Relentless Read online

  Not a normal thing. Todd never listens to him. That’d be a first. Hattie rarely does. The girls only do because they’re still too young for rebellion, but that’s right around the corner. He knows it. He’s heard from friends and neighbors all the horror stories about raising girls.

  None of those feelings of being ignored are new.

  They’ve been coming on for a while. He’s felt it building up more and more recently. The growing tension in his marriage. All the ties of his life gripping tight around him, cutting into him. Middle age and so on. Could be that maybe last night was the blowup. The middle-aged crazy story he’s heard jokes about all these years. Was last night the perfect storm of being out of town, drinking and the chance meeting of the wrong, beautiful people?

  Did I get drunk and take it too far?

  Davis wraps his head in his hands as if trying to rub hard enough to bring the memories back to life. Cerebral CPR. It’s not working. Whatever knocked him out, be it booze or drugs, it did its job and did it well. Covered its tracks and cleared the evidence without a smudge of a fingerprint. He strains and shuts his eyes tight, stretching out to the farthest corners of his failing memory, but he can see nothing past Justin and Tilley at the bar.

  Their smiles. Their eyes looking back at him, welcoming him into their world. A world that looked inviting as hell.

  The cab stops at LAX. The busy international airport is a whirlwind of chaos. Cars, SUVs, buses and cabs scream in and out. Hard stops. Fast starts. Quick jerks of steering wheels. Horns blare. Loved ones give rushed kisses. Others scream obscenities out cracked windows. Davis gets dizzy simply watching the world rip and roll around him.

  “Fifty-two thirty-five,” the cab driver says without looking his way.

  Davis has no clue if that’s accurate or if he’s getting screwed, but he pulls his Visa out anyway. He takes a deep breath before the slide. He hasn’t been this nervous about a credit card transaction in long time. Like playing a slot machine of sorts. Hoping for a good outcome. The cab’s credit card terminal pauses, blinks, then…

  DECLINED.

  In a snap of an instant Davis’s world crashes down even harder.

  It’s been years since he’s had a card declined. Been years since they ran up the debt to that point. They spent years paying it off. A long, hard climb that almost ended his marriage. Hattie said she never wanted to feel that way again. He convinced her it was different this time. With this business, he could make it work. They were smarter this time.

  She loves him, trusts him.

  She held his hand on this leap of faith.

  He tries the card again.

  Same.

  “What…” Davis is finding it hard to breath. He slaps a heavy palm on the terminal. “What the hell, man?”

  “Easy, boss. It’s been acting up,” the cab driver says, turning back toward him now. “Do you have another card? Cash still works, bro.”

  Davis pulls out his wallet. All he has is the company card and some cash. He really doesn’t want to use the company card, which is getting real damn close to hitting the redline max too. Getting declined twice in thirty seconds might be too much to take. Counting out his cash, plus tip, it’ll clean him out, but what choice does he have?

  He hands it over to the driver and jumps from the cab. Time is running out.

  Racing to the security line, he pulls up his e-ticket on his phone and gets his driver’s license ready. His phone buzzes in his hand. He’s got a new text burning a red number one.

  A text from Justin.

  When u leaving, big fun?

  Davis thinks of replying. He has no idea what to say, but he wants so bad to know what the hell happened. How do you even start with something like this? How do you phrase the question, assuming Justin will even tell him anything? Davis’s fingers hover over this phone. He doesn’t have the words as his fingertips shake just above the glass. Truth is, he’s not sure he wants answers to the questions he can’t bring himself to ask.

  What was I thinking? Did I ruin everything?

  Justin Reed is trouble. A problem that needs to go away. Davis will change his number if he has to, but he can’t engage with this guy. He needs to let this die and come to an end on its own. A guy like Justin will get bored and leave him alone eventually.

  He ignores the text.

  Davis swipes over to the ticket on his phone then rushes toward the security line with his driver’s license ready in his other hand.

  Time to go.

  Just come home, Hattie said.

  8

  Davis walks into his house.

  There’s a tingle in his fingers. A flutter in his stomach.

  His girls rush to his knees, squeezing tight with all they’ve got. He’s only been gone a day or so, but they’re young enough to not know the difference. All they know is daddy was not here and they didn’t care for it, no matter how long. He forgets his thoughts about their upcoming college costs. Their braces. Their weddings. Their pending rebellion against him. They love him now, even though they forget sometimes, and that’s enough. He lets the warmth that comes from their little arms wash over his body. His eyes well as he touches the soft hair on their tiny, wonderful heads.

  “Hi,” Hattie says.

  Davis looks up, sees his beautiful wife walking into the room. She remarkably looks the same as the day they met in college when they locked eyes as their fingers fumbled over a keg all those years ago. Those two buzzed, slightly horny kids never would have imagined they’d be standing here almost twenty years later.

  Married. A house. Two kids.

  Kinda crazy when you think about it in those terms.

  She’s still dressed from work, but has on her feet the ridiculous black and white cow slippers he got her for Christmas. Davis smirks, acknowledging the fashion choice. Hattie shrugs.

  “Hungry?” she asks, maneuvering through the girls and stealing a kiss.

  Davis nods. “I’m sorry,” he says.

  She nods her head along with an understanding look. “Did the client get disgusted by your lack of tolerance?”

  She’s teasing, but Davis can read between the lines.

  He holds her eyes, lost in his thoughts.

  He thinks about telling her everything, wanting to lay the truth out for her right here, right now. They’ve been through so much together. Things much harder than this LA trip. At least as far as he can remember about the LA trip. He thinks of the incredible release that would come from unloading this burden he’s been carrying around since this morning. The lies he’s told her to cover up a truth he’s not even sure of. It would be a difficult conversation, to be sure, but she’d understand. He’s sure she would. There might be a fight, but it’d be over soon. They could put it in their rearview mirror and that would be that. He didn’t do anything, after all.

  Did I?

  “I’ve got to get some work done after dinner,” she says, “but you’ll tell me all about it later?”

  Davis blinks. “What?”

  “Your trip. The accounts, all that,” she says. “I want to hear this story.”

  Davis swallows then nods.

  There have been many times Davis has marveled at how she manages to do it all. She’s a successful marketing manager for a major clothing store, yoga queen and a super mom candidate if ever there was one. Juggling it all as if it wasn’t even there. As if this was something she’s done her whole life. There’s no online training for what she does. No bonus payout for being everything for your family.

  “The client is okay, right?” Hattie asks.

  She wants more out of life. She’d never say it, but he knows it. She has to. A woman like her wants more, right? She doesn’t want to scrape by, living redline to redline.

  Davis doesn’t have the heart to tell her anything other than, “I’ll know more soon, but I hope my lack of drinking skill didn’t ruin everything.”

  It’s like didn’t ruin everything has been nailed to the wall of his brain. Did
he subconsciously throw that out there?

  She smirks and retreats back into the kitchen to finish up dinner.

  It’s a bomb waiting to detonate. He knows it. He comforts himself, knowing that at least he knows how to disarm it. He can tell her. Come clean. He’ll tell her later, he tells himself. When the time is right.

  “I’ll do the dishes,” he says.

  She laughs from the kitchen. “Damn right, Hollywood.”

  The girls are still hanging from his legs. He Frankenstein-walks them into the living room, leaving his bags at the door. The dog now joins in on the attack, jumping up, fighting for a good lick. Davis falls down on the couch in a pile of children, daddy and dog. The girls giggle. The dog licks. The daddy smiles.

  He’s home. With his people.

  There’s a sting of knowing how close he came to screwing this all up. He feels a lump in his throat. He can’t believe where his head was not long ago. That he allowed the stress of the business, the lure of booze and the excitement of sexy people to take hold of him that way. That he allowed it all to take him close to a place that would jeopardize this.

  He tickles the girls with reckless abandon and pets the dog while dodging a massive slurping tongue.

  His phone buzzes.

  A shot of anxiety rips through him. He stands straight up, reaching for his phone.

  “Dad-dy,” the girls say in unison.

  He checks the text.

  It’s Justin.

  Duuuuude…. Where r u?

  “Dad-dy.”

  Davis’s mood shifts in a snap. His face hardens as he stares into the screen of his phone. Almost looking through it. As if the house and family around him have been cropped from his senses.

  He feels his stomach flutter then drop again as it did in his hotel room in LA.

  He grinds his teeth.

  He can’t even hear his girls anymore.

  9

  The morning sun cuts through the blinds, creating shafts of light across the bedroom like bars from an Old West jailhouse.

  Davis is rolled over on his side staring at his phone. He can hear Hattie waging an all-out war with the girls down the hall. The daily give and take, all in the name of getting them to school. He slept some, but not well. Lots of turning, broken, scattered rest, but calling it sleep is a stretch.

  Davis is staring at a new text from Justin that came in at 2 a.m.

  r u ignoring me?

  2:36 a.m.

  need to talk soon, bro

  3:07 a.m.

  hello you owe

  Davis rolls his eyes. Annoyed this isn’t going away as quickly as he wanted.

  Justin isn’t getting bored as Davis had hoped.

  Davis has had some time to think about it. Some time to sleep on it, so to speak, even if he didn’t truly sleep much. He knows he should just contact this guy, get it over with, have the damn conversation that he’d rather not have. Tell this guy to go to hell and leave him alone. Still, he’s willing to give it more time, let it play itself out. He hasn’t been home a full twenty-four hours yet.

  A few annoying texts?

  Davis is more than happy to let this go a little longer.

  Conflict is not something Davis seeks out, and this Justin situation more than qualifies as potential conflict. Davis is not afraid to step up when called upon—he’s had to go toe to toe with people in the past—but it’s not something he enjoys. Todd loves to mix it up. Enjoys the fight and will go the long way around to find one. Davis is the cooler of the two heads.

  He sets down the phone, telling himself he’ll call Justin after he talks to Todd later this morning. Davis wants to talk this through with Todd. He needs his personal sounding board, business partner and friend to hear him out. This needs a conversation. A good one.

  They’re meeting for coffee at their normal spot.

  Their office, otherwise known as a coffee shop.

  He’s been telling Todd, We’ll talk about it when I get back, the whole time he was in LA and, well, now he is back. For better or worse. The business is another conflict chat Davis would rather not have, but unlike Justin, Davis can’t avoid Todd.

  “Shit,” Davis grunts.

  “Dad-dy,” echoes from the hall.

  “Shit,” Davis grunts again as he drags himself from the bed.

  As he sits up, an image of Tilley races across his brain.

  This is new.

  The mental picture stabs into his mind’s eye like an icepick. It’s not a memory from the bar. It was only for a fraction of a second, but there’s no mistaking it was of her. She was on her back on the floor, staring up at him. He recognized the carpet. The pattern was from his room at the hotel. Her eyes were warm, inviting and she was smiling at him.

  He shakes his head, rubs his face, and sits back down on the bed.

  The image is gone now, leaving as quickly as it came.

  He closes his eyes, straining to remember. Fighting for recall. He can’t pull it back up. Can’t access her face, a face he saw so clearly only a few seconds ago. His breath accelerates as he realizes he just had a memory, one he didn’t have yesterday. Not much of one, more like a single flicker-frame of a memory, but one that has created a hell of a lot more questions than answers.

  “Shit,” he says. This time he can hear the fear in his own voice.

  “Dad-dy.”

  “Davis,” Hattie calls out. “Little help from the father?”

  He shakes off the memory of Tilley’s face. “Coming.”

  10

  At the coffee shop, as expected, Todd isn’t happy.

  Not at all.

  “What the hell, man?” he asks.

  “I know.” Davis sips his first coffee of the day, letting his eyes slip over toward the window. He watches the good people of Beaverton, Oregon go about their day. Smiling. Laughing. He wishes he were one of them. Davis has just explained how the meetings went and Todd’s reaction is exactly what Davis has been dreading since he was pacing in front of the Viceroy. Precisely what he’s been putting on hold until now.

  “What...” Todd is frustrated as hell, but sucks in a deep breath, trying to hold it together. “What are we going to do?”

  “I told you, I’m not a salesman.”

  “We don’t need you to be the greatest salesman in the history of American salesmen. We need you to present the damn product. A product you designed. A product you love.”

  “I know.”

  “All you gotta do is talk. Talk about the damn thing the way you talk to me about it. The way you talk to Hattie about it. That will sell it, man. Your passion for the thing is goddamn inspiring. It inspired me for Christ’s sake, and I’m incapable of being inspired.”

  Davis sips his coffee, letting the silence fill the space between them. Buying some time for Todd to come down a bit. Davis remembers Todd once telling him the greatest sales trick ever is getting the other guy to believe that what he’s buying is his idea. The salesman’s dream he called it. It took a long time for Davis to even understand the concept, let alone try to get it to work in the world. It’s a trick that Todd can do, but Davis knows he cannot.

  “I can try,” Davis finally says.

  “Damn right you can. You need to get out there and earn, or there will be no company. No product for you to love.”

  “Come on.”

  “You’ve seen the numbers, right?”

  Davis nods. “I know.”

  “Yeah?” Todd says. “They are not good.”

  “I’ll make this right.”

  “We better figure it the hell out or we are completely fucked, friend-o.” Todd resets. “You’re the creative. I’m the business guy. I understand. We’ve said it from the beginning and accepted it, but we’re not big enough to completely separate roles. We’ve got to do a little of both.”

  “I know.”

  “Stop saying that. I know you know,” Todd says with a hard edge.

  Davis looks away, jamming his tongue into his cheek. He’s hol
ding back, and Todd can see it. He knows when he’s gone too far with Davis.

  “Shit. Sorry, man.” Todd looks Davis over. “You okay? You look like you’re not great. LA beat your ass?”

  You have no idea, thinks Davis.

  Davis considers telling Todd about Justin and everything about that night, but he doesn’t. Not the right time. He’s the right person, but he’s not in the right frame of mind.

  “I’m fine,” Davis says. “Long trip. Just tired.”

  Todd taps his coffee cup. Nods. Checks out an attractive woman at the counter. “I can still make that call. They called me again, ya know.”

  “Todd. I—”

  “I know you don’t want to go that way, but damn, man.”

  “We could sell direct. Direct to customer. Online.”

  “Been over it a thousand times, cut it up a thousand different ways. Too expensive and we simply ain’t got it.”

  “We can figure it out.”

  “Really? You want to take on mastering a new skill set on top of everything else?”

  Davis sucks in a deep breath. He feels the walls caving in on him, again. The same old feelings of failure creeping in. Feelings of knowing you’re good enough to get to a certain point, of getting close to success, touching the outer edges of it, but ultimately not being able to get there. Davis knows them well. As if he’s standing at the ropes of an exclusive club watching seemingly everyone else get in, but not being allowed inside himself. The crushing thoughts of letting everyone in his entire world down enter into his mind as well. They come into play slowly, but they’re here now.

  Numbers roll through his head. Red, negative numbers printed on insufficient funds notices. Credit card statements. Words like DECLINE. Calls from phone reps spitting out words like DISCONNECT and DELINQUENT. Words like NO and SORRY. Phrases from friends and family like AT LEAST YOU TRIED and YOU’RE TALENTED, YOU’LL GET ’EM NEXT TIME.

  “I’ve got two meetings today,” Todd says. “There’s another one I can’t get to. They have to meet today or they’re out.”

  “I’ll take it.”