Sidewalk Flower (30 page)

“Darlin’, open your legs a little wider
for me please.”

Her eyes widened with anticipation and
she did as he asked.
 

“Do you like this?” she asked when she
moved her hands to the top of his wet head.

“Your hands in my hair?
 
Yes.”

“Okay.”
 
She just smiled and bit her bottom lip.

Everything was perfect.
 

He opened her fleshy, warm lips wide with
his thumbs and nuzzled his nose into a spot where he could both breathe and
please her until she melted in his mouth.
 
The tip of his tongue found the swollen little nub poking out.
 
With a long deep lick, he tasted her, losing
his mind in complete ecstasy as she held his head and nuzzled herself against
his face.
 
He could be drowning for all
he knew.
 
The shooting water and her
whimpers continued to be the only sounds he heard as he dined like the most
privileged king.

Until her phone rang once, twice, three
times and a fourth.
 
It began a fifth
time.

“Screw.
Me.”
  

Before he could make sense of what was
happening outside of their shower, she hissed the curse, “God dammit.”
 

Unable to let go, even with the
disruption of the phone, his hands stayed fixed at her hips while the water
fell over them.
 
Until
she peeled away.
 
“I’m sorry,” she
whispered.

“It’s okay.”

But it wasn’t.
 
The phone had lain there obediently the whole
night.
 
And now, the ring tone he’d come
to know as Jaxon’s broke through their perfect shower.

Chapter
Nineteen

“Really,
it’s
okay, I’ll wait.”
 

Why am I
answering this stupid phone?

“Sorry, Lucky.
 
I’ll just see what it is, quickly.
 
I promise.”
 
Reluctantly, she stepped from the steamed sliding doors on shaky legs,
leaving her southern gentleman who knew just a little more about pleasure than
she’d have thought.
 
If it had been anyone
else, she’d have ignored it.
 
Jaxon
better be lying on the floor, nearly dead, or she’d kill him herself.

“Jaxon?
 
What do you need?
 
I’m kind of busy.”

No answer.
 
At least not with words.
 
A pained groan wallowed through from Jaxon’s
end.
 
She checked the time displayed on
her phone.
 
It was almost one a.m.
 
Normal times for him to be awake but not generally calling me.
 
He knew she was usually asleep on her couch
in the studio by midnight.
 

“Jaxon, what is it?”

Lucky turned the shower head off and came
to stand, dripping wet at her side.
 
If
it hadn’t been for his complete, beautiful, glorious nakedness as a reminder,
she’d have forgotten she too stood there soaking the fluffy white rug beneath
their feet.

“Jaxon?”
 
Her voice rose and hammered in her throat.

But again all she got in response was a
strange sound.
 
“Jaxon, I’m calling 911
if you don’t answer me!”

At that, Lucky grabbed a towel off the
rack and wrapped it around his waist then tucked another under her arms.
 
It hung open in the back until she turned
around so he could secure it for her.
 
Right now her hands were needed for things like shaking her phone and
snagging her hair.
 
She had no real
intention of calling the police, but Jaxon had better speak to her soon or she
might.
 

“No, no, no.
 
Please,” Jaxon slurred from his end.

“Shit, Jaxon, what’s wrong, hun?”
 
Her anger dissolved into worry. “Where are
you?
 
Are you at home?”

It sounded close enough to an “Mm-hmm”.

“Hold on, hun.
 
I’m on my way now.
 
Just hold on.”
   

“What’s going on?
 
Is everything okay?”
 
Lucky chased her out of the bathroom.
 
She sped lightning fast to her backpack where
she snatched out the first clean dress she found and started to dress.

“I don’t know, but something isn’t right
with Jaxon.
 
I have to get over to his
house.”

“Well, why don’t you call 911?
 
If something is wrong, they’ll get there
faster.
 
Wouldn’t that be better?”
 
Lucky grabbed his jeans he’d kicked along the
floor in his chase.
 
He pulled them on
over his bare butt and then followed her hastily again out to the front
room.
 
She grabbed his red and black
shirt that was still damp; even though she’d taken great care to stretch it out
over a heating vent, and tossed it to him.
 
And then his boots, no socks.
 
She
was already clutching her backpack and out the door, waiting for him to follow
so she could lock up.

“No, no police.
 
No reports.”
 
She didn’t explain any further.
 
Hopefully Lucky could follow along and understand it would hurt Jaxon
where his daughter was concerned.
 
Lucky
tailed her to the Jeep without another question.
 
A minute later they pulled out and headed
north on the freeway.
 
She didn’t bother
to tether her hair.
 
The stinging wet
slaps across her cheeks and neck served as a wakeup call.
 
No matter how carried away she might get with
a possible new future, her past would always be there, crushing her back into
its inescapable darkness.
 

Jaxon’s Saab was parked near the thickest
section of his night blooming jasmines.
 
The house was dark, quiet and unlocked.
 
Pretty normal for her night owl best friend.
Lucky let them in when Jaxon didn’t answer.
 
While she doubted burglary, it was a possibility.
 
Neighborhood watch wasn’t always the best in
these cliff side homes designed especially for the reclusive.
 

“Jaxon, are you here?”
 
Her voice traveled up the stairs, stopped at
the closed doors and then reverberated back down.
 
She’d always been enchanted by the echo from
the high arched ceilings.
 
But tonight it
sounded more eerie than anything else.
 
“Jaxon?”

“Do you think he’s outside?
 
Maybe in the pool?”
 
Lucky sounded eager to find his cousin.

“No, he never uses it.”
 
It was for the girls.
 
At one time, she’d counted herself in that
group.

They stumbled through the spacious
downstairs hallway, passing the vacant dining room, still decorated in
streamers and balloons.
 
A sliver of
moonshine shot through a window and reflected off the shiny silver
cellophane.
 

She thought she’d knocked over a lamp but
realized it laid there at her feet, already shattered.
 
This cave seriously couldn’t have been
darker.
 
Finally she flicked on a
light.
 
Although not a complete mess, two
lamps lay in pieces on the floor looking like they’d been hurled across the
room.
 
She had to find Jaxon; this was
bad.

“I’ll go upstairs, okay?”
 
Lucky gently rubbed her shoulder.
 
“Why don’t you check Maryella’s room?”

Blonde braids and marble like eyes
flashed in her mind.
 
With a renewed shot
of “
get your butt
moving”, she dashed to the little
girl’s door, sweating over what she may or may not find.
 
Where the hell was everyone?

She opened the creamy wooden door and
found part of her answer.
 
Jaxon was
sitting on the floor, on the Neapolitan colored rug that was centered just
right, leading a circle of Maryella’s favorite stuffed animals
around
its perimeter.
 
His bulky upper body lay propped against the frame of his daughter’s day
bed while his cheek appeared glued to the velvet comforter.
 
Holy shit!
 
Trista hurried over, forgetting her annoyance, and knelt down at his
side.
 
She avoided turning on any bright
lights.
 

His shoulders felt heavy but limp as she
tried to cajole him awake.
 
“Jaxon,
Jaxon, can you hear me?”

He moaned and she felt better that at
least he was alive.
 
Unfortunately, his
only other reaction was a sudden movement that hurled his chest to his knees and
snapped his head and neck following after it.
 
Then the vomiting began.
 
Needing
to see his face, she crawled to turn on the koala lamp at Maryella’s
bedside
.
 

Jaxon looked like hell.
 

A hell she hadn’t seen
visit
her friend in a very long time.
 
Sure,
it’d made its appearances in the smarmy VIP rooms amongst wasted
strangers.
 
Or in the back doors of pubs
where Jaxon had stood trying to grab a smoke, often getting in fights over
something stupid in the process.
 
But
never here in his daughter’s room.
 
A
gash above his right eye leaked freshly over a patch of dried brownish
blood.
 

Jaxon’s heavy guttural retching continued
as Lucky appeared and kneeled at her side on the floor.

“What’s going on?
 
Is he okay?”

“I don’t know.
 
He hasn’t said anything yet.
 
I’m assuming he hit his head.
 
But I don’t know what’s making him so sick.”

While she smoothed the hair drenched in
sweat away from Jaxon’s forehead, Lucky searched around the room.
 
He walked over to the foot of the bed and
then back to the other side.
 
And then he
got down on his hands and knees and poked his arm around under the frame.
 
He pulled something out and handed it to her.

A bottle of Brazilian
sugarcane alcohol.
 
That was
empty.
 

“No way is this Maryella’s,” Lucky said
under his breath.

Trista held the bottle up for
inspection.
 
If her brain wasn’t stunned
and on lockdown, she would’ve considered busting it over Jaxon’s other eye to
prove a point.
 
She resisted the truth as
long as she could but the proof lay fermented in Jaxon’s breath.
 
He moaned and then the reflexive action of
his vomiting started again.

Two more rounds of that and he finally
opened his eyes.
 
“Tris...”

“Trista, we should at least take him to a
doctor.”
 

“No, we can’t.”
 
Lucky could keep insisting on it but she
would protect her friend to no end.
 
And
his future rights to his daughter.
 
“Look, if you really want to help, bring a large glass of water and some
wet rags.
 
Please.”

Lucky shrugged but left and returned
quickly.
 
After cleaning Jaxon’s face,
they rolled up the rancid smelling rug to be tossed somewhere far away.
 
She’d never seen Lucky roll his eyes before
and it hurt her feelings.
 
“Look, as long
as I don’t let Jaxon get dehydrated, he’ll be okay.
 
I’ve had to do this with him before.
 
I think I know what happened.”
 
The profuse sweating, the
body curling pain that forced him to throw everything up, the quickened heart
rate.
 
Jaxon had mixed alcohol
with Antabuse only one other time.
 
He’d
thought he’d been having a heart attack, stroke combo.

“Lucky, can you just trust me here?
 
I know what to do.”

But Jaxon and all his color loss and
convulsing was making her sound like an idiot.
   

“I’m telling you, Trista, he looks like
he’s about to stroke out.
 
Just call 911
and let the doctors and the lawyers work it out.
 
He’s not gonna do anyone any good if he dies
here tonight.”