Okay, I'll be the first to admit that this chapter is pretty much just filler - I went way over the top with Greg, to the point where I'll probably offend somebody. I just couldn't help myself - I really started to like him. I promise the next chapter will be more focused... ;)
Chapter Seventeen
Kate froze, trying her best to look casual and unconcerned. Her heart, however, was pounding a mile a minute. This could be it, she thought. It could all be over right now.
"I'm sorry?" she asked, as if she hadn't heard him. That would buy her some time, at least.
"Yeah," he went on, nodding, confirming his suspicions. "At first I wasn't sure, but then I got to lookin' at you real close...and it just come to me, all of a sudden, like."
He paused.
"Sally, right? Sally Malone?"
Kate didn't move. She had absolutely no idea what was happening, or how to respond.
He went on nodding at her, smiling as if to encourage her. "It's me! Greg!"
She started to realize what was going on here, but was still too confused to respond normally. She finally managed to say, hesitantly, "Greg?"
"Yeah! Prolly didn't recognize me, huh? Yeah, I packed on a few since high school days, but I still play some football every now and again...Thinkin' a tryin' out for the pros next season," he added, in a tone that indicated he was really too modest to mention this, but what the heck?
"Really?" Kate asked, starting to get her bearings now.
"Haven't decided yet, though..." he admitted. "But damn! Sally Malone!" He shook his head in wonder. "How long's it been, girl?"
With this, he crossed the kitchen to her and pulled her forcefully into a hug. She stiffened, once again fighting the uncontrollable urge to just knock him out and be done with it. But she knew that in this case, playing along was probably her best bet. Patting him awkwardly on the shoulder, she tried to ignore the fact that he smelled like stale sweat and onion rings.
"It's...been a while," she said, pulling away from him and attempting to put some space in between the two of them.
"Man, you and me had us some good times, didn't we? We musta gone steady for...how long was it? All of senior year?"
"Something like that," she said, glancing toward the door. Please God, let Sawyer take a quick shower, she thought. Why the hell did I tell him to shave?
"Damn..." he said, still clearly amazed at this unexpected blast from his past. "I see you got that mole removed...What'd I tell ya, huh?" he asked with a grin. "Always told ya you'd look better without it, didn't I?"
"You were right," she said, with a stiff, awkward smile.
"Sally Malone..." he repeated in awe. "So what the hell you been up to?" He looked around the kitchen, as if he'd just now noticed where he was. Pointing down at the floor, he asked in shock,"You with this son-of-a-bitch now? James?"
"Mm-hm," she said, the smile still frozen on her face.
"Course...I just call him that as a joke, you know. Me and him's like brothers...We're real close."
Does he know that? Kate thought.
"And just so you know, I never held no hard feelin's about the way things went between us. I mean, I guess I coulda been pissed about you sleepin' with that guy and runnin' off with him, but hell, he was your cousin. And the way I see it is, family comes first." He spoke this last statement with absolute moral conviction.
Kate felt like something more was required of her here. "Yeahhhh... I always felt bad about the way things ended."
He looked appreciative. "So how is Joe, anyway?"
"Joe?" she asked, trying to think fast. "Joe's...Joe's in prison." She had no idea who the hell Joe was, but if he'd slept with his cousin, it wasn't a complete stretch to guess that he might be in prison.
Greg looked as if he should have expected this. "Welll...Happens to the best of us."
She nodded slowly, pretending to digest this bit of wisdom.
"Hey...you remember that time when we was doin' it in the bathroom at the Kentucky Fried Chicken, and the place caught on fire and we didn't even know it, so we just kept right on goin?" He laughed. "You 'member that?"
"Wow...I'd almost forgotten about that." For the love of God, Sawyer, hurry up, she thought.
"And you 'member that other time when we was goin' at it in your barn and your dad come after me with a shotgun? Good thing he only had the one eye, or I might not be here today." He shook his head fondly. "How is the old man, anyway?"
She tried to think of something that would end the conversation. "Unfortunately, Dad passed away last year."
"Really?" he asked, puzzled. "Damn. Coulda sworn I seen him down at the VFW last month tellin' that story about how your mom tried to castrate him. But hell, all those crazy vets sound the same after awhile."
There was a slight lull in the conversation. Suddenly, Greg glanced surreptitiously around the room as if afraid someone might be hiding there, listening. Moving closer to Kate, he asked in a low, confidential tone, "Hey Sally...You, uh...You still like to smoke weed?"
At a loss as to how to respond, she opened her mouth, but before she could answer, he went on.
"Because, uh... I got some really good shit I could sell you cheap. You know, seein' as how we're old friends and all. I mean, this shit'll blow your mind, Sal. You 'member that stash we stole from your crazy aunt...the one with all the peacocks? Well, this shit's even better than that, if you can believe it."
"Actually...I've been trying to cut back lately, Greg."
He looked at her as if she'd just announced her intention to stop breathing air. "Why the hell would you wanna do a thing like that?"
"I don't know...It just seems like it's... time to give it a try." She made her best effort to seem sincere and natural, stealing a glance at the door to check for any trace of Sawyer.
"Well..." He paused, considering. This was a new idea to him. "Hell, maybe you're right. Guess my brother Tucker woulda been better off if he'd gone that route too. Course, it's too late now. You remember Tuck, don'tcha?"
"Of course...How is Tucker?"
"Not so good these days. But really, I don't blame the pot so much as the damn mule."
"The mule?" Kate asked, with the conviction that this conversation couldn't possibly get any worse.
"Yeah," he said, sighing. "After his wife up and left him, he just got so lonely...And it's a damn shame too, because if he'd just left the thing out in the barn, the sheriff woulda been none the wiser. But he had to go and build it a ramp so he could back it up into the house. And it ain't like the mule minds it," he went on, as if this should be obvious to anyone with half a brain.
"Hell," he said, leaning over to Kate conspiratorially, "I can tell you for a fact that the mule don't mind it at all."
She stared at him for a few seconds, and then walked quickly to the kitchen door. "JAMES! You have company!"
Turning back to Greg with a slight smile, she tried not to meet his eyes, fearing she would lose it. "He'll be right down."
She heard Sawyer's footsteps on the stairs almost immediately. "What are you talkin' about?" he called out, confused. "And why the hell are you callin me..." He froze at the doorway into the kitchen, seeing Greg. The look on his face was dangerous, almost lethal. But Greg clearly had no receptors with which to register it at all.
"Hey, man... I brought you them parts you wanted." Greg seemed almost shy, like he had a crush on Sawyer.
"Thought I told you I'd come up to your place." Sawyer's voice was calm, but with barely contained rage.
"You did?" He scratched his head and seemed to think about this. Kate actually felt a little sorry for him. Then he shrugged it off. "Ah, well. It's all the same, ain't it?"
"No, it's not all the same, because I needed to use your phone. You remember now?" He looked as if he could easily beat the guy to death without a second thought. Kate knew, however, that the reason he was this edgy was that Greg had seen her and threatened their safety here, not just because he was pissed at the guy himself. She prayed he wouldn't unintentionally give her away through his anger.
"Oh, that's all right," Greg replied, as if he was having a casual chat with his best buddy. "You can just use my cell phone."
He pulled something out of his back pocket. "Aw, shit. That's my remote control."
Kate put her hand to her mouth and pressed hard, trying desperately to keep a straight face.
"Well, I'll just drive you back up to the house, then," he said, replacing the remote. "I don't regret comin' by though, cause me and Sally here got a chance to catch up on old times." He grinned at Sawyer good-naturedly. "Bet you didn't even know me and her used to be together, did ya?"
Sawyer looked at Kate. She raised her eyebrows and nodded almost imperceptibly. Go with it, she seemed to say.
"You don't say..." he muttered savagely, still looking at her.
"Oh, yeah!" Greg was delighted. "We were together for...what was it? All of freshman year?"
Earlier it had been senior year, but Kate didn't mention the discrepancy. It would just confuse him more, anyway. "Yep," she said, nodding, looking pointedly at Sawyer.
"There was this one time...when, uh.." Greg was hardly able to finish his story through his memory-inspired chuckles. "When, uh...a bunch of us went up to Fairhaven for the game, and Sal tried to moon this cop on the way home, but she forgot the window in the truck was broke...She musta had her ass stuck up there for about four, five hours." He shook his head in admiration. "Never complained once."
Sawyer still stared at Kate. "Guess there's a lot I don't know about you, Sally."
She looked down at the floor, biting the insides of her cheeks. "It was a long time ago," she whispered.
Greg spoke to Sawyer. "Hope you ain't mad that I had her first," he said, looking a little worried. "Wouldn't want nothin' like that to come between us. Hell, with Sally, there's enough to go around! Ain't that right, Sal?"
Kate didn't respond. She was watching Sawyer, hoping he wouldn't lose control of himself.
With his teeth clenched, Sawyer asked Greg, "You ready to go?"
"Whenever you are," he replied, happy to oblige. Sawyer made a motion to herd him out the door, and he called back cheerfully to Kate, "It sure was good to see you, girl! Don't you forget about me, now!"
She waved at him slightly. "There's not a chance of that happening, Greg."
Not detecting even a trace of irony, he looked delighted to hear this.
As Sawyer pushed him down the porch steps, she could hear his voice trailing off.
"Seriously, man, this shit'll blow your mind."
When Sawyer came back into the house about fifteen minutes later, he found Kate sitting on the floor in the hallway outside the kitchen, leaning back against the wall of the staircase. She had a strange, self-contained look on her face, and she was completely still, staring at the floor. She seemed eerily calm, as if she was trying to hold something back.
He stopped, looking down at her. "What the hell was that about?"
Slowly, she let her gaze travel up to him, and with a gleam in her eye, she said in a soft voice, "I'm sorry." She paused. "It's always awkward when old boyfriends show up."
Then, to his absolute amazement, she bent her head over onto her knees and started to laugh uncontrollably. He watched her, bewildered and a little annoyed, but also mesmerized. The most he'd ever heard her laugh was when he was going through the ordeal of getting his quote-unquote "glasses" on the island, but that was nothing compared to this. The laughter poured out of her unchecked, filling the house. She could hardly catch her breath.
In spite of himself, he found it hard to hold back a smile. Her laughter was almost contagious. Sliding down beside her onto the floor, he waited until she could get herself under control.
Finally, her laughter tapered off, dwindling into occasional spasmodic giggles. Her face was bright red, and she wiped tears from her cheeks.
He watched her. "Glad you find this so entertaining, sweetheart, because I gotta say, I'm not exactly seein' the humor in the situation. He could have recognized you."
"Oh, come on... You could have had Wonder Woman standing in your kitchen and he wouldn't have recognized her." She tried to hold back more laughter.
"Well, next time it might be someone else, and they might not be stoned off their ass and dumb as a stump to boot. We gotta start leavin' that inner door closed...the screen door's not good enough."
"All right," she agreed.
Then, assuming a still more sober expression, she looked at Sawyer closely. "Hey."
He turned to her, reluctantly.
"What's wrong?" she asked.
He acted like he didn't want to say. After a few seconds, he looked away again. "I woulda killed him. If he'd known who you were."
She sighed, closing her eyes briefly. "I know you would have. That's what scares me. And I don't want you to try to do that. No matter what happens. Okay?"
No response.
"Sawyer."
Instead of answering, he reached over and put his arm around her shoulders. She slid down the wall, closer to him, and sighed, giving up. It was useless to try to get him to change his mind about something like that. To be honest, she didn't know if she really wanted him to. It made her feel that much safer.
After a few seconds, she asked, in a lighter tone, "So...did you know her?"
"Did I know who?"
"Sally." He could tell by the tone of her voice that she was smiling again.
"I didn't go to high school here." He thought a minute. "But yeah, I remember her from grade school. She was a whore even then."
"Sawyer!" she said, sounding offended. "How can you say that about a little girl?"
"What! She used to charge a dollar to pull down her underpants and let the boys look as long as they wanted," he answered in a defensive tone.
"You're making that up."
"How you think I lost my lunch money every day?"
She shook her head against his shoulder, trying to act disgusted. "Well, I'm just glad I got a chance to share in her shame."
She pulled back a little and looked at him reflectively. "You don't really think we have anything to worry about from him, do you?"
"I doubt it. Stupid son-of-a-bitch won't even be here much longer...Just told me his uncle had a bumper crop of marijuana this year, so he's headed down to Florida day after tomorrow to share in the harvest." He spoke derisively. "Asked me to feed his cat."
"Are you going to?" Kate asked, curiously.
"I would. 'Cept the damn thing got run over by a tractor-trailer six months ago." He looked at her. "Like I said, guy's a few bricks short of a load."
She smiled. "Would you think I was crazy if I told you I kind of liked him?"
"Yeah." He tried not to smile at her. "But if you're worried about him comin' to his senses on down the road and realizin' who you are, we can always take off...go somewhere safer."
"I know." She looked sad all of a sudden. "But I don't want to. Not yet." In a voice that was almost a whisper, she continued. "I'm so tired of running. I just want to stay somewhere for a while."
"You sure that's what you want? Even if it's more dangerous?"
She nodded decisively. "Yeah."
He sighed. A few days ago, he'd been unable to convince her that it was in her best interest to stay. Now he was equally unable to convince her that it was in her best interest to go.
"You're as stubborn as a damn mule, you know that?"
A funny expression drifted across her face. "Sawyer?" she asked, in that strangely calm voice she'd used earlier.
"What?"
"Could you do me a favor and not mention mules again, ever?"
Then, mystified, he watched as she dissolved into peals of laughter yet again.
