Five Minute Man: A Contemporary Love Story (17 page)

Adam sipped at the cold water Brandon handed him. “And where was I during all this?” Adam finally asked, his voice quiet.

Brandon inhaled and exhaled deeply before replying. There was such pain on the kid’s face that Adam knew he wasn’t going to like the answer.

“I tried calling you, to tell you about what happened, but it went right to voicemail. When I got back from the firehouse, there was a message on the house machine from Paul up at the Lakeside Pub. He said he’d had to take your keys and that your truck was in the lot.”

“Something about that didn’t seem right,” Brandon said, looking at his hands, “so I drove up there myself. Paul said you were in bad shape and that some chick gave you a ride home. After he described what she looked like, I knew who it was. What were you thinking, Uncle Adam, meeting up with Eve like that?”

Adam sighed and took a drink, his hand shaking enough that he had a hard time keeping it from sloshing over the sides. Some of the fog seemed to be receding and things were coming back to him little by little. “I wasn’t. Eve said she needed to talk to me. I said no, but she was persistent. She said if I met her for one drink and heard her out, she’d leave me alone for good.”

Brandon’s eyes opened wide in disbelief. “And you believed her?”

“Not really. But she knew about Holly. I was afraid she’d start stalking Holly like she did the last woman I took out to dinner, and I didn’t want to take the chance that it would have the same consequences.”

“Holly wouldn’t have given up so easily, Uncle Adam.”

“I know. At least I hoped I did. But I still didn’t want Eve anywhere near her.” He scrubbed his face with his hands. “I thought maybe I could prevent that from happening. I should have known better.”

Brandon appeared to think about that then nodded. “Okay. So what happened then? After you got there, I mean.”

“I don’t know,” Adam said, frustration heavy in the words. “I agreed to one drink, and that’s all I had. Eve was spouting all kinds of crazy shit. I got up to leave, didn’t feel so good. Next thing I know, I’m waking up in my own bed feeling like shit. How did that happen, by the way?”

“After I talked to Paul, I called your phone again, hoping it wasn’t too late to stop you from making a big mistake. Eve answered. She said you and she were back together. I demanded to talk to you, but she said you were in the shower and couldn’t come to the phone.”

Adam closed his eyes, coming to the sickening realization that those images he thought were nightmares probably weren’t.

“Then what?”

Brandon looked down at his hands, unable to meet his uncle’s gaze. “I didn’t believe it, Uncle Adam. You seemed so happy lately, all because of Holly. After hearing you talk about Eve and how obsessive she was, I just couldn’t see you leaving Holly and going back to her like that.”

“I wouldn’t,” Adam agreed, glad that despite how things looked, the kid still had some faith in him.

“And with Holly in the hospital... well, I thought you should know about that, regardless. So I drove over to Eve’s place and pounded on the door until she finally opened it. She was in this skimpy robe thing, and you were as far gone as I’d ever seen you, practically passed out on her couch. You didn’t even know who I was at first...”

Brandon closed his eyes and shook his head as if to dispel the image. “Anyway, I finally convinced you to come back with me. I got you to bed, and you went out like a light.”

“Fuck,” Adam breathed. How did things go from great to fucking shit so quickly?

“Uncle Adam,” Brandon said quietly after several long minutes. “Did you really only have one drink?”

“Yes!” Adam said, rubbing his face. “A depth charge. One shot in a glass of beer. That’s it.”

“Did you order it yourself?”

“No. Eve had it waiting for me...” His voice trailed off as the implication became clear. “She must have put something in it before I drank it.”

Brandon nodded. “That’s the only thing that makes sense at this point. Come on, we’ve got to get you down to the clinic.”

“What the hell for?”

“To have them draw your blood and do a tox screen.”

“Later. I need to call Holly.”

Brandon’s face took on that pained expression again. “Yeah, about that. Probably not a good idea right now.”

“Why is that?”

“Because I’m pretty sure she hates you right now.”

H
olly closed her eyes and silently counted to ten as her mother and sisters prattled on. Relegated to the couch, she was bullied into remaining quiet and immobile while her immediate family swarmed around her in a frenzy of activity. The women of the McTierney clan cleaned, tidied, shopped and cooked; the men inspected, repaired, mowed and trimmed.

That’s what they did when faced with adversity. They came together and took over, assuming complete and absolute control under the basic assumption that whichever family member was facing said adversity was incapable of doing so on his or her own. Holly supposed that some people might have taken comfort in that, but she was not one of them.

Her family meant well, but they were suffocating. It was one of the primary reasons Holly had moved away.

Of course there were the standard mumblings, spoken in quiet, hushed tones but overheard nonetheless: commentaries on the evils of single women living alone, away from their families, out in the middle of nowhere; a particularly long-winded discussion on the joys and inherent
rightness
of settling down with a man and having a family while one was still young enough to do so; and, of course, the benefits of having a
real
job, making
real
money and
real
benefits, while awaiting one’s fated Prince Charming.

Prince. Fucking. Charming.
Holly laughed out loud at that one, an incongruous cackle amongst the quiet mutterings of her much-loved but uninvited guests, drawing worried looks her way.

Holly caught her mother looking at the clock, no doubt wondering if it was time for her next dose of sleep-inducing narcotics.

Holly could have told her not to bother. She was counting the minutes, longing for the brief hour or two where she could slip back into a dreamless sleep and not think about...
him
.

For the hundredth time that day, Holly wished for the impossible. She wished her cell phone had been destroyed in the blast, or at the very least, run over and crushed by one of the fire trucks. She wished she hadn’t been so eager to check her messages when she first awoke this morning. She wished she’d stopped after the first one.

Most of all, she wished she’d never met Adam Grayson.

Voice Message #1: “
Holly, this is Adam. Listen, there’s something I need to talk to you about. I’ll explain everything tonight, but for today, just... be careful, okay? Stay close to home and call me right away if anything weird happens. And Holly? Call me back as soon as you get this...
”

It was a bit mysterious, that message, but nothing worrisome. So she’d continued to Voice Message #2: “
Hi Holly, Adam again. I planned on coming over right after work, but something’s come up. I might be a little later than expected.”

Also mysterious, but no big deal. Adam had a highly successful construction business. Sometimes things came up – delayed deliveries, messed up shipments, scheduling conflicts, zoning delays. It was just the nature of the beast. Whatever it was, it must have been important.

At least that’s what she thought before she heard Voice Message #3. Though it was left from Adam’s mobile number, it was not his voice this time. No, this one was left by Eve Sanderson. “
Fun’s over, Holly. Adam’s back where he belongs. With me.”

And then there was Voice Message #4, also Eve: “
Adam knows where you are, and he doesn’t care. He doesn’t want to talk to you. Tell your bitch friend to stop calling already. You lost. Get over it and leave us the hell alone.”

If it had ended there, Holly might have been able to believe that there was some perfectly logical, rational explanation of how Eve managed to get hold of Adam’s phone and leave those awful messages, especially since Liz had dropped some vague hints about how cunning and obsessive Eve could be when she set her sights on someone. Until she had a chance to talk to Adam and hear what he had to say, she was not going to fall prey to Eve’s obvious attempts to incite trouble between them.

Which just went to show how love could turn a normally intelligent woman into a complete, fucking idiot. Because while she might be able to rationalize the voice messages, there was absolutely nothing that could explain the
pictures
.

At least half a dozen of them, all sent via text from Adam’s phone. Selfies of Adam and Eve engaged in various sexual acts. Adam between Eve’s thighs. Eve sucking Adam’s dick. Eve riding Adam.

It didn’t appear as if Adam was aware that the pictures were being taken. In those where his face was visible, his eyes were closed, his head thrown back as if in bliss. In contrast, Eve was smiling like the proverbial cat who’d just eaten the canary in each and every one.

Maybe she was being naïve, but Holly didn’t want to believe that Adam knew that the pictures were being taken. She
really
didn’t want to believe that he knew and approved of Eve sexting them to her. But in the end, it didn’t matter. For whatever reason, Adam had hooked up with Eve. That was a bad enough scenario on the best of days, but knowing that it happened while she was lying in a hospital bed after being nearly roasted to extra-crispy was especially painful.

If there was anything good about the situation, it was that she had heard and seen those things before her family started showing up. Thank God Liz was there.
She
went ballistic. Holly actually felt sorry for Brandon when he brought Max back. Liz set on him like a junkyard dog. To his credit, Brandon seemed pretty sick about the whole thing, too.

“Hey Holls,” her younger brother David called, breaking her away from those morbid mental images as he walked through the front door like he owned the place. It sure as hell didn’t take long for him to make himself at home. Of all of her siblings, he was probably the one she got along the best with, but she was in such a crappy mood it didn’t matter. Good thing he was also the most tolerant.

“Mail’s here,” he said, dropping down beside her. “This one looks important.”

It was the little things like this that irked her the most. Not the fact that David walked out to the mailbox along the road and got her mail – that was a nice gesture – but the fact the he felt the need to paw through it and analyze each piece.

Out of principle, she leafed through each item, deliberately leaving the one he thought was worthy of important status until the end. Immature, perhaps, but she was cranky and tired and sick with heartbreak.

The “important looking” item was a legal-sized envelope stamped with the name Kline, Schweitzer, and Kline, a prestigious local law firm that catered to some of Covendale’s elite. Holly removed the official looking letterhead and read through the contents not once, but twice.

“Well?” David asked, leaning against the arm of the sofa.

“Fucking A,” Holly breathed. She handed him the letter and let him read it for himself.

The Covendale Valley Historical Society was trying to take her house away.

***

A
dam couldn’t remember ever feeling so sick, and it wasn’t only because of whatever chemicals were still sloshing around in his system. Even with the rush put on it by his old friend and Chief of Police, Sam Brown, the tox screen analysis would take several days. However, the nurse at the clinic who drew his blood said his symptoms were consistent with the ingestion of some form of benzodiazepines, more commonly known as date rape drugs.

It was a little hard for Adam to accept. Usually when you heard about such things, it involved young, naïve coeds, not thirty-two year old male contractors. But according to the nurse, the reality was a lot different than the media-fueled perception.

Benzodiazepines were more prevalent than commonly believed, and went far beyond the Rohypnol (“roofies”) referenced and sometimes glamorized in Hollywood movies, she’d told him. Surprisingly, some of the top name in prescription tranquilizers – Valium, Librium, Xanax, Ativan – fell into that category.

While those mainstream drugs had legitimate uses - often prescribed for things like anxiety or panic attacks - they were used (illegally) for recreational purposes as well. When combined with alcohol, it was not uncommon for the user to experience anterograde amnesia (loss of memory while under the influence), dizziness, confusion, lack of coordination, and nausea.

Which pretty accurately described Adam’s last twenty four hours to a T.

He was drinking water by the gallon in an attempt to dilute and flush as much of the stuff out his system as possible. With each passing hour, he was starting to feel like himself again. In another day or two, his physical malaise would be nothing but an unpleasant memory.

Too bad the real damage could not be so easily undone.

When Brandon told him about the pictures, he didn’t want to believe it. He knew that Eve had some major issues, but that? It seemed surreal. And yet he knew by the heavy, leaden feeling in his gut that it was not some horrible nightmare. Those vague images in his head – of things he hadn’t wanted and yet hadn’t been able to stop – were all too real.

All it took was a look back in his phone’s message log to see the proof of it. He felt like throwing up again when he’d seen those. There was nothing like looking at high-pixel, digital images of your half-naked ass engaged in various non-consensual sexual acts with a crazy, obsessed, psycho ex-lover.

As humiliating as it was for him, he couldn’t even imagine how Holly must have felt. If he had seen pictures like that of her? He would have lost his shit. Completely.

God, she must fucking hate him. And he didn’t blame her. He’d been stupid to think for one minute that Eve would step aside gracefully and let him get on with his life. But never in a million years would he ever have imagined she would go to these lengths.