Chapter 38
Thirty-Eight
Kenny weathered a lot of storms recently, both tangible and cerebral, so was surprised that this one perturbed her as much as it did.
There was something foreboding about it.
That fear lasted a few minutes before her practical journalist’s mind set in and she decided that the lesson in the meteorological event was to stick with the true crime beat at WBS and not attempt to transfer to the weather team.
She often envied her colleagues who traveled from continent to continent to report on penguins in Antarctica or cover the hottest-ever recorded temperatures in Australia, but this storm confirmed that she wasn’t cut out to produce any live shots from the eye of a hurricane or base of a wildfire.
She grabbed a roll of paper towels from under the kitchen sink to wipe down the furniture on the patio and assess any damage.
The ground was covered in fallen pine needles, the waterproof cushions felt like they’d be saturated for a week and two of the chairs had blown over, but nothing catastrophic happened to the quaint outdoor seating area.
The pool, however, looked like it needed a whole team of skimmers to clean up the debris that floated on the surface.
The deck around the perimeter was in disarray.
The lounge chairs and tables, always uniform, were strewn across the concrete.
There were no women wading in the pool, anticipating water aerobics to begin; and there were no gentlemen huddled around the coin-operated newspaper boxes to collect copies of The New York Times or The Sea Pines Sentinel.
Kenny squeezed the excess water out of the chair cushions and strategically placed them around the patio in areas where they would receive direct sunlight.
She had just finished drying off the arms and legs of the table set and lounge chair when she heard a buzz buzz from the other side of the opened glass door.
She saw her phone light up next to the percolator on the counter.
FaceTime from Colby.
She normally would’ve hesitated to answer a call from Colby on a Sunday morning, for fear it was an accidental dial and unsure of the company he’d be keeping; but after hunkering down alone during the recent apocalypse, she welcomed a familiar face whether the call was intentional or not.
She picked up her right arm, tilted the phone down and cast up her gaze. She cocked her head to the right and opened her eyes wide.
“Morning, sunshine,” she chimed as she picked up the percolator with her left hand and poured a cup of coffee into one of the whale-shaped mugs from the cabinet.
“You’re alive, thank God!” Colby gasped with a sigh of genuine relief, though he still sounded half asleep.
“I am. It appears you are, too. Kind of, anyway,” Kenny said noting his tousled hair, squinted eyes and puffy face indicting he had a late night and hadn’t strayed from under his covers, yet.
“What do I give this early-morning pleasure?” She shuffled back to the patio and reclined on the lounge chair.
“I love your place, doll! That yellow couch is fabulous,” he said twisting his head.
From the other side of the screen, it appeared like he was repositioning himself and the phone in the hopes that doing so would give him a better view of the interior of the villa that was now behind Kenny as she walked outside.
“It’s not the most comfortable but it fits the space, and the color makes me happy. I’d give you a tour of the rest of Pelican Pointe, but the complex is recovering from a minor natural disaster. I’ll give you a call later when things are cleaned up and dried out.”
“That’s why I’m calling. I was scrolling though my phone to see who I drunk-dialed and texted last night and to assess whom I should actively avoid the next few weeks or, worse, owe an apology to.
” Colby nonchalantly shrugged his shoulders at his Sunday morning ritual, “and all my news apps are reporting biblical flooding in the Carolinas. Powerful waves, high tides, whipping winds, it’s a vocabulary lesson in scary words that city-dwellers like me don’t have to worry about. ”
From the way he elaborated, she suspected he was trying to make the point that he thought it was time for her to come home.
Kenny rolled her eyes. “Wasn’t it just last month that your ‘friend,’ the ‘best barista in Chelsea,’ was arrested for making bombs in his apartment and had wallpapered his bedroom with maps of the subway system? I think you have your own set of problems, Colby.”
“I’m sure that was all a misunderstanding,” he laughed.
“Now that I know you weren’t whisked out to sea, tell me about yesterday’s shopping trip!
This is the first I’m seeing you in a few weeks and it’s obvious you’ve shed those pesky pounds.
What kind of ensemble did you put together to drive this golfer out of his mind? ”
Kenny recounted every detail of her charades in the dressing rooms at the boutiques around Coligny Plaza, complete with commentary about why each outfit would and would not work for her date with J.P.
She missed having Colby on the shopping spree.
He had a ruthless critical eye, but it was offset with a keen sense of style that she relied on.
He had a vision for fashion that she was blind to.
He was in the middle of analyzing the risk factors associated with wearing white jeans after Labor Day, he was particularly hung up on the shade of white, when Kenny abruptly shooshed! him.
“Don’t. Say. A. Word.” Kenny firmly directed as she quietly placed her mug on the patio and slid down the lounge chair like she was hiding from someone.
The stucco wall that enclosed the patio was high enough that there was no chance anyone on the other side of it would be able to see her. Even when Kenny stood vertically, the wall came to her ribs, but she wasn’t taking any chances.
“What’s going on? Are you okay?” Colby whispered.
She picked up her finger and shooshed! him again like she was a grade-school teacher trying to corral a room full of rambunctious third graders.
Colby’s squinted eyes grew wide, and he obeyed.
“I’m not worried about it; you shouldn’t be either. I think Mr. C will be thrilled when he finds out. And to have you here, full-time, he might be more excited than me!” Kenny heard a familiar voice exclaim.
“I hope so. The last few summers have been great, and I thought I was okay with it being a warm weather fling. But this last month has been hard. I realized I had deeper feelings than I knew or wanted to have,” a female’s voice said softly, sounding both optimistic and hesitant.
“Last night confirmed what I secretly hoped for a long time, that there is something real between us.”
Kenny’s insides tumbled and her head spun.
She lost feeling in her right arm and dropped the limb and her phone to her waist. The undeniable, smooth-talking voice was J.P.
She didn’t know if she wanted to throw up, disappear, or confront the sappy couple who presumably were still basking in whatever happened between them the night before.
“Relationships are never easy, and I’m told the good ones rarely make sense. We have to work on them,” J.P. encouraged. “What do you say we grab breakfast?”
“I’d love that. You know breakfast is my favorite meal,” the female voice giggled.
By now Kenny was on all fours and crawling on her hands and knees, phone in hand, across the patio to the glass door. She palmed the door with her left hand, slid it open and dragged herself inside.
What is going on? What are you doing? Colby silently mouthed with exaggeration and alarm.
Once she was safely inside, she sprung to her feet, ran to the front of the villa, and flipped the camera around on her phone so she and Colby could peer out the window together.
“That is J.P.!” Kenny shouted, directing the phone to a couple who were walking toward a red Wrangler. “And that must be last night’s hook-up! What a slime ball! And look at her! Of course she’s gorgeous. I should expect nothing less. He looks like a movie star.”
“They both look pretty disheveled to me,” Colby said in what seemed to be a feeble attempt to reign in Kenny’s outburst. “You would never go to breakfast looking that way. Her hair looks like a bird’s nest and those gold sweatpants look like they came from the lost and found box in a high school boy’s locker room.
That color wouldn’t flatter anyone’s complexion,” he spoke in disgust.
“I can’t go there. I don’t want to think about why they look disheveled.
Look at him now, trying to act like a gentleman,” she spewed as she watched J.P.
help the tall blonde into the passenger seat of his Jeep.
“My God, her legs are a mile long. She doesn’t even need help getting into the car.
Her hair looks like it was professionally pinned into an up-do, not a bird’s nest.”
“She looks like an woman. If that’s the type this J.P. is interested in, you never stood a shot, Hunny,” Colby lamented from inside the phone.
“She looks like a runway model, not an woman. But you’re right, I should’ve known J.P. would never be interested in someone like me. What was I thinking?” Kenny’s voice trembled.
She was on the verge of tears.
“Stop that right now, Kennedy Sloane!” Colby scolded. “Do you know how many men would drop everything to be with you? How many men have tried?”
“I don’t understand, Colby!” Kenny broke into full blown sobs. “How can I keep misinterpreting my life like this? I really thought this was something special. I thought the connection was mutual. Was this all a dream, too? Did I dream up him kissing me? Did I dream up him asking me to dinner?”
“Oh, Love. It wasn’t a dream. I heard it in your voice, and I saw it in your face when you answered the phone this morning,” Colby comforted. “He was just a bad seed.”
“I thought he was different. I felt different when I was around him,” Kenny cried.
“I know it’s hard. I hate that you’re upset, and we can’t lay in bed and watch Sex and the City reruns all day and get fat from Levain cookies together.
But if there’s one thing this loser did, he brought you back to life.
He made you realize you don’t want to be alone.
You need more than me and WBS in your life, Kenny,” Colby lectured.
“It never would’ve worked anyway,” she sighed as she watched the red Jeep pull away.
“Maybe that’s why he pursued me in the first place.
He was lonely and needed a quick fix of something.
What better way to temporarily satisfy yourself than prey on a girl you know is going back up the coast in a few weeks.
” Her tears slowly dissipated. “He also alluded to commitment issues, although that didn’t sound like a guy with hesitation.
He probably feeds that line to all the girls to preemptively justify his future actions,” she rambled.
“We are getting you back on the dating circuit when you come home. You’re going to make dates and keep them. If you like a guy, you’re going to answer his calls when he tries to make plans to see you again,” Colby instructed.
“It just doesn’t make sense. If J.P. is averse to relationships or commitment, why would he chase a standing summer fling with someone he works with? Someone he won’t be able to avoid?”
“I don’t know, Kenny. I’ll never understand what makes a straight man’s brain tick.
Thank God. But don’t allow this guy to let you fall back into a slump,” Colby warned.
“What are you going to do about Wednesday’s date?
Will you still go if he doesn’t cancel? I think you should go and screw with the bastard’s head. ”
“I don’t know, yet. I’m meeting a new friend for drinks tonight. She’s young, still in school, but seems like a cool girl. I’ll get her take on the situation. These Gen Z’ers can be brutal. I’m curious what her recourse would be.”
“Yas, Queen! I love it! Now go cut up a cucumber and de-puff your eyes from the tears. We don’t want you going out with ugly mourner face.”
Kenny flipped the camera on her phone, so she was again looking at Colby.
“Thanks. I’ll talk to you later.” She sighed, knowing the exact look he was referring to.
She wore everything on her face—fear, sadness, excitement, stress, anxiety, anger—and no makeup could cover it up. To look fresh for her night out with Hailey, she would need to start with a clean slate.
“Love you, mean it, bi-yee!” Colby chimed.