by Kylie Parker
We wind up seated on her couch watching a movie while her tea is brewing. I have to admit; she makes some really good tea. We’re about halfway through the movie, and I’m about halfway through with my second cup of tea, when Éclair puts her hand on my knee. She leans closer to me, and I flinch. There is something bothering me, and I can’t help but to put it out there. “Did you have anything to do with what happened to Eddie?”
She looks really pissed off. She removes her hand and crosses her arms. “You don’t seriously think I would hurt your brother, do you?”
“Come on, Éclair, you can’t blame me for being suspicious.” I say, “You have been trying to get me to sell my company for years. You and Eddie have never gotten along. How do I know you didn’t poison my supplements and then Eddie found out about it and you hired some muscle to-”
She slaps the shit out of me. I probably deserved that. She stands, “You and I have been friends for years. I just paid your fucking bail! Eddie and I may have had our differences, but I would never hurt him! Fuck you, James!”
I remain seated. I just look down at my lap. “I’m sorry.” I say. “I just don’t know what to think right now.”
“You need to relax,” she says, and I can sense the slight erotic tone in her voice. I’ve always been powerless when it comes to Éclair. She leans forward and puts her hands around my neck. Her lips crash into mine, and she pulls me forward slightly so that I am sitting on the edge of the couch. “Come with me,” she says, and I don’t resist. We wind up in her bedroom, and she slams the door behind me. Éclair, always the little power house, pushed be back into the door and pins me there. She leans into me, and I can feel her warm breath on my ear. “How do you want it?” she asks, and I shudder slightly. Éclair is not the asking type; she’s the do-what-I-want-when-I-want type. It catches me off guard so much to the point that I don’t even have a response. “Fine,” she says when I don’t respond fast enough, “I know what you like.” She drops down to her knees and pulls my cock out of my pants, not wasting any time to get her mouth wrapped around it.
I feel myself sinking back into the door, and I grip the doorframe to keep myself upright. She’s right; she knows exactly the sort of things I like. That’s the thing about Éclair –she and I have been at this sort of thing for a while now, so we know what to do to turn each other on. She pulls away from me and stand up suddenly. She releases me and steps toward the bed, dropping every bit of clothing to the floor and suddenly leaning over on the bed, her feet on the floor.
I follow her and pull my band and drawers down around my knees. I come up behind her and press myself into her, and I make her groan loudly. She really does know what I like. “James, you really turn me on,” she mumbles, her voice slightly muffles as her face gets somewhat shoved down into the mattress. I reach out and grab her by her hair, pulling her head back slightly. She turns her head to the side so that she can look back at me slightly.
I’m not stupid. I know what she is doing. She’s never so talkative or so willing to please me. This is just some damn pity sex to try to make me feel better about how my entire life is going to shit. “Just shut up,” I tell her, “and let me just fuck you.” I cum inside her, and then I just pull away and don’t take any time distancing myself. I did it again. Éclair has always been a weakness of mine. What about Sylvia? “I got to go,” I snap and clean myself up on her nice, satin sheets.
“James,” she starts to argue with me, but I’m done. I leave her standing there in her bedroom, probably confused as hell, and I hurry out the door.
Chapter Thirty-Six
This is just a small victory. A sour victory. I am finally able to see Eddie again. Lillian got the station to drop the charges. Thankfully, I’m no longer a suspect in Eddie’s assault case, but that just means there is someone else out there who hurt him. It makes me sick to my stomach to think that someone is out there walking around free.
Now that my name has been cleared in the assault case, I still have the business negligence and accidental homicide by poison to worry about. The lawyer working the lawsuit has been working overnight, and more and more people are signing up to sue me. Just my luck. My business is going down the drain, Éclair is pissed at me for running out on her, and I am just barely keeping my head on straight.
Thankfully for me, Sylvia is back in town after her brief skiing and snowboarding trip in Utah, so she is with me on my first day back to see Eddie. Luckily, he is physically looking better. He is still on life support, but the doctor seemed a bit more confident that he is not going to stay that way. The doctor says he might actually make a recovery. I find myself slightly more relaxed in that thought –the thought that I actually might get to talk to Eddie again.
I sit next to his bed reading a book out loud. One of the nurses told me that coma patients can sometimes hear you, so I figured I would give him something to listen to just in case he could hear me. I feel kind of like a dumbass sitting here reading The Outsiders, but it’s the only book I had lying around my apartment. Eddie had actually been the one who had lent it to me, so I assume he liked it.
As I am finishing another chapter, I notice in the corner of my eye Sylvia starting to nod off. I feel kind of bad. She’s been sitting there being all sweet and supportive for hours. I realize I can’t keep her locked up in a hospital room all day. I close the book, slamming it and making her jump just to kind of be a jackass and tease her a bit. She laughs. “Sorry,” she says.
“Listen,” I say, “My money is still frozen… I’d love to take you out on a fancy date, but until Lillian gets that worked out for me-”
“How about I treat you to lunch?” she suggests with a smile.
I smile back, “You’re too sweet. I was going to say I have ten bucks in cash so we could get a dollar menu lunch, but that works too.”
She laughs again. “Okay, well, I’d rather have some real food. Are you in?” I nod. She can tell I’m reluctant to leave. She nods towards Eddie, “I can give you two a minute.” She says and steps out into the hall.
I’m glad she did that. She’s really thoughtful. It makes me feel like a real asshole for sleeping with Éclair again. She told me she knows I’m sleeping around and that she’s okay with it, but it still makes me feel guilty when she acts so sweet and perfect and understanding. By comparison, I know I’m coming off as a complete pig.
I sit by Eddie for a while longer. I talk to him –tell him about all the shit going on. I talk about Éclair and about Sylvia. I tell him about my awkward first meeting with Lillian Lioness and her lesbianism and me coming off as a dumbass not knowing –he probably would have found that funny. I tell him how confused I am about Sylvia. How I can’t figure out what I want. I tell him about how worried I am about the lawsuit and how I wish he was awake so that he could tell me what to do. He would know what to do. He is smarter than me.
After talking to him for several minutes, never getting so much as a flinch from him, and I head out into the hallway to go have lunch with my fantasy girl. Hopefully lunch with Sylvia will allow me to forget my troubles if only for a little while.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
After yet another long day of talking to lawyers and attempting to avoid the press, I head to the hospital for another visit with Eddie. This time I am alone. Sylvia is on another two-day business trip, so she can’t attend. I would ask Éclair to go with me, but after I had run out of her home like a little bitch I doubt she would have agreed. I don’t know –maybe I am being too critical of her character. I’m sure Éclair would have come if I had asked her to, but truthfully I am glad that I will be getting some alone time with Eddie.
Instead of reading through the same old book again, I had gone to the library and checked out a copy of Moby Dick. I’m not sure if it’s something Eddie would like or not, but it’s something for him to listen to –if he can actually hear me, that is. I’m just glad that Lillian got this shit straightened out quick. The few days of not being able to visit with Eddie had d
riven me absolutely insane. I stroll up to the hospital, thinking about the book I have in my hands and worried whether or not Eddie would even like hearing me read.
I check in with a nurse who is monitoring the hallway that is full of comatose and life support patients. You have to go through a sort of security check in this wing of the hospital. It is one of the most depressing areas in a hospital I have ever been in –especially the waiting room. Everyone is either dying or almost dying or just barely hanging on out this way, so there is always someone out in the nearby lobby or waiting room balling their eyes out after getting some bad news that their brother or daughter or whoever has been put on life support or that they are not going to make it. I am just hoping that any news I get won’t make me into one of those ghostly looking faces I see every time I come here.
When I enter into Eddie’s room after speaking to a nurse, I immediately start talking to him without looking around the room. “Hey, Eddie, I brought a new book today,” I say, not realizing that Eddie has another guest.
The guy sitting in the chair next to Eddie’s bed jumps slightly and wipes his face dry, clearly he had not expected someone to just come walking in all of a sudden. If it wasn’t for his tear soaked face, I probably would have shouted for a nurse to call security. I don’t recognize the guy at all, but there is something somewhat familiar about his face. He looks to be about Eddie’s age, maybe a little younger. He’s wearing a simple button up shirt and stained tie, blue jeans, and tennis-shoes. He kind of looks like an underdressed Geek Squad rep from Best Buy.
Slowly, he stands, probably sensing my surprise and slight discomfort at seeing someone else in the room. Eddie does not exactly have a lot of guy friends, and those that he did have had all waited around for when they had known I would be here for a visit –no one close enough to just pop in all of a sudden at the hospital unannounced. Plus, who gave this guy permission to come back here? I’m the only one on any sort of emergency contact. The guy forces himself to smile, “Y-you m-mu-must b-b-be J-James,” he says with the worst stutter I have ever heard in my life.
“Uh… yeah…” I say as I come somewhat closer. He sticks out a hand to shake, and I shake despite my discomfort with this stranger’s presence.
“Ed-die’s t-told m-me so m-much about y-y-you,” he says as he releases my hand.
“I’m sorry, but who the hell are you and what are you doing here?” I say in the nicest tone I can manage.
He frowns and then half-heartedly smiles at me, “I’m-m s-sorry. I’m M-Max. I’m-m Ed-die’s little br-brother.”
I feel my throat tighten, but I’m not sure why. I have never met one of Eddie’s other half-siblings before. “Oh.” I say, and that is literally all I can come up with.
He looks embarrassed now. He straightens his tie and steps away from the hospital bed. Max puts his hands in his pockets and looks down at his feet. “I sh-should go.”
“No,” I say quickly, not wanting to chase the poor guy out of here. He had actually bothered to come visit, so I wasn’t going to punish him for it by making him uncomfortable. There was nothing for him to gain by coming here, so I guess I may have made a few harsh judgements about Eddie’s siblings. I can admit that, but I am not entirely convinced of it yet. “Stay,” I say and steal the guy’s seat right next to where he had been sitting next to Eddie’s head.
Max nods and pulls up another chair. We are both uncomfortably silent for a while. Max breaks it after a short period of time. “Ed-die d-do-doesn’t de-deserve this s…sort of sh-shit,” he says.
“No, he doesn’t.” I say, trying not to make it obvious that I am having to focus really hard to understand whatever he is saying.
A part of me is curious about the stutter, but I would never in a million years ask about flat out about it –but I suppose he can sense my curiosity. He just points to the side of his head and says, “B-brain inj-jury. It u-used t-to be worse, b-but Ed-die g-got m…me in sp-peach th-therapy n-now.”
“Brain injury?” I question.
“One of m-my,” he pauses and I watch him shake his head embarrassingly for a moment before deciding that he needed to take his time, “One of my m-mom’s old boy…boyfriends kn-knocked me out of a m-moving car when I w-was a k-kid.”
“Shit man,” I say, “That’s fucked up.”
“N-no,” he says and waves a hand towards Eddie, “this is f-fucked up.”
I nod in agreement. I can tell he is trying ridiculously hard to cover up the stutter in front of me. Max clearly is not comfortable being in the same room as me. It is a little weird that we have never met before, but it’s not like I ever showed any interest in getting to know any of Eddie’s family. I decide to try and talk to him so that he doesn’t feel like he has to leave. The next thing I know; we are having this long conversation about Eddie.
I tell him about growing up with Eddie. About Eddie and I running around my dad’s company. About family holiday’s. About sibling rivalries. That sort of thing. He asks a lot of questions, and I answer them the best I can. I tell him that he looks like Eddie a little, and it makes him beam with a bit of pride. I ask about him, but everything he has to say points back to Eddie in one way or another.
Max tells me that he grew up with a single mom. Apart from her shitty taste in men, she sounds like a decent woman. She worked two jobs to take care of Max growing up, but she could never afford to get him much help with his condition because they could not afford health insurance. Eddie, a few years ago, had come looking for all of his siblings, and Max had apparently been the first he found. Max was able to introduce Eddie to the others. Eddie had paid to get Max into speech therapy, and he had helped to set up a retirement plan for Max’s mom. Max also credited Eddie with helping to get him a job.
I could hear it in Max’s voice –the incredible amount of gratitude he had for what Eddie had done for him, and it makes me feel like an ass. Clearly, Max is not just some freeloader that I had assumed all of Eddie’s siblings would be. In fact, by the end of the day, I would even be willing to call Max a friend. The two of us wind up going down to the cafeteria in the hospital to have dinner together, and we keep talking until they kick us out.
Now I feel bad that I haven’t gotten to know him before now. It shouldn’t have taken Eddie being put on life support for me to meet Max. It makes me wonder about Eddie’s other siblings, and hell, about his biological father too. I ask Max about his and Eddies’ father, but Max deflects as though it was too sensitive of a topic. Weird considering our very first conversation was about him being pushed out of a moving car by his mother’s abusive boyfriend.
The two of us exchange information once visiting hours are over, promising to stay in touch. I decide that once things settle down and Eddie is doing better that I am going to try and meet the rest of Eddie’s family like I should have done a long time ago.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
I find myself sitting in Sylvia’s apartment as she prepares lunch for us both. She had invited me over, figuring that I could use the distraction. I really appreciate it. She was totally right. I really do need the distraction. My head is in a million different places, though. I do my best to pay attention to her, but I keep zoning out. There is just too much to think about. While she is dancing around in her kitchen, I am sitting in her little den on the sofa, staring mindlessly at the television.
I don’t even know what is on the television right now because I’m not really watching it. I keep thinking about Eddie, about the lawsuit, the people who were killed taking my supplements, about Éclair, and now I can’t stop thinking about Eddie’s brother Max and the nameless other siblings I have never met. My life has just been one disaster after another after another. It just won’t stop, and I don’t see an end in sight any time soon.
Eventually Sylvia is prancing into the den, two plates of homemade pizzas. I’m impressed. She had made the dough and the sauce from scratch. I smile as she puts the plates down on the little coffee table and hurries into the ki
tchen to fetch us some sodas. While she is searching for drinks, I take a bite out of the pizza. Damn. So she’s beautiful, athletic, smart, and she can make pizza from scratch? Where is this woman’s flaw?
The pizza is great, and I tell her that, but I have not exactly had much of an appetite in the past several days. I eat it anyways, though –not wanting to disappoint her or make her think that I don’t like her cooking. There is just so much on my mind right now, and I think she can tell. She winds up scooting right next to me on the couch. “Are you okay?” she asks despite probably knowing that I’m not.
“I will be eventually,” I say and give her a lazy peck on the cheek. “The past few weeks have just been a little rough.”
“That’s quite an understatement. It’s okay, you know? It’s okay to admit that you’re struggling.” She smiles at me. “A lesser person would be about ready to check into the nut house after everything that has happened to you in the past few weeks.”
“That’s because a lesser person might not have had you by their side the whole time,” I say with a smile. It’s true. She has definitely been my rock through all of the craziness. I mean, we’ve only just met, yet here she is making me pizza from scratch and letting me pretty much camp out in her apartment so that I have a place to sulk where I’m not completely alone. She’s a little charm.
She smiles at me and puts her plate of pizza down. She takes a swig of her soda and then puts that down as well. Sylvia looks at me with these longing eyes, and I have to say that if she is wanting to hurry to the bedroom that I don’t think I could ever be emotionally damaged enough to turn that down, but she seems almost too afraid to ask or hint at it. I let her know I’m game next time she leans in to give me one of those reassuring kisses of hers; I slip my tongue into her mouth. It causes her to lean into it more, and the next thing I know she has slipped her hand between the buttons of my shirt to touch my chest.