Bay

I almost get a speeding ticket trying to get home after a nervous bride called and had to be reassured about her flowers and cake and everything that is humanly possible and included in a wedding.

By the time I saw Jack’s ears turn red and her eyes catch fire I just stepped in and took over the call, scaring the hell out of the woman who genuinely thought I was an automated voice message.

Me and Kim laughed and laughed–well Kim laughed, I just grunted and got my ass into the car before Jack could make me describe Jones’s dick to her again for the fourth time that day.

That woman really, really needs her husband to screw her soon before she loses the one marble left still rolling in her gourd. And now I am really late to meet Jones at his place, and I smell like the dead end of a rotten deer because Dee…

Is not over her morning sickness like she’s been bragging to everyone. I would have screamed and run home hours ago to change, but I didn’t want to prove to Jack that I have feelings, so I stuck it out and only secretly puked into my wastepaper basket twice from the smell.

I dunno, she’s either been eating at Jimbo and Luanne’s place lately, or there is something dead and nasty cooking in her belly. Kim says that baby is probably Satan which made Dee’s eyes for real catch fire.

I think she’s right since I can still smell the dried and crusty remains of what she swears were eggs. I’d agree if they came out of a dead chicken.

I pull into my driveway and hustle into the house, cursing when I have to stop to deactivate the alarm, and then Ripper who usually comes to greet me stops mid-run and turns to scamper the other way.

Not that I blame him. I smell…

I shower fast, only scrubbing my skin twice and change into jeans and a lightweight sweater the color of wheat before feeding Rip and reactivating the alarm.

It takes me twenty minutes to get to Jones’s and by the time I’m at his door I am excited and looking forward to deep fried tacos and some dessert of the inappropriate variety.

I ring the bell twice and smile, wanting him to see it first thing when he pulls the door open, but it fades fast when I get a look at him and see the anger on his face.

“Hey, uh, is this a bad time?” I ask, peering around him and into the living room where people are sitting, scowling at me.

Jones stiffens and looks back before turning to me and shaking his head.

“I should have called you. This is not a good time.”

Now usually I’d be upset by this and just barge in and sit down but for some reason, maybe the completely devoid expression on Jones’s face, I just feel like an intruder.

They’re his family, I know because well I went to school with that muff rot that he calls a sister, and I’ve seen mama and Luanne eyeballing Linda Jones enough to recognize her.

The older guy is obviously Jones’s father because they look like replicas of each other. The asshole sitting next to his sister Marlene I don’t recognize, but from the look of it, I’d say some poor idiot got himself hitched to that meat wagon.

“Uh…yeah, I see that. Are these the assholes–”

“I’ll call you later, okay,” Jones interrupts, wincing when I glare at them and turning his shoulder to block my view.

I draw in a breath, take a step back and look at him and it hits me that he isn’t inviting me in. In fact, from his body language I am pretty sure he’s trying to pretend that we’re not even together.

I’d laugh and ask him if he’s ashamed of me, but at this moment I feel so…something, I feel something I don’t even want to talk about, that I take a step back and swallow, trying to get my face back on before he sees…something.

“Yeah. Sure,” I mumble before I turn and walk back to my car, keeping my feelings inside while I start the thing and back up into the street.

I look up before I drive off, but Jones isn’t even there. Usually he’d have walked me out to the driveway, kissed me twice before I could get in the car and walked out onto the street to watch me until he lost sight of my car.

Today, just a day after we decided to date, he isn’t even meeting my eyes, and it feels…something. I feel stuff, okay, but I am so not even thinking about it until I am home alone, Ripper locked in the yard just in case I do something really pathetic like cry.

 

*****

 

“Okay! What is going on?” Kim yells when she walks into my office and falls into a seat, offering me a piece of blueberry pie that I turn down with a silent shake of my head.

I can’t eat. I just don’t feel right.

Kim gasps when I decline and jumps up to touch my forehead, her eyes going narrow when a check proves that I am in fact not running a two-hundred-degree fever.

“What the hell? Jack! Dee! Bay just turned down food and her face looks…well, it’s still devoid, but her eyes don’t look right,” she yells, and a split second later I hear the click-clack of running heels before Jack falls into my office and Dee bumps into her sending them both to the carpet.

“What? Is she sick? Are you okay? Did mama call again and ask you about tampons? I swear on my life I do not know how she got to be a hundred and two and still doesn’t understand how to insert–Bay?” Jack asks, stopping her tirade when she looks at me.

I have absolutely no idea what they all see, and I do not care. My face is on, I have the tone down to an art today, and I am not, not talking about how I lay awake all night waiting for Jones to call.

I especially will not tell anyone that he never called and that I finally broke at seven am and called him like some loser in love. When it went to voicemail and he didn’t bother to call back I so got the message. Hard.

So here I am, dry-eyed, closed lipped and I will stay that way until such a time as I decide exactly how I will make Jones suffer for turning me into a normal girlfriend who does the “should I call him, shouldn’t I call him” spiel.

It got so bad poor Ripper was whining by the fifteenth circuit I made around my kitchen, his confusion when I didn’t pet him making me feel like shit.

It was a rough morning, made only rougher because I am well aware that people are betting and placing hard wagers on what will happen between me and Jones.

I have it on Luanne’s authority that Jimbo has a hundred on me murdering Jones and needing an alibi. I would have laughed, silently, at that but I wasn’t feeling it. More especially because my eye landed on the cleaver and I didn’t even have one thought about using it.

I have turned into my pathetically in love and tragic sisters. The only thing I have going for me is that I didn’t tell Jones I love him for which I am eternally grateful.

It doesn’t count that when I wanted to say it to him he was going down on me and I didn’t have the breath to wheeze it. Point is I didn’t, and I don’t give a shit if it only didn’t happen because I passed out from pleasure.

“Bay?”

I look up at Kim who is cautiously approaching me like she would a skittish, rabid animal and narrow my eyes to make her back up.

“What?”

“Er, honey…uh, are you okay?” she asks tentatively, her face losing all color when I blink and nod once.

“I’m fine! Why? What do you idiots want?” I ask, looking down at the flower order and breathing a sigh of relief when I see that it’s been corrected.

I am so still going to graffiti the florist’s shop, now I just won’t break the window too.

“Erm, uh. Well, honey…” Dee starts, looking back at Kim with a frown and what I think may be real fear. “Um, you see, it’s just that um–”

“Oh, for God sakes! Stop being such pussies! Bay, honey, you’re crying,” Jack says gently, giving me a look filled with so much love and sympathy I don’t tell her to bugger off but reach up to touch my cheeks.

Oh, Jesus, no.

I am crying, silent tears that have tracked down my cheeks and made a puddle I didn’t even notice on the blotter that covers my desk. The horror I feel is matched only by the horror I see reflected on their faces, and I gasp, grabbing at the unused box of tissues.

I swipe at the stupid fucking leak and groan when the three terrors sit down and stare at me, silently, as if they have no idea what to say. Well neither do I!

I didn’t even cry that one time Kim forced me to go tandem biking with her and we hit a pothole. I about engraved that bar on my vagina and walked gingerly for three days and even then, I sucked it up and didn’t even make a peep.

This is just…unacceptable.

“Stop fucking looking at me,” I moan, swallowing when they keep staring and poor Jack bursts into tears.

“Oh, Bay, I thought I’d be ecstatic the first time I saw you cry but I thought you’d have to lose a limb for it to happen and that I could at least take pictures and laugh a little and, and this isn’t even funny,” she wails, making me throw my hands up and close my still leaking eyes.

Swear to God I will use a melon baller on them if this doesn’t stop soon.

I don’t find this funny. I hate it, and what’s more. I hate that the anger and pain I’ve been holding inside my chest is pushing free and making breathing hard.

I’ve never felt this before, this…sense of rejection and uncertainty and I can tell you I don’t like it at all. Two fucking years I’ve kept my shit together and not gone after Jones because I didn’t want to hurt him, and ironically, here I am, the one who’s been hurt because…I love the idiot.

Figures.

“Bay, ahem, are you…okay? I mean you looked happy enough yesterday. You even ignored it when Dee stole one of your donuts, and you didn’t even flinch when it ended up on your shirt because she puked and–”

“Okay. Never speak of that again. Dee always has carrots in her puke and I know she doesn’t eat them so what the fuck?” I sneer, glaring at her when she blushes and shrugs in confusion.

“Don’t look at me, I don’t know how they got there unless the baby is making me sleep eat again.”

Kim huffs and rolls her eyes before looking right at me.

“What happened, Bay?”

I so do not want to talk about this, not at all, but Jack is still crying and I have to say her acting is getting really good with this pregnancy while Kim and Dee just watch me.

“Dammit. Will you all leave me alone if I tell you?” I ask, needing guarantees before I so much as spill a kernel of my evening.

Dee nods enthusiastically which means she’s lying through her teeth, and the other two stay silent because they’re terrified of what will happen if they lie to me. Side note, I once had a hobo piss in Kim’s car for telling me I look hot in purple lycra. It was a phase!

She had to sell the car and thankfully did, but then we all know Essie can’t smell a damn thing after years of marriage to Skeeter. Bonus.

“I went over to Jones’s place for dinner last night and his family was there.”

“Oh God, not those idiots. Did you crotch punch someone? I’ve been dying to twat cripple Linda Jones for years after she called mama a hick,” Kim says, looking excited by the prospect.

Honesty, I would totally have done it if I’d been admitted to the hallowed Jones gathering. I don’t know what hurts more, the rejection or the shame I feel that I just walked away.

Jones needs to die. Painfully.

“I didn’t get the chance seeing as he kept the door opened to only a crack and pretended we weren’t even together. Oh, after he didn’t so much as say hello and then promised to call me. Which he never did,” I say matter of factly, trying on the mantle of calm acceptance.

It’s a bad fit since no one in my family even knows the word calm, and acceptance is what you do when you get a plea bargain.

Kim’s jaw drops open and I hear Dee gasp while Jack’s green eyes glaze over and then go so hard even I shudder. Just for interest’s sake, Jack hardly ever loses her temper. She’s what we call the Day Walker in my family because she’s so different in temperament. Yeah, she’s crazy and mean, and she can be a royal bitch when she’s annoyed, but the fact is that Jack has only ever lost her temper once, and for Uncle Bob, a man who moved clear across the country to escape her, it ended with his truck on fire and Jack holding a chainsaw.

The sheriff tackled her before she got anywhere near Bob, but the damage was already done. His crime? He told his boss, who told her sister. who told everyone. that mama went down to the free clinic for a pregnancy scare.

It riled Jack because, and let’s just be clear here, we may be hillbillies but we ain’t white trash. Free clinic my ass! We go to the doctor and pay the bill in trade. And the doc really likes mama’s canned peaches. And by the way, we all know mama is way too dried up down there to ever sustain another baby.

Maybe it was just Jack on the rag, who knows but her temper…scary.

“That filthy hooker eating, ass munching sonofabitch! I can’t believe I called in the one favor I had with daddy to call in his favor with you so you could finally date Jefferson and that toad ball does that to you!” she yells, jumping up to pace.

I see Kim wince and Dee look anywhere but at me while I process what information I just got. Now you see this…this is not surprising and yet I feel a bubble of pure rage burst within me when she stops, makes a sound that reminds me of a trapped rodent and turns to me wide-eyed.

“Please don’t kill me. Cord just started giving me head again.”

“You did this?” I snarl, throwing caution to the wind and just letting it all hang out.

Anger. Anger. More anger. What! I don’t like the other emotions and anger is so strong right now it keeps mutating like a virus.

“Er, em, but it wasn’t like that and…I just wanted you to be happy and smile maybe like once a year!” she defends, stamping her foot in a way that makes me want to laugh.

While I look down at her dead corpse.

“You…”

“You got a night of awesome sex out of it! Come on, Bay, it was good and, and you know Jefferson is like the only guy for you and, but I didn’t think he was even capable of being an asshole otherwise I’d have let Kim rip his face off a long time ago! Please forgive me. I’ll help you with the body and get Cord to alibi us both,” she screams, her last defense in a situation wherein I feel like I need to kill someone.

That anger fades rapidly though and I sigh, waving at Jack to retake her seat because honestly, what the hell does it even matter? Yeah, I dated Jones for like a hot second and now he’s played me wrong.

“Erm, I hesitate to interject here since it’s a death sentence, but you should talk to Jefferson,” Dee says stiltedly, cringing when I let out a rusty bark of laughter.

“You mean like this morning when I tried to call him and he let it go to voicemail?” I ask sweetly, seeing them shudder and share a look filled with fear.

Yeah, I know. My sweet voice is serial killer creepy. It’s why I used it.

“Oh man.”

“Yeah.”

“Oh man.”

“Yeah, Dee! We get it. This is bad,” Kim snarls, shoving a cupcake into her mouth wrapper and all and chewing like an animal.

Of all my sisters, she scares me the most because Kim isn’t a firecracker that will explode like Dee, or insane like Jack. No, she’s just plain mean to the bone and she can out wait the most patient of people.

“No, I mean I heard Ky talking to his mama last night and he was pissed about someone dying or something, I mean I was eavesdropping so I didn’t get it all, and the news only coming through yesterday. You don’t think…” she says, trailing off and making me groan.

I may not have been with Jones for long, but we’ve known each other for years and everyone knows how close he is to his grandma who lives in Connecticut. The only time in the last few years that I haven’t felt stalked by the man was his once yearly visit up there to see her on his grandfather’s birthday.

Sully once said he takes her to the cemetery and they have a picnic and everything.

Shit.

“Bay, I mean if that is what happened…”

Then I will tell him how sorry I am and send flowers and he can kiss my ass. We were supposed to be together. Me and him. A relationship. Not this thing where he tells me to go home, doesn’t even bother to introduce me to his family and doesn’t once mention the possibility that his grandma may be dead.

Christ, this actually hurts more.

“I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” I say in a stony voice that leaves no room for further discussion.

Kim opens her mouth, thinks better of it, and silently tells the other two to leave as well. When they’re gone I feel better. I’m not into that psychobabble shit, but I do know that at least I’ve talked things out and I now know that I can’t just murder Jones.

No, I’ma do worse and go back to the way things were. Let’s see if he likes being ignored. Again.