Page 22 of Wicked Games

“He was a gang leader, Seth. He still has connections on the outside.”

“He probably does, but there’s nothing that connects me to a gang.”

“There doesn’t have to be. They got away with five million dollars. That’s a lot of drugs and guns. LaSalle better be looking into him.”

“I’m sure he is, if he can stop hacking up a lung.”

“What are you going to do now?”

I glance at Avery. She moved from the kitchen into the living room. Sitting on the couch, one of her feet tucked underneath her, she’s writing in the notebook she had with her the day we sat on the dock. A lamp shines a dim orange light over her shoulder. She stares through the glass doors as if daring me to stare back.

“In general or right at this minute?”

“Both.”

“What I came out here to do. Grieve.”

“Okay. Be careful, Seth, and if it’s difficult to be around her, come back. You don’t have to stay out there like it’s some kind of prison sentence. Don’t punish yourself.”

“That’s not what this is.” Only what it will feel like if Avery never talks to me again.

“Now that you know she’s okay, get some sleep.”

“I will. Goodnight, Vi. Thank you for being my friend. You’re the only good thing in my life right now.”

“I’m not going anywhere. Goodnight, Seth. Talk soon.”

She disconnects, tears in her voice she didn’t want me to hear.

I sit on the couch and watch Avery write. Write about how much she misses her sister, how terribly the men in her life have hurt her.

I watch her hand move the pen across the paper until my eyes drift shut.

When I wake up, it’s the middle of the night. The lamp in Avery’s living room is still on, but she’s gone.

My neck has a crick in it, and no matter how many times I roll my head around, I can’t get it to pop loose. I’m exhausted, the little sleep I get not giving me the rest I need.

I make coffee and try to glance into Avery’s house. There’s a glare on the glass and I can’t see her.

It’s late, later than I usually get up, and the day stretches out in front of me. It’s scary, that I don’t have anything to fill it with. More Hemingway, more tears. A run, maybe, to the beach. I should grill some of the meat I bought before it expires. That doesn’t sound good, though, unless Avery’s here, sipping wine and speaking more in the silences than with words.

I shower and then fry eggs for breakfast. They’re slimy in my mouth, but I choke them down. Though Violet would be ticked off, I check my work email. My executive assistant has done a good job filtering through the junk and starring the items that need my attention. Violet can take care of most of it, if not all, but I answer a few emails that were meant only for me, and then skim through some industry newsletters. I check social media, but there’s not a lot there. Brooke’s been photographed with Vale, his arm around her. I don’t know how long she’d been seeing him behind my back, if that had been her intent and if it hadn’t, when it changed. When we hired him to draw up plans for a house we were thinking about building, I could have sworn that was the first time she’d met him. But maybe she recommended him to me because she’d met him somewhere before and wanted an excuse to be able to see him.

I wonder how she feels now, wasting time with him when she could have been at home with her family. If she was with Vale the afternoon those bastards grabbed Theo off the playground and shoved him into a van and drove away. Was she fucking him that afternoon?

No. She loves the guy. I can see it in the pictures. They were doing more than just fucking. I wish she would have told me. Maybe Theo would still be alive.

I work and read for half the day, then go for a run. I’m proud of myself that I managed to make it to dinnertime feeling somewhat productive, but after I shower off the sweat and change into clean shorts and a t-shirt, I’m back to where I was this morning, the evening waiting to be filled. I could make dinner and watch a movie, but the idea taunts me. If I wouldn’t have been such an asshole, I could have been doing those things with Avery.

With my laptop and a beer, I sit in my usual place on the couch. Not so I can watch for her, the glare is gone and I can see clearly into her kitchen, but because Winnie’s sleeping on my patio in the sun and I like the look of her there.

I don’t know why I didn’t do this sooner, and I do a search for Avery McKay. The first thing that pops is a pretty headshot of her. She’s smiling, her hair loose around her face. She’s wearing a low-cut blouse and a gold necklace. There are other images of her and I click on one where she’s standing next to an older man at a party. He has his arm around her, his hand resting on her lower back. He’s distinguished, wearing a suit, his dark hair greying, and they look good together. I click on the article that goes along with the photo and find out he’s a creative writing professor at the university. Christ, was I wrong. I bet he was prouder than fuck of Avery and her accomplishments. She said he was her professor, but I didn’t put two and two together. He’d chosen her out of a hundred other students. I would have too. Darren McKay. She kept her married name. He's done a little writing of his own—short stories, a couple of poems that have won some awards that I’ve never heard of.

They were a good fit, and why does that make me feel like a jealous asshole? I like to read, but that doesn’t put me on the same level as Avery and her ex-husband. Something must have gone horribly wrong in their marriage for them to have thrown away their perfect life.

I scroll through more pictures. Avery accepting awards at dinner banquets, candid shots of them at what looks like a book signing, a cocktail party celebrating a book release. He’s always so close to her, and I can read in his body language exactly what it was. Possession. He wanted the whole world to know that she belonged to him.

I go back to the search results. She’s got a website, and I click on the link. A different headshot greets me. She hasn’t updated her About Me section and she says she and Darren have been married for over a decade and make their home in Ashfield, Minnesota. She graduated from Minnesota State University, Ashfield, with a bachelor’s in creative writing and she’s working on her Master’s. Fall is her favorite season and she loves coffee. She invites readers to contact her through her email address.