Authors: Michelle Love
Touch Me
Joel Mallory leaned his head against the cool wall of the hospital waiting room. Next to him, Marley Griffin was sitting hunched over, jiggling her legs up and down. It was three a.m.,
and
they’d been waiting for a couple of hours while the doctors assessed their friend, Quilla Chen.
Joel thought back over the last few hours. The laughter, the fun of hanging with his brother and Quilla and her friend in their favorite bar then the utter horror when in an instant the world had changed and his eldest brother Jakob’s girlfriend was stabbed by a vengeful ex-partner of Jakob’s.
The mad, panicked dash to get help, the flashing lights, Quilla passed out and bleeding in a terrified Jakob’s arms
-
God.
Joel felt sick.
He looked over at Marley. They’d only met that night but already they’d become good
friends,
but now the young woman looked hollow and scared. He took her hand and
she
half-smiled at him. ‘Don’t worry, sweetheart, she’ll get the best care, I promise.’
Marley smiled gratefully. ‘I’m going crazy waiting. I’m going to find some coffee.’
Alone, Joel sighed. He’d called his dad, who was on his way. Skandar had wanted to come too but Joel, mindful of the constant press contingent that followed his son everywhere, told him not to. ‘Last thing we need, pal, is a media circus,’ he told him. ‘Quilla knows you care.’
The door to the waiting room
opened,
and a young woman with messy blonde hair to her shoulders came in. She nodded at Joel then took a seat
on
the far side. She looked exhausted. In her hands, no purse just a set of car keys. Joel realized that she was wearing a nightshirt over her jeans, obviously having to come out in a hurry.
‘Hey,’ he said, ‘you okay?’
The woman looked up, her eyes red from crying and tried to smile. ‘Yeah, thanks.’ She hesitated. ‘Teenage sister thought it was a good idea to go out, drink then gets in a car with a guy who was also drunk.’
‘Damn…she okay?’
The woman sighed. ‘Yeah,
she
’s just getting stitched up now. Scared the shit out of me.’ She studied him. ‘How about you?’
Joel shifted in his seat. ‘Friend got stabbed. We don’t know how she is yet.’
‘God, I’m sorry.’
Joel nodded then got up and held his hand out to the woman. ‘Joel Mallory.’
She smiled. ‘Nan Applebee. That’s awful about your friend
…
what happened?’
Joel sat down next to her, shaking his head. ‘Hell if I know
…she
’s my brother’s girlfriend and the dude that stabbed her was trying to get back at my brother for firing him. Damn coward. She’s tiny
too; you
should see her.’
The enormity of what had happened seemed to be hitting him now after hours of disbelief. He clenched his fists tightly to stop his hands trembling. ‘Sorry,’ he said when he noticed
her
watching him. ‘It’s the cruelty of it, you know? Never seen anything like that before.’
Tentatively, Nan put his hand on his back and rubbed it to comfort him. Joel blew out his cheeks then looked up as first Marley, and then Jakob came back to the room. Joel stood and hugged his brother, introduced the others to Nan Applebee.
‘Quilla’s going to be fine,’ Jakob said, his voice scratchy from stress. ‘One stab wound, clean, not too deep but nasty enough. Painful. It didn’t hit any of her major organs. She’ll be here for a
couple of
days then they’ll let her out to recover at home.’
Marley stood at his side, dark purple shadows under eyes. Jakob looked down at her and put his arm around her shoulders. ‘Hey kiddo, do you want to
stay
at mine for a couple of days?’
Marley, pale and drained, move away from him, her entire body rigid with tension. ‘No, thanks. I’d rather be at home.’
Joel nodded. ‘I’ll take you.’ But Marley shook her head.
‘No…I’ll get a cab, thanks. I just…never mind.’ She turned to go then stopped, looked back at Jakob. ‘I don’t to be the person who assigns blame…but make this right, Jakob.’
Joel stared
after
her. ‘Man, she’s angry.’
‘She has every right. Look, they say I can stay with Quilla but…’
Joel nodded. ‘I get it. Look, I’ll
update
Dad and the others. What are we going to do about the press?’
Jakob rubbed his face. ‘God, I hadn’t even thought…look, we say
exactly
what happened. We fired Gregor Fisk because of gross incompetence and his
behavior
. He got angry, tried to get revenge.’
‘They’ll dig up everything on Quilla they can find – it might get rough.’
Jakob smiled humorlessly. ‘Not as rough as being stabbed. She’s a fighter; a little press intrusion is something we
can
protect
her from
. Can Skandar run some interference?’
Joel nodded. ‘I’ll talk to him. He’ll get questions no doubt, and someone from here’s bound to leak it.’
‘Maybe we can ask them to sign some NDA’s?’
‘No,’ Ran Mallory walked through the door at that moment and heard them, ‘we’ve never been the sort of family who runs and hides. We ride…’
‘…out the storm,’ said his sons in unison and Ran smiled.
‘That’s right. How’s Quilla?’
Jakob told him the news and Ran nodded. ‘Good. That’s good to hear. Damn that Fisk
…
I have everyone out looking for him. Hello…’
He suddenly noticed Nan sitting behind Joel, trying to make herself invisible. Ran smiled and shook her hand. ‘I’m sorry; we seem to have taken over the waiting room.’
‘It’s no problem…oh hey,’ Nan looked over at the door where a young blonde teenager hovered, her face
crisscrossed
with butterfly stitches. She glanced shyly at the three men then at her sister.
‘Doctor says I’m good to go.’
Nan got up, smiled at Joel. ‘It was nice to talk to you.’
Joel nodded. ‘You too, glad the kid’s okay.’
‘You wait til I get her home,’ Nan muttered with a wry grin. Joel laughed but didn’t envy the younger woman.
‘Look, can you get home okay?’
Nan, at the doorway with her sister now, turned. ‘Yeah, I have my car but thanks. I hope your friend is okay.’
Hayley Applebee glanced over at her elder sister as they drove home. So far, Nan had said precisely nothing but Hayley
knew that
just meant the build-up of magma under the volcano was just getting bigger and soon
Vesuvius
would explode.
To head at least
some
of the eruption off, she sighed. ‘Look, Nan, I’m sorry. It was a dumb thing to do.’
‘So dumb.’
‘I know.’ Hayley waited. Nothing.
‘Aren’t you going to yell at me?’ She frowned at her sister, weirdly disappointed. Nan, who looked drawn and tired out, shook her head.
‘Hays…I was
all ready
to rip you a new one but then…that
dude
I was talking to, his friend got stabbed by a guy because her boyfriend fired him. He stabbed
her
. Not the boyfriend. When we live in a world like that, you doing something most teenagers have done at one point or another and getting off relatively unscathed – well now, I can live with that.’
She shot a side look at her sister. ‘Doesn’t mean you’re off the hook entirely, though.’
Hayley smiled. ‘Didn’t think so. Nan, you know who those
people
were, don’t you?’
Nan looked blank. ‘I know the first guy’s name was Joel but…’
Hayley sighed.
‘Nan, please,
occasionally read a gossip site, okay?. The
Mallorys
? The richest family on the west coast? Kit Mallory, the actor? Skandar Mallory, the tennis player?’
Nan looked confused. ‘
He
wasn’t there.’
Hayley muttered something under her breath then said ‘I
know
. The
dude
with the long blonde hair? That’s Skandar’s dad.’
Nan shook her head. ‘No way, that guy is way too young.’
After trying to explain who The Mallorys were to no avail, Hayley gave up. At home, she apologized to her sister again, hugged her and went to bed.
Nan flopped down on her bed and checked the time. Just after five a.m. She groaned. In a
couple
of hours, she’d have to be up and ready to
teach
a class full of eighth graders about Hemingway. Why couldn’t Hayley have decided to do this on a weekend? Nan realized the absurdity of what she was thinking and sent an apology into the cosmos.
She plumped up her pillow and closed her
eyes,
but sleep would not come. For some
reason,
she was thinking about the tall, blonde, impossibly handsome Joel Mallory.
And you’ve just answered your
own
question,
she grinned to herself. She couldn’t believe he was the son of a billionaire, the father of another. He had such a plaid-wearing homeliness about him. She could imagine him chopping down trees or bringing in the cattle
but
not coaching a world-class tennis player. She wondered if the dark haired girl with him was his girlfriend – she hadn’t seemed like it but who knew?
She fell asleep eventually and was only ten minutes late to her first class. She called that a good day.
Two weeks later, Joel sat, watching Skandar’s practice session with his hitting partner, barely registering the skillful shots his son was hammering down the other end of the court. Soon, he wouldn’t need to do this, get up early to fly off all over the world. It had been his decision to bow out of Skandar’s training at the end of this season but as his responsibilities had lessened, and his time freed up, he’d been flailing around for things to do. Before Skandar had been born, he’d started at college, intending to take an architectural degree, to go into business with Jakob, building and designing exquisite homes at affordable prices. But when a
one-night
hook-up
with a girl called Felicity had resulted in a pregnancy and subsequent maternal abandonment, all that changed. He’d given his son both his own grandfather’s and his son’s grandfathers’
names,
and Skandar Randall Mallory was born. And he had honestly loved every moment. His bond with his son had been one of trust and love and laughter. Skandar, as soon as he could run, was a bundle of energy and when Ran had bought him a tennis racket for his sixth birthday, it was obvious to everyone that Skandar’s future career path
was pretty much set
.
Now, Skandar was twenty-five and the number one tennis player in the world. His matinee idol looks meant he was never off the front page of the tabloids and his dad, not a slouch in the looks department either, garnered almost as much attention. Joel, unlike Skandar, didn’t relish the attention, and he was looking to go back to relative anonymity when he left the coaching team.
‘Yo.’ Skandar nudged him out of his reverie, holding out a cold bottle of water to him, then cracking one open for himself and draining it. The morning was warm for a Seattle
Fall day
and Skandar’s shirt
was drenched
with sweat. Peeling it off and dumping it on the ground, he yanked another from his bag.
‘You okay, P
a
? You’ve been quiet all morning. I hit a pristine backhand down the line earlier, see it?’
‘Good job,’ Joel said automatically then blinked, coming back to the present. ‘Sorry, my head’s not in the game today.’
Skandar sat down next to him. ‘Pa, I’ve
meant
to ask…what are you going to do now? It’s been a
couple of
months since you said you were going to hand over to Carlos.’
Joe shrugged. ‘Honestly, I’m not sure. I was talking to Jakob about it…I
thought
maybe I could go back to college, finish my degree, partner with him on some project.’
Skandar tipped half a bottle of ice water over his head. ‘Sounds good. What’s stopping you?’
Joel smiled, sheepish. ‘This sounds
crazy,
but my confidence in my ability to do that now I’m older has taken a knock.’
Skandar studied his father. ‘What about taking a couple of adult courses at night school? See if you like that before you commit to college.’
Joel squinted at his son. ‘When did you get so smart?’
Skandar grinned. ‘Just occasionally, I can bring my A game.
Although
really, I’m thinking, you’re a freaking billionaire, just enjoy life. You did all the heavy lifting bringing me up on your own.’
‘Never felt like heavy lifting, and it’s Dad who’s a billionaire, it’s you, not me. I need to make my
own
way,’ Joel
said,
and Skandar clapped him on the shoulder.
‘Dad, I know. Regardless, it’s not easy
…
I’m not sure I could have done it.
Anyway
, I’d better get back to it. Think about the night classes, yeah?’
The kid
was right, Joel thought. A taster class might be the way to go. He grabbed his iPad and started to research as Skandar destroyed his hitting partner with a vicious serve.