Rock Chick 01 (48 page)

Okay, so maybe I wasn’t a natural-born
detective with a keen sense of danger.

“Stay here, I’ll check it out,” he said,
pulling a gun out of his waistband and walking into the dining
room.

I followed him.

He turned to me. “Which part of ‘stay here’
didn’t you understand?”

“You’re not leaving me behind, I don’t like
to get left behind. Sure, I get kidnapped and find dead bodies when
I don’t stay where I’m supposed to be but I’m pretty certain it’d
be worse if I stayed behind.”

Eddie gave me a look that said I was quickly
curing him of his unrequited passion.

We walked through the living room, up the
stairs and the TV was on in the second bedroom. The minute I hit
the landing and looked into the TV room, I came to an abrupt
halt.

Eddie walked into the room and said, “What’s
up,
hombre
?”

I could see through the open door that Lee’s
huge-ass, flat screen TV was in the place where my old-ass, tired
TV used to be. I could also see some frames stacked against each
other on the floor and leaning against the wall.

I turned my head the other direction and saw
two big suitcases on the floor in my bedroom, one of them open and
it appeared to have exploded. Men’s clothes, or more to the point,
Lee’s
clothes, were all over the floor.

I looked into the bathroom and there was an
open dop kit on the counter of the bathroom vanity.

Lee had moved in.

I wandered into the TV room. My desk no
longer had all my cute stationery, fun girlie boxes, knick knacks
and brightly colored journals, that I collected but never wrote in,
carefully lined up on the attached shelves with my laptop closed.
Everything was shoved around, there was a huge flat screen monitor,
wireless keyboard and mouse and a bunch of other crap littering the
surface and floor and all sorts of cords
everywhere
.

There was also an enormous safe next to the
TV stand.

Lee was flat on his back on my big, red,
poofy, deep-seated, comfortable couch. All my fancy toss pillows,
which were normally arranged artfully, were shoved up behind his
head and shoulders, he had a beer dangling from his fingers and a
baseball game on.

He and Eddie were chatting but when I came in
Lee looked at me.

“Hey,” he said.

I didn’t answer. It was a physical
impossibility.

I wandered out of the room and into my
bedroom.

I was vaguely aware of Eddie leaving and was
staring at the exploded clothes when Lee walked into the room.

“Cherry’s gonna be all right,” Lee told
me.

I didn’t answer. Not that I wasn’t glad as
any good human would be that Cherry was going to live to see
another day where she could make other mortals feel inferior, just
that I was freaking out.

I walked forward and opened my closet doors.
I put both my hands at the very end of the hangers on one side and
with all my might, I shoved them to the other side. It was a
superhuman effort. Hangers clacked together and all my clothes
scrunched up and I managed to free about a foot and a half of
space. I stepped back and looked at Lee’s exploded clothes on the
floor.

It was then I began hyperventilating.

Lee’s arms came around me from behind and he
rested his chin on my shoulder.

“Breathe deep,” he advised.

I did as I was told. In. Out. In. Out.

“Feel better now?” he asked.

“No,” I answered.

He walked over to my CD player and sorted
through some CDs. Then I heard Stereophonics “Dakota”. It was a
really good song. I was beginning to feel better.

I looked at Lee and took a deep breath.

“Give me a minute, I can do this.”

He left me to it.

Half an hour later, I was losing it. I had
freed another foot in the closet and there was a small pile of
stuff that I should have thrown out years ago laying in the
landing.

It wasn’t going to be enough.

“It’s not gonna be enough!” I shouted
hysterically.

Lee walked back in.

“You could help, you know,” I told him, hand
on hip.

He walked to the closet, slapped through a
couple of hangers and brought out my butterfly-winged shirt
liberally threaded with silver that I wore when I wanted to pretend
I was Olivia Newton-John. It wasn’t my best look but I’d seen some
good times in it, it was a memory shirt.

“Don’t even think about it,” I said.

His eyes crinkled and he put it back, slapped
through a couple more hangers and pulled out an embroidered
camisole that had a big rip in it. It used to be gorgeous but could
never be repaired. It had also seen good times.

“Are you nuts? I went to the Red Hot Chili
Peppers concert in that!”

He put it back and walked out of the room and
down the stairs. He came back with two open bottles of Fat Tire,
gave me one and then walked out again. It wasn’t a lot of help, but
it wasn’t a bad effort.

Forty-five minutes later, I’d scaled the
mountain. There was a huge pile of my discarded clothes in the
landing, some shoes, bags and other junk. Lee’s suitcases were
unpacked, zipped up and out on the landing too. He had two and a
half drawers all to himself and about a third of the closet.

I was face down on the bed, listening to
Kelly Jones doing a fucking great job at singing Rod Stewart’s
“Handbags and Gladrags” which I thought was apropos.

I felt the bed depress with Lee’s weight and
a hand at the small of my back.

“I ordered a pizza, I’m walking to Famous to
get it. You wanna come?”

I shook my head and Lee left.

I finished the song, replayed “Have a Nice
Day”, then turned off the CD player, stumbled in the TV room and
threw myself onto the couch. A couple minutes later, Lee walked in
with a pizza box with two opened Fat Tire bottles balanced on
top.

“Please tell me that’s pepperoni mushroom,” I
said.

He smiled. “And black olives.”

Thank God.

We ate, we watched baseball, when we were
done, Lee took the box and empties downstairs and came back with
full bottles.

This wasn’t so bad.

Lee pulled me off the couch, laid down on his
back and pulled me on top of him, shifting me to the side then
tucking me in. I was snuggled up, cheek on his chest, watching the
Rockies night game.

Okay, so, this wasn’t bad at all.

After I made that momentous decision, I fell
asleep.

* * * * *

Lee woke me up by shaking me and saying,
“Time for bed, gorgeous.”

I rolled over him and got up from the
couch.

I disrobed between couch and bedroom,
crawling between the sheets wearing nothing but my hot pink
hipsters, too tired even to brush my teeth.

It took several seconds for me to notice that
Lee was moving around the room but the noises he was making were
not bedtime noises.

“What’re you doing?” I mumbled.

“I have work.”

I knew better than to ask and furthermore, I
didn’t want to know.

He turned off the light, leaned over me and
kissed my temple.

“Be careful,” I told him.

“Always,” he whispered.

Then he was gone.

* * * * *

Lee woke me up getting into bed.

I rolled into him and he tucked me against
his side.

“Everything okay?” I mumbled, though I
couldn’t imagine he heard me because my mouth was mostly mushed up
against his chest.

“Yeah. Go back to sleep,” he said.

I laid there a second, close to dreamland
then I asked softly, because I had to know, “Is this gonna be my
life?”

His body was tense when I rolled into him but
had relaxed after he tucked me in. It got tense again at my
question.

“Yeah,” he answered, ever the
straight-talker.

I took a deep breath into my nostrils and let
it out my mouth. “Just promise me one thing.”

“What?”

“I want you to wake me when you get
home.”

His body stayed tense for a beat then
relaxed. “I can do that.”

“Thanks,” I said.

Then I fell asleep.

* * * * *

Early the next morning, I was standing
outside in the middle of my yard wearing a pair of cutoffs and
Lee’s olive drab shirt that said “Army” across the chest. I had a
coffee cup in one hand and the hose in the other hand, the spray
gun locked down and I was watering my flowers.

I heard a door open and then Stevie called,
“Do ours too, will you?”

Still in my morning stupor, I lifted my
coffee cup in a half-assed, “gotcha” not even bothering to turn
around and I heard the door close again.

I noticed Lee run across the sidewalk at the
front of the house. He stopped and opened the front gate and walked
into the yard to stand a couple feet away from me.

I looked up at him. He was wearing another
pair of sweats cut at the thigh, these black and faded. The shorts
were topped with the white Night Stalkers tee that I considered
mine, the shirt was plastered to him with perspiration. His running
shoes were shoes that had been run in, not fancy-ass, look-at-me
shoes.

Even with all that sweat, he was somehow not
breathing heavily and if I wasn’t in a haze, I would have jumped
him, I didn’t care how sweaty he was.

“Hey,” I said.

He looked at me, then looked in the direction
of the spray. His eyes crinkled and he looked at me again.

“Hey,” he said.

“I’m watering the flowers,” I told him.

He shook his head. “Honey, I hate to tell you
this but you’re watering the fence.”

I looked toward the spray and saw that I was
aiming a little high, the force of the flow was hitting the fence
and running down,
not
hitting the flowers.

Oopsie.

“I haven’t had enough coffee,” I
explained.

He walked up and took the hose out of my
hand.

“Perhaps you shouldn’t operate complicated
machinery in the morning,” Lee suggested.

A hose spray nozzle wasn’t exactly
complicated machinery but I wasn’t going to argue.

“Do Tod and Stevie’s too, would you?” I asked
and then I walked into the house and sat on my new couch and put my
feet up on the ottoman, staring off into space until I’d emptied
the cup.

I topped it up, walked up the stairs, put my
mug on the bathroom counter, took off my clothes and got in the
shower. I had a head full of shampoo and was rinsing when the
shower door slid open and I heard Lee join me. Lee’s hands started
on my hips and began gliding around which made it kind of difficult
to concentrate on the task at hand but I persevered.

Once the soap was rinsed from my hair, Lee
moved me out of the spray and took my place. I grabbed my
conditioner and started to massage it into my hair.

“So, how exactly do you work all night, wake
up before six in the morning and go for a run?” I asked.

“Practice,” he answered.

Soap was running down his body. At the sight,
I kind of lost interest in the conversation. I abandoned my
conditioner and started to glide my hands around Lee’s body, the
soap making him nice and slippery. I began to explore in earnest,
the water falling over both of us. Then, I decided to make it a
multi-sensory exploration using hands and mouth, which Lee allowed
for awhile then he pulled me up and pressed me against the
wall.

I looked into his eyes and noticed that I had
unleashed Lee Beast.

One of his hands went down my ass and thigh,
he lifted my leg and wrapped it around his waist.

“Did you bring the condoms up from
downstairs?” I said against his mouth.

“I’ll pull out,” he replied.

“No! That never works. Ask Andrea.”

“Don’t worry about it, I want you
pregnant.”

Holy crap.

“What?” I screeched, coming out of my zone,
“like… now?”

“Not now but if it happens, I won’t be
disappointed.”

My mind boggled for a moment and then I put
my hands to his face, which was looking down at my body and made
him look me in the eyes.

“I gave in on the together thing and the
moving in thing, going a lot faster than made me comfortable. You
gotta give me time with this baby thing, Lee, it’s only been a
week.”

He kissed me and I slid back into my zone.
When he lifted his head away from mine I found I was totally okay
with the baby thing but he said, “I’ll go get the condoms.”

He got out, wrapped a towel around his waist
and went downstairs.

Yep, this wasn’t so bad after all.

* * * * *

We were lying on my bed, me face up, Lee face
down with his arm wrapped around my waist.

We got kind of carried away, what with seven
boxes of condoms within easy reach and after christening the
shower, I discovered (to my great fortune) that Cherry was right.
Use your mouth on Lee in the morning, he’ll return the favor.

“I have an idea,” I said.

Lee got up on his forearms and looked at
me.

“The last idea you shared with me got us
caught in a cemetery in the middle of the night. You and Ally fell
into a freshly dug grave and made such a ruckus the neighbors
called the cops.”

I smiled. That was a good night, a night just
before I started to avoid Lee. Eddie, Lee, Ally and me were sitting
around drinking and I dared them to go to a graveyard at midnight.
It was fun. Though, I could have done without the falling into the
grave part.

“This is a better idea,” I told him.

He rolled to his side, the eye-crinkle thing
going. “Let’s hear it.”

“I think I should pretend to let Wilcox win.
I can go out to dinner with him and…”

I petered out when the eye-crinkle faded and
Lee’s face got hard and scary. “That’s not gonna happen.”

“Listen, Lee! I can wear a wire, maybe get
him drunk, get him talking –”

“It’s not gonna happen.”

“It’s a good plan!” I said, kind of
loudly.