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Gary arrived at the Donovan residence within twenty minutes after speaking with BJ on the phone. The house was ablaze with light.
BJ must’ve been watching at the window. She swung the door open before he unbuckled his seatbelt. He walked fast, all the way into the foyer. No sooner had she closed the door than she fell into his arms. She didn’t cry this time, only trembled nonstop.
He wrapped his arms tighter around her, held her close. Lightly rested his chin on top of her head, breathed in the flowery scent of her shampoo. “Where’s your husband?” Only then did it dawn on him that the guy was flat-out never home.
“He’s in Bigfork, Montana.” She gently withdrew from his embrace. “I changed my mind about calling him.” Turned to walk away. “I printed the email. It’s in the kitchen.”
Gary followed her. He read the note. BJ opened a bottle of tequila. He placed the sheet of paper on the table. Accepted one of two glasses in her hands.
“Don’t you have anyone you can stay with until your husband comes home?”
She looked at him. About to ask why the hell should she do that, she cocked her head, moved into character mode. “No. As you can see,” she angrily sliced the air with her hand, “I’m pretty much alone.” A brief pause. “I don’t have any family. And Cyndi Nortman, my one and only true friend, has problems of her own. She’s already moved back to Memphis.”
“Tennessee isn’t far away.”
BJ banged her glass down on the counter. “I can’t leave. I have a restaurant to run. Books to write. In case you and everybody else haven’t been paying attention, I have a goddamn life.”
Gary was taken aback.
So was BJ. Sometimes she confused Alma’s life with her own. “Uhm, besides, Rex sure as hell wouldn’t understand. I have no excuse. If I said I wanted to visit Cyndi, he’d insist on making me wait until he’s free to go with me. He’d never let me travel any great distance without him.” She debated how far to go on this pity trip. Enough to complete the chapter.
“Rex? Isn’t your husband’s name Frank?”
“Why yes, yes it is. It’s Frank. Did I just call him by my character’s name?”
Gary nodded.
“I guess I’ve spent too much time in my story, here lately. Anyway, Frank doesn’t know. About any of this. He’d have a fit if he did, and I, for one, couldn’t handle it. You can’t reason with an unreasonable person. He knows how to take things and turn them around on me. He hears what he wants to hear, filters out the rest. In other words, all he’d hear is that I have been flirting with guys on the internet. If you’re advertising, you must be selling, he’d say.”
“Surely you can tell him about this. It isn’t like you’ve actually done anything wrong. There are a lot of oddballs on the internet, and I can see how easy it’d be for one to latch on to somebody. It happens a lot, I’m sorry to say. Nobody really knows who, or what, they’re talking with in there.”
Give me a break. You don’t know anything about being on the internet. BJ’s patience had worn thin, but she kept up the pretense. “I understand what you’re saying, but since the person I’m talking with isn’t standing in front of me, I can at least get an impression of them by the words they use. I live in a world of words. They say more than you think.”
Gary scratched his forehead to hide his expression. “I’m worried about you. Professionally and personally.”
She felt her cheeks grow hot. She grabbed her glass. Drank thirstily. Poured another shot of the golden liquor. He thinks I am a complete and utter fool.
“BJ?”
Her bottom lip trembled.
“I am so sorry. I truly didn’t mean to make you feel bad. I care about you. Probably more than I have a right to. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
She looked down. “People can’t hurt you unless you let them.”
“Yes they can.” He gathered her in his arms. Tenderly kissed her forehead.
When he pressed his lips to hers, she tilted her head back in the crook of his arm and looked up at him. Teardrops disappeared in her hair. The need for genuine affection burned through her soul, but now was not the time nor the place.
Misunderstanding her reactions, he became embarrassed. He released her. “I’m sorry. Damn, I keep saying that, don’t I? I think it’s best if I leave, don’t you?”
She took him by the hand, led the way to the door. “We’ll... we can talk later.” She inched the door closer to him.
Gary involuntarily stepped behind the threshold. “Sure. Call me, any—”
BJ shut the door. Locked it.
“My god, I didn’t think he’d ever leave.”
She bounded up the stairs. Hit the button on the computer to turn it on. Dashed back down to the foyer. Peeked out the window. Made sure the detective was definitely gone.
In the study, she brought up her story. Wiped her face with her hands. Typed everything exactly the way it had just happened. BJ re-read the last sentence, the one about shutting the door in the cop’s face.
Where to go with the next chapter?
“I don’t mind making a storyboard, but I can’t see wasting time putting together a longass outline. I mostly write as I go.”
Hmm.
She held down the backspace key and removed the ending of the chapter. Began again.
––––––––
Alma gave Boutin another shot of tequila. She took him by the hand, led the way to the living room. They spent the better part of the next hour getting to know one another.