Disclaimer: If you recognize the name it's not my character, the muse just wanted to take them for a spin!
Notes: Trying to get this done, I want to finish some of my other stories while the muse cooperates!
Thanks for the reviews guys! I was really nervous about the last two chapters!
On we go!
Chapter Eleven
Four days later I was sitting in the locker room at work.
"Hey, Jersey," Tamsin plopped down next to me on the bench. "How you holding up?"
How was I holding up? Truthfully, I wasn't really sure. I'd found plenty of bodies in the past during my work as a bounty hunter, and my few forays into more private eye type stuff—Way too many bodies. And it's not something you really get used to, it just sort of happened often enough that I had developed the ability to push through the moment, and then go home take a boiling hot shower to stave off the death cooties, and then I'd cope by eating enough Tasty-cakes to put me into a pre-diabetic coma.
That much sugar and lard in your bloodstream at once and it's hard to feel panicked about much of anything. I would know—I had extensive tasty-cake therapy experience. I'd get up the next day and try to forget about it.
But Yvonne was different. I'd known Yvonne, and Ember—if not quite as well. Neither one of them was some random stranger or criminal whose own poor choices and shady dealing shady contributed to a premature and violent end. She wasn't an 80-something year old grandparent laid out at Stiva's in her very best, cheeks rogued to a healthy glowing pink and eyes closed in the respite of eternal slumber.
Yvonne had been beaten and stabbed and I'd spent hours sitting on the cement leaning against the building surrounded by flashing lights trying not to watch the cops circle the bodies laid out on the pavement, avoid staring at my hands. The blue and red flashes turning her blood black against my pale skin.
I hadn't even thought about death cooties until now. Death cooties seemed impersonal and childish when compared to the images that seemed to be imprinted across the back of my eyelids every time I tried to sleep. I hadn't had nightmares like this since the Slayers incident a year ago, now I couldn't make it through the night without waking several times in a cold sweat, getting up to double check the locks on my door. I'd even taken to dragging a chair in front of the handle as an extra precaution.
How was I holding up? Part of me wanted to ignore all of it, shrug it off and go into denial land. I looked up and realized I'd been sitting in front of Yvonne's empty locker for the last ten minutes.
"I don't know." I whispered, "I don't think I'm okay," the words just tumbled out. Probably the first really honest thing I'd said in Months, since this whole mess started certainly.
Tamsin slid down the bench until our thighs were touching, one arm draped over my shoulder pulling me into a half-hug. "Steph," she repeated my name quietly, probably so we didn't have to worry about anyone overhearing and wondering why she was calling me a different name. But I appreciated the gesture; it made me feel like she was speaking to me, the real me and not some identity we'd fabricated over the last few months. "I think you should go home this weekend," for some reason the suggestion made my vision blur and my chest feel tight. "You need a break from this—"
"—I can't quit,"
"—Do you want to quit?"
I didn't know. I wanted this to all be over. I wanted to feel safe again. I missed my friends. I missed Ranger so bad my chest ached and it hurt to breathe just thinking his name…God help me I even missed my parent's house with the noise, overbearing questions and crowded bathroom. I wanted to sit in my Mother's cramped kitchen surrounded by the overwhelming scents of cooking and baked goods and just soak it in.
I wanted to eat a cookie from the tin she kept over the fridge and pretend for at least a day that I was just a kid again and safe; that nothing would get me, and the biggest worry I had was if Mary Lou would be available to go to the mall later to window shop. I didn't want to live with the constant anxiety and debilitating fear of wondering if I was being stalked by a serial killer, yet. Worrying that I would never get his attention and simultaneously horrified that I might already have it…Especially when I'd seen what he could do first hand—to my friends.
Tamsin squeezed me again and filled the silence, "I think you need a healthy dose of reality— because this is a fabricated story Steph, it's not real. It's just a skin you have to wear to get the job done, got it?"
Sure it was a fabricated story—but it was a story that had the very real possibility of getting me killed. This wasn't pretend, finding Yvonne and Ember had driven that point home, brutally so.
"I don't know if I can do this anymore…" My voice cracked and I drew in a shuddering breath. I wasn't cut out for this undercover, double life shit. I wasn't Ranger, or Joe…I was just me, Stephanie Screw-Up Plum. I swiped at the tears sliding down my cheeks suddenly.
"You can do this. You're tough as nails. You're a tiger. You're just feeling wounded right now. You go home, lick your wounds, regroup and you get your ass back here and help me nail this sick son of a bitch to the God damn wall."
My breath left me in a rush. "You're not really a night club manager, are you Tams?"
She squeezed me once more and then let go standing up. "Whatever gave you that Idea?" Then she winked so quickly I might have imagined it and turned towards the door. "Go home Jersey, I don't want to see you til Tuesday. And Bring your A Game."
She walked out before I could figure out what to say.
.
.
I thought about not going home.
Going home might raise some uncomfortable questions in my current frame of mind, questions I wasn't positive I could instantly create answers in my funk. But the last thing I wanted to do was hide in my one room apartment for five days. Tamsin was right, I needed a break.
I needed to feel like ME, not Michelle Plume, Exotic dancer and Serial killer bait. I needed to feel like Stephanie Plum. I didn't feel like I could do that in New York. Even if I didn't set foot in Dominic's for a few days, everything about New York reminded me of why I was here, and despite the size of the City I was worried I'd somehow run into someone I knew as my alter ego and screw things up.
The phone call to my Mom the next morning was short. A quick hello, and telling her I had some time off, a long weekend for all the hard work I'd put in. She was thrilled, promising to have my Dad pick me up from the train station. "Bring something nice to wear," she ordered me before hanging up, "Everyone will be here on Sunday and I'd like us all to go to church together before dinner." I was too tired from lack of sleep and distracted to be suspicious.
Which was a mistake.
My Dad was already waiting in the taxi cab when I walked out of the Trenton train station a few hours later. He gave me a quick hug, and a 'Hi Pumpkin' then grabbed my suitcase by the handle and escorted me into the front seat. He tossed my bag in the back and climbed in.
"I feel I should warn you." He said after he'd already started driving.
"Oh, No."
"Don't look at me, wasn't my idea I told your mother to stay out of it."
"Oh God. What now?" A shifting rolodex of worsening images was scrolling through my head; Joe waiting for me at the house ready to pick up where we left off, some random bachelor she ran into outside the deli sitting on the couch, or worse Grandma's latest hot stud…
"He seems like a nice guy." My Dad offered keeping his eyes on the road.
"Who seems like a nice guy?" I shot back through gritted teeth.
"Alex."
I should have stayed in New York. I thumped my head against the back rest a few times letting it bounce off. "Is he there now?" I huffed.
"No, He's coming for dinner.
"Greeeeeeeat." I drawled biting off the t. "I thought she wasn't going to get involved?" I added a second later.
"She's your mother." My dad answered with a shrug. "She's involved."
Ugh.
Twenty minutes later my Dad was dropping my suitcase in the foyer by the foot of the stairs and I'd stormed right into the kitchen.
"Mom!"
"Stephanie, you're hom…"
"Don't even! What the Hell Mom?"
My mother's eyes widened then narrowed. "Don't talk to me like that young lady!"
"Thirty-Three!"
"What?"
"I'm Thirty-Three! For the love of all that is Holy Mother! I do not need you to line up men like Play-Dates!"
"Stephanie Michelle!"
"No! Could you please, for once in your life butt-out?!"
"That's ENOUGH!" My father bellowed from the doorway.
My mother and I both gaped and him.
"Both of you Sit Down, Now." We sat. "Now," My father announced from the other side of the table. "Helen I've tried to stay out of this but it's pretty clear to me, and should be to you that Stephanie does not enjoy being set up on blind dates, ambushed at family dinners and brow beaten into seeing that Morelli kid."
My eyes nearly popped out of my head.
"And Stephanie, I understand that you're upset but your Mother loves you and she just wants you to be happy."
"Then stop trying to set me up with people!" I cried out and my Father sighed.
"I'm sorry Stephanie."
Wait, What? "What?" I think my mouth was hanging open, I should probably close it.
"I know you said you weren't ready to see anyone, but this Alex guy has been by the house a few times," She explained looking contrite. "And he is a very attractive, and very nice man."
"Mom…" I whined slumping down in my seat.
She held her hands up, "I know, I know. I should stay out of it. I'm sorry. I promise I won't invite anymore available men to dinner without asking you first."
"Thank you!"
"But he's coming to pick you up at six."
Ughn! I slumped forward and banged my head against the table.
"Oh, it's not that bad! It's one date!" My mother sniffed. "I even ran a background check on him."
My head popped up. "You did a what?"
"A background check." My mother repeated. "You can pay for it online. Mary Oliveto told me all about it!"
"You ran a background check on my date." Before or after she set me up I wondered?
"Well I figured after Dave we couldn't be too careful." My mother said.
Imagine that.
To be continued...
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(Oh come on, you didn't think Steph's Mom could resist meddling just a little bit did you? LOL)