Celia's Puppies (17 page)

“
I’m sorry,” Jacob said.
“Trevor’s a jerk and went on vacation with your
brother.”

“
Exactly,” Heather said.
“Well, my cousin came back early. He was upset and wouldn’t tell me
why. Of course, Trevor came home like nothing happened. Five days
later, Jill was sick. She had Chlamydia.”

“
Among other things,” Jill
said. “I was lucky I didn’t get AIDS.”

“
Or Herpes,” Sandy
said.

“
But, of course, Trevor
spent all their money, so she couldn’t pay for a doctor,” Heather
said. “We took care of the bill and helped her get better. Jill was
at my house when my cousin had a layover. He saw her and kind of
freaked out. He told me Trevor and his buddies spent their
vacations picking up women and buying hookers.”

“
I heard him tell her. He
didn’t want me to hear, but I heard it anyway,” Jill said. “I guess
I knew that’s what happened. I left Heather’s to confront
Trevor.”

“
The bitch-ass says…”
Tanesha started.

“
He said there was nothing
wrong with what he did. He was sure I did the same thing when he
was gone. Cat’s away and stuff like that,” Jill said. “I was
shocked. I mean I... I hadn’t. Not until… Well, you
know.”

“
He told Jill that he
wasn’t sick,” Sandy said. “She must have caught all those diseases
from someone here in Denver.”

“
Nothing’s ever Trevor’s
fault,” Jill said. She sighed. “I think things started to get
really bad then.”

“
They were bad from the
beginning,” Tanesha said.

“
I got really depressed. I
couldn’t leave him.”

“
Or didn’t. Too loyal,”
Sandy said.

“
But I DID make him use
condoms,” Jill said. “And I told him if he did it again, I would
leave him.”

“
Why are we talking about
this?” Jacob asked. “I want to know about Jill’s life but
...”

“
Because it’s all a part
of it,” Tanesha said. “This happened the year before. Well, of
course, there was that depression bullshit. Jill was depressed
because she was trapped by douche bag and he says...”

“
He told me that the birth
control pills were making me depressed,” Jill said. “I came home
from Pete’s one morning and he had an appointment scheduled with a
doctor. For me. Trevor did all the talking. I was depressed. He
said it was the birth control pills. So the doctor told me to stop
taking them and take these antidepressant pills.”

“
The doctor never even
asked Jill why she was depressed,” Heather said. “What did he care?
Just wrote the prescription, took her money and canceled her
prescription!”

“
I didn’t have the energy
to fight Trevor, and we were using condoms anyway. I took the
antidepressant pills and stopped taking the birth control pills. I
should have known that he...”

“
He did that to trick Jill
into getting pregnant,” Heather said. “He...”

“
Put a pin through all the
condoms so she’d get pregnant,” Sandy said.

“
That was like a month
before he...”

“
Left for a guys’ week
again,” Jill said. “This time, he didn’t tell me he was going until
the day he left. He said he ‘forgot’ I told him I would leave him
if he went on another trip. I had to go to work so I...”

“
She moved out. Well.”
Sandy and Jill shared a long look. “With our help, she moved
out.”

“
Sandy let me live with
her,” Jill said. “She had just moved into her condo. It has three
bedrooms. She said I could stay there as long as I wanted. But
mostly I just worked and laid in bed and cried. Those stupid pills
didn’t help. They made me impulsive AND depressed.”

“
We drank lots of hot
chocolate,” Heather said. “Tanesha and I moved in to be with Jill.
We were really worried she would kill herself or…
something.”

“
I was pretty messed up,”
Jill said. “I think that’s why I was so screwed up when he left. We
got through all of this, had Katy, then he leaves… ME... After
I...”

“
Moving on,” Tanesha said.
“Sandy has a client who works on the Simpson’s. There’s a huge mask
party for Mardi Gras in Santa Monica, California. Sandy got tickets
for all of us.”

“
My cousin got us real
plane tickets to LA,” Heather said. “Said it was to make up for the
Thailand thing.”

“
So we dragged Jill to
LA,” Sandy said.

“
Now it’s your turn,”
Tanesha said.

“
My turn?” Jacob asked. “I
don’t know anything about your trip to LA.”

“
You know a little,” Jill
said.

“
I’m still processing
that.” Jacob saw the stern looks on the women’s faces and
acquiesced. “I’d been out of college a year or so and mostly
finished with my college girlfriend. She thought I was haunted by
the stuff that happened here.”

“
Stuff?” Heather
asked.

“
My mother’s death. My
father’s infidelity. Owning half of a stupid company that had
nothing to do with me. My sister’s complete shut down. Mike’s
disappearance. Stuff.”

“
Oh, I thought you meant
girl stuff,” Heather said. “Because we heard you were quite the
ladies man in high school.”

“
I was
promiscuous.”

Figuring the best offense was silence, Jacob
stopped talking. He had no intention of going over his sexual
history with Jill’s friends.

“
How did you get to Santa
Monica?” Jill asked.

“
Lipson construction was
looking at a project in the Marina. Because out of state work is
outside of Lipson’s standard procedure, Dad needed everyone’s
approval. Val and I went to review the project. I hadn’t seen Val
in a while. She had tickets to the party. That’s why I wore the
jacket. It’s all I had with me. I went to spend time with Val. I
didn’t think it would be the best night of my life… well, up to
that point.”

Jill blushed through her big smile.

“
I flew in on a red-eye on
Friday then planned to leave Saturday night. Val convinced me to
change my reservation until Sunday. I was in the middle of a
complicated rehab in Maine so I couldn’t really be gone
long.”

“
And had a girlfriend,”
Sandy said.

“
Actually, we weren’t
seeing each other,” Jacob said. “In fact, she married a guy about a
month later. I wasn’t really on her relationship radar.”

“
But you were still
sleeping with her,” Heather said.

Jacob raised his eyebrows. He would never
get used to female information highway. How could Heather possibly
know he had ex-sex an hour before he left for LA? He kept his mouth
shut.

“
It was really you?” Jill
asked.

Jacob raised his shoulders and shook his
head. He couldn’t believe it either.

“
Jill wore a sheer tulle
nighty,” Sandy said. “It covered about half her butt. And
some...”

“
Incredibly hot five inch
white pumps,” Jacob said.

The women stared at him in silence. Even
though they knew he had to be the ‘button’ guy, his knowledge of
this tiny detail stunned them.

“
I made her mask out of
some tulle,” Sandy said.

“
Val made my mask out of a
black bandana. It covered the top of my face and head. You could
only see my eyes. May I?” Jacob took the jacket from Jill. He
pulled the two masks out of the inner pocket of the jacket. “I knew
the moment you entered the party. It was like a...”

“
Pulse that went through
me,” Jill finished his statement.

“
I’ve never seen Jill like
that. She walked across the room to you. You guys disappeared like
ten minutes later,” Sandy said. “I was worried but Jill texted me
to tell me she was all right.”

“
Actually, that was
Jacob,” Jill said. “You know I could never figure out how that
phone worked.”

“
So what happened?”
Tanesha said.

Jacob shrugged his shoulders. Jill
blushed.

“
Everything. Nothing. We
ate pancakes.”

“
Chocolate chip pancakes,”
he said.

“
We talked and laughed,”
Jill said.

“
We drank champagne and
played.”

“
Played?” Jill giggled.
“Yeah. Raspberries. Oh my God, I’ve never had anything like that.
And the lavender bubble bath. Wow.”

“
Oh fuck,” Jacob said.
Turning to look at Jill, he said, “You had the condoms. Remember, I
went out later to get more...”

“
More condoms!” Tanesha,
Heather and Sandy said in unison.

“
You had six or seven!”
Sandy said. “You joked about having one for every guy.”

“
We used them.”
Embarrassed, Jill shrugged. “But you’re right. I got them from the
apartment. They probably had...”

“
A hole in them,” Jacob
said. “Trevor’s sterile.”

“
WHAT?” Tanesha’s voice
resonated over the women.

“
I thought Miss Thing was
pregnant,” Heather said.

“
They just said that so
Val and I would give them the trust,” Jacob said. “Honey said they
have been doing fertility treatments. I guess Trevor had something
bad enough or long enough to make him sterile. That’s why we think
he wants Katy. He can’t have his own kids.”

“
You mean something like
Chlamydia?” Sandy asked. She laughed.

“
Actually, exactly
Chlamydia,” Jacob said.

The women laughed.

“
At least that’s what
Honey said. He denies ever having anything, but the doctor told
them that was why he was sterile.”

“
This is what I don’t
get,” Tanesha said. “You have this incredible night, but don’t
exchange names or phone numbers or anything.”

“
It’s what Jill wanted,”
Jacob said. “We wore our masks the whole time. She left before I
woke. I didn’t realize she took the button until I saw her in the
closet with the jacket.”

“
I didn’t have the space
inside me to… deal with a relationship.” Jill’s eyes filled with
tears. “It never occurred to me that...”

“
What happened, Jill? How
did you end up back with Trevor?” Jacob asked. “You were confident
that your marriage was over.”

Jill shrugged her shoulders.

“
She was… different. After
Santa Monica, Jill was strong and happy,” Sandy said.

“
Yeah, she was all about
ridding the Trevor from her life,” Heather said. “We
thought...”

“
I went to tell him that
it was over,” Jill said. “He cried and begged me. At least, one
more time of togetherness.”

Jill sighed. Tanesha sat on the arm of the
couch and put her arm around Jill.

“
I wanted him to let me
go,” Jill said. “I went back to Sandy’s but like two days later, I
started feeling sick in the mornings. We waited a week
but...”

“
Trevor hounded her,”
Heather said. “He waited outside the condo, outside work. He
followed her around begging her to come back. He noticed she was
sick to her stomach and told her about the holes in the condoms. He
bought the pregnancy test.”

“
Which as positive, of
course,” Tanesha said.

“
That’s where this whole
soul mate thing came from,” Sandy said. “He said only soul mates
can get pregnant like that. They were meant to be and she was meant
to have his baby. How could she leave? She was sure it was Trevor’s
baby. She went back to him for the baby. They got the tattoos right
after that.”

“
It never occurred to me
that you and I...” Jill’s sorrow was palpable. “We were so careful.
I don’t know what I would have done anyway.”

“
I am so sorry, Jill.
You’ve really suffered because of me,” Jacob said. “I need to make
this up to you.”

Looking around the loft, Jill said, “I think
you have.”

“
As soon at the tattoos
were done, he went back to his usual bullshit,” Tanesha said. “And
Jill was stuck. Then he walks out taking everything he valued – all
Jill’s money, her car, everything. So you bet you have some making
up to do.”

“
Yes ma’am,” Jacob
said.

“
Can we see the loft
first?” Heather asked.

Across the loft, a door opened. A burly
member of Alex Hargreaves’s team leaned in.

“
Mr. Marlowe?” he said.
“There’s a woman here who insists on speaking to you. She says
she’s your step-sister. We are on alert for a step-sister. This one
is Honey?”

Jacob nodded.

“
You can let her in.
Thanks.”

Jacob walked across the loft to meet Honey
as she flew in the door. They spoke back and forth for a moment.
Honey nodded. She asked Jacob a question and he laughed. She
smiled.

“
Tonight?” Honey
asked.

“
See you later,” Jacob
said. “Can you put Honey on the guest list? She should be on there.
Thanks.”

Turning back to the sitting area, Jacob saw
that every woman had her hands on her hips.

“
What?”

“
What did SHE want?”
Tanesha said.