Last Chance to Fall

by Kelsey Kingsley

  Patrick’s grin was almost enough to make me punch him in the throat. “I didn’t think he could actually get you into a feckin’ strip club.” I hated the way he said you, as though it was unfathomable for Sean Kinney to partake in the tradition of chauvinistic activities at a bachelor party.

  And then I remembered: it was.

  “I was at your bachelor party too,” I reminded him.

  “But you and Jules decided ya wanted to get somethin’ to eat instead, remember?”

  My fingers paused their dancing over the screen and I pursed my lips. “Ah, right.”

  “So, did ya get a dance?”

  I nodded slowly. “Jules made me.”

  A laugh burst out, filling the surrounding area. I glanced around to see if anybody was listening.

  “Oh, I’m sure he tied ya to the chair and made you like it, right?” I rolled my eyes, and he shrugged. “Honestly, they’re not what they’re cut out to be,” he said, squinting his eyes up at the fluorescent lights.

  “How the hell would you know?” I had been under the assumption that my sister-in-law Kinsey had permitted Patrick to look and not touch all those years ago, and here he was, telling me he hadn’t kept his word.

  He sighed, diverting his gaze. “The girls at the club had gotten wind that I was the one gettin’ married and they, ehm, surprised me with a lap dance. And just so we’re clear: if you ever find yourself engaged, never tell your pregnant fiancée that ya had a stripper rubbin’ up on your junk. It won’t go over well.”

  I grinned and had myself a laugh. “Why the hell didn’t you tell us this?”

  “Sleepin’ on the couch for a week wasn’t somethin’ I was really willin’ to brag about at the time,” he laughed.

  “You should’ve been used to it,” I jabbed, reminding him of his decade-long marriage to his ex-wife. He spent the better part of those ten years sleeping on the couch in his basement, without so much as a complaint, and all for the sake of his daughter, my niece Meghan.

  “Ouch,” he laughed. “But hey, we’re talkin’ about Kinsey here. Wasn’t too willing to have her kick me out of bed, ya know,” he said, and I nodded with a fondness searing through my chest.

  When my family moved over from Balbriggan, Ireland, I was at the ripe age of three months old, and that’s when we had met the McKenna Family. From what my parents had said over the years, Patrick had fallen for Kinsey the minute he first saw her, and at three years old, he knew where his destiny would take him. Mam and Da spoke of it like it were a fairytale, which had annoyed the hell out of me when I was younger. What twelve-year-old kid wants to hear about his fifteen-year-old brother’s relationship to the girl next door? But they’d smile at them with this sort of awe, like they were witnessing the painting of the goddamn Mona Lisa, and it wasn’t until I was older that I understood.

  They truly were art. And I was jealous.

  It wasn’t that I wanted Kinsey for myself. Hell, I had seen her as a sister from the moment I could say her name.

  No, it was more in that Patrick hadn’t cared about how reckless it was to finally divorce his wife, essentially on a whim. He didn’t care that Kinsey had turned down his advances for two years straight before finally agreeing to go out with the persistent bastard. And he hadn’t cared because he knew he needed to be with her and that he would do anything to get her back.

  That knowledge made me jealous.

  His carefree approach made me jealous.

  “Anyway,” Patrick said, smacking his hands against the counter as he straightened his back, “I told Kins I’d stop by and harass her at work, so I’ll see ya later, okay?”

  “Do you ever actually work?” I laughed, eyeing the RCPD uniform. “Or do you just go around to local businesses, harassin’ the employees?”

  “Hey,” he said, pointing at the mic on his shoulder, “I’m always on call if the raccoons decide to break into the mayor’s kitchen again.” And with a grin, he turned and headed toward the elevator.

  The guy couldn’t go a couple of hours without seeing his wife. Even after all those years, he still loved her that much, to need the sight of her face that often.

  And I was jealous of that.

  ❧

  It was five minutes to closing time when Jack the big spender stepped out of the elevator and walked onto my floor.

  I sat at the computer, scruffy chin in hand as I scrolled through my phone. Biding my time before the big hand landed on the six, when I heard the dinging of the elevator from just across the aisle.

  Narrowing my eyes, I put the phone down to see a tall, leggy blonde stepping out. She had a backpack slung over one shoulder, a braid cascading down over one side of her chest, and she headed right toward me at about the same speed as it took for my heart to stop.

  In all of my thirty-one years of living, I don’t think I had ever seen someone more jaw-droppingly gorgeous.

  “I’m here to pick up for Jack,” she said, her voice held tight.

  “You’re Jack?” I asked, untying my tongue. “Do you have I.D.?”

  She blinked a few times, opened her mouth and closed it. She was searching for her explanation. I had seen the look too many times, after all those nights Ryan would wander in from being out all night.

  “Yeah, I … Uh …” Her eyes closed, and she sighed. “No, I’m not Jack. Jack doesn’t even know I’m here. God,” she groaned before looking at me again. “You know, I had this whole thing planned out before I got here, but I just can’t do it.”

  I shifted uncomfortably in my chair. “Well, ehm … If you could just get permission from Jack to—”

  The blonde shook her head, a few stray hairs falling against her ear. I had to resist the temptation to tuck them away, to brush my fingertips against her cheek, like a feckin’ creep.

  “Jack’s my boyfriend. Well, actually, he’s my ex-boyfriend. We just broke up yesterday, after I caught him with his secretary. They were fucking—excuse my French—in our bed, in our house, and so today, I did the most crazy thing I’ve ever done. I shoved the fucking thing out the window and set it on fire. So, now I need a new mattress before I move to a new place, and—”

  Her jaw dropped moments before she clapped her hands over her mouth. “Oh my God,” she groaned, muffled behind her fingers. “I’m so sorry. I’m rambling, and I’m sounding crazy. I know you guys close in a couple minutes, and I’m sure you just want to go home and the last thing you want to do is hear the sob story from some crazy bitch who bought a ten-thousand-dollar mattress with her ex-boyfriend’s stolen credit card.”

  It was taking my brain a few seconds too long to process everything she had said, but I had listened intently. Marveled by her glossy pink lips and the speed of the words passing between them. I finally exhaled, unaware that I had even been holding my breath, and I laid my hands flat on the counter as I slowly stood up.

  “Listen,” I began, finding myself out of breath from just listening to her. “Ya sound like you’ve had a terrible weekend, and I’d love to help you out, but if you’re makin’ the purchase without him knowin’, I can’t, with a clear conscience, allow the sale to go through. That’s essentially stealing, and he could get you on fraud.”

  Her hands dropped and her arms hung limply at her sides. The excitable speed-talker had drained away, leaving behind this other woman, clearly broken and beaten without a bed to sleep on. Her eyes glistened and she sniffed loudly, using her long fingers to wipe a tear away before it could even leave its watery trail along her cheekbone.

  “I’m really sorry,” I threw in for good measure, hating myself for being so careful with a book of rules to follow. For playing a part in her tears.

  “No. It’s not your fault,” she said with a shaky voice. “I can’t believe I pushed the fucking thing out the window and threw a match on it. I don’t do shit like that, you know? I don’t play with matches, like … ever. I mean, for crying out loud, I don’t even burn candles! I use an electric wax burner, and it sits on a little pl
ate, on my kitchen counter, without anything—” Her lips stopped moving again, hung on the sentence, and she shook her head. “No, wait. It’s not my kitchen counter anymore. It’s his. Not even ours—his.”

  Her fingertips pressed against one temple, as though her head were all of a sudden killing her. Maybe she wished it would, with the heartbreak now emanating from her like an aura. I could see it: glowing a moody shade of blue, haloing around her perfectly styled hair, encasing her slender body. She squeezed her eyes shut, pressing harder on the temple and I knew I had to say something. I had to remedy the situation in the only way I could, and I dropped back into my chair, tapping along the screen.

  “Okay, so you’re gonna need a pretty big truck.”

  Her eyes snapped open. “What?”

  “To transport the mattress,” I clarified. “You’ll need a truck. You ordered a California King, so it’s big.”

  “W-what are you doing?” she stammered, blinking rapidly and playing with the end of her braid.

  “Selling you a mattress.” I looked up from the screen.

  “B-but why?” Her voice trembled, her hands smoothing over the strap of her backpack.

  “Because …” I had started the sentence with every intention of continuing it, but, what explanation did I have? That I felt sorry for her? That I wanted to make sure she had a bed to sleep on? That I wanted to kill her ex-boyfriend but couldn’t, so this was the next best thing?

  “You could get in trouble,” she said quietly. She pulled her plump bottom lip between her teeth, biting gently. A line deepened between her brows. She was worried. “What if I just, um, put it on my own credit card?”

  I looked up at her, arching a brow. “It’s none of my business—none of it is, really—but can you even afford this? You know it’s a ten-thousand-dollar mattress, and that’s the sale price.”

  Closing her eyes again, she shook her head. “No, I really can’t. Not right now. Maybe, um … Fuck,” she mumbled, fingers pressed to her temple, “why did I burn the fucking bed?”

  “People do crazy things when their heart’s been broken,” I said gently. “My brother got his heart broken once and slept with a girl he feckin’ hated.” And why I told her that, I couldn’t say. I scarcely talked to strangers, outside of customers, and I certainly didn’t divulge the personal business of my family to someone I just met.

  The blonde nodded, hands now clenching around the backpack strap. “Hey, they say getting over someone is best when getting underneath someone else.” She said it too matter-of-factly for it to be an implication of anything, but the words sent a lightning bolt of blood right to my groin.

  After clearing my throat and licking my lips, I said, “That’s all well and good, but he found out two months later that he had gotten her pregnant.” Her brows raised with curiosity, and I shrugged. “He married the girl and was stuck for ten years.”

  “It happens sometimes,” she nodded thoughtfully, and I smiled and replied, “Yeah, and sometimes people set their mattresses on fire.”

  She scoffed. “Yeah, well, you would’ve too, if you caught your boyfriend fucking his secretary in your bed. I couldn’t sleep in that thing again after that.”

  “Didn’t say I blamed ya,” I said with a small smile, and looked back to the screen. “Anyway, so if you get caught, ya swear this won’t come back to me? I don’t need to be framed as an accomplice. I have a very clean record and I’d really like to keep it that way.”

  A shy but playful smile reluctantly spread over her lips. “You know, um … I’ll figure out the bed situation, okay? But would you, um … Maybe we could go out for a drink? I could really use one.”

  Not minding that I had spent the night before in a drunken daze, I shut down the computer and stood up. Deciding for once to live, but just a little.

  “Sure,” I said with a smile, grabbing my jacket from under the counter. “But you’re buyin’, and I won’t tell a soul if you use your boyfriend’s credit card.”

  “Ex-boyfriend,” she corrected, looking up at me.

  Then she grinned, and Christ, the darkened store lit up like a feckin’ Christmas tree.

  CHAPTER THREE |

  Moments & Ice Cream

  The department store was on the outskirts of town, too far to walk to the bar, and so without thinking, I offered to drive us both there before she could in her car. Immediately after saying the words, I regretted it. I hadn’t expected her to take me up on the offer, because what woman accepts a ride from a man she just met? Wasn’t that how they got themselves into dangerous situations? But she smiled and thanked me for being a decent guy, as though she actually knew me at all.

  Was I really that transparent?

  It took her all of three minutes in my car to officially introduce herself, turning to me in her seat, and she smiled bashfully. As though it had just occurred to her that she was riding in a truck driven by a stranger.

  “I just realized you don’t know my name,” she said, her cheeks red with her embarrassment. “I’m Lindsey, and I know you’re probably thinking that I’m one of those girls that will just jump into any car with a strange man and head off toward certain death, but really, that’s not me. Like, at all. I wouldn’t even get in the car with my boyfriend—ex-boyfriend—for weeks after we started seriously dating.”

  I diverted my eyes from the road for two seconds, refreshing her face in my memory. “Why’s that?”

  “Oh, um, well, I’m pretty careful, you know? My friends back home would always tease me about it. They’d remind me of every little thing that could go wrong in any given situation. Like, ‘Oh, better not ride that rollercoaster, Linds. You might fall out.’ Or, ‘Are you really going to eat that ham sandwich? Because, you know ... diseases.’ They were probably joking, but they had no idea that those were the exact things always going through my head, you know? Always reminding myself of all the things that could happen to me if just the slightest thing went wrong.” She shifted in the seat. I caught her studying me through the corner of my eye. Taking me in, overanalyzing my every feature, every twitch of my lips. “I don’t really know why I let you drive, actually. You just seemed … safe, I guess.”

  She smiled. It was sweet and infectious, and, facing the road, I couldn’t help but smile with her. The white lines against the blacktop zipped by, guiding our way to an evening of uncertainty and maybe more excitement than I could handle in one weekend.

  “I’m Sean,” I said, tipping my head in her direction, “and you are unlikely to find anybody who’s safer than me.”

  ❧

  The Ol’ Tavern was quiet for a Sunday evening.

  On most weekends, you could hardly hear the music above the loud murmur of patrons, but that night, in the private corner booth, I could distinctly make out the lyrics to Gordon Lightfoot’s “Song for a Winter’s Night.” An odd choice for a mildly warm evening in late-May, and I wondered what the hell whoever-it-was had been thinking when they punched that one into the jukebox, but it somehow felt fitting.

  Because, for all I knew, in that old 18th century tavern, it could have been winter outside. I could have fallen into such a daze, watching her lips move around her rambled words and her eyes dance excitedly with animation. I could have woken up in the middle of December without any clue of where all the time went and I wouldn’t have cared. Because as she talked and the flickering flame inside the iron lantern above the table danced poetically across her face, I felt myself shift and change. And suddenly I couldn’t remember who I was before I met her.

  Lindsey sipped her Manhattan slowly and grinned as she brought the glass back down to the table. “I feel so fancy drinking these things, you know? Like I’m supposed to be on one of those old time TV shows from the 50’s or something.”

  “Or an extra on Mad Men,” I threw in, tipping the neck of my Guinness toward her before taking a small sip.

  “Yes!” she exclaimed excitedly, and a couple of regulars at the bar turned to glance at us irritably, as thoug
h she had insulted them with enthusiasm. Lindsey grimaced and mouthed a ‘sorry’ at them. Then she whispered, “I’m already making friends, I guess.”

  I chuckled. “They don’t matter.” And that was the truth. All that mattered was her, and the rapid formation of the crush I had on her.

  Her smile was accompanied by a light flush to the cheeks, and I puffed up with confidence.

  “So, um, when you mentioned in the car that you’re safe, what did you mean by that?”

  I wrinkled my nose with distaste at the bottle in front of me. There was nothing that made me want to be honest about my need to be “Sean the safety police,” because it was suddenly humiliating and not something I wished to be true of myself. But then I shrugged, because, what the hell did it matter?

  “All that stuff you said about being careful?” I asked, and she nodded. “Well, that’s me.”

  Lindsey tucked her chin into her palm, planting her elbow on the worn dark wood of the tabletop. The years could be read like braille in the knots and grooves, and I had to wonder who had sat there centuries ago. A pretty blonde and a careful Irishman perhaps; our long-departed counterparts, just meeting, just getting to know each other in the flickering candlelight.

  “Give me an example?” She begged with her eyes.

  “Ehm, okay … Well, I haven’t eaten ice cream since my twenty-fifth birthday. I’m lactose intolerant and I don’t want to have a stomach ache. That could prevent me from goin’ to work, or at least doin’ my job, and I can’t … be like that.” I gripped the neck of the Guinness and put it to my lips, shaking my head. I wanted to chug, to wash down my confession, but I resisted the urge with a controlled sip.

  She blinked a few times. Silent, lips parted only slightly to allow my ears the privilege of hearing her breathe. It was possibly the dumbest example of my cautious lifestyle I could have given her, but I thought the ridiculous nature of it all was a good way for her to gauge how possibly insane I was.