Just A Fling: A Driven By Fire Novel 0.5

by Rayna, Eden

  I hold out the flowers to her and with a shaky hand, she receives them.

  “Flowers?” Danielle’s friend says with a small shake of her head in my direction indicating that I missed the mark.

  “I wasn’t sure if you’d like ‘em, but I thought I would try. I have something else here for you too,” I hold up the hat box and shake it gently, trying to play it off as the main thing since the flowers are a fail. “Maybe I’ll give it to you later.” I look at the other woman who’s watching us with great interest. “Sorry,” I remove my hat now that I have a free hand and tuck it under my arm. I then extend my hand toward the other woman, “Kirk. Pleasure to meet you.” I remember what happened the last time I said that to one of Danielle’s friends and how I was promptly told that we hadn’t, in fact, met yet.

  “Jess,” she says with a blush creeping up to colour her cheeks. Then she turns to Danielle and cups her mouth as though it would stop me from hearing her whisper. “A cowboy?”

  Another first.

  Danielle is still standing in the same place, frozen with the flowers clutched in her hands staring at me as though she’s not quite sure if I’m really here or not.

  Jess pipes up again. “You didn’t tell me you had a boyfriend.” She says it like Danielle is so sly for keeping me a secret. “Probably a good thing, because if you brought him around the ladies up here, you’d have to have to beat them off with a stick!”

  I’m glad she sees another side to what’s going on because from where I stand, looking at Danielle who appears utterly petrified to see me, it seems like she didn’t mention me because she didn’t want anyone to know she had a boyfriend.

  “Babe?” I say, my voice and attitude a little more speculative than a minute ago when I walked in. “Should we get a vase for those from the staff room?” I walk around the desk and take her by the elbow, leading her through the swinging door marked “Employees Only”.

  She places the flowers down on the counter by the sink and I put my hat and the hat box next to them.

  “Kirk,” she finally speaks once the door stops swaying. “What are you doing here?”

  I take her shoulders in my hands and squeeze gently. “Can’t a man surprise his woman after not seeing each other for nearly two months?”

  “Yeah. Yeah,” she says breathlessly. I move my hands to her face and lean down to kiss her. Her arms remain dangling loosely by her sides. I stop before my lips reach hers.

  “Danielle, are you okay?”

  She places her hands on my arms and speaks to my chest. “I’m just surprised to see you is all.” It’s not until the sentence is full out of her mouth that her eyes meet mine. The emotion I see is not what I’d expect. There are two kinds of surprised: the woohoo kind and the oh shit kind. There are no wrinkles at the corners of her eyes from a big smile. There’s no sparkle. There’s no woohoo.

  “I’m just going to tell Jess that we’ll chat another time.” She pulls herself from my grip before I’ve even had the chance to kiss her hello.

  Danielle pushes her way through the swinging door and I hear another squeal from Jess. The door continues to flip back and forth and just before it settles in the closed position, I hear, "He's just some guy I met in Fort Mac. It's nothing really, just a fling."

  The air in the room gets replaced with sludge and I can’t get a breath into my lungs. I put my back to the door and run my hand through my hair. Did I hear her right? Just a fling? The phone calls, the text messages, the trips to Fort Mac were all just part of a fling. The I love you? Just a fling. For a brief second I tell myself that her words must have been distorted by the thwacking sound of the swinging door. But the moment is gone when I turn back around and look at her face, see the stillness and sureness in her eyes through the small window cut out in the door as she talks to Jess. Wow, she is quite the actress. Her impassive expression is like a thousand lashes on my bare skin. My body burns and my jaw clenches but I don’t let out a sound. I don’t show pain and weakness that would only earn me more lashes.

  I can’t believe I got so caught up in her. I can’t believe I fell this hard for some chick I met at a club one random Saturday night.

  I slam my hat back on my head and grab the box off the counter. I turn to exit the employee’s room when I come face-to-face with Danielle who has silently come back through the swinging door.

  “Hey,” she says more composed now that her friend is gone. Now that we’re alone and she can put on the act of loving me again. Her palms splay out on my chest. “Where are you going?” A coy smile plays on her face like she’s trying to seduce me. Now I can see right through it. Her veneer is thin as vellum and her true colours show through despite her efforts to hide behind a smile.

  I push past her and turn over my shoulder just before leaving the room to say, “For real, Danielle?” I blink back the rage and the hurt. “Just a fling?”

  “That’s not what I said.” She shakes her head like she isn’t even sure what lie she’s trying to keep up with anymore. “I mean, that’s not what I meant.”

  “Really? ’Cause it sure sounded like you said it and you meant it.” My voice is harsh. I have never spoken to a woman this way before and being rude to her doesn’t make me feel any better.

  I need to get out of here.

  I push through the door, not capable of listening to her voice anymore. I take long strides through the foyer and kick the office door open with my foot hard enough that it slams on the outside wall and crashes closed.

  Danielle comes running through the door a heartbeat behind me yelling my name, asking me to wait. She catches me, gripping my bicep and trying to pull me to a stop. “Kirk, just let me explain.”

  I spin around, ripping my arm from her tiny hands in the process. She shivers standing outside in just a t-shirt and folds her hands over her chest, squeezing her arms to the point of her fingers turning white.

  “Jesus, Danielle! Get inside. It’s freezing out here.” I put my back to her and continue at a fast pace to my truck. Stubbornly, she follows me.

  “Okay, then come back inside with me.” Her words are pleading but I can’t get her emotionless voice out of my head from earlier. “Let’s talk inside. Let me explain.”

  “What’s there to explain? It all makes perfect sense now.” I kick the tire on my truck. “You were never planning on coming to see me on your holiday, were you?” I state as a point of fact even though there is a question mark at the end of it. I can’t even look at her while I say it, I stare at the spot where my boot made contact with the tire. I’m met with silence. When I turn around to look at her, she gives me a teary, silent stare. Danielle isn’t one to go quiet when she’s angry, she gets fiery. If I was falsely accusing her, she’d have gone up one side of me and down the other, ripping me a new asshole at the same time.

  “Gordon’s rig shut down two days ago. All the rigs that Justin manages will be shut down by the end of the week. Did you think I wouldn’t know that your holidays were coming up any day now?” It’s April already, for fuck’s sake.

  “Kirk, I was. I was planning on coming down. But you didn’t –.”

  I point a hard finger in her face. “Oh no you don’t. Don’t go blaming this on me. This is on you sweetheart.”

  “Please don’t do that Kirk.” I shake my head at her as if to say do what? I wasn’t the one doing anything. “Don’t look at me that way. Don’t look at me like you don’t know me. Like I’m a stranger.”

  How could I look at her any other way? The woman I thought I was coming to see doesn’t exist. The fun we had, the moments we shared, they were just pretend for her. Or maybe it was a fantasy I made up in my own head. Either way, none of my memories were made with the woman who stands before me now.

  Chapter Fourteen

  I watch his taillights disappear down the highway. I stand outside shivering from the cold slicing through me and the adrenaline leaving my system but I can’t go back inside. I remain rooted in place in the middle of the deserted
parking lot in the hopes that he will look in his rearview mirror and see me standing here. He’ll grasp my recognition of my own ignorance. He’ll take pity on me because I don’t deserve more than that at this moment, but he’ll turn his truck around regardless. He’ll let me explain.

  Although what there is to explain is a bit confusing even to me right now. I did say he was just a fling. I can’t deny it even if I can’t justify it. My stomach turns leaving me with a nauseous feeling.

  I was so worried about Kirk breaking my heart that I didn’t consider the possibility that I could be the one to break his.

  Kirk’s truck has long since dropped out of sight and I abandon hope that he will come back. Numb now the cold, all I feel is the loss of him. My body feels empty, my heart deflated.

  I walk back into the motel office, straight through the door to the back room to find a vase for the flowers. It’s been a long time since it’s been used. The glass is stained an ugly yellow and a white crusty line from the hard water rims the halfway mark. I toss it in the sink and soap up a sponge to try to clean it up a little.

  No one’s given me flowers before in a manner of speaking. Guys I’ve met in clubs and gone home with have sent flowers to me via delivery service but no one has hand-delivered flowers. No one has purchased a bouquet in a city almost an hour away and driven them to me in person after flying nine hundred kilometres.

  Those other flowers have all been passed off to friends or ended up in the bin because they came from people who didn’t get that it was just about the sex. I never gave the impression to wanted anything more. I never even tried to fool myself into thinking I wanted more.

  I want more with Kirk, though. I want these flowers and I want whatever he had in that box. I want to meet his family and see a heifer in real life. I want to learn how to ride a horse and I want to start my day at four thirty in the morning. I want to go to sleep with our legs tangled together and I want to wake up curled into his broad chest.

  I set the vase on the front desk and I turn to my computer screen. This is where I have sat all night, every night for the past several years, yet tonight it feels so different. It feels like the room is judging me. Like the screen is scolding me. I haven’t even told my side of the story and I am being sent to the gallows.

  Who would I tell my side of the story to, though? I can’t talk to Piper and I would rather be drawn and quartered than talk to my filterless mother. The only other person I have gotten close to since I was a teenager is Kirk. The irony is baffling.

  I hit an all-time low in the middle of the night when I look to the internet to absolve myself. Anonymity is a blessing and a curse. I am now armed with enough information to argue both sides of my situation six ways from Sunday and I still can't breathe.

  I search up flights to Lethbridge then I look up car rentals. I even check to see if Nobleford has a hotel, just in case. Then I send the motel owner an email telling him that I changed my mind, I do want to take my holidays.

  The bell above the front door jingles and my heart skyrockets into my throat. An irrational part of me thinks that he came back even though I know he’s too proud to do that. Even if he came back to say something mean to me, I would let him. I would allow him to hurt me with his words because it would show me that he cares enough to try to get under my skin. My wishful thinking for a dose of retribution is quickly laid to rest when I see Piper’s tall figure approaching the counter.

  “Hey, Dee!” Piper works at the diner across the parking lot and she sometimes pokes her head in before her shift starts. How is it already almost five o’clock? Where did the night go?

  “Flowers?” She points with one hand and gestures to the ceiling with the other palm questioning their presence.

  I shake my head as though I have no idea where they came from. More lies. More lies.

  I can’t tell Piper about Kirk now, she’s only going to be upset that I didn’t say anything before it was over. Or she’ll be worried for me and I don’t need that either. I am supposed to be her rock, not the other way around. Everyone knows if anyone needs a shoulder to cry on, it’s her and not me.

  “You okay, Dee? No offence, but you look like shit.”

  “Hey!” I exclaim, temporarily getting my emotions under wraps to stave off the inquisition. “I’m nearing the end of a ten-hour night shift. Cut a girl some slack.” More lies.

  “I don’t think that’s it,” she says with suspicion. Piper knows me better than anyone else in town. I wouldn’t put it past her to see that the bags under my eyes are from sorrow and not sleep deprivation. “I think all this time you’ve taken off from partying is bringing you down. You haven’t gone dancing in weeks now. You don’t pester me about Chad anymore. What’s the matter, did sleeping over at Kirk’s house that one night ruin the fun?”

  If she only knew how close to the truth she is.

  “Carly’s been away and Deidra is a little too crazy for me to handle on my own.” Pile on more lies, why don’t you? “I’m heading off on holidays soon, I’ll have my mojo back when I return.”

  “Good, I don’t like this tame version of you. It’s a little scary.”

  “Well, you’d better rest up while I’m away because when I get back, I’m taking you clubbing with me.” I hold up my hand blocking her excuse before she has a chance to even express it. “You need it just as much as I do.”

  Piper changes the subject as she always does when it gets too close to talking about Chad. After a few more minutes of chit chat, she tells me she needs to get going to work. She leaves, running across the parking lot holding down the sides of her diner uniform skirt, which she always complains is too short. She is so sweet and innocent compared to my coarse corruption. I know I am only making things worse by adding more stories to the messy tales I have already spun, still, I don’t know another way to move through it at this moment.

  I’ll deal with it in two weeks when I get back.

  Chapter Fifteen

  “Leave it alone, Dean!” I snap at my little brother. He saw me pull up to my house and came down to meet me. When he spotted the hat box sitting on my kitchen table, he laid into me about Danielle refusing my gift, joking that the city girl was too cool for it. I swear I came close to knocking his teeth loose from that pretty little face of his. We’d see how hard he laughed about getting shot down by girls when he smiled with the toothless grin of a seven-year-old.

  “Come on, big brother. This isn’t the first time you’ve been dumped. Let’s just drink it off like we always do.” I’m not too proud to admit that I’ve been dumped before. All the same, this isn’t like any of those other times. With the other girls I thought there was someone else out there who I’d be better suited with. Not this time, though.

  I smack him on the chest with the back of my hand. “You still got some of that Crown Royal I bought you?”

  “You mean the good stuff?”

  I punch him in the shoulder again, still considering fighting this smarmy asshole. “Yeah, I mean the good stuff.”

  “Pull the tampon out of your vagina and come on up to the main house, I’ll pour us a glass.”

  Dean leaves my place and I brace my hands on my kitchen table trying to untwist my balls before seeing Ma. I stare at the hat box and wonder what I should do with it. I can’t take it back to the store. The saleslady is one of the said ex-girlfriends. I’m sure everyone my age plus or minus a decade already knows that I was in her store buying a lady’s hat. Since all the biddies are aware that I’m not dating anyone in town, lips must be flapping about who this girl is, where she’s from and when I’m going to introduce her around.

  I carry the hat box into my second bedroom and open the closet. I move some boxes out of the way and shove it in the back corner, piling the boxes back up in front of it. Out of sight, out of mind.

  I put my boots on along with my hat and warm sheepskin bomber jacket to cut the wind on my walk up the road to my folks’ place. The sun is shining and it looks beautiful out but
it’s still hovering around zero degrees as the sun starts to sink over the horizon. I pull the collar up around my neck and shove my hands deep into my pockets looking forward to warmer days when I’ll be out here in shirt sleeves with sweat dripping from my brow. That’s exactly what I need right now: to throw myself into my work and not think of things outside the farm.

  I walk in through the side door of the house that leads directly into the kitchen. Mom is at the stove getting dinner ready, wearing her usual Kiss the Cook apron that she’s had since I was little. Leaving my boots on the mat and my hat on the hook by the door, I walk in to greet her. She warmly places both hands on my upper arms and gives me a kiss on the cheek. She doesn’t ask how I am, she simply says it’s good to have me home. Dean obviously gave her the head’s up. Or maybe it was the two tumblers sitting on the kitchen table that gives it away.

  I return to the door and hang up my coat then park myself across the table from Dean. He was surprisingly generous with his pour. I thought the cheeky bastard would offer up a nip of the whisky I bought. Dean raises his glass several inches off the table and signals a silent cheers.

  Mom was never good with silence. I think having four kids in the house killed her desire for peace and quiet if she ever had one. “The calves are all doing well. Lacey Carver told me her son wants to buy one from us and do what you did when you were his age. Gosh, it’s hard to believe her son is already twelve.” I make a noise to let her know that I’m listening even if I don’t feel like contributing to the conversation. “I told him to come by this week and have a look. Maybe you could have a talk with him, you know, tell him how it went for you.”

  “Sure thing, Ma.” I swirl the ice around in my glass and take a sip. “I have some things to take care of in town, so just let me know when he can come by, I’ll make sure to be here for him.”

  The steady swirling sound of her spoon in the pot stops and I hear the soft swish of her apron as she turns her back to the stove to face the table. “What’s going on in town?”