by Carver Pike
“Kevin,” my brother said as I entered the apartment. “I tried to visit you but the cops wouldn’t let me anywhere near you. I tried to get you a lawyer too but that didn’t work out either.”
I hadn’t expected him to visit me. He’d already done his time in prison for me. I would be happier knowing he never had to step foot in a police station or jail again for the rest of his life.
“I’m f…f…fine,” I promised. “T…tired is all.”
“Kev, I saw the guys in the hospital. Davey and the other guys you roughed up.”
So he knew. He knew what I’d done and that meant he knew that I’d lied too. Shame was all I felt. As much as I wanted to get revenge for what they’d done to Ivory, I’d wanted to do it without him having any idea. At that moment, for the first time, I wished I could rewind time and take it back. My short stint in jail had also made me realize that I couldn’t handle time in prison. I’d always thought it wouldn’t be so bad. Hell, it wouldn’t be so different from what I experienced every day in life. I’d spent a lot of time alone with Ivory gone and now that he was spending all his time with Valerie and with Nikki, it was right back to the same.
“So it happened at a strip club?” he asked.
He knew it hadn’t. He was only making me face the fact that I’d lied. It was a tactic he’d always used, even when we were kids. I was the older brother but most of the time our roles were reversed. Anytime he suspected I wasn’t telling the truth, he’d ask me the same question several times. I hated lying to him and when he suddenly leaned forward and wrapped his arms around me, it felt good.
“Kev, I know you wanted to help me,” he said. “And I know you were angry. But you hurt those guys so bad that God forbid they tell somebody it was you and you could get locked up on those charges alone. You damn near killed those boys. I know you were protecting me, but I can’t do it again. I can’t, Kev. I went away for a long time and I can’t do that again. I don’t think I’d make it next time. If this blows up…”
He didn’t need to remind me what he’d sacrificed for me. I knew and I always felt like shit about it.
“Then, on top of all that, this shit with Nikki,” he added.
I looked at him but didn’t say a word. I didn’t know what to say.
“Did you call Nikki at work?” he asked.
“I…I…I…don’t even na…na…know where she wa…works,” I said. “I…I…don’t. I s…s…swear it, Ivory.”
A new lie. It was the same lie I’d told Nikki but it was too late to change my story now. What could I say? That I knew where she worked but only because I was stalking her?
“Nah,” he said. “You’re a sweet soul. You’ve had a rough night, big brother. You need to get some rest.”
I wondered if he suspected anything. Did he think I was capable of killing people? Did he doubt, even a little bit, that I wasn’t the killer? It broke my heart just thinking about it. Ivory couldn’t doubt me. He never had in the past. He’d always stuck up for me and believed in me and protected me. If he thought I was a killer then I might as well be one.
I went to bed after our conversation, but I didn’t go to sleep. I plugged my phone into a charger. The battery had drained while I was stuck in jail. I scrolled through my messages. I’d missed three from Jane.
Jane: Hey mumbles.
Jane: Did I scare you off the other night?
Jane: I hope you’re sleeping and not ignoring me.
All three of the messages had come in this morning, maybe thirty minutes apart. Of course I immediately wrote her back.
Kevin: Mumbles here. Sorry for the delayed response. Long story.
I waited.
Jane: Well hello there. What are you doing?
Kevin: Lying in bed. I didn’t get much sleep last night.
Jane: Mmm, sounds nice. I got plenty. The benefits of having kids in high school. They sleep in later than I do.
Kevin: I need some of those kids then so I can actually get some sleep. Ivory was in his room making quite a bit of noise last night.
Jane: Oh, who’s the lucky girl? Wait, Nikki?
Kevin: No, Valerie.
Jane: Oh her. Nikki told me about her.
Kevin: Yeah, her.
Jane: Well, at least somebody was getting some last night.
Okay, where do I go from here? How far do I go?
Jane: It’s been a looooong time since I’ve made noise throughout the night.
You’ve got this, Kevin.
Kevin: That’s a shame. Sounds like you’re due for some.
Jane: You have no idea.
Kevin: Well, what are you doing tonight?
Jane: Depends. What are you doing?
Kevin: Whatever you’re doing.
Okay, this is sounding stupid now. I need to change it up.
Jane: Come see me tonight.
Kevin: Okay. Where?
Jane: At my house. My husband has a “business trip” and my kids are both sleeping over at friends’ houses.
Kevin: Are you sure?
Jane: Absolutely. Last night, talking to you, was the first time I felt like…me…again.
Kevin: I’ll come over after work. I have to help close the shop tonight but I’ll come over after.
Jane: Deal.
My heart was fucking racing when we stopped chatting. How was I supposed to sleep now? Ivory had told me not to worry about work but I couldn’t leave him hanging. He’d probably had as much sleep as I had. I knew he was worried about Nikki and Valerie would probably show up at any moment to use him for sex. That’s all it was. My brother never fell for girls easily. He seemed to be falling for this chick way too fast. Almost the way I was falling for Jane.
I supposed Ivory’s situation had more to do with Nikki than it did Valerie. He wasn’t in love with this gangbanger hoochie mama. No, he was in love with Nikki. He always had been. He was only using Valerie as an escape, an excuse to stay away from our childhood friend. Maybe he was even doing it to make her jealous. That last part wasn’t really his style, but things were different with her back in town. He might do whatever it took to keep her around.
None of that really mattered in the end. Valerie turned out to be only a temporary part of our story. It was later that night that we had visitors at the shop. One of Ivory’s old buddies, Reid, stopped by with his new fling, Ava. Reid was a lucky man. Not only had he chosen one of the prettiest girls in the city, but she also owned Del Mar’s diner. I couldn’t imagine a more perfect woman. Reid could get sex and pumpkin pie…all the time!
I’m not great with hellos so I only nodded at the two when I saw them talking to my brother. The jokes were flying and everyone seemed in good spirits until Valerie walked in holding the hand of her six-year-old daughter, Melody. Ivory had never mentioned her daughter so I had no idea. Seeing the little girl made me change my mind about the woman. Perhaps she would be good for Ivory. He’d lost the chance to be a father to his own son so maybe having the chance to be a father to her daughter would be good for him.
Then I saw Valerie hand him the note and walk away. It was as clear to me as it was to everyone else in the room that the letter contained no good news. If it had, Valerie would have stayed to talk or she would have at least left my brother with a hug or a kiss on the cheek. Instead, she rushed out of the room like she was ashamed of the letter’s contents.
Reid stormed out after her, probably only to make sure she was okay. He must have noticed how shaken up she’d been. Ivory stood shocked as he held the letter and stared out the window at the dark night beyond. Reid returned shortly after and Ivory did his best to act like everything was normal. If you knew him as well as I did, you’d know that it wasn’t.
Stepping around our guests, I went to the window to see if Valerie and her daughter were still outside. She was in the process of backing my brother’s car out of her parking spot. That’s when I saw him. It wasn’t necessarily a person I saw, but a shadow out there in the parking lot, standing between two cars
. He was deep in the shadows and appeared to be wearing all black. At first, I wasn’t sure that it was a person at all. It could have been a figment of my imagination or maybe some kind of burglar or thief waiting to pounce on his next victim. Then he was gone. He crouched down and disappeared into thin air.
Ivory didn’t say much as we closed up the shop. He was oddly quiet. Reid and Ava had left an hour before closing and Chunk left a few minutes after that. So we were alone.
“Are y…y…you okay?” I asked him. “Ya…you seem s…s…sad.”
“Valerie left me,” he said. “She wrote me this bullshit note and bounced.”
“Ba…ba…bounced?” I said. “Like that? She st…st…stole your car?”
“No,” he said. “She’s leaving the keys with her roommate, but she’s going. She’s skipping town and taking her daughter and there’s not a fucking thing I can do about it.”
Silence.
“It’s good though,” he said. “It’s good. She should go if that’s what she wants. Seems to be what all women want. They all run away at some point, right big brother? Well, who needs her?”
My brother was good at throwing words around but he wasn’t so great at hiding his feelings. I knew he was hurting. I knew he was also thinking about Melanie and his little boy. Nikki had run away from him and then Melanie had run away from him and now Valerie was running away from him. This was the reason I tried to protect him from Nikki this time. It seems I should have been watching out for Valerie instead. While I was busy keeping tabs on Nikki, Valerie was sneaking in the back door and tearing my brother’s heart in two.
I would be a horrible private eye.
Ivory invited me to have a few drinks with him at Red’s, so I did, but I let him know ahead of time that I couldn’t stay long. I’d promised to meet Jane at her place and that was a date I did not want to miss out on. I felt bad telling him about it in the first place, but he was happy for me. I knew he was legitimately happy. He wanted the best for me and he knew I hadn’t been in love for a long time.
After driving him over to Valerie’s apartment to get his keys, we went to Red’s for a cold one. We weren’t at the bar longer than a minute before Red walked up.
“Yo,” he said. “What the fuck happened to Valerie?”
“Na…na…now’s not a g…good time,” I told him.
“Not a good time?” he said. “I need a fucking waitress. She showed up earlier with her kid in tow and handed me her nametag. Then she left without explanation. You believe that shit?”
“I believe it,” Ivory said.
“She came all the way over here to drop off a nametag that cost me ninety-nine fucking cents. Who does that? Should’ve never hired her irresponsible ass,” he said.
“It’s a bar,” Ivory reminded him. “Not many of the people here are responsible.”
He nodded and opened a new beer for Ivory.
“Guess you probably need this,” he said. “I know you two got cozy real quick. You alright, brother?”
“I am,” Ivory said.
“He’s n…not,” I argued.
“Hey did you guys hear about all this crazy shit with this umm…Simon Says character?” Red asked as he leaned closer to us.
“S…S…Simple S…Simon?” I asked.
“Yeah, him,” he said. “This crazy motherfucker has the whole world looking for him. First, he killed some club promoter a few blocks from your shop. Then he snuck into the medical examiner’s office and killed some guy there. Then…get this shit. He had the fuckin’ balls to kill one of our guys.”
“He killed a brother?” Ivory asked. “Someone from the MC?”
“Well,” Red said, opening his hands up out in front of him, “kinda. He was more like an ex-fuckup. He was a serious member at one point but he made some dumb mistakes that guy. Anyway, his body was found out in front of a police station. They say his Iron Claw tattoo had an “X” carved over it and he had the words “we all fall down” carved into his chest.”
“Wa…wa…was this on th…th…news?” I asked.
“Nah, I get my news from other sources, but it’s legit. Trust me. This Simple Simon is a fuckin’ lunatic and he’s hitting way too close to home for comfort. Watch yourselves out there. You never know where this creepy motherfucker is lurkin’.”
Simple Simon. The guy Nikki thinks is me. Nice. Yeah, because I’ve had so much fucking time on my hands. I went on a killing spree while I was locked up in jail.
At least that was a plus side. When had all this happened? When had the murders happened? Was I still in jail? If so, that would mean I was off the hook, right?
“I ha…ha…have to go,” I said.
“Pussy calls,” Ivory said.
“Na…no,” I said in a much stronger voice than I’d meant to.
I didn’t like Ivory talking about Jane like that. She wasn’t some piece of ass to me. She was something much more. She wasn’t someone who’d up and run like all the women he’d encountered. She was a strong woman, a fighter, who had two grown kids of her own. She knew the meaning of responsibility and she knew what it was like to have a man not follow through on his word. Her husband had stopped caring, had stopped following through, and I wouldn’t be anything like him. I needed to go and keep my promise to her.
“Sorry, bro,” Ivory said. “Go see your woman. Be careful out there.”
I hugged him and said goodbye to Red before walking out the door and making my way over to Jane’s house.
When I arrived at her door and rang her bell, I heard her call out from somewhere on the other side.
“I’m coming!”
I couldn’t believe my eyes when she opened the door. She wore a silk kimono like top with short shorts of the same material. It was obvious she wasn’t wearing a bra because I could see one nipple pressing against the thin fabric. With her new tattoo, she’d probably needed to go braless.
“Kevin, come in, please.”
I entered and closed the door behind me, locking it after listening to Red’s story. If there really was a killer out there lurking in the shadows, I didn’t want him getting in and spoiling our evening. Especially after seeing that shadowy figure outside our shop. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I, or someone close to me, was being watched.
Jane led me into the living room where she invited me to sit on the couch while she went to get us a drink. When she came back, she sat down on both knees on the couch. It was adorable, the way young kids or even teenagers might sit. My hand found its way to her thigh right away and she didn’t move it.
“So how was your day?” she asked.
“L…l…long,” I said.
I hoped she wasn’t going to make me talk a lot. Talking reminded me of how bad I was at dating, and the last thing I needed was a reminder on the importance of verbal communication.
“Long,” she repeated. “Mine was long too.”
It surprised me how at ease she was at having me there in her living room. She must have really trusted that her husband would not be returning home unexpectedly. After dealing with his affair for so long, she must have known that his “business trips” lasted several days. After all, she’d just survived breast cancer. He wasn’t worried about her having an affair on him. Yet, here we were, sipping wine and flirting in our own way.
“H…h…how long has it b…b…been since you were wa...with a m…man?” I asked.
She bit her bottom lip and looked up at the ceiling.
“That’s a good question,” she said. “Well, considering I’ve never cheated on my husband and he stopped fucking me a couple of years ago…I guess that would be my answer. A couple of years at least.”
My heart began to speed up and my breathing intensified. The thought of her going so long and needing a man between her legs turned me on. She wanted to have sex with me. Between the texts she’d sent and the way she was looking at me now, I knew that she wanted me. She leaned closer to me so that our faces weren’t so far apart. I leaned closer
too. Then I closed my eyes and went for it. I kissed her softly on the lips. She didn’t pull away but pushed forward a little harder, bumping my fedora. Her hand found my hat, removed it, and tossed it onto the couch next to us.
She slid her face to the side of mine and whispered into my ear.
“I don’t want to rush you, Kevin,” she said. “I’m not the kind of a woman who does things like this. I never have, but I’m lonely. I’m so lonely, Kevin. And you turn me on. You turned me on last night and you turn me on tonight.”
That’s all she needed to say. Whatever her reasons were for wanting me so soon, I didn’t give a shit about. We weren’t virgin teenagers dipping our toes in the water for the first time. No, we were adults, both with needs, who’d happened to discover each other. She wasn’t forcing me to talk and wasn’t forcing me to explain myself and I wasn’t going to do that to her either.
I grabbed her waist on both sides and lifted her up from the couch. I sat her down on my lap and looked up into her face. She stared down at me and smiled. With one hand on her thigh and the other on her back, I pulled her close to me, held her tight, and kissed her again, this time sliding my tongue into her mouth. She attacked me with hers, kissing me passionately. She pulled back, looked at me, and then dove back into my face.
My cock hardened beneath her and I know she must have felt it through that thin silky fabric she wore. I considered removing her top but remembered she had a fresh tattoo covering her missing breast and I was afraid it might be too much for her, too soon.
She surprised me when she stood from the couch, took my hand, and said, “Come upstairs with me.”
She led me up to her bedroom by my hand and took me into the bathroom.
“You’ve been working all day,” she said, “And I need some aftercare for my new ink. I was thinking…”
She turned off the bathroom light and suddenly lifted my t-shirt up over my head.
“That we could shower together,” she finished.
“Are you s…s…sure?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said. “If you are.”
Her dainty hands were cold as they pressed against my hard chest. She ran her fingertips over my muscles, playing with the grooves in my stomach. I’m not the fittest of men, but I’ve got a decent upper body. She seemed to like touching it and I was okay with that.