Chapter 16

I didn’t like the sound of that and I found myself wishing I’d thought to stock a liquor cabinet in the house here. We sat on the couch while Sissy took a chair and looked us over. “Barb is still moving gingerly, if not nearly as bad as yesterday. All the ladies in the office have noticed and there are a few that you might consider that Barb didn’t have on her list.”

I shrugged. “That’s a topic we can get to later, unless that’s the big news.”

“Not hardly,” she smirked. “Brad and Barb had a fight at work,” she told me.

I shrugged again. “I kind of expected them to mix it up. By tomorrow, they’ll be back together.”

“I don’t know,” she said. “She was pretty livid. She told him that he wrecked her life.”

“He had plenty of help. Barb’s like that retarded kid that keeps putting their hand on the stove,” I said with a roll of my eyes. “How many times has she been told that she was on a collision course with a train?”

“A lot,” Sissy admitted. “In any case, today was a weird day. Almost everyone was in the office today, so everyone saw what happened and everyone talked about what she meant by it. I got asked if you needed a date for the party by three different people through the day today. People know that I’m a friend of the family at this point. I think if I’d told them where you live, they might have showed up here to make their case. I promised to let you know that they were thinking about you.”

I shrugged. “I’m really not that thrilled with dating someone else from that office,” I admitted. “I’d much rather focus on my fighting career for the next couple of years and see where that leads.”

“You’re gonna do without for the next couple of years?” she asked skeptically. “You know that every day that you do that is a day you’re letting them control your life, right?”

I grimaced. “And going to Barb’s glorified bachelor auction tomorrow night is much better?”

“Think of it as MY glorified bachelor auction,” she suggested. “Some of the women that are interested are good picks. I was thinking of making some introductions myself, but this gives you an opportunity to meet everyone without having to go on an actual date. I think it would be hilarious though, if you became the office tradition. You HAVE slept with the top two sellers in the office this year,” she pointed out. “Maybe you’re magic.”

“Very funny,” I said. “You and Barb got where you are on your own.”

“Maybe,” she said. “I think I might have edged Barb out this year though and that’s a HUGE deal for me. This house was the one that started the landslide for me. I sold a lot of houses since we got together. Some of the girls in the office are superstitious. They believe in good luck and rituals and things like that. I may have let it slip that you’re the Midas touch to a couple of them.”

“Single?” I asked cautiously.

“Of course,” she said. “I know you’re not about to wreck another marriage. Brad’s doesn’t count and even if it did, he deserves to lose his marriage for what he did to you and for what he did to Doris.”

“I still don’t like you having to go to a party with my ex-sister,” Jane said, speaking up. “You know she’s gonna spend the night trying to argue her way back into your life, right?”

I nodded. “She’s going to use every interaction we have to try to convince me to come back to her,” I said. “I honestly can’t think of anything she can say, offer or do to get me to forgive everything she’s done.”

“That’s what worries me,” Jane told me. “She might come up with something we don’t anticipate.”

I shrugged. “I’m not going back to her. Someday, there might be enough time for the wounds to heal so I can forgive her, but she’ll never be what she was to me. Not ever again. The best she could ever hope for would be for me to consider her a friend. The monumental task of gaining that much of my affection is probably beyond her. If she saved one of your lives, I think I could go that far. What she’d have to do to create a better outcome would be so out of this world that she might as well not get her hopes up.”

“What if she tried to commit suicide?” Jane asked pointedly.

“I’d give her a taste of her own medicine,” I said. “Every time I told her that I’d rather she’d shot me in the head than what she’s put me through, she’d slap me and tell me not to even think like that. Or maybe I won’t even react. I don’t know, but I know that taking a handful of sleeping pills isn’t going to get me back in her life.”

“What if she actually dumps Brad?” Cecilia asked.

I shook my head. “Too little, too late. If she’d done that any time up to and including last night, I’d have given it a chance. Once I moved in here, that’s done.”

They nodded and we talked about the party tomorrow. Cecilia said she had to go after a while, since she had dinner with Marty to plan, but invited Jane to come with her tomorrow. “I’m getting my hair done and getting myself all dolled up for the party. Why don’t you come with me and we’ll make it a day?”

Jane accepted and Sissy said she’d pick her up in the morning. That left the two of us to fend for ourselves and I made a light salad, baked potatoes and a pair of steaks for us. We chatted about her time at college most of the time. She told me about her friends and the things they’d done. She did all the normal college things, like parties and concerts and dates, but she didn’t say much about those. I asked about her boyfriend and she shrugged. She repeated that it wasn’t really serious and changed the subject.

“So what are you gonna do tomorrow night?” she asked. “I know my sister has a plan, Cecilia clearly has a plan. What about you? What’s your plan?”

I thought about that while I tended the stove. “I don’t know,” I admitted. “I guess, I’ll go to the thing, meet people, dance with a few of the women and then I’ll probably come home early so you’re not stuck here bored.”

“I’m not gonna be bored,” she said. “I have some reading that I want to get done. I brought a couple of my texts so I could get a jump on next semester. Besides, I still haven’t seen all the recordings. I’m sure they’re entertaining,” she giggled.

I smirked at that. “There’s some parts that are better than others,” I admitted. “Barb actually brought her boyfriend home to fuck him in our bed. I was in Vegas, ironically celibate.”

She rolled her eyes at that, but it turned the conversation into a discussion about my fighting and she wanted to know all about it. She had friends that were UFC fans, some girls, but most of the guys she knew at least watched it casually.

Overall, we had a pleasant night. We watched the clip of the fight that had gotten me noticed and the one from Vegas. We watched highlight clips I had of Barb and Brad. We watched the marathon session that I’d had with Barb. I spotted her hand slipping between her thighs to touch herself a couple of times when she forgot I was there. Each time, she’d come to her senses and move her hand away, glancing at me to see if I noticed.

I kept my eyes on the screen, though I did notice the movement of her hand out of the corner of my eye. When Barb gave up, she squeezed her legs together and glanced over at me. “You could have kept going, couldn’t you?” she asked.

“Yeah, I wasn’t really close to done. The condom dulls sensation some and I was so not into Barb that I could have been sticking it in a sex doll at that point. She didn’t even make me cum. I went and finished my own business in the shower while she passed out,” I said. “Between you and me, I didn’t want to cum with her. She’s probably the least sexy woman I know. Her body’s still hot, but the head attached to it is too damaged to make the package worth handling.”

“Good,” she said. “I don’t want you to ever touch her again,” she said emphatically.

“I don’t see us ever reconciling,” I admitted. “I’m not taking her back. At this point, if she showed up here, wanting me to talk it out with her, I’d probably call the cops. She’s got no hope. I’d be more likely to have sex with your dad at this point.”

She laughed at that. “I don’t think he swings that way,” she said lightly.

“Neither do I,” I pointed out. “If it’s what I had to do to get rid of Barb though...”

“You won’t have to go that far,” she assured me. “Hopefully her conversation with Mom and Dad convinces her that you’re completely done with her.”

“I doubt it, but we could check on them, if you want,” I reminded her and looked at the cloud for listings for today. I loaded up the first of them from this afternoon.

I was instantly gratified to see that Barb was still moving delicately, but was starting to recover. She came in and looked around the house hopefully.

“She’s looking to see if I came back,” I said, amused.

We watched as she got a phone call that she declined with an angry look. “That would be her lover calling,” Jane guessed and I agreed.

She was starting to look around the kitchen for dinner, when the doorbell rang. She stormed out of the kitchen and down the stairs, already screaming when she opened the door. She was mid-rant when she realized that it wasn’t Brad, but her parents.

“Jane told you,” she said flatly.

“She told me,” Janice confirmed. “I felt this was too important to keep from your father. May we come in or do you have company already? We can come back if you do. John’s offered his place if you need some time to yourself.”

“No!” Barb said immediately. “I don’t have company. Come in. How long are you staying?”

They stepped inside and hugged before going upstairs. “We thought that we should come down for Christmas,” Arthur told her. “This is going to be a difficult year for both of you.”

“Jane’s with him?” she asked delicately.

Janice nodded. “I tried to get her to come and see you, but she wouldn’t leave. She’s ... a little, uh, disappointed about this.”

“She hates me,” she said with a hopeless sigh. “She said that I was dead to her when she was on the phone last night.”

“She feels disappointed in you,” Arthur said. “I gather that John’s been forced to put up with a great deal of pain caused by your lover. He’s trying hard not to be disparaging, but the hopeless tone of his voice when he talks about how things have been is eye-opening.”

Barb sighed at that. “I’ve been trying to work with him, Dad. He just won’t listen.”

“You pushed him to the point that he feels like there’s nothing left of your marriage to save,” he said. “You’re my daughter and I love you dearly, but there’s things you can do to people and there’s things you can’t. If John beat you up, you’d leave him, right?”

“John would never do that,” she said primly.

“With the things he’s put up with? You had to think there might have been a chance that you were in danger. All it takes is one moment of temper from him and you’d be covering up a black eye for a month. That’s not the point I’m trying to make though. The point is that you could accept a lot from John, but at some point, you’d draw the line and get out for your own safety when things got abusive.”

“I suppose so,” she allowed.

“Just because you haven’t been violent doesn’t mean you haven’t been abusive to him,” he told her. “whether you see it or not, HE sees it and he sees nothing for the future but more abuse.”

Jane and I exchanged surprised looks. This was something we’d never expected from her father. He’d always been wrapped around Barb’s little finger.

“Your uncle, Jeff, liked to play around when he was younger,” Janice told her. “He was married, but his wife left him because he wouldn’t stop. That was before you were born. You never got to meet his wife. She moved to Hawaii and never kept in touch with us. Fortunately, he met Katrina. She settled him down. I think she might have threatened to kill him if she caught him with another woman.”

“So what are you trying to tell me?” Barb asked her tartly.

“Mostly that your father and I are going to make an effort to stay in touch with John,” she said. “Your sister has already made it clear that if one of you is leaving the family, she’ll keep John and lose you. I don’t think she actually hates you, but she’s deeply disgusted by what’s happened and feels like she has to choose sides for her own reasons. I think that divide is probably fixable, unless you try to make your lover part of our family. At that point, I think you can add Jane’s name to John’s on the list of people you’ve lost because of this affair.”

Barb hung her head at that point and started to cry. “I didn’t want ANY of this to happen!” she wailed piteously.

Janice went to comfort her, much as Cecilia had the night before. “We know that, Baby,” she told her. “I think even John knows that. You’ve just allowed this affair to take over your life and now people that you’ve hurt are cutting you off from continuing to hurt them.”

We watched while they talked it out for the next little while, each of them trying to impress on Barb that she’d destroyed her marriage and the best thing she could do would be to accept the divorce and come to a fair settlement and each of us go our separate ways. They told her that they’d make an effort to come down to LA for more holidays so that they could visit both of us separately. That seemed very generous, in my thoughts and I was touched by the sentiment.

When they started making dinner of leftover stir-fry, we started jumping ahead. After dinner, Barb got another phone call which she declined again, making me smirk. I’d have to ask Doris how insane Brad had been tonight.

“Jane,” I said, suddenly thinking about something, “where’s your bag?”

“Shit!” she swore. “It’s in the trunk of the car.”

She pulled out her phone and called her mother, explaining that they had her bag with them. “Mom!” she said with a roll of her eyes. “I told you that I don’t want to talk to her. I don’t want to see her.”

“You want me to go get it?” I asked softly.

“NO! I don’t want my sister anywhere NEAR you!” she practically snarled. “She’ll try to get you to stay.”

I shrugged. “I need to pick up at least one of my suits if I’m going to the party tomorrow night,” I told her. “With your parents there, she’ll at least hold on to her dignity.”

Jane was torn, wanting her bag, but not wanting either of us to be around Barb. “We’ll be over in a few minutes. Just keep her away from me,” she said sullenly.

They said a very terse goodbye and then we got in the car. Neither of us were eager for this confrontation, but I really did need my suits. If I’d been thinking last night, I would have grabbed them, but I was a little distracted.

The ride over was silent, each of us wrapped in our own thoughts and when we pulled up outside, I sighed and went to the door. I rang the bell at what had been my home just yesterday. Barb answered it a moment later. “You don’t have to use the bell, John,” she said gently. “It’s still your home too.”

I nodded in understanding. “I feel more comfortable using the bell when I know someone’s supposed to be home,” I told her.

She stood aside and I stepped in, closing the door behind me. “Where’s Jane?” she asked.

“Jane opted to stay in the car,” I told her. “I promised her I’d get her bag since I needed to pick up my formal wear for tomorrow.”

She looked disappointed that she wouldn’t get the chance to talk with her sister and try to work it out. “Oh,” she said, crestfallen. “Okay. Is there anything else that you’ll want?”

“Well, I’ll be coming by to collect my things this week, if I can. I’ll try to do that mostly while you’re at work so I don’t disrupt your life.”

“You’re not disrupting my life, John. Come whenever you want. Stop by to talk if you feel like it or to pick up your things or to have a drink together.”

I shook my head. “I don’t want to risk running into him,” I told her. “The sooner I get my things, the better.” I’d gone upstairs at this point and said hello to Janice and Arthur. “Jane didn’t want to come in,” I explained. “I’m going to get a few things out of the bedroom and then I can take the keys and grab her bag.”

“I’ll pop the trunk from here when you’re ready to go,” Arthur said.