7. Kennedy
“I don’t know how much more of this I can take.” Double-checking to make sure that the 911 caller has already hung up, I stare over one of the five computer monitors at Maya, my boss and director of Birch County RCC.
Maya smiles brightly in response, despite the fact that we’ve been working for a solid twelve hours together, answering emergency calls and handling everything else that dispatching involves. “Sometimes I forget what it’s like to sit in dispatch,” she says. “I miss it.”
“I don’t.” I’m already thinking about tacos, in fact. Three days one week and four the next, I get off shift and immediately go to Lucy’s, where there will already be a taco platter waiting for me.
The digital clock on my computer says I only have about five minutes before my replacement clocks in, and I literally start counting the seconds until I’ll see Nikki’s truck pull into the parking lot on the security cameras.
“I just wish I could find a dispatcher that wouldn’t wash out in training,” Maya says bluntly. “I know it takes a special breed of person to dispatch, but we’ve gone through four since Teri left for BPD.” She huffs and then glares at me over her screen. “You better not abandon me for them.”
I would have given her some sort of snarky answer, but Nikki’s truck pulls into the parking lot just then.
“At least you’ve got Nikki now,” I tell her. “She started as a deputy’s wife, right?”
Maya’s face shutters, her eyes flashing with a darkness that I hadn’t quite expected. “Yep.” She coughs. “Dustin. Before he died.” She sniffs. “She’s a good one.” Her smile returns. “Nikki definitely understands the stuff a dispatcher needs to be made of.”
While I wait for Nikki to come into the building and relieve me, I grab all my stuff and make sure that my trash is disposed of. Twelve hours in one place is a lot, especially since our desks are our home away from home.
Nikki walks in with a smile on her face and a bag full of food that smells delicious. My stomach growls in response.
Yep. Time for tacos. Tacos, and maybe a stiff drink that will help me forget the fact that I’m miserable in my life.
“I’m outta here,” I say while waving on my way out.
In the parking lot, I see a familiar truck, with the man of my dreams sitting in the driver’s seat. Linc stares down at his phone with a grimace, and curiosity almost kills the cat. Instead of walking over and tapping the glass on his window like I want to, I get in my car and leave.
Even if my chest aches as I go. Absently, I rub the scars on my left wrist while I clutch the steering wheel.
The ridges serve as a reminder of everything I’ve already lost in my life. All the things I’ve done and suffered that led to my current life.
“Breathe. Just breathe.” My heart keeps beating, even though the anxiety in my veins says that I’m having a heart attack. “You’re fine.”
Lucy’s, thankfully, is only down the road from the sheriff’s office, and I make it into the parking lot before the onslaught of memories hit me like a wrecking ball.
Cheap cologne and bad music fill my senses, blinding me to reality and leaving me lost in the past.
Tap. Tap.Tap.
I open my eyes, expecting to be stuck in a living nightmare, and see Parker standing next to my car with Nox at her side.
“Come on, Auntie,” he calls out loudly. “It’s taco time. Mom said I’m going to your house after you’re done and that we’re gonna spend the weekend together.” His face is pressed right up to the window, and he blows his lips on the glass, letting his cheeks swell out and it sounds like he is farting.
Parker stares at me with an apologetic smile on her face. “Sorry.” Even through the closed window, I hear her.
With a shrug, I open the door and put on my best smile. The one I reserve for Nox, and Nox alone.
“You’re in the way of tacos, my man.” Tugging on his hand gently, I pull him into step next to me and we walk into the restaurant. “So you better speed it up and you can have some, too. You know…” I lean down next to him to whisper, “I don’t share my tacos with anyone at all. Not even your momma. So me sharing my tacos with you is something special.”
“Your tacos are on me today,” Parker says when she joins us. “I’m sorry to spring it on you last minute, but Remy and the guys are going out to Galloway Bay this weekend to help with something to do with roller derby. And after everything that happened, I don’t trust Nox with anyone but you.”
She doesn’t say anything else about it because Nox is right there, but I know what Parker is talking about. Hell, everyone in Birch knows what happened the night Nox was taken and buried alive.
Parker has every right to be psychotic when it comes to her son’s care, and I wouldn’t blame her even if she didn’t trust me.
“Hey, Nox.” I point him in the direction of my favorite booth at the back of the restaurant. “Go have a seat. I’m sure Vi is gonna bring you over some food as soon as she sees you. I got my taco order on repeat.”
He takes off like a bolt of lightning, leaving me standing there with Parker and a tiny bit of privacy.
“How is he?” I miss being at the house with them, but honestly, I like having my own space and not hearing my big brother having sex. Which actually happens a lot. They are loud after Nox goes to bed, and my room happened to be the halfway mark between the two rooms, so I heard it all.
“He’s a lot better than I am,” she admits with a long look at her son. “But he’s still having nightmares sometimes. I wouldn’t ask you to stay with him, but this trip seems pretty important to Remy. I guess one of his friends needs help. You know how he is about loyalty.”
I’m already nodding. “When a friend asks for help, you give it to them.”
She smiles. “Thank you, Kennedy.” We slowly make our way to the table. “We’re not leaving until tomorrow, but Nox got so excited about spending the weekend with you. If you don’t want to, I can ask Rose.”
“Shut the front door.” I raise an eyebrow while she tries and fails to come up with a response, her mouth opening and closing like a fish gasping for air. “I’ve got the next four days off, to use some vacation time before I lose it. It’s honestly not a big deal. Nox is my favorite, too. Of course I’ll keep him.”
“Good,” Nox says loudly from the table. “You didn’t have a choice. Mom said she’d break out the big guns if she needed.”
“Big guns?” I slide into the booth next to him and think about how many tacos the two of us can possibly go through.
“Yep.” He nods his head with the air of an old man and not a six-year-old kid. “She said I could use the crocodile tears if you didn’t say yes.”
“Traitor,” Parker mutters in response as she takes her spot across from us.
Almost immediately, Vi appears with two plates of tacos, proving yet again that she is beyond a badass who sees everything and runs Lucy’s like a champ.
“Thanks, Vi.” Nox reaches over the table to give her a high five. “Can I please have my usual?” There aren’t very many kids who have a usual at any restaurant, but that is the benefit of his mother running the place. Plus, he is so cute and caring that everyone just loves him to pieces.
“One Shirley Temple coming right up,” Vi answers him seriously, making sure to write it down before offering him a playful wink. “Anything else?”
“Nope.” He sits back down and snuggles into my side with a smile. “Auntie Kenny’s gonna share her tacos with me.” He completely ignores the fact that Vi brought him his own plate of tacos to eat.
Parker and Vi both snort at Nox’s statement. If it were anyone else in the world, I would have stabbed them in the hand for trying to steal my food. But not him. Since the first time I met him, when he cried and held his hands out for me to take him from his mother in the middle of the grocery store at three months old, I was his. Literally, he owns me. Heart and soul. It doesn’t hurt that he looks exactly like his father and uncle, either.
He has blond hair, blue eyes, and freckles under his eyes that will drive girls crazy when he becomes a man. Not only that, but Parker has raised Nox to be a gentleman, even if he is only six.
“Auntie Kenny?” Nox looks up at me with a question in his eyes, and I realize that I completely missed part of the conversation.
“What’s up? Sorry, I’m sleepy.” I yawn for dramatic effect. “I didn’t hear the question.”
Nox eyes me suspiciously, wrinkles on his forehead as he gives me a dissatisfied and sarcastic expression. “I asked,” he says dejectedly. “If you still have all the blankets we need for a blanket fort. You’re my favorite auntie, and that means you have to have the blankets, right?”
That little shit even bats his eyes at me. He knows he’s my weakness, and if I have to turn my living room upside down and inside out to make a fort for him to keep my top-shelf placement, I will.
“Duh,” I snap playfully. “What kind of aunt would I be if I didn’t have the blankets?”
“Great.” Nox claps his hands together as his drink shows up. “Let’s eat. Then we can make a fort and watch a movie.”
Parker leaves us there with the promise to send videos and pictures, but not before she inhales an entire plate of tacos. Nox and I make sure to eat our fill and to ask for a to-go box as well. By the time we make it back to my house, Parker has dropped off Nox’s backpack and a stack of extra sheets on my front porch.
“Mom knows what’s up,” Nox explains when we walk onto the front porch and see them. “She probably knows you don’t have enough blankets.” He nods to himself before opening the door and walking in like he owns the place.
We proceed to tear apart the house completely. The couch is moved. Every one of the dining chairs that my mother gave me when I moved in is dragged to the living room. We even grab an entire bin full of clothespins that I’d bought to dry my blankets outside during the summer.
There are sheets and blankets pinned everywhere we look. My windows are covered; even the TV itself is covered so that we can sit on the floor in front of the couch and still watch the movie he picks out.
Long after bedtime has come and gone, Nox is curled into my side with wide eyes.
“You’re the best, Auntie.” He yawns loudly. “Better than Mom and Dad… I mean Remy.”
Nox is too young to understand how hard his words hit me and the immediate effect they have on my heart. My heart throbs, not for myself, but for him. The loss he suffered before he was even born and whatever regret he had at calling Remy his father.
“You know.” I cough to try and clear the emotion from my heart, unable to breathe through it for longer than I want. Instead of forcing the words, I wrap Nox in a hug as tight as I can manage without hurting him. “You know,” I try again and still can’t get it out.
“What is it, Auntie? I didn’t mean to make you mad by calling Remy my dad.” The panic in his voice and the way he pulls away from me, or tries to, sets everything into motion.
“You know, I think Remy and your mom would be perfectly fine with you calling him your dad. I think they’d like it, actually.” My voice catches, and I can’t keep the tears back any longer.
Pure, sweet love, that of a child, is something I’ve wanted my entire life. A family. One I couldn’t wait to have for my own.
“He’s the only dad I have.” Nox yawns even more. “I love him.”
While Nox curls into my side even further, completely oblivious to the fact that he’s thrown my world into chaos, my mind wanders to another time. Another night, where I shared my hopes for the future.
“Come along, Nox.” I ruffle his hair. “It’s time to go to bed.”
Groggily, he gets up and starts to crawl out of the blanket fort with a series of grunts and complaints.
“You know what? I’ve changed my mind.” I look down at the bright smile that appears on his face. “Let me just turn on the light in the window, and we’ll sleep down here.”
“Why do you turn the light on?” Nox yawns and curls into the pillow and blankets that we’ve been using. “We’re going to bed.”
“Because sometimes your uncle Linc comes by and sits outside. Watching out for me.” I rub the scars on my left wrist once more. “He’s worried about me, I think.”
Nox nods into the pillow. “He’s got your six.” His eyes are closed, so he doesn’t see the tears well up, nor does he see the watery smile that I give him at his words.
Instead, I turn on the light in my window, like I do every night. I lean against the door, resting my forehead against the solid wood. And just like every night, I silently wish that instead of being outside, Linc was with me, building a life.
But wishes are only granted in fairy tales, and my life has been nothing more than a nightmare wrapped in a daydream disguised as the apocalypse.