After Hours (InterMix)(87)

“Hello?”

“I dunno how to text.”

“Oh. Well, your fingers are probably too big for it, anyway. But I shouldn’t have gone all psycho on you before.”

“I’m trained in dealing with psychos,” he said dryly, calling me on my faux pas.

“Thanks, I guess. For what you did.”

“Sorry you couldn’t have done the job yourself. The world’s shitty that way.”

I sighed, the last of my anger escaping with the breath. “I hope you appreciate how much power you enjoy, just being . . . you know.”

“A huge *.”

“A built one, anyhow.”

“Not like it’s an accident. I don’t lift weights to look good, mowing the lawn with my shirt off.”

“True.” A beagle could bark all it wanted, trying to sound tough. A Doberman could send a far more credible message just standing there, silent.

And there I went, animalizing Kelly yet again.

“I’ll let you know how I manage, fixing your car.”

“Thank you, Kelly.”

“Not a problem.”

“Uh, good night. See you when I see you, I guess.”

“Night.”

I flipped my phone closed, feeling deflated. But deflated in a good way, like I’d been pumped full of something noxious, then lanced. Now I was just limp, anger all drained away. I wasn’t too worried about Amber. This was merely the latest in twenty-plus years’ worth of fights. We’d patch it up, same as we always did.

The nagging hole that had opened in my heart might not heal over quite so quickly. Like Kelly had his finger in there, wriggling it around now and then so it never quite closed up, like the tear in Amber’s couch. I didn’t want to have a crush on him, but I’d known I would, if the sex was good, if our connection offered any hint that it might extend deeper than just the physical. Both of those things had come to pass. This attachment wasn’t a surprise, but it unnerved me all the same.

I changed into my Red Wings shirt and got under the covers. The pillow I hugged as I fell asleep was cool and squishy and comforting, but it wasn’t what I wanted to cling to.

I wanted warm and hard and solid.

I wanted Kelly.

***

I was at a loose end the next day, not having my car. There was a ready list of distractions in the form of errands I’d planned to run, but now no way to run them. It made it far tougher to keep my head out of the gloom left by yesterday’s incident. I nearly pined for restraint training.

I puttered and did laundry, called my mom for the first time in months. I didn’t reach her, but I left a message saying I hoped she was doing well, that my new job was challenging but good, give me a ring some time, let me know what she was up to. She didn’t call back.

Amber didn’t call, either—not for more fighting or for a truce, but happily not for any fresh crises, either.

To my chagrin, the absent call that haunted me most was Kelly’s. Until about four in the afternoon, I had my hopes up that he’d ring to tell me my car was fixed. Maybe instead of dropping it off, he’d pick me up for dinner at the bar and we’d patch over our little spat with a bit of vigorous, no-strings screwing.

But nothing. A nothingness that echoed with his voice and breath and moans and had dirty flashbacks strobing through my head. Sexual schizophrenia.

And in the late afternoon, I did a bad thing.

I drank two beers and tipsy impulse got the better of me, and I went places on the Internet I shouldn’t have. It took a couple of hours, but I found a site with Hamtramck’s public records going back to the sixties.

I searched for James Mahoney, and I found out exactly what Kelly’s biological father had done to get put away.

Vet Earns Maximum Sentence for Assaulting Pregnant Girlfriend, the scanned headline read.

Pregnant. My insides filled with ice.

And there was his grainy photo, probably the same one Kelly had stared at on library microfiche when he’d been a teenager. James Mahoney looked sad in the picture, and tired. A lot older than twenty-six, the age cited in the article. There was a resemblance to Kelly, in the brows and jaw. Forty-five years he’d been sentenced for aggravated assault, for beating Kelly’s mom unconscious and kicking her in the stomach.

Jesus. Not even born yet and Kelly was getting waled on by a father figure.

He hadn’t known she was pregnant, the article said, and my heart broke for him. Just back from the war, probably mind-f*cked with PTSD or struggling with alcohol or uppers like so many of those guys had. And still did.