Hi guys! Here is chapter 13. Sorry for the wait. Life is kicking my ass right now. Not feeling all that well. But know what would help me feel better? A review or two! :-)
Chibs awoke to a sharp tug on his hair. His eyes flew open and he inhaled a sudden breath. Waking was never a pleasant thing to do, and this time was no exception. His eyes darted around, looking for the source of his discomfort and it took him barely a second to recognize the source. Abel Teller, shooting him a toothless grin, was standing next to him, hands tangled in his hair. Chibs's sleep fogged mind wondered when baby Abel had learned to walk.
"Abel!" he heard Tara whisper yell as she made her way over to the couch where he was currently sleeping. "Leave Chibs alone! You can't wake up people when they are sleeping, baby!"
"He's alright Doc," Chibs muttered, stretching the tired muscles in his shoulders and back as he sat up. "My fault for falling asleep in the middle of the Club house. I shouldn't be sleeping right now anyway. It's what, eleven in the morning?"
"Yeah, try noon," she smiled as she picked up Abel. "And sleeping is fine. You have only been back for what, a day and a half? You are probably still jet lagged."
"Yeah," he agreed with a yawn. Looking around, he took in his surroundings, noticing the abundance of leather and wood and the stripper pole, in addition to the ever present haze of cigarette smoke, even though the room was mostly empty. Between his Ireland trip and the guys being on the inside, he hadn't spent much time in here lately. It was funny to Chibs that he could manage to fall asleep here, in a cold, musty Club house, but not at his own house, in his own bed. After spending weeks and weeks sharing a bad with his wife, he was finding it difficult to not have her next to him. He hadn't really slept since he had been back, and he supposed it was getting to him.
"Well, I am still sorry he woke you up," she told him. "We actually we about to leave. Tess finally showed up, so I am off phone duty."
"She say why she was late?" he asked. The girl working in the office had been very late this morning, and luckily Tara had been able to cover for her.
"No, but she is upset about something. She has been crying, I can tell," Tara reported with zero doubt in her voice. "Are you sure you are going to be okay here on your own today? I could cancel my appointment and stay if you need me to."
Opie and Piney had left on a charity run early this morning, leaving him in charge of the garage. Perhaps not surprisingly, Kozik was nowhere to be found. The garage was pretty busy today, and if he hadn't had Tara around to handle the phone calls and customers this morning, he would have been forced to do it himself, which was a disaster waiting to happen. He may have lived here for nearly ten years, but despite that fact, the vast majority or Charming still looked at him as though he spoke a foreign language.
"Yeah, I'll manage, no need for you to cancel. You need to check up on the littlest Teller. The mechanics and prospects are handling the actual work and Tess will handle everything else. Chuckie will be here soon to do whatever it is that he does. We will be fine," he told her firmly.
"And what about you? What will you handle?" she asked him with a smirk as she tried her hardest to keep a firm grasp on a squirming Abel. Now that he had learned to walk, he liked doing it as often as possible.
"I will handle doing my laundry," he gestured to the still untouched bags he bad brought back with him from Ireland. "I am on my last pair of clean socks, so I can't put it off any longer."
He had truly meant to do some of his laundry before coming back, but he had gotten a bit sidetracked by his wife looking all to enticing in an ancient button up shirt of his and then by sleep, and by the time he had actually woken up, Fiona and Kerrianne had packed his clothes for him and it was too late for any laundry.
"Yeah, then definitely wash some clothes," Tara encouraged him, crinkling her nose at the thought of dirty socks. "Don't forget dinner at Gemma's tomorrow. She wants to welcome you home with lasagna and family drama. Call me if you need anything, okay? And…check on Tess if you get a minute."
"Absolutely," he assured her, running a hand through his hair, attempting to remove any evidence that he was sleeping on the job. "Same goes for you. If there is anything at all you need, you'll let us know?"
"Actually," she spoke up, looking down at her feet as if she was feeling nervous or guilty or both. "There is something…"
"What is it, Doc?" he asked, looking at her seriously. She hardly ever asked anything from them, so whatever she asked, he was going to make sure it happened.
"I think I want to go see Jax," she blurted out. "I have been putting it off, and it needs to stop. Do you think…Would it be okay if…Can I just…"
He looked at the woman in front of him, surprised to hear that she hadn't been to Stockton yet. He hurried to answer the question that she hadn't managed to ask yet. "Absolutely. Tomorrow, if you want."
She grinned at him, glad that he understood. "Thank you. Opie came to see me about it and…I can't put it off any more. He deserves it, and I need to see him."
"And you will," he promised her. "Tomorrow. Now, go check on the wee one and I will do laundry and have a lovely chat with our office girl."
Tara thanked him and Chibs helped himself to a beer from behind the bar. He waited for Tara and Abel to leave before sinking into the couch again and thinking of the long list of shit he had to do today. Between work and some necessary repairs to his bike and laundry and making sure that the bills were paid for the guys on the inside, he was in no way looking forward to having a chat with Tess. He would, though, because she was family now and because he had promised Tara. First things first, though.
He downed the last half of his beer and got up, dragging his unpacked Ireland bags towards the small laundry room near the dorms. He really hated doing laundry but there was no way to avoid it. Chibs dropped the smaller of the two bags on the floor and set the larger on a counter. He pulled the generic laundry soap from the utility shelf and then unzipped the large duffel, ready to dump the entire contents into the washer. He was surprised to find that it was unnecessary.
Inside his bag, he didn't find random pieces of clothing shoved into every spare nook and cranny. Instead, he found every pair of pants, every t-shirt, every sock and every pair of underwear neatly folded and organized in the duffel. If the smell was any indication, they were all clean, too. It took him a minute to figure out what happened, a fact that he blamed on lack of sleep. Fiona must have worked halfway through the night, while he slept soundly, to wash and fold all of his damned clothes.
His eyes found their way to a slip of paper, peering out from under a pair of jeans. He smiled and he gently pulled it out, not willing to risk ripping it.
My Filip,
Kerrianne and I thought that you might like some clean clothes once you got back to Charming, so we washed them for you. I know how much you hate to do it, and besides, it's not too often that I get to act like a proper wife and do your wash for you. Kerrianne was not feeling so charitable, and she took her vengeance by taking any money that was in your pockets. Sorry.
We both love you, very much.
Fi
He ran his fingers over the closing, promising him that his family loved him, before he tucked the note carefully away in his pocket and zipped his bags again. He would have to make sure to call and thank them later today, and he was thrilled to have an excuse to talk to his girls, not that he really needed an excuse. A smile situated on his face, he left to start the next task on his list.
Tess glanced to her left, ensuring that the blinds were closed, before sinking her head on the desk to rest on top of her folded arms. She had hoped that it would bring relief, but when it did no such thing, she started gently banging her skull against the solid wood of the desk. That probably wouldn't help her headache, exhaustion and profound sadness, but it did make her feel a little bit better.
She had fucked up, yesterday, royally. Waking up this morning, alone, had made her realize that shockingly quickly. Spending the two hours that followed her awakening crying on the floor of her shower, long after the water ran cold, had been another mistake. For those couple of hours, she had completely lost herself, and work had been the farthest thing from her mind. That was, until her phone had rang and it had been her mother, asking her yet again whether or not she was ready to admit her mistakes and come back home.
No, she was absolutely not ready to go crawling back home, and she sure as hell wasn't ready to admit her mistakes. She may have made a monstrously huge error in judgment last night, and she may be feeling alone and embarrassed and abandoned and completely ashamed of herself, but she was NOT going home and she needed this goddamn job. So she dried her hair and put on clothes and makeup and called the shop to apologize and say she was on her way. She just hoped like hell that he wouldn't bother showing up today. She didn't know what she might do if she saw him.
Thankfully, he had been blessedly absent when she pulled in. The shop looked busy and she didn't notice too many familiar faces as she slipped into the office, apologies pouring out of her like blood from an open wound. The pretty, dark haired woman, Tara, had just smiled and assured her that it was okay. As the doctor explained that Opie and Piney were gone for the day and Chibs was in charge, Tess tried her best to focus and listen. She must not have done very well, because Tara has immediately asked her if she was okay.
Tess did her absolute best to assure the woman that she was fine and nothing was wrong. She could tell that Tara didn't buy it, but thankfully she let the subject drop. Soon after that, the doctor and her cute baby had exited the office, leaving Tess alone with her thoughts. In all honestly, the young woman had no idea whether or not that was a good thing. After all that had happened in the past twenty four hours, she was almost sure that 'alone with her thoughts' was not a great place to be.
For a while, she tried to distract herself with work. She filled out and addressed invoices, she did the parts order, and she filed paper work. All of that had taken her a grand total of twenty minutes. She had then broken down and filled out the mechanics time sheets, even though they were supposed to be responsible for that themselves. She even taken up a cheery voice and made phone calls to ask people how their vehicles were fairing after services. Once that task as finished, she was well and truly left with nothing to do, which was when she decided that banging her head on the desk was an acceptable task.
Her head shot up when the door unexpectedly swung open, and she was hit with a moment of sheer panic. Kozik liked to burst in without knocking and she really couldn't handle that right now. She was relieved to find that it was Chibs who wandered into the office. She quickly fixed what she hoped would pass for a smile on her face and greeted him.
"Hey Chibs, long time, no see," she said, careful to regulate her tone of voice. She was shooting for light and cheery, but she had a feeling it came out as weird and demented instead.
"Aye, you're right," he agreed, sinking into one of the chairs. "Just got back yesterday."
"How was Ireland?" she asked, eager to keep the conversation off of herself.
"It was great," he told her easily. Looking at the man in front of her, it seemed like a weight had been lifted off of his shoulders, and she was happy for him. She had liked Chibs instantly and was truly glad to see him happy. "Really, really great."
"That's good," she smiled at him, a little more genuinely this time, as she desperately thought of ways to keep the conversation going so that he wouldn't feel the need to ask any questions. She failed miserably.
"Seems like things with you are not as great," he spoke up, with every air of casual conversation. "Want to tell me what is bothering you?"
Shit. Shit shit shit. This was exactly what she hadn't wanted to discuss. She decided to play dumb. "Nothing is bothering me. I am just fine."
She watched as his eyes narrowed. Before his answer even came, she was well aware that he didn't believe her. "Yeah, I have spent the past several weeks surrounded by women. I have learned a great deal about how women say that they are fine, but they generally mean the exact opposite," he told her. "Wanna try again?"
"No. I really, really don't," she whispered, begging him with her eyes to please, please understand. What could she possibly say? 'Well, I had good, amazing, literally mind blowing sex with one of your leather bound buddies for hours and hours last night, and I really liked it, and I really liked him, and then the second I closed my eyes, I listened to him curse under his breath and hightail it out, and then I cried myself to sleep.' Yeah, no.
He sighed heavily. Looking at the young woman in front of him, he knew for a fact that something was wrong. He also knew for a fact that if she was anything like his Fiona or Kerrianne (or any other woman in the world), pushing too hard would get him nowhere. "Are you in any kind of danger, Sweetheart?"
"No, nothing like that," she assured him, shaking her head emphatically. "Just some…personal stuff. That's all. I promise, I won't be late again."
"Don't worry on it," he told her, standing up stretching. His next statement surprised her. "I am surprised you haven't gotten bored in here yet."
"What?" she asked quickly, thrown by the sudden change in topic. "What do you mean?"
"Well, you've got everything sorted around here, and I know from experience that the day to day isn't all that exciting. I figured you would have gotten bored by now."
"Well, I…um…it's just…" she stammered, before managing a laugh. "Yeah. Bored. Really, really bored."
"Gemma used to read in here all the time," he eyed the books on the shelves, mostly torrid romance novels involving pirates or cowboys. "But I am guessing none of that is quite your thing?"
"Not really," she agreed. "I am all for terrible, easy to read books, but that is just…too much."
His eyes lit up as he reached in his back pocket. "I have just the thing for you," he grinned as he tossed a book, Twilight, on the desk in front of her. "This is incredibly terrible. You will love it. I'll need it back, mind you. My daughter gave it to me."
She looked at him like he was crazy. A man like Chibs with a book like Twilight surprised the hell out of her, but she nodded and shot a smile at him as he walked out, whistling. At least now, she had something non-blonde to occupy her thoughts.