Pink Shades of Words: Walk 2016 (16 page)

With her motherfucking shoe.

The crying came a minute later, accompanied by hysterical accusations of me leading her along to think we were heading towards marriage and a future together.  I knew exactly where that idea had come from the second she screamed it at me in a rage.

Fucking crazy talk.  I told her there was only one Mrs. Blackstone alive in my family, and that was my recently widowed mother, the person responsible for planting such a ridiculous notion into her head.  She’d told me to fuck off before storming out my door, calling me every name in the book as she cat-walked her way toward the elevators.  The neighbors would’ve had to have been dead in order to miss her not-so-subtle show.

God.

My phone buzzed and I was afraid to look to see who was messaging me.  I wasn’t up for discussing Janice with Mom right now, or anytime for that matter.

James.  I guessed what he would say before I even started reading because he only lived two floors down from me.  She hadn’t had far to travel.

J: Hey man Jan is here crying u broke up w/her.  That true?

I shook my head as my fingers flew.

C: Yeah.

J: So...u don’t care she’s here?

The poor bastard was playing with deadly fire.  Like soak a huge pile of dry leaves with gasoline and blast it with a blowtorch.

C: Nope.  Thx for checking w/me first but we are over.

J: Ok man.

Christ, James was gonna go there with Janice.

C: Hey James?

J: Yeah.

C: Be careful.  Don’t die tonight.  Jan is a goddamn nympho if u didn’t know already.

J: Yeah I got that impression when she showed up here and said she wanted 2 suck my cock. I won’t die u fool.  Talk later-

C: Safe sex, James and wrap that shit up tight.

J: Yep.

C: Suggest u only go one night.  She’s a clinger.

J:

I went to get a Sam Adams out of the fridge.  What a cluster of a night.  Did it make me a horrible person to be worrying more about what was happening to my friend than my ex-girlfriend right now?  James Blakney was in for a night of crazy sex with an even crazier Janice.  I couldn’t help but feel grateful for dodging an immediate bullet with her, but knew this shit couldn’t possibly end well for me, or for James.  But I had to remind myself he was a big boy and he had been warned.  He’d find out exactly what Janice was like soon enough.

I needed to put in an order to have my locks changed.  I quickly sent a text to my PA Victoria to set that up.  She’d take care of it tomorrow.

A shower was calling my name.  Burning hot with lots of Dial soap—the hardcore yellow stuff that just about took your skin away with the dirt.

I flipped on the light to my bathroom and flinched at the sight of what greeted me.

“Jesus. Christ.”

Janice had been upstairs trashing my bathroom while I thought she was getting dressed to leave.  FUCKING BASTARD was scrawled on the mirror in her red lipstick.  She’d smeared shampoo, toothpaste, and God knows what else, everywhere from the walls to the countertops to the floor.  Towels had been shoved into the toilet.  The contents of the drawers had been dumped out and thrown around.  Utter mayhem and destruction.  I checked the cupboards but the stuff there appeared untouched, somehow miraculously escaping The Wrath of Janice.  I was almost expecting a severed horse head or a dead bunny rabbit to be behind the doors when I opened them to check.  The whole thing was straight out of
Fatal Attraction
and creepy as fuck.

I shut off the light and headed for the guest room to take my shower, draining my beer as I went.  I felt sorry for Ann having to clean it all up tomorrow, but the mess was too much for me to deal with right now.  I’d be sure to thank Ann with a paid extra day off during the week for her trouble.  I felt my phone vibrate in my pocket.

Oh goody, a picture.  From Janice.  Of her sucking on James’s cock no less.  She even added a message to go along with it. 
You will be so sorry you ever fucked with me Caleb Blackstone.

I was already sorry.  And Janice was seriously unhinged.

I did three things before powering off my phone for the night.  Deleted the photo.  Blocked Janice’s number.  Texted James to tell him she was posting pics of his dick in her mouth.  His father, a judge for the First Circuit Court of Appeals, wouldn’t be too keen about it should the picture get leaked.  Well, four things.  I went back for another beer and downed it before going to the guest room for my long overdue shower.

As the too-hot water poured over my skin I made a promise to myself to stay away from women for a while.  Dating certainly wasn’t doing me much good and I’d had it with all of the crazy females who only wanted to use me for open access to my money, or trap me into marrying them.

Where were the normal women of the world?

Were they only a myth?

I remembered something Dad had said to me before he’d died.  “When you find whatever it is that makes you happy, Caleb, hold on to it with everything you’ve got.  Your heart will let you know.”

I wanted to believe what Dad had told me was true, but the fact of the matter was my heart hadn’t told me a thing in a very long time.

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T
WO

~BROOKE~

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B
lackstone Island, Massachusetts

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L
iving on an island had its perks, but the hour-long commute on the ferry into Boston wasn’t one of them.  There were other reasons for being here though.  Good reasons, I reminded myself as I pulled my coat a little tighter against the autumn chill breezing over the water.

My nan needed me now and there wasn’t anything I wouldn’t do for the woman who’d taken me in at fifteen after Mum and Dad were killed.  I don’t really remember a great deal about when I first came to live on the island with Nan.  I must have blocked it out due to the terrible shock over what had happened to my parents, and being so suddenly uprooted.  The high-end touristy retreat called Blackstone Island couldn’t be more dissimilar from the place I’d previously called home.  From the suburbs of London to a swath of colonial America separated from the mainland by Massachusetts Bay.  Well, at least the language was the same.

Sort of.

“Oh, you have an accent.” 
No, you’re the ones with the accent.

“You’re from Australia, right?” 
Wrong hemisphere.

“Hey Brooke, say something in your English accent for me.” 
Something.

I had heard every joke and had been asked nearly every question imaginable, but it didn’t bother me.  Not really.  I knew people were merely curious about how I’d come to be here and tried to be friendly.

In time I came out of my shock.  I went on to finish what they called high school here on the island, and then later attended university at Suffolk where I earned my degree in interior design.  I didn’t realize it then but those were the happy times.

Then I met someone and made a terrible mistake, and had to leave Nan on the island while I lived far away in Los Angeles.  I suffered through my terrible mistake for a year and a half until the day came that I didn’t have to endure the suffering anymore.  Not physically at least.  The sorrow was still with me and probably always would be, but I was determined to keep moving forward in a positive way.  And I’d made a promise to myself not to let the bad parts of my past hurt me anymore.  It was a goal and I planned to stick to it.

Five months ago I left L.A. and came back to Boston, and then went about the process of getting my life back.  Nan was still in her darling cottage on Blackstone Island where she had come to live all the way from England as a young bride.  Many a time I’ve heard the locals tell the story about how my grandfather had brought home an “English girl” for a wife, as if she’d come from an alien planet.  Nan and I had our citizenship in common—both British born but called America our home.

I’d lived in the U.S. for so long now it
was
home in my mind.

“Penny for your thoughts, young lady.”

I turned toward twinkling blue eyes that regarded me kindly and smiled.  Herman was a dedicated flirt.  Since he had to be pushing seventy, and also the mayor of Blackstone Island I gave him a pass.  He was rumored to own most of the property on the island and to be worth millions.  You’d never know it though.  He lived what appeared to be a modest life in a very small house, with a really big ocean-front view—probably what constituted the millions he purportedly had—and was one of the most cheerful people I’d ever met in my life.  He always greeted me warmly and asked about Nan.  I’d wondered if he might be a little in love with my nan, actually.

“Good morning, Mayor.  What has you heading off island today?” I asked, suddenly curious.  I’d never seen him on the morning ferry to Boston before.

“County council quarterly meeting in the city.”  He looked out at the view of the shoreline and seemed pensive as he studied it.  “One of the few reasons left to get me to leave, otherwise I wouldn’t.”

“Ahh, well I don’t blame you a bit.  I’d choose the island over Boston any day.”

“Why don’t you then?” he asked quickly.

“Herman, you are the mayor so I know you are fully aware there is no thriving interior design business on Blackstone Island for which I might be employed.”

He stroked his chin thoughtfully before replying, “I’ll have to work on that one then, but you never answered my question.”

“What?”

“I offered you a penny for your thoughts, but I guess you’ve raised your rates.”  He pretended to sulk.  The man could still flirt like a champion and his handsome features hadn’t been erased by the years, either.  He must have been quite a specimen in his younger days breaking hearts all over the place.  I’d have to ask Nan about his past sometime. 

“For you, no charge.”  I nodded toward the trees rising majestically along the rock cliff and the rocky beach below as the ferry moved around the horn of the island toward the open bay.  “I was thinking about how happy I am to be back here.  I do love that view so much.”

He admired the scene along with me for a minute.  “Glad to have you back, too.  I know your grandma is thrilled.”  Was that a flicker of something I just saw pass through his deep-blue eyes?  I waited for it.  “By the way, how is your grandma doing since her surgery?”

As dependable as clockwork, dear Herman Blackstone was when it came to my nan.

“Thank you for asking.  She is recovering well, but between you and me, I don’t think she was ready to retire from Blackwater when they closed the house.  She loved her job, and now I think she’s a bit bored.”  There were other things I left unsaid because I didn’t want to offend Herman in any way.  It was his family who’d employed my grandmother for more than three decades, before abandoning the property two years ago.  Nan had been the housekeeper at the Blackwater estate for thirty-five years when it was boarded up for good and now sat empty along the western cliffs of the island.  The family didn’t come here anymore.  I’d heard it was only the father who loved it so much, but after he became ill they didn’t return again.

“A lot changed while you were away.”

“As things do,” I replied softly, sensing his sadness but not wanting to pry.

“Yes indeed, but that doesn’t mean there’s no room to improve the situation,” he said, “and remember where you’ve come from.”  Clearly he was unhappy with his family giving up on the island.

I put my hand on his arm.  “I am so sorry for your loss, Herman.  Nan told me about your brother’s passing.”  I’d heard Mr. John-William Blackstone had died of cancer not long before I returned five months ago.  “I only met him one time when Nan first took me in, but he was always a very good employer to her and she thought the world of the family.”  That was mostly true.  Nan never said a word against her, but I don’t think she held Mrs. Blackstone in the same esteem as her husband, and she’d stopped coming to the island for holidays years ago, once her children were grown.  I guess not everyone could love the rich beauty of the island in the same way.

He turned his wise eyes on me and covered my hand with his.  “I’m sorry for your loss as well, Brooke.  Your grandma told me when it happened.  She was worried sick about you, and she needed—well, I think she needed to talk to somebody about it at the time or she would have lost her mind.”

Kindness can induce an outpouring of emotions I had found.  This wasn’t the first time it had happened to me, either.  My friend Zoe’s heartfelt condolences had done the same thing when we first met up after I returned.  Same with Eduardo.  When someone showed they cared about you, and expressed it in a kind way, that very kindness held the power to bring all of those experiences and hopes and dreams of memories rushing right back up to the surface again like it had happened yesterday.  Even when I believed I’d buried it deep, my hurt was really just hovering at the surface, barely covered by the thinnest of sheets ready to blow away in the breeze.

My eyes filled with tears before I could stop them.  I gave in and let them fall.  Sometimes I was weak and couldn’t help remembering what I’d lost...and I cried.

“Oh hell, I’ve upset you—I’m so very sorry, Brooke,” he sputtered.

I could tell Herman was absolutely horrified by my outburst, the poor man.  I heard it in his voice.  Awesome!  I’d freaked out a sweet old man, and the day was barely underway.  I’d bet money he’d go straight to my nan and tell her about it the minute he returned from his meeting in the city.  Then she would be worried.  And she didn’t need to be worrying about me right now as she healed from her knee replacement.  I was fine.  And nothing would change the past no matter what people said or didn’t say to me.  The whole experience of grief was rather an unending cycle, and so damn exhausting, I just wanted off the ride at this point.

I shook my head and stared down at the decking below my feet.  “It’s okay, please.  This happens to me sometimes and I—do this—” I used my knuckle to brush away a tear and took in a slow, deep breath to help bring my emotions back down to a functional level.  “I’ll be fine.  Sorry, Herman.”