Page 15 of Peaches

Who the hell is named that way, any ways?

Brett Beckett, I hear my head repeat in a mocking kindergartener’s voice as I roll my eyes and continue down the hallway towards the elevator. Stomping, mind you. Like a bratty three-year-old who didn’t get her way.Classy, Grace! Real refined of you.Hate surges inside me with each angry step I take.

Who gives their son a first name that starts with the same letter in their last name?

Weirdos! That’s who!

Weirdos that think they own the world because it does something stupid like, make them more powerful, or some stupid shit!

I don’t know, and what’s more, I don’t care as I push the button to the elevator and actually breathe a sigh of relief knowing that I now don’t have to struggle to force out the words I don’t seem to have in me and finish a manuscript I was hours ago feeling like I didn’t have the brain cells to write. God, I welcome the much-needed release as I sigh and think of more important things to do, like the fact that I can now take a trip home and check on… Archie!

Fucking hell!

And this is where I immediately feel like shit as a sickness starts in my toes and travels quickly through my whole body like someone just shot me full of morphine.

Archie.

My father left when we were both little. He couldn’t take it. He couldn’t take his son that is. But of course, we weren’t denied the occasional fucked-up greeting throughout the years. Honestly, it was disturbing the way his path magically collided with ours so he could remind us just how insignificant we were in life. After all, Presley boys were the pride of the county. Had been since the 1920s, or hell earlier if you look back far enough. There wasn’t a sport they didn’t play. What’s more, there wasn’t a sport they didn’t play and excel at more than any other boy their age or older.

Presleys always had one child. A son to carry on the chauvinistic tradition. The fact that my mother got pregnant with twins, well there was no way he could make her get rid of me before I was born. Sad to say, but true as all hell. And I’ve accepted it over the years, at least, I think I have.

When Archie was diagnosed, I’ve been told its better we were so young and can’t remember the mayhem that followed. He left my mother with nothing. Not even her dignity as he spread rumors through town and made it difficult for her to even get a job to provide for his children.

“If they starve to death, it would be a blessing.”

My grandmother, my mother’s mom, told me he was quoted as saying when she went behind my mother’s back and begged him to at least send a little money home to help with life’s necessities when it was clear none of us had eaten in over a week.

Thinking of that, I pause, mid-button pushing at the elevator, and my mind wanders to Archie. To my mother. To something I could never see as a burden but feel the weight of knowing I’m grown, I’ve got it together, on most days, my latest outburst excluded, and they need me.

“Dammit,” I whisper under my breath as I turn around and look back down the hallway I just came from.

Maybe I shouldn’t kill him.

Not yet, at least.

Not until after I eat crow and grovel at his expensive Italian leather feet.

Do I really have to?

Fuck!

Yeah, I guess I really do!

“Uhhhgggggg,” I growl, as my eyes roll back in my head and I stomp my foot like a two-year-old. It’s amazing how I’ve decreased in age through this temper tantrum, isn’t it? “This is going to suck, and I know it. More than I know I’m willing to drop to my knees in front of him and suck his…”

Shut it down, Grace,I tell myself as I reluctantly start to make my way back down the hallway.Shut. It. Down.

Keep it business. Strictly business.

Don’t let him get to you and you’ll get what you need out of the arrangement. A nice amount of cash to see you through until you can find another publisher, and not the shoulder biting, back scratching, knee wobbling, toe-curling, mind-numbing sex your mind keeps lusting after like your only alternative career choice, a whore on Savannah’s street corner.

“Mr. Beckett,” my voice starts out as I reach the office door and lightly rattle my knuckles against the wood.

I snicker.

Wood.

God, my mind really is full of trash only capable of filling steamy contemporary romance novels, isn’t it? Maybe I won’t need that alternative job description after all.

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