by P. Dangelico
“Of course I am,” I fire back and immediately cringe in embarrassment. Throwing my ex-boyfriend onto my lap without warning tends to make me a bit over reactive. “I really don’t see why he needs to be here when I am.”
“Rowdy arranged it that way, Miss Murphy.”
Rowdy…if he weren’t dead already, I’d strangle him with my bare hands. My mind starts running in circles, looking for a means of escape, screaming at me to get the hell out.
“Can I reschedule?”
“Afraid not. I’m leaving for a fishing trip tomorrow.”
I’m starting to think there are dark forces at work here. It never even crossed my mind that I would be trapped in close proximity to him. In passing, maybe. With enough distance between us to make him an inch tall. That would be good. I could handle that. But not this close. Not this soon. I’m not prepared for this.
“Rowdy wanted you to get acquainted with the club and how it operates…you are his sole heir, Miss Murphy. It all goes to you. Most importantly his share of the club.”
I shift in my non-ergonomic wooden chair, searching for a comfortable position that does not exist. I’m still working through the shock so it takes me a minute to process what he said and what it means for me.
“He wanted you to learn the ropes, if you will, and Callahan is to help in that endeavor.”
“Umm––” He’s got me on my heels again, off balance. I can’t keep the disbelief off my face. “No.” I’m shaking my head before I can even get the word out.
“Miss Murphy––”
“No. Absolutely not. I play tennis. I do not run bars.”
Walters gives me a long-suffering look and tugs at his collar, inadvertently pushing his tartan bow tie slightly off-kilter.
“Ronald’s will specifically stipulates that you can’t sell your half of the properties for a full calendar year and within that timeframe you are to learn the business.”
“This is insane,” I say more to the ghost of Rowdy than anyone else. “I don’t understand why he would’ve left everything to me anyways? I don’t need it. I certainly don’t want it. It should all go to my father.”
Walters’ bushy gray eyebrows draw together in disapproval. “That’s not what Ronald wanted.”
I push the heel of my good hand into one eye socket to ease the pressure. With each word spoken, I sink deeper and deeper into acceptance, my head throbbing from the realization that my grandfather, a man I loved dearly, a man I worshiped, has royally fucked me as his parting gift. It’s not lost on me that this one of the five stages of grief.
“If you don’t hold onto it for a year––” he continues, unfazed by my meltdown. “You forfeit everything. In which case, the sum of the properties––the nightclub and the land leased to the county––will be sold off to a developer, including Mr. Callahan’s half.”
His task accomplished, Walters rocks back in his chair, a man at ease. Meanwhile my skin starts to itch, particularly under the cast on my right hand. It becomes so unbearable I consider banging the cast against the edge of the desk, along with my forehead.
Making me that man’s business partner is just plain cruel. Not to mention that placing Noah’s half of the business in my hands is borderline sadistic with how acrimoniously we ended things. If I wanted to, I could make things very uncomfortable for him and Rowdy knows it…knew it. Lord, what a mess.
“Fine. I’ll sign it over to my father and he can deal with it.”
“It can’t be done. There’s a clause in the will for that as well.”
My god with a lowercase g the man was devious.
“Mr. Walters, let me be clear. I play tennis––pretty well actually. I live in London. It’ll snow in hell before I get into business with––”
“Mr. Callahan, so nice of you to join us,” Walters drawls sardonically, his attention aimed at a spot over my shoulder.
My body goes stiff so quickly I may have pulled a muscle in my neck.
“Sure feels chilly in here,” comes a lazy drawl from somewhere behind me.
Asshole.
I’m pretty sure the amusement I detect is at my expense. And Jesus take the brakes because if he persists I may bring down a decade’s worth of resentment on his head all at once.
“Sorry ’bout that, Tim. Got tied up at work.”
It takes a monumental amount of energy to summon a carefully crafted appearance of bored indifference, but I manage it. I manage it because I am no longer that pathetic girl that followed him around everywhere. I am a thirty-year-old woman with a large measure of success in her career and a backbone to match.
In the periphery of my vision, the Antichrist moves to stand behind the chair next to mine. I play it cool. I’m fine. I’m good. I can handle this.
“Maren,” he says, as if it hasn’t been a decade since we’ve exchanged a single word. After which, a cold, sweaty film instantly covers my entire body. This is why I don’t come home.
“What did I miss, Tim?”
“I was informing Miss Murphy of the stipulations in the will.”
I’m trying to be good, I really am. I ignore him, stare straight ahead as long as I can. Until I can’t do it anymore. Because I am desperate to see what I’m dealing with.
Let’s face it, every jilted woman wishes fifty pounds, a sweet set of man tits, and copious amounts of hair loss on her ex (among other things you can find on a Google search with grotesque pictures attached). And right now I am putting all those wishes in a basket with a bow and sending them up to the wish fairy and that bitch better be home because she owes me big-time.
I nonchalantly turn my head, just a fraction, enough to satisfy my curiosity, which, by the way, has no regard whatsoever for my pride, and my eyes come in contact with someone I don’t recognize.
He has changed. Unfortunately for me however, only for the better. This is so demoralizing I want to cry. On the inside. Never on the outside. Never again will he own another one of my outside tears. I’ve shed enough of those over him in the past to rival the Dead Sea.
The body that was once lanky and lean is now filled out with powerful muscles. The lines of his jaw and cheekbones are now sharp. A neat short beard covers a face that was once smooth and round. His hair…this one earns a lazy eyeroll. It’s one of those hipster haircuts. Longer on top, shorter on the sides. Even the skin above the collar of his starched white dress shirt is different. What was once uniformly tan is now decorated with colorful tattoos.
The man standing next to me is a stranger. A stranger who’s wearing a suit? That’s new, too. I’ve only seen Noah wear a suit once in his life. At his parents’ funeral. And I can assure you it looked nothing like this. Back then he looked like a boy playing dress up in his father’s clothes.
This is no boy. This is a man and the fine charcoal-gray suit he’s wearing looks expensive, hugging his body like it’s custom made, a perfect fit. I hate him.
Our eyes lock. His are cool and detached, and as foreign as the rest of him. Mine say, “Drop dead, please.” Because I’m a nice person. With manners.
“We were just getting to the good part,” Walters continues.
I scoff and Walters gives me a disapproving frown.
Unbuttoning his suit jacket, Noah takes the seat next to me. It dawns on me then. While he looks like he stepped out of the pages of GQ, I look like I stepped out of a Port-O-Potty left all day in the sun at Coachella. Awesome.
It’s hotter than a shirtless Hemsworth outside and I am one hundred percent certain my hair looks like overcooked spaghetti while my face resembles a BP oil spill. I could not have written a more humiliating script for this reunion if I tried.
“Did you tell her?” he casually queries.
And the top of my head explodes off. “Great. That’s just great. So he knows already. He knew before I did.” The glare I level at Walters can’t be interpreted as anything other than an accusation of malfeasance.
“He’s your grandfather’s business partner,” Mr. Wa
lters says, slowly, as if speaking to a child. “He was there when Rowdy drew up the new will.”
“But…he’s not family. Does my father know?”
I’m grasping at thin air. I know I am. For reasons I still can’t fathom, Noah was closer to my grandfather than my father was. But I’m drained from the emotional gymnastics, my wrist aches like a bitch––not to mention the itch––and I suspect I reek of stale airplane and whatnot. All in all, I’m not having a good day.
“He knows everything,” the man I’m desperately trying to ignore answers.
“I’m not talking to you,” I snap, eyes trained ahead. I refuse to grant him another second of my attention.
“Fine by me. I’ll talk, you listen.”
“I’d rather poke out my eardrums with a blunt instrument.”
“There’s more,” Walters grumbles. “If you two could stop bickering for a minute.”
“What else could there possibly be?” I practically scream for the entire town to hear.
Walters admonishes me with a shake of his head and I sink further into my seat. “Your grandfather left you a letter with specific instructions, Maren. A wish list he wanted you to carry out on his behalf.”
He pulls an envelope out of the stack of papers sitting on his desk and waves it around before dropping it on top of the pile. We used to have a cat that liked to do that, drop dead rodents he deemed as gifts at our feet. That’s what this reminds me of. A dead rodent.
“No. I have a very tight training schedule I need to get back to and––”
“With a broken wrist?” comes from my right.
I pretend not to hear him. I’m anxious to end this torture as quickly as possible, which means I’m going to keep my mouth shut and let Walters shovel out the rest of this steaming pile unimpeded.
“Can we get this over with?”
Walters nods. “Ronald’s wishes were to be cremated.”
I nod in return, knowing my grandfather had made arrangements after my grandmother died and asked for cremation.
“That’s one of his requests. He wants his ashes spread at the lake. Where he released your grandmother’s ashes.”
Of this entire waking nightmare this is the only part that makes sense. “Fine. I’ll do it this week.”
“Not alone.” Walters fiddles with his signet pinky ring, a frown pulling on his face. “Rowdy wanted the both of you to do it.”
I don’t fail to notice that Noah doesn’t react at all. I don’t detect even the slightest tension in his body. When you spend the better part of your life watching someone, you learn a thing or two.
“He knew about this,” I voice out loud, already knowing the answer.
“I tried to argue, but you know him.”
I thought I knew my grandfather. After today I’m not so sure. There’s truth to what Noah said however. Once Rowdy got something in his crazy head you couldn’t get it out with a hacksaw.
“Rowdy said to remind you of all the things he did for you, Maren. That if you cared for him, you’ll do this,” Walters adds.
And there it is, the kill shot.
Chapter Three
Noah
What happened at the lake all those years ago kick-started our friendship. I never tried to make sense of why I liked her company. I just did and it was enough for me.
In hindsight, it does sound weird. I was thirteen and she was ten so, yeah, I can see how some people wouldn’t understand––but there was never anything weird about it when we were together.
We played video games and talked about sports and I told her things I was too embarrassed to tell anyone else. Like that I often overheard my parents fighting late at night and that it scared me. Or that my father was worried about concussions and was pressuring me to switch from football to baseball, something I didn’t want to do.
No one understood it, least of all Dane and Jermaine. But if J was my conscience, and D was my partner in crime, then Maren was my heart. And I wasn’t about to give her up. Not for them, not for anybody. So I kept it to myself. And that’s how our friendship grew. In a bubble, free from the opinions of the outside world.
Never one to be shy, Maren began tapping on my window after her tennis and my football practice. My bedroom was on the ground floor and it took my parents a while to catch on to the mischief this invited. I’d find her staring through the glass with a big smile on her face.
“Took you long enough,” she said as soon as I opened the window to let her in.
“I was finishing up a game,” I explained as I walked back over to the PlayStation and TV I’d gotten for my thirteenth birthday.
“What level you get to?” she asked, as she sat down cross-legged on the carpeted floor next to me.
“Sixteen.” I was handing her the other game controller when her skinned knee caught my eye. “You’re bleeding.”
Shrugging, she tried to hide it from me. “It’s nothing.”
“I can fix it. My father’s a doctor.” I’ve always been a cocky bastard, but at thirteen I was unbearable.
Chin tilted up, she examined my face. “Is that what you’re gonna do when you grow up?”
“No way. I’m playing wide receiver for the Dallas Cowboys. Come on.” I motioned for her to follow me and she did without hesitation, right into the bathroom.
“I’m gonna be the best tennis player in the world.”
“Oh yeah, what about your sister?”
That seemed to throw her off. Frowning, she looked away. “We’re both gonna be the best in the world.”
“You sit here.” I pointed to the toilet and grabbed the hydrogen peroxide, the anti-bacterial ointment, and the big square Band-Aid from the cabinet. “Girls can’t beat boys so you can’t be the best.”
“Yes, I can!” She jumped up from the toilet seat, furious, her face flushed.
I laughed. “I was teasing you, stupid.”
Eyes directed at the floor in embarrassment, she sat back down and I went about patching her up, soaked a cotton pad with peroxide, dabbed the wound the same way I’d seen my father do it a thousand times to me and watched her flinch.
“Does it hurt?”
“Nah,” she said with a shake of her head.
I smiled, holding back the urge to laugh at her again. Her cheeks turning white pretty much confirmed she was lying. I finished applying the ointment and the Band-Aid while she watched my every move.
“Noah––” she said a short time later, once we were back in front of the TV playing the video game.
“What?”
“Will you marry me when we get old? I promise I won’t fight with you.”
It sounded like a good plan at the time. She liked sports, jumping off of cliffs, and video games. And being old was a good long ways away so I shrugged and said, “Okay.”
But it was the way she looked at me that got me. Like she’d put her dreams in my hands for safekeeping. That kind of trust. That look had the power to make me feel invincible.
Over the years it pushed me to do better, be a better person, to become the guy she put on a pedestal. No one had ever looked at me that way before, and no one has ever looked at me that way since. Not since she walked out of my life. It took me way too long to understand that someone believing in you like that can make all the difference in the world.
* * *
Jermaine’s Navigator rolls up while I’m working on a bike in the barn behind the club. It’s my home away from home and where I come to clear my head. There’s something about the complete focus building bikes and restoring vintage cars requires, the simplicity of it with no room for interpretation, that quiets the restlessness. Doesn’t look like I’ll be getting any today though.
Grabbing the bandana out of the back pocket of my jeans, I wipe the sweat off my brow. He strolls up like we don’t both know why he’s here.
“When you gonna build me one of those?”
I keep tinkering with the frame I’m putting together, not bothering to look his way. �
�When your wife stops threatening my life if I do.”
J doesn’t mess around when Nyla puts her foot down. He has five kids to raise. A health scare caused him to retire from playing center for the Kansas City Chiefs a few years ago. Since then he’s shed a hundred pounds and gotten his health back, but I can’t blame his wife for being overprotective.
“I hear Maren’s back.” He slides onto one of the stools near the bike I’m working on.
The meeting in Tim’s office went just about as bad as it could have. The minute I saw her sitting there it didn’t matter that I’d prepared myself. It didn’t matter that I promised to keep it strictly business. Nope. I saw her sitting there, looking more beautiful than ever, and I got so damn nervous I almost sweat through my suit.
The hell was I even thinking wearing a suit? You wanted to impress her, dipshit.
“Hand me the monkey wrench. Third one on the bottom tray.” J hands it over and I take my frustration out on the bike. “Who told you?”
“There’s talk.” He wipes his face with the hem of his sleeveless OKC Thunder t-shirt. “Dang, it’s hot today.”
Standing, I go to the refrigerator I installed when I remodeled the barn, grab two water bottles, and throw him one.
“Talk? Where?”
“My mother’s knitting circle––where the fuck you think? Your wife called me.”
Dane is worse than a dog with a bone. If I didn’t love him like a brother, I’d block him.
“What about it?” I feign a casual attitude because I know all too well if he gets wind of anything more, the two of them won’t give me a minute’s peace.
I had plans for my life that did not resemble the one I’m living––not in the least. I’m not complaining, mind you. I’m blessed in many ways. I have a thriving business, good friends. Do I miss the one I’d envisioned for myself? Hell, yeah. Some days so badly it brings me to my knees. But I’ve accepted that life doesn’t always behave the way you want it to. Sometimes you’re forced to make compromises, do things you wouldn’t normally dream of doing to survive––and sometimes you have to forfeit your soul in the process.