by B. N. Toler
“Are you laughing at me?”
I look up to the ceiling in thought. “Yes,” I chuckle. “Yes, I am.”
Paul purses his lips in annoyance.
“It’s not like they’re doing anything. There’s nothing wrong with her having a crush on an older guy.”
“Wow,” he surmises. “I thought I was the cool parent.”
“You are,” Neena chimes in as she enters the kitchen. “What are we talking about?”
“Wait. Why am I not the cool parent?” I fake offense.
Neena shrugs. “You’re just cool in a different way,” she replies, stealing a cucumber from the salad on the counter, just like Paul did a few moments before. I’m starting to see she’s a lot like him.
Paul does an obnoxious, silent mocking laugh, directed at me. I flip him the bird when Neena isn’t looking. “You know, if you want to be cool like me, I could give you some lessons.”
I pretend to gag. “Thanks, but I’m good on my own.”
“I wouldn’t charge much,” Paul continues.
“Is that so?” I ask as I slightly pull the oven door open and peek inside.
“What should my fee be, Neena?” he asks.
When I turn back, Neena has her mouth twisted in thought. Then her brows perk up. “A date.”
I’m holding my breath as Paul and I awkwardly make eye contact. I cannot have her thinking we will date. “I’ll make you a cake,” I finally answer.
They both twist their mouths. Neena opens her mouth to speak, but for fear she’ll mention Paul and I dating again, I speak before she can.
“Your dad wants to beat up Mills because you like him,” I announce nonchalantly.
Cue matching father-daughter facial expressions. They both look like they want to die of embarrassment.
“I didn’t say beat him up,” Paul clarifies, looking to me. “And thanks for throwing me under the bus, by the way.”
I raise my hand and pull down twice, bellowing out an obnoxious, “Honk-honk.”
“I don’t like him,” Neena protests, her face bright red.
“There’s nothing wrong with you liking him, Neena,” I clarify. “Paul is just having a father moment. This is classic.”
Neena smiles faintly as she meets Paul’s gaze. “Please don’t say anything to him.”
Paul throws his hands up. “I never said I was. Your mother is embellishing. Big time.”
Her smile slowly fades and she plops down in her seat at the kitchen table. “Doesn’t matter anyway,” she sighs sadly. “I’m just the ugly sick girl. He’d never like me.”
As a mother, who loves her child so fiercely, and who sees all of her beauty, inside and out, that statement just crushed me. On instinct, I move to approach her, comfort her, but Paul holds his hand up, stopping me. I want to be angry with him for it, but when he kneels down in front of her, my heart melts a little.
“Look at me, Neena.” When she does, he tells her, “You are so damn beautiful. I know I’m your father and you think I’m just telling you this, but it’s true. Inside and out, kid. Beautiful. I’ve been to a lot of places, seen a lot of faces, and none in this world are as beautiful as yours.”
“I have no hair. Guys like girls with hair.”
“Guys like girls that are awesome, and you’re clearly that. Even without hair, you have killer eyes, like your dad,” he adds with a wink, “and you’ve got your mother’s head-turning smile.”
He knows damn well she has his awesome smile.
Standing, he looks down at her. “And Mills is a lucky bastard if a girl like you wastes even a second thought on him.”
Neena nods and perks up. It’s not her style to feel sorry for herself, and I wonder if maybe she’s starting to get depressed. The doctor gave us a prescription for anti-depressants, just in case. I just didn’t think she’d need them. And maybe I’m misreading her reaction just now.
“Can we eat?” she asks. “I kind of want to go to bed early tonight.”
“Ten minutes, sweetheart.”
As we eat dinner, Paul and I try hard to keep things light, to make her laugh. She works just as hard to keep up, but it’s not difficult to see her heart isn’t in it. When she kisses us good night, I hold her and squeeze her tight.
“I’m okay, Mom. Really. I’m just tired.”
Letting her go, I bend and kiss her forehead. No fever. I try to hide my sigh of relief, but she snorts and shakes her head.
“No fever.”
“I know.”
“What?” Paul asks, causing us to giggle. I’m so busted.
“Nothing,” Neena replies. “Mom’s just over here using her lips as a thermometer.”
“Well, I thought I was subtle,” I sigh.
Neena smiles. “Night, guys.” She waves and heads up the stairs.
With nowhere else to look, Paul and I look at each other. I have no idea what to say about our kiss. So, for now, I’ll avoid it.
“About the kiss,” Paul says.
Scratch avoiding it.
“Let’s table it until tomorrow,” I pipe up. “It’s been a long day. We’re all tired.”
He nods once, sliding his hands in his pockets. “Okay. Well, you go on up to bed, I got the dishes.”
“Are you sure?” For some reason, no words have ever sounded sweeter. I can’t remember the last time someone did the dishes for me. Even if it means just loading the dishwasher or clearing the table.
“Yep. I’ll see you in the morning.”
I trudge up the stairs. Climbing into bed, I flop down and bury myself under the covers. I try counting sheep. I try naming all fifty states in alphabetical order. I try it all. But sleep escapes me because my mind keeps turning back to Paul and the kiss, and how he confessed he still loves me.
And how I still love him.
He’s getting to me.
I’m officially in the vortex of the suck.
“Last weekend we left off where you and Clara were butting heads about her new . . . managerial methods.”
“Is that what we’re calling them?” I chuckle.
“Did anyone show up for the paint party?”
I scrub the length of my face with the back of my hands a few times, applying pressure with the knuckles, and prepare myself for the trip down memory lane.
When Sunday evening rolled around, Marcus and I were three-beers deep at a bar about ten minutes from the office. I’d driven by the office on the way to the bar about twenty minutes before everyone should have been there. Clara’s car was the only one in the parking lot. Being a young, arrogant ass, I continued on even though I knew deep down what I was doing officially made me an asshole. But I told myself she deserved it. Even after three beers, I was working hard not to think about Clara; willing myself not to think about how none of the staff probably showed up. I was trying not to imagine how she was undoubtedly going to ream me when I saw her again, and how I probably deserved it . . . sort of. I hated that maybe, deep down, I felt bad. There was absolutely no reason for me to feel bad. She was kind of an asshole, too. Just in a different way than me. I needed to get my mind off things; find a distraction. The two women that had just taken seats across from where we sat at the bar did the trick.
Distraction found.
With a jut of my chin, I motioned for the bartender to put their drinks on my tab.
“Which one are you going for?” Marcus asked as he lifted his glass in a silent toast to the ladies. The women smiled, glancing at each other before looking back at Marcus. You would think his height would make it difficult for him to get women, but it was quite the contrary. There would always be one intrigued by the idea of hooking up with a little person. He was at perfect eye level, after all. Maybe they were just curious. The list of women interested ran a mile long. But I’ll be damned if more often than not, that one hookup would turn into several. Marcus always joked he had a cock of gold, and I didn’t doubt it.
“Either one will do.” I shrugged. Women were all the same to m
e then. I had no desire to settle down . . . at all. Settling down meant losing my freedom, and my freedom was too precious to me. I needed to be able to pack up on a whim and hop a plane to Brazil, or anywhere, if I felt the need. Having a girlfriend or wife wouldn’t allow that luxury.
“What’s with you today?” he asked, his face scrunched up. “You seem . . . off.”
Sitting up straight, I widen my eyes in an attempt to look full of pep. “Nothing.”
Marcus eyed me with an inquisitive brow. “You worried about the shrew?”
“Pfft. Why would I be?” I feigned.
“She’s going to breathe fire in our faces tomorrow,” Marcus grumbled before popping the peanut he just shelled into his mouth.
I gave another nonchalant shrug. I wished he’d stop talking about her already. “She’ll get over it.” The side of his mouth quirked up as if he didn’t believe me. I did not want to discuss Clara with Marcus. I needed to change the subject. “I’m hungry, bro. You wanna order some food?”
He tilted his head as he snorted and took a swig of his beer. I wasn’t fooling him. But he didn’t push. After eating some cheap, grease-filled dinner, having two more beers, and playing a game of darts, I drove Marcus to his home behind the office. It was just past ten when we passed the front of the office and noticed only Clara’s shitty little car in the lot.
“Looks like no one showed up,” Marcus pointed out, snorting out a laugh.
“No surprise there,” I murmured.
When I parked my truck and he started to open the door to climb out, he turned back and said, “It’s too bad she’s such a stick-in-the-mud. She’s actually pretty fucking hot.”
I nodded in agreement as I stared ahead. He wasn’t kidding. Clara was extremely attractive. Not in an obvious, needed to wear slutty clothes and lots of makeup kind of way, but in a soft way, almost as if she didn’t even know how beautiful she was. Too bad her looks were shadowed by her tyrannical personality.
When I glanced back to Marcus, he was smirking at me, and shaking his head. “You want to sleep with her.” He wasn’t asking, he was stating it. What the fuck ever.
“Pfft. She’d likely rather get mulled by a bear than hook up with me.”
“That wasn’t a no, Paul.”
“It wasn’t a yes, asswipe,” I argued.
“But still not a no,” he snickered. “Really, Paul? You’d do the shrew?”
“Get out of my truck,” I grunted. “We gotta work tomorrow.”
Shaking his head, he sighed, “Yeah, okay. See ya.” Then he slid off of the seat slowly until he hit the ground, shut the truck door, and went inside.
I rounded the building. As I approached the office’s lot, I still didn’t know why I pulled in. I told myself I wanted to see her suffer; see how she looked when she realized she couldn’t just whoosh in here and change everything. This was my fucking domain. I wanted to see her broken. But, I know now, no matter what I told myself then, I just wanted to see her.
When I entered, the intense paint odor hit me at once. She’d successfully painted one wall and was standing near a table looking through some of the framed photos she’d taken down as she placed them in a box. Her head whipped around when she heard me enter. Her surprised expression faded quickly into a look of annoyance. “Here to gloat?”
“Maybe,” I teased as I approached. She was wearing a pair of sweats that did absolutely nothing for her ass. Her hair was tied up in some weird bird’s nest looking thing and she was wearing a faded Michael Jackson T-shirt that was two sizes too big for her. But damn. Even amidst the paint fumes that smell of clean linens found me. “You’re not throwing those out, are you?” The photos were of me, some of the few I still had from my short career as a stuntman. Those photos were some of my prized possessions. Once upon a time, people thought I’d be the next Evel Knievel. I was hot shit . . . or at least they thought I was.
“How’d you get into that kind of business? The stunt business, I mean.”
Small talk. Really? Tilting my head, I studied her, searching for a hint of sarcasm, but didn’t find a trace. Shit. Did she really want to know something about me? “When I was a kid, I was always skateboarding, snowboarding, biking, and causing my mother to panic.” I chuckled as the memory of my mother worrying her head off came to mind. The things I put that poor woman through. “When I was eighteen, I attended this motorbike event in California and won. Someone there was a director and they liked what they saw.” I shrugged one shoulder. “Voilà. I became an instant stuntman for movies.” I was invincible. Fearless. “They were the best days of my life,” I admitted as I picked up a photo of me riding a bike off a burning building.
“Why’d you stop?” Clara asked as she placed more frames in a box.
“Got injured.” I shrugged. “Too much risk after that.”
Her gaze flicked to mine, with a hint of sympathy in them that quickly vanished. Her lips were tight, in a flat line, before she asked, “What happened?”
I could tell she hated herself for asking the question. After all, asking indicated that she gave a shit, and she didn’t want me thinking that. Remembering what happened, what caused me to retire, wasn’t something I liked to think about. Oddly enough, it wasn’t a stunt that ended my career.
“Betty Lee Ozman.”
She furrowed her brows in confusion. “What?”
“I was changing a tire on the side of the Interstate and I got clipped by a car.”
Her eyes widened with disbelief. “Are you serious?”
“Yep,” I confirmed with a sad chuckle. “Little old granny didn’t see me. Luckily she wasn’t going the speed limit. She might have killed me.”
“Damn,” Clara muttered. “How bad were you hurt?”
“I was unconscious for a week. They weren’t sure I’d even wake up, and when I did, they informed me one more blow to the head could kill me. My mother made me swear I’d quit the stunts.”
Looking down in the box, she frowned slightly. “I’m sorry, Paul.”
It was one of those weird moments in life. I hated her. She hated me. But she was being nice to me. At any moment a series of phenomenons; hurricanes, tornadoes, or tsunamis, would ensue.
I quickly changed the subject. Spinning around, I gave the room another once-over. “You just went ahead and started painting by yourself, huh?”
“Yep.”
“You’ll never finish this tonight.”
“Oh, I know,” she answered cheerily. “But I have a good start.”
Collecting her paintbrush and can, she headed toward the back. I took the ladder and folded it. “Thanks,” she murmured politely.
Seeing her seem so okay, happy even, made me nervous. The woman I had come to know in the past few weeks would’ve had steam coming out of her ears right now. “You seem . . . not angry no one showed up.”
She shrugged. “It’ll get done, one way or another.”
While she rinsed her brushes and roller in the bathroom, I put the ladder up and turned off most of the lights in the back. I waited for her, and when she entered the front of the office, she froze when she saw me.
“You’re still here,” she stated, more than questioned.
“Just want to make sure you got to your car okay.”
Her mouth quirked up on one side, her expression suspicious. “Okay.”
I held the door open so she could exit, then waited while she locked it. I noticed she hadn’t removed Dennis’s keychain on the set of keys I gave her. “You need help getting that off?” I pointed to them.
Looking at them in the palm of her hand, she frowned. “No. I’m keeping it on, but thanks.”
I stood at the office door and watched her unlock the driver’s side door of her vehicle. “Night, Paul,” she called just before she climbed in.
“Night.” I waved, but felt off. I expected her to blow up at me when I walked in, but she didn’t. Why? It didn’t make any sense.
The next day, my house phone rang bright and ea
rly. And when I rolled over in bed, cracking one eye open, the clock said it was ten in the morning. Hey, that’s early for me. After clumsily slapping my hand around a few times, it landed on the receiver and I answered.
“Hello,” I managed, my voice hoarse.
“You better get down here, Paul,” Marcus grumbled.
“My first jump is at three.”
“She’s canceled all jumps today.”
My eyes opened, blinking a few times against the harsh morning light. “What?”
“All jumps—canceled. The guys are pissed.”
I released a long and aggravated sigh. “I’ll be there in a bit.”
After tugging on some twice-worn cargo shorts and an old Sky High T-shirt, I made my way down to the office. Marcus, Bowman, Sap, and two other employees were waiting out front, leaning against the building when I pulled up.
As I advanced, they all stood straight. Marcus spoke first. “She’s closed the office for remodeling. Canceled all jumps until it’s finished.”
Running a hand over my face, I let out a tired and frustrated growl. I guess she had this planned last night and that’s why she didn’t blow up at me for not showing up. I walked in the office, leaving them to brood outside.
Country music blared from the back of the building, so I followed the sound until I found her in the bathroom, rinsing brushes. She was shaking her hips and singing with the tune, clearly unaware I’d entered. I was pissed. Rightfully so. But that didn’t mean I didn’t take a second to appreciate the cutoff jeans and tight tank she was wearing. Her attire pissed me off even more. How dare she screw us out of money and look sexy as fuck while doing it. Every other time I’d seen her, she was wearing her less than form-fitting clothes that hid her body. This little . . . sexy outfit was distracting me.
Focus, Paul.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” I snapped, causing her to jump because I startled her.
One side of her mouth curled in annoyance. “It’s called work,” she sneered as she turned off the faucet.
“You canceled our jumps?”
She shrugged as she picked up the bucket of paint at her feet and shoved by me, heading to the front. “Figured since I’m doing all of this painting by myself, it might take a while and we can’t have our clients coming in here with wet paint all over the place.”