Page 23 of Daddy's Little Librarian
“Don’t care. Not leaving.” Suddenly, his phone lit up now too and vibrated, buzzing against the counter. Picking it up, Kurt looked at the unfamiliar phone number.
From Scotti’s phone, Gopher’s voice dropped ominously. “I can make you go.”
“I’d love to see you try, Guinea.”
“Guinea?”
“Pig.”
“Bastard.” Gopher hung up the phone.
Switching phones, Kurt answered his. “Hello?”
“May I speak to Kurtis Doyle, please?” a man’s voice replied. For some reason, the voice sounded familiar, though at first Kurt couldn’t place it.
“Speaking,” he said cautiously.
“Mr. Doyle, I’m not sure if you remember me, my name is—”
Recognition hit like a sickening twist that went straight through his gut to his groin. “Emerson Davis,” he said along with the man on the other end of the phone. The district attorney who had called him a dirty cop and sent him to prison for two years, costing him everything, including his career, and all for something he hadn’t done. “What the fuck do you want?”
“I realize I’m not the person you probably want to hear from right now, but last night I received a visit from a young lady named Krissy Degrassi—”
“Now you listen to me,” Kurt interrupted, the twists in his gut erupting into temper so hot and volatile that for a moment all he wanted to do was slam his phone into the bottom of the sink. “Running into that girl yesterday was sheer fucking misfortune. I wasn’t following or stalking her, if that’s what she told you. I was applying for a god-damn job.”
“You’re not in any kind of trouble,” the DA calmly assured.
“Then I don’t have to tell you shit,” Kurt replied, and hung up the phone. He promptly blocked the number, because the way his temper felt right now, if Davis called back, he really would throw his phone and he simply could not afford a new one.
Setting his cell down instead of dropping or throwing it was a massive personal achievement. One he’d be proud of later, once he was done being pissed.
Hands braced against the counter, he closed his eyes and simply breathed. In… then out… until shaking his head, he let it go. He had more important things to do than dwell on Dana, Krissy, or the DA who had sided with her to ruin his life.
Swallowing past his anger, he shoved back off the counter and made himself finish what he was doing. His hands only shook a little as he piled a thick variety of turkey, chicken and baloney over half the bread, a stack of cheese and tomato slices over the other half, and mashed both sides together in a therapeutic show of emotion six times. Stuffing four away for later, he was much calmer when it came time to make breakfast and lunch for Scotti. Her sandwiches were peanut butter with strawberry jam. He cut the crusts off both, stuffed one set of ‘fries’ in a Ziploc baggy along with one sandwich, then took the other into the living room on a small plate. He set it on the dining table and, after adjusting his towel, sat down across from where Scotti was folding a basket of freshly dried laundry.
“So,” he said conversationally, taking a huge bite. “How’s the underwear coming?”
Her hands stopped folding. Her head still bowed and moving only her eyes, she looked at him. She bit her bottom lip.
Kurt sighed. “Let’s see them.”
Reluctantly, Scotti dug into the unfolded pile and slowly withdrew a pair of his undershorts, still stained bright pink from when she, in a moment of helpfulness, kidnaped his clothes while he was in the shower. He knew exactly what had done it, too. His red and white-striped cabin boy’s shirt was now red and pink-striped. His tights were pink, too. He could already hear the sensitive pirate and I-wanna-sing-and-dance jokes now.
In other words, his Tuesday had become Monday Part Two.
“I can’t get the color out of your tights and shirt either,” she admitted. She offered the smallest wince of a smile. “You know, a lot of guys wear pink these days.”
He just chewed his food. Mondays and Tuesdays, now there were two days of the week gunning for his personal destruction. To be brutally honest, he wasn’t holding his breath for a happy Wednesday either. He frowned at his pink shorts in her hands until she self-consciously tucked them back out of sight beneath the unfolded laundry pile.
“When do you have to be to work today?” he finally asked.
“Eight to noon on Tuesdays. When do you work?”
“Two to eight,” he said, unenthused. “Just not on the fry machine.” He could see his pink-striped shirt peeking out between the plastic mesh of the laundry basket. “Maybe they’ll have another uniform my size,” he said, although he didn’t have much hope. Things like that didn’t happen on Mondays, and he suspected the same would hold true for Monday Part Two.
“How are we going to do this?”
“We’re going to handle this by me accompanying you to your work where I can keep my eye on you, and then you are going to accompany me to my work, where I” —he sighed heavily— “am going to be the only thirty-two-year-old pirate on the payroll in pink tights, shirt and shorts. And, where I can also keep my eye on you. You might want to bring something to do.”
