“Tonight over dinner.”
Kennedy flashes that easy magazine smile only she knows how to do, the cover girl with the glittery grin. I’m sold—have been for years.
“And I suppose you’ll be wanting the truth.” A dimple goes off in her cheek as she says it.
“There is no other option.”
“Dinner with me? And the truth?” She gargles out a laugh as she slinks to the door. “Some people really do want it all.”
Iwait until after lunch, after I finish going through my client list for the day to watch one of the videos. At first I wasn’t going to do it. The stoic, gentleman in me thought better against it, but then the legal eagle in me, the shark, the piranha thought better of that, and decided I needed to know what I was up against—what Kennedy was up against. I chooseSorority Sister Screamsonly because the title is the most innocent of them all—if you can say that, and I really don’t think you can.Deep Throat Debutantmay never get viewed, at least not by me. I hit play, and the screen goes dark for a moment. Pink scrolling handwriting comes up spelling out the title one letter at a time. Classy.
Kennedy comes into focus, soft at first, a blur of flesh then an abrupt manipulating of her limbs to get her in a camera-ready position. Kennedy laughs as Keith lands his hands on her knees. She shakes out her dark hair, her shoulders coming into sharp focus as he lies her down over ground zero, and there she is, her perfect body, pale, firm, perky in all the right places. My dick ticks in my boxers, forcing me to reposition it. Down boy. This is all work and no play. Hopefully this will pan out to be a prophecy at best.
The action begins. Keith’s hairy ass takes over the screen for a few minutes too long. He pulls her lower onto the mattress, spins her body, pinning her thighs back with his greasy mitts. He’s showing her off to the world. Kennedy is on display in a horrifically graphic way, and I’m physically sickened by his actions. Her lashes flutter, her mouth opens with her next breath as he sinks his head over her belly, then lower still, uncomfortably lower, and I shut my laptop because I’ve just concluded all of the research I’ll be conducting.
Nope. That horrible nightmare was Kennedy’s past. I very much plan on being a part of her future. I only want the best for her, and the best for her right now is keeping myself in the dark when it comes to her sexual escapades with her ex.
The rest of the afternoon I’m high off the idea of spending an entire uninterrupted evening with Kennedy of all people. Kennedy is a girl who makes you wonder what she’s thinking. You can see the challenge in her as clear as her beautiful eyes. I want a woman who’s able to challenge me. I need that. Deductive logic begs to reason that I need Kennedy. And, God knows, I’m all about deductive logic these days.
While I was away at NYU, and then later while I was getting started in my career, I did try to forget about her. I tried washing away the memory of those stolen summer kisses, those achingly raw exchanges, away with a few other women. There weren’t many. I wasn’t a serial dater, but I had a few regulars who kept my bed heated and my balls content for the time being. After a while, they each wanted a commitment. No, they never came out and said it, but, before I knew it, I was hanging out with their good friends, double dating with their good friends, having intimate barbeques, planning vacations, then the ultimate buzz kill—the slow lure to meet the parents. I was upfront with each of them that I wasn’t in the market for anything long-term, just another asshole having a good time, but they weren’t listening to my bachelor’s lament. They nodded, confessing to want the same things, but their motives were far from mine. It made me realize two things, there are very few women interested in a good-time arrangement, and the end game to each one of those good times was the hope that I would put a ring on it.
I wouldn’t mind a long-term commitment with Kennedy, and, for sure, I wouldn’t mind putting a ring on her beautiful finger. She’s the only woman who’s made me so sure of anything in my life. I’m sure about the two of us. I’m hoping she is, too.
My phone buzzes. It’s a text from Abel interrupting my schoolgirl fantasy of having a white wedding on an exotic shoreline with Kennedy as my bride. I’ve never gone that far in my delusions before. I’m not too sure it’s safe or sane.
Just giving you an update, it doesn’t look good.
Solomon, our more colorfully decorated, numerically referred to these days, brother is in the middle of a nightmare of a trial. He’s banished me from the fun zone, or I would have been there for him from day one. Of course, nobody knows this but Sol, which makes me look like a grade A ass. Admittedly Solomon is a fuck up, a fuck up indicted on murder charges, on possession, on having a vehicle that’s registered in his name to be the principle weapon that delivered that fatal blow, and I wish I could say he’s facing the music like a man, but he’s not. He’s very much facing the music like a coward because a man would step up and tell the truth. Solomon believes, with alarming conviction, that he is indeed choosing the path of a real man. That’s where Sol and I draw a line when it comes to the definition of being a man, but I refuse to dig up that point of contention. He has made it unquestionably clear he wants to do this without my “lousy” help. His words not mine. Although, for the record, my help wouldn’t have been lousy, perhaps Abel’s might be, but the help of our father was not forthcoming. In fact, he went on public record to tell his baby boy he’s on his own. And on this miserable point my mother stands with him. Although, in her defense, she doesn’t have the means to see him through this. Solomon is waging this battle on the county’s dime, with the county’s legal squires struggling to avail justice. They won’t win—but then he doesn’t want them to.
My mother, on the other hand, both humbly and gladly accepts my financial provisions. I want to make sure she’s going to come out the other side of her personal struggles without losing her home, the only real possession in the world my father left her. He made off with his well-to-do practice, with his bevy of fairly attractive, much younger women on the side, and my mother was left with a two-story tract house with a leaky roof and dying crabgrass. And she considers that, in itself, as the crowning moment of her terribly tragic story. I try to push her out of my mind for a moment. I’ll give her a call in the morning, or afternoon if Kennedy decides that a sleepover is in order.
Appreciate it. I ping the words right back to my big bro. I really am grateful for the update. Abel has been my lifeline to Sol. I’ve been laying low, steering clear of the handful of news outlets that might actually garner some info on it. The case makes me sick. If I dwell on it too long, I might just storm the courtroom and shout out the truth. Although I’m not sure it’s the truth so much as it is something sandwiched between the truth and a lie, sort of the way I’m sandwiched between my brothers in the familial lineup.
I’m the middle child, the invisible one. The joke has always been Abel can do no wrong, and Solomon can do no right. And who the hell is this Caleb kid again? And so it goes.
Abel and I get along for the most part, but his golden-child status has always created an unintentional rift between us. He’s pensive, always buried in books, self-secluded, not quite the arguing type. I’ve long suspected he’d rather be hiding out in a stack of books somewhere than performing like a circus monkey in court. I think my father had more to do with the fact he’s a lawyer than his heart did. Abel always threatened to go off somewhere and write a book. He and I have never had too much in common. Something in me has always gravitated toward Solomon who is younger than me by eleven months. We’re all very close in age. My father and mother were very impressed with each other early on in their marriage, not so much later when he began gravitating toward the hemlines of other women’s skirts. Hell, I remember some of the bimbos he had on the side. There was an entire sea of these long lost cheek-pinching special “aunts.”
Abel texts again.How about you come with me sometime? Next week OK? I think we should ambush Sol. Maybe a visit?
I growl at his words a moment too long. Solomon made me promise to stay away. He swore up and down he knew what he was doing. My stomach turns to sludge at the thought.
Maybe.
I snap up my jacket and head out of the office for the day. Zoey looks up from her phone and meets me at the elevator with her purse.
“Taking off early?” She gives a little hop, adjusting the strap on the back of her heel. “I guess I’ll go home, too.”
Zoey usually takes off far earlier than I do, but I don’t bother pointing that out. She’s nice in general. She’s Gavin’s kid sister, so, of course, I gave her the job. Gavin and Demi are two of the nicest people I know in Loveless.
Zoey is harmless for the most part. Gets my coffee right, doesn’t do much else, but her smile sure brightens up the place.
She shakes out her vanilla mane. “So like—um, I know I shouldn’t ask, but what’s the deal with Kennedy?”
“Attorney-client privilege. I’m not entitled to say.” Not sure I’d want to.
She frowns for the briefest of moments. “Hey, you want to hit dinner?” Her eyebrow lurches high up on her forehead. It’s an interesting maneuver I seem to notice more on women. I first noticed it on Kennedy. There’s something attractive about it, the eyebrow waggle in general is off-putting, but from Kennedy it perks me right to attention.
“I’d love to, but, actually, I’ve got plans.”
