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  That night after dinner--Minnie had made a pot roast, special for my return home from the hospital--I took a shower, my first since my little accident. It took me a few minutes of staring at the empty tub to convince myself it wasn’t a monster and it wouldn’t eat me if I stepped inside it. I tried two times before I finally succeeded at getting both legs inside, each time stopping and shivering with the image of me sitting inside and about to fry my brains out. Once finally in, though, the hot water from the shower head felt good, and I stood for a long time, letting the water beat down on me. While I was showering, shrouded in the clouds of steam filling the bathroom, my mind drifted back to my writing, and possible story ideas. It was a kind of counter-productive thinking, really. Part of me, a big part of me, was prepared to do nothing but move away from being the Dan Dawkins of old, and becoming a completely different person. Now, standing in a hot shower and feeling good and enjoying the way the water seemed to be waking my body and my mind, I was focusing on how to keep the habits and career of Dan Dawkins alive, feeding the depressed beast. At some point, and I can’t tell you exactly when, somewhere between washing my hair--mindful of the staples in my scalp--and wrapping a towel around my waist and making the short walk down the hall to my bedroom, my two trains of thought had a head-on collision, and suddenly I knew exactly what I would write. Another Ah-Ha Moment.

  My readers loved Jackson Hugh. Because my readers loved Jackson, my publishers loved Jackson. I loved writing Jackson, and hell, was about to become Jackson.

  I had an idea for my first novel. I was going to tell Jackson’s story. Let readers in on his past, explain where he came from, let them know that he wasn’t always who they knew him to be. No, Jackson had led a pretty normal life for a while, successful career, attractive wife, had even been considering having a kid and starting a family. But then, in the blink of an eye he had made a few bad decisions, ultimately leading to the tragic death of his wife and the collapse of life as he knew it, sending him into the oblivion of depression and insanity, leading him to become the demon that my readers knew him as.

  Sound familiar? It should. My life had become the perfect back story for Jackson Hugh. Then towards the end I could make up a few seduction and murder tales to give the readers a bit of the excitement and thrills they loved from the first Jackson story and that would be that.

  I didn’t end up having to make up anything.

  Late that night after Ralph and Minnie had gone to bed, I sat in Ralph’s recliner and started writing the first chapter of Jackson: The Beginning.

  Chapter 24

  Heather and I chatted for a bit by the bar, each drinking our drinks and smiling a lot. I’d never been the shy type, but for some reason talking to her as Jackson instead of Dan was much easier, and I was much more confident than I would have been under normal circumstances. I touched her arm a few times as we laughed together, and occasionally let my eyes wonder away from hers and checked out her body, fully aware that she was watching me do so. She didn’t say a word about it, which only encouraged me further.

  A pool table opened up a few spaces away from the one where her brother and friends were just starting a new game.

  "How about we shoot a game? Loser buys the next round." I made my way to the table, not waiting for her response. She followed. That was good. I took off my jacket and laid it over the back of the chair by our table and then started racking the balls.

  "I think you’re the only guy in here wearing a suit." She said, grabbing two cues from the rack on the wall. I started to roll up my sleeves, balls racked.

  "I’m passing through town on business. I didn’t bring much else." I rolled my sleeves up high, tight around my recently enlarged biceps. For a second I felt a little ridiculous, but then I saw her eyes linger on my arms for a moment and the feeling was forgotten.

  "It’s not a bad thing," she said. "There must be fifty guys in here all wearing jeans and pastel colored Polo’s."

  "Who gets to break?" I asked.

  "I do. I’ve got home court advantage."

  I stood to the side while she bent over the table, poking her ass out a little more than was probably necessary, but hey, my sleeves were rolled up further than necessary, too. Two could play the game, I suppose. I didn’t mind, that was for sure. It was exciting. I hadn’t taken a second glance at a woman since the day Amy died, and doing so felt comfortably… normal. That was the idea, to start over. Erase my past.

  She broke well, sending balls scattering around the table, sinking a solid and then turned and smiled. "I hope you’ve got a fat wallet."

  As she walked around the table and lined up her next shot she asked, "So, Jackson--do you go by Jackson or Jack?"

  "Jackson."

  "So, Jackson, you say you’re here on business. What do you do?"

  She missed her next shot and I immediately sank one of my own balls. "Stock broker. I work on Wall Street."

  "The Wall Street? As in, New York?"

  "Same one."

  I hit two more shots before missing on a bank shot. I missed on purpose, prolonging the game so we could interact some more.

  "Well, I guess that explains the suit," she said, picking up her drink and taking a sip before her next shot.

  I cocked my head and wrinkled my brow. "How so?"

  She giggled. "I don’t really know." We both laughed then and she put her hand on my shoulder for a second. Very good, I thought. Very good.

  "You’re a long way from Wall Street. How’d you end up here?"

  "There are rich people everywhere who are always looking for ways to get richer. And like I said, I’m just passing through."

  We finished the game--I won, but insisted on buying us our drinks still--and then started a second, continuing to talk. Heather, as it turns out, was going to community college studying to be a dental hygienist, but said that her real interest was theater. She had been in a few small local productions, most recently as Mrs. Cratchit in A Christmas Carol. I smiled thinking how she, a theater buff, would love the performance I was putting on in front of her.

  In the middle of the second game, Heather’s brother and crew came by our table. The two guys nodded at me--no words--and then her brother said to her, "Hey Heather, we’re gonna take off, you ready?" The two other girls were grinning ear to ear behind him. Stealing glances at me every chance they got.

  This was what I was waiting for, to see if my charm could hold a candle to that of the Jackson Hugh that existed on paper and in my mind. Heather, upon hearing what her brother was saying, looked at me first, biting her lip a little, and then back to her brother saying, "Come on, Adam, its still early. What’re you wusses leaving now for?"

  Her brother--now known to me as Adam--looked at me with a look of disapproval and then said in a quieter voice, "Heather, don’t do this tonight. You know I gotta be at work early tomorrow. You knew that before you came. Now come on, we’re leaving in five minutes and I don’t want to--"

  I held up my hand. "Hang on a minute." He looked at me, mouth open, but didn’t say a word. Then I leaned over and whispered in Heathers ear--all while disapproving brother, Adam, looked on--"I’d really like you to stay a while longer. I can give you a ride if you need one," I paused, letting the words sink in, then, "And I don’t have to be anywhere early tomorrow." My lips just brushed her ear and I saw goosebumps stand up on her arms.

  She walked away from me, taking Adam by the hand and leading him off the side. I thought I had failed, that I had scared her off, creeped her out. But then a few seconds later I saw Adam throw his hands up in the air, say one last thing to her and then storm off towards the exit, the rest of his crew chasing after him.

  Heather turned and walked back towards me, pulling her hair up tying it back as she made her way to the pool table.

  "Everything Ok?" I asked.

  "Perfect. Let’s play another game. And this time I won’t take it easy on you."

  Chapter 25

  We played two more games and Heather
drank the equivalent in Bowldas. She wasn’t wasted to the point of passing out or vomiting in my face, but she was getting increasingly more flirtatious and finding more and more excuses to touch me as we worked our way around the table. When I sank the eight-ball, winning our last game, and keeping my night undefeated, I took her cue from her and returned hers and mine to the rack on the wall. The clock next to the rack, one of the ones made to look like a giant Coke bottle top, said it was almost midnight.

  I turned around and she was right behind me, literally two inches from my face. I almost took her down. "Whoa, hey," I said, genuinely startled. She grabbed the back of my head into both of her hands and kissed me, stretching onto her toes to reach. Her lips sat on mine, softly, breath smelling of alcohol and pineapple, and I kissed her back. When I pulled away, she said, "I’m ready to leave now."

  "Sure, I’ll take you home, as promised." I took her hand and started to lead her towards the exit when she stopped me, pulling on my forearm.

  "Take me with you."

  I’d been out of the game a while now, and even with my Jackson act going full steam ahead, I couldn’t help but sound like an idiot. "Take you with me where?"

  She giggled and rolled her eyes. Reaching up, she ran her hand through my hair, "Your hotel, silly."

  Oh.

  This had been my plan, if not on the first night--I didn’t guess I’d be that lucky--but soon, to get a girl into bed with me. That’s what Jackson did, right? And it was time for me to start doing the same. Jump back on the Life Expressway and ride out into the sunset. I had no intention of coasting. I was going to smash the pedal to the floorboard and keep it there.

  Still, the suddenness--the easiness--of what I had just accomplished astonished me. Extreme confidence… Who knew? The muscles and the suit might have helped too, but anyway.

  Quickly covering up my lapse of character, I said, "Good. I just wanted to hear you say it. I hate to assume anything. Especially with a woman as beautiful as yourself." I brushed a strand of hair out of her face.

  She blushed and we walked out of Pebbles. Both of us for the last time.

  "Holy shit! You drive this?" We were back in the parking garage and I had just unlocked the doors to my Mercedes. I walked to the passenger side and opened Heather’s door for her. She ran her hand over the shiny black side of the car, admiring, and then quickly jerked her hand away. "Oh my God, I’m sorry. You probably just had this thing waxed or something."

  I smiled and waved her off. "Oh please, it’s just a car."

  She got in, thanking me as I closed the door. Once my own door was closed I pressed the button to start the engine and the car roared to life. Once out of the garage and cruising stylishly back through the downtown section of Larendale, I realized I had no idea where I was going about the same time that Heather asked, "So where does a hot-shot stock broker like you stay when visiting towns like this?

  I certainly couldn’t take Heather all the way back to Ralph and Minnie’s. It hit me then that I didn’t even know where the girl actually lived. But, even if it was all the way back near, or in, Jacob’s Bluff, there was no way I’d take her into Ralph’s home. First and foremost, Ralph and Minnie knew me as Dan and nothing else. That was going to stay that way. I couldn’t take a chance of them and Heather having an encounter together and her calling me Jackson. No need to raise eyebrows. Ralph, even though he would never say it, was always watching me closely, probably evaluating my mental stability.

  Second, a bed and breakfast owned by an elderly couple whose bedroom was not more than thirty feet down the hall, even one you’d been living at for weeks on end, just didn’t seem like the place to bring home a girl you’d picked up in a bar. Especially not one who was fairly drunk and who you planned to fuck and forget.

  Fortunately for me I had driven back and forth between Jacob’s Bluff and Larendale more times that I could count in the past few weeks and had a pretty good mental map of the place.

  "Holiday Inn, the one on the edge of town."

  "Oh that’s great. I can take the bus from right around there in the morning. It’ll get me pretty close to home in no time."

  I smiled to myself. "You’ve got to love public transit. But I’d be more than happy to give you a ride if you’d like."

  "Oh no, don’t worry about it. I’m sure you’ll need to get going early."

  "Didn’t you listen earlier? I’ve got nowhere to be tomorrow. So for now, it’s just you and me."

  She laughed like what I had just said was in the funniest damn thing she had ever heard. "Just you and me!" Then, "Well… if that’s the case." She unbuckled her seat belt and leaned over the center console, biting my ear and grabbing my crotch. It caught me off-guard and I nearly jerked us off the road. I remember very clearly what I said next.

  "Whoa now. Let’s not get us killed." I took her hand and placed it on my thigh, away from the hot-zone. "The hotel’s right up here."

  She laughed again--I’d turned into a fucking comedian--and turned on the radio, settling on a country station. Six minutes later I pulled into the parking lot of what appeared to be a newly renovated Holiday Inn and pulled up in front of the doors to the lobby. "Gotta go check-in, " I told her.

  She gave me a confused look. "You’re not checked in yet?"

  Oh shit, I was sending up warning flares.

  "I made my reservation yesterday, but got into town later than I had planned this evening and just went straight to dinner. Good thing, too."

  She cocked her head to one side. "Why’s that?"

  "I got to meet you."

  She lunged across the console again and kissed me hard. "Hurry up."

  The lobby was quiet, nobody but me, and the middle-aged black lady who worked behind the front desk was more involved in the Soap Opera she was watching on a tiny television than she was with me. That was a good thing.

  I greeted her politely and gave her a reassuring smile. She stood up, glanced from me back to the television and then said, "Can I help you?"

  I checked in as Jackson of course, providing a false address and phone number and verifying it with my newly made drivers license. Ms. Soap Opera hardly gave it a first glance. The room was about ninety bucks a night. I paid cash, laying three hundreds on the counter and telling the woman that I thought it was a respectable deposit and that if she didn’t think so I’d gladly take my lodging needs elsewhere. This too didn’t seem to surprise her, and she didn’t offer the least bit of hesitation. A shirtless man on the TV was standing over a girl on a bed, obviously about to get busy, all while another woman watched with a scowl from the bedroom closet. Probably shirtless man’s current wife or girlfriend--oh Soap Operas. The woman thanked me and handed me my room key, all while keeping her eyes glued to the TV. I walked outside and rejoined Heather in the car.

  I pulled around the side of the building and parked in an empty space. A number of things worked in my favor that night--distracted front desk woman was one--and a simple door was another. The room I had been assigned was room number 102, which I assumed to be on the first floor. A few parking spaces up from where Heather and I had parked was a side door to the hotel. Inside it I could see vending machines and the doors to an elevator. Walking hand and hand with Heather up the sidewalk as we got closer I saw a key-card slot, just like the ones found on the doors inside the hotels, and figured I’d give it a try. I slid my room key into the slot and little red light flashed green. Satisfied, I pulled the door open for Heather, "After you."

  She dipped her head, "Why thank you, sir." Nobody ever saw that Heather was with me.

  We made the short walk down the hallway, playfully touching each other and Heather laughing and giggling the whole time. We went into room 102 and I hung the DO NOT DISTURB sign on the door handle.

  Heather jumped onto the King size bed and switched on the small lamp on the bedside table, kicking off her shoes at the same time. Laying back, propping herself up on elbows she gave me a little wink and said, "Well, what are you just
standing there for."

  "I… uh." The truth was, suddenly I felt strange. What was I doing? Bringing a girl I just met to a hotel room in some random town. What would Amy think?

  Amy is dead! You killed her remember?

  I didn’t kill her, she died in an accident.

  Still, you need to move on! You were moving on, all night. You’re doing good, what’s the hold up?

  "I just need to use the restroom real quick?" I said with a smile.

  Smooth, Dan. Smooth.

  "Well," Heather said, getting up onto her knees. "Just to give you some motivation." She pulled off her tank top and tossed it onto the floor. Her bra quickly suffered the same fate. Then she plopped back down onto the bed, breasts bouncing, and didn’t say a word. I’ll give it to her, it helped. Suddenly my mind was filled not with thoughts of my dead wife, but with the image of the topless girl in front of me.

  I went into the bathroom and closed the door. I really did have to pee, and once I was finished I washed my hands and took a couple of deep breaths.

  Get out there, Dan!

  I switched off the light in the bathroom and stepped out. Heather jumped off the bed and wrapped her arms around me, kissing me hard on the lips and then working her way to my neck. I took off my jacket and her hands started working on my shirt while mine worked on the buckle of her belt.

  Both naked, we collapsed onto the bed.

  Things went well for a while. While my mouth explored her body, sucking and nipping from her neck to her waist, Amy was the furthest thing from my mind. When Heather lay me down and started giving me a blow job, Amy never existed. It was exactly the feeling I was looking for, the feeling and mindset I had been chasing since the day I left Hillston. When I was there in that bed, naked with a girl’s head between my legs, I was free. Free from the slavery of my horrible past.

  The feeling continued once Heather came up for air. With the foreplay done with, she straddled me and then I was inside her.