Unpredictable

by Shantel Tessier

  I stand from my chair and pat Slade on his back. “Slow down on the wine, man,” I say as he takes another drink.

  “I haven’t had the taste of alcohol in a while,” he says with a smile. “Making up for lost time.”

  “What about Sadey?” I ask about his daughter as I see her bouncing around on the dance floor. She was the cutest little flower girl I had ever seen.

  “My parents are taking her for the night.” He lifts his glass over to where his mother and father sit across the ballroom. He smiles. “Gonna get drunk and laid by my sexy wife tonight.”

  “Your dick isn’t gonna be able to function if you drink too much,” I inform him with a smirk.

  “Oh, it’ll work,” he says with confidence, and I roll my eyes.

  I walk away from the table and make my way back to the girls’ dressing room, still trying to get the cake off my face, figuring that’s where Katherine ran off to.

  “Is Katherine in here?” I ask placing my head in the room.

  “She just had to leave,” Sam says not looking up from her phone.

  “What?” Shit, Missy is gonna kill me. The reception isn’t over, and I just made one of her bridesmaids run out of the church.

  “She had to go to the hospital.”

  “Why?” I step into the room. “What was wrong with her?” I ask truly concerned.

  Sam looks up from her phone as if annoyed by my questions. “The hospital called her. Her father had been admitted.”

  “What’s wrong with her father?”

  She places her hand on her hip and narrows her bright green eyes at me. “Why do you have to be such a prick and then act like you care?”

  I run a hand over the back of my neck. “I do care. Stop being a …” She lets out a growl. “Just please tell me what is going on,” I ask nicely, and she drops her hand from her hip.

  “It’s not my business to tell. You wanna know? Go and ask her yourself.” And with that, she turns around and goes back to texting on her phone.

  “Maybe you should get off your phone and go take care of your drunk-ass husband,” I say, before slamming the door shut.

  I make my way back out to my reserved table and sit down. I take a drink of my wine as Josh elbows me in the side. “What?” I growl.

  I look over at him and see he has one of his and Courtney’s twin boys on his lap. Drool runs down his chin as he chews on what looks to be a dog toy. Gross.

  He leans over and whispers, “That Katherine seems crazy.”

  I grunt. “She is. But you know how much my cock likes crazy,” I say with a smile.

  He chuckles “You better be careful or it may cost you your dick.”

  “Ain’t that the truth!” Slade chimes in.

  *****

  KATHERINE

  “What happened?” I ask in a rush as I enter the hospital. “Where is he?” I ask a nurse sitting at the nursing station.

  As soon as she sees me, she jumps up and comes out from behind the desk. She rattles off a room number as she continues to lead me to it. I run after her with my heart pounding, thinking the worse. I should have never left him, but I did. I left him with a nurse. Someone trained to care for him. As soon as I walked away from Parker, my phone rang and it was the hospital letting me know that my father had been admitted. The nurse I hired for the day had brought him in. That’s all I was told over the phone.

  We slow down and she pulls back a curtain. I walk in and see him sitting up in a bed. A nurse stands beside his bed trying to put the leads for the heart monitor on him.

  “Dad?” I ask, walking over to him. “What happened?”

  His dark blue eyes look over at me, and it breaks my heart when I see him frown. He has no idea who I am.

  “What happened?” I ask the nurse standing in front of me.

  “He fell down outside on the porch,” he informs me.

  I look down at him. “What were you doing outside?” Where in the hell was the nurse?

  “I wanted to go out and see the garden.” He finally speaks.

  “Dad, we don’t have a garden,” I inform him softly. He and my mother always had one. She took care of it. After she had left us, I tried to take care of it but I couldn’t keep anything alive. So, I gave up, and when we moved to the house we live in now fifteen years ago, I didn’t even try to put one in. I was eleven when we moved in, and he was over her, or so I thought.

  “Jules,” he says with a smile and my heart breaks. Jules was my mother. The very same woman who left us so many years ago. The one he always sees. She’s the one who he remembers. Guess those were better times. He met her when he was in France while on vacation. She was a beautiful French woman who fell in love with the American. Three months later, they were married. She moved back to the states with him and then a couple of years later they had me. I changed everything. I made their life hard. I guess the love faded. I was six when my mother left us.

  I stand by the front door staring at my mother’s suitcases. “Where are we going, Momma?” I ask looking up at her.

  She bends down on her knees and pushes my hair back from my face. She hasn’t given me my bath yet today. We never leave the house until I have a bath.

  “Never settle, Katherine.”

  “What do you mean, Momma?”

  She points a finger at my chest. “You are beautiful. You are strong. You don’t need a man. Remember that. You don’t need anyone, Katherine.” She gives me a smile yet tears fall from her eyes. How can she be happy and sad at the same time? “Most importantly, remember to leave before you are left.” She pulls me in for a hug and I hug her tightly. “I love you,” she whispers.

  “I love you, Momma.”

  She pulls away from me, grabs her bags, and walks out the front door. I never saw her again.

  “No, Dad,” I say gripping his hand. “It’s me, Katherine,” I try to remind him.

  “Katherine,” he says with a smile and I think he understands me but then he speaks. “You need to take Katherine home, Jules. This is no place for a child.”

  I sigh as he pulls his hand from mine. “You’re right,” I agree with him.

  But I don’t leave. He will forget about the little child in a few seconds. So, I walk out of the room in search of the nurse I had hired. I find her sitting in the waiting room.

  “Katherine…” She stands the moment she sees me. “I got a call…”

  “So you left him alone?” I yell, making people look over at us. “What if he would have broken something?” I scream in her face.

  Her green eyes fill with tears and I want to punch her. “I hired you to watch him for three fucking hours and you can’t even do that.”

  “Katherine!” The same nurse who was here two weeks ago when I brought him in from falling down the stairs comes to stand between us. “This is not the place.”

  I take a deep breath as I look down at her. “You’re right,” I say and then look over her shoulder. “You’re fired!” I yell and the nurse places her hands on me as she starts to push me away from the waiting room as everyone’s eyes are on me. It could be my screaming profanity or it could be that I’m still dressed in a purple bridesmaid dress.

  We walk down the hall and enter our break room. I never work days so I don’t know many of the ladies on staff during the day. I sit down at the long table and place my head in my hands. What am I gonna do? I can’t leave him alone. Ever. I’ve had the last two weeks off work to take care of him. Today was the first time I had left to go anywhere without him.

  I look up when the nurse throws some pamphlets on the table. “Not this shit again,” I groan, looking up at her.

  She pokes the pamphlets harshly, and I can tell she’s mad at me for making a scene in her waiting room, but I couldn’t care less. “This is your only option.”

  “I have other options…”

  “No, you don’t,” she snaps, interrupting me. She pulls a chair out and sits down. “This is what you must do, Katherine,” she says nicely. “I know
you’re capable of taking care of him, but you’re not capable of having a life and watching him.”

  “I don’t need a life.” I haven’t had one for the last two years.

  “No, but you need a job to support him and yourself. You can’t work if he stays with you.”

  I allow my head to fall down to the desk. I welcome the coolness it brings me. “I can’t just go and drop him off at some home,” I mumble, closing my eyes.

  “I know how you must feel.”

  I raise my head. “Do you?”

  She nods. “My grandfather had Alzheimer’s. I watched my grandmother put him in a home. We all watched him as day after day he forgot more and more.” She swallows thickly, and I feel like such a bitch. “Like I said, I know how you feel, but that’s why they are here for you. To help you and him.”

  I blow some hair out of my face. “He’ll never forgive me.” How can I just dump him off on someone else to take care of?

  “You’ll never forgive yourself if something were to happen to him.” That is the truth. “What happened tonight was minor. What happens next time…?” She lets the question hang in the air.

  I look down at the pamphlets and take them into my hand once again. “Don’t throw those away this time,” she says before she stands and walks out of the room.

  *****

  Three hours later, I find myself sitting on my couch. I told my father goodbye and came straight home to look over my options. I’m even still wearing my purple dress. Like Sam said, it was a pretty dress. And since I paid good money for it, I might as well get some wear out of it.

  I’ve called and set up meetings tomorrow at four places. Thankfully, the nurse told me that they would keep him a couple of days in order for me to get everything in place.

  My father was an engineer. When he found out he was sick, he began putting back money. He always was a pack rat when it came to money anyway. He saved well and had a good chunk to cover what his insurance wouldn’t. But the question is will it be enough?

  I stand from my couch and go to open the door when I hear the doorbell ring. I’m not all that shocked to find Missy’s annoying friend standing on my doorstep with a bouquet of flowers in his hands. “What do you want…?”

  “Parker.” He announces his name like I care.

  “What do you want?” I repeat.

  He gives me a big smile showcasing his perfectly straight teeth as he offers me the flowers in his hand. “Flowers?”

  He nods. “Consider them a peace offering.” He shakes them as he holds them out for me to take them.

  I grab them and then throw them out into my yard. “Hey,” he whines.

  “Consider your offer denied,” I say, before going to slam the door in his face, but he sticks his foot out to stop it.

  I know guys like him. The cocky dicks who think they can throw some heartless gift at you. They expect us to jump up and down and tell them thank you for something that us women are capable of doing ourselves.

  “Well, this is harder than I expected it to be,” he says running a hand over the front of his suit that he wore for the wedding. It still has some cake on his collar. And he smells of expensive wine. The same wine that I wasted on him.

  I give him a sassy smile. “Thought I’d lay down and tell you that you’re the master of the universe?”

  A smirk grows across his face. “Something like that,” he responds with a wink.

  And I refrain from rolling my eyes. I go to shut the door once again, but he speaks. “Do you need help with your truck?” he asks, looking over at it sitting in the driveway. It still has the dents from the bat in it. And the flat tire. I haven’t had time to get it fixed. “Missy’s dad owns a repair…”

  “No.” I shake my head. “Think I’m just gonna finish it off with the baseball bat. Or set it on fire.” I shrug carelessly.

  His brown eyes widen in surprise, and I try not to laugh at how serious he took me.

  “Uh…” he fumbles for the words.

  I laugh and he narrows his eyes at me. “I was just kidding with you.”

  He straightens his suit jacket and nods his head. “I see. Well, I should be going.”

  “You should,” I say before slamming the door. I find myself going over to the window and watching him back his lifted, white Chevy truck out of my driveway. He squeals his tires as he storms off and I smile. I hurt his ego, poor thing.

  I then go to the front door and walk out onto the grass to pick up the flowers. I know the bastard stole them from Missy and Tate’s wedding. I don’t wanna waste them.

  *****

  Yesterday was a hectic and stressful day, to say the least. After Parker had left, I changed and went back up to the hospital. I spent a few hours up there with him and then crashed when I got home. First thing this morning, I went and looked at a few places for him to live before I had to be at work. I called and spoke to Missy; she completely understood like I knew she would. But I still felt bad that I left. I apologized for wasting wonderful cake on Parker, but she also said she understood that as well. I didn’t keep her on the phone long. I know her and Tate were leaving for their honeymoon so I congratulated her and told her that I would see her when she got back.

  Work has been pretty busy tonight. But at the moment I’m sitting back in a room with one of my friends, who is also a nurse, and her daughter, who I just love to death.

  “What does this look like?” Ashley asks me as she holds out her daughter’s hand. She tries to pull it away, but I smile at her.

  “I’m just gonna look at it,” I promise, and she closes her big brown eyes tightly.

  “It looks like a wart,” I say trying to sound sincere. She always thinks that she and her daughter have problems that need medical attention. Being a nurse, I can see why she would think that. We see everything, even the things that don’t seem possible. Science is a very scary thing when you think about it.

  “Are you sure?” she asks uncertainly. “It turned red when she hit it on the car door earlier this evening.”

  I put her hand down, stand up and face Ashley. “Ashley. It’s just a wart. If you hit something, the area affected is gonna become irritated,” I say nicely.

  She looks up at me giving me a hard look. I sigh. She lifts Megan off her lap and hops up off the table and walks over to the sink. She turns the water on and starts washing her hands.

  I try to think of something to say but come up with nothing as she washes her hands.

  “Guess what, Aunt Katty?” Megan says with a big smile.

  “What?” I question with my own. I love that she considers me her aunt. Ashley got pregnant as a result of a one-night stand. The guy up and left her, but Ashley has done her best for the last five years to take care of Megan.

  “Mommy has a date tonight and I get to go.”

  “Oh?” I say excitedly. “That sounds like fun,” I say sliding my eyes over to Ashley as she leans up against the countertop.

  “Yeah. I got a new dress to wear.” She claps her hands and I laugh.

  “Make sure to have your mommy take a picture for me.” I stand and lift her up off the table.

  “A date, huh?” I ask walking over to the sink to wash my hands as well. “Is this the same guy you’ve been seeing?” She has been seeing some guy for the last month but hasn’t given me any information about him. No matter how much I dig.

  “Yeah.” She looks down at her fingernails carelessly. “He wants to meet Megan and I think it’s time.”

  “I didn’t realize it was getting that serious,” I say with a frown. She doesn’t let many people around Megan. She keeps her very sheltered.

  “I think he’s the one,” she says with a dreamy smile and my eyes widen.

  “What makes you think that?”

  She sighs and places her hand over her heart. “The way he looks at me. The way he touches me. He’s amazing.”

  I bite the inside of my cheek to prevent me from saying what I wanna say. It’s only been a month. You have
a child to think about. Who he hasn’t even met yet. He could be a total dick to her tonight. I don’t understand how people fall in love so fast. “I’m happy for you,” I force myself to say, and she leans over to give me a hug.

  We walk out of the room, and I make my way to the nurse’s station. I see a guy who has his back to me as he stands at the nurse’s station. The nurse who he’s talking to points at me, and he spins around to face me.

  “Katherine?” He smiles kindly and his soft brown eyes search mine.

  “Yes,” I say slowly wondering who this man is that is asking for me.

  He hands me the papers and then smiles “You’ve been served.” With those last words, he walks off.

  I rip open the envelope and pull out the papers. “Son of a bitch,” I hiss as I read them over.

  “What is it?” Ashely asks with concern.

  “Rollin is suing me.” The rat bastard.

  “For what?” She takes the papers from my hands to read for herself.

  From what I just read, it’s for losing his job. I got him arrested, which made him miss work. Seriously? And that caused him to get fired. I’ll show him what suing me will get him.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  PARKER

  It’s been pretty quiet for a Sunday night shift. I’ve spent most of my time up at the police station filling out paperwork. But then an adorable little blonde showed up wanting my attention. Well, she got it.

  I lean back against my desk and cross my arms over my chest as I look down at the pretty blonde. “You want to do a ride along?”