Shallow Creek

“No, you should go,” Brice said, obviously loving every minute.

Would Kim forgive him if he pounded her ex unconscious?

“Brice, what’s going on here?” Kim asked again.

“Your new friend here left your sister’s place yesterday morning,” Brice said.  “Real early in the morning.”

“So what?  They’re old friends.”  God bless her for defending him, but Brendan had a nasty premonition about where this was going to end up.

“It’s not weird that an old friend would stay over when her husband’s out of town?” Brice asked.

“That doesn’t mean anything.  It’s not like they slept together.”

Kim looked him right in the eye in that moment, and Brendan just couldn’t keep his face as deceptively neutral as it needed to be.  How had years of interrogation training not prepared him for such a simple lie?

It was game over.

“Oh my—”

The last word was muffled by Kim snatching her hand from Brendan’s and covering her mouth.  Was it too late to smash Brice’s teeth in?

“Are you fucking kidding me, Brendan?  After all this shit with you pretending to like me?”

“That was yesterday.”  Brendan knew it was lame, but he didn’t have any other legs to stand on.

“Oh, so that makes it okay?  No, don’t answer that.  We’re done here.”

And there she stood, arms folded tight, chin up, but wavering slightly.  He’d really done a bad thing here.  She’d liked him and he’d let her down right as she’d dropped her guard.

“I can drive you home—”

“You are nuts if you think I’m getting back in that truck with you.  You need to go.”

This was music to Brice’s ears.  He perked up as he probably figured his odds of scoring just skyrocketed.

“Fine, just do me a favor and don’t sleep with this limp dick junkie.”

“You don’t get to tell me what to do.” She turned and stomped off towards the brightly lit restrooms.

“That was a dick move,” Brice said, now that the two men were alone.

“You just made a big mistake.” Brendan lunged towards the smaller man.

Brice backpedaled into the bar so hard that he knocked a few shot glasses clean off the backside with his flailing arm.  Before Brendan could say anything else, the bartender, a graying old man with a funny Irish hat on, came to say he’d call the cops if Brendan so much as touched one of his best customers.

It wasn’t worth the trouble.  Brendan backed down and stormed out into the night.

Chapter 29

A second set of fifty pushups drew to a close and Brendan was still pissed.  He’d spent most of the night tossing and turning and punching his pillow, but now even his old trick of working out to vent the frustration had little effect.  Normally after one hundred pushups all anger and consternation fled with the rest of his pent-up energy.  Apparently this was all too heavy to wash away with physical exertion.  He sat with his back against the wall and banged his head against it.

He’d already beaten himself up mentally over whether or not he should’ve tried harder to lie to Kim and defend his name.  The back and forth was fruitless, though.  At the end of the day, she needed to know, so it was probably best to get it all over and done with now, rather than breaking her heart even more at a later date.

But more importantly, how the hell did Brice know about Brendan staying over with Michelle, yet Grant apparently still had no idea?  If Brice was so willing to tell Kim about it, surely he’d told others.

Man, he should probably just pack up his things and leave town again.  This could get real ugly, real fast.

There was still the slim possibility that his brother really didn’t know.  If so, then maybe it was a perfect opportunity to skip town.  Why stay on the beach when the category 5 hurricane is roaring past the seawall?  The smart money was on leaving.

Brendan snuck out of Grant’s old room and scoured the house looking for his mom’s phone.  Eventually he found it wedged between one of the couch cushions and the armrest.  His phone didn’t have Grant’s number in it, but his mom’s would.  He touched the button to light up the screen and wasn’t prompted for a password.  That made sense; his mom would never be able to remember a password anyway, so why bother?

The secondary benefit of using his mom’s phone to call his brother was that Grant wouldn’t screen a call from his dear mother.  Brendan touched the screen to initiate the call, and then waited through a few painfully long rings before his brother answered.

“Hey Grant.  It’s Brendan.”

“Oh, hey there,” Grant said amiably enough.  “Good to hear from you, but I’m kind of busy right now.  I’ve got to get a bunch of stuff packed for this road trip.  Customers hate it when I’m late.”

“Sure, okay.” Brendan felt relieved for the first time in twelve hours.  “When are you leaving?”

“In a few hours, around noon probably,” his brother said.  “Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why do you want to know?”  Brendan had no reply to that.  “Do you need help with something?  I can push the time back a little if I need to.”

“No, no.  Nothing like that,” Brendan said hurriedly.  “Was just curious, that’s all.”