Chapter
8: A Rocky Start
Darren staggered out of bed the next day around
“Good afternoon, Ms. Garner,” Darren kindly greeted her.
“Good afternoon, Darren,” she happily replied. “Tiger has been
eagerly waiting for you.”
“Really?” Darren asked, almost wanting to laugh.
“Tiger!” Ms. Garner called to her dog. He came running in from the
other room and pounced on Darren, knocking him to the floor.
“Uh,” Darren groaned as he pushed the monster of a dog off his body.
“I should have expected that.” He stood up and took Tiger by the collar as
he grabbed his leash from the rack beside the door and led him out as he waved
goodbye to Ms. Garner.
Darren walked Tiger down the stairs making sure that he didn’t bump
into anyone as the walked out the door to the street. The sky was a bright blue
that afternoon, and with a temperature of about 65oF, it felt nice to
be out and about on the somewhat familiar sidewalks. Darren looked down at his
watch to see that it was only
‘Jay,’ Darren thought as he got closer. He shook his head, still
trying to get over the fact that she was with someone else. It was still hard
for him to see her so happy with another guy, but he had to support her, he
promised he would, no matter what happened. Tiger was pulling at his leash,
dragging Darren down the street when he finally realized where the dog was
going. He pulled as hard as he could to stop the dog from walking towards them.
The last thing he wanted was another confrontation with either one of the two,
especially Van, who he thought knew more than he let on.
It gave Darren all the more reason to follow him as he stood up from his
chair after kissing Jay goodbye and began walking down the street. He followed
Van at a distance as he turned the corner and kept walking until he reached
another corner that led down into an alley. He stepped into the dark and
foreboding place without a second glace behind his back and disappeared into the
shadows.
‘What the fuck?’ Darren began to wonder as he stared into the
darkness of the alley trying to figure out why Van had gone there. Moments
later, another figure appeared out of the shadows, his bleached blond hair
shimmering in the few rays of light that bounced off the pale, dusty windows of
the buildings. Wide eyed, Darren realized who the man was. ‘Seth,’ his mind
angrily hissed as his eyes narrowed. ‘That little bastard.’
Darren knew he should get closer, but it would be too great of a risk.
Just as he was about to leave, his eyes caught sight of the most disturbing
thing he could ever witness. Seth had pulled out a bag and handed it to Van, who
in turn opened it up and reached inside to pull out a wad of hundred dollar
bills. Darren’s mouth dropped in surprise, anger, and rage.
‘I have to tell Jack. I have to tell Jack,’ his mind kept repeating
as he high tailed it out of there before either of the two men saw him. ‘But I
can’t. She’ll think I’m lying and never want to speak to me again,’ he
told himself as he reached his apartment.
Van, on the other hand, knew he had put himself in a pretty awkward
position that day, especially since he got that call in the middle of his lunch
with Jay from Seth. The sick bastard had been watching from the other side of
the street. He could only imagine the smirk on the man’s face widen as he
softly kissed Jay’s cheek before he told her he had business to attend to and
headed off without so much as saying goodbye. He only wanted to get the guy off
his back and would hopefully meet up with her again soon. But after leaving her
like this, he doubted he’d get absolution for his actions.
‘God, she must be pissed,’ he thought, continuing to turn corners
until he reached the alley where Seth told him they’d meet. Van walked into
the shadows, the feeling of being watched overpowering his senses. His instinct
told him to watch out, which he did by making so many different twists and turns
until he finally reached his destination. The feeling subsided as he walked into
the alley and found Seth standing there, a bag at his feet.
“You got the rest?” Van asked as he leaned against the wall and
waited for him to say something.
“Yeah, it’s all here. A million in hundreds just like last time,”
Seth replied as he threw the bag over to Van and let him open it to see for
himself.
“I trust that you have all of it,” Van said as he turned to leave.
“Hold on a sec. I wanna know what progress you’ve made in the last
couple of days,” Seth added before Van was out of his sight.
He turned around slowly, wishing he had made a run for it, but realizing
that this was probably a good opportunity to get some more background on why
Seth hated Jay so much. “Not much,” Van answered. “It takes time to get
close to someone like her.”
“Tell me about it,” Seth replied as he reached into the back pocket
of his jeans and pulled out a pack of cigarettes and lit one, which he took a
puff of before continuing. “Took me six months before I had her in bed, and
even then I had to force her to do it. Bitch never told.”
Van’s mind and stomach did a back flip. ‘Oh, God… He raped her?’
he thought in disgust. ‘Why weren’t we told about this? And how much more
fucked up does it get?’
“She wasn’t any good, though. Still a virgin, didn’t know shit,”
Seth continued. “I don’t know now, but I did hear that she got pregnant but
lost the baby. Hell, she was even engaged to some prissy pop star from
Van nodded, swallowing down the bile that rushed to his throat. This
conversation had to end, NOW, or he’d bust a cap in the guy’s head. As much
as he would have liked to do it, there was a difference between wanted and
doing, and he wasn’t the type of person to shoot now and ask questions later.
“I have to get going,” Van said, trying to be subtle.
“Oh, by all means, don’t let me stop you,” Seth replied as he threw
his cigarette to the ground and crushed the smoldering butt with the heel of his
foot.
Van high tailed it out of there, bag in hand, and headed back to his car.
This was something he had to tell his partner and his boss. The case seemed to
get more and more complicated as the days passed.
In the mean time, Jay had begun her walk home from the café. She was
somewhat angry that Van had to leave on such short notice, but she knew that an
emergency at work was an emergency and that he needed to go back, but still. He
barely even said goodbye. It was just a kiss on the cheek and he was gone. She
shook off the anger, trying to get past it as she walked up the steps to her
apartment, but it wouldn’t go away. She wished Nadia was around so they could
talk like they used to, but they were now nearly seven thousand miles apart, and
the only thing that connected them was a phone which only worked very early in
the morning or very late at night.
Jay sighed as she pushed the door open and stepped into the foyer,
throwing her keys in the bowl of colorful marbles beside the door and taking off
her shoes. The first place she headed was the bathroom to freshen up, and just
as she was about to was her hands, she spotted the black ink on the inside of
her palm.
“Darren!” Jay exclaimed aloud as she turned off the faucet and
grabbed the cordless phone in the hallway, dialing the barely visible numbers
still written on her hand. It kept ringing as she sat down on the toilet seat
and waited for someone to pick up. She ended up getting his voicemail and left a
message for him to call her back before hanging up. ‘The one time I really
need to talk to somebody, and there’s nobody there to talk to,’ she thought
with a sigh as she slouched back on the seat and let her head roll, effectively
cracking the sore spots in her neck.
Before she even had time to roll her head back, the phone began to ring.
Jay grabbed it off the counter and answered, “Hello,” without even looking
at the caller ID.
“Jay?” Darren replied from the other line, having just arrived in his
apartment to find that he had forgotten his cell phone on his kitchen table.
“Hi. I just got your message. What’s wrong? You sound like hell.”
“Well, I know we’ve gotten off on the wrong foot these last few days,
and I just wanted to say I’m sorry,” she said. “I’ve been such a total
bitch to you, and you’ve been really nice to me. Do you wanna meet up
somewhere later on today so we can talk about things?”
“Yeah, sure, I’ll be at the studio all day. You can stop by there,
maybe listen to some tracks for the CD and we can talk then,” Darren answered.
“That would be great,” Jay replied.
He gave her the directions to the studio and one more piece of
information that she would need to know in order to see him. “Be there between
three and five. Just tell the receptionist you need to speak to Luke Skywalker
and she’ll send you right to me,” he told her.
“You still haven’t grown out of the Star Wars thing, I see,” Jay
replied.
“Never have, never will,” Darren said.