The Hookup

by Kristen Ashley

  “Johnny—”

  “Go to sleep, spätzchen.”

  “Can you sleep like this?” I asked.

  “Can you?” he asked back.

  “Yes,” I gave him the truth.

  “Then yes.”

  I relaxed into him.

  I felt something hit the bed and I looked through the dark as that something became a furry something curled against Johnny’s arm.

  “Jill,” I muttered. “She’s used to your scent so she’s getting friendly.”

  “She’s gonna get more used to it.”

  Thank you, God.

  I smiled into his neck.

  Jill started purring.

  Johnny held me.

  I fell asleep.

  Johnny

  After mucking out the stalls Saturday morning, pulling off his work gloves and shoving them in the back pocket of his jeans, Johnny went to the little sink in the front corner of the tack room he’d seen when he’d disposed of the condom he’d used when he’d done Iz in the stables.

  When he finished washing his hands, he turned toward the door and his eyes caught on the four pictures on the back wall that he’d noted the last time he was there, but it hadn’t been the time to get a good look at them.

  He moved that way and stared at the two photos to the right of the window.

  Standing there, he got his first look at Izzy’s mother.

  And that first look rocked him straight to his boots.

  If he didn’t know the story, he’d have no idea the life she’d led from her face, her demeanor, the bright smile she aimed at the camera in the top photo where she was striking a pose, head thrown back, body in an arc, one leg kicked up behind her. Her arms were around an adorable little-girl Izzy who was standing straight and holding tight to her momma’s middle, dazzling the camera with her smile.

  A gleaming chestnut horse was behind them.

  They looked what Izzy said they were.

  Happy.

  Not like people who needed government cheese.

  The picture below was all three in a row: see no evil (a little-girl Addie with the fingers of both hands covering her eyes), hear no evil (Izzy’s mother with her hands over her ears) and speak no evil (Iz with her hand over her mouth). They all had huge smiles on their faces (Izzy’s he could see in her eyes). And that horse was behind them.

  He moved to the other two and saw Addie with her mom up top, both of them striking a goofy pose. The three of them together at the bottom. Izzy’s mom in the middle with her arms around her girls’ shoulders, both of them with their arms around their mom’s middle, all of them staring straight at the camera, looking like they were laughing.

  That woman was not beaten.

  That woman was not broken.

  She’d made two precious beings and she was right where she wanted to be, happy as a clam.

  He stared at her laughing face and he knew without ever meeting the woman that she left that man to save her daughters. She left that man to give her girls moments like that. She left that man to show them the path of their lives and it wasn’t about things, it was about taking care of yourself and the ones you love, even if that meant sacrificing everything, that everything meaning nothing when you could hold the world right in the curve of your arms.

  He’d never seen a more beautiful woman in his life.

  Only looking hard did Johnny see the girls’ cheap, plastic sandals. The decals on the front of their tank tops faded from many washings. The at-home haircuts that didn’t really matter since they both had their mom’s thick, long, tawny mane of hair. But still, none of their hair was styled, layered, like Izzy’s was now. Just cut straight at the bottom and healthy.

  He stared at Izzy’s sandals and his palms started to itch, his throat started to burn, his gut started to roil.

  So he forced his gaze to her face.

  Her smile.

  Her holding on to her mother.

  The pictures were faded, square, small, from an old camera that took an antiquated type of film.

  But the frames were top notch.

  He took ten steps back and stared at the room.

  The fabric on the flowered chair was faded, worn.

  The leather of the other chair was beat up, there were scratches everywhere and there was a short split through the leather along the front side, under the arm.

  He looked up at the light fixture, which was kickass right there in that room with the tack and those chairs.

  But under that veil Izzy threw over it, it was a piece of shit.

  Images collided in his brain as the veil was pulled off.

  The chandelier in her bedroom had probably once been like that light fixture, except Izzy had made it something else with her flair and her care.

  Got a deal on the marble countertops because some lady ordered them and then decided she didn’t want them, she’d said about the marble in her kitchen.

  Johnny had no doubt she rocked what she did at work. Her land was worth money. The farmhouse was solid. It had space. Three bedrooms. Two baths and a powder room downstairs. The stables added value. She took care of all of it and a bunch of animals including two horses. You couldn’t have all that without the means to have it.

  She’d made it magical using magic.

  You just couldn’t know what he now knew or look too close, because once the veil dropped, it all came clear.

  He was a guy but he wasn’t dead, blind or stupid so he’d heard of the concept of shabby chic.

  Izzy had a master’s hand.

  She still made do.

  She still surrounded herself with scraps of shit, other people’s castoffs, because it was the best she could do to have what she needed to make herself feel safe and happy.

  “That shit ends,” he growled at the picture of her with her mother.

  Johnny was rich.

  He had six million dollars in checking, savings, property and investments. He also had eight garages with mini-marts that were locally-owned, priced right and had established customer loyalty over three generations, so they turned over a mint.

  He’d picked his furniture at the mill and he’d fixed the place up himself, but he picked the furniture through an interior designer that cost a fortune. Her time and the furniture. His dining room table probably cost more than all the furniture on the first floor of Izzy’s house, including the front and back porches.

  He lived simple because that was the life his father taught him and his father’s father before had taught his dad.

  But if it mattered to him, he got the best.

  And Izzy mattered to him. In her, he’d found the best.

  So she was fucking going to have the best.

  Addie had rallied the night before over pizza then copious beers at Home. She’d gotten loaded.

  But with the troubled looks Izzy gave her sister as well as Johnny, he knew she hadn’t unloaded.

  Eliza and Adeline Forrester both were still eating shit.

  “And that shit has to end,” he said.

  He turned on his boot and went up to the house, finding Izzy and Addie on the back porch, having late-morning coffee.

  Izzy’s eyes on him were bright, sweet and still troubled.

  Addie’s eyes on him were dull and dead.

  He collected Brooks, his diaper bag, his lunch that came in jars, his schedule from his mother, and he strapped the boy in the car seat Addie had told him how to secure in the back seat of his truck.

  He drove away with both sisters in his rearview and Brooks babbling in his back seat.

  And Johnny drove away knowing he was going to shift the life course two sisters had been on.

  With one, he knew how that was going to go.

  With her sister, he had no clue.

  If Izzy Wanted to Go, Absolutely

  Johnny

  LATE THAT AFTERNOON, after returning to Izzy’s, Johnny stood in her backyard.

  And he stared.

  There was a long, wide wooden table
under a tree. The table was covered with a filmy lace tablecloth. It had three little vases stuffed full of fluffy flowers and four squat glass things filled with little candles intermingled in a line down the middle.

  At the end, surrounded by those squat glass things with candles, was a big tin bucket (with a dent in it) that was filled mostly with ice, some water, and in it there were three bottles of wine and six bottles of beer. A lacy-edged napkin dangled off the side. There was a bottle opener and a corkscrew discretely tucked at the back.

  The table was surrounded by chairs with ruffled pads on all of them, some wood with their paint chipping off, some miracles of curlicue iron.

  When he sat his ass down, he was going for a wooden one.

  The tree over the table now had a ton of Christmas lights in its branches with long strings of clear beads with crystals at the ends dangling down from it.

  Needless to say, while he was hanging with Brooks, the sisters had not given each other facials.

  He felt her come up beside him and looked down at her to see she was carrying a stack of melamine plates that were green with pink flowers all over them, a stack of pink cloth napkins laid on the top.

  In that moment there was one thing he was not annoyed about.

  She was wearing the dress she’d worn at the festival.

  And knowing there was a good possibility he’d be taking it off her that night was the only thing she had going for her right then.

  “Where’d that table come from?” he asked.

  “The legs unscrew. I keep it in the hay room and pull it out when I want an outdoor party.”

  “How heavy is it?”

  She cottoned on to the path of his questioning, gave him big eyes and pressed her lips together.

  Right.

  “The chairs?” he pushed.

  “There’s a shed beyond the stables. You can’t see it from here. I keep the chairs there. And my Christmas decorations. My Halloween decorations. My Thanksgiving decorations and, um . . .” she faltered then rallied, “etcetera.”

  That shed had to be maybe thirty, forty yards away.

  Yes.

  Annoyed.

  “The lights?” he pressed on.

  “I had the idea and got the lights and crystals weeks ago, I just haven’t had time to do it or the occasion to do it for. Today, Addie and I did it.”

  “You couldn’t ask me to set that table up, bring out those chairs and get up in that tree with the lights before I took off?” he asked.

  “I had Addie to help me. Normally I have to drag them out myself.”

  He felt his jaw get tight.

  She hurried on. “And sometimes Charlie and Deanna come over to lend a hand.”

  He scowled down at her.

  “You can help me take the table apart and put it all away,” she offered.

  “Do we need to have another chat about the kind of guy I am?” he asked.

  She gave him a look and muttered, “Not anymore.”

  “Right,” he grunted. “What else needs done?”

  “I know you’ve had Brooks all day but can you keep an eye on him inside while Addie and I bring out the rest to set the table?”

  “Wrong answer,” he stated.

  Immediately she adjusted her request.

  “Can you bring out the rest to set the table while Addie and or I keep an eye on Brooks?”

  “What do you need brought out?”

  “It’s all on the countertop, honey.”

  He turned on his boot and went inside.

  On the counter he saw wineglasses, water glasses, cutlery and a pink milk glass pitcher with raised polka dots that was filled with ice and water.

  He also saw, under a ribbed glass dome on a raised ribbed glass stand, a cake that was a miracle of rich, thick swirls of white frosting.

  Addie was in the kitchen, Brooks in her arms, and she was cuddling him when Johnny came in, but her gaze was on Johnny when his went to her.

  “This all the stuff that goes outside?” he asked, jerking his head to the things on the counter.

  “Yep,” she answered.

  “You sure there’s no unicorn statues, grenades rigged to explode glitter or nets of rose petals to hang to rain down on us when Iz pulls a cord?”

  Her lips twitched but that was all he got from her before she said, “We didn’t have that much time.”

  He nodded and set about taking the stuff to Izzy.

  It took four trips to get it all out, and as he went back and forth with three canines dogging his steps, Izzy laid the table.

  Addie wandered out with Brooks while Izzy was putting on the finishing touches and Johnny was opening a bottle of wine.

  “If you’re pouring, I’m drinking,” Addie declared.

  “I’m pouring,” he confirmed.

  She nodded to him, her face mostly expressionless. Not a woman who was looking forward to a dinner party with friends. Not a woman who was looking forward to anything.

  Then she looked to her sister.

  “Queso dip is bubbling, Iz,” Addie told her. “I turned it down low and the skillet’s ready to brown it in the oven.”

  “Thanks, doll,” Izzy replied just as the dogs took off toward the front, only Ranger barking.

  Johnny saw Izzy’s eyes shift there and she visibly went from sure of herself, setting up an outdoor party, to flustered.

  She was worried her friends wouldn’t like him.

  He finished with the cork, shoved the bottle back in the ice water and moved to her to sling an arm around her shoulders.

  He then started her moving, murmuring reassuringly, “Don’t worry, spätzchen. People like me.”

  “You’re likable,” she said, her eyes glued down the wide open space covered in neatly cut grass at the side of her house. “But they’re family.”

  He gave her a squeeze. “It’s gonna be fine.”

  He saw an African American couple emerging from a big, black truck that was a lot like his, except his was a Ram and theirs was a Ford.

  They were vaguely familiar. He’d seen them around town.

  The man was a good-looking guy, very tall, barrel-chested, hair cropped close at the sides, longer up top.

  He was dressed like Johnny. Jeans. Nice button up. Boots.

  The woman was top-heavy and coming out of her short skirt he saw she had legs that were nearly better than Izzy’s, but the dark skin was shining, this something that made them so attractive, he almost couldn’t move his eyes to her face. When he did, he saw she had strong, striking features under short hair that was artfully messy, with wisps of it hugging her cheeks and neck.

  She was not dressed like Izzy. Her skirt, as he’d noted, was short. It was also tight and attached to the rest of a bright yellow dress that was loose up top and fell off one of her shoulders. She was wearing spiked heels with complicated ankle straps and walking through the grass without those heels sinking in, because he suspected she never wore anything but heels like those so she could walk anywhere in them.

  Izzy’s friend Deanna didn’t hide she was sizing him up.

  Her husband didn’t either.

  He felt Addie coming up behind them, Izzy beginning to make a move to separate from him to greet her friends, and he saw Deanna beginning to open her mouth, when another vehicle turned into Izzy’s drive.

  The dogs that were dancing around the newcomers looked that way then they headed that way, this time all three of them barking.

  “Oh no,” Izzy whispered as Deanna and Charlie turned to watch a beat-up, rusted-out, criminally-not-cared for, old, light-blue Mustang come screeching to a halt by Charlie’s truck, kicking up the gravel of Izzy’s drive as well as a fair amount of dust.

  He felt something from Izzy.

  He felt something more beating at his back.

  He twisted to look at Addie to see her face was pale, her eyes were glued to the Mustang and she was holding on to Brooks like someone was trying to tear him from her arms.

  Instant
ly, Johnny let go of Izzy and prowled forward as a tall, lanky man with a mess of dark-brown hair and a scruff of beard, wearing faded jeans with both knees split, a rocker tee and a pair of black motorcycle boots, got out of the Mustang not hiding his movements were agitated and aggressive.

  Addie’s husband.

  Perry.

  “You stupid fucking bitch!” he shouted, eyes on Addie.

  Johnny felt Charlie come up beside him, but Perry was on the move and it was like the two men, both of them bigger than Perry, weren’t between him and his wife, blocking his path.

  He also ignored the dogs who were holding back from him, but on the alert, a hostile alert, all three of them having bared their teeth and were growling.

  Fuck.

  “Ranger, down!” Johnny called. “Dempsey. Swirl. Back!”

  The dogs minded, but didn’t.

  They didn’t jump Perry.

  But they did follow him, front shoulders crouched low.

  “You stupid fucking bitch!” Perry repeated in a yell, advancing quickly.

  “Stop moving,” Johnny growled, shifting quickly to block his advance.

  Perry’s gaze cut up to his as he tried to adjust to the side to round Johnny. “Get outta my way, man.”

  Johnny adjusted with him as Charlie flanked Addie’s angry husband.

  “I said, stop moving,” Johnny warned.

  Perry stopped and shouted in his face, “And I said, get outta my way, man!”

  “You need to calm down,” Johnny told him.

  “You need to fuck off,” Perry returned.

  “Listen to me—” Johnny started.

  “Kiss my ass,” Perry sneered.

  Johnny went on like he didn’t speak. “You got one minute to turn around, get back in your car, go somewhere and cool off then make a meet with Addie when you’re in a different frame of mind.”

  “And if I don’t?” Perry asked snidely.

  “I’ll detain you while Eliza calls the police,” Johnny answered.

  “Fuck you.” He shot to the side, yelling, “Addie!”

  Johnny shot to the side and Charlie moved with him, both of the men crowding Perry and moving him back.

  “Jesus, fuck off!” Perry shouted, bouncing his chest against Johnny’s.

  A low, pissed noise rolled up Johnny’s throat and out his mouth.

  “This is not the way this is gonna go.”