KENNICK: A Bad Boy Romance Novel Read online

  He had directed the question at Ricky, but it was clearly more aimed at Kim. Ricky smiled as she shook her head and slipped Kim an expectant glance.

  “I can't,” she said. “Want to start working on this.”

  “Kim?” Kennick asked, finally turning to her with a smile on his face.

  “I can stick around for a while,” she said, her cheeks warming as her sister not-so-subtly pushed against her shoulder. “Let me walk you to your car, Ricky.”

  Outside, the afternoon had turned to evening.

  “Holy. Shit,” Ricky said as she paused, half-entering the driver's side of her car. “I can't believe that's your gypsy man. I mean, Kim...way to effin go!”

  Kim blushed at her sister's reaction, a twinkling of pride inside her heart. For once, Ricky was impressed by Kim's love life.

  “He's a good guy, too,” Kim offered bashfully. Ricky rolled her eyes as she plopped the rest of her body into the seat.

  “I don't care if he eats puppies,” Ricky said. “You better work that body as much as you can, for the sake of all us women who can't.”

  Kim was left laughing as Ricky pulled her door closed and drove off, honking a few times on her way out and brandishing a hand out the window to wave goodbye. When Kim turned around, she saw Kennick leaning against the door, watching her.

  “So, this party?” Kim asked as she approached. He merely laughed, which she’d come to expect as a normal reaction to her questions, and took her hand.

  Chapter Nineteen

  He hadn’t been lying when he said that a gypsy party was a sight to behold. The party was held outdoors, in the rows between the trailers and on the “porches”, where people set up makeshift bars, barbecues, and long tables of food. There was enough booze to slake the thirst of a hundred sailors on shore leave, and enough food to sober them up enough to drink some more.

  Music mingled and mixed from where it played through open trailer windows or on tiny radios, much of it shimmering, incandescent, and exotic to Kim’s ears. Children and adults alike twisted and turned under Christmas lights strewn from trailer to trailer, dancing wild and free in the cool summer air.

  Damon, who’d been absent when Ricky was talking to Kennick, appeared during the party with a guitar, settling down at the far end of trailers and strumming some simple folk songs that people intermittently sang along to.

  Kim had started out the night feeling on edge; parties had never been her forte, and especially amongst this crowd of strangers who looked at her as an outsider, she felt out of place and judged. But as she helped set up, drifting from family to family at Kennick’s side, the wondering looks turned to warm acceptance. She felt the enormous amount of liquor that the gypsies seemed to drink helped that, but then so did her association with Kennick, whom they trusted implicitly, it seemed.

  Now, she was nestled under Kennick’s arm, holding a beer in one hand and a shot glass of clear, strong-smelling vodka in the other, near where Damon strummed out a beautifully lonesome tune. Three old men, whose names she thought were Dago, Turk, and James, though it was hard to remember considering how many names had already been thrown at her that night, were trying to one-up each other with fantastic tales.

  Some were uproariously funny, some tinged with a kind of horrible awe or aching loss. All the same, each story blended into the next one regardless of subject or tone, synchronized with the familiarity of retelling, sharing the same practiced beauty that comes from years of details perfected and refined.

  “That’s nothing,” the man Kim thought of as Turk said, taking a sip from the shot glass he held, which was a sign for everyone gathered to do the same. “Let me tell you about this woman I worked for back in ’83.

  I was tarring her roof all summer, got to know her pretty good. She was a real sweetheart, and not stingy with the lemonade. Had two pretty daughters and a husband who, I guess, was never around too much. I barely ever saw him, anyway. The girls were in school, and I guess I was her only company, and with me on the roof knee-deep in tar, I wasn’t much for conversation.

  So she goes and gets herself a parrot. Real pretty thing, all bright green and blue. She got it for a steal, too, and she didn’t figure out why until the damn bird started talking. Best we could figure, the last place that bird hung out was a bordello. ‘Cause when he talked, it was all pretty filthy.

  First time she brings the bird in, I’m in the shitter, and when I come out I hear him squawking. He looks around, he goes, ‘new house, new madam.’ We didn’t thinking nothing of that ‘til he looked at me and says, ‘new house, new madam, new john.’ That got us thinking. And then later, when the girls, they were teenagers anyway, come home from school, the parrot gave ‘em a good look and said, ‘new house, new madam, new john, new whores.’ And that’s when we knew.

  I was laughin’ all the way home, and pretty damn well into the next day. ‘Cept when I get there, I realize half the shit in the house is layin’ out on the lawn. So I say, ‘what’s this?’ and the lady, all red-faced, says ‘I’m kicking the hubby out!’.

  That’s a pretty damn rash thing to do, and she always seemed like such a sweet lady, so I ask what it is he did to deserve it. And she points to the parrot. She goes, ‘last night when John came home, that damn bird said: new house, new madam, new whores, old friends! Hi George!’”

  Laughter erupted as Turk broke into a smile. Mina, who’d come up to witness the storytelling marathon, nudged Kim in the ribs.

  “I bought him the joke book that one came out of,” she said with half a smile on her face. Overhearing her, Turk puffed his chest out and pretended to take offense.

  “You callin’ me a liar, Mina Volanis?”

  “I’m calling you a funny man, Turk,” Mina answered sweetly.

  “How about this one?” Dago asked, pointing to Kim across the circle with a glint in his eye. “Looks like she has some good stories.”

  “Me?” Kim asked, suddenly feeling that old roar of anxiety rushing up her throat, threatening to expel all the liquid courage she’d taken in so far. She looked to Kennick for support, but found only a bemused, expectant smile on his face. She swallowed hard. Her mind went blank. “I’m really not…I’m quite boring, actually…”

  The booing sound that surrounded her was almost worse than the prospect of having to tell a story that would match the yarns the old men had been spinning. Kennick moved closer, tightening his grip around her shoulders. Her brain raced, trying to think of something – anything – to say.

  “There was a flood once,” she said, still staring into Kennick’s green eyes. She could pretend they were in bed, like they had been the night before, conversation flowing free and easy and unencumbered by shame. “In the 60’s. My father was young – maybe 19? It was a massive flood, though. It almost washed the town away.”

  As Kim spoke, she slowly tore her eyes from Kennick’s and, finding herself the center of attention, stalled out. Her mind blanked. And then he squeezed her again, and more words tumbled out of her, surprising her entirely.

  “My father worked for a stained-glass factory. He had a friend there named Rodney, a much older man with no wife or kids. But he had a dog, Abe. He was really big, like, a Rottweiler. I think it was a Rottweiler. But it was huge, anyway, but it was sweet. So sweet, like, wouldn’t hurt a fly. But right before the rains began, Abe ran away, and Rodney was heartbroken. He was sure that Abe was dead, drowned or whatever.”

  She moved her gaze down to her shot glass and, without thinking, downed the remainder of the liquid. As it burned down her throat, she closed her eyes and remembered her father telling her the story as a girl. She’d loved it. She hoped she did it justice.

  “But then, on the first day the waters went down, they found Abe. Somehow, he’d gotten himself stuck on top of a Coke machine in the back of the library. The dog was almost as big as the machine itself, but there he was, sitting on top of it. I guess – well, my father and Rodney and a few other folks were there, and they couldn’t really c
all the fire department because they were a little busy taking care of the rest of the town, you know? But none of the men were big enough to go get Abe down with a ladder. He would have broken anyone’s back trying to lift him.

  So they think – they go get a trampoline. You know, one of those little ones? I guess one of the guy’s wife had one for exercise, so they go get it and bring it back, but they can’t get Abe down. He’s too scared to jump, he doesn’t know the trampoline will catch him or anything. So Rodney says – go get some pineapple. And everyone’s like, ‘pineapple? What the hell is pineapple gonna do?’ Well, Abe has one weakness, and that’s pineapple. Loves it. This big burly Rottweiler, and he goes nuts over pineapple.

  So they go and get a can and bring it back, put the pineapple on a plate, and they hold it up, let him smell it, and then put it down in front of the trampoline. And poor Abe is up there, whimpering and whining because he wants that pineapple so bad, and Rodney’s saying, ‘c’mere boy, c’mere,’ until eventually, the dog just goes for it. Leaps off the top of the Coke machine and lands dead center on the trampoline.

  But my Dad had some bad luck that day, and he was standing right in front of the trajectory when Abe bounced off, and here comes 100 pounds of startled, confused, scared-ass Rottweiler right into his chest and face, and they both go down hard, knocks the wind right out of Dad and the damn dog ends up pissing all over his shirt. But as Dad’s lying there, on his back, hurting, Abe looks down at him and gives him one big, good lick right from his chin to his hairline. And, well…I mean, that’s it. That’s the story. I guess…it might not even be true but…”

  Kim felt her cheeks turning red as she realized there was no punchline to the joke, no real point to the story, just a funny picture in her mind of a Rottweiler bouncing off a trampoline into her father’s arms. She could, in that moment, heartily empathize with a bad stand-up comedian with an audience of expectant drunks, and shame ran down her spine in an awful wave.

  “Well, he never did eat pineapple after that,” she finally offered with a shrug. One loud cackle of laughter called her attention away from the beer she’d been staring into, and she saw with surprise that the old men were beaming at her, clearly tickled. Kennick leaned down and kissed the top of her head.

  “All stories are true if you tell them right,” he said. Kim didn’t know what that was supposed to mean, but she liked the way he was looking at her, like he wanted her to keep telling stories, all night long.

  Chapter Twenty

  So so sorry, the text read, and Kim’s fingers immediately clutched the phone harder as her jaw set tight. Can’t come to lunch. Buried in this story you got me! Cover for me with Ma?

  You’re kidding, right? Kim shot back, tapping so angrily on the screen her thumbs hurt.

  =X, was Ricky’s only response.

  You owe me so so so hard! Kim wrote before throwing her phone down and groaning, her eyes hidden in her palms. She could already see her mother’s raised eyebrows and pursed lips when Kim arrived alone.

  Once a month, Kim and Ricky met their mother for lunch. Sometimes, they went to Dover, where she lived. Sometimes, they met halfway. On a very rare occasion, the eldest member of the James family came down to Kingdom. It made her especially unbearable. She would cluck at the dirt on Main Street and ask why they couldn’t “go somewhere nice for once” before answering her own question: “there’s nowhere nice in this town anymore.”

  Cordelia James was a force to be reckoned with. No one knew that better than Kim, who as the older daughter, had been privileged to experience the brunt of her mother’s disappointment. She always thought that Cordelia had been so worn out by trying to make Kim perfect that she hadn’t had the energy to deal with Ricky.

  Now, she was going to have to sit through their monthly lunch alone. And Ricky hadn’t exactly given her ample warning; she had been about to leave the office when the text came in. Now, she sighed and put the “out to lunch” sign on the door; Mayor Gunderson was taking one of his epic three-hour lunches, which Kim knew was actually just when he’d go home and try to sleep off the rest of last night’s fun. He wouldn’t be back for another two hours.

  Mom doesn’t know that, though, she told herself, thinking she’d probably drop the whole gotta-get-back-to-work line. That would make Cordelia mutter about driving for so long for nothing, but whatever. Kim wasn’t in the mood to deal with her mother alone.

  She should have known that her Mother would have been early. She was always early. Looking at her watch, Kim saw that she was early, too. Not early enough. She waved through the window to get her mother’s attention, which only allowed her to feel the judging stare for a few extra moments as Cordelia’s eyes followed her around the glass front of Sid’s Diner and through the door. She was on her feet as Kim approached.

  “Hi, Mom,” Kim said, accepting the stiff embrace and the hard peck on each cheek before taking a seat opposite her. “Ricky can’t make it. Say she’s swamped with work and very sorry.”

  Cordelia scoffed and her eyes fell to the menu, as though studying it. She would get the same thing she always got, but reading the menu gave her the chance to remark, sneeringly, at the greasy spoon-style offerings.

  “It’s not enough to carry someone in your womb for nine months and then raise them practically on your own and put them through college, I suppose,” she mused. “I suppose your sister expects me to be happy she’s got a job that makes her work through lunch. You know, she’s never going to get anywhere on that dinky little paper.”

  The words cut straight to the quick. The emphasis on “your sister”. The ability to insult Ricky and Kingdom at the same time. Cordelia was good.

  “Oh, Mom,” Kim said, shaking her head. “You didn’t raise us on your own.”

  “I might as well have,” Cordelia snapped, her eyes cold on Ricky’s as they left the menu. “Your father was always working. It was me that took care of you both all day long.”

  Kim bit her lip. There was a lot she could say – wanted to say – in response to that. But none of it would ever penetrate Cordelia’s inflated sense of burden. Tucker James, Kim’s father, had worked a lot, but it was only to keep his wife happy. He loved his daughters, and made time for them even when he was working 70 hour weeks at the now-defunct stained-glass studio. When he’d passed, Cordelia had taken the substantial life insurance payment to Dover, where, she said, she could live “a real life”, not surrounded by “depressing small-town bumpkins.”

  “How was the drive, Ma?” Kim asked, steering the conversation away from sore subjects.

  “Horrid,” Cordelia responded, her eyes flitting back to the menu. Her nose scrunched. “What on earth is a tamale doing on this menu? Is this a Mexican restaurant, Kim? I don’t recall Sid being of the Hispanic ethnicity. I don’t suppose he’s hired some illegal immigrants to work in the kitchen, has he?”

  “That’s always been on the menu, Mom,” Kim answered. “You don’t have to be Hispanic to cook tamales.”

  “And what in blue blazes is a deep-fried Oreo? My God, the gluttony of some people…it’s truly enough to make one sick.”

  When Cordelia’s eyes returned to her daughter, squinting and examining, Kim’s stomach sank. She knew what was coming next.

  “You haven’t been eating those, have you Kimberly? You’re looking a bit pudgy. You know you can’t eat like your sister or I. You just don’t have the metabolism. You’ve been running, haven’t you? Hard to imagine there are any men banging down your door or begging for your hand, not with that little…what do they call it? Muffin top. Rather a funny term, and quite descriptive, don’t you think?”

  Kim’s jaw clenched. She didn’t have a damn muffin top. Do I? she wondered, second-guessing herself as her eyes travelled down her own body. The light, flowy sundress she wore gave no indication of a muffin top.

  When she looked back up, her mother’s eyes were stuck to the menu once more, her head shaking slowly back and forth. Kim begged for a waitress to c
ome by already. But she was rewarded with quite a different type of distraction.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Kennick watched Kim’s eyes widen. It made him smile. He’d been driving by when he saw her. She was unmistakable to him, even distorted by the glare of a glass window. He guessed the old broad across from her was her mother. As he approached, she shook her head slightly, but from the way her mouth was set it was clear she needed rescuing. It had been a week since she first spent the night in his bed, a week that had flown by in a blur of quickened heartbeats, long talks in dim lighting, and a growing sense that the space next to him on his mattress had been waiting for her his whole life.

  He also sensed, could almost see, the cracks and slices in Kim’s heart. Places where someone else’s opinion of her had slithered in and made itself at home, filled her with doubt and broke her ego. He wanted to shove his fist right in there and yank that parasite out, fill her heart with all the beauty and strength he saw when he looked at her. And he had a sneaking suspicion that the woman he was about to meet had a little something to do with that parasite.