Chapter 129

I was in bed watching TV when there was a tap on the bedroom door. I hit the mute button on the remote and said, “Yes?”

Nothing happened, so I said “YES” in a louder voice, and “SURE, COME ON IN,” when Megan asked, “Are you awake?”

She came in and sat on the side of the bed. She was wearing pajamas and she really looked cute when she said, “I just wanted to tell you what a great time I had tonight again.”

“I’m glad you did. My family likes you.”

“Your folks are great, especially your mom, and your sisters, along with being the most beautiful girls I ever saw, are both super nice. I’ve never been so comfortable around people, especially those who I just met.”

“I’m glad you are.”

“Well, that’s all. I just wanted to thank you for tonight and for lending me your car again.”

“No problem.”

She looked at the floor for a second, then she said, “I never had a brother, and I was a little worried about you, but not anymore.”

“Good, I promise not to disappoint you. What made you change your mind?”

“Your sisters did. I thought that siblings either fought all the time, or ignored each other like my sisters did me, but your sisters love you and they kept telling me what a great guy you are.”

I grinned, “That’s because I am!” She giggled and took a playful swat at my arm.

She started to get up and I said, “You look kinda wound up.”

“Yeah, I am, it’s been a crazy day.”

“I agree, I’m a little wired too.”

“Hey, it’s chilly in the house. I think that I’ll make some hot chocolate. Would you like some?”

“That sounds good.”

“Be right back, it’ll only take a minute.”

“There’s an ‘Instant Hot’ water heater on the kitchen sink, and she was back with two steaming mugs of hot chocolate in no time. She set them on the end tables to cool, then she asked, “Whatcha watching?”

“Friends.”

“Oh, I love that show. There’s a Friends marathon on right now. Can I watch it with you for a while?”

I said, “Sure,” and she hopped on the bed next to me. She did it so casually that it surprised me. I was under the covers and she was on top so there was no contact, but she was suddenly lying next to me like we’d been doing this forever.

I was touched. She trusted me. I wanted to hug her, but remembering what Nell had said about my being careful with her, I thought that I had better not, so we just drank our chocolate and watched TV.

I guess that we dozed off, because a noise woke me. Megan was still next to me but she must have got cold because she had pulled the bedspread up around her and she was sound asleep.

Someone went “Hmm,” and Nell was standing in the doorway looking at us when I looked up. She didn’t look angry; her expression was more of concern, so I pulled the bedspread down to show that Megan was on top of the covers. Nell’s expression turned to a smile when I did, and she said, “You and your sister were watching TV, eh?”

I said, “Yeah, would you mind waking her and sending her to bed? I have to go to the bathroom and I’m not wearing pajamas.”

She came to the bed with a laugh, and gently shook Megan awake. Megan sat up and looked around. She looked startled when she saw me, but she smiled, slid off the bed and headed to her room a second later.

The toilet in our bathroom has its own door. I was in there doing my thing when I heard the shower start, so I joined Nell when I finished. We played around a little, but she said that she was so tired that she needed to sleep, so we went to bed and I held her until she fell asleep which took about a minute.

I lay there for a while thinking about today. Dad was back, and it was great having the family all together, especially Amy. It’s like a part of me is missing when she’s not around, and about that kiss ... I fell asleep thinking about it.

Another kiss woke me in the morning. Nell was standing over me, fully dressed, and she said, “I have to meet with John this morning. I made you and Megan your protein drinks, be sure that you drink them. Megan will make breakfast when you get back from your run. I’ll see you at Stone at ten o’clock.”

I said, “Wait, I want to talk to you about that,” when she turned to leave.

She waggled her fingers at me, and said, “Not now, Dear, I have to go. Get dressed, Megan is almost ready.”

I threw some sweats on and met Megan in the kitchen. She was standing at the counter staring at two glasses of Nell’s protein drink. I went to one of them, picked it up, and smelled it. It smelled as bad as last time and I said to Megan, “Let’s pour these out, she’ll never know.”

Megan frowned and answered, “Yeah, but we’ll know, and I promised her that we’d drink it, so c’mon.” It didn’t taste good, but it wasn’t as bad as I remembered, so I finished it in one long gulp. Megan finished hers too, and we headed for the beach. We had a nice run that ended with a race back to the house. The girl could really run and it was all I could do to stay even close to her.

She started fixing breakfast when we got back. She was humming all the time and she started giggling at one point, so I asked, “What’s going on with you?”

“I’m happy. I haven’t felt this good in a long time. I have a home, I have people around me who actually like me, and I have some new friends. Did you know that your sisters invited me to go shopping with them next weekend?”

“That’s great, so that’s why you were giggling?”

“I was giggling because, umm...”

She stopped talking and grinned, so I said, “Okay, what’s up?”

“I was giggling because I wondered what the girls in school would say if they knew that I was in bed with Peter the great last night.”

“W-What, who’s Peter the great?”

“That’s what some of the girls in school call you and that’s before your picture was in the paper as much as it is now. You were on TV over the weekend, so you’re getting to be a legend around here.”

“That’s ridiculous; I’m just a regular guy.”

“She said, “Okay, regular guy, it’s time to eat,” and she put plates of food on the table.

She made what has always been my favorite breakfast; corned beef hash and eggs. It was canned hash but that’s okay. She formed the hash into a patty and put it in a hot skillet so it got crispy on the outside. Then she fried three eggs ‘over medium’ and put them on top of the hash. The yoke soaked into the hash when I cut into the eggs. It was simple and it was delicious.

I helped her clean things up after breakfast. I was standing at the sink putting the last of the dishes in the dishwasher, and she said that she had to get ready for work when she finished wiping the table.

She was about to leave the kitchen when I said, “I guess that I must be a lucky guy.”

She stopped and asked, “Oh, why?”

“I was in bed with a shark last night and she didn’t bite me.”

She rolled her eyes and grinned as she left, and said, “Maybe next time,”

I didn’t have to be at Stone until ten o’clock, so I went downstairs to check out the new workout machine. Things looked different than the last time I was there. There was a robe hanging on a hook, and there were several water bottles sitting on the floor next to a pair of slippers. It looked like either Megan, Sarah, or both of them had been using the machine.

It took me a minute to figure out how things worked and I began to see that it was a lot different than ‘Killer’ after a short test drive. I had pretty well maxed Killer out, but there was no way that I could come close to the capabilities of this one.

It was still early, so I went upstairs. Megan was gone so I called Brandy. I asked, “Have you been talking with Della?” when she answered.

“Of course, I have, I talked to her a bunch of times. I’m driving up there to pick her up tomorrow, would you like to come along?”

“There’s a big meeting about work today, so I don’t know if I’ll be available. Do you need me?”

“I’m not sure. She told me how much you mean to the family and that they might be more comfortable if you came along.”

“I’ll see what I can do. Have you thought about this any more? Bringing a pregnant girl who you barely know to live with you seems like a big undertaking.”

“It IS a big undertaking and we talked about it a lot, but I definitely want to do it.”

“Why? It seems like a big responsibility and it’s going to affect your lifestyle.”

“I know that it is and I don’t care. It’s time that I changed my lifestyle anyway. There’s something about Della that I can’t explain. I’ve never felt so connected with anyone. Not even Nell, and she says that she feels the same way. I definitely want to do this, Pete.”

“I don’t have to worry about you hurting her, right?”

She chuckled, “No, you sweet man, I won’t do anything to hurt her.”

“Good, I’ll call you later and let you know if I can make it tomorrow.”

I was thinking about what she said after I hung up when my cell phone rang. It was Brandy again, and she asked, “Do you treat everyone with such concern?”

“What do you mean?”

“I understand about Della, you and she have a history, but why did you treat me like you did at the hospital?”

“I don’t get what you mean!”

“You acted like you were really worried when you thought that it was me laying there.”

“Of course, I was worried, why wouldn’t I be?”

“But you barely knew me!”

“How can you say that, we’d even made love?”

“We didn’t make love the first time we were together, we fucked.”

“Maybe that’s what you did, but I made love with a beautiful woman.”

“D-Did you really feel that way?”

“Darn right I did, and what about the other night?”

“We had sex the other night. We had a lot of sex and it was great, but it was just sex.”

“Maybe that’s what it was in the beginning, but we actually made love that time at the end of the evening when it was just you and me, it wasn’t just sex.”

“No, we didn’t.”

“Yes, we did! That’s why you yelled at me in the bathroom and hesitated when I wanted to kiss you goodbye. We made love that last time. It was wonderful and you know that it was.”

She sighed, then, “Okay, maybe you’re right. I-I guess I got a little carried away and I’m sorry. I usually don’t make love with guys. I fuck them and send them on their way, but you’re right, we really did make love that last time. It upset me and you made it worse by insisting that we were friends.”

“So you don’t make love with friends?”

“Not male friends.”

“What about the guy you were dating when I met you?”

“We weren’t dating, he was just a fuck buddy. He was married and we had an arrangement. The only time we saw each other was when we needed to scratch an itch.”

“So why do you think it happened between you and me?”

“I’d had a lot to drink and I guess that my guard was down. Things were great when we were fooling around with Dolores, but you said something to me when we were standing together looking at her rolled up into a little ball later, and I said that she was beautiful. Do you remember what it was?”

I thought for a second, then I said, “I think I said that you were more beautiful than she was.”

She said, “You have to be careful when you say things like that to a girl,” She stopped for a second, then she continued, “You’re right, the last time we had sex was wonderful and we weren’t fucking, we were making love. It had been a long time since I let myself go and really made love with a man. I got scared when we finished and I realized what happened, so I couldn’t stand it and lashed out at you when you came into the bathroom and started waving that wonderful cock of yours around. I’m sorry.”

“We’re friends now, aren’t we?”

“Yeah, we are.”

“Good, I plan on waving my cock at you again.”

She laughed, “I’ll look forward to it,” and hung up

I got to Stone a little before ten o’clock. The first thing I noticed was a shiny silver Bentley with a ‘Burger1’ license plate when I pulled into the parking lot. It looked like John was here.

Gail Adams, our lawyer, was sitting at a table in the lobby with two guys when I got inside. They were going over some papers and she wiggled her fingers at me when she saw me. I started to walk over, but Jasmine caught my eye and waved me to her. She pushed a button when I got there, and said, “Pete is here,” into an earpiece, then she nodded and said, “Go on in, they’re waiting in the conference room.”

Mom, Dad, Amy, and Myrna Devon were sitting on one side of the long table, Nell and John were sitting on the other side.

Dad, and especially Mom, didn’t look happy so I asked Dad after I said “Hi,” to everyone, “What’s going on, where Erin?”

“She’s at the voice coach. This is about you. Mr. Burger wants to talk to you and he has an interesting proposition.”

I sat next to Dad and John got right to the point. He said, “As I’m sure you know, Pete, the ‘Ask Pete’ campaign has been a big success. It was originally supposed to last ninety days but it was adjusted slightly to fit your school vacation schedule when you came on board. It was initially meant to cover California, a few places in Arizona, and two in Las Vegas, but it’s been going so well and the reports have been so good that the Board wants to keep the momentum up. They want to extend it for a year and make it nationwide, and because you’re such an integral part of the success, they want you to continue to be its face. How would you feel about that?”

“Fine, it’s been fun so far, but what about school?”

“The law is that you must be schooled until you’re eighteen years old. Your eighteenth birthday falls just as school starts. That releases you and what we propose is that you put your senior year off.”

He watched me while I tried to absorb what he said, then he continued, “It means that you’ll miss some things if you agree. It means no football, no senior prom, and not a lot of hanging around with your friends for almost a year. There’ll also be a lot of travel which can be boring, but you’ll get to visit a lot of places and I think that you’ll find the ones we have in mind interesting. A year is not long enough for you to go to all our stores, so we’re only going to send you to super stores in the larger cities, and depending on how long you’re there, you’ll sometimes have time to really look around and find things that you ordinarily might never get to see.”

“What do you mean by ‘how long I’ll be there’?”

“We want you home as much as possible, but there may be times when it would be more practical for you to stay a week to ten days. For instance, we have a number of superstores on the east coast and in the Midwest. You could visit four of them in two weekends, working a different store on Saturday and Sunday like you did last weekend.”

“So I’d just hang around during weekdays?”

“You’ll have a couple of days to sightsee, but you’ll also be doing radio and TV interviews in all the bigger cities, and you’ll visit some high school and even some college campuses once school starts nationwide.”

“What would I do there?”

“You’ll talk about Burgers and what we do for the community. We’re going to be spending a lot of money on youth activities in the coming year. We’re sponsoring youth centers all across the country and we want you to be our spokesperson for that as well.”

“It sounds interesting, are you sure that I’m up to it?”

“We’re positive you are. We saw how you behaved in front of the cameras last weekend. That’s one of the reasons you’re here today. You’re a natural; it should be a piece of cake for you and there’s a big thing that I think you’ll like.”

“You mean visiting strange places?”

“No, I’m talking about money. You’re going to get a lot of it. It’ll come mostly from us, but your parents told us about some of the other offers you have. We don’t mind, as a matter of fact we encourage it. It mean more publicity for you, and ultimately for us. We reserve the right as your primary sponsor to prevent you from doing something that we think would be bad for your image or ours, and didn’t interfere with our schedule, of course.”

He seemed to be warming to the subject and he leaned toward me and continued, “What you’ll make from us alone in the next twelve months is more than some people make in a lifetime if you agree to this, and the more exposure you get, the more offers you’ll get. We like you, Pete, and we’re counting on you coming on board with us. Believe me, you won’t be sorry.”

“But I have to drop out of school to do it?”

“We’re not asking you to give up on an education; all we’re asking is for you to put it off for a while. You can go back to school, or we’ll pay for tutoring to get you a general education degree when this is over if you like. It’s up to you, but I can’t help thinking that you’ll be so busy by the time the year is over that you’ll want to put it off even longer.”

He sat back and I looked around. Nell and Amy were watching me with interest, but Mom and Dad still didn’t look happy, so I asked, “What do you think I should do, Dad?”

John turned to him before he could answer, and said, “We talked about this before Pete got here, Mister Baker, but let me elaborate. It requires lots of training and you have to be in school to get it if you want to be a brain surgeon or a nuclear physicist. It’s the same with almost any career path unless you have something special. Well, your young man is definitely blessed with something special. He’s a big handsome boy with a great smile. That’s fine, but a lot of young men have that. What makes him special is his character. He’s a fine young man and you’re responsible for that. I first heard about Pete when my people brought me some pictures of him. I was convinced that he was too good to be true, and my first thought was, “Anyone that good-looking has to have an attitude or some kind of failing.” Well, he’s proved me wrong on all counts so far. Not only is he a nice young man, but we filmed him while he was working last weekend. The Board and I have never seen anyone so comfortable in front of a camera. That combination was the final straw and what convinced us to make him this offer.”