Chapter 4

The only thought I have while talking to someone is ‘how do I make this stop?’

-Cora’s secret thoughts

Cora

“Hey, Fire Crotch.”

I would’ve slammed the door closed had Janie not waltzed right in before I could. Kayla came in with Janie right behind her followed by another woman who looked vaguely familiar.

At least she walked in more hesitantly than the first two.

I stood there awkwardly, the door open, hoping that they’d leave.

They didn’t.

Then again, I knew they wouldn’t.

Janie was a force of nature. Janie and Kayla together were a natural disaster.

They had gotten me into more trouble when I was younger than I cared to admit—and not one single incident had been my fault.

“There we were,” Janie said. “Visiting June, who was picking up a change of clothes for her boss because there was a chemical spill at work when I spotted a familiar yellow and blue van through the trees.”

I winced.

My van was familiar. Then again, it was hard for it not to be, seeing as it was a 1960 Volkswagen van that was painted yellow and blue. It was one of a kind. There really was no mistaking it. Especially when you were there to help choose the paint colors.

Which had been why I’d started driving a nondescript black sedan around town whenever I needed to leave the house. Just for this very reason.

“I cannot believe that you didn’t tell us that you were here, Fire Crotch!” Kayla cried, throwing her hands in the air like I’d committed the ultimate sin.

I’d made it a week, which was pitiful. This town was roughly the same size as my hometown, Kilgore, and I really expected that my privacy would last a little bit longer. I was somewhat disappointed that it hadn’t.

“I didn’t tell you that I was here because I didn’t want you to know. When y’all are around me, I tend to get into trouble,” I admitted, ignoring the ‘fire crotch’ nickname that they’d been calling me since I was fourteen.

See, here’s the thing, my carpet didn’t match the drapes for one single day because of a coloring mishap gone wrong, so to speak, and since it was so obvious, it was no surprise that it caught their attention, especially since I’d been so god awful at pruning the bush in my younger years.

Let me tell you something, though. I’d gotten better about it. I had to, thanks to Janie and Kayla being complete douche bags.

Since I was sixteen, I’d learned to conceal and not feel…at least when they were around.

It wasn’t done maliciously by any means, but I was also what one would call an introvert. To the extreme.

I didn’t particularly want to do the things that they’d wanted to do. But, they were experts at executing coercive maneuvers, and I found myself being dragged into their debauchery on many an occasion.

“Listen,” I said, sounding just as tired as I felt. “I’m working. I can’t do this right now.”

Janie looked like she didn’t believe me one bit, which was only partially true.

“Maybe we should go,” the stranger suggested. “I do have to go back to work and bring Coke his clothes.”

I looked at the stranger. “Which direction did you come from?”

The neighbor pointed in the direction of my male neighbor. The man that I couldn’t stop drawing.

The same one who had to practically run away from his ex-wife yesterday when I’d seen him at the Taco Shop.

I’d gotten a lot of good gossip just by being my usual quiet self—and listening to those in the restaurant talk about the two of them. I’d learned that not very many people liked this ‘Coke’ man’s ex-wife. Interestingly, though, they also didn’t particularly care about Coke either.

But it seemed that was only because he wasn’t a nice person—or so they said.

“Oh,” I paused. “Would you mind giving your boss a note from me?”

She frowned. “Sure…”

I gifted her with a thumb up, then rushed to my drawing room where I’d left the comic that I’d drawn for him.

After seeing him with his ex-wife yesterday, I decided that I really needed to make him smile.

I’d drawn him a short, funny cartoon, and then I’d slipped it into an envelope.

I had intended to take a walk later and drop it in his mailbox, but this would work just as well, too.

It’d also gave me the excuse not to go since I didn’t particularly want to go on said walk.

I’d already taken a short walk earlier that morning down the driveway and back. That was at least a quarter of a mile each way—meaning I got a half a mile in. That was more than I usually got…

“What the hell, Cora?” Janie asked. “You didn’t tell us anything. You just thought it’d be okay to show up and hide?”

I picked the envelope up and handed it to the stranger. June? Was that what I’d heard Kayla call her?

“I’ll be sure to give him this,” June promised, sounding sincere.

“Thank you,” I paused, then stared at the two women that I knew wouldn’t leave until I at least gave them a short explanation.

“I didn’t call you because I didn’t want you to make a big deal out of the fact that I was here,” I admitted. “I’m working. I was just hired on to animate a character for an upcoming kid’s movie, so I need you to leave. I have a team meeting in about ten minutes, and I can’t miss it. It was one of the stipulations for them to allow me to live remotely and work from home.”

“Fine,” Janie sighed. “But don’t think that we’re not going to discuss this another time. You have until Friday afternoon to get back with us, and if you don’t, you’ll be sorry.”

“You’ll probably be drunk, too,” Kayla groaned. “Janie, we need to make sure we don’t accidentally get her another tattoo again.”

I snorted.

They hadn’t accidentally gotten me a tattoo the first time, either.

In fact, they’d poured alcohol down my throat and got me snockered, and then took me to a tattoo shop only because they wanted me to get a tattoo first and tell them if it hurt.

It had.

A lot.

It’d been a stupid little heart on the bone of my ankle. My one and only.

My drunk self hadn’t realized what I’d been getting into. Janie and Kayla had laughed their asses off after I was finished, and I’d been unaware of the problem at hand until the next morning.

“You won’t be doing that,” I hissed. “Now get out!”

Kayla grinned at my impatience.

Janie narrowed her eyes.

Then June’s phone rang, and a clearly irritated man could be heard on the other end of the line.

“I need clothes!” he growled. “I would’ve already had them myself by now if you hadn’t stuck me with that phone conversation.”

I was downright surprised that I could hear every single word out of the man’s mouth—through a phone.

But I had, and what I did hear made my insides shiver.

That smoky, scratchy, rough voice caused my nipples to harden.

I kept my poker face firmly in place, though, and then squeezed past the two still obviously annoyed women and headed straight for the door.

Once I had it open, I gestured at the women that had followed me out of my office, and neither one said a word.

Janie flipped me off, and I had to work at not bursting into laughter.

“I’ll be watching you, FC,” Janie complained.

Fire crotch. Ugh.

“Must you call me that?” I asked with barely restrained patience. “It’s annoying and people always ask what that’s short for. I don’t want to have to tell them here. Please, just for once in your life, act like you’re not the crudest person on the planet.”

Janie laughed, taking no offense by my blunt words, and exited.

She’d never understood how much I hated it…and she never would. If she knew exactly how much it got on my nerves, she’d probably use it more.

Moments later, she was passing by me and heading back through the woods.

“Don’t forget. Friday. Be there or be square,” Janie said.

Moments later, I fully lost sight of her thanks to the woods, and I couldn’t say that I was upset by the notion.

I wished they didn’t know where I lived. Now they’d be here all the freakin’ time if I let them.

Which I wouldn’t—at least not willingly.

***

Coke

“What’s this?” I asked June as she handed me an envelope.

“Someone asked me to give it to you,” she explained.

She didn’t expound on who that someone was, nor did she wait around for me to ask. Instead, she walked out of my office, and back into the main room of the building because her friends were there.

“Hey!” I called before she could completely disappear from sight. “Could you close the door? My ex-wife said she was on her way over, and I’d rather not talk to her if I can help it.”

June snorted. “So, you’d rather me deal with it?”

I didn’t bother beating around the bush. “Yes.”

She scoffed. “You remember the last time I had to deal with her, right?”

I did. Vividly.

That’d been the night that my daughter had told her mother that she was going away for college, and Beatrice, in only the way Beatrice could do it, had taken out her anger on a random person instead of her daughter—June.

She’d bad mouthed her so badly that June had left the restaurant altogether—leaving her elderly grandfather to finish his meal alone.

I’d arrived to hear Beatrice turn her ugly words on my daughter and had had enough.

Yet, it was as if Beatrice had no desire for anyone to be happy but her—and that included her daughter.

At this point, I was fairly sure that my daughter had changed her number—or would if her mother continued to do what she was doing. Which was pushing her daughter away, farther and farther, until one day they’d be so far apart, it’d take a map and a miracle to find their way back to each other.

“With Janie and Kayla here, I might just let them deal with her.” June grinned.

I burst out laughing. “I think Beatrice would definitely refuse to come back if she had to deal with those two. Why are they here?”

I stood up and placed the envelope on the counter before reaching for the bag of clothes that June had gotten from my house for me.

“They’re here because they want to see a car crushed…”

I just shook my head. “I’ll do that in about an hour. I have to finish up a few bills…just try to keep the Wicked Witch of Hostel away from me while I do that.”

June gave me a single thumb up and closed the door, and I yanked my shirt up and over my head, fisting the collar at my neck as I did. Once it was off, I tossed it in the direction of the chair but missed.

The next thing to go were my dirty pants, followed shortly by my socks.

I left the underwear on since they were the single item of clothing I was wearing that hadn’t been doused in gasoline when the line had broken earlier and splattered me.

Once I was redressed, I left the clothes on the floor where they’d fallen and sat back down in my chair, sans socks or shoes.

My eyes caught on the envelope as soon as I sat down, and I tore it open carelessly.

Had I known what was inside, I would’ve been a lot more careful about how I’d handled it.

As it was, I’d already torn the corner of the eight by ten piece of paper in my haste to get it open.

Once I unfolded it, my heart stopped.

Then I burst out laughing.

It was a short comic strip, just three scenes, but the amount of detail in each was astounding.

It took up about a third of the paper, and luckily the tear was small, and not through the comic itself.

The first comic was of a man on a motorcycle, pointing his finger at a woman who was saying, “Why don’t they play poker in the jungle?”

The next scene was of the man rubbing his chin, looking deep in thought. The bubble above his head said, “I don’t know, why?”

The third scene was of the woman, a huge smile on her face, throwing her hands in the air. “Too many cheetahs!”

My grin was stretched so wide that my face was hurting.

I flipped the note over, trying to find the author’s signature, but there wasn’t one or even a name anywhere.

It was just the comic and that was it.

I found myself disappointed.

For some reason, I really, really needed to know who’d sent it to me.

That was the first person to make me smile in quite a while, and I felt like I needed to thank them.

That task was nearly impossible lately, thanks to my ex-wife.

Grabbing a tack off my desk, I went to pin it to the wall but stopped short when I saw the old frame on the bookshelf with my degree in it.

It would hold up better if I had it in there. Despite my best intentions to keep the place clean, this was still a salvage yard. Papers got dirty whether I wanted them to or not, and sometimes my cleaning lady wasn’t nearly as careful as she should be.

Decision made, I put the comic into the diploma frame, in front of my diploma, and replaced it on the wall where I’d intended for the comic to sit—right behind my desk where I’d be able to see it the moment I walked into my office.

After one more last glance at the comic, I decided to question June on who’d given it to her.

I made it to the door, but before I could open it to ask June anything, I heard the shrill sound of my ex’s voice and changed my mind.

I also locked my office door for good measure and went a step further by turning off the light.

Then I went back to my desk, turned on the flashlight on my phone, and worked in the dark as I wrote checks and paid bills online.

It was another thirty minutes before June knocked on the door and said loudly, “She’s gone!”

I licked the last envelope and stood, dropping it onto the pile on my desk where the rest of the outgoing mail lay.

Then I cursed and went back for the socks and boots, slipping both hastily on my feet.

I emerged moments later to find three women smiling at me.

“What?” I rasped, my voice a little rougher sounding than it normally was.

I was probably getting sick.

Great.

It never failed. Every single time I got a cold, I’d lose my voice.

“Your ex-wife is a crazy bitch,” Janie supplied.

I snorted. “Tell me something I don’t know.”

“She threatened to call the cops because we wouldn’t leave. Apparently, she’s still under the false impression that she has every right to be here,” June continued.

I groaned. “She would. What’s hers is hers, and what was mine was hers. Even if we divorced, and I was allowed to keep my place of business because her daddy made me.”

Janie snickered. “After what I just endured for you, you have to crush two cars.”

I gave her an assessing stare. “I’ll do this…but just know that it takes more time than you think it does.”

Janie shrugged. “I have nothing else to do today, anyway.”

“Actually, we’re both supposed to be working, but we took the day off because it’s National Hamburger Day, and Janie felt that was a legitimate reason to celebrate,” Kayla supplied.

I didn’t know what to say to that, so I stayed silent.

“So, what was in the envelope?”

I turned to see Janie staring at me with a look of speculation on her face.

“Why?”

She grinned. “Because your neighbor, my good friend, Cora, gave it to you, and I want to know what it was.”

I felt something like guilt, and a small amount of elation, fill my chest.

“It was a comic,” I explained.

“Why’d she give you a comic?” Janie frowned. “What did you do to her to piss her off?”

I frowned. “I didn’t do anything to piss her off…”

At least not lately. It’d been six days since she’d asked me to stop working on my truck at midnight, and I’d saved it for the weekends, during the middle of the day, so that she couldn’t complain.

Then again, I’d finished the truck and sold it, and now had another one to work on…this one I had an even tighter deadline on.

I might not be able to do it only on Saturdays if I wanted to get it completed in time to head to the Barrett Jackson car show in Vegas in two months.

I had about two hundred grand saved up, and more hopefully once I got this Stingray finished.

I was going to find my car—a limited edition Camaro—and this time, I’d actually have the money to buy it unlike when I’d seen it as a teenager who was on the verge of becoming a father.

But the idea of keeping Cora up all night when she had to work early was quite unsettling to me, so I’d think about when best to do it…or maybe I could delegate more to June and allow her to pull her weight instead of just pulling parts off the lot for customers—at least the ones she could get on her own—and answering phones.

“Funny, but she only wrote me comics when I pissed her off. And most of them were a caricature of her flipping off a caricature of me. I saved them all. One day she’s gonna be famous, and I’m going to show the evolution of Cora in picture frames in my living room.”

My brows rose.

“She started drawing these comics for us in like sixth grade. They’ve progressively gotten better over the years,” Kayla explained.

“Ahh,” I said in understanding.

I was convinced, though, that the comic hadn’t come because she was mad—at least not at me. But because she didn’t like how my ex-wife had cornered me.

And I smiled.

It was nice to know that someone cared.