Fool That I Am Page 2

  Billie rushed to assure him, “They’re great, Dad. Everybody is just fine. I was just going to ask a quick question.” Already knowing the answer, Billie continued, “Did you pay some money on my cell phone bill the other day?”

  Confusion clouded his voice as he replied, “No, I sure didn’t, but I can go do it today. How much do you need?”

  Her heart warmed even as frustration bloomed in her chest. “I don’t need any money, Dad, I swear. We’ve got everything we need and all the bills are paid,” she fibbed guiltily. “Besides, Mom just took the kids on a huge shopping spree for winter clothes, so you’ve already helped out enough. Sorry to cut this short, but my lunch break is almost over. Love you, Daddy!” She purposely hurried him off the phone before he could start another lecture on letting them give her some money.

  Resignedly, George responded, “Ok, baby. I love you, too. Call me if you need anything.”

  As soon as she ended the call, she was furiously sending a text to Sam: I need to talk to you tonight. You can come over for dinner or just swing by any time, if you’re free.

  She drummed her fingers impatiently while she waited for the reply. It wasn’t long in coming, either. Less than a minute later, her phone pinged with a response: Sounds ominous. What’s for dinner?

  She couldn’t help the silly smile that tipped up her cheeks as she replied: Fish sticks, mac and cheese, and bagged salad. Gourmet fare.

  Seconds later, he replied with a short confirmation: My fave. I’ll be there at 6.

  A voice broke into her reverie. “Uh, oh. She got that goofy look on her face again, you guys. She must be texting that hunky Sam again,” one of her coworkers, Connie Vasquez, called across the room.

  “Cállate, Consuela,” Billie chastised the nurse with mock severity as the other nurses laughed good-naturedly.

  Connie, a lovely 28-year old Hispanic woman with a noticeable accent, pursed her lips and cocked her hip as she surveyed Billie who was blushing furiously. “Mmmm, I am regretting my decision to teach you Spanish, chica. When are you going to quit dancing around that man and screw his brains out?”

  “Yeah, Billie! If you don’t make a move soon, some other bitch is going to come along and snatch him up. I know if I wasn’t already married and sixty pounds overweight, I would be all over him like white on rice,” another nurse named Jessica chimed in as she waited impatiently for her frozen meal to cook in the microwave.

  Billie forced a laugh and tried to deflect their comments. “I really don’t think it’s appropriate for nurses who wear Dora the Explorer and Transformers scrubs to be using that kind of language.”

  Another nurse named Irene Jansen, a salt-and-pepper-haired, fit and attractive lady of 61 years, gracefully slid her body in the chair across the table from Billie and said, “Believe me, honey, we’ve all heard worse from the kids that troop in and out of these exam rooms. Just today, I had a 12-year-old boy tell me to go ‘fuck myself’ when I told him he had to get a booster shot before sixth grade. Yesterday, a two year old girl kept screaming ‘Shit! Shit!’ over and over again while we tried to waterpik the wax buildup out of her ears.”

  Billie had to concede their point. She had been shocked at some of the things she had seen and heard over the last three years while working in the office of the pediatric practice in Radcliff. Having never worked in the medical field before, she had been in for a rude awakening during the first six months of her employment. Even though she still performed the same basic functions as she had for the real estate office such as filing, answering phones, scheduling, and computer work, it was still vastly different when working with anxious mothers and sick children.

  The staff of the office had quickly become her closest friends and allies. They were a diverse group of women of all ages, sizes, backgrounds, and ethnicities, but they were all funny, patient, caring, and irreverent by turns and took great delight in nosing their way into Billie’s life. There were two doctors in this practice and the nurses took turns rotating from one doctor to the other so they got to know all the patients and each doctor’s preferences. Dr. Gupta, a middle-aged Indian man with a very thick accent, was charmingly funny and liked to make the kids laugh with his over-the-top mispronunciations and purposeful mixing of metaphors. He was also good to the nurses and staff without ever crossing any professional boundaries. Dr. Williams, however, was a different matter. She was professional, no doubt, but her demeanor was clipped and, at times, impatient with both the staff and the children. It still puzzled Billie why a 42-year-old woman with no children or apparent love for them would go into pediatrics. Behind her back, the nurses called her “Popsicle” because of her tall, slender frame and icy demeanor. Needless to say, Billie took her kids to see Dr. Gupta when they were sick.

  “Don’t try to change the subject, Billie,” Connie warned her, pronouncing her name BEE-lee. “I don’t care what you say, if that hunky man is paying your bills and finding excuses to come to your house, he is not just your friend. He wants to get into your panties and is just waiting for you to give him the green light.”

  Before she could refute that statement, Shanay, the other office worker who was going to nursing school at night, threw her two cents in as she walked in the door. “I may be only twenty-one, but even I can see that he’s got it bad for you, girlfriend. I don’t understand the problem. He’s damn sexy, got a good job, and he’s good with your kids. What more do you want?”

  Billie took a deep sigh and reminded herself that these were her friends and they just wanted what was best for her. “We’ve been over this a thousand times, guys. It’s complicated and messy. He’s my ex-husband’s best friend! He has never once, in all our years of friendship, indicated he was interested in any other kind of relationship with me. End of story. Let’s move on.”

  Taking a large bite of her Hot Pocket, Jessica still managed to ask, “Fine. No more Sam talk for now. Besides, we got bigger fish to fry. I just want to know one thing…we going out this Friday night or what?”

  “Count me out. I got a big project due next Monday, so I’ll be working on it all weekend with my study group,” Shanay volunteered mournfully.

  Irene, always up for a good time if it involved beer, chimed in, “Well, you can count me in as long as I’m not the DD. I don’t have the grandkids this weekend, so I am ready to have some fun.”

  “You are always ready to have some fun, abuela,” Connie laughed. “I am sooo ready to do some dancing. Maybe I will land me another handsome soldier to buy my drinks, sí?” she teased as she sashayed across the floor to retrieve her plasticware of leftovers from the fridge.

  Jessica, a round-faced, round-bodied woman of 35 with long, red corkscrew curls and freckles, clapped her hands excitedly. “Yes! I have been looking forward to another girls’ night out! Billie, will you be DD again?”

  Billie nodded eagerly as she replied, “Of course! Chad has the kids this weekend, so I’m free. You know I’m always up for some karaoke.” Billie wasn’t averse to drinking, but she knew that if she was the designated driver, all her non-alcoholic drinks would be free for the night.

  “If I was as good a singer as you are, honey, I would love karaoke, too. I still say you should try out for one of them reality shows they have on TV. With your voice and your body, you would win hands down,” Irene said around a mouth full of Ramen noodles.

  Uncomfortable with compliments, Billie awkwardly shrugged before replying, “Who wants the burden of being famous? I wouldn’t say no to the money, mind you, but all that attention from everyone is just frightening.”

  Shanay, unpacking her leftover sushi, raised one plucked eyebrow and said, “I’ve seen you up on that stage, girl. Once you have a microphone in your hand, you quit worrying about being scared and the fact that you have the attention of everyone in the room.”

  “Yeah, she gets up there and becomes all ‘Sasha Fierce’ and owns that shit,” Connie chimed in around a mouthful of arroz con pollo. “But once she steps off that stage, she g
oes back to her shy and mousy little self.”

  Irene looked over the top of her glasses at Billie and added, “Honey, if I was your age again and looked half as good as you do, I would own the world. All you gotta do is have confidence. Forget fear, forget that men believe they rule the world. We’re the ones with the vagina, honey. We freaking own the world and don’t you ever forget it.”

  Billie laughed out loud as the whole break room erupted into raucous cheers and more ribald comments. She loved each and every one of her coworkers and knew that they all had her best interests at heart. She had never had sisters growing up, but she imagined that the relationship she had with these four women wasn’t far off the mark.

  As Billie threw away her trash and headed back up to her desk, she thought about what Irene said about confidence and fear. It was so much easier said than done. Fear ruled her life and confidence was hard to come by after years of marriage to a man that systematically tore her down. But they were right about one thing: all of that disappeared when she was on the stage. There was some kind of magic that happened whenever the lights were on her, the music filled her ears, and she began to sing. It was the one secret pride she held close. She was a damn good singer and that was the one thing that Chad could never take away from her.

  CHAPTER THREE

  That evening, Billie put on her Super Mom cape and leaped into action. After picking up Derrick from the afterschool program and Lola from daycare, she rushed home to begin the mad dash toward bedtime. Thankfully, Derrick always got his homework done during the program, so he was able to assist her by picking up the TV room, bringing in the trashcans from the end of the driveway, getting the mail, and meeting Lola’s insistent demands for apple juice. Meanwhile, Billie changed out of her Snoopy scrubs and into a fitted pair of jeans and a Betty Boop tee shirt and pulled her hair back into a sloppy half-bun/half-ponytail.

  In short order, she was busy putting a load of laundry into the washer, pulling out the clean towels from the dryer and folding them, loading the dishwasher, flipping through the mail to weed out the junk, and asking a million questions about Derrick’s day while Lola sang a song at the top of her lungs. By the time 5:30 rolled around, she was thoroughly exhausted, but still mustered the energy to start fixing dinner.

  Billie found out the hard way that the more effort she put into dinner, the less the kids would eat it. Therefore, dinner was usually simple fare that kids enjoyed such as tonight’s menu. The silver lining to having kid-friendly dinners was that it was faster and easier to fix and Billie usually didn’t eat as much of it since she was sick of most of it by now.

  By 6 pm, the fish sticks were in the oven, the mac and cheese was done, and a large bowl of salad was sitting on the table along with the ranch dressing and a basket of toasted Hawaiian rolls. Haute cuisine it was not, but it was affordable and decently nutritious. Billie’s nerves were shot as she buzzed around adding glasses of sweet tea for her, Sam, and Derrick and refilling Lola’s sippy cup with more watered-down apple juice. While she was always happy to see Sam, she was not looking forward to her showdown with him about money.

  Finally, a booming knock of “shave and a haircut” landed on the front door sending Lola screaming down the hallway with shouts of “Uncle Sam! Uncle Sam is here!” Derrick, who was too old for such displays, played it cool by casually leaning in the kitchen doorframe so he could see Sam when he came in the door.

  Billie’s stomach fluttered in pleasure when a deep, cheerful voice carried through the house. “There’s the most beautiful girl in the world! Come here and let me steal some of that sugar behind your ear!” Girlish giggling and high-pitched squeals soon followed as Sam scooped the little girl up into his arms and pretended to chomp on her neck with playful “nom, nom, nom” sounds. Finishing up his routine, he hefted Lola into the air like a heavyweight dumbbell and bench-pressed her toward the ceiling while she counted out the reps to ten. When he was done, he deposited her back to the floor where she staggered away drunkenly while giggling like mad. Apparently, he has that effect on girls of all ages, thought Billie sardonically.

  Next, it was Derrick’s turn to greet Sam and he tried so hard not to be too obvious, but Billie could read the eagerness for Sam’s attention in the set of Derrick’s shoulders and the large grin that split across his face. Sam pulled the slender boy into a brief one-armed hug and ruffled his hair lightly.

  “I heard you’re out of reading material again, dude,” Sam told the smiling boy while pulling a small card out of his wallet. “Here’s a gift card to Amazon to download some new books to your Kindle, but there’s a catch,” he warned as he snatched it back from Derrick’s grasping fingers.

  Pushing his gold wire-framed glasses back up his nose, Derrick smiled brightly and replied, “You name it, Sam! I’ll do it!”

  “I’ll hold you to that, man. Now that it’s November, the gutters on this house are getting full of leaves and other nasty stuff. You’re going to help me climb the ladder and clean all the gutters on the house and rake leaves the next weekend you’re home. Is it a deal?” Sam asked with an arched black eyebrow.

  “You bet! Can I have the card right now or do I have to wait?” Derrick asked him covetously, his eyes trained on the little black plastic card.

  With a loud laugh and heavy clap on the back, Sam handed the card to the excited boy and replied, “You can have it now, but you have to wait until your mom says you can use it, okay? We all know who the boss is around here, and it ain’t me.”

  Feeling cranky at this latest gesture of monetary gifts, Billie muttered, “Let’s just hope you remember that later.”

  As Derrick ran back to his room to hide his precious card and Lola chased after him to see where he would hide it, Sam turned to Billie with his hands up in defensive mode. “It’s only for $25, B.J. Don’t get your panties in a wad.”

  Billie fixed him with her sternest glare, but that didn’t deter her friend from enveloping her in a bear hug that made her squeak when he picked her up off the floor for a second before placing her feet back on the cracked linoleum.

  “Let me go, you big oaf!” Billie laughed, even though she didn’t really mean it. Every time his arms wrapped around her, she took a split second to breathe deep of his scent of fresh air and Polo Black and catalogue the sensation of his arms like steel bands around her and the feeling of his muscled chest pressing tight against her breasts. Later that night, when she was tucked into bed, she would take those memories out and relive them over and over again as she imagined a different outcome.

  Taking a much-needed step away from Sam’s overwhelming presence, she made herself busy by pulling out plates, ketchup, and tartar sauce while he sprawled in one of the mismatched chairs at the table. Billie darted glances at him while he took a deep drink of his sweet tea. At well over 6’3”, Sam Garrett was the quintessential ex-football player with a large body of muscles that were kept in peak condition by his job as a Field Superintendent for a profitable construction company in Elizabethtown. When he wasn’t actively supervising his crew, he was on the project with his guys by helping to lift, carry, climb, or any other task that would help them meet their deadline. His hair was as black and shiny as a raven’s wing, and usually longer than it should be since he never took the time to keep it trimmed. Since his Momma was a hairdresser, she usually was able to guilt him into her chair about once a month.

  His eyes, though, were her Achilles’ heel. Like falling into the ocean on a sunny day, his eyes ranged from robin’s egg blue, then to teal, and finally, deepening to sapphire on the rims and they were framed by deep laugh lines honestly earned over years due to good humor and easy laughter. His face was tanned from days spent in the sun and a dusting of 5 o’clock shadow wreathed his high cheekbones, plump lips, and strong chin. She could tell he showered before he came over because his hair was still damp and he was wearing artfully ripped jeans, a red plaid shirt, and his construction boots. He was utterly delicious and Billie bit her tongue before she
could tell him so.

  Placing her hand on her hip, she pointed her blunt-tipped finger at him. “That right there is the exact reason you’re here tonight,” she started, knowing he understood she was referring to the gift card. “We’re going to have a serious discussion about money and boundaries, right after dinner.”

  “Cut me some slack, woman. I came here to visit my good friend and my favorite godchildren, not for a lecture. Now be a good serving wench and bring me a hot plate of dinner,” Sam demanded with a broad grin.

  Billie rolled her eyes good-naturedly and bent over to pull the cookie sheet full of fish sticks out of the oven. Secretly, she hoped Sam was checking out her behind, because she knew that it looked really good in these jeans. “You better not let Renata hear you talk like that. From the few times I met her, she seemed very liberal and outspoken.” She had also seemed very beautiful and materialistic, but Billie would never point that out to Sam for fear that it was her jealousy speaking.

  Running his hand absently through his hair, he replied, “Well, that won’t be an issue anymore. We broke up a week ago.”

  She tried to keep her heart from rejoicing, because no matter how she felt about him, he deserved to find a good woman who would love him, treat him right, and give him children of his own. Sam was a special man with a big heart and he would make some woman very happy…in bed and out.

  “Oh, no!” Billie exclaimed half-heartedly. “What happened? I thought you two were really hitting it off.” She kept her back turned to plate up the fish sticks and to guard her expression from his eagle eyes.

  A dark chuckle floated across the kitchen to tickle her ear. “Come off it, Beej. You couldn’t stand Renata and you know it. I saw the look on your face when she went off on one of her tangents about how men try to suppress women in the workplace and how they just want women to stay at home and have babies.”