CHAPTER 22
JOE
I had my arm around Lana. She was letting me put my arm around her shoulders. I took this as a very good sign. I took the fact that she’d even shown up here at all today as a good sign. Her soft, sweet, womanly smell filled my nose, making me almost intoxicated by her nearness. It was so good having her close to me again. Hopefully we could solve this Doug thing together, and I’d have her back in my bed, back in my arms, back in my heart—all of it for good this time.
She didn’t know it, but a big part of my motivation to stay sober these last two days had everything to do with her. I had to keep her safe. I had to fight for her. And I couldn’t do that drunk. She said Doug was my personal problem, but she was wrong. He was both our problems. We needed to be rid of his grudge against her, once and for all.
“Okay,” I told the girls as we approached my motel door, “my microphone-wire thing is in the room. I’ve been acting out scenes and playing music for Doug the last two days. It’s in there right now listening to the TV.”
Kitty brushed her hair out of her eyes. “So Doug still thinks all is right in the world?”
“Yes. He thinks I’m off on a bender just like you both thought. And I want to keep it that way for now. So let me go grab it and move it outside. Sometimes I like to put it on the edge of the woods at night, let him listen to the crickets, let him think I passed out in the woods.”
I took a quiet moment to hurry inside, grabbing ‘Doug’s ears.’ Then I rushed him over to his spot in the woods.
I jogged back to my motel room, back inside. Kitty now laid in my bed, making herself comfortable. Lana stood, leaning against the small wooden desk against one of the walls.
The room was your standard motel room—two queen beds, an outdated TV, and a bathroom. Not bad for only forty-nine ninety-nine a night. Free breakfast. Free WiFi.
I walked over to the desk. I’d left my pad of paper with ‘the plan’ on it there. Lana’s fine ass was nearly sitting on it. Her cheeks instantly turned a cute crimson color as I reached around her, needing her to move.
I don’t know what had changed. If she needed a little bit of time to process or if seeing me again had helped. But I got this sense that I had just as much effect over her as ever . . . maybe more so. She had a new cute nervousness around me. And I fucking loved it.
I had my pad of paper and pen, both with the motel’s logo printed on them. My plan was written on the pad of paper. But I took a moment, pealing a blank page from the back, and I used it like it was one of my Post-it’s to write her something.
I love that you kept my notes. I meant every word.
And the blush on your cheeks is driving me wild.
I handed it over to her and watched silently as she read it. And dammit, if it didn’t make her cheeks turn pink all over again.
Hell yes. I had her back.
“Joe,” Kitty interrupted, “are you going to read it to us? Or are you going to eye-fuck your girlfriend all day. I’m waiting on this brilliant plan over here.”
I didn’t correct Kitty. Instead, I plopped down on the bed opposite to Kitty’s and started reading. “Here goes. Step one: Lana and I fly to New York City and meet with Leo Maddox. Step two: Convince my old friend Leo his cousin is evil, and get him on our side. Step three: Meanwhile, back in Portland, Kitty takes the microphone. Talks to Doug through it. Pretends she stole it from me. Convinces him to meet her about the tapes, with Larry as her muscle, of course. They meet somewhere public—”
“Wait. Wait. Wait,” Kitty interrupted. She chucked a pillow at me from the other bed. “What kind of dumbass plan is this?”
“That worries me, too,” Lana added. “Why would you send Kitty to him?”
“Here’s my reasoning,” I started, shooting Kitty’s pillow back at her. “Doug and I met, and he gave me back the least offensive tape of Kitty’s five tapes. The one that doesn’t show her face. I haven’t seen them, so I have to take his word on that.”
“It doesn’t show my face,” Kitty added, “but what does this have to do with anything?”
“Let me finish.” I was on a roll now. “So, initially, he claimed he’d uploaded this fifth video of Kitty to some porn website. Then, at the end of our meeting, he tells me that, no, he never uploaded it. Then he gives me the video back as a show of good faith. Specifically tells me to give it to Kitty to burn. I thought about it, and I thought about it some more. Why wouldn’t he just have uploaded that video? It would have shown me he was serious. Again, it didn’t show her face, so really, of the five videos, that one he could use while still not technically breaking his side of our agreement. Then, on top of that, he said something about Zane, the guy Kitty was with in the videos. He tracked Zane down and made sure his copies were the only copies. He said something like, ‘After I was finished with him,’ making it sound like he beat Zane around or something. At the time, I was too freaked out that he’d caught me with Lana to process it. But the way he talked about you, Kitty, was protective. I think he might have a crush.”
Kitty laughed out loud. “That’s hilarious. You’re ridiculous.”
“I don’t know.” Lana moved from her spot by the desk and sat on the edge of my bed. “I only knew Doug one semester at college,” she told us. “We had a class together and quickly became friends. He was the first person I told about my dream to start Java Beans, and how I planned to run it out of my parents’ shed that summer. Anyway, he was very supportive, which I needed that at the time. But he quickly grew obsessive. Like overnight. He wanted to spend every second he could with me, and I just didn’t return those feelings. My point is, he fell hard and he fell fast. And I always felt like I never gave him any signs that I liked him more than a friend in return. I think it’s possible he could fall fast like that again. And he does have a few very explicit videos of you to help nudge those feelings along.”
“Great.” Kitty flopped her arms down on the bed. “Now the psycho likes me. Perfect. And Joe wants to send me to meet him. Even better.”
“I don’t want to perpetuate his feelings for you, but maybe he’d give you your tapes back if you pleaded to him. Asked nicely. Of course, you meet somewhere public. You bring your big friend Larry along, for protection, while making it clear that you just want your videos back and to move on.”
“So you just want to shift his obsession off Lana and onto me?”
“No!” Jesus, that was be the last thing I wanted. “Of course not.”
“What are the rest of your steps after that?” Lana asked.
“Alright.” I went back to my list. “Step four, after hopefully getting the videos back, we lawyer up. Doug’s stalking isn’t legal. We can take a few steps against him. Step five, and this is where Leo comes in. The Maddox family is all about good publicity for their company. They can’t have some crazy relative running around blackmailing people. Leo threatens to tell the whole family unless Doug stops once and for all. And step six . . .” I trailed off because I didn’t want to read step six out loud. “That’s it.”
“What’s step six?” Kitty asked.
“It’s personal.” I pocketed my list. “Anyway, this whole plan is contingent on Kitty getting the tapes back. All of this is a long shot.”
She made a face. “Well, I guess, at the end of the day, the tapes are my own fault anyway.”
“They aren’t your fault,” I corrected her. “Some loser boyfriend of yours made the sex-tapes when you weren’t sober. Not only that, from what Doug mentioned, they’re pretty graphic. How much of the stuff that occurred in them was even consensual? Kitty, after we deal with Doug, the real fucking fish to fry is Zane. None of what he did to you is okay.”
I pushed Kitty too far. I think her coping mechanism for the shit in her life was denial, and I’d just made a crack in that denial. I knew my rape was exactly that—rape. She still didn’t look at any of the stuff that happened with Zane as foul play. Even Doug, of all people, saw it for what it was.
Kitty jumped off the bed. “I’m a big girl; I knew what I was getting into. Instead of all your detailed ‘six steps’ crap, maybe we should just tell Doug to go screw himself and let him upload my tapes. I don’t care who sees them. I don’t know why you care so much! I need to go. I’m supposed to return Abe’s truck tonight. You two are on your own with your crazy-ass plan.”
She stormed out of the motel room, slamming the door as hard as she could as she went, making the walls rattle. I didn’t know if I needed to chase her or let her have her space.
While I was hesitating, Lana got up. “I’ll go talk to her. You stay here. She probably doesn’t want her big brother—the person she looks up to the most in the world, whose opinion matters the most to her—to tell her she’s a victim of sexual abuse. Let me try.”
I stared at Lana. She always had a way of surprising me. She was confident in times of crisis, the way I wasn’t always, and I found it very attractive. My six steps—maybe they were a little out there—but with Lana by my side, I was positive we could make this plan work.