Southpaw (5 page)

“I did it on purpose. I
know you ladies just wanted to see me wet,” I say with a sideways grin as I
hold up my hands. They only laugh harder, and Olivia uncovers her mouth to
reveal a sexy smile laced with longing. Believe me, I’ve seen that look before.

***

“That was probably the best non-date
I’ve had,” Olivia says while we walk to the parking lot in the faint light of
the vanishing sun.

“How many non-dates
have you been on before?” I eye her with curiosity.

“Just this one,” she
admits with a laugh.

“Then, it’s not exactly
a compliment. You just liked seeing me fall in the water,” I accuse as I point
to my Harley. “I’m right here. Where are you?”

“Over there.” She
points to a Camry just a few spots over. “I have to admit that it was pretty
hilarious watching a massively cut guy fall in the water surrounded by
forty-year-old women out-balancing him.”

“All I heard was
massively cut.” I follow her to her car, passing my bike.

“So you’re a motorcycle
guy. Somehow that doesn’t surprise me. What other stereotypes are you going to
fill? Don’t tell me you’re an ex-con, too.”

“Nah, sorry to
disappoint. No jail time here,” I reply, omitting the fact that I’ve come closer
than I’d like to admit. I jump at changing the subject. “I had a great time
tonight, and I was wondering if you’d like to go on another non-date.”

She leans against the
bumper of her car and pulls up her leg in a smooth movement. My body aches as
her dress slides up her thigh to expose her black bikini underneath. She’s
driving me wild, and I can’t believe I’m going to let her get in that car
without trying to get her to come home with me. Tonight’s been filled with more
firsts than I could’ve imagined.

“I’d like that. Since I
picked the first one, I’ll let you pick this one,” she says, narrowing her eyes
playfully at me. She’s making this hard, real hard.

“Rocco’s Gym. Tomorrow
night. I’ll pick you up at seven.”

“Four days in a row. Is
that some kind of record for you? You better not be some sort of stalker,” she
teases as she digs through her bag and pulls out my phone and keys. She tries
to slide through the screen on my phone before handing it to me. “Passcode
required. Making sure to hide all the women from each other?”

I snag the phone out of
her hand, punch in my code, and give it back to her. I have nothing to hide,
after all, I typically don’t bother to get numbers. I neglect to mention this
to her. “Not at all. And don’t give me a fake address or phone number for this
non-date. I might have to come back here next week to SUP yoga and dunk you
under.”

The screen glows as she
taps in her information and shakes her head. “I’m probably going to regret
this.”

“The only thing you’ll
regret is not getting a kiss from me before the night’s over.” I take a step
toward her. She pulls her leg down,
finally
, and pushes her body off the
car.

“You’re sure of this?”
she asks, eying me carefully and parting her lips.

“Never been more
confident,” I say, taking another step closer until the tips of our shoes graze
each other. I gently wrap my hand around the back of her neck and pull her
closer to me. She hesitates for a second as I feel her warm breath against my
face. Then I meet her lips in the sexiest kiss I’ve ever had the pleasure of
tasting. Her lips move gently against mine in a longing so painful it makes my
knees weak.

She pulls away slowly
as her eyes open. Her eyes search mine as she whispers, “You were right.”

Damn. I need to call
Dr. Denise in the morning.

Chapter 4

I’m standing in the lobby of Dr.
Denise’s office leaning over the counter as Peggy the receptionist holds her
index finger in the air. Peggy’s long red fingernails tap against the counter,
which only makes me more anxious while she talks into the mouthpiece of her
headset. Gatekeeper Peggy is making me reconsider skipping my lunch to see Dr.
Denise. It’s always the same with middle-aged, no-man, hates-her-life Peggy.

“Kelly Black is here to
see you. He’s insisting it’s urgent.” Peggy looks up at me, and I can
hear
her eyes roll. She pauses and presses a lacquered nail on the earpiece deep
inside a rat’s nest of black hair. It looks like Peggy’s hairdryer got the best
of her this morning. I find myself wondering if Dr. Denise offers free therapy
sessions to Peggy. She sure the hell could use them.

“Are you sure?” she
asks. “I can…”

She stops talking and
rolls her fingers faster while I lean further across the counter. I’m about to
rip the headpiece off her head when she finally says, “Okay. No problem.”

Peggy pulls her
mouthpiece away from her red-stained lips and says, “She’ll see you for fifteen
minutes. You’re one lucky son of a bitch.”

“Some of us have it
all.” I rush past the counter and down the hallway toward Dr. Denise’s office. I
think I hear her mutter
dick
, but I’m not sure. Dr. Denise is waiting
for me in her doorway, like always, in her skirt and matching jacket, her hand pressed
against the open door as I walk past her.

“You need a new
receptionist. You have to be losing business with that -”

“Don’t finish that
sentence,” Dr. Denise says as she closes the door. “I’ve got it covered. I’m
working through some things with Peggy.”

“I bet you are.” I
slide into the leather chair. The leather squeaks against my jeans because
Biosystems is a company ‘where every day is casual Friday’ and because every
therapist has to have matching leather chairs. I glance at Dr. Denise’s
certificates on the wall like I do every visit. She’s a ’97 graduate of the
Clinical Psychology program at my alma mater. Go Badgers.

“So what’s so important
that you’re making me miss my lunch on a gorgeous Friday afternoon? It’s
seventy degrees and the sun is bright. This better be good,” Dr. Denise says as
she sits down in front of me and crosses her legs in her knee-high skirt. I
look for a second because like I said before, Dr. Denise’s legs are so damn
sexy, and she’s one helluva cougar. A sudden sense of guilt washes over me, and
I avert my eyes. I try to convince myself that the plastic plant in the corner
is just as appealing, and that I didn’t just experience the slice of guilt.

“I met someone.”

“That’s good.” She
pulls down her glasses from the top of her blonde mess of curls because every respected
therapist wears glasses. She waits for me to say something earth-shattering.

“That’s it.”

“That’s it?” she asks,
holding her glasses in the air. I’ve been seeing Dr. Denise every other week for
about two years now, and I’ve never seen her hold her glasses in the air like
this. She begins to twist them between her fingers.

“We went on a date last
night. Well, technically it was a non-date and everything went really well.
Like,
really
well. I didn’t bring her home. I didn’t try. I gave her a
kiss and watched her drive off.”

“And?” She holds her
glasses still, staring at me with those eyes that somehow see through the wall
that no one else can see through. The wall that I built six years ago, brick by
brick.

“I think I like her.”

“Hmm.” She slides her
glasses back on top of her head and leans back into her seat. “Well, that’s
good, Kelly.”

“I’ve never met anyone
like her before. She’s different. Smart, funny, beautiful, doesn’t like
fighters.”

“You’ve met plenty of
intelligent, beautiful women before,” she says.

“Next week is the
anniversary.”

Dr. Denise looks at me
and blinks a few times, unfazed with my declaration. Of course she knows. She
remembers. It’s why I’ve been in this chair more than fifty times. My mom died
on June 24, 2007, six months after my dad was sent to prison. She died of a
heart attack at the age of fifty-two while she was weeding in her backyard. She
was getting the house she had lived in for twenty-five years ready for sale.
With a husband in prison and all four of her boys gone, she couldn’t come to
terms with staying in the four-bedroom, two-story Victorian anymore. I found
her face down in a pile of clippings after coming home from my summer job at
the city. I knew the second I saw her there was no bringing her back. My mom
had died of a broken heart.

And I’ve been mourning
her loss by refusing to see the man who should have been there. The man who
caused her the stress, the sleepless nights, and the heartbreak that led to her
death. My father.

“It feels like a cruel
coincidence,” I add, leaning forward to put my elbows on my knees.

“Or a delightful
serendipity,” she offers. “Depends who you ask.”

“But you know what?
Since I’ve met Olivia, I’ve been thinking about seeing him. I don’t know why. I
feel like I need to see him or something. It’s a feeling in my gut, but I don’t
want to mess this up with Olivia. I don’t want to drag her into my past. I
don’t want her to be just another girl I don’t remember. ”

“Then don’t let her be,”
she says simply.

If only it were that
easy.

***

“Honey, I’m home,” Piper calls as she slams
our apartment door shut. Her keys clatter in a crystal dish just inside the
door. Most guys don’t have a crystal dish or a table inside their foyer. Most
bachelors have the typical pad with black faux-leather couches, empty beer
cans, and a cardboard box of half-eaten pizzas. But most guys don’t have a
father in prison and a dead mother.

The crystal dish and
table belonged to my mom. They were in the Black household for more than twenty
years - the dish in the same spot on the table, the table in the same spot in
the front hallway. They’re two of a handful of things I kept when everything
went up in an estate sale. My brothers didn’t take much either. I guess we
didn’t want to have the constant reminder of our parents every time we turned
on a TV or sat on a couch. But that table reminded me of coming home. I wanted
to keep coming home.

Piper throws down her
bag full of biology and anatomy books on my couch, which she has now claimed as
her bed, and makes a beeline for the fridge. “What’s for dinner?”

I don’t answer right
away because the clank of her keys is still ringing in my ears. All I can think
about is how it’s been six years and somehow it feels like yesterday. I can
still see my mom’s beautiful face and still remember the way she threw her head
back when she laughed. I can picture my dad picking me up and throwing me over
his shoulder like he always did when I was little. I can still see his face the
day he was sentenced, and his sullen eyes behind the glass the last time I visited
him, a week before my mom died.

“Kelly?” Piper’s head
pops out of the fridge. She eyes me with suspicion and treads carefully. She’s
getting better at living with me. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah. I’m fine.” I
stretch across the counter and grab an apple from a bowl. I bite into it,
talking with my mouth full. “How was class?”

“The usual,” she says
slowly.

I swallow hard, twist
the apple in my hand and reply, “You know, most people don’t take extra classes
to prep for med school. They graduate after four years with the bare minimum so
they can go to school for another four years. Eight years isn’t long enough for
you?”

Her face relaxes before
her head disappears into the fridge again. “Yeah, eight years isn’t long
enough. So what’s the story? Are you ready for tonight?”

“I guess.” I take
another bite of apple. Seven can’t come soon enough. My afternoon at work was
hell. I mixed up two petri dishes, almost catastrophically ruining the time
trials I was running all week. If it hadn’t been for my partner, Greg,
BioSystems would’ve been out fifty grand and crucial test results, and I’d be out
a job.

“You better not screw
this one up, Kelly,” Piper warns. She finally emerges with a leftover box of Chinese
take-out and slams the fridge shut with her foot. “Olivia seems like one of the
good ones.”

“Believe me, I know,” I
reply, turning the apple around and contemplating another bite before I add,
“Not that you should be handing out relationship advice. How many boyfriends
have you had the last couple years? It’s Friday, right? What are you doing
tonight?”

She throws the white
box in the microwave and grabs a fork from the drawer. “Yeah, yeah. If it
wasn’t for me, your ass would be parked on the couch right next to mine
watching whatever’s on cable.”

“By the way, why did
you lie to me about Olivia being Jax’s girlfriend?”

“You know that was only
fuel for the fire. After you knocked out Jax, I realized most people don’t
knock someone unconscious just for a piece of ass,” Piper replies, waving the
fork at my face.

“Most people don’t
leave a note without contact information to the potential love of their life
either,” I reply, catching the fork in her hand. Our eyes meet and her face
falls. “Too far?”

“Too far,” she replies
as she pulls the fork down.

“Screw leaving it up to
the universe. Take a stance against the universe. Pull up your big girl panties
and find him. Cash is still in Appleton, isn’t he? That’s only two hours from
here. That’s nothing. I’ll go with you tomorrow. We can hop on the bike and
head north. What do you have to lose?”

“It’s not about me,”
Piper says slowly as she opens the microwave. “It’s bigger than that. It’s
complicated.” She pulls out the box of food and twirls her fork in the lo mein
noodles before she sets it back down on the counter. She takes a long look at
the box and then tosses it in the garbage.

“I’ll knock him
unconscious if he says no to you. What’s complicated about that?” I grab her
arm lightly before she can make it out of the kitchen. She twists around, her
eyes glistening in the sun streaking through the window. “I’m sorry, Pipes. I
didn’t realize it was too far. I’m just on edge with this date tonight. I -”