Be Careful What You Wish For Read online

  Chapter Nineteen

  I WORKED THE next day and so Kage spent the night with me, but we both agreed Thursday night away from each other. He had pool night with his boys (I could hardly believe we’d only known each other a week), and I was in serious need of study time. But Friday night, he picked me up after work and he stayed at my apartment again. And then I had him drive me to Carl’s place so I could begin cleaning the dump as well as see how my car was coming along.

  Carl hadn’t started it…yet. He’d been waiting for the weekend, and he figured it would take both days. He said his goal was to have it ready by Monday, but he wouldn’t know until he started.

  I promised to cook him an early dinner too. It was the least I could do.

  Yes, I was tired. I got there by ten in the morning, but I knew his house would need lots of attention.

  He sauntered off to his garage while I started working. He liked the idea of dinner too. Figured. But that’s what I got for offering.

  I took a deep breath and walked around the house, assessing its needs. I even grabbed a small notepad out of my purse that I kept for when ideas hit me (I was still pondering what my thesis would be—no idea could be neglected), and I recorded my observations—what I thought needed done in each room. I decided that things like vacuuming the carpets and washing the windows would be done all at the same time. Why vacuum the living room and not vacuum the bedrooms? Once I did a job, I wanted it to stay done, and vacuuming one room at a time seemed futile.

  I’d forgotten too that he had two bathrooms, and I knew based on my work experience that they’d probably be nasty. He was a guy, after all, and they were less concerned about the cleanliness of their environment than we women were.

  I decided to tackle the worst room first. No, it wasn’t one of the bathrooms (although they were contenders). It was the kitchen. First, there was the matter of the insane clutter to deal with. On one counter, he had stacks of…shit. Newspapers, junk mail, magazines, and other paper clutter. So I went through it. Junk mail and newspapers went straight in the trash. Magazines I stacked in a pile and then I evaluated all the mail piece by piece, tossing out things like “special offers” for a new credit card. If Carl really wanted or needed a new credit card, he could find one to apply for.

  I put those stacks on the table. The other papers, things that seemed foreign to me but had to do with cars, I also put into a stack of their own. I’d let him evaluate each paper’s worthiness. I didn’t have time to organize his life. I was here to clean.

  I sighed. There were still dishes piled next to the sink, both dirty and clean, so I washed the dirty ones and then found homes for everything. He could do a search and destroy if he needed a particular item. There were also beer and soda cans all over, but those too were easy to toss. I found myself growing irritated, wondering how the hell he could live this way.

  He’s fixing your expensive problem, Jessica. Be grateful.

  I took a deep breath. How true. And my mess might have seemed just as bad to him as his did to me. So I cheered up and tackled it head on. There were food messes everywhere—on the stove, the wall, the floor, the fridge, in the microwave. I was surprised to find something splattered on the ceiling. But I decided to tackle it all methodically, cleaning one section at a time as I worked my way around the kitchen. I cleaned inside the microwave and the fridge. I was glad the stove was self-cleaning, so I turned it on, and, until I’d really started working up a sweat, the warmth felt nice.

  Three hours later, as I was finishing up mopping the floor, I felt immense relief.

  Until I remembered that was only one room.

  Ah, but it had been the worst.

  Still, I needed a bit of a break, so I decided to clean the living room. It wasn’t too bad. Some cluttery trash here and there but much easier to handle than the kitchen. I dusted and straightened and cleaned. I washed out the ashtrays and cleaned off the window sills. If he’d had his own washing machine, I would have washed the curtains. I wasn’t going to offer, though, because I doubted he even noticed them. I did take them and the throw rugs outside and beat them a little to get all the dust out and off them, but that was the extent of it. I also decided I’d vacuum under the sofa cushions when I vacuumed all over.

  By then, it was getting late. So I put away the cleaning supplies and dug around in his fridge. I decided to cook him a couple of cheeseburgers and fries, and then I’d get out of there. I’d heard him come in the kitchen once to get a drink (and I made sure he didn’t track anything on the clean floor), and I knew he’d used the bathroom a couple of times.

  I texted Kage to pick me up, since he’d promised. I couldn’t wait to see him, but I was afraid I looked horrible after my morning spent cleaning. I peeked my head out in the garage. I had to get back to my apartment so I could get ready for work, and I had stayed a little later than I’d intended. I hoped that extra time would pay off and I could finish tomorrow. I just hoped he appreciated the deep cleaning I was giving his place. “Hey, Carl!”

  “Yeah?” He was rifling through some tools on the table against the back wall.

  “Got your early dinner ready.”

  “What’d you make?”

  When I told him, he looked like he could have kissed me. He went to the bathroom and washed up. I put his burgers and fries on a plate on the table—next to the stacks of clutter I’d need to tell him about—with mustard and ketchup bottles in case he wanted them. He made his way to the fridge and pulled out a beer. “Want one?”

  I shook my head. “No, thanks. I have to work in a little while.”

  “Don’t you have one of them jobs where you can drink while you work?”

  “I work for a bar, but that doesn’t mean I can drink. Thanks, though.”

  He paused beside me before sitting down. “Look, Jess, I know you’re a busy girl. You done a real nice job here. The kitchen’s never been this clean. So, if you wanna just go with our usual arrangement to save yourself some time, I’m good with that.”

  His eyes were so sincere and, believe it or not, sweet. It took me a few moments to realize he was telling me I could give him the usual blowjob in exchange for putting the new transmission in my car (well, new to my car). You might think he was being piggish, but trust me when I tell you he was not. He knew how busy I was and he knew that—in the past—I had given a blowjob in exchange for car repair more than once instead of cleaning his house because I’d wanted to. I smiled at him and said, “Thanks, Carl. I appreciate that, but I can’t do it.” He got a quizzical look on his face. “I have a boyfriend.” And it might have been just a blowjob, but that would have felt like cheating to me.

  “So what? You didn’t care with your last boyfriend.”

  “That was before we were officially together. Robb and I had just started dating the last time…I paid you that way.”

  “What do you mean officially together?”

  “I’d gone on one date with him. I didn’t know if I wanted to keep seeing him or if he’d want to keep seeing me at the time.”

  “Oh.”

  “The guy I’m with now?” Bowled me over. I wasn’t going to go nuts telling Carl just how head over heels I was for Kage, but I did want him to know things were serious, and my lips were going to stay far from Carl’s dick. He’d have a spotless house by the time I was done with it. “He’s something special, Carl.”

  “Special, huh?”

  “Yeah.”

  He nodded. “All right. Then I guess I’ll thank you in advance for cleaning my house from top to bottom.” He sat down in front of his cheeseburgers.

  “You like what I’ve done so far?”

  “Looks great.” He took a sip of his beer. “I think I’ll have your car ready by tomorrow.”

  “Really?” I grinned. I’d never realized how important my independence was until it had been taken from me by fate. “Oh, thank you. And I should be done cleaning tomorrow…I hope.”

  Kage picked me up as promised and we had hot sho
wer sex before I got dressed for work. And the next day he ran me back over to Carl’s for another cleaning session. I managed to keep my promise and finish cleaning his filthy house. I started with the bathrooms and then took care of the two bedrooms and the hallway. This time I texted Kage and told him I had my car back. After making Carl another dinner, I rushed home to get ready for work. And even though I was beyond tired after work that night, I told Kage I would love to see him afterwards.

  He’d forgotten that I had my car, so I introduced him to Daffodil, my little yellow baby that kept chugging along with a fix here and there. Kage ran his hand up the hood toward the windshield suggestively and said, “I think I’m going to have to fuck you on it once the weather warms up.”

  I grinned at him, raising my eyebrows. “Promise?”

  “Hell, yeah.” He sealed that promise with a kiss.

  Chapter Twenty

  ONCE I FIGURED out how Kage settled into my life around work and school (and I learned to keep up with those priorities without denying me my hot sexy man), we began to settle into a routine. Wednesday and Thursday nights we spent apart. I also gave him his Saturday and Sunday afternoons. I heard the word Yoko come out of Diesel’s mouth once, and that was all it took. I was not going to get in between Kage and his buddies.

  But the rest of the time—when neither of us was working and I wasn’t in class—he was mine. I managed to get studying in, even though I knew I wasn’t devoting as much time to it as I should have.

  One night he was lying next to me in my bed and I was tracing the tattoos on his chest as I often did. That pretty one, the one that said “Forged,” had captured my imagination long ago, and I wondered if he’d done it simply because he worked for the steel mill. Maybe it was a rite of initiation for new guys there. I didn’t know, but I was finally curious enough to ask what it symbolized to him. “Did you get this tattoo when you started at the mill?”

  He raised his head enough to see which one I was tracing. “Yeah.”

  “So tell me about it.”

  He smiled but he closed his eyes again, so I started tracing the cursive F. “I’ve learned more about steel in the last few years than I would have ever dreamed of. The first few months I was there, I started thinking about how steel reminded me of my life. We don’t actually forge steel at the mill, but it got me to thinking—I wanted to learn all I could about my job, so I read up on the whole process. And my boss at the time, a guy who retired a couple of years ago, took me out to lunch one day. I’d only been there a couple of months, but he told me he saw ‘something’ in me. I asked what it was. He told me he’d seen a lot of kids start at the mill over the years, and he’d learned to tell who had what it took to stick it out. He said some kids just had the stick-to-it-iveness.” Kage chuckled softly, enough that I felt the motion on my head. “He asked me a little about me, about my life, and when I told him, he said I was someone who’d been forged—I’d passed through the fires, been beaten down, and it made me strong. He said, ‘Son, men aren’t made. They’re forged’.” Kage was quiet for a few moments, but I could feel the pause in the air. He wanted to say more. “I liked that, because I felt that way too. I had a shitty childhood, Jessica, but for some stupid reason, I have hope. I’ve always had hope.” He sat up then and took my face in his hands. “And I didn’t have a great life after growing up, either. Fay made sure of that. I feel so weird now, so strange, and I wonder if it’s because I’ve never known what that odd thing called happiness feels like.” His eyes searched mine, and I felt breathless. “All I know is I feel alive with you. I feel hope. I want to see what tomorrow will bring, and it’s not just me hanging onto my dreams. That used to be how I made it through life—my dreams pulled me through. They’re still there, yeah, but I feel something inside me even without grabbing onto the dream.” I swallowed. His eyes were so intense. “It’s you, Jessica. You. You’ve shown me something I’d never believed in before, helped me see there’s more to life than just that dream. I can feel something…positive.”

  God. It was like being hit by the water that had been held back by a dam, the force of his words on my heart. Kage still hadn’t told me his entire background, probably never would, and yet I knew it rivaled my own for worst childhood experiences. He said he’d always had hope. I knew that. I suppose I had hope too, but nothing like Kage. He helped me find that inside me, helped me appreciate life for what it was day to day. Before that, I’d just judged my life based upon the milestones I’d reached and the ones ahead of me. Those were success. Those could be my substitute for happiness.

  Not anymore. Kage could and would be those things and more.

  After he kissed me, he looked in my eyes again. I still felt overwhelmed, but he said, “So I got that tattoo to remind me that I was forged. I could have stayed a melted blob of iron, feeding on that hot hate, or I could have let myself be beaten down for good. Instead, I was forged to be who I am today.” I could see it then, something in his eyes I’d never seen before, a vulnerable part of him. “This is me, all of me, and I wouldn’t be who I am today if it wasn’t for the shit in the past.” He took a deep breath, as if getting his bearings and assessing his situation. His voice was lower when he said, “I love you, Jessica, and I can see it in you, that you feel the same way. And I know you were forged too. I think that’s what draws me to you.”

  This man…this was the Kage that I knew hardly anyone had ever seen. In fact, I doubted Fay had ever seen this side of him. If she had, she’d stomped on it and made him hide it away. But I didn’t think he’d ever shared this piece of himself with her before, because I didn’t see how she would be able to hate him like she so obviously did if she’d seen how beautiful he was inside. I had no words. All I had was a kiss…and my heart.

  * * *

  So we had our routine. We had our planned times together and planned times apart, and, as spring approached, it seemed to work well. I found myself falling more and more in love with Kage every day, and my life—my mind, my heart—became more inextricably entwined with his.

  He came by on Monday afternoon one week a little unexpectedly. If I didn’t work, he would typically come by later that evening and spend the night. But he wanted to let me know he had something going on and was going to have to miss our time together. If he hadn’t acted so weird about it, I wouldn’t have given it another thought.

  But he was acting very strange. When I asked him if everything was okay, he said it was but wouldn’t elaborate and said he had to go. He kissed me, but I could tell he was distracted. Something was going on, and it upset me that he didn’t trust me enough to tell me.

  So, when he left, I watched him through the window and then decided to do something very not like me. I grabbed my coat and purse and walked out the door. It was still early March, so dusk was settling in and I thought I could get away with following him, especially if it was only for a while. The streets around my apartment were busy, so I wasn’t worried about it. If he figured out later that I was following him, I’d deal with it.

  He was pulling out of the small parking lot in front of my apartment building by the time I reached my car. If he looked in his rearview mirror, he might see me, but I was going to take a chance. I thought maybe his distractedness would make it easier for me to follow.

  It didn’t take long for me to catch up to him, but I kept enough of a distance that, I thought, he wouldn’t notice my car. Even better when a car pulled in front of me. He drove into the Belmont division of east Pueblo, taking a few winding turns, and I was afraid I might lose him. Still, I was a little familiar with that area of town and decided to not speed up to catch him, because then he’d definitely see me. If he hadn’t noticed me behind him, I would be okay, and since he wasn’t on a main road going through the area, I was convinced he was almost to his destination.

  As I rounded the bend, I discovered I was right. He had just pulled over in front of a light blue house. Oh, shit. If I kept driving, I’d surely be caught. So I pulled over and
slid my car behind another just two houses away. That too would be obvious if he was paying attention, but I thought there would be no way he wouldn’t recognize my car if I drove by him just as he was getting out of his truck. At least parking a little ways behind him, I had a chance.

  I watched him walk around his truck and onto the sidewalk as he made his way toward the front of the house. There was a hedge between the two homes that made it impossible for me to see him. I needed to see him and try to figure out what he was doing.

  Yeah, I know what you’re thinking. What a bimbo—desperate, untrusting, snoopy. Yes, I suppose I was all of those things, but his behavior that evening had been so uncharacteristic.

  Stupid or not, I got out of my car and made my way down the sidewalk until I made it to the hedge separating the house where Kage had gone and the house next door.

  I had to maneuver a bit to find a spot where I could see a little through the branches of the hedge. It wasn’t completely dark out yet, so I didn’t want to chance peeking around the hedge and being seen.

  Kage stood at the door of the house, waiting for someone to answer it. The lights were on, so I knew someone was inside.

  I felt the blood drain from my face when the person who answered the door was none other than Kage’s wife, the icy blonde bitch known as Fay.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  I COULDN’T HEAR a word Kage and Fay were saying to each other as I stood in the cold behind that hedge. I tried. And I made the attempt not to be paranoid, but what the fuck was he doing talking to his wife…or supposedly soon-to-be ex? They didn’t seem to be angry or hateful with each other. Fay looked a little perturbed and impatient, but she was listening.

  Oh, God. Was he trying to get back with her? Had I been just a little fling?

  My heart sunk as I watched her talk with him. She wasn’t angry. A little upset, yes, but she wasn’t turning him away. I wished I could hear their voices.