“I’m gonna come,” he whispered, all husky in her ear.
“Okay. Great,” she said, voice deadpan.
And he did and she didn’t and as his body clenched and spasmed on top of her, people started returning her text messages. The obnoxious sound of a horn honking burst in the room and out of breath, Brady giggled. But the laughter got sucked right back down his throat when he propped himself up on his elbows and saw Keisha sitting their, nonchalant and uninterested.
She’d made her point, and she didn’t think he’d ever want to be back.
“What the hell do you call that?” he said. He shook his head.
“Don’t act like you didn’t get what you wanted,” she said. It came off colder than she wanted, but sometimes you couldn’t control your words or your tone.
Brady blinked.
“I’m uh… I’m gonna go.” He stood up.
“Okay,” Keisha said and glanced back at her phone. “Sorry about your face.”
“Yeah...” He didn’t look at her.
He grabbed his clothes and left the room. After a long moment, the front door slammed shut. If he ever took the condom off, she never heard it.
Keisha didn’t feel great about what she’d done, but she didn’t feel all that bad either. She’d given him what he came for, a little attention and something more. It wasn’t her fault that the board didn’t see a future between them, and who was she to get in the way of Conrad. One of these days he’d answer her and she’d find the guy that was more than just a one-night stand, but until then, she had to do everything to make sure all these adventures stopped after the first night. Anything else would only clog the path to her second and hopefully final true love.
She set an alarm for the morning on her phone and masturbated to the memory of Brady inside her. With the moment still vivid and her nerves still tingling, it didn’t take long before her body burst into orgasm and she drifted off to sleep.
3
Keisha woke shivering with a mild headache, but nothing a few ibuprofen and a coffee wouldn’t wash away. She’d fallen asleep on top of the sheets and the comforter never made it back onto the bed. Stumbling to the bathroom, she rubbed the sleep from her eyes and noted the tightness of several muscles. Sex always seemed to work out muscles you forgot you had.
Feeling better, she took her phone from the nightstand and scrolled through, no new messages, nothing important but the shrill of her alarm that she quickly shut off. She didn’t have any big plans for the day, but most weekends, if she didn’t force herself out of bed before ten she’d sleep the whole day away.
In the kitchen she put on a pot of coffee and replayed the events of last night through her head. With the 20/20 vision that sobriety often brings about, she felt a twinge of guilt at the cruelty she’d exercised on Brady during last night’s romp. But she also knew that in a week, a month or whatever, he’d be nothing more than a faded memory. Plus, if things went too well, some guys, especially the good ones had a tendency to get clingy. She didn’t mind a good guy, hoped to settle down with one actually, but that was up to the Ouija board. To Conrad.
She looked at the Ouija board on the coffee table. The alpha and omega for Brady and so many others. Keisha sipped black coffee, already feeling her hangover enter remission. She walked over to clean up after last night and put the board back in its box when a shock of anxiety pulsed through her. Something was missing. Conrad was missing. In a panic she searched under the tables and couch, under the cushions and behind it. Exasperated, she could only draw one conclusion. That weaselly little fuck Brady must have stolen him.
Fuck.
All that remained of Conrad had been in that bottle. Her last link to him in the spirit world.
“No. No. It can’t be…” Tears filled her eyes and her chest heaved with sobs as hysteria gripped hold. Slowly clarity bloomed in front of her as she took control of her breathing.
The ashes weren’t here. Brady had them. It’s not like they were in a dumpster somewhere or flushed down the toilet. She could get them back.
He looked too sad and disappointed to do something that mean last night, she thought. The last thing she wanted to do was see him again. She’d never faced a guy afterward. But it didn’t look like Brady left her much of a choice. Keisha had to track him down.
She pulled out her phone, then realized that she never got his number and never gave him hers. Shit, she didn’t even know his last name or where he worked or anything. Hysteria threatened again, but a glance at the board flooded her with hope. Some of Conrad’s ashes still littered the board like a rain of soot. Enough for him to help her through this.
Keisha got to her knees and picked up the planchette. She squeezed her eyes shut reciting the mantra “Please work, please work, please work” over and over in her mind.
“What was his last name?” she asked, her brain focused completely on the question.
The planchette came alive in her fingers and she opened her eyes. It started to move, spelling out “MacGregor.” Once it was out something clicked in her head. A notion like “You’ll know it when you see it” even if you can’t recall it from memory. Yes. That was it. Brady fucking MacGregor.
“Thank you, Conrad.” She ran to her room.
Drumming her fingers on the edge of her laptop as it booted up, excitement sizzled in her joints. A quick search online and there he was, all sunglasses and smiles in his profile picture.
Unfortunately he kept his page mostly private, but she garnered enough information to go on. From his pictures he seemed like an okay guy, maybe even a nice one, but that didn’t matter. Conrad ruled and she just wanted his ashes back. She found what she was looking for. He served and bartended at a place called the Ooga Booga downtown, not too far from her house.
After a shower and a shave, she tied her dark hair in a ponytail and put on some big, bug-eyed sunglasses. She slid a book in her purse and headed out of her apartment.
The early autumn air soothed her skin and tasted clean in her lungs. It was a refreshing change from the sweltering summer. So many great memories in the early autumn, she smiled and shook the ideas out of her head. A few bad ones too.
She walked along the streets weaving through people, their faces glued to their smartphones. Up ahead she saw the neon sign, a palm tree that read Ooga Booga just below it, somehow bright even in the afternoon sunlight. Keisha steadied herself and stepped through the door.
Ooga Booga looked like a great place, full of tiki torches and pineapples, and flip-flops, and not a big crowd on a Sunday afternoon. Though a few screens showed football, it wasn’t the kind of place people went to murder as many beers and chicken wings as humanly possible every Sunday from September to January. The luscious smells from the kitchen reminded her of the hunger in her stomach.
The lighting in the place wasn’t great and she had every intention of reading some of her book whether Brady showed up or not. In the corner she found a perfect spot, well lit but isolated enough to keep her incognito, unless he happened to be around.
She flipped through the menu and ordered a Bloody Mary, a water, and some kind of pineapple habanero chicken thing highly recommended by the server.
While she waited, she pulled out her paperpack, Darkness Tell Us, which was one of the few remaining books by Richard Laymon she hadn’t read. It even involved a Ouija board. Her waitress, Mariah, brought her a Bloody Mary, extra spicy and with a house twist, a massive pickle spear poking out the top.
Keisha didn’t remove her sunglasses while she read. Every now and then she poked her head up over the corner looking for fuckboy Brady. She finished her drink, ordered another and finished her entrée. It tasted as good as it looked. When she finished her second drink, she was so into the Laymon book that she ordered a third. When Mariah set it down, Keisha thanked her and checked her phone and saw that she’d been there almost an hour and a half. Mid afternoon leaned toward late afternoon and she decided to give it another half hour.
Her
patience paid off. At a little before five, fuckboy Brady MacGregor stepped up behind the bar.
4
She finished her chapter and her drink and motioned for her check. If she transferred her tab to the bar, Brady would get her tip instead of the waitress who’d been with her all afternoon. Keisha left a generous tip, and walked on slightly tipsy feet to prepare herself in the bathroom before she confronted him.
She felt somewhat nervous, somewhat ashamed, somewhat felt guilty, but mostly she was just plain pissed off that not only had he stolen from her, but he’d stolen something so important. Even giving him the benefit of the doubt that he didn’t know what was in the bottle, he knew the board was incredibly important to her. Stealing was stealing, and she didn’t like that at all. But emotions and motives didn’t really matter any more. She just wanted it back.
Keisha sidled up to the bar and took a vacant seat toward the end as far away from other customers as she could get. Down at the opposite end, Brady, with scabbed lip and all, smiled and nodded as he handed out a few draft beers to a few kids who barely looked of age. One of the patrons pointed to Brady’s chin and asked something Keisha couldn’t hear.
“Yeah, well, you should’ve seen the other guy.” Then, “I’ll be right back.”
He wiped his hands on a towel and walked toward her. She lowered her glasses. Halfway there his mouth twisted in surprise then he smirked.
“Well now,” he said. “This is unexpected. What are you doing here? And waiting so patiently too, not even checking your phone.”
“Spare me the drama.” Keisha rolled her eyes. “You took something that belongs to me and I want it back.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he said, hands up in mock surrender. A glint of arrogant defiance flashed across his grey eyes.
“You are fucking pathetic. I’ve heard about all these beta bitches that would leave behind glasses or jewelry or something in an attempt to force a guy to see them again, but I have never in my life heard of a guy stealing so he could see a girl again. That might actually be the most pitiful thing I’ve ever experienced.”
That wiped the smug expression from his face. All those Bloody Marys had both loosened and sharpened her tongue.
“Beta,” he said, and laughed to himself. “That’s harsh.”
“Yeah well…”
“You’re not wrong though. I guess you took something from me last night, my pride, my feelings, whatever, doesn’t matter, so I took something, something I knew was important, from you.”
“And that makes you a gigantic asshole.” Keisha resisted the urge to leap to her feet and scream at him.
“You’re right. I’m sorry,” he said.
Someone whistled down at the other end of the bar.
“Sorry, I gotta check on them. I’ll be right back. Here, on me,” he said and slid her a beer across the bar.
Keisha took a long gulp thinking about what he said, what she’d done to provoke him, and what she’d do next. His apologetic, defeated demeanor took a lot of the tension away, as did the beer and she drank half of it by the time he returned.
“Okay, this is a pretty busy time, I can’t really talk, but I’m really sorry and I want to fix this.”
“So give it back. It’s pretty simple.” She grinned at him, booze doing its work as her rage was coming out almost flirty.
“I will,” he said. “I have to work till about ten then maybe I can bring it over?”
“Okay,” she agreed. “Thank you. But don’t get any ideas, I just want it back.”
“I have no ulterior motive. I may have at the beginning, but you’re right. It’s pretty sad,” he said. “I shouldn’t have taken it and I’m sorry.”
“Good. And glad to see your face is recovering, it doesn’t look that bad.”
He looked puzzled, then winced as he smiled and felt the pain in his lip. She drained the rest of her drink and headed to her apartment wondering what exactly was going through his head, and her own for that matter. Once inside, the hair of the dog kicked in double time and she crashed on the couch, not waking until well after the sun went down.
5
Around 11:30, Keisha assumed that Brady was either full of shit or ended up working later than he thought. She took a quick shower, made herself a cup of tea, and snuggled into bed. She had just opened her book when three thuds pelted the front door.
Half of her wanted to ignore it, punish him for taking his sweet ass time, not to mention she felt so cozy, but the other, stronger half wanted those ashes back. She kicked off the covers, padded to the front door and swung it open.
“Whoa,” Brady said, “you look a lot better than I expected.”
“Don’t even try to charm me, Brady. I took quite a nap.”
“Can I come in?” he asked, sheepish.
“I thought you just came to right a wrong, you know, return what you stole from me.”
He looked away.
“I did,” he said. “But I was hoping to talk to you for a minute as well.”
“To try and win my affection once and for all? You guys are all the same.”
“No,” he said, meeting her eyes. “To try and find out what kind of person sprinkles weird shit on a Ouija board to find out if she should sleep with someone and then plays around on her phone while it happens.”
Keisha tried to keep the blush from showing on her face.
“Can you please just give it back to me?”
“I will,” he said. “I promise. Can I come in?”
She puffed out her cheeks and opened the door all the way. He entered and she closed it behind him. He went straight to the couch in her living room and sat, propped his feet up on the coffee table next to the board she’d not yet put away.
“Just make yourself at home,” Keisha said.
“I just worked all day, you got anything to drink?” he asked.
“I fucking hate you,” she said, but came back from the kitchen with two tumblers and a bottle of bourbon.
“Not playing around are we?”
“You said you had a hard day, and I’m just getting ready for bed. Seems like the perfect medicine for both of us,” she said and poured two fingers into each glass. She raised hers, “To returning stolen property.”
He flashed her his middle finger and they both took a healthy swig.
“So,” she said. “You stole it, tricked me into letting you back inside instead of just making you give it to me on the doorstep. Tell me what you want?”
“Straight to the point,” he said and pulled the prescription bottle from his pocket, sat it down next to the board. “What is this anyway? Pixie dust? Magic powder?”
“Something like that,” she said. “But not a what, a who.”
“What do you mean a who?”
She stared at him. He stared back blankly.
She cocked her head and nodded as a hint. Then, light went on in his eyes when he got it.
“Oh… oh shit,” he said. “That’s a… person?”
“It was, but he died. That’s all that’s left.”
“He?”
“His name was Conrad, and I really don’t like talking about it, and that’s all I have left of him and it’s really important to me and…”—she yawned—“it’s getting late and thanks from brining it by, but I think I’m ready to go to bed now.”
She reached for the bottle on the table and he grabbed her wrist, not hard enough to hurt her, but hard enough to show her that he was serious.
“What?” she asked.
“Talk to me, tell me what this is all about,” he said.
“I don’t even know you. I don’t owe you shit, man.”
“Yeah well, we got to know each other okay last night, not to mention this board and maybe this bottle popped me a good one right in the face.”
“I’d say things balanced out.”
“Why are you like this? When did you turn so cold? I thought we had fun last night?”
“We did.
” She looked away. “For a while, but then the board said it was going to be nothing more than a one night thing, so I did everything in my power to make sure you wouldn’t come back. Most guys want nothing to do with a girl who texts her friends while they’re fucking.”
He looked perplexed.
“I was here. Remember?” Brady gestured to his lip. “When I asked, albeit, crudely, if we should have sex, it gave such an excited yes, the thingy flew off the table and hit me in the mouth.”
“It did. Although it could’ve been anger at how you phrased the question,” she said. “But while you were gone, I asked him if this should go any farther than one night and it… he... said no.”
“And so you sabotaged our sex on purpose because a Ouija board told you that we should fuck, but I’m not the one?”
“I guess you could put it that way.”
He poured himself another two fingers and offered the bottle to her. Keisha shrugged and Brady topped her off.
“All right then. Let’s do this your way. Ask the board. If it says yes, you tell me and I give you your bottle. If it says no, I give you your bottle and leave right away. I won’t even try and get a kiss goodbye.
She rolled her eyes.
“Whatever,” she said. “He’s gonna say no.”
“We’ll see about that.”
“Don’t try and move it, that will only piss him off.”
“I would never,” Brady said.
“All right.” Keisha got to her knees, sat next to the board, and sipped her bourbon. He joined her, an excited grin lighting his face. He placed his hands on the planchette before she did. Then he looked at her. She swallowed hard, trying to hide the nerves in her stomach. With shaky hands Keisha touched the planchette.