Author's note:
This chapter contains no sex. If that is your motivation for reading, please tune in again next week for Chapter 16 Pt.2.
This week's chapter resolves some unanswered plotlines left over from Messy. I've mentioned them or made oblique references to them in the preceding 15 chapters, but 16 addresses them head-on.
Regarding the change in Short Description, this "cluster" of chapters is particularly meaningful to me - it's about people loved and lost, and the people who replaced them - and I wanted a way to set them apart from all the others. I would encourage you to listen to the referenced songs while reading these chapters. It will definitely enhance the experience.
As always, all comments, criticisms, critiques, and concerns are appreciated, public and/or private. Thanks for reading.
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"Sex now? Please?" McKenna asked impatiently. "Jessie's stress relief is getting beat or smoking, yours is hitting things, mine is getting fucked."
I looked over at Jessie and she rolled her eyes, shrugged. "Tonight," I said.
"Awwww, but that's too long to wait, I want your cock in me now... What about a blowjob? Can I give you that?" McKenna sounded whiny.
"Tonight."
The girls had showered together and were getting ready for their meeting. Jessie was getting dressed. McKenna had been laying on the bed face down, ass up, reaching back to rub her open pussy in an attempt to entice me.
I was focused on Jessie.
The vampiric woman seemed somewhat better today than she had last night. Dressing in a pencil skirt, blouse, and jacket, she was silent but didn't seem as...lost...as she had in the shower. She'd kissed me this morning and told me that sleeping in my arms was exactly what she'd needed.
McKenna dressed quickly, a slightly shorter skirt, slightly lower cut top, and a jacket left unbuttoned, and they both rushed through makeup as quickly as women can. I was lucky. I just needed to throw on boxers, shorts, t-shirt, shoes, and a knife and I was good to go.
I walked with them to that monstrous black spider building, and the Brotherhood mob quieted down when they saw us. No profanity, insults, or projectiles spoiled the cool, sunny morning, and Jessie pulled me into a ferocious kiss at the door. "Go kick some butt," I told her.
She smirked, and I saw in it that that intelligent, predator grin that had drawn me in. "I will. Love you."
"I love you too. McKenna, don't annoy them too much."
The smaller girl sneered at me and I held the door for Danny and Harper. "Weird crowd this morning," he said in passing. "They ain't bothering us."
"Funny that. Good luck."
And then the door shut and I was alone on the concrete, with a hostile mob at my back.
I don't do well alone, so I decided to take my mind off my aloneness by exploring. Denver is a big city, I might as well get a start on seeing it.
I spent most of the day wandering. Up and down the Sixteenth Street mall, through a museum of really ugly modern art, down a street of nothing but restaurants, through a beautiful garden, and over a shining white bridge that looked like a sailboat. I ate lunch at a gourmet pizza restaurant and treated myself to a lunchtime whiskey, then spent a good hour or two wandering through a massive used book store.
I like big cities. As much as I like the desolation and return to primal nature of the great outdoors, there's something thrilling about getting lost in a crowd, moving through the streets like a blood cell in a vein, drifting anonymously in a sea of humanity, wandering through a vertical forest of human ingenuity and accomplishment. I could be ANYONE and NO ONE.
No worries.
No cares.
No history, no past, no memories.
Just shoes and shadow on brightly sunlit concrete. The cool of air conditioning and a bell against a door as I pushed into a shop. The feel of a firm body against my leading arm as I shouldered through a crowd, a faceless nobody among hundreds of thousands.
In a big city, I could just BE.
My phone rang at four thirty, and I answered it as I stood in a corner store buying a bottle of water. "Hey, darling."
"We're done for the day." I couldn't tell if her voice was stressed or not. "You wanna come get us? I feel an urge to go shopping."
I walked out onto the sidewalk, twisted the cap and gulped water. "Be there in ten. You have a good day?"
"I have no idea. It was...ok?"
"That's better than bad."
"Yeah it is."
"See you soon. Love you."
"I love you."
I picked up my place and made the clock tower in seven, held the door for my woman and her friend in eight. Jessie pulled me into another fierce hug and buried her face in my neck. I could feel her heart hammering through our shirts and skins. "Good to see you," I whispered. "I missed you today."
"Missed you too, daddy," she whispered back.
I pushed her to arm's length. "How'd it go?"
"Can't talk about it in detail. Confidentiality agreements like a mile long. But I think it went ok."
McKenna slugged me in the arm. "Don't let her fool you. She did awesome."
I looked over at Harper and Danny. "How do you guys think it went?"
Danny shrugged. "I think we'll know more tomorrow."
"You guys wanna go get some pizza and a brew?" Harper asked. "I'm famished."
Jessie shook her head. "I need some retail therapy. Mike? You wanna go?"
"I'm following you."
The mall along Sixteenth looked like it had some churn, the stores in a perpetual state of moving in or moving out. Most either had the pleasantly chemical "new store" smell or were disorganized messes with "Going Out Of Business" signs. We walked down tiled corridors, under skylights, past storefronts and restaurants and huge banks of windows, in and out of thick crowds as Jessie led us from one store to another. Afternoon faded to evening as the women pulled me along to "just one more store" and I held purses and phones and jackets while they tried on clothing or shoes.
I had LTE, I couldn't be bored.
And it was nice seeing Jessie happy again. She seemed to be working out her stress with long strides and fast pace, the nervous energy bleeding off as she burned up tile floors and asphalt streets.
"One more, that cowboy looking store, and then let's go to dinner. That brewery looks amazing." Jessie stared down the street we'd already walked like four times.
I sighed. What was one more store?
The business was at the base of a huge brick tower, and the lights were bright and soft and inviting as we walked in. They seemed to cater to city-slickers, though Billy Crystal was nowhere to be seen. Rough leather jackets, cowboy hats, hardy flannel shirts, tough canvas work pants, home décor with a western or woodsy motif - everything the store stocked seemed designed to cater to suburban men who liked to pretend riding the lawnmower was the same as riding out to run miles of fence.
But I wasn't going to complain. It made Jessie happy. And so I wandered rack to rack while the girls tried on boots, and I tried to visualize myself wearing this shit at a house in the Colorado countryside. It was a pleasant image.
Warning bells cranked to full Chinese gong band in my head as I passed a mirror, and my heart rate jacked up. Something was wrong. I'd caught something in my periphery that didn't belong here.
Hand in my pocket, finger through the ring of my knife, I walked around a rack with forced nonchalance.
A small woman bent over a box of deerstalker hats. Glossy black hair streamed down her back, cascaded over her left side as she knelt.
I knew her.
I could never forget her.
But still, it couldn't be her. In this massive country with three hundred and fifty million people, she couldn't be here right now. The odds were impossible.
The cane in her hand confirmed it.
Dammit.
"Tori?"
Her head cranked around at warp speed, and it WAS her. She'd added a few pounds in the last few years - exercising is difficult when a high-velocity chunk of lead destroys your thigh - and a few lines to her face, but she was still Tori. Gorgeous bright eyes, brilliant teeth in a broad smile, light brown skin, and that thick soft waterfall of hair black like oil.
I hadn't seen her since she moved out of the now-sold row of townhouses I'd owned a lifetime ago. The last thing she'd said to me was "We needed each other, Gary. But I never loved you."
The last thing I'd said to her was "I love YOU. And I always will."
Staring at each other across a few feet of empty carpet, I could still hear the zipper on her duffel, and the beep of the moving truck outside her back door.
"Hey, neighbor," I said. Killing had been easier than saying those words. Dying had been easier.
"Hey, Gary."
Dammit, even her voice was still the same. I could feel my breathing picking up, like a panic attack. "Um, fancy meeting you here. What are the odds? How have you been?"
She reached out and I shook her hand. Warm. Dry. Muscle under the skin. Familiar. Tori. I could see the way her fingers whitened on bedsheets, feel her pulse as I gripped her wrists together behind her back, see those delicate digits wrapped around the handle of a gun.
"Good. You?"
"I'm good. On a months vacation between jobs. Here with Jessie for her business."
"Jessie?"
"That woman I met in Milwaukee."
"Ah."
"So what do you do? Do you live in Denver?"
A shake of her head sent that beautiful mane of hair swinging. "No, I live in Vail. I was up here to get some parts for a furnace, decided to treat myself to some shopping."
"Hey Gary, who - " Jessie entered my world again. She stopped mid-sentence and I looked over to see her sort of stagger in place as she saw me holding Tori's hand. Stormclouds of rage and pain crossed her face, then blew away. "Who is this?"
"Jessie, this is Tori. Used to be my neighbor, back in Minneapolis. Tori, this is Jessie. She's... Mine. And that's McKenna, a friend of ours."
