The Simpatico Series Box Set (3 books in 1)

by Dermot Davis

  Andrew laid on a lounge and felt the golden rays of the afternoon sun beaming down upon him. He felt relaxed for the first time in a long while. After a while, he got back in the pool and floated on his back. Lily paddled at the other end of the pool for a bit. "Let's go watch that movie," Lily finally suggested. "You got anything to eat? You know what? Never mind, you already sold me on that freshly made popcorn. I shouldn't have the butter but most popcorn tastes like Styrofoam without it."

  "Not this one," Andrew corrected with pride. "It has all these different special settings, I'll show you," he said as he climbed the steps out of the pool.

  "I'm having so much fun!" Lily said as she dried herself off with a plushy spa bath towel. "This place is like a vacation resort. I swear, if I lived here, I'd never leave. Just have my food delivered and get everything I needed mailed to the house. I would work entirely from home. You're a lucky dog, Andrew!"

  "You got that right," Andrew said, briefly forgetting how miserable he had been most, if not all, of the time since Fiona left him.

  Sitting in a plush, sunken armchair in the screening room, while watching a first-run streaming movie and stuffing her mouth with the most delicious freshly-popped popcorn that she had ever tasted, Lily could easily have believed that she had died and gone to heaven.

  Andrew looked over at her and was glad to have a guest. Enjoying her company still, yet beginning to feel the approaching fog of sadness that descended upon him daily, each time that the sun began to fade, Andrew managed to smile whenever Lily looked over at him.

  "Dude, even if the movie is shit, which this one isn’t, this would still be a blast," she said in-between mouthfuls of popcorn. "You must be in here every night after the hot tub and if you're not… you're an ass. Get a pool table in here and I'm moving in," she joked. "Try and stop me."

  Giving her a smile to indicate that she was so on the money, Andrew quickly returned his eyes to the screen as if he were still engrossed in the movie, which he was not. Wishing it was Fiona who was sitting in the armchair beside him, he wondered why they couldn’t have worked it out. Fiona was so much more real than Lily, and, besides, they had this amazing connection; he and Fiona were so tight that they could almost read each other's thoughts.

  In fact, Fiona already knew what he was thinking and how he was feeling before he did, much of the time. Fiona was an amazing woman who could never be replaced. How on earth was anyone ever going to come even close to what he and Fiona had shared together? Yes, Lily was wonderful but she was not Fiona. She was superficial and a spiritual lightweight. Being with her would never make him a better man.

  Even if he and Lily did get together, he would still be feeling discontent, like maybe something was missing. In which case, he'd be better off staying single. In fairness to other women, it would be better not to subject anyone else to his pain and unrequited love for Fiona. Was he doomed to a life of misery without his One True Love?

  "That was a sucky ending," Lily said as the movie finished and the credits began to roll. "Does every movie have to end with the good guy fighting the bad guy and the good guy finally beats the bad guy to death? I mean, how many times are they going to make the same ending if they can't even make it look fresh or different? I swear, you could switch around the ending on a whole bunch of films and no one would even notice."

  "Yeah," Andrew said, his thoughts returning to the present. "I know, right?"

  "Now I'm thirsty," Lily said, looking over at the drinks cabinet. "Don't suppose you have any of that Brazilian drink left?" she asked coyly. "That was a good time, wasn't it?" she asked, although Andrew wasn't too sure what she was asking.

  "Yeah, no, I drank the last of that shit ages ago."

  "Well, whatever you're having is fine with me," she said laughing, putting aside her half-finished popcorn. "I'm taking the rest of this home," she said, finding a good place to stash the tub. "Want to watch another movie?" she asked hopefully.

  "Uh, yeah, sure," Andrew said uncertainly as he got up and made his way over to fix some drinks.

  "You don't have to," she said with disappointment. "If you don't want to."

  "A beer?" Andrew asked as he considered that fixing some cocktails would be way too much work.

  "Sure," she agreed happily.

  "So, what was that about, on the phone the other day?" he asked as he pulled out two beers from the small fridge. It seemed like Lily wasn’t going to bring her mysterious question up and he didn’t think he could wait several more hours to learn what she wanted from him.

  "Oh, yeah," Lily said, as if she didn't want to be reminded. "I must have sounded all cloak and dagger and stuff the other day, huh?"

  "Yeah, a bit," Andrew agreed as he gave her a beer and propped himself casually on the arm of his armchair. "What's going on?"

  "Well, after all their inspecting and interrogations up the yin-yang and shit, the organization finally cleared me of all wrong-doing and gave me back my job, duh," she said as if it were all a huge pain in the ass for nothing.

  "Yeah, that must have been a pain."

  "Like you wouldn't believe. Anyway, after all of that and I'm back in the job, guess what?"

  "What?"

  "I want out."

  "You want out?" Andrew repeated, not knowing for sure what she meant.

  "Yup," she said as she took another drink of her beer. "I want to get out of Dodge and keep on moving. I'm sick of that place already."

  "Wow," Andrew said, although in his mind her revelation didn't merit his astonishment. "That's what you couldn't tell me on the phone?"

  "I know it's only rumors but no one in that place believes that it's safe to talk about anything, anytime or anywhere, particularly about ditching the organization and the Order," she said like a character in a spy movie. "The walls have ears, know what I'm saying?"

  "Yeah," Andrew agreed weakly. "So, why not just leave?"

  "Well, that's what I wanted to talk to you about," she said, turning more fully towards him. "Again, it's only rumors… but you were the one… one of them, that said that no one could leave or if they did, they risked the consequences, right?"

  "Yeah, I heard that but I think that it’s only rumors. When I told Abigail that Simon said that I couldn't leave she laughed at me and told me that, basically, Simon was a lying SOB, pardon my French. She held the door wide open for me and told me that I was free to leave… anytime that I wanted. Of course, she could be the one doing the lying but I don't think so. Maybe because she's from England and they do it differently there or maybe somehow they've got their wires crossed here but, personally, I'm going with the theory that Simon is a lying piece of an…”

  “SOB?” Lily asked with a smile.

  “Yeah," Andrew said with a laugh.

  "And look what happened to him," Lily said and grinned. "You do the crime, you do the time, sucker," she said in a movie voice similar to the one that the star in the movie that they’d watched had used.

  "What do you want to do, instead? If you did leave?"

  "I always wanted to design clothes, I mean I do, already, in my spare time, but I really need to go to fashion design school and learn how to design clothes properly, you know? Before I get too old, not that I’m not, already, I don't know."

  "Of course you're not. You're still young."

  "You think so?"

  "Yeah, definitely. You should do what you want with your life and to heck with them," Andrew said with a wave of his arm. Tired and a bit taken aback by the conversation he didn't see that he had just spilt his beer on Lily. She looked down at her top and almost gasped. "The organization can rule the world quite well without you... or me, for that matter. What's wrong?" he asked when he saw her pull at her tee-shirt.

  "Dude, you just drenched me with your beer," she said, stretching out her tee-shirt and squinting in the semi-darkness to evaluate the damage. "I get stopped on the way home, I'm going to smell like I just came from a brewery."

  "I'm so sorry," Andrew said as
he jumped up to turn up the lights. "You should take it off and we can rinse it out and throw it in the dryer real quick."

  Andrew hadn't finished his sentence before Lily had swiped it off revealing her bare mid-riff and frilly lacy pushup black brassiere. “I just bought this, like, yesterday!”

  "Oh, here, I'll take it," Andrew said, suddenly bashful. Just as he turned, something shiny hanging from her neck caught his eye. "What's that?" he asked, referring to a silver hawk that hung from a silver chain around her neck.

  "You like it?" Lily asked as she scrunched her neck downward to get a better view. "It's a—"

  "Hawk," Andrew finished her sentence. "That's wild, I had one just like it, except it wasn't on a chain," he said, now remembering Fiona’s gift.

  "Then this must be yours," she said like it was a mystery finally solved.

  "How come?"

  "I found it on my sofa and no one that I know would have lost it there, except you, I mean. I called you once, when I found it."

  "You did? I don't—"

  "Fiona picked up, on your phone. I told her about it and she said that it didn't belong to you. She did sound a bit weird, but then she mostly does around me, I guess."

  Rummaging through his memory banks, Andrew looked on the verge of a major revelation. "Fiona answered? On my phone?" he asked.

  "Yeah, ages ago. I think she said you were in the shower, maybe?"

  Looking like he had just solved a mystery that he didn't even know he was trying to solve, Andrew's expression got hard. He felt a shock wave ripple through his body.

  "Are you okay?" Lily asked, looking concerned that maybe she had done or said something that she shouldn't have.

  "Yeah, I mean, yeah, now it all makes sense," Andrew said, as his memory of the day that Fiona left caught up with him. "She must have thought..." he said but didn't finish. He got lost in his thoughts of the past for a long moment. "Crap," he finally said, piecing it all together.

  Looking at him with expectant and worried eyes, Lily waited for him to explain. "Did I do something wrong?" she finally asked.

  "No, no, you didn't do anything wrong, don't even think that. It's a miscommunication, that's all. See, that hawk was a gift from her; in fact, she gave it to me the very day that I lost it. I’m pretty sure it happened that way, I mean. I'd forgotten all about it, to be honest. I basically only had it a few hours."

  "So, when I called she must have assumed..." Lily said but stopped before stating the obvious.

  "Yeah, she definitely must have assumed," Andrew said regretfully as his body deflated and sunk deeper into the sunken armchair.

  “It must have fallen off when I crashed on your couch that night,” Andrew admitted.

  "Sorry, dude," Lily said sympathetically. "If there's anything I can do, maybe call her or something, clear it all up, I don't know."

  "Naw," Andrew said, appreciating her offer. "I don't think that would help any, thanks, though." He suddenly realized that Lily was standing there, in her black lacy pushup bra, and how terribly incriminating that would look if Fiona walked in right at that minute. He turned away. Lily blushed, realizing that she was practically half-naked and standing there like it was something she did every day, stand around guys in her underthings.

  "Yeah, I guess not," she agreed. "It's not like a bunch of flowers and an apology could get that girl back, huh?" She pulled her shirt back on and took off her silver chain. Her buzz had almost entirely dissipated. She slipped the silver hawk charm off of the chain. “Right?”

  "No," Andrew said, grinning at the thought. "It would take more than that to turn that girl's head, once her mind got made up about something."

  "I feel your pain, Andrew," Lily said with genuine empathy. "I really do." She tapped him on the shoulder and he turned and saw that she was dressed again.

  She motioned for him to hold his hand out.

  Andrew held out his hand and looked down to see that Lily had dropped the silver hawk onto his palm. He stared at it and in his mind’s eye saw Fiona’s face. “Thank you,” he said and looked up to see that Lily had gone. Before Andrew could see where she went, he heard her car outside crank up and heard it drive away.

  Andrew sat at a long table in the prison visiting room while waiting for Simon to show up. The room was noisy with many visitors cramming the large room, many of them family members of inmates. "What's the long face?" Simon asked as he entered and sat opposite from Andrew.

  "My mom said you wanted to see me," Andrew said without preamble. "Something about an apology?"

  "Yeah," Simon said, settling himself in and looking generally around. "Thanks for stopping by."

  "Well?" Andrew said impatiently.

  Simon looked long and hard at Andrew, as if sizing him up in a deep way. "What do you want out of life?" he then asked.

  "What?" Andrew answered, thrown by the question.

  " Turns out I was wrong about you. You're a good kid and if there's anything I can do for you, I'd be happy to help. I want to help you."

  "Help?" Andrew asked, like Simon had just told a joke. "How can you help with anything, locked up in here? Why would you even want to? You hate my guts."

  "I don't hate your guts, Andrew. You have every right to hate mine, however. I'm sorry for all the misfortune I've caused in your life."

  Andrew fell silent as he looked carefully into Simon's eyes. He was half expecting the man to follow his apology up with a smirk or some back-handed compliment but instead Simon's facial expression looked sincere. Andrew was quite weirded out by Simon’s behavior. He’d previously felt mixed feelings about Simon until he’d realized that the man was essentially evil. Now, Simon seemed to be either making, or pretending to be making, some kind of turnaround.

  "Okay," Andrew finally said for want of a more meaningful response. "Apology accepted."

  "Last time you were here you were looking for names," Simon said and paused. "I can give you names."

  Looking at him with squinted eyes, Andrew attempted to read Simon's mind and hence deduce his agenda. "Why would you give me names, number one, and number two, how could I tell if the names you were giving me were any good?"

  "You want to take down Abigail, so do I," Simon answered.

  "Why? Why would you want to take her down?"

  "She left me in here to rot and she gave you my house. How many reasons do you want?"

  "Fair enough," Andrew said, like his reasons were convincing. "I could see that."

  "That's not what you want?" Simon asked, wondering why Andrew seemed so apathetic. "Last time you were here you were practically jumping down my throat for names, what's up? What's changed since?"

  "I don't care about names or Abigail or the job or the house..." Andrew said, sounding like he had truly entered a deep depression. "All I care about is..." he started but then stopped. "Never mind."

  "All you care about is reuniting with Fiona, is that it?" Simon asked, like he had known already.

  "Something like that," Andrew said like he really didn't want to go any deeper.

  "I can help you with that," Simon said, holding back a smile. "If you wish."

  "Considering how you spent most of your time thinking up ways to split us apart, why would you want to—" Andrew said and stopped in an attempt to hold back his full anger and increasing deep despair. He looked down at his hands which were clenched in tight fists.

  "I wish to make amends. I can see now that you two are truly in love and I can also see how incredibly miserable both of you are without each other. I screwed up. I'm sorry. Let me make it up to you."

  "Fiona looks miserable without me?" Andrew asked and looked up, heartened by the revelation. He wondered when Simon might have seen his daughter last.

  "Probably just about as depressed as you are, maybe even more so."

  "She said that?" Andrew asked hopefully.

  "I'm her father," Simon said bluntly. "I can tell how she's feeling. Yes, she's miserable without your sorry ass," he said with a smile
obviously intended to brighten Andrew's spirits.

  "Wow," Andrew said, a smile finally breaking out on his face like it was the best bit of news that he's had in ages. He relaxed and unclenched his fists. The idea that Fiona was unhappy without him meant that she might still love him.

  "You've no idea where she is, do you?" Simon asked, realizing that he really could be of help to Andrew.

  "You do?" Andrew asked and took a deep breath to try and tame his hopefulness in expectation of the likely pain of being disappointed.

  "I do, Andrew," Simon said smugly. "She's been living right under your nose all this time, as a matter of fact."

  Looking at Simon, with a skeptical and pained expression on his face, Andrew racked his brain in order to solve the puzzle. "Right under my nose, where?" he asked, bracing himself for a false answer or, at worse, a joke told in very bad taste.

  "In your bedroom, as a matter of fact. She's been sleeping in your bed every night and, no doubt, you've been sleeping in hers, how's that for irony?"

  Andrew sat for a long moment while his mind and body digested this new information. Simon looked relaxed and his facial expression was open, like he was telling the truth, but—based on the man's history—Andrew knew that his statement could still be an elaborate hoax.

  "Fiona has been living with my mother… all of this time?" Andrew asked, speaking slowly and clearly, like he didn't want his question to be misunderstood.

  "Yup," Simon answered with a smug expression. "Too bad you don't go visit your mother as often as she would like, huh?"

  "How? When? How did she end up living with my mother? I don't understand," Andrew asked, eyes wide, with a puzzled expression on his face.

  "You probably don't know that your mother comes to visit me, pretty much ever since the beginning," Simon said and paused for some kind of expression or acknowledgement of understanding from Andrew. It was not forthcoming. "Anyhow, first time they each came to see me, they met here together and got to talking. When your mother found out that Fiona had been sleeping in her car, she insisted that she stay with her, at least until she found somewhere safer to crash."