by Chal, Bella
She opened the door, confused and angry to find him sitting on the toilet ending a call. “So who do you love?” she whispered.
“My mom,” he answered with a scowl.
“You call your mom at one in the morning?”
“Yeah, actually, I do. Especially when I do something stupid and get in a fight with my girlfriend.”
The word hit her like cold drops of water down her back. “Girlfriend?” she repeated the word as if trying it on for size.
“Yeah,” he sighed. “Aren’t you?” The way he looked at her killed her doubts in an instant. “I’m sorry I didn’t put on a condom first. I was tired and stupid. Will you forgive me? Please? I can’t take you being angry with me.”
“I probably overreacted,” she said, taking pity on him after a moment. “Come back to bed.”
It only took a few seconds to arouse him enough to roll a condom on. His kisses felt like feathers against her face and neck as he slowly filled her again. With her fingers pulling at his back, he built up speed until they were a in frenzy of motion.
His hot breath against her shoulder made her flesh prickle. Wrapping her arms around his head, she pulled him tight as the chills and his heat brought her to the edge. While experimenting with him the night before, she’d found him on top and her angling her hips a certain way he could provide enough stimulation for her to get off. So she tensed up and pushed against his strokes, biting down on his shoulder when she got close.
“Oh, fuck yeah,” he muttered, moving his head so she would bite him again. Her moment came with the impact of a car crash, taking her breath away until the only option was to cry out so she could draw another in. He groaned and pushed all the way inside, his pulses meeting hers until everything was wet, hot, and still.
Sleep came in a tangle of limbs, sheets twisted around them like bindings. Her last conscious thought was, I have a boyfriend!
* * *
The next morning Polly slipped out of bed, closed the bedroom door, and began to cook a hot breakfast. Bacon sizzled in the pan while she danced around the kitchen making coffee and setting the table. Before long the wonderful scents drew Trey out of the bedroom with a grin, wearing nothing but his boxers, and his hair poking out in every direction.
“Good morning,” he mumbled and gave Polly a quick kiss on the lips. “This is unexpected, but very welcome.” He sat down at the table to watch her with a happy grin.
“Here’s coffee,” she said as she placed the mug on the table. “I’ll have the food done in a minute. How do you like your eggs?”
“Whites hard, yolks runny,” he said between sips of his coffee.
Polly put the eggs on, then brought the bacon and toast to the table. In the light of day, all the concerns from the previous night seemed silly. Obviously they were both tired and she overreacted, she told herself. “What’s on your agenda for the day?” she asked.
“Work, then back here if that’s okay with you,” he said. “What about you?”
“I’ve got the late shift today, so I won’t be here until after nine. I’ll call you when I’m on the way if you want.” She brought their plates of eggs to the table and joined him there.
“Sounds great,” he said. “So what’s new with the family? Did Kurt get another water bus to drive yet?” Polly frowned at his choice of topic and the cruel laugh that followed it.
“Why do you care so much about what Kurt is doing?” she asked as she cut her eggs to dip her toast in the yolks. The irony wasn’t lost on her that she also cared a little too much what he’d been doing.
“I don’t, I just like to keep score,” he said, raising a piece of bacon to his lips.
“Well, he had a date night before last with a wild friend of Julie’s named Cathy. Just before the date he got a call and was hired by a company called Johnson and somebody.” The bite of her buttery toast and egg tasted wonderful.
“Johnson and Abernathy?” Trey asked, seeming surprised.
“I think so. Anyway, he’s somewhere on a boat yesterday and today, but should be back in the morning. Charlotte was interviewing at Ben Taub yesterday and when she got back she said it went really well. Oh, she also met some hot social worker while she was there apparently, because she wouldn’t shut up about him. And tomorrow I’m going out with Julie, Charlotte, Cathy, and Camden to a place called Dave and Buster’s.”
“Hey that sounds like fun. Can I come?” he asked, taking another bite of his eggs.
“Nope, its just a girls’ night out. You can hang out with Jack, Kurt, and the kids if you want,” she said, grinning at him over her coffee cup at him.
“No thanks,” Trey said with a dismissive frown. “Do you mind if I shower and go to work from here?”
“Can I scrub your back?” she asked, making him chuckle.
“Then I’d never get to work.”
* * *
After the meal, Trey went to the shower while Polly cleaned up the breakfast mess. A nagging thought stayed with her as she washed the dishes. The lie about the wrong number bothered her almost as much as him forgetting to use a condom. Despite telling herself she was wrong and totally overreacting, she found herself walking into the bedroom anyway.
His phone was on and sitting on her night stand. She stared at it like it was a snake, but the noise of the running shower made her feel brave. Picking up the phone, she noticed the smudges on the screen in the shape of a numeral three. Waking it up, she dragged her finger along the smeared pattern to unlock it.
Her heart was pounding in her throat, but she had to know the truth. Opening up his text app, she saw it had been completely erased. There were no messages at all, not even from her. Bringing up the call logs, she saw they had been wiped as well. Feeling dizzy, she was just about to lock the phone and put it back when a new text arrived.
Since the screen was unlocked, she saw the message text in the notification pop-up. It was from someone named Jennifer and said, “Thanks for the call this morning. Just finished for the day. I miss you so much. Love you!”
Putting the phone to sleep again, Polly sat it back where she’d found it as a numb confusion overwhelmed her. It wasn’t a US phone number, because she recognized the same ‘011’ international prefix she used when she called her parents overseas.
Telling herself it might have been a relative or a friend, she went back to the kitchen to pour another cup of coffee. It didn’t work, though, she couldn’t make herself believe the lie long enough to reach the table. She collapsed into a chair and stared at the wall.
I’m a fool, she thought as she fought back tears. What the hell do I do now?
Chapter 10: Kurt
The delivery run ended with Kurt feeling sad that he wasn’t really going to work for Johnson and Abernathy. Bo Tidewell was a funny, skilled captain who seemed genuinely glad to have Kurt around. The other crew members were the same kind of hard working guys he’d been around for years, despite their lack of appreciation for Cajun food and music. Spending their off time playing cards and wild telling stories had made them fast friends over those two days.
After putting his smelly duffel bag in the trunk, Kurt drove back to his Uncle Jack’s house feeling a deep sense of satisfaction. He had a date on Sunday with two of the most wild, sexy women he’d ever met. He’d managed to find out something that might help his Uncle Jack solve the problem he had at work. And most importantly, the secret fear he’d been carrying in his heart for years was gone.
He’d never realized that working for his Uncle Charlie was a kind of crutch. Since he’d failed out of school, working for his uncle wasn’t so much a choice as a last ditch option. During those early years, he’d needed lots of extra help getting around his difficulties reading and writing. Since his uncle knew about dyslexia first hand, having had the same problem himself growing up, learning from him had been easier.
In the beginning he’d memorized things with his uncle’s help to avoid reading, but somehow in the last decade the words had started comin
g easier without him really noticing. Bo Tidewell had no clue how hard he used to struggle with forms and checklists, but for Kurt, the last two days had been as exciting as going on a bike without training wheels for the first time. The fact that he could tell himself it wasn’t really a new job had made him unafraid to fail.
His phone rang while he was at a stop light, but when he saw Polly’s name he pushed it to voicemail. I don’t need you, girl, he thought with a chuckle. A moment later his phone rang again, but this time with his sister’s name on the screen. He accepted the call and put it on speaker.
“Hey, sis!” he said as he drove off from the light.
“Hello, brother mine,” she said with a cheery tone. “Are you back safely?”
“Yup, and you best not be callin’ to tell me Kendall is there at Uncle Jack’s house.”
Her ringing laughter made him smile at his own joke. “No,” she said. “I have a favor to ask you, though.”
“Yes, you can borrow my car when I get home. I’m gonna shower and then kick you out of Jen’s room to sleep the day away. That mean ole captain made me work all night last night and I’m beat.”
“No, I was wonderin’ if you’d be the designated driver tonight for our girls night out.”
“I ain’t a girl,” he said, not really wanting to get caught in that hellfire cross-wind of drunk women and sobriety. “Besides, being on a ship for two days makes a man mighty thirsty.”
“Please?” she begged. “I’ll owe you huge for this.”
“You already owe me huge for not leavin’ your ass in Morgan City!”
“Okay, how much will it cost? Are we talking Jacksons or Franklins?”
“I’ll do it if you cook me a chicken gumbo for lunch on Sunday. I’ve got a date Sunday afternoon and need all the strength I can get. Well, assumin’ I ever get out of the confessional after the last date.”
She laughed again and said, “You’re on!”
“See ya in a bit,” Kurt said and dropped the call.
* * *
As he was setting the alarm to play chauffeur, Kurt noticed there were two voicemail messages waiting. The first was from Polly asking for a call back, which he deleted as soon as he got the gist of her message. The second was from Uncle Jack hoping his new job was going well. Kurt took that as an invitation and called him back at work.
“Hey, I was hoping to hear from you today,” Jack said when he answered.
“I just got back and cleaned up before I saw your message. You ready to take some notes?”
“Shoot,” Jack said.
“My captain was Bo Tidewell, spelled B-O and T-I-D-E-W-E-L-L. He gave me some shit work to feel me out. My first job was to double check the manifest against the inventory in the hold.”
“Okay,” Jack said. “What’d you find out?”
“For some reason they listed the base cost-per-ton rate for each item on their manifest. All Deep Drilling inventory was around twenty-two cents a ton, which is insane. Truck shipping is only around thirty-five cents per ton, and the highest I ever seen Uncle Charlie go is twelve cents, and that was for some ole skunk who cheated him at cards.”
“Hold on, I’m writing this down...” Kurt could hear Jack scribbling in the background of the call. “Okay, go on.”
“There were three other vendors with inventory on the ship. Two were about ten cents per ton, which is what I’d expect. But one had a base rate of five cents per ton, some outfit called MJP Engineering.”
The scratching stopped and Jack was silent for a moment before saying, “That son-of-a-bitch.”
“Mean something to you?”
“Yeah,” he growled. “It sure does. Did you happen to bring any proof out of the ship with you?”
“I dug a copy of the manifest out of the trash before I left. Since Bo was asking me to look for things that were off, I pointed out the weird base rates. He said someone recently invested in the company and part of the deal was to stop doing business with Deep Drilling. He still wanted them to give a quote, just make it high enough to lose the business. Bo said he was amazed someone would pay that much and that the boss, Evan Johnson, thought it was hinky.”
“Did he say who the investor was?”
“Nope, but when I pointed out that the MJP Engineering stuff was basically shipping at half cost, he clammed up. It was kind of obvious there was a connection, but he wouldn’t say any more and I didn’t want to push it.”
“Have I ever told you that you’re my favorite nephew?”
“No,” Kurt said with a laugh.
“Okay, just checking,” Jack said and hung up.
After that, Kurt went to sleep dreaming of Cathy and Camden.
* * *
Feeling someone sit down gently on the bed roused Kurt to yawn and stretch. Polly was sitting with her hands fidgeting in her lap, and kept glancing at him only to looking away again. He rubbed his face and asked, “What time is it?”
“Six,” she whispered.
“I guess I need to get up then,” he said as he sat up, watching her glance at his bare chest with a frown. He was only wearing boxer-briefs, but didn’t really care if she got an eyeful anymore.
“I need to talk to you,” she said without moving.
“We both said all we need to say to one another,” he said, unable to hide his irritation at her presence.
“I think I fucked up,” she said.
“That ain’t exactly news to me,” he said as he crossed his legs under the sheet and leaned forward. “So which lie did you catch him in?”
She flushed and bit her lips for a moment. “There’s a girl named Jennifer, somewhere overseas, I think.”
“Yeah, his girlfriend is spending a semester in Europe and he said he gets lonely at Christmas. You prolly ain’t the only fish he got on that trotline either.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” she pleaded with tears in her eyes.
“What, and have him deny that he told me? You know you wouldn’t have believed me. You had his hook in your mouth from day one.”
Polly sobbed into her hands while Kurt watched impassively. A few days ago he would have given anything for her attention, but things had changed. After a few moments she wiped the tears off her face and stood. “Thanks for telling me the truth,” she said as she stood up to get a tissue from the box on the dresser.
“I always will, like it or not. What are you gonna do?” he asked.
“I don’t know. I told him I was sick last night so I’d have time to think. It didn’t help much.”
“You prolly need to talk to Charlotte or Julie about this. I ain’t much good at dealing with Trey’s kind of bullshit.”
“I can’t,” she said and shook her head. “I can’t tell them this.”
“Why, cause they’re gonna think you’re a fool?” he asked with a sad chuckle. “Hell, Charlotte already thought that from when you started datin’ him! Ain’t nowhere to go but up from there.”
“This isn’t funny,” she hissed at him, her face twisted in anger.
“And that’s half your problem right there,” he said sweeping the sheets off his legs and standing up. “You ignored everyone who told you how he is because you’re so smart. You read books about politics, after all,” he said with a mocking tone.
“Stop it,” she whispered, but he didn’t miss her glance at the bulge in his boxer briefs. Typical, he thought.
“No, I’m still telling you the truth. Being tricked and lied to ain’t your fault and it ain’t nothin’ you need to be ashamed of.”
“But I am ashamed,” she whispered and started crying again.
“You need to get mad,” he said and lifted her chin to look in her eyes. “You need to get mad at him.”
The bedroom door opened at that moment and Trey walked in saying, “Polly, are you—” He froze when he realized who was in the room. Kurt felt the hate pouring off of Trey as his face flushed and fists clenched.
Polly squared her shoulders and turned to Trey. “We n
eed to talk.”
* * *
By the time Kurt had cleaned up and gotten dressed, Trey was gone. He saw Polly sitting at the dining room table with Julie and Charlotte, but didn’t want any part of that mess. Turning into the living room, the kids were piled on their father watching some cartoon movie.
“Hey,” Kurt said as he wandered to the overstuffed chair next to the couch. He felt like a real part of the family when the kids began to ignore him occasionally.
“Welcome back,” Jack said with a tired smile. “I hear you’re the designated driver tonight.”
“I’d rather hang out with you on the back patio and smoke cigars.”
“Sophie is picking up the girls at six, so it’ll just be me and Jackson tonight,” he said with a chuckle. “I’ll think about you when I have my scotch and stogie.”
“Don’t rub it in,” Kurt said as he let the movie distract him.
After a while, Julie, Charlotte, and Polly walked through the room and out the front door without a word. Kurt was curious about what happened, but didn’t want to discuss it in front of the kids. When Julie came back in, she crossed toward the kitchen and said, “Kurt, are you busy?”
He got up and followed her until she stopped at the sink to wash her hands and splash a little water on her face. “I want to thank you for being supportive with Polly.”
“She’s family as far as I’m concerned,” Kurt said with a shrug. “That’s all the reason I need.”
“I want to kill Trey,” she said with the kind of mother bear expression that made him worry how serious she was. “But I’m a mom now and can’t go to jail.” She cracked a smile after a moment to clue him that she was joking.
“I know the feelin’,” Kurt said.
“We’re still going out tonight. Polly went home to change and Charlotte went along in case Trey tries to cause trouble. I don’t want her alone for a few days, so Charlotte’s gonna stay with her. We’ll pick them up on our way to get Cathy and Camden. Are you sure you don’t mind driving?”