Tellings of the Time: Complete series

18. 18

We’ve barely slept all night. I’m not one for girly romance and all that shit, but being held until the sun rose while getting kissed until my lips got sore maybe wasn’t as bad as I thought. I’ve lost count of how many times we fucked or made love that night, but I do know I’m sore and at the same time can’t stop smiling.

Waiting for the coffee machine to warm up to get some much needed caffeine, I let out a huge yawn and stretch my arms above my head. A warm hand glides under my shirt, pulling my back against a warm, firm front.

“Bonjour,” Remy says.

“Is it really morning already?”

“Yes. That’s usually what the sun rising implies.”

“Feels like we just got out of that car and walked through the pouring rain.”

“Well, you know what they say about time,” he says as he presses a kiss against my ear.

“It flies when you’re having fun?”

“Nope,” another voice answers, and I look up to see Chester walking into the room, groggy from sleep. “It’s running out.”

“What do you mean?” Remy asks as he lets me go and takes over the coffee making. He’s been here enough mornings already to have gotten our regular drinking orders and the hang of how to operate our machine.

“It’s only two days until it’s the second day of the month. The Time will take another victim. We’re running out of time.”

“Stop calling him The Time. He’s the killer,” I tell him through my teeth.

“Well, then we’re out of the killer. We’re out of time. Whatever, it’s almost too late.”

Jesus, he’s grumpy. And rightfully so, because the deadline for the killer to take another victim is right there. Nothing we can do about it either.

“Have you slept at all?” Remy asks him, as he starts making Chester coffee. Just the way my best friend likes it, he’ll have some caffeine with his caffeine.

“Maybe an hour or two.”

I’m not telling him that so did we, because I think we’ve had completely opposite nights. “What’d you do?”

“Looked around on the web a little, searching for clues,” he says, evading my question. Usually this means he’s hacked into some server or whatever the hell it is he hacks into to snoop around and he doesn’t want me to know. I wholeheartedly believe it’s better that way. When the day comes I have to stand up in court, swearing I don’t know what he did, I’ll be able to speak the truth. And trust me, that day will eventually come. It’s inevitable.

Remy pushes a tiny cup of espresso his way. “Then I did some cat and mouse play with a hacker in Croatia. Managed to put the lighting she has on a smart system around her house programmed to go off to various Christmas songs at unpredictable times during the night. Pretty sure she pulled the main plug to her electrics at some point, because she went cold and I know she didn’t breach my program.”

“What was that good for?”

He’s looking pretty smug right now, throwing back his espresso at once. “That was for fun. And for thinking she could outsmart me.”

Remy grabs my phone, using my code to open it up, because apparently being in a high speed chase hasn’t made him forget I gave him the code. When some metal version of Run, Run Rudolph comes blasting through my phone speakers. Remy grabs Chester by his hands, pulling him along after him to the open space of our living room. He wraps his arms around him tightly, as he starts a wild kind of dance, mostly consisting of jumping around. Honestly, it probably looks like how I frolic around at a concert most of the time.

“The fuck, Remy?” Chester yells, a wrinkle between his eyebrows.

“You just admitted you need a little fun sometimes. Have some fucking fun with me, Ches.”

Chester glares at the playful smile on the dancer’s face, but Remy keeps making them dance around. I lean against the door frame, crossing my arms and watching them have some plain, undiluted, fun. As the song progresses, the corners of Chester’s mouth start turning up. And before the song has ended, he has his hands on Remy’s shoulders, grabbing him back just as hard. He’s laughing, genuinely laughing, with Remy, dancing to a Christmas song. Maybe I walked through that door to Narnia without realizing I did so.

When the song comes to an end, the two men look at one another, and before I can comprehend how, or what, or why, Remy’s lips are pressed against Chester’s. Tensing up for the tiniest amounts of time, he then gives in to it, kissing Remy back. I can see the attraction that has been there between them. I can see how easy it has to have been for them to hook up. Somehow they work, they fit.

I’m just unsure where I fit into all of this.

They break the kiss before they really get into it, while I’m stuck in place. Chester has got his back to me, and I can’t see him, but I can see Remy’s. The little crow”s feet that surround his eyes smile at me. No part of him is experiencing the kind of freak out that I seem to be on the brink of. When Chester slowly turns around, I see a panic attack starting to well up in him, making me snap out of my own stupor.

Do I really need to understand what is going on? Or do I just need to remember that Remy is able to make us both laugh. Even with this whole heap of awkwardness between Chester and me, Remy is there to ease us over all the hurdles.

It’s not like we’ve ever done anything in life the normal way, so why would I try putting things in boxes right now?

I force myself to take a deep breath and relax. My posture changes, and I smile at both boys, like nothing ever happened. Chester is spinning his thumb ring with his middle finger. Going with my gut feeling, I walk over, make him spin around and wrap my arms around him, kissing on his cheek, scraping over the side of his mouth.

“It’s okay,” I whisper. “We’re good.”

I can feel the tension leaving his body. I’m not sure how I feel about all of this, but I do know that I liked seeing Chester smile and hate the way I just felt him tremble. Geez, he’s in it deep, isn’t he?

Remy stands a little on the side, rubbing his neck, looking uncomfortable. “Sorry, I didn’t think. I was… I was in the moment and went for it without thinking about what it would mean for you.”

Chester opens his mouth to answer, but no sound leaves him. Before we can try to untangle this mess we’re suddenly in, both Chester’s and mine phones buzz, letting us know there’s someone at the door. Chester gets out of my embrace and makes his way to the door, leaving Remy and me behind.

“Did I fuck up?” he asks me, in a quieter tone than he usually uses.

“No,” I answer without overthinking, “it’s just all… complicated. There’s all these feelings.”

He keeps staring at me from a distance.

“It’s all just weird. And not normal, and complicated. But there’s also possibilities and if anything, seeing you make Chester smile and kissing him might speed up my thought process, because…”

I fall quiet, not really sure how to put into words what I haven’t even acknowledged yet to myself.

“Maybe I like it to be this way, with… all of us. But going from besties to more than besties with Chester is…”

“Complicated,” he answers with an understanding smile on his face.

“It’s just like all your life you’ve believed the color red is red, but then someone tells you it’s actually blue. And you find out you like the fact that it’s blue, but some part of your brain still tells you that it’s red.”

“That’s the worst analogy I’ve ever heard,” he answers as he makes his way over and takes me in his arms. “But I understand. And for what it’s worth, I’m truly sorry for messing with your process.”

I look up at him from beneath his eyelashes.

“I, however, am not sorry about kissing Ches. So I will not be apologizing for that.”

My mouth crashes into his, and then I let him go again. “I’m not really bothered with you kissing him. It’s more that I don’t know where I fit in all of this yet.”

“You’ll figure it out.”

“Probably,...”

Before I can finish my thought, Chester walks in with a little package. It’s wrapped in brown wrapping paper, and looks suspiciously like the other packages I’ve received from the killer. My heart rate spikes and my inside voice is screaming at the top of her lungs. The urge to run away is strong.

“He addressed it to you,” Chester starts. “Used your middle name. How the fuck does he know your middle name?”

“He knew how to use the dark web. Maybe not as expertly as you, but I’m sure there’s ways to find out my middle name.” I’m more worried about what”s inside it. It can’t be a new victim, it’s not the second of the month yet. I just pray to fuck it’s not more pictures of Elaine, because I don’t think I can handle that.

I make myself smaller, and try to hide in Remy’s arms. “Open it for me, will you?” I ask him in a small voice. Fuck, who is this scared girl that I don’t recognize? I need to up my dose of badass.

Chester lets out a sigh, grabs a knife from the kitchen, sets the box on the coffee table and cuts the tape open. My heart is pounding so hard it hurts when he opens the box and peeks in it. His face doesn’t give much away, he mainly looks confused, furrowed brows and tight lips.

When he picks it up again, he topples it over so we can have a look inside.

Inside of it is a necklace with a Celtic knot, in a perfectly round symbol. Winny and Beckett told us the victims were wearing a similar kind of necklace. What the hell does this mean? Why is he sending this to me? Didn’t they say something about the necklace symbolizing family?

“That… is creepy,” Remy says.

“Call Beckett,” I command. “Don’t touch it. Maybe there’s evidence or something they can find.” I don’t really believe in it myself, but we can’t let go of the chance that maybe there is something this time. Maybe he fucked something up. Maybe there’s something there that will help us save the poor soul that he’s going to abduct soon.

“On it.”

I let out a huge sigh, looking at the box like that girl from The Ring is going to come crawl out of it any moment. Not knowing what any of this means is creeping me the fuck out. That necklace feels haunted, and I want nothing to do with it. And what’s up with him knowing my middle name? It’s not exactly a secret or a bad name or anything, but the fact that he’s looking into me is daunting.

“I need to be distracted as soon as we can get out of here.”

Remy waggles his eyebrows at me, but before I can respond, Chester cuts in. “Hell no, you two are out of order. You’re in serious risk of dying of a sex overdose. Or exhaustion. Or dehydration. Besides, I kind of need to be around you guys, because believe it or not, I don’t like serial killers sending stuff to my home.”

“Oh, I’ve got a plan,” I say while I try to focus on what I have in mind instead of Pandora’s box on my coffee table.

“Really?” Chester whines as we pull up to the running track.

“Really,” I answer. “What did you think we were going to do when I made you put on workout clothes?”

Beckett came over as soon as he could and collected the box with the necklace. He looked about as troubled as I’m feeling, and my hope that this bastard will suddenly forget all about me has gone completely.

“I don’t know, like, dancing or something maybe. Not another round of hell.”

He gets out of the car reluctantly, while Remy looks like he doesn’t understand. He borrowed some of Chester’s workout clothes, so he’s now wearing black jogging pants and a Rammstein shirt. It looks oddly fitting on him. Before I can start to explain, another car pulls up, and Scott, Alex and Dylan get out, followed in their tracks by none other than Zoey. She waves at us excitedly, as I turn to Remy to explain.

“We work out here. Alex takes us through drills, gets us fit. Zoey tagging along is new though. We had an appointment to work out anyway. Guess it’s tag-a-long day. Upside is there’s a chance he might go easy on us.”

Remy looks around me. “Alex is the big scary Black dude, who looks like he’ll eat me raw if I don’t drop and give him twenty, right?”

“The one and only.”

A wide grin appears on Remy’s face. “Awesome.”

“There’s something seriously wrong with all of you,” Chester says, rubbing his hand over his eyes. “We’re willingly going to do this?” He turns to me. “Again?”

“Yup. We’re going to clear our heads.”

“We’re going to fucking die.”

The others make their way over to us, finding a grumpy Chester, a stretching Remy and a tired me. Once I’ll get into the workout I’ll be fine, but right now I’m just dead tired and stressed out as fuck.

“What are you doing here?” I ask the little hacker with the pink pixie cut. For some reason her cheeks heat.

“Thought it’d be wise to work out a little, with this killer who’s focusing on you. What if he comes to the office, and I have to flee, and I can’t make it down the fifteen flights of stairs because I’m unfit?” She’s rambling in a panicky kind of way, but it’s kind of adorable.

“You do know this is going to kill us, right?” Chester mopes.

Zoey doesn’t answer him right away, seeing as she’s busy staring at Scott. She cocks her head a little, as she inhales sharply, her eyes glued to a stretching Scott. “Worth it,” she finally says. Chester notices her not so subtly checking Scott out, and squints at his co-worker.

“I thought you were a lesbian.”

Zoey perks up, her ears now turning red as well. “Pansexual, if we’re labeling stuff. And not that it’s any of your business.”

Scott looks up, giving Zoey a smile that tells me enough. Those two are totally into each other. It’s absolutely the real reason she’s suddenly interested in working out, I just know so. But I don’t judge. Love is love and all, even if it makes you want to willingly surrender to a workout that’s likely a suicide mission.

“Leave them be,” I tell Chester. “You were gay right up until the point you weren’t. So don’t judge.”

Chester looks at me with horror, as I feel all eyes focus on us. Crap. Fuck. Shit. Balls. Hell. Did I just out Chester as not being gay to everyone without meaning to?

“You’re not gay?” Zoey asks wide-eyed.

He scrunches his face as he looks away. “It’s complicated.”

“I’m so sorry,” I whisper to him.

“Oh. My. God,” Zoey says, still staring at him with the biggest eyes I’ve ever seen. “All the female hackers around the world are sooooo gonna be all over you.”

He huffs. “Yeah. Like my sexuality is widely known in our world. They don’t know. It won’t change a thing. They don’t even know what I look like.”

“Yes they do. We’re just like regular girls. We talk.”

Somehow the idea of all the female hackers in the world fawning over him makes me feel irate. Like… that’s not how it’s supposed to be. Suddenly it becomes very clear. If there’s any girl who gets to be with Chester, it’s going to be me.

And that’s a thought that scares the living crap out of me.

I scrape my throat, lift my chin to Alex and signal him to get this show on the road. He claps his hands, his white teeth taking over his face as it breaks out in a wild smile.

“Okay, listen up. Oldies do two laps, gimme your all. Newbies, one lap, lemme see what we’re dealing with.”

And just like that, we take off. I take it slowly the first half of the first lap to warm up a little. Then I start taking bigger steps and running faster. With each pounding of my feet on the ground, my head gets emptier. There are no more thoughts about boxes with necklaces, there are no more thoughts about killers who take innocent girls and turn them into a statistic. There’s no more confusion about what it is that I’m feeling. It’s just me and the track, the sound of my breath and my footsteps the only thing that register with me.

Before I know it, I’ve run my two laps, and Alex stops me. He grabs me with both hands on my shoulders, showing me his pearly whites as his kind brown eyes bore into mine. “Need it today?”

“Yeah. Tear me apart.”

“Remember you asked for this,” he says before he walks away.

Remy is already waiting, jumping up and down in anticipation. I guess he did better than Chester and Zoey, who are now just finishing their first round. Alex signals everyone to huddle, and they do.

“You two,” he says to Chester and Zoey, “give me another lap and then wait for me here. We’ll do some basic exercises after that.” Chester looks grumpy, and Zoey looks flustered as her eyes keep darting to Scott. Yeah, she’s totally tapping that, I just know it. Alex points at Remy. “You can play with the big boys. Suicide runs until the newbs are done with their lap.”

“He’s enjoying this way too much,” Zoey mutters.

“That’s what I said last time,” Chester concurs.

“Save your breath for the running, grannies,” Alex says as he swats both their asses. If looks could kill Alex would be a dead man now, twice over.

The rest of us start doing suicide runs, which I’m totally not hating today. The first few times going up and down I’m fine, but as Chester and Zoey are taking their sweet time to finish their laps, the runs are starting to honor their name and I feel like I’m dying. Which is still a better feeling than being scared and defenseless.

Remy is keeping up with us, looking almost as ecstatic as Alex does.

“You like working out with us?” I ask him between breaths.

“I like being pushed,” he answers. Boy is fit too. “I like trying to get just that little extra out of me.”

He sounds way too happy and not suicidal enough. I try to find some breath to answer him, but thank God Zoey and Chester come in at that moment.

“Burpees, ladies,” Alex commands while he makes his way to Chester and Zoey, and starts having them do lunges and jumping jacks. I force my body to start doing burpees, and once again remind myself that Alex really is a sadistic bastard who enjoys kicking me when I’m down. I bet he was a bully when he was a kid. I know that when he’s at home with his wife and kids he’s a total sweetheart, otherwise I might need to worry about him. He walks back, and makes his way to Remy.

“I need to know your last name, sir.”

“It’s Ashburn,” Remy says with a huge grin and not a worry in the world. “Why, have you heard of me?”

“No, Ashburn, it’s so that I can yell at you more efficiently. If you’re still smiling, you’re not going hard enough! Go faster! I want to see that scowl of yours. Give your pretty little face some character by adding some wrinkles, Ashburn!”

Alex laughs diabolically as he walks away, and Remy? He just smiles and starts going through his burpees faster. I look at him in disbelief.

“God, I love that man.” The smile on his face is so wide it almost splits his face in two.

“What’s wrong with you?” I pant.

“Everybody underestimates a dancer,” he says as he lets his body come down to the ground, straining the muscles in his arms as he keeps himself off of the ground by a hair. “Oh, we’re just soft dreamers, making some dancing motions. You know what dancing takes? Extraordinary amounts of stamina and strength. You think lifting a dancer above your head is easy? No. You gotta have the muscle to make sure she doesn’t fall. And let’s be honest, we’re all little endorphin junkies.”

I pant, and I want to react to his statement, but I’m just too out of breath. “You’re nuts,” is all I can manage to bring out.

He cackles.

Once we’re done with the workout, I make my way to the car while I’m barely able to walk anymore and I check my phone, seeing that I have two messages. One from Beckett and one from my aunt. I open Beckett’s one first. If he has bad news, I still have the other text to cheer me up.

Beckett Sanders (FBI): First results from the necklace came in. So far nothing to find. We are sending it in to see if the material it’s made of is the same the other ones. Will get back to you once I hear more.

It’s very unlike him to keep me this informed, but I figure he’s feeling bad for me for being the receiver of creepy gifts. Forcing myself to think about other stuff, I open the other texts.

It’s a picture of Aunt Viv, hugging all three of her kids. They’re all beaming at the camera in their backyard, the sun giving them a golden glow.

Aunt Viv: We miss you, auntie Abby! Be safe and come visit us soon. PS I told them you know the best curse words, so you’ll have something to tarnish their perfect little souls with. PPS They don’t have perfect souls, they’re little demons. PPPS Send help.

I laugh out loud and send her a quick text back that I miss them too.

I turn around to see what’s left of everyone after the workout. Scott is crouching down by Zoey, whose face looks very red and it kind of clashes with the pink of her hair. She’s animatedly talking to him with her hands, and he looks at her with a soft look. It’s a look I don’t know from him. It’s like I can see them start to fall in love right in front of me, making me feel warm on the inside.

Remy and Chester make their way to the car, but they seem to be bickering. When they reach me, I raise an eyebrow at them.

“He,” Chester says as he points to Remy with his thumb, “wants to come next time. And I’m wondering if he’s good for you, Abs? Like, really? Is this what you need in your life?”

I snort.

Remy wraps his arms around both our shoulders. “Ah mes amis, I’m exactly what both of you need. But what we all need right now, is coffee and donuts.”

“And a shower,” I add.

“No,” Chester says, pulling himself free, pointing at both of us with one hand, his eyes wide. “No more showering together while I’m in the house. Go do that shit over at Remy’s or something. No more. I can take it no more.”

When we fill the car with a cacophony of laughter, I forget all about the necklace and the victims and the killer, and just live in a moment filled with happiness. Even if it’ll only last for a little while, it’s still worth it.