Chapter 7: Alex
Jenni Wright. Wow, had she grown up to be a looker and a half.
It was all I could to not turn around and look at her.
For years since Janice died, there were only two things that had occupied my head. The first was Kelly, the little girl that had to do with only her father when what she really needed was a mother. And the second was the job.
I never really had any time for relationships. I had never even toyed with the idea of maybe bringing someone into my life. For years, my whole world had revolved around Janice. We had met during a particularly dark period of my life, when nothing was going to way I had planned and I was ready to just throw it all away and head back to Kent with my tail between my legs.
We met at the carnival, a run-down assortment of crap rides at a pier where the only good thing that could possibly come out of it was a good fix. And that was exactly why I had been there. I had started working at the DEA a year before, and one of the first assignments was cracking down on a distribution channel coming out of the carnival.
The job had been easy enough, the dealers too comfortable in their turf, and the carnival attracting nothing more than the low-life of the city. It was one of the reasons why I had been a little surprised that Janice was there to start with.
She had been taking her nephew out, showing him around the city, and had found herself caught in the middle of an arrest when we cracked down on a couple of dealers by the Ferris wheel. She had been shell-shocked, and I had felt the need to make sure she was okay. Had even driven her and her nephew home.
And from then on, well, the rest is just history. Several dates led to her moving in with me, and eventually I was on one knee by the same pier where we had first met, asking her to be my wife.
I had flown my father in for the wedding, and it was the only time I had actually seen him cry. I couldn’t even remember him shedding a tear at my mother’s funeral. And if he had, then he’d done a pretty good job at hiding it from me. He didn’t do that on my wedding day, though. The man was practically bawling his eyes out, and it had scared me just a little.
Kelly came a couple of years later, and for me, it had been the happiest day of my life. I had looked into my daughter’s eyes, and knew that I would do anything I could to keep her safe. The two of them were my world, and everything revolved around them.
The cancer came quick, and Janice was gone before I even had the chance to register what was going on. Kelly was three when it happened, and Samuel had flown down again just to make sure I didn’t drive the both of us off the pier and into the ocean. A thought that I hate to admit, came often.
“That girl needs you,” Samuel had told me, but I wasn’t listening. At that point, you could have me that the world was on fire, and I wouldn’t have flinched. I tried to be a father, and a cop, and had been failing miserably at both for quite a while until I learned to pull myself together. Hours of therapy and tough love helped, but throwing myself into the job with all the fury of a hurricane did even more.
And every time I was late picking her up, or missed a recital, or didn’t show up for a PTA meeting, I said to myself that I was doing it for her. I was working the night oil for my daughter, to give her the life she deserved.
Until I got shot, of course, and realized I was probably not doing it for Kelly after all. A part of me still missed Janice, and that same part seemed to have an inexplicable death wish.
Sometimes I look back at all that, and wonder what the hell went wrong. When did I forget to take care of myself for her sake? When did I think it would be okay for her to grow up without both parents?
Maybe those hours of therapy didn’t help after all, buddy.
Maybe. And maybe I had been pushing people away for the exact same reason. Why build long-lasting relationships I didn’t expect to keep, right? It was why I had never been on a date, why I had never let any woman into my life, and definitely why I couldn’t even fathom the idea of sharing a bed with someone Kelly might one day call ‘mom’.
Which made my attraction to Jenni Wright even more confusing!
She was definitely my type. Brunette, check. Slim, check. Smile that could melt steel, double-fucking-check. But there was something else there, something more than just the way she looked. It was in her eyes, a hint of mischief, a touch of a desire to live on the wild side. Reading her was definitely not easy, but that had been clear enough. And maybe that was exactly why I was feeling the way I was. Janice had that same spark, the willingness to jump headfirst into the unknown.
Dammit, she had even made jokes about the cancer when the pain had been bearable enough for that.
Jenni Wright…
The truck hit a small speed bump, and I was abruptly brought back to where my mind had wandered off to. Samuel was pulling into the driveway of a small workshop, Pete’s Garage in large painted uppercase letters on the front. I remembered the shop from my childhood, a lot of long afternoons spent with my father and Pete as we fixed up whatever the Ford had been complaining about then. It felt a little nostalgic.
“Okay, you kids stay here while I go talk to Pete,” Samuel said, jumping out of the truck.
“Take me with you,” Kelly said, following suit.
I watched from my seat as the two of them disappeared into the shop, then turned to look at Jenni. She was huddled up near the door of the backseat, biting her lip as she gazed out the window. She smiled at me when she saw me looking, and I felt parts of me melt immediately.
“So, what brings you back to Kent?” she asked.
“Decided to spend the summer with the old man, show my daughter where her father grew up,” I replied.
“That’s nice,” Jenni smiled. “Is it her first time here?”
I nodded. “Ever since her mother died, and we’ve kind of been avoiding free time.”
“I’m so sorry,” Jenni said, her eyes suddenly wide in shock. “I had no idea.”
“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “It happened almost ten years ago.”
“That’s a long time to be avoiding ‘free time’.”
I shrugged. “We’re not very good at mourning.”
“And Kelly?”
“She has to deal with me, which I think is probably the hardest part of it all,” I said.
“I know where she’s coming from,” Jenni said, looking out the window again, her eyes glazing over.
“Mother, too?”
Jenni nodded. “But she walked out on us,” she said. “I’m sure it’s not the same, but the end result pretty much is.”
I laughed. “Hank isn’t exactly the lenient type.”
“Tell me about it,” she smiled. “But he’s a great dad, all things considered.”
“Is that why you stayed back in Kent?”
Jenni hesitated, then shrugged. “I’m not sure,” she said, frowning. “Partly, yeah, but I don’t hate it here, either. It used to be a great place to live for a while.”
“Used to be?”
“The college campus brought a lot with it,” she replied. “Good business, but also late-night parties, drunk drivers and of course, our all-time favorite, drugs.”
The DEA agent inside me suddenly woke up. “Drugs?” I asked.
Jenni looked at me, and for a second I had a feeling that she was about to tell me something she wasn’t supposed to. It looked like she was conflicted over what to say and what not to.
“The usual,” she shrugged. “Weed, a couple of synthetic garbage, you know?”
I did, and I also had a feeling there was a lot more to it than that. It was in the way she said it, how she looked away while trying to act like there was nothing serious to it. I made a mental note to ask Samuel about that later. The last time I had checked, Kent wasn’t exactly the place most people would associate with drugs.
I was about to ask her more, when a knock on the window startled me. Samuel waved for me to come out and help him with the chains, and as I stepped out of the truck, I glanced back at Jenni. She was looking out the window again.
Pete was standing next to my father, the hood of Jenni’s car up as he hunched forward to check the damage. “Right, it’s the alternator,” Pete said. “Don’t have the parts now, but should get ‘em in a couple of days.”
Pete stood up and stretched, then gave me a wide smile. “Welcome back, Alex.”
I shook his hand. “Thanks, Pete.”
“You tell Jenni she can come pick this up on Monday,” Pete continued. “Till then, she betta find herself another way to go about her day.”
“Thanks, Pete,” Samuel said, clapping the man on the shoulder. “We’ll manage, just do what you can.”
I unhooked the chains, then helped Pete push the car into the garage. “Now don’t you be a stranger, kiddo,” he said. “You gotta pass by here more often.”
I walked out of the garage with the promise that I would. Kelly was standing in the middle of the driveway, waiting for me.
“Grandfather’s invited your new friend to dinner,” she said with a smile.
I gave her a wary look. “Does that bother you?”
Kelly shook her head quickly. “Nope, I like her.”
“You don’t know her.”
Kelly frowned and tapped her index finger on her chin. “Let’s just say I have a feeling about her,” she said. “What’s the world I’m looking for? Intuition? I think that’s what you keep throwing at me, right?”
“One day that lip of yours is going to get you into a lot of trouble,” I smiled, resting my arm around her shoulders as we walked back to the truck. Samuel was talking to Jenni, and she looked over at us as we approached.
“Your father’s trying to charm his way into my heart,” Jenni said.
“Yeah, be careful about that,” I replied. “A real heartbreaker, that one.”
“So, a man can’t ask a beautiful woman to join him and his family for dinner?” Samuel asked, looking at the both of us with an amused smile on his face.
“Well, we could use the company,” I chimed in. “Normally, the three of us can’t really stand each other, so you’d be like a buffer.”
Jenni laughed. “Only if it’s okay with Kelly,” she said.
Nice. She knows how to play this right.
“Are you kidding?” Kelly rolled her eyes. “Please come. Save me from these two geezers.”
Jenni laughed again and nodded. “Fine, dinner it is. Where are we heading?”
“The Red Roof,” Samuel replied, hoisting himself into the driver’s seat as the rest of us got into the truck.
I stood back to let Kelly in and was a little surprised when she opted for the backseat next to Jenni. I gave her a confused look, and she shot me a warning gaze that made me smile.
It looked like I wasn’t the only infatuated with Jenni Wright.