Falling in Love

Falling in Love

Dusty Miller

Copyright 2014 Dusty Miller and Long
Cool One Books

Design: J. Thornton

ISBN 978-1-927957-31-8

The following is a work of fiction. Any
resemblance to any person living or deceased, or to any places or
events, is purely coincidental. Names, places, settings, characters
and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination. The
author’s moral right has been asserted.

This ebook is licensed for your
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away to other people. If you would like to share this book with
another person, please purchase an additional copy for each
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the hard work of this author.

Table of Contents

Breakdown

Selena’s Escape

The Logic of Love

Time and Place

Poker Night

Throwing
Chocolate

About Dusty Miller

Breakdown

Scene One

“
Mom! My battery is
dying.”

The high shriek of the air wrench cut
off her mother’s response.

Voop-voop. Voop.

Mom had the baby, her voice shrill and
judgmental.

“
I’m sorry, I really am.
I’ll make it up to you. I gotta go. Byeee!”

Mallory shut the phone off and stuck
it securely back in the side pocket of her purse, black leather,
very slim, and a good bargain.

It was a knock-off of a popular
designer brand, of course, a bit of a contradiction in terms—it was
a popular exclusive. Mom would just have to deal with Ember for a
little longer.

A sense of humour might help at a time
like this, but this was no laughing matter.

The van had blown a something or
other. Mallory had the auto club come and tow the
vehicle.

There was some discussion as to what
they should do. The tow truck driver winched it on the end of a
cable onto the tilted bed of the wrecking truck as Mallory examined
her options.

She could have it towed to the parking
lot of her apartment building.

She could have it towed to Mom and
Stan’s place, where it would probably sit for a while, and where it
would be the subject of much contention.

She could have it towed to the
junkyard.

She could have it towed to
the
nearest
junkyard.

She could have it towed to the nearest
garage.

After that she had run out of
ideas.

She couldn’t just leave it
there, and she couldn’t just leave it
here
either.

The truth was the mother of one little
girl, barely out of diapers and starting to ask questions now,
needed that van.

Old Betsy, she called it.

She should have known better. The
sounds of impact hammers, and the clink of wrenches on metal, a
motor idling, the men’s voices on the other side of a glass
partition brought that home.

The van was thirteen years old. And
yet it seemed like such a good idea, on this fine spring Saturday
morn, to go visit her friend Kate, who lived in a small village,
just a few short miles down that road.

She bit her lip, leaning forward over
crossed legs, quite good legs she thought, nicely shiny and shod in
yet another set of popular knock-offs, spike-heeled shoes with
sharp pointy toes and with her charcoal plaid dress slightly over
the knee.

Kate and Mallory had enjoyed having
tea together immensely. It really had been too long, but Kate’s
boys were getting older now and Mallory had been so busy these last
couple of years, what with Ed running off. Raising her daughter,
Ember, kept her hopping. Her mother, and Stan, who was ailing
pretty bad now, all conspired to keep her busy. It was easy enough,
looking back, to sort of lose touch with old friends.

Looking around, a feeling of
desolation settled over her.

Betsy was up on the lift, and two men
were looking around under the engine as steaming green stuff
dripped out.

Mallory sighed deeply and
prayed.

Oh, God, let it be something simple.
Something cheap.

She had never really thought of it
before, but now, in her recently-acquired role as a supply-chain
specialist for Murphy’s Inc., Mallory prayed that whatever it was,
it was in stock and in the catalogue, and the warehouse, and who
knows, hopefully they might even have one right here in the
store.

She had thought she was settling in
for a long wait. The answers came all too quickly.

***

“
I’m sorry ma’am. I’m
afraid I have some bad news for you.”

“
Oh—”

“
Yeah.” Skip was what it
said on the embroidered red and white patch on his shirt
pocket.

Skip.

Skip, what kind of a name
is Skip, she wondered wildly, trying to remain focused on what he
was trying to tell her. Skip was humongous, like a young Jean
Claude van
Dammit
or whatever that Belgian, the martial-arts actor was
named.

“…
anyways, that’s about
three hundred dollars, including the labour and we can get them to
deliver it right after lunch. I need to call that in right away.
So, if that’s all right with you?”

“
Ah…” She swallowed,
unable to think what to do. “Ah.”

Three hundred dollars.

Did she have that? Certainly not in
her purse, and probably not in her bank account. Her neighbour
Sharon still owed her forty dollars, that was from three weeks ago
and it looked like it might be a while yet.

She might still have that much left on
her credit card. All the other cards were maxed out.

Skip stood there patiently waiting, in
some state of compassion, as he could see the lady wasn’t having
the best day so far. He was carefully trying to ignore what she
looked like, and just to try and think of her as any other person.
He wasn’t having much luck, but he tried.

“
I…suppose. What kind of a
name is Skip, anyway?” He towered over her, and a warm sense of
confidence, the real kind, the quiet kind, just sort of radiated
from him.

Those big brown eyes were really
something and he had a nice chin too.

He grinned.

“
Well. I don’t know.” He
looked down at the clipboard. “What’s your name, again?”

“
Mallory.”

His eyebrows rose.

“
Yeah—yeah, that’s right.
You sure got me beat. Oh, I don’t know. It’s just the name my
mother gave me. So, what we’ll do is order that part right away and
we’ll get her back up on the lift. The vehicle will, hopefully, be
ready by three or three-thirty. Okay?”

He proffered the clip board and a pen
and showed her where to sign.

“
Oh, God.” She exhaled
strongly, shaking her head and giving him a look.

“
It’s okay, ma’am, it
happens to us all.”

Her eye slid along the row of symbols
plastered on the glass of the door, the coats-of-arms of all the
big credit cards emblazoned there for all to see.

Abandon hope, all ye who
enter here.

The whine of the lift coming down and
the thoughts of a three-hour ordeal, maybe worse, barely faded as
she watched him walk over to the counter and go behind
it.

She only knew one thing for sure about
Skip, and that was that he had a remarkably fine ass. It really
wasn’t much to go on, but the decision was made.

This was no time for such thoughts.
Hopefully the phone charger was in the van. She thought it might
be.

Skip fired it up and took it out of
the building.

***

There was a trail of liquid over to
where the vehicle was parked and a strong, sickly sweet smell still
inside Betsy as she climbed in and began looking for the cord for
the charger.

“
Shit.”

No charger.

It was all so predictable, after the
perfect morning. Mallory thought about having a breakdown herself.
What made Betsy so special?

***

Skip left the door up after bringing
in the metallic green Lexus, which needed tires all around. They’d
do the thirty-point check and see if they could find anything—it
was good for sales after all, but he didn’t think they’d find
much.

The blonde girl was inside her van. He
could see her head down between the front seats through the dusty
rear glass.

“
Wow.”

Dave, his balding sidekick and a
pretty good wrench in his own right, chuckled over by the bench
rear work bench

“
I admire its
purity.”

Skip snorted. Then he turned and gave
Dave a grin.

“
Yeah!” That was exactly
right.

“
Well, I wouldn’t worry
too much about it, if I were you.”

Skip seemed to sag a bit, still
staring at the back of her head. Oh, yeah. The Lexus.

Back to work.

He had the thing up on the rack and
the left front wheel off. Right about then Mallory got out of her
van and came back.

Dave was head down inside the engine
of another job, and didn’t see her coming. He might well have
gotten there first.

“
Yes?”

She gave an exaggerated
sigh.

“
Is there somewhere I
could charge up my cell phone?”

His mouth opened. He wasn’t all that
sure, really, but it wouldn’t hurt to look either.

It turned out they did.

He had her behind the counter, where
there was a drawer, and a jumble of stuff that he sort of
remembered putting in there for one reason or another, i.e.,
essentially handy but mostly useless, and when he took the phone
from fingers that seemed a bit warm and damp, the jack slid right
in.

One other waiting customer
ignored them, a middle aged woman who seemed immersed in a three
year-old copy of
Chatelaine.

Their eyes met, and he smiled although
she looked deadly serious. Of course, he was forgetting about her
problems, whereas for him, it was just a pretty good day at work.
So far. It might get better, it might get really slow or something.
You never knew.

“
There. I don’t know how
long that will take…Mallory.”

A faint trace of pink began to blossom
on her cheekbones, and she looked away—she looked down, and then
away, and it seemed they were having an awkward moment.

As she backed away slightly, looking
for the way out again, he glanced at his watch. He was trying to be
helpful.

“
Look, there’s a little
lunch-bar just down the street, if that might help to kill some
time.”

He looked up to see her chin lift. Her
lips parted and her eyes were very clear and still.

“
Okay.”

She had turned back to face him again,
with her hands folded across her middle, holding the black
hand-bag, very trim and chic in her vest and white blouse. The
pleated skirt made her look very young and vibrant.

Wait a minute…? What did I just say
there…? Skip froze up on those thoughts.

She had her hip up against the
countertop and she was sort of waiting.