Puppet On A String (21 page)

      
“And…?”

      
“I threw him out.”

      
“Without any further explanation?”

      
“Yes, without any further explanation. I knew what I needed to know. I was furious, more pissed off than when I stormed into Clive’s office. So, I threw him out. I made him leave…I had to…” She made the last sad phrases through gulping breaths, a rush of painful sobs about to overtake her.

      
Dr. Ramsey sat back and waited for
Shelby
’s tears to subside and for her to calm.

      
Shelby
blew her nose in a Kleenex and dabbed her eyes.

      
“And now you regret throwing him out?”

      
“Regret it?” She looked at the doctor doubtfully, then her tears began again. “Maybe I do.”

      
“Has he called you since you ‘threw him out’?” the doctor asked gently.

      
“Snuff…A few times. He’s left messages because I won’t talk to him.”

      
“And have you seen him?”

      
“No.”

      
“Not even in the coffeehouse?”

      
“Well, once. But only from behind the counter. Maureen covered for me. Told him exactly what I wanted her to say. That I wasn’t going to see him. She said he was angry and sad and, well, spitting nails angry.”

      
“You threw him out just before calling me. Am I right?”

      
“Yes.”

      
“
Shelby
, I think you might need to go to him for the explanation. You never gave him the opportunity to tell his side of the story, and I think that’s what’s troubling you now. You wonder if you made the wrong decision about him, came to the wrong conclusions. Maybe he was as duped by Clive Darcy as you were.”

      
“No, please…”

      
“People don’t fit neatly into good and evil, black and white. There are lots of shades of grey. Look at yourself.”

      
Shelby
gazed up at the ceiling, sheepishly biting her lip. “Yeah, look at me...” Then she looked back at the doctor and tried to smile. She felt a little better; maybe the catharsis did her good. But see Padraig again? “He keeps telling me to listen to the message on my answering machine.”

      
“And have you?”

      
“No. He left it on my land line. Clive’s phone. The one Clive used to arrange my assignments. The light’s been blinking since I returned. At first I figured it was a message from Clive – why the hell would I want to listen to him?”

      
“So, you have no idea what Padraig has to say?”

      
“No.”

      
“Well, you’ll never know unless you push that button or go see him. You don’t need him haunting you.”

      
“I wouldn’t know what to say.”

      
“I think you’ll find the words. The outcome may surprise you. If you really loved him and he loved you, there might be something to salvage. If not, at least you’d know for sure.”

      
“But what kind of relationship can we have now? What we had was built on lies – his and mine.”

      
The doctor sat back, as stern faced as Dr. Ramsey would ever get.

      
“I don’t tell my clients what to do, not often anyway. I think you know that. But I
do
think that when you listen to that inner voice, the honest one, that you’ll do what you need to do.” She waited a minute, then said, “Time’s up,
Shelby
. I’ll see you next week, if you like. Your regular appointment time is already in my book.”

Chapter Sixteen

The newspaper thrown over the company phone in her apartment still covered the blinking red message light. She had successfully ignored it over the last three weeks, thinking the act of snubbing Clive and Padraig was an act of courage, part of her path to the rest of her life without them both. But now she had no courage, no will left to fight what had been inside her all along.

      
First message was a routine call from Clive, which she quickly deleted.

      
The second was recorded the day of her flight after she left her apartment for the airport.

      
“
Shelby
, answer this! Please!
” Pause “
You got to be there, lass. C’mon, pick up…
” a frantic Padraig kept on. “
Shelby, you there? Damn you, please pick up. You need to hear me
.”

      
The message had come much too late, at least two hours after she left for the airport. She was already in the air by that time, out of cell phone contact, half a world away.

      
Padraig in a panic and what did it mean?

      
The third message was from Padraig again, a month later, a day after she threw him out. “Talk to me, Shelby. Call me now…” Same as the fourth and fifth messages, in
Padraig’s
various states of mind … frantic, angry, the last she heard sounding defeated … until there were no more. She reset the machine and turned away. Then impulsively changing her mind, she turned back and yanked the cords from the wall, throwing the machine against the brick, gladdened to hear it shattered to pieces by the impact.

***

When
Shelby
had gone into her session with Dr. Ramsey, a week had passed since she’d had had a message from Padraig on her cell phone. Before she’d walked into the office the lack of new messages had been a relief. However, it was no longer a welcome relief when an hour later she walked out of the psychologist’s office with a new purpose burning in her heart. Perhaps no messages cluttering up her cell phone was a message in itself; that Padraig had given up on her and finally walked off to do something new with his life. Wouldn’t it be ironic to find that just when she allowed her heart to race again with thoughts of him, and fill with the hope that they could salvage something from the mess they’d made – that Padraig would have already moved on without her?

Shelby
went to his favorite pub: the most likely place to find him after
six o’clock
on a week night.

      
And there he was … her heart anxiously leapt at the sight of him. Through the murky smoke of the cloudy bar, she peered toward the corner where they always sat, where Padraig would drink his Guinness and she sipped light beer or a glass of wine. He was there just as she’d hoped, in the seat where he always sat, where she had a clear view of his striking face and muscled shoulders. But he was not alone. Because of the high-backed booth seats, she could not clearly see who sat across from him – although she knew it was a woman. Her hair was a tangle of red curls and when she turned her head,
Shelby
could just barely see a sliver of her smiling, flirting Irish face – a beautiful Irish girl – like the ones from home.

      
Her heart sank like a sack of stones. Goosebumps made her shiver cold.

      
When she saw Padraig glance her way, she turned back toward the door for a hasty exit, hoping he’d not actually seen her. Hurrying down the street, she gulped huge breaths of cool night air trying to hold back her emotions. She swallowed them hard until she felt nothing but numbness, then a steady ache in her head, her shoulders and her chest. She realized she could barely breathe, as if something had punched her in the stomach. Then a warm pain surfaced in her left shoulder. She was spun around, suddenly facing Padraig; he was hardly breathing hard, despite the fact that he would have had to run from the pub to catch up with her.

      
“What the hell are you doing coming in search of me, then leaving?” She wasn’t used to Padraig
Finnian
fuming, a hairsbreadth from a full-blown rage – although it seemed like most of their times together since her rescue had been marked by his anger, and even hers.

      
“You were with someone,” she said meekly.

      
“I was. But only because you’ve thrown me out of your life, lass. You give me no chance to explain myself. For weeks, I’m in a panic because you’ve been fed to the wolves and I know it. Then you blamed me for your misfortune. That is not justice. But I can’t wait forever for you to come around.”

      
“I’m not blaming you, Padraig…but I do need to talk…I mean if you’re willing to?”

      
He looked confused and then just determined. “Sorry, for now, your need to talk will have to wait. There’s a girl in the pub that I owe a beer and a good meal. I guess you’ll have to wait till it’s convenient for me.”

      
There was a long wait, as though there were something left to say. In the quiet, their emotions gathered until they reached an intolerable degree. Suddenly, he reached out and pushed her into the adjacent alley and shoved her against the hard brick of a warehouse wall. A violent kiss followed, his tongue prying her mouth wide open. The potency behind the kiss she’d felt before, but not from Padraig. Roused by something dark inside him, he pushed her further into the alley, whispering vehemently. “Go on!”

      
Swallowed inside the murky depths of a damp alcove, he pushed again against the brick. Then in one swift move, he tore open her coat, pulled up her dress and yanked her panties down. Unzipping his fly, his cock sprung free and ready. “You better want this, lass,” he warned, “Cause it’s all you’re
gonna
git
from me tonight.” Lifting her crotch up to greet his manhood, he delivered the final shock with his cock ramming hard into the wetness of her velvety hole.

      
Seconds later, he came with a muted groan, and ground himself deep as her body would allow.
Shelby
came too, heaving convulsively as the spasms in her coming body went on and on and on. Even when he set her feet back on the asphalt and backed away, her body was writhing against the warehouse wall, coming still, his juices dripping down her thighs.

      
“Don’t you call me, lass, though I don’t imagine you would,” he bit off scornfully. “I’ll call you when I’m ready.”

      
She assumed he would leave her there in the alley to the rats and mice that scurried from one trash bin to the next. Instead, he tore away her panties, discarding them in the trash, then grabbed her arm and escorted her back to the sidewalk. Her car was parked just ten feet beyond. “Go home, now,
Shelby
.” Some of his bitterness had seemed to abate, but he was no less demanding.

      
She looked back at him wishing with all her heart that they could just skip through the next few hours or days, or whatever it took for him to come to her again – if he even would. For just an instant, she thought she saw a look of regret pass across his face. But then it was gone.

      
“In your car,” he ordered. “I have to go back to my friend.”

      
Sure now that there would be no changing his mind,
Shelby
fled to her car and roared off down the street. In the rearview mirror, she saw him standing on the sidewalk, watching her until she was out of sight.

      
How swiftly the tables had turned! He was now the one in charge, and it was her turn to wait.

***

The incident in the alley replayed in
Shelby
’s mind for days after it happened. What’s worse, there was no Padraig pulling her from the purgatory of her anxious waiting. How did she even know that there was anything to rescue from their once idyllic relationship? When her
 
heart would suddenly leap back to him, she reminded herself that he still had much to explain. Why should she feel like shit? Why should she blame herself when she was the one who had been victimized?

      
As the days went by without hearing from him, she began to regret the hours spent with Dr. Ramsey, slowly working her way to the punch line when she finally had the courage to spit out the truth she needed to tell. Why couldn’t she have avoided the drama of replaying her life in its tedious sequence of events? She could have saved herself the constant worry now. The lost sleep. The fretful hours wondering if the minutes spent with Padraig in the alley would be her last with him.

Five days after the shocking fuck, she rushed into the coffeehouse to start her shift; she’d be working until eight that evening. Maureen was there, busily making sandwiches, while Corinne, their teenage waitress was waiting tables, rushing efficiently from customer to customer refilling cups of coffee and taking orders.

      
Shelby
’s eyes scanned the coffeehouse from behind the counter, her eyes suddenly lighting on a man in the corner, his face tucked behind a newspaper. She couldn’t actually see his face with his head still buried in his newspaper – but she knew who it was. Padraig had always been a glutton for news. Even then, she would have known who it was by the familiar work boots, the blue jeans and the way he sat back in his chair. Just his energy might have been enough to identify him amongst a crowd of coffee drinking patrons. He might have once blended into the walls and the woodwork of her coffeehouse, a handsome but enigmatic stranger, too closed to meddle with, too private for an inquisitive female. But he was nothing like that now.

      
“He’s been here for almost two hours,” Maureen said, as she passed by behind her. “You might as well take the day off,
Shel
, because you’re not going to be any use to me here.”