by Linda Opdyke
Finally, feeling safe and hidden from the glow of streetlights, Jack stopped and leaned back against a thick, heavily branched tree, dragging deep breaths against his pounding heart while he put his sneakers back on.
Kelly Jo’s breathing was as short and labored as Jack’s and she also leaned against the tree, watching while Jack put on his sneakers but she made no comment that her own feet remained bare. It wasn’t until each of their breathing returned to normal that Jack realized he had no idea how to find Rosetta Street.
Kelly Jo put a soft hand on Jack’s face and on her second attempt to smile succeeded. “Come on, Jack, I want to get to my apartment as quick as possible.”
Jack held Kelly Jo’s gaze. Why did she remember him and nothing else? He cleared his throat but was almost afraid to ask, “Rosetta Street?”
Kelly Jo’s laughter was lyrical and her lips brushed his when she giggled, “Like I have another one? You act like you’ve never been there before.”
Chapter Twenty Nine
Jack held Kelly Jo’s hand as they hurried through the streets, gently nudging her forward in such a manner that she had no idea she actually guided him to their destination. The quiet footfalls of his sneakers and her bare feet along the dark sidewalks and the steady noises of cars blaring their horns in traffic were the foremost night echoes until they left the main drag and rounded a corner onto Rosetta Street. No bikers pursuing, no police hot on their heels. A few people walked the narrow street, but nothing more than a politely murmured, “hey, how you doing?’” passed between Jack and those that walked by him and Kelly Jo. He didn’t bother to turn his head and look back to see if they were staring at Kelly Jo in her sexy, well-fitting Grease outfit. That fact was a given, one acknowledged by cheeks that had blushed throughout their escape flight and her self-conscious but fruitless tugs to pull the top just a little bit higher on her shoulders. He was surprised to find that two-way traffic on Rosetta Street was as heavy as that on the main road.
Jack eyed 17 Rosetta as they approached it, turning through a black wrought iron gate and onto the path of aged bricks that formed a walkway through a lawn dotted with flowerbeds and evergreens. The house was set back about twenty yards from the sidewalk and similar in style to its well spaced neighbors. 17 was an aging, ivy covered, three story red brick building with a cast iron weathervane on a gray slate roof. Concrete steps led upward to the long wrought iron enclosed front porch of what was obviously a private home converted to apartments. Faded white wicker chairs and potted plants in dark green containers added a cozy touch to the building’s I���m old and weary look. A dim beacon of yellow porch light greeted their arrival. Four numbered bronze buzzers, one for each apartment he guessed, were lined in a vertical row beside the white door jamb.
“You do have a key hidden out here?” Jack asked hopefully as they reached the top step. “Or is someone already inside?” he added, having no idea if she lived alone, with parents or with someone else. Wow. This could prove fairly awkward if someone demanded an explanation on who he was, her outfit or even just why she was barefoot. He hoped that ‘we entered the talent contest’ would appease any questions he wasn’t able to breeze over.
She reached for the round black metal doorknob but threw him a puzzled side glance. “Are you trying to be funny?”
He gave her an ‘of course’ grin but groaned inwardly. He was now totally on his own. Not only did she not remember what she’d put them both through to get here, he had no idea who she thought he was, what or who he represented to her. The fact that she still not only knew him but seemed very relaxed with him should have scared him at least a little. Truth be told, it scared the hell out of him. He was now winging it, literally winging it for his life.
Kelly Jo pushed the door open and they stepped into a long narrow hallway lit only by the faint glow from heavily shaded wall lamps.
When she’d closed the door again Jack noted there were two dark, heavy doors in the white walled open foyer. The first, on their right, stood opposite a flight of stairs to their left, stairs that he figured led to the two upper apartments. The other door faced them at the far end of the hallway and he guessed it led to the basement apartment. Each door bore a transparent nameplate that held a white paper with, he assumed, the tenant’s name. From the door closest to them Jack read ‘Whitman’.
Kelly Jo sighed, glanced at the Whitman door and offered Jack a gloomy look before she headed for the staircase, stopping with her hand on the thick banister before starting up the stairs. “It’s quiet tonight. We can only hope that he’s either sober or asleep and that it stays that way.”
Jack nodded, what else could he do but pretend he understood perfectly?
Kelly Jo stopped and raised an eyebrow to Jack.
Surprised, he asked, “What?”
“Don’t you want to stop downstairs first?”
Now it was his turn to raise an eyebrow, but his heart pounded that he stayed able to play along like he knew everything that she did. “For…?”
“To see if the bogey man stopped by again, of course,” she answered matter-of-factly. At his startled look, she laughed. “To grab some socks, silly, what do you think? You always complain when your sneakers rub the back of your heel.”
“Oh. No, I’m fine,” he answered, wondering if he needed to contact Robert and ask if there was a reason he’d better go downstairs. Only, he had no idea what had happened to Robert after they raced from the high school leaving the brawl to Robert and the bikers. His money was on Robert, no question about it. But Robert had made it very clear what would happen if Jack chose to help Kelly Jo. Did that mean Robert would tell Jack exactly what he could do with any appeal for help before he carted him off once and for all? Robert was the one who told Jack to get to this address, so he definitely knew where the two of them were headed and it was only a matter of time before Jack’s time crunch ended, very possibly ended unpleasantly.
“Well, goody for you,” Kelly Jo tossed over her shoulder as she climbed the first section of stairs, stepped onto the short landing and turned a sharp right to finish the trek to the second floor. “But I can’t wait to get out of these…clothes.”
“Sounds good to me,” he answered but returned her withering look with an innocent one. Suppressing a grin, Jack followed her. Because the landing and the upper floor held the same heavily shaded wall lamps as the first floor, slivers of moonlight overpowered the artificial lighting and danced along the stairwell, casting an almost eerie atmosphere.
Kelly Jo topped the stairs and headed right, to one of two doors identical to those downstairs. Jack’s fast look around gave him the impression that the name plated door at the hallway’s far left end was probably for the third floor apartment.
Kelly Jo turned to look at him and saw him studying the other door. “The attic apartment hasn’t been rented yet, if you’re still considering moving from your place up to where you actually have a view of something besides the cellar windows of old man Shelton’s house.
“I…uh…maybe. We’ll see,” Jack answered lamely. His gaze went to the name plate on her door and he read Bradford neatly written on the white paper inside it. Kelly Jo was now more than just the self-serving con artist angel that had done nothing but steer him toward and into trouble. Now she had an actual name. Like a real human being.
Sky blue eyes evaluated him. “Are you okay, Jack?” She giggled. “You’re not still annoyed that I won and you didn’t, are you?”
“No,” he said sourly, and his answer sounded petty even to him. But before he could graciously add that she deserved the win, he saw, with dread, a puzzled look flit across her face. “Kelly Jo?” Now it was his turn to ask, “Are you okay?”
She raised her hand to her forehead and briefly closed her eyes. “I think so…yes,” she ended with assurance. “I guess I’m just tired.”
Jack moved close and laid his hand on her cheek. “You sure?” he asked quietly, but his heart was thudding at the realization that he
’d be groping blindly if he was suddenly left on his own to try and straighten out this mess. A mess of her making, but somehow he couldn’t bring himself to feel anger when he saw her very real vulnerability.
He reached for her door, but it was locked. “Where’s the key?”
She looked at him blankly and his heart dropped at her, “I don’t remember.”
Then she shook her head as if to clear it and said, “Just run downstairs and grab the emergency key that I leave in your apartment.”
A chill ran through him. What the hell was he supposed to do now? The only thing he could do is either somehow fake it or hope that the downstairs door was unlocked. He hoped it didn’t mean he’d end up doing another breaking-and-entering stunt, this time breaking a basement window to get inside to find her ‘emergency’ key.
“I’ll be right back,” he told her, then smiled. “Relax, it’s going to be okay,” came out with much stronger conviction that he felt.
He started down the stairs and had just stepped onto the landing when she called, “Jack!” Something in her tone sent mild alarm through him.
He raised his head to look back and her confusion of before was nothing compared to the look she now wore. He hurried back upstairs, apprehension increasing with each step.
“What’s wrong?”
She was looking down at her clothes, fingering the tight pants and barely-there off-the-shoulder top. When she looked up she seemed completely surprised. “Why…why am I dressed like this? Where are my shoes?”
Chapter Thirty
Wonderful, was Jack’s terse thought. Not only do I have to find a way to break into an apartment I don’t live in and locate the key to her apartment, now I have to explain the state of her… He shook off the thought, determined to try to salvage some semblance of rationale.
“Hey, hey, hey,” he soothed quietly, his mind racing to come up with an acceptable, or at least semi-believable explanation. “Don’t tell me you don’t remember?” He laughed and stroked back the hair from the left side of her face as her eyes held his. “The contest? Our bet about which one of us would win?” He laughed again, hoping his ability to bluff passed close scrutiny. “Wow, I guess that celebratory champagne we toasted with had more of a kick than I thought it did if you’ve already forgotten. You’re so adorable when you’re tipsy.” His smile, meant to disarm, failed miserably.
She half-stared and half-glared at him. “I’m not tipsy,” she said flatly. “What on earth are you talking about?”
He gave her a half smile and shook his finger in her face. “Very clever, Kelly Jo, but I’m not buying it. You just want me to tell you all over again how great you are, how everybody fell all over themselves when you started singing.”
Her eyes widened, then narrowed slightly and her voice was amused annoyance. “Oh, is that right? Well, tell me again anyway, Dean.”
Floored at both her unreadable reaction and the fact that she’d just called him ‘Dean’, Jack tried not to stutter. “You were incredible,” he said honestly. “I couldn’t believe…”
“Yeah,” she interrupted, folding her arms across her chest and leaning sideways against the wall to watch him. Now her voice dripped laughter. “I’ll just bet you couldn’t.”
“Um…what?”
“I think I get it now,” she said and stood straight, but relief flooded him when he saw the smile that played on her lips. “This is some sort of payback for me putting you on the spot last weekend at the Haywood Cafe, for making you read that poor guy’s god-awful poetry to the open-mic crowd because he was too shy to read it himself. Right?”
“Maybe,” he answered lightly, hoping like crazy that she’d elaborate a lot more and praying she’d call him Jack. Who the hell was Dean and what role did he play in this? Jack would be more than happy to switch places with him.
“You’ve got a lot of explaining to do,” she said, but giggled, lost her balance and went backward against her door as though given a slight push, but hard enough for the key to come clinking down from overhead the top molding.
Jack grabbed the key just before it hit the floor, aware that it was too coincidental, and muttered, “Thank you, Robert.” He wasn’t sure why Robert would lend any kind of helping hand and had trouble reconciling why Robert had clearly warned him against being Kelly Jo’s partner-in-crime but conversely had answered, right before they fled the school, Kelly Jo’s questioned ‘who are you?’ with ‘a friend’.
He slipped the old fashioned brass key into the lock and turned both it and the doorknob. He had no idea what he was about to find inside but he hoped he’d be spared any more surprises tonight. In his humble but irritated opinion he’d endured more than enough surprises and curveballs for anybody, for any lifetime.
He stepped to the side and Kelly Jo brushed past him to go into her apartment. She flicked a switch to her immediate right, the result an instant soft glow from a tall table lamp several feet ahead beside the dark green sofa.
The living room was large and airy but with little furniture on the hardwood floor, Jack noted, just a mismatched sofa and blue wing chair plus the table and lamp. A small television sat on an old bureau that could use refinishing. Extra tall windows ran nearly the width of the front wall, with a wooden window seat along their entire length.
Kelly Jo headed to a door on her left. “Why don’t you pour us some tea while I get out of this…these…” her voice trailed off in distaste as she headed toward what Jack assumed was her bedroom. “Sure you don’t want to go and get something else on your feet so you don’t get heel blisters?” she called out.
“I’m sure,” he answered, closing the door and tossing the key onto the table beside the lamp. He’d love to get something comfy on his aching feet, even if it was just a nice thick pair of socks but he had no intention of making a show of getting into the basement apartment. Somehow he doubted Robert would be Johnny-on-the-spot with a key twice in ten minutes.
Moonlight that streamed through the white blinds of the kitchen’s two double windows vanished when Jack found and flipped the wall switch. He blinked twice. An apartment size refrigerator and stove flanked a short, narrow laminate countertop that held a small sink and sat on aging oak cabinets. Two wall cabinets above the sink matched the bottom ones. The appliances weren’t new but they were avocado green, something he’d only seen in retro themed television shows. The wall telephone with its long winding cord perfectly matched the color of the appliances. He could see why the popularity of the shade had worn out its welcome.
Dressed now in loose fitting gray sweatpants, matching sweatshirt and white socks, Kelly Jo came into the kitchen behind him. Her blonde hair was pulled back into a high ponytail that hung just below her shoulders. “Quick as always, I see,” she said and laughed, gesturing for Jack to take one of two spindled chairs at the small round oak table. “Ice?” she asked and when he shook his head she set the glasses on the table. She grabbed a pitcher of tea from the refrigerator, poured some into both glasses and put the pitcher back before nudging Jack’s glass over to him.
“Okay, sweet pea,” she said after a long sip of tea. “Start talking.”
Jack hoped his face was nonchalant and she couldn’t hear his heart pounding. “About what? The tea?” He took a long swig, then smacked his lips. “It’s wonderful!”
She was not amused “Oh, no, you don’t, Dean. You’re not getting off that easily,” she chided. “I want to know exactly how you persuaded me to sing in front of people, where, and why I don’t remember it. Start with how you convinced me to wear that…outfit.” Her cheeks blushed a soft shade of pink. “If I’m being perfectly honest, I don’t remember a thing after I met you downtown this evening for dinner and to go to the park.”
“Oh,” was all he could respond, rattled that she had a time blank she assumed he was about to fill in for her. How could he possibly explain in a way that wouldn’t scare or freak her out, or, worse, in a way that didn’t tick him off all over again remembering all the th
ings she’d done to him and caused to happen to him? And who the hell was Dean and what was their relationship? Friends? More than friends? Judging from how comfortable she seemed when he gently touched her face they were definitely either in a romantic relationship or well on their way to being in one. Lucky Dean came the unbidden thought that he tried to shake off as soon as he realized that Kelly Jo stirred him in ways he hadn’t expected. His gaze held her questioning sky blue one and he wondered if maybe the truth or at least a little bit of that truth might be an interesting starting point. Maybe it was worth a try.
He cleared his throat. “Kelly Jo, this is going to sound…”
Both of their heads turned toward the soft knock on her door. For a second, neither of them moved, but Kelly Jo’s expression saddened, as though the knock was no surprise.
Jack drew a quick breath. Was it Robert with the ‘your time is up’ brigade, come to drag him off and leave Kelly Jo with a paranormal experience she’d later share with Jerry Springer’s audience? No, he knew that if Robert wanted to make a memorable entrance he was capable of a much better one than anyone here could ever imagine or describe. Besides, Kelly Jo couldn’t possibly be sad about something she was unaware was about to happen.
She rose but Jack was faster. “I’ll get it,” he told her and headed for the door, knowing full well he’d have no idea who was at the door even if they greeted him like a long lost son.
He didn’t bother calling out, “Who’s there?” because the answer would be useless to him. Instead, he simply opened the door.
A little boy of about seven, with tousled brown hair and wearing slightly tattered blue pajamas stood there, ignoring Jack and looking directly up at Kelly Jo who had followed Jack to the door.