A Little Bit of Trouble (3 page)

     “You married her.”

     “I love her, and I love Evelyn. I’m just praying she doesn’t grow up to be as devious and cunning and as damn beautiful as her mother… I’ll never have a moment’s peace.”

     I give him a wry smile, “Why not have another? A little brother to protect her.”
His eyes light up, shit. Maya’s going to kill me. I’m only joking. I don’t say this though as he’s already texting… what a fucking sap. “You’re a strange man James.”

     “
Whatever.” We share a moment of silence, the only noise that can be heard is the babbling and gurgling noises coming from the kid. Then he suddenly blurts, “I need to get Maya back.”

     “What?” They have no way split up again have they? “What do you mean?”

     “I mean revenge!” he throws his hands up in the air and lets them drop onto his thighs. “I said something… I can’t remember what it was. It annoyed her… so she hid all of my socks. Every single fucking pair. I had to go to work with no socks on.” Oh, the horror. “And then she handcuffed me to the bed and put a spider on my chest for calling her a crazy bitch!” Snort. “She’s going too far. It’s driving me mad. I have to sleep with one eye open.”

     “If you retaliate, she’ll only bite back.” Which is true, and the ideas that go through her devious mind frighten even me. “And it will be worse.”

     “I don’t know,” he sighs and we both watch Evelyn start chewing on the corner of her play mat, then she rolls and traps herself inside. James panics and jumps up, even though she’s laughing like it’s the funniest thing ever, he helps her out.

     “Put
cling wrap in the middle of the hall, right after the desk so when she drops her keys on the desk she’ll turn around and walk straight into it,” I suggest, it’s not original but it’s funny. “And film it.” Because I have to see it.

     He grins devilishly and nods eagerly. Then his face falls and he looks down, “Are you…? (Pause) It doesn’t matter.”

     Wait, you can’t tease me like that! “What? Now you have to tell me.”

     “Honestly, it’s not important.”

     The look he gives me is pleading, he’s begging me not to ask. I don’t.
It’s then I notice two large, full garbage bags stood in the corner. “What’s that?”

     James looks, blinks and curses under his breath. “Shit. I completely forgot. I was supposed to take these down to Carey’s store an hour ago.”

     “Okay. Take them now.” He looks at me and attempts to do a pleading smile. Fucking idiot looks constipated. “No.”

     “Please.”

     With a shake of the head I say firmly, “Nope.”

     “Come on
Bro.”

     “Fine,” I relent
like I always pissing do. “Not like I actually have anything to do. Write down the address.” Who you gonna call? Call Lucas! “What’s in them anyway?”

     “All of Maya’s unworn clothes from pregnancy, all but three tops have the tags on them. She has a fucking pr
oblem.”

      “Right, I’ll s
et off then. I’ll take those with me. Good luck with the cling wrap.” I pick up my niece and pretend to bite her chubby neck, she giggles and bites me back, right on my lip. It fucking hurts. She then gives me the biggest smile and opens her mouth for me to kiss… definitely her mother’s daughter. A kid that loves freedom, loves kisses, loves biting and beating things over the head and laughs at anything that is even slightly funny. Poor, poor James.

   
“Oh and James,” I smirk as I place her back on the ground. “If you really want to get her back, you could always get her pregnant again. She left you alone last time.”

     He flips me off as I laugh myself out of their home, taking the bags with me.
So, I now have to go to a place called, Carey’s clothing. Okay. Never heard of it.

Lustful Lucas

    Whilst climbing out of my car the sky starts to spit. That’s just brilliant. I head along the damaged sidewalk and stop outside the flaky, white door to Carey’s store. It really isn’t much to look at, I’m sure I’ve seen it before, although I tend to avoid this part of the city. Gripping the handle firmly, I open said door and I’m greeted by the smell of clean linen and bleach. The owner or cleaner has issues with bleach. It’s burning my nose, the scent is that strong.

     Shifting the bags over to my right hand I step inside and shut the door behind me. The little bell above it rings annoyingly.

     “Can I help you?” comes a female voice from across the store. I head over and stop when I get to the desk. Then I look up. Fuck. “I said can I help you?”

     “I brought these,” I say blankly and place the bags on the counter. She narrows her eyes on me, her large, sexy
, brown eyes shadowed by a thick brown sweeping fringe. My mouth feels suddenly dry. I can only see her from the waist up due to the counter separating us. She starts going through the bags, my eyes zoom in on her waist and holy fuck… tits.

     “These still have the
price tags on.” Let’s pretend that tone isn’t accusatory.

     “Yeah, my sister in law didn’t use them through her pregnancy,” I clear my dry throat. She places the bags on the floor and bends right over
them to dig through and start placing things on the counter behind her. I watch her back arch and her legs open slightly. Blood rushes straight to my… heads. What an ass… her real ass I mean, not the insult.

     What am I thirteen? Get a hold of yourself Lucas! She’s just another female… a really fucking hot and sexy female with tits, hips and an ass to match. Even her face matches her body in beauty.

     I hate it when you notice a great body, look up and the face is something your
mother would put over a fireplace to keep you from treading near.

     “I said you don’t recognize me do you?” shit, she was talking? I was too busy staring at her chest and neck, such a long, perfect neck. I blink a few times and meet her chocolate brown eyes, they hold little flecks of honey colors around the pupil. “Hello?” She waves her hand in front of my face, an even deeper scowl on her face. Her eyes now nothing but tiny slits.

     “I was just thinking, give me a chance will you woman?” I grin at her, the grin Maya and Marie say reeks of sex. Whatever the fuck that means. “No, I apologize but I don’t.”

     “You know my cousin.” I do? “Dana.” Ah fuck. “You still see her?”

     I shake my head, “Not since she entered moldy rehab.”

     She flips her shoulder length brown hair back and quirks a brow at me, “She what?”

     “Nothing. Are you doing anything later?” Oh… fuck! Why the hell did I say that?

     “Wow, you really don’t remember me do you? Because if you did, you wouldn’t be asking me out.” She says, actually, it’s more of a snarl. I wrack my brain trying to find her in my memories, yeah she looks vaguely familiar but she never hung around with us I don’t think. “Christ, you’re still as big of an idiot as you were then. Don’t worry I don’t expect
you
to remember me!”

     “What’s that supposed to mean?” why’s she being so bitchy.
Can’t she understand the only things running through my mind right now are, fuck, shit, fuck and boobs? “What’s your name?”

     “It’s Loryn Carey… as in Scary Carey,” what… the… fuck. “Yeah. Remember me now?” Gulp. Uh-huh. “Yeah, well thanks for the clothes from your sister.” Actually it’s sister In-law. “Now go away.”

     Well… that went well. “Come on Sc… Loryn,” yep, she noticed my slip up
, I can tell this by the now even deeper scowl on her face. Shit.

     How can this be Dana’s cousin? She was a little, buck toothed kid with bad head lice and an alcoholic for a mom who ran… this store. As if I didn’t recognize this store, although I was certain I felt it to be familiar. We used to toilet paper it and egg it on the weekends during our junior year of High School, although the door used to be yellow not white and the windows had a huge sign on them in a clear gray, whereas now, they’re just clear glass. The sign reading:
Carey’s Clothing
is above the windows. “I’m sorry about High School.”

     “I’d accept your apology if we shared the same high school which we didn’t,” She’s two or three years younger than me, I think, so by the time she started I’d graduated. Okay, so Dana and Crystal used to be mean to her. How can this be her? Fucking Scary Carey? She’s fucking gorgeous! “Bye, bye.”

     Dana was a real bitch to her, used to call her and her mother an embarrassment to their family. Look how the tables have turned, talk about a bad dose of karma. “I’m sorry Loryn. That was years ago. I was a dick in High School!”

     “Yep, you were. Bye, bye.” What the hell? I still don’t really remember her that well. I
do remember something… oh shit… Crystal tipped a beer over her head at a party once, I remember laughing, but I was pretty toasted. Not that being drunk is an excuse to be a dick. “Why aren’t you leaving?”

     “What time do you finish?”

     “Quarter past never,” she flutters her thick long eye lashes and smirks angrily. “Bye, bye.”

     “Fine, fine, I get it
. I am sorry though. Even though I never did anything to you directly I shouldn’t have let anyone else either,” I give her an honest smile. My eyes catch the broken shelf behind the counter. “That needs fixing.”

    
She follows the direction in which my eyes are looking and shrugs, “Everything needs fixing in here.” I can’t help but watch her lips as she talks, so pouty and full. She must have had braces at some point because her teeth are rather straight in comparison to how I remember them being. “You can come back and collect your percentage of the profits…”

      “They’re a donation. Keep the profits…”

      “That’s not how it’s done here. We don’t take charity.” She sounds just like me, I can finally see how infuriating it is… not that I give a fuck.

      “My sister in law is loaded, she won’t miss it. Trust me.” How can I see her again? To make it up to her for being such a dick
in the past.

Yeah, let’s pretend that’s the reason you want to see her again.

     “See you later!” I call as I turn to leave, making sure to burn her very image onto my mind. My cock is fucking killing me, it’s going to have a zipper imprint on it at this rate. I need a shower. A cold one.

   
I leave her open mouthed… groan… and shocked, possibly annoyed and a little pissed off. Have you ever met someone for even the briefest amount of time and for some reason there’s a pounding thought in your… ‘heads’… that you just have to get to know them? Well, fuck, because this is happening to me and I don’t like it one bit.

    
There’s a reason people say a dick has a head… it does.

     It tends to be the ruling head more often than I’d like too.

   
So many hours later, my place is empty, I spent my afternoon shopping for movies and games and other shit to pass the time. When I finally made it home my kitchen was clean and tidy. My apartment didn’t look like it had even hosted an event as hectic as whatever the fuck kind of event they hosted. Yet even though my entire afternoon has flitted by faster than expected my mind has been full of unshakeable thoughts of a certain fucking woman.

     How can she be Scary Carey? It’s stupid. They look nothing alike.

I turn in bed.

     Maybe she had a lot of surgery, nah, she doesn’t look fake at all. There’s a reason she was called Scary Carey. From what I can remember, her mom was an alcoholic and really negligent which made Scary Carey really withdrawn and quiet. The way she looked at you would freak you out, like she wanted to kill you. Or so I heard…

     I think she
got the nickname because of the way she looked, I don’t really remember but what I do recall in my fucked up memory is her always having her hair over her face and her eyes always seemed wide and frightened. This is probably where she got the nickname from. I would ask but I don’t think she’d appreciate that much.

I turn again. Sigh.

     It’s all really dramatic bullshit now and of course I feel like crap. She was a quiet and nice girl. I remember she loaned me a pencil once during a football game, she was sat with Dana on one of the rare occasions Dana was kind to her. I don’t think I ever gave it back.

I turn again. Huff.

     It’s just a little bit of lust. It will pass. I’ll have forgotten about her by next week. I’m hungry. I’m also horny. I haven’t been this horny since the night I… let’s not think about that. Shit. Such a creep, I’m such a god damn creep! Crystal will be flipping me off from wherever she’s perched, I guarantee it.

  
Man I miss her. I miss her soft skin and nibbling on her thin upper lip, I miss the way she always smelled of green apples, because of that stupid fucking shampoo she insisted on using. I even miss the stench of her cigarettes, she used to enjoy a smoke on occasion. She quit whilst pregnant with Annie and started smoking casually until Amelia and then started again after she had her.

     I wish I’d never moaned about that smell. It’s so stupid and trivial now.
Of course, my intentions were good, I didn’t want her to die of cancer. I remember her response, “I enjoy it. You only live once.”

     “And what a life that will be, coughin
g and wheezing your way through, with that foul lingering scent all over you.”

     She just shrugged me off, how right she was. Not abou
t smoking, but about enjoying life. You do only live once, and sometimes that once is cut far too short.

I’m getting morbid again. I should really try to sleep. I turn again.

     I don’t understand why she feels so much animosity towards me. Loryn I mean… I never bullied her or said anything bad to her at all. Sure I didn’t stop the others but I hardly joined in with more than a slight laugh and chuckle. She can’t honestly blame me for the actions of others?

I really need to sleep now, this is ridiculous.

     Morning comes, I’m so bored. With no Amelia I have nothing to focus on. I have no work to do for the next three days. The movies and Xbox games I purchased yesterday aren’t calling to me. Christ my life is dull. What can I do?

     As if by magic my
cell rings, I answer without looking at the screen… yet again. “Sup?”

     “It’s Marie,”
okay, it’s not like her to be up this early. “Can you do me a favor?”

     Who you gonna call? “Depends on what it is.”

    
“Come pick me up,” Call Lucas!

     “Where’s your car?”

     “I kind of maybe… got into a little accident last night. Involving a certain somebodies Wife and a crowbar.” Fuck. “Yeah, my thoughts exactly.” I must have said that out loud. “I’m at the cop Precinct.”

     “Why are you at the
Precinct? Please don’t tell me you got arrested!”

     “No, but I did use pepper spray on the bitch and break her nose. That last part was by accident though.” Oh Jesus. “Yeah, my thought’s exactly.”

     “Now I know I didn’t say that out loud.”

     “No but your silence definitely spoke volumes. So, can you come pick me up?”

     I exit my apartment fully clothed, with all of my crap shoved into my pockets. “Already in the elevator babe. I’ll be there soon.”

     “Thanks Lucas.”

     “No problem. Why didn’t you call Maya?”

     “She’ll go mad at me. I swear I didn’t know he was married! He never had a ring, no photos in his apartment, nothing!” Yeah, Marie may be a bit of a whore but she never messes with another girl’s man. Or so she’s said. “I’ve got to go. See you soon.”

     The line disconnects, I place my cell in the cup holder
attached to the console, before running my fingers through my hair and then I rub my jaw. I need a shave, my shadow is turning into a beard. Okay, focus Lucas. Focus.

     Go get Marie, find out what the hell happened, grab some breakfast and take her to pick up a loan car or to ‘borrow’ another from Maya. Call Sylvia and ask her how Amelia was last night. Then go home and twiddle my thumbs until school finishes or until my family decide to give my daughter back to me. Which at this rate will be… never.