Chapter Eighteen: Ryder
I won’t lie. I was tired as fuck on Monday morning when Quinn called to ask if I’d meet him for coffee around nine. I had spent a good part of the weekend doing wild and wondrous things with a gorgeous nineteen-year-old girl, and the rest of the time dealing with a rambunctious four-year-old boy, who Hank and Emily dropped by the house on Sunday right after church at noon. Honestly, I’m not sure which one wore me out the most.
Lolita was the most amazing girl—woman— in and out of bed. When we weren’t doing devious things to each other’s bodies we were talking and laughing and eating and drinking and bonding like old friends. It was as if we had known each other for years. To be so young, she had an old soul that seemed to connect immediately and directly with my own.
We had lots of things in common besides an insatiable appetite for sex. We both loved science fiction movies, greasy cheeseburgers and fries slathered in ketchup, Pearl Jam, long walks on the beach, hiking in the mountains, swimming in the ocean, The Black List, the Rock, Julia Roberts, and Dancing with The Stars (okay, I lied about liking that one, but we were on a roll).
Sunday afternoon I introduced Cody to his new nanny. He eyed Lolita suspiciously for a moment, then asked if she liked Legos and Barney and that was all she wrote. Within minutes they were the best of pals and Cody was dragging her all over the house by the hand showing off his room and his toys.
Lolita could not stop hugging and kissing him and telling him what a great little boy he was. Cody insisted that she stay for dinner (Domino’s Pizza because I had not had time to go to the grocery store) and demanded that she read him a story before going to bed.
As I walked her to the door around eight on Sunday night, I took her in my arms and gave her a goodnight kiss that was filled with passion and emotion. I thanked her for a wonderful weekend and told her I’d see her in my dreams.
Watching her tiptoe barefoot across the lawn to her front door, I could barely believe how happy I was that she was in my life. It took every ounce of willpower not to beg her to spend the night, but neither of us thought it was a good idea for Cody to wake up to find a strange woman sleeping in his daddy’s bed. Maybe someday, but not quite yet.
Besides, she’d be back first thing in the morning to watch Cody while I met Quinn and dealt with a few things. I fell asleep with her on my mind, and as I’d hoped, found her waiting for me in my dreams.
* * *
If you looked up the phrase pussy hound in the dictionary (if it was actually in the dictionary), my best friend Quinn Blackwell’s picture would pop up. Quinn was forty-two, 6’2, lean, muscular, with sandy brown hair and dark brown eyes that women couldn’t seem to resist.
He had never been married, never been engaged, never even been serious with a woman as far as I knew. He changed women as often as most guys changed socks.
Even in Iraq and Afghanistan, where willing, fuckable pussy was as scarce as clean water and edible food, he had bitches lined up outside the gates to fuck him.
I was always a little jealous of Quinn and his lifestyle. Good looking, rich, sexy, smart, successful. Yet, sometimes I thought he might be a little jealous of my settled home life. Married with a kid, nice little house in the ‘burbs.
He’d always been playfully flirty with Bethany, who would just roll her eyes and call him a pig, even though I could tell she thought he was a good-looking guy. He’d said more than once I should be thankful that I found Bethany before he did. And he thought my son was the greatest kid on earth. Cody loved Uncle Quinn and Uncle Quinn loved him. He made it a point to look after my son while I was away. There was no better friend in my eyes than Quinn Blackwell.
Quinn wanted to meet in a little coffee shop on the outskirts of Falls Church, in a strip mall a few miles from the enormous house in the hills he shared with two German Shepherds named Milo and Otis. His office was on the tenth floor of the Credit Suisse building in DC. It was a busy, noisy place; too chaotic to talk about the death of my wife and my future with his firm. The coffee shop would be a nice, quiet place to talk.
“So, how is Cody holding up?” Quinn asked as he watched the ass of the young waitress who had just delivered our coffee walk away. He picked up the steaming cup of black coffee and settled in with his elbows resting on the table. “Poor kid. Must be hard for him.”
I shrugged. “He’s okay. He’s too young to understand it all, thank God.”
Quinn held the cup to his lips and blew into it. Steam settled beneath his eyes. He set the cup aside to let it cool and gave me a wary look. “How are you holding up?”
I shrugged again. “You know, it is what it is. I’m sorry she’s gone, but things weren’t great between us. She told me she was divorcing me when I left for Mosul two months ago. Other than the occasional Skype chat to check on Cody, we hadn’t talked at all. Soon as Cody would lose interest in talking to me, Bethany would click off without even saying goodbye.”
“Yeah, you told me things weren’t going well,” Quinn said with a heavy sigh, as if he could feel my pain, or what little pain I was feeling. I felt guilty about not being more depressed by my wife’s death. I mean, this was a woman I once loved and would have died for. Now, it was almost like I barely knew her, like I was trying to grieve for a stranger.
“Don’t beat yourself up, man,” Quinn said, as if he had read my mind. “Marriages don’t last. People change. It wasn’t entirely your fault.”
“I know, still…” I picked up my coffee cup and took a careful sip. I set the cup on the table and tapped my fingers to the sides. “Did I tell you she was pregnant?”
Quinn had picked up his cup and was bringing it to his lips. His hands froze at the word pregnant. He slowly lowered the cup to the table. “Jesus, buddy, I’m sorry.”
I shook my head. “It wasn’t mine.”
He blinked a few times, then looked at me from beneath his perfectly manicured eyebrows. “Not yours? How the fuck do you know that?”
“I shipped out eight weeks ago for Mosul,” I said, holding up eight fingers, then folding down two. “The medical examiner said Bethany was six weeks along.”
“Son of a bitch…” Quinn shook his head and looked out the window at the gray sky. A storm was rolling in from the ocean, dark clouds on the horizon. The air was heavy with ozone and salt.
His eyes fixed on the sky, he said, “I can’t fucking believe it…”
“You can’t believe she was pregnant or that she was fucking around on me in the first place?” I asked.
He took a deep breath and thought it over. “Both, I guess.”
The waitress came back to see if we wanted to order anything. I wasn’t hungry and neither was Quinn, which was surprising because he could usually eat a tall stack of pancakes and a pound of bacon without blinking an eye. “Just coffee,” he said without looking at the waitress, who shrugged and walked away.
“Any idea who the guy was?” he asked.
“No, but I intend to find out,” I said.
He frowned at me. “How?”
“Bethany’s car has been released by the cops,” I said. “I’m headed to the tow yard as soon as I leave here.”
“What do you expect to find in her car?” Quinn asked. His voice had taken on an edge, as if talking about Bethany and her lover was getting under his skin more than it was getting under mine. That was Quinn for you. I was his best friend. If something was bothering me, it wouldn’t take long before it was bothering him.
“I talked to the cop in charge, a Lieutenant Mason. The lot manager has her purse. I assume her cell phone is still in the car. And I assume she had been calling or texting whomever she had been fucking. I’ll get a number and a name from her phone, and then—”
“And then what?”
“Then maybe I’ll pay the guy a little visit.”
“Why would you do that?”
I pushed up my eyebrows and frowned at him. “Why wouldn’t I?”
“You said it yourself,” Quinn said, head shaking. “Bethany’s dead. You guys were pretty much over months ago. Why does it matter who she was sleeping with?”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “Are you telling me you wouldn’t want to know?”
“I’m telling you that you need to move on,” he said, giving me a stern look. He picked up his cup and shook his head again. “No good can come of this, Ryder. Just let it go.”
“Again, are you telling me you would just let it go?” I cocked my head at him, already knowing the answer. “You’d track the guy down and gut him like a deer just on principle. Tell me you wouldn’t.”
“This isn’t about me,” Quinn said quietly. “It’s about you and your son. Don’t do anything stupid that’s going to jeopardize your time with Cody. It’s just not worth it.”
“I’m not going to do anything stupid,” I said, draining the coffee cup and setting it aside. “But I have to know the truth, regardless of who gets hurt.”