by Vivian Wood
“Is that… fuck, is that an order?” Her heartbeat jumped up again. “A doctor’s order?”
“Come for me, Addy.”
He’d never heard such a hammering before. As Addy’s wails filled the room, as he felt the clenching of her center and the rush of wetness from between her legs, her heart battered wildly, filled his head entirety with her.
“Jack,” she called, and clutched him closer.
I fucking love you, he thought as her heart began to slow. I love you, Addy.
But somehow, the words wouldn’t come out.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Addy sighed as she pulled into the restaurant. She checked her text messages from Jack, who had spent his morning seeing his mother off at the airport. At the moment, he was texting Addy a hilarious play by play of the whole deal as he started his shift at the hospital.
Addy pursed her lips, and figured that she ought to check in with Kenzie.
How’s Dad doing? Addy texted Kenzie.
Even though Addy was the one doing the scheduling, it seemed like she and Kenzie crossed paths briefly during the day. Addy was pulling the morning shifts and Kenzie preferred the evenings, perfecting her flirtations to rake in hefty tips.
OK, I think, Kenzie replied. Sleeps a lot.
How’s the drinking?
About the same. I tried to water down the bottles, but he can tell so just drinks more and yells at me.
Addy sighed again but plastered on a smile as she got out of her car and entered the restaurant.
“Addy! Thank God you’re here.” Dawn zoomed toward her, her eyes wild. “Both the dishwashers called in sick today. Both of them! And you know it’s just because of the homecoming game—”
“What about the guys for the dinner shift?” Addy quickly calculated how busy the morning would be.
They could get by if they switched the dishwashing machine to quick cycles, but just barely.
“Same. The same guys were scheduled for doubles.”
“I’ll call Kenzie.” Addy pulled out her phone and braced for Kenzie’s complaints.
“What? You want me to play dishwasher? I don’t think so. That’s gross and there are no tips.”
“Kenzie, I’m not going to beg you and this isn’t a favor. This is Mom and Dad’s restaurant. Get your ass in here within an hour.”
Kenzie hung up on her, but Addy knew she’d be there. And Addy already knew she’d be splitting her tips with her baby sister to appease her.
“Chef says there’s no avocados.” One of the new girls approached Addy with her head cocked sideways.
“Of course there are avocados, I saw them arrive yesterday.”
“I mean no good avocados.”
“They’re all bad?”
The girl shrugged. Addy rushed to the back even as she heard Dawn unlock the front door and the rustle of the first customers arrive.
“Ethan! What’s wrong with the avocados?” she yelled as she flew past the cook to the fridge.
“All rotten on the inside or with pits so big the meat’s useless,” he called back. “What am I subbing?”
“I’ll let you know. Probably spinach.”
“Regulars ain’t gonna like that.”
“I know, but a vegetable isn’t going to kill them. Can you prep some creamed spinach? Make it unhealthy enough and they won’t grumble so much.”
“You got it, boss.”
She reapplied the smile to her face and wrapped the black apron strings around her waist twice. A Friday morning breakfast rush was mild compared to the weekends, but the stodgy group of elderly regulars would keep her on her toes.
Addy was on autopilot as she flew around the restaurant, refilling coffee mugs and explaining the avocado situation to huffy guests. One woman, a local but not a regular, rolled her eyes aghast when she heard about the avocado crisis. Her neatly trimmed silver bob reminded Addy of Diana.
Thank God I never have to see that beastly woman again, she thought.
But the specter of her so-called mother-in-law managed to put a damper on her for days after the event. She’d be taking an order and suddenly the image of the Aussie prima donna would appear in her mind’s eye.
I have to admit, with a mother like that it’s amazing Jack turned out as relatively normal as he did.
If she had any doubts that this whole fake marriage was a bad idea, Diana sealed it. Still, every time Jack texted her she felt a flutter in her heart.
During her ten-minute break when she locked herself in her car to zone out to music and not get pulled into restaurant drama, he sent her a picture of him and Philip at work digging into a homebaked pie one of the nurses had brought. Addy’s face lit up. It was just what she needed to face the last half of her shift.
“You owe me. Big time,” Kenzie said as Addy slipped through the kitchen. Kenzie had yellow gloves up to her elbows and a face mask covered half her face. “Kenzie, it’s dirty dishes, not a biohazard.”
“Same thing. You’ve seen some of those people eat. So gross. You know I found dentures on one of the plates? Dentures, Addy!”
“Did you… did you keep them?”
“Hell, no! I threw them away and then had to change gloves. By the way, you need to order more of these.”
“You threw them away? Kenzie, those things cost thousands of dollars.”
“Then they shouldn’t leave them on dirty plates,” Kenzie said with a shrug.
“Kenzie, what was Dad doing when you left?”
“I dunno. Sleeping, I think. He was on the chair.”
Addy looked at her watch. Her shift was up and her feet throbbed. All she wanted to do was go home and climb into bed, but with Kenzie working the evening shift she didn’t want to leave her dad alone for that long of a stretch.
“I have a temporary dishwasher coming in to change you out,” she said. “He’s on loan from Dusty’s. Text me when he gets here? I’m going to swing by the house and check on Dad.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Kenzie muttered as she scrubbed uselessly at omelet remains.
When Addy pulled up to her dad’s house, she saw that Kenzie had forgotten to close the garage door.
“Goddamnit, Kenzie,” she said aloud. The last thing they needed was for someone to burglarize the place.
She heard her father’s monstrous snores as soon as she walked in. The house was still somewhat clean from when her dad had been in the hospital, but it was clearly heading back to disaster territory.
“Dad?” she called, but his snores remained steady.
He was passed out in his chair with what looked like a watered-down whiskey in a tumbler on the table. Addy put a crocheted blanket over him, picked up the glass and wiped away the water mark.
She could tell by his slack jaw he was down deep. It would be pointless to try and wake him.
In the kitchen, she opened the dishwasher after she rinsed the glass, but it overflowed with dirty dishes. None of them had been rinsed.
“Screw it,” she said. “Kenzie and him can deal with this.”
Any other day, she would have rinsed what was in the dishwasher and started the load.
Let them fend for themselves for once, she thought as she put the tumbler in the sink.
She tried to put Diana, Kenzie, and her dad out of her mind as she drove home.
Home, she thought. That still seems weird.
Addy smiled when she saw Jack’s Jeep in his spot.
“Jack?” she called as she entered, but the condo was dark and silent. “Jack?”
She opened the bedroom door to find him already in bed asleep.
Addy kicked off her black clogs and stripped down to the boy shorts she wore under her work skirt and the tight tank top underneath the button-up. He roused as she snuggled up against him.
“Hey,” he said, his voice thick with sleep.
Addy pushed her back against him and made herself the little spoon in their pair. As Jack rolled toward her, he wrapped one thick arm around her waist. She felt
his hardness against her ass and her body responded as his hand roamed up her stomach to her breasts.
“It wasn’t right how you treated Rosalie.”
Jack stopped. “What?”
“The way you treated her… all of it. I’m afraid that, you know, one day you’ll do the same thing to me.”
It was easier like this, telling him her deepest fears while she faced away from him.
“Addy, she left me because I didn’t propose to her. It’s not really an issue here. I mean, we’re kind of way past that.”
“I’m telling you that I’m afraid of something,” she said. Addy could feel the heat of his breath on her neck. “It’s your job to comfort me.”
Jack hooked a thumb in the waist of her tight little shorts and inched them down. “Jack—”
“Shh.”
She let him roll up her tank top to the top of her breasts, the pressure from the tight material making them swell and pucker below the hem. Jack opened her legs easily and tested her wetness with his finger.
“You’re always so fucking wet,” he whispered into her ear.
Before she could respond, he’d disappeared under the covers and she felt his tongue trace across her mound while his hands explored her breasts. As his mouth reached her clit, she gasped and her eyes shot open.
Addy wove her fingers through his hair and held him against her. She could see nothing but the moving sheet between her legs, but when she felt his finger against her opening she pushed instinctively against him.
As she panted toward orgasm, there was a dim thought in the back of her mind. It wasn’t exactly what she’d had in mind when she’d asked for comfort, but she had to admit it felt pretty fucking good.
She opened her legs wider, unable to get enough of him. Suddenly, he stopped. Addy squirmed against the discomfort, gripped his head tighter and presented herself to him. “Say my name,” he demanded from between her thighs.
“Jack,” she said, and his tongue flicked across her clit.
The more she said his name, the louder, the more pleasure he gave her. When she finally came against his tongue, her heart pounded inside her head so loudly she could have sworn it shook the room.
It wasn’t until she was coming down from the high that she realized it was the neighbor. A faint pounding sounded from the living room wall along with murmured exasperated sounds.
“Looks like you pissed off the neighbors,” Jack said as he emerged from the sheets, her wetness spread across his face.
“Who cares?” she asked as he spooned her again. “They’re probably just jealous. Who knows the last time they got laid?”
“For all we know, it might be Jeremy.”
Addy hadn’t considered that. Surprisingly, she also didn’t care.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
“Jack?”
Nurse Bostian popped his head into the hospital’s break room. “There’s a Mr. Fuller here to see you? I’m sorry, the front desk tried to have him see someone else, but he was really… adamant.”
“Ted Fuller?” Jack asked, his mouth still half-full with a stale sandwich from the cafeteria.
“Uh, yeah.”
“I’ll be right there.”
“He’s in room 2-E.”
Jack dumped the rest of his lunch in the trash and rushed down the hall. When he opened the door, Addy’s dad looked the same as he remembered.
Years of alcohol abuse gave people a certain type of pallid expression, a hunched-over look, that made them look years older than they were.
“Mr. Fuller, what brings you in?” he asked.
“It’s my heart.”
“How so?”
“It feels… kind of the same thing as last time,” he said.
As Jack approached him, he was nearly knocked over by the smell of whiskey. He couldn’t tell if it had spilled on him, was just his breath, or a little of both.
“Can you describe the sensation? Sharp, dull? Where exactly is it?”
Addy’s dad pointed to the center of his chest.
“It kind of comes and goes in waves,” he said. “Sometimes it’s sharp when it’s, you know, at the peak, and then it subsides to a more dull throbbing kind of pain.”
Jack removed his stethoscope from his neck and gestured for Mr. Fuller to unbutton his shirt.
“This’ll be cold,” he said. “Can you take your shirt off completely? I need to listen from your back. Sit up straight.”
When the shirt was removed, the stench of body odor mixed with whiskey was almost unbearable. Jack listened to the heartbeat, a bit fast, but regular and nowhere in the realm of unusual.
“Sounds solid,” he said. “As I recall, from your last hospital stay there was nothing found in your bloodwork. I’ll take another look at those records though. For now, I think we should order a full blood workup just to rule anything out.”
“What… what do you think it is? A heart attack?”
“I can’t say for sure, but I don’t think so,” Jack said.
“Are you… are you gonna tell Addison?”
“Addison?” Jack asked as he made order notes. “Not unless you want me to.”
“No,” he said quickly. “Let’s just leave her and Kenzie out of it.”
“Whatever you say. A nurse is going to come in and take care of the blood orders soon. Once they get back, I’ll go over them and discuss the results with you and we’ll go from there. Sound good?”
“How long will that be?”
“Hard to say, the nurse will have a better time estimate than me. However, things seem to go a little faster in the ER, and it hasn’t been too busy today.”
“Okay,” he said slowly as he shrugged on the flannel shirt.
It took three hours for the blood results to come back.
“Well?” Jack asked the nurse as he handed over the results.
“Nothing too out of line,” the nurse said with a shrug. “He’s a drunk, right? I mean—”
“Thanks,” Jack said quickly.
He scanned the results. Surprisingly, for a man who drank his calories and otherwise subsisted on red meat whenever he could, he was relatively healthy. However, the B-type natriuretic peptide protein was slightly elevated.
Jack had expected it to be higher given the years of alcohol abuse, but it was still technically within a “worry-free” range.
“That took a long while,” Mr. Fuller said when Jack knocked on the door.
“Actually, that was speedy in ER time,” Jack said.
“Okay, give it to me,” he said. “What’s wrong?”
“Your bloodwork is largely normal,” Jack said. “There’s a small elevation of the B-type natriuretic pep—”
“English, doc.”
“It’s a protein that’s produced by the heart. It’s high, but not at a dangerous level. At this point, it’s something to keep an eye on. Maybe go see your GP and retest it in a month. I, uh, would recommend laying off any drinking until then because alcohol can exacerbate it.”
“You, uh, you doctors aren’t allowed to tell people that I was here, right? That’s what you meant when I asked about Addison?”
“Well, no… doctor-patient confidentiality,” Jack said reluctantly.
He clutched the results tighter in his hands. The bloodwork might be in the normal range, but he still had a bad feeling about it.
That’s just what the medical field needs, he thought. Intuition.
“Let’s just keep our lips zipped then,” Mr. Fuller said. He stood up and wobbled slightly. “This is something for us menfolk to worry about. Besides, I’m sure it’s nothing. That’s what the tests say, right? Nothing?”
“Basically,” Jack said slowly.
“Well, thanks, I guess,” Mr. Fuller said. “Think maybe I’m just still a little spooked after that last incident.”
“Better safe than sorry,” Jack said. “It’s always wise to come in if you suspect something’s up.”
As he watched Mr. Fuller head down the hall
toward the exit, he paused only briefly before he ran after him. “Mr. Fuller? How did you get here?”
“Taxi,” he said gruffly.
“My shift is just about over. Would you like a ride home?”
“That sounds real nice, doc. Thank you.”
“Okay, just… just wait right here. I’ll be back in ten minutes.”
The ride to Addison’s house—her old house—was largely quiet. Mr. Fuller was a man of few words.
I can’t believe he doesn’t know we’re married. Where does he think Addy’s living?
“You single, doc?” he asked suddenly as they pulled up to the house.
“Uh… well…”
“Hell, you’re young. ‘Course you are. Have fun with it. But just so you know? When it comes time to settle down, you’re not gonna find nobody better than my Addison.”
“I don’t doubt that, sir,” Jack said. He couldn’t help the smile that tugged at his face.
“If and when the time comes, you just let me know. She can be feisty and stubborn, but underneath it all she’s got a heart of gold. Takes after her mother in that way.”
“Take care of yourself, Mr. Fuller,” Jack said.
As he watched Addy’s dad climb the steps, he briefly wondered if he should escort him in.
And then what? Become his volunteer caretaker?
He shook his head and pulled away. When he walked in the door, Addy was curled up on the couch streaming Stranger Things.
“Come here,” she said. “I just started the second season.”
She opened up the blanket she was buried under and he slipped out of his shoes to join her.
Any thought of telling her about her dad disappeared when she reached beneath his scrubs.
“I thought you wanted to watch the show,” he said from behind her.
“And I thought you knew what Netflix and chill meant,” she said. “You smell like hospital.”
“Is that a good thing?”
“I dunno. To me it just smells like you now.”
She gripped him in her fist while he lifted up her skirt to find nothing but soft, bare skin underneath.
“Were you planning this?” he asked and kissed her neck from behind.
“Maybe.” He reached for her to turn her toward him, but she resisted. “No. From behind.”