Chapter 14 #3
“I thought you’d get over it,” she said. “I thought you’d come around. But this?” She swung an arm to indicate the courtyard. “This is unforgiveable, Dad. I rescind mom’s and your invitation to the wedding. I want you nowhere near the Oasis when I become my man’s wife.”
Jacob was suddenly there (which meant now Cap was doing what Knox was, sidling close to be on hand just in case).
He put his arm around her and curled her to him. “Stop talkin’, baby, so you don’t say anything you can’t take back.”
“I’m okay with everything I’m saying,” she retorted to him then looked to her dad. “I don’t know what the flipside of disinheriting is for a kid, but I’m disinheriting you.”
She looked over her shoulder, so I looked over her shoulder, and I saw her mother was now deathly pale.
“Both of you,” Alexis concluded.
“Roy,” her mother called anxiously.
“Fine by me,” her father, who apparently held the world record for the amount of stubborn he could display, shot back. “Your mother has always wanted to go to Paris, and we can have a slam-bang trip with your wedding fund.”
Alexis flinched.
Jacob growled.
I fought giving her father a bloody nose my damned self.
“Roy!” her mother shouted.
“You’re a goddamned piece of work,” Jacob muttered, beginning to turn Alexis toward their apartment.
“Speak up, boy,” Roy ordered. “Be a man and say that to my face.”
Cap and Knox stopped sidling and closed in.
But Jacob simply turned back and said, “You just let the most precious thing on this earth slip through your fingers. You’re not worth it. And I gotta look after my woman, who seriously fuckin’ is.”
Bill and Zach, one of our two-bedroom couples, our official community organizers, the presidents of our residents’ association and recently, part of the residents’ wedding planning team (long story), came jogging up with Bill asking, “What’s happening?”
“Alexis, honey.” Her mom reached out to her as Jacob guided her into their apartment.
But Alexis withdrew from her touch.
Her mother quailed.
Jacob closed the door.
Now it was Martha in Roy’s face.
“You’ll be leaving now,” she declared.
“I don’t take orders from some spinster cat lady who lives in a shabby apartment complex,” Roy rejoined.
Everyone in the audience (save probably Knox and Cap) gasped in afront because Oasis Square was not shabby.
It was the best complex in Phoenix.
Maybe not the most expensive.
But still the best.
(Part of our gasps was about him being a dick to Martha as well, it’s important to note, but since we all knew Martha could dish it out and take it, it was mostly his dis of Oasis Square.)
“Wrong again,” Martha fired back. “I was married for years to the best man on this planet. Unfortunately, most of those years he was battling cancer. Fortunately, he was a goddamned warrior with that, and he stuck around long enough to help me raise our three boys and do it right. After we succeeded in that magnificent achievement, he left us all, even if his love didn’t, and his memory never will. ”
She had him in her thrall with all of that, so she edged closer to Roy and lowered the boom.
“Now, all my boys are married. And I can’t say I like any of the women they chose very much, though I know on some level I don’t because I know to the depths of my soul no woman would be good enough for any of my boys.
That doesn’t mean in reality that’s true.
It’s just a parent’s prerogative to think that way.
But I put up with them because my sons love them and they make my boys happy.
That’s my job. I might be mildly crotchety about it sometimes… ”
Raye snorted.
Martha spoke through it, “…but I’d cut off my own arm before I let one of my boys down like you did your daughter today.
Far’s I can tell, as parents, we got three jobs.
Give ’em life, raise ’em right, then let them live their lives.
Not a one of those jobs is easy, ’cept the first if you’re a man.
But you blew it on the last today, bucko.
So bad I was set to be angry at you until the end of my days, but all I got to give you is my pity. ”
Roy was winding up to retort, but Alexis’s mom got there first.
“Roy, we’re leaving.”
Roy scowled at Martha while Cap and Knox (and Jacques) took her back.
“Roy!” Alexis’s mom snapped. “If you don’t walk out of here right now, this courtyard isn’t the only thing I’ll be leaving today.”
“Well, damn. Momma Alexis is finally showing a backbone,” Rhea mumbled.
Roy aimed one last scowl at Martha, then, without looking at anyone, he trudged out.
His wife was already through the gate.
Martha wasn’t quite done, and we knew this when she shouted at his back, “And I don’t have any cats!” She then turned directly to Raye and stated, “Though, been thinking about that, Raye. You got a shelter you can recommend to me?”
Along with being an Angel, a server, my bestie, and Cap’s fiancée, Raye was the resident Oasis pet sitter. She used to do it officially, as a second job for extra cash, but now that Cap was splitting their monthly outlay, she just did it for gift cards from her neighbors.
I watched with irritation as Knox bent down, grabbed Jacques and tucked him under his arm.
My attention was caught with Rhea saying, “I wasn’t aware traipsing around in a man’s shirt was the new fashion statement, but gotta say, sister, you kill that look.”
I hadn’t seen me, but I was one hundred percent certain I did.
“My man and I were interrupted in our reunion by well-meaning friends and a drama in the courtyard,” I replied as Knox made it to my side.
She looked him up and down and asked, “This your man?”
“Haven’t you met Knox?” Before she could say anything, I introduced, “Knox, Rhea. Rhea, Knox. Rhea lives next door to Cap and Raye. Knox is my hot guy.”
“We’ve met,” Knox muttered. “Nice to see you again,” he said.
“Excellent use of restraint in not punching that asshole in the throat,” she replied.
“Thanks,” he replied through twitching lips.
“Well, won’t keep you two any further from getting up to reunion activities that your neighbors are likely to complain about at the next Oasis barbeque. Later,” she bid her brand of adieu and walked away.
Raye took her place, with Cap.
She was looking at me.
He was grinning at Knox’s shirt on my body.
“We good?” she asked me.
“Totally. Always,” I answered.
“Cheyenne strategy meet tomorrow at headquarters?” she queried. “Or will you two still be reuniting?”
I really did want that Cheyenne line item crossed off our to-do list.
But more, I wanted to make up for lost time with my guy.
So I requested, “Can we play it by ear?”
“Sure,” she replied.
“Getting my coffee,” Shanti shouted from the upstairs walkway, on her way to my unit. “Then I’ll be out of your hair.”
“All right,” I shouted back.
Everyone else was drifting away or huddling to gossip about what just happened (and fill Bill and Zach in, and I could tell they didn’t mess about doing it because both men looked ticked as all get out).
I got Angel squeezes of my hand and arm that were different versions of Raye’s “we good?” to which I obviously answered the same as I did to Raye, doing it using a smile.
And then it was just Knox and Jaques and me.
Jacques barked because two things needed to happen: pee break and breakfast.
“I’ll look after him, you go make us coffee,” Knox ordered.
“I’ll look after him, you put him down, go up, put on your sling, and make us coffee,” I countered.
“Baby.” He got closer, and his voice lowered. “Promise, I’m healing.”
“Baby,” I held his gaze and did not lower my voice.
“If you put on that sling and make me coffee, I’ll give you a blowjob that will make you question your allegiance to the Cardinals, Uncle Sam, the knowledge that the sun rises in the east and man has walked on the moon.
So”—I hitched a hip—“which way we gonna play this, honcho?”
He was grinning flat out when he said, “I’ll make coffee.”
“As I suspected.”
He dropped a kiss on my lips before he put my dog on the grass.
Then, the infuriating man, he jogged up the damn steps.
Though he sauntered to my unit.
I followed my dog around and was glad to see this morning he just needed a pee break, because I hadn’t brought my puppy poo bags.
Then he followed me up to my apartment (such a good boy, he didn’t even need a leash).
Knox had coffee ready.
I took a few sips.
And about twenty minutes after that, I knew Knox had forgotten that Neil Armstrong even existed.
Mission accomplished.