Lia’s just told me about how she wasn’t able to continue on with her schooling.
“I guess so,” says Lia. “But I wouldn’t change anything… I mean, Will’s everything to me.”
I nod my head. I’m not sure what to say, honestly.
“Sounds like you’re only missing one thing,” I say.
“And what’s that?”
“A man.”
She catches my meaning, and smiles at me as I look into her eyes. Our eyes lock again. My cock is growing in my pants, getting stiff and ready.
“Maybe,” I say. “We could head to the car for another…”
“The car?”
“I know you don’t want to wake up your son.”
“The car, eh?” she says, a twinkle in her eyes. “I guess that could work.”
My cock’s at full mast now. I’m ready to penetrate her, to get inside that glorious and tight pussy again. It seems like it’s made just for me. It fits me like a glove. I want to bury myself again inside of it. I want to taste her and savor her.
Off to my right, the door to the house opens.
A little kid appears standing there, holding the door open.
“Mom?” he says.
“Hey honey,” says Lia, setting her wine down and getting up. “What are you doing up?”
“I don’t feel well.”
“Did you throw up again?”
The kid shakes his head.
“Do you feel sick to your stomach?”
He nods his head.
“Hey there, Will,” I say, waving at him.
Will just looks at me, a little confused.
“This is my friend, Shane,” says Lia.
She seems flustered, nervous, and a little embarrassed. I guess that’s understandable. Maybe she’s not used to having her son meet her male friends or something.
“Sorry,” says Lia, making an apologetic face at me. “I’m going to have to help Will. Let’s hang out soon, though, OK?”
“OK, sure,” I say, trying not to look too disappointed. “I’ll see you soon.”
I watch her beautiful figure as she disappears inside. I stay on the porch for a couple minutes in the dark, contemplating the darkness of the night.
I want her. I want to make her mine. But there’s something in the way. She’s holding onto something and I don’t know what it is…
18
Lia
There’s been a change of staff at work. Jim fired everyone except me. And himself, obviously.
The cook is new, as are the other waiters.
I don’t dare ask what happened or what made Jim do something so drastic.
He’s grumpier than ever, and I can hardly stand him.
No one’s coming in all day. There’s one customer, and he just orders coffee and I watch with dismay as he pours sugar after sugar into it. “I like a whole hell of a lot of sugar,” he says, speaking with a thick Russian accent.
When he leaves, there’s simply nothing to do. I start mopping the floors but then Jim growls at me to stop. So I retreat to the back room where I pick up one of the romance novels that’s been sitting there for ages. There’s one I haven’t read before, and I pick it up and try to concentrate on it.
I finally get my eyes to concentrate on the words and wind up sinking myself into the story. The world around me seems to fade. That’s what it’s all about really, a big escape from the horrors of the daily routine, the grind. Of course, Will is really what makes it all worth while for me. He’s feeling better today, a lot better. Those antibiotics really work, whatever anyone says.
The novel follows an investment banker whose wife died three years ago. He’s searched and searched all over the world for love and hasn’t ever found it. The character has the money to travel, and travel he does. He visits China, Vietnam, Russian, Mexico, Belize, and a dozen others, some of which I’m embarrassed to say that I’ve never even heard of.
I get to the point in the book where the wealthy banker, who is conveniently retired from work, meets a young woman ten years his junior. They’re about to kiss, when Old Jim interrupts me.
“What the hell are you doing in here?” he growls at me.
“What do you want me to be doing?” I say.
“Something,” he growls.
What’s with him? He’s in an even worse mood than normal.
“You know,” I say. “I’m tired of this. You told me that you wanted me to stop mopping. And there’s nothing left to do. There aren’t any customers. You’ve fired everyone. What the hell is your problem?”
He’s shaking with anger. “No one talks to me like that,” he says.
I need this job, but not this much. I can find another one. I can support Will and myself working at just about anywhere else. The tips would be better at another place, anyway.
“I quit,” I say.
I take off my apron and throw it down on the ground.
I walk out, shaking with anger and nerves.
But when I get outside, the autumn air cools me, and I take a deep breath.
It’s going to be OK. I did the right thing, even if it was completely spontaneous, completely unplanned, and possibly more than a little stupid.
After all, I do need a job.
My phone rings.
“Hey,” says Shane. “What are you up to?”
“Oh, not much. I just quit my job, that’s all.”
“You what?”
“Yeah, I just couldn’t take it anymore. My boss is a complete asshole.”
“Damn, so what are you going to do? I mean, are you going to be OK financially?”
“Yeah,” I say, sighing. “I will, eventually. I have to get another job. But the upside is that I’ll have a few more days free this week until I find another job. Shouldn’t be that hard. There’s always a shortage of waitresses in this town.”
“Well I’m sorry to hear about all that. Hey, I was calling to see if you wanted to come to my game.”
“Your game?”
“Yeah, it’s coming up, don’t know if you heard about it.”
“I don’t follow football much, truthfully.”
What I don’t say is that I’ve been following him, just not football. I still don’t know the first thing about the game.
He laughs. “So you want to come or what?”
“Sure,” I say.
“You can bring Will if you want. I can get as many tickets as I want.”
“Uh, I don’t know. That might be a lot for him. He’s still pretty young, you know. Maybe I’d just better come myself. I can leave with him my friend Jane.”
“Whatever you think is best,” says Shane. “I’m going to have to be studying up pretty hard… and I’ve got some other stuff going on up until the game. But I was hoping we could hang out after.”
“Sure, that sounds great.”
We say goodbye, with him promising to send me the information about the tickets.
Going to a football game? I must really be into Shane again. I mean, I know I am, but… If I’m going to sit through a football game just for him, then there must really be something between us.
I put my phone away in my handbag and suddenly remember again where I am and what I just did.
I sigh. Now it’s time to hit the pavement for another job. I want to kick back and relax, but the reality is that the sooner I find another job, the better.
I get into my car and look through a file folder that I have in the backseat. It still has my resumes in it for when I was applying to jobs the last time. Not that the resume matters much. In my experience, food service jobs don’t really require a resume the way a desk job might. Sure, it’s better to show up with a piece of paper in hand, but what’s actually on the resume is somewhat inconsequential. It’s more about presentation, about showing up, and about appearing reliable.
There’s a coffee shop down the block, so I get out of my car again without moving it and start walking there. I didn’t apply to coffee shops the last ti
me around because I figured I’d make more at a restaurant. But who knows. The tips have been getting lower and lower. Either the customers are getting cheaper or there are less of them. It’s probably a combination of factors. Who knows. Maybe my luck will be better at a coffee shop.
As I walk, my mind turns to Will. He’s feeling better, which is good. My thoughts turn to his overall happiness and how it’s going to be as he grows up. It’s going to be tough without a man in the picture for him. It’s going to be tough if I can’t get a better job. I’ll end up missing quite a bit of his growing years. I might not be able to be there when he has school plays and team sporting events. This makes me feel impossibly sad. But what makes me feel even worse is the thought that he’ll want to have a dad…
The solution is right in front of me.
I have to tell Shane that he’s Will’s dad. I have a growing sense of what type of person Shane is, and it seems as if he’s the kind of guy who will actually want to be a dad. I know he’d want to do the right thing and be there for his kid.
But to do that he has to know he has a kid.
The guilt washes through me.
I mean, I made an effort to tell him when it happened. But now it’s clear to me that he doesn’t know. Shane doesn’t have any idea.
Now it’s my responsibility to tell him.
And I haven’t yet.
I can make up all the excuses that I want. But the reality of it is that I didn’t tell him for a very specific reason. And that reason is that I want to get closer to him. I’m worried that if I tell Shane the truth, he’ll be furious with me for not having told him. He’ll say that I should have made more of an effort to contact him and to let him know what had happened. And maybe he’d be right. Who knows. I did what I could. I was under stress, and I thought Shane was being a huge dick. And who can blame me? He didn’t have exactly the best reputation on campus.
The longer I wait to tell him, the worse it’s going to get.
But if I tell him, I’ll screw up any chance for having a real relationship with him. We’ll end up functioning the way divorced parents would, splitting Will between us.
And who knows how the custody would work out. That could be a disaster.
He’s got plenty of money for lawyers. And I have none.
I’m sweating with anxiety by the time I step into the coffee shop.
19
Shane
I’m lying in bed with the morning sun streaming through the cracks in the window blinds. I’ve been up for an hour, but haven’t gotten out of bed yet. I started off the morning just lazily reading one of the books I’ve got in a pile by my bed. Then I moved on to studying football plays. That’s where I’m at now, reviewing a huge pile of papers that each have little diagrams and drawings on them. Coach knows a lot about football, but he’s no artist, and the drawings are impossibly crude, and occasionally hard to decipher.
There’s a loud banging sound coming from downstairs.
What the hell is that?
The sound gets louder.
I guess it’s someone banging at the door.
Damnit, this had better not be Jack.
I head downstairs wearing just my boxers. I swing the door open and sigh as I see Jack standing there.
We used to look alike, and in a way we still do. We’ve got the same facial structure, but in many other ways we look wildly different. He’s older than me, and he’s always looked older, but now he’s aged way faster than I have. He hasn’t taken care of himself, and he’s got a myriad of intense lines that run across his forehead. His skin looks old and weather-beaten.
He has tattoos all over him, but not the nice kind of tattoos. I have a couple myself, but they were professionally done and they look great. I have one on my inner bicep, for example, that gets a ton of compliments.
But Jack’s tattoos were done in prison, and while I’m sure there are some great prison tattoos, Jack’s certainly aren’t in that category. I suspect that he did them himself, inking himself with some kind of prison-made tattoo gun that hardly could get the ink on straight. I saw a documentary about it, actually. They use ball point pen ink and hot needles. Maybe they use parts of glue guns, I don’t remember.
Jack’s wearing tattered old clothes, and on his wrist is a very expensive looking watch. I can tell by the way it looks that it’s not one of those knockoffs. In fact, I’m almost positive that it’s a Rolex Submariner, a watch that costs at least $5,000.
Something about his appearance just doesn’t add up.
“Shane!” he says, coming right into the house and clapping me on the back.
“Hey, Jack,” I say, closing the door behind him.
He moves immediately into the living room and flops himself down on the couch, kicking his feet up.
“You know you can’t stay here, right?”
It breaks my heart to have to talk to him like that. But I’ve gotten burned too many times in the past.
“Oh, sure, bro, I get you,” says Jack, giving me a curious look. “No worries, just thought I’d drop by to see how my younger brother’s doing.”
“I’m doing fine,” I say, still standing, looking down at him. “What’s going on with you?”
“You mean why am I here? I told you I’m just coming by to see how my little bro is doing.”
“The real reason,” I say, already getting annoyed. I’ve had too many late night phone calls, too many times that I’ve had to bail him out of jail…
“Fine,” says Jack, changing his tone. “I know I can’t stay here, but I’ve got some bags with me, and I was hoping I could just store it at your place… just for a while until I get a bigger apartment.”
I don’t say anything at first, just mulling it over.
“Where are you staying now?”
“Just some temporary place. There’s not enough room there, and I brought my van down with all my stuff in it. You know, everything from my old apartment. It’s hard to move in this day and age.”
I nod my head.
“Let’s go out and check out what you have,” I say.
“No, it’s OK,” says Jack. “I’ll just bring it all in myself. Don’t worry about a thing. I’ll do it all myself. Don’t worry.”
“You telling me not to worry makes me worried,” I say. “I want to see what it is you want to store at my house before I let you put anything in here.”
“Well, if you’re going to be like that, fine,” says Jack. “But it’s just normal stuff.”
“Let’s go check it out,” I say. “I’ll be right back down.”
I head upstairs to put on some jeans and a t-shirt. I’m aware of the fact that Jack might very well take the opportunity to rustle through my belongings downstairs and pocket whatever looks valuable enough to buy him some more coke, or whatever it is that he’s into now.
I come back downstairs and Jack makes a point of looking innocent while sitting on the couch.
“Come on,” I say. “Take me to your van.”
I follow Jack outside.
His van is a busted up huge half town van from the late ‘80s. To say it’s seen better days would be saying too much. It’s seen bad days, and then some.
“Well, here we are,” says Jack, opening the van doors.
There are some duffel bags and black plastic trash bags. Jack starts opening them up to show me the contents, making a point to act as if he’s being totally upfront. Since I know very well that being upfront is never the case with Jack, his acting like this only makes me more suspicious than ever.
“Looks normal,” I say. “Looks like your normal shit. Now what do you have under that tarp that’s taking up most of the van.”
“What tarp? What are you talking about?”
I point to the tarp. It’s quite obvious. It’s a bright blue color and it’s the only thing in the van that looks like it was bought sometime in the last decade. Except for maybe the trash bags.
Jack’s actual possessions only take up a small space in
the huge van. The tarp takes up the rest, and there’s clearly a huge amount of stuff underneath it.
“Oh, that,” says Jack, doing a bad job of acting. “That’s nothing. Just some odds and ends left over from a construction job I had. They let me take some of the older lumber home and I just didn’t have a chance to sell it yet.”
I nod my head. “Sure,” I mutter. “Now let me see what’s under it.”
“You don’t trust me, bro?”
“No,” I say. “I don’t.”
Before Jack can do anything, I tug at the end of the tarp and pull it. It comes off easily.
Underneath the tarp, now revealed, there’s a huge pile of incredibly expensive looking musical gear.
It looks like Jack made off with an entire band’s equipment set, minus the drums. And it looks like nice stuff.
There’s a shiny Fender Telecaster. It looks like the USA-made edition, which runs for quite a bit. There’s a Rickenbacker electric bass, and the most shocking of all is the collection of vintage looking tube amps for the electrical guitar and the bass.
“All you’re missing is the drum kit,” I say. “What, you couldn’t steal that before the band came back?”
“No, it’s not like that,” says Jack. “There was this confusion… a friend asked me to store his stuff for him after a gig. He didn’t have any place to put it. He’d just gotten thrown out of his apartment. It was a real mess, and I was just trying to help out.”
“A minute ago you told me it was just bits of spare lumber,” I say.
“Well, I didn’t want to make you worried.”
“This shit is worth a lot,” I say. “So you stole it and you were looking for a place to keep it under the radar while you waited for a chance to sell it once the band stops putting up their advertisements looking for their stolen gear, is that it?”
“Uh…”
“I can see that it is,” I say. “Now get the hell away from my house with this shit, before I do something I don’t want to do.”
“And what’s that?” says Jack. “You going to call the cops on your older brother? Who the hell are you?”
Quarterback's Baby: A Secret Baby Romance Page 11