t have details.”

  “Fortune cookie it for me.”

  “Vague and general sweeping views? Got it. Uh, tell the truth, always. Don’t panic, it’ll give you wrinkles. And if you think this won’t be a problem five years from now, then don’t let it take more than five minutes of your time. It’s not worth it.”

  I remain silent for a minute. Contemplative. Strategic. Then I nod. “Alright. I’ve got it.”

  “Problem solved?”

  “Yeah. Maybe. I think so. I’ve gotta go, but I’ll call you later.”

  “With details?”

  “Details about Luke, sure. But details about this other thing, no. I can only give you generalities.”

  “Well, now I’m intrigued. Give me what you can later. Call me on your lunch break.”

  “Will do. Love you, Mom.”

  “Love you too, honey. Kick ass today.”

  I pull the phone away from my ear and navigate across to my text screen, and finding Luke’s last message, I hit reply, and type out Thinking of you. Talk to you later. Don’t get beat up too bad. Hitting send, I lock my phone screen, draw a cleansing breath, then I get on with my life.

  I pass Calla’s desk again, smile to let her know I haven’t completely lost my mind – though I doubt a smile would be confirmation of that – then I stop at Sonia’s door and softly knock to announce my return.

  Stepping into the office, my confidence falters when Jason’s eyes come to mine and stare. Deep and penetrating. I was coming in here to be the epitome of professionalism. To be kind but detached. Compassionate but businesslike. But the way he looks at me, the way his eyes try to dig into my very soul, makes me falter.

  “Ally, come on in.” Sonia smiles and gestures toward the chair I so often occupy, so I set the glass of water down in front of Jason – on the table, rather than handing it to him and risking us touching – then I sit down and cross my ankles. “I’ve just finished explaining to our new friend your role inside this office. I explained that you’re finishing up your bachelor’s degree, you’ll be taking notes, and at some point at the end of the semester, you may be required to submit an essay or something equivalent, in which you might reference clients you’ve met in your time here, though you will not use names or identifiable details. Have I covered everything?”

  “Um… yeah.” I cough to clear the odd croak from my voice, then I look to Jason and smile. Because this doesn’t have to be weird. He’s just a guy that Luke brushed up against. Just a guy who is new to town. That’s it. “That’s the extent of it. If you do not wish for me to be in your sessions, it’s really not a problem. If you say yes today, but change your mind next time, that is also okay. These sessions, this hour with Sonia is all about you. I’m just a fly on the wall, and if that fly bothers you, then I can be gone, and you can continue on like I was never here.”

  “I don’t mind.” He smiles a charming smile and stares deep into my eyes. “I don’t need you to leave. And if you want to add me to your report, I won’t mind that either. Let me be the subject for your whole class to point fingers at and laugh.”

  “Ha.” The sound I make is more of a faltering ‘heh’, but it gets the job done. “I won’t write anything embarrassing in my paper. Mostly, I think I’ll be discussing human behavior. It fascinates me, so that’s usually what I focus on while in these sessions.”

  “Human behavior?” He sits back on the couch and crosses his left ankle over his right knee. “Like how your boyfriend marked his territory this morning when he saw us talking?”

  Sonia’s eyes fire up and snap over to mine in accusation… or, well, intense curiosity.

  “Yeah.” I clear my throat. “I guess. His behavior today was not at all uncommon among men his age, with his life experience. I find that, often, people react much the same way in similar situations, regardless of gender or upbringing. That’s not to say such behavior is acceptable. But it is certainly predictable.”

  “I see. And what do you predict will come of my being here? How do you see this going down?”

  “Ya know what?” I look to Sonia and fake a smile. Help me! “How about we discuss you, Jason?” I look back to him. “Why don’t we talk about why you’re here?”

  “I agree.” Sonia switches on her therapist voice – if not a little extra, since she’s intent on protecting me – and picking up her cup of tea, she grabs a notepad and a pen. “Tell us about yourself, Mr. Donnerson. Tell us what led to you coming here today.”

  “Oh, well…” He smiles and genuinely looks like he’ll make an effort to actually begin his therapy session. “My story begins a long time ago. I’m not yet forty, but the things that bring me here started a couple of decades ago. It all started with a girl.”

  Sonia smiles and begins making notes. “It often does. Tell us about her.”

  “Oh, she was beautiful. And funny. She was daring and always getting us into trouble.” As he speaks, he sheds a little of the intensity from the beginning of this meeting, and instead takes on a sweet air of nostalgia. “My high school sweetheart. Funnily enough, I was the Robin to her Batman, if that makes sense.”

  “She was the instigator?” Sonia prods and writes. And while she does that, I shrink back and try to remove myself from this discussion.

  I don’t want to be an active participant, but rather, an observer. That’s not because this is Jason the Slightly Too Intense. This is how I prefer it for all of Sonia’s clients – Luke being the only exclusion, of course. For as long as I’m here, for as long as I’m still a student, these are not my clients, and this is not my practice. So while I’m in this place, I want to be the observer.

  If we could change locations and somehow host these meetings in an interview room in a law enforcement office, where I could sit behind one-way glass, that’s what I’d do. But since I can’t, I choose to be silent, I don’t move, I do nothing that draws the eye of either Sonia or the client. Instead, I make my own notes, but I don’t often describe what I’m hearing. Rather, I jot down what I’m seeing.

  I describe Jason’s body language. His hands. His chest. I observe the way he looks over to me when he speaks of this girl, and the way he looks to Sonia when he speaks of losing her.

  “She was certainly our instigator,” Jason chuckles and rubs a hand over his jaw. “She was the reason we were picked up by the police so often that we were on a first-name basis, but at this point, we were also minors, and our crimes tended toward silliness, rather than anything that would leave damage.”

  “What things did you do together that would get you in trouble?”

  “Oh,” he laughs and goes back into the recesses of his memory. “We’d sneak into places we shouldn’t. Like, where I used to live, there’s this open-cut mine where people once drilled for gold. It was deserted long ago, once they extracted everything of worth, but now that space remains. It’s a
round two-thirds full of water, and anyone who lives there knows about the healing qualities in the water because of the minerals and such.”

  “It became a local swimming spot?”

  “Yes.” Jason smiles so much that his cheeks push his eyes half closed. “But it was deemed unsafe by the town counsel, so it was fenced off. ‘Keep out’ signs had been posted for as long as we’d been alive, but for people like her – we’ll call her Maria – a warning like that is basically a flashing neon sign, beckoning her closer.”

  “So you and Maria would sneak in and go for a swim?” Sonia’s words are gentle but prodding. Calm, but unshaking.

  “Right. The number of times we were caught there, they should have just renamed the place in our honor. But while it annoyed the police, and technically, we were breaking the law, there were never any charges filed. We were just picked up and driven home, time and time again. Maria’s daddy was…” He barks out a laugh. “He was a strange egg, and he was not pleased by our continued shenanigans, but I swear, he thought I was the bad influence. Funny, since my parents held the opposite view.”

  “Both sets of parents thought their child to be the angel, the other, the bad influence?”

  “Yes, when obviously, the truth lay somewhere in the middle,” Jason explains. “When we weren’t swimming in an old mine, Maria and I would protest. She was a staunch feminist, but not the bra-burning kind. She was the kind who stood up for women’s basic rights. Often, I’d find myself standing outside of a politician’s home, holding a sign that read something about staying out of reproductive issues. Maria was faithful in her belief that her body was her own, as were her ovaries, and that no politician had a right to make decisions about that for her.”

  Sonia’s brows wrinkle. “You didn’t agree?”

  “Oh, no, I did. Very much so. But had I never met her, I doubt I’d have been holding picket signs that said so. Me telling you this is just my way of explaining how I was the Robin in our relationship,” he laughs. “And how our acts of defiance were mostly an inconvenience for others. Not true crimes.”

  “I’m certain the babies you and Maria advocated for are thankful,” I ponder before I realize the words come from my own lips. My eyes widen as I look from Jason to Sonia. “I’m sorry. Go on.”

  “No, you’re right,” he smiles for me. “I’m hopeful the women and children we spoke for somehow benefitted from our tiny act of rebellion. It wasn’t much, on the grand scale, but it made us happy. And in our young minds, it was the most we could do. We were minors, we had no money but a few dollars here and there. Her parents were solidly middle-class – they weren’t swimming in cash, but Maria never went hungry either. Similarly, my family did just as well – perhaps a little bit better off. Enough for a private education for my last few years in school. Both of my parents worked, to pay the mortgage on a house in the suburbs. We drove a station wagon that was about as old as I was.”

  “I get the feeling your Maria is no longer with us,” Sonia says quietly and draws Jason’s eyes back to her. “Would you like to discuss that?”

  His eyes shadow, and his thick brows pull together. “I guess, if we have to.”

  “It’s your choice.” Sonia leans back and reseats herself on the wingback chair. “These sessions are for you. They’re to discuss whatever it is you’d like to discuss, not what I suggest. So if you don’t want to, then you certainly do not have to.”

  “Maybe next time.” Like Sonia, he sits taller again, switches legs when he realizes he’s uncomfortable, and when he notices I’m watching and making notes, he stretches forward and takes his glass of water.

  He’s nervous, and I’m not sure he understands why… which is both intriguing and inconvenient, because I want to know what’s in his mind. I want so badly to be able to dissect his thoughts and drill down to what he’s really thinking.

  But since that’s not possible, I’m forced to instead watch his actions. His bouncing knee, his tapping fingers. His broad chest expanding, his Adam’s apple as it bobs in his throat, and his darting eyes as they come back to me, time and time again.

  Jason’s hour progresses with more stories of his Maria. More crazy times, wild nights, failed high school exams, and memorable pride parades. It’s warming to hear of this woman he never stopped loving. He laughs at her silly behavior, but he speaks with such reverence. He shakes his head at the memories of rallies they attended together, or parades, political events, simple town hall meetings. They were just children themselves, but they were vocal… or at least, she was. And he accepted that about her, and was ready to ride the rollercoaster right along with her.

  Each time he broaches the topic of ‘the end’, he backtracks, and remembers something else that makes us all smile. He’s a professional procrastinator, a skilled deflector, because although logic demands he finish his story, he never truly does.

  The end hurts him, and he’s resistant to visiting that time again.

  An hour after he walked in, he walks out again, and smiles for us as he goes. The second the door closes, Sonia leaps up from her chair and dives onto the phone on her desk.

  “Calla. Is Ryan here yet?” She waits for a response. “Alright. Can you give us ten minutes before sending him in? I need time to debrief from the last. Excellent. Thank you.”

  She hangs up, and then like the proverbial executioner, she turns to me, leans against the edge of her desk, and folds her arms. “What happened this morning between you, Jason, and Luke? Spill it all.”

  Luke

  Dinner Date

  Whoever invented the necktie can suck a dirty dick. Whoever thought that was the standard to which men should dress when escorting beautiful women out to dinner after dark can join the first guy, and then they can suck each other’s dicks. And then the guy who decided flowers are where it’s at, something pretty and smelly to impress the ladies… he can join the first two, and they can take it in turns to rotate on each other’s laps.

  But here I am anyway, standing inside a flower shop while a tie attempts to choke me to death.

  “Umm…” I reach up and try to loosen the noose around my neck as the scents from a billion flowers permeate the air and make me dizzy. “Maybe something that says she’s beautiful and important, but not ‘We’re going to a funeral’?”

  The shop’s owner – Abigail, with her bicolored eyes, and light red hair… a red much different to Ally’s – laughs and walks the aisles of her store. She’s so small, so dainty and soft, that I’m afraid to breathe too heavily and knock her over.

  And let’s not get it twisted; I’m not afraid of hurting her when I knock her over. I’m afraid of her seven-foot-tall army commando, muscle-clad, gun-toting psycho-husband killing me when I accidentally make her stumble a single inch.

  Spencer Serrano is a family friend, for sure. But look at his wife wrong, and they’ll never find your body.

  “First date?” She stops in front of a display of tulips and sniffs. “In love, or buying forgiveness?”

  “Er… I’m not asking for forgiveness. But it’s a first date, so love is… ya know…” I wave her off. “Not yet.”

  “Hm.” Grinning, she moves away from the tulips and slows in front of a vase overflowing with something that droops and dangles over the edge. “Not this.” She fingers the weeping greenery, and moves into roses. “But this… roses are typical for a first date, and they communicate to the recipient that they’re important. But I think, perhaps,” she hedges, “red might give off vibes you’re not quite ready for. So how do you feel about pink?”

  “Um…” I reach up to loosen the godforsaken tie again. I feel like a monkey on show – dance for me, you whipped bitch. “Sure. If you think pink is the right choice.”

  “You’re really struggling with this, huh?” Abigail looks across the shop when the door opens and the bell above jingles, then when she catches sight of her visitor, she smiles, comes back to me, and grabs two bouquets; one red, one pink. “Come with me.”

&nb
sp; She hugs the bouquets to her almost flat chest, and circles around to the other side of the counter. Then, grabbing a pair of scissors, she goes to work massacring the bouquets until two dozen roses lay out on the counter between us.

  “Red feels a little serious, but pink seems almost a little too blasé. So how about we use both.”

  She grabs a red. Then a pink. Red. Pink. She builds a brand new bouquet by circling the first two flowers, and between all those, she adds little sprigs of… something green.

  “Your lady friend will love this bunch, guaranteed.” Smiling and humming as she works, Abigail holds the new bouquet in one hand, and reaches into the pocket of her apron with the other to grab out a spool of ribbon.

  Her movements are fast, practiced, as she wraps white lace around the stems, then tying it all together, she snips the ends, fusses until it’s to her liking, then sweeping the unwanted trash away, she sets her new creation in a vase that sits by the till, just waiting for flowers to fill it.

  “She’ll love them, and if they don’t buy you an immediate kiss on the cheek and a heartfelt thank you, then you come back here, and I’ll refund your money.”

  “Wow.” Reaching back, I take out my wallet and chuckle. “That’s quite the guarantee. You give that kind of assurance to all of your customers?”

  Laughing, she shakes her head and offers the card-reading machine so I can tap. “But I get the feeling I could be right with you. You’re dressed up so nice, and that tie is annoying the dickens out of you, but you did it anyway.”

  “Do women really, truly care about the tie? Is it a deal-breaker?”

  “No, Luke.” When my card is accepted and a receipt begins shooting out of the machine, she shakes her head a second time and looks up at me with a sweet smile. “You can lose the tie, and I doubt you’ll be punished for it.”

  “Thank god.” I rip the choking material from around my neck and fist it within a second. Shoving it into my pocket, I grab my heavy bunch of roses and finally smile. “I can already breathe better.”