Page 19 of The B!tch is Bad

Chapter 6

Patience

My hand trembled as I pinched the bridge of my nose. The numbers on the computer screen swam and blinked at me like champagne bubbles.

Maybe this was my penance for never going to Wine on Main and checking on Creed’s Ghost Riders. Pippa had hooked me up with Gudrun McGill, Slushy’s daughter, a nurse practitioner. She’d given me Cymbalta and Ativan. That was one of the beauties of The Bare Bones MC—their ability to make things run smoothly, to obtain things that a normal person would have to jump through twenty hoops for. Gudrun agreed I had clinical depression and anxiety disorder and it was nothing to be ashamed of. I’d been able to walk a couple miles every day around the vineyards, sucking up the stunning backdrop of red cliff walls, the intricate lacework of the bare vines twining around the trellises. I still had gloomy days. I was still a cracked and mangled soul.

It was invigorating to leave my little cottage, though I was afraid I’d run into Creed. I was still my same old broken self, but my environment, the scent of the red soil wafting through my window at night, the rustling of the dried leaves, and the tinkling melodies of Creed noodling on his piano. Sigh. His house was maybe forty yards off, and sometimes I could hear him on his terrace talking on the phone, but we hadn’t spoken since the kiss. Before the kiss, he’d been cooking diabetic meals for me and I’d join him at his kitchen island. Now? I munched alone on almonds with no enthusiasm.

Creed was a terrifying trigger for me. I flashed back more and more to Ivan, the love of my life who’d been ripped from me by my greedy, shallow mother. Falling in love was a horrifying descent into insanity. The more you love, the more you toss and turn at night with panic-stricken half-dreams of your man fucking other women, or not calling you, or plotting your demise. Then you clamber out of bed at six with dark fucking circles under your eyes looking like a hobo, unable to do your job. My mother always screamed that I was secretly drinking or something. How the fuck would I be able to get gin? She watched me like a ten-car pileup, and I was never allowed to go out the front door alone. I didn’t start drinking gin—and wine—until my involuntary marriage.

That was the one good thing about Mr. Fingerhut. I could care less about him, so his average day-to-day mistreatment of me didn’t matter for bitcoin. It was only when the beating started, the forced copulation, that I began plotting my escape.

My burgeoning feelings for Creed scared the bejesus out of me. I knew when I took the job that it’d be a problem, but I expected Creed to be cavorting with any number of silicone-infused gals. And he wasn’t. Since the harvest party I hadn’t seen one solitary slattern slinking around his yard, much less going through his front door. And the thought of a hoe slathering herself all over Creed’s hard, taut body made me cringe, my stomach twist into ropes.

Why had I put myself into this situation? Was it the human need to feel a connection with others? But I had that at the bud and breakfast, working alongside Pippa, a fellow casualty of the warped relationships battle. I’d traded my stage for a cage with Fingerhut. I would have rather married the Pilsbury Doughboy, but Fingerhut and his rape schedule was my destiny.

I could only conclude that by accepting Creed’s job, I had that everlasting and all too mortal need to really unite with a man on myriad levels. Not just calling an electrician to fix a switch. Not only assuring a visitor that we had more Dabba Doo marijuana in the back. And not just arranging a room for a hipster musician with no underwear. No. Creed captivated me with his fun-loving, clever attention to me. My dad had been that way before he’d passed on, just an impressive treasure trove of wit.

I needed Creed. His kiss had taken me by surprise, activated the fight or flight option, one of the bad parts about living in a body that has a hit contract on you. Good thing I hadn’t socked him and ran crying instead. Tarnation! What did he bring out in me, that hot, compact snack of a man? I often fantasized about his Roman nose between my legs when I plugged in my faithful, horribly noisy, vibrator named Victor. And you know, your perception of things is a reality when you’re in the midst of it. So when I’d see Creed after orgasming all over his face, I’d feel like he knows. He knows I just cascaded female juice down his chin. And a part of me felt smug.

Sometimes I felt dying would be a blessing, because at least then I’d gain some serenity.

I did one of those jumps where your pen goes flying when someone knocked briskly on my front door. My heart clunked because I automatically imagined it was the guy with his long, hard tongue up my twat. As I lived in a regular cottage, my office was one of the two bedrooms, so I had to tiptoe down the hall. It’s him, my imbalanced brain told me. He’s come to kiss me again—or apologize for it.

But he’d done neither since the party.

“Hey Patience!” shouted Sean Wildstar.

I exhaled and opened the door. The poseur stood there all crinkly-eyed, perfectly wavy hair just gleaming in the sunshine. “Hey, Sean.” I tried not to sound disappointed.

“Listen, can I come in? I need to ask you something.”

I stood back. “Sure enough.”

I arranged my living room in a boring format, work being my main priority. A cherrywood table took centerpiece, ringed with matching chairs. A big laptop, coasters, nut bowls, even an ashtray for those toking up all scattered about the table. I tried to lead Sean there, but he headed for my fridge, where he withdrew a bottle of Pictures of Lily sauv blanc as though he already knew it was there.

Yes, it was still there. I preferred the temperamental Pinot, which I used to put on a happy face when I was miserable.

Sean fingered a glass from the overhead rack, his jaw set grimly. “Sorry to bust in on you like this.”

I shrugged. It was four in the afternoon. “Pour me a taste too. Have you heard about that guy in San Francisco in the karaoke contest?”

Sean’s face lit up as he poured, savoring the story. “You mean the guy who drank that hydrogen beer?” This Japanese beer filled drinkers’ lungs with the gas, allowing them to sound like Chipmunks and, more importantly, shoot blue flames from their mouths using lit sources. “He catapulted Godzilla balls of flame across the room!”

I cheered up too, taking my glass. “Right, that guy. After fifteen bottles, he was horribly out of tune and didn’t win the contest, so he shot flame balls into that female judge’s hair.”

Sean continued. “He totally charred her eyebrows and lashes and ruined some customers’ outfits. He tried to set fire to some security guards—”

I butted in. “And when that one guard tackled him by the knees, the force propelled so much hydrogen from his lungs—”

“That he swallowed his own lit cigarette, causing a kind of internal combustion that ruptured his stomach lining—”

“And burned up his esophagus and sinuses!”

Both grinning like barracudas now, we took our seats at the table. I used a coaster, Sean didn’t.

“Yeah,” he said, savoring the memory of the story. “He lost his job as a DJ because now he can’t talk.”