Part 3:
The Mystery of Roy
Kara smiled back at the guy, brushing back the
long, dark whips of hair that had escaped from her ponytail. “Yes, I’m the one who found him. Are you interested in giving this little guy
a home?”
Nick laughed, raking a hand through his hair,
a nervous habit he’d picked up years ago.
“I wish I could, but I can’t.”
Kara’s mouth turned down in a disappointed
frown, as she stooped to give Toby a hello pat, Nick squatting down beside
her. Before she could say another word
to try and convince Blondie to give Toby a home, a voice behind her made her
stomach lurch.
“Long time no see.”
Standing up, Kara groaned.
A guy was standing there with a bushy, blonde
mustache, shoulder-length hair parted in the middle and feathered down the
sides, and way too tight jeans. Nick
looked up at him, thinking the guy looked like an extra from some low budget
70s horror movie.
“Hey there, Kara.” It was the stripper from the bachelorette
party. How the hell had he found her
here?
“Oh, hi.” Kara looked surprised and a little
embarrassed that the guy was talking to her, despite the fact that, to Nick,
they obviously seemed to know one another.
“I tried to call you this morning, but you
weren’t home. Your roommate said you
might be here. You forgot something last night.” Sticking out his hand, he twirled a pale
pink, lacey bra around his index finger.
“Jesus,” Nick said under his breath, laughing
into his hand.
“Oh my God.”
Kara grabbed at the bra, pulling it from his finger and hiding it behind
her back, while making a mental note to kill her roommate when she got home.
“I was wondering if maybe you wanted to get
together again sometime?” The guy cocked
his head and winked at her, making Nick laugh even harder. “Did you say something kid?” Shooting Nick an irritated glance, the guy
raised his eyebrows at him, waiting for a response.
“Nope, I was just clearing my throat. I had a little tickle in there.” Nick gave him a wide, innocent grin as he
went back to scratching Toby under the chin.
“So whadda you say?” The guy turned his attention back on Kara,
who was horrified by the whole exchange.
“Maybe this time I can buy you a little dinner before we do it?”
“Why don’t you just kill me now!” Kara
mumbled, feeling Nick’s gaze on her from where he was crouched on the ground
below.
“Hey there…”
She couldn’t even remember the guy’s name?
“Roy,” he jumped in, helping her out.
“Yes, Roy.
I knew that, I knew that. Anyway,
Roy, how about we just leave things the way they are for right now. You know, the mystery and all that. I wouldn’t want to tarnish what we had.”
Her sarcasm was lost on the dumbass as he
pointed a finger at her and gave her a cheesy wink. “You aren’t the first girl who has said that
to Roy, and you definitely won’t be the last, baby. All the girls love the
mystery of a one night stand with Roy.”
Backing up, he licked his lips and winked for about the twentieth time
in the short span of their conversation.
“You have my number if you ever want to give me call.”
Kara nodded at Roy. Nick nodded at Roy. Hell, even Toby nodded at Roy.
“I’ll see you around, baby.”
“I hope to hell not,” Kara muttered under her
breath, spinning on her heel and walking as far and as fast away from the
“Mystery of Roy” as she could get.
***
Nick gave Toby a final scratch under the chin
and stood up, following the girl who had stormed off in a huff.
Damn, that was the best laugh he had had in
months. When that guy pulled out her bra and twirled it around his finger, he
thought he would wet his pants. He
walked quickly to catch up to her as she weaved off towards a garbage can and
discreetly lifted the lid, dropping her bra inside.
“Hey what did you do that for?” Nick asked,
stopping when she spun around, a wicked look in her eyes. “No need to throw away a perfectly good bra.”
“Oh, quit following me!” she said, hands on
hips. “As if that wasn’t embarrassing enough without you following me around
reminding me of it!”
Nick put his hands up with a grin. “Hey, I’m
not the one who put on my tight, sexy jeans and twirled your bra around for
everybody to see! If you’re going to be
pissed, be pissed at The Mystery of Roy, not at me.”
Kara stood for a second, biting her bottom lip
to keep from laughing. But when she
looked up into the dancing, blue eyes of the dog lover, who was trying to keep
from laughing himself, she had to smile.
“You’re an idiot,” she said with a grin.
“That’s what everybody is always saying,” he
replied, his nose wrinkling slightly when he smiled. “And since I’ve seen your bra, you might as
well tell me your name.”
“I’m Kara,” she said, sticking out a hand.
“I’m Nick,” Nick answered back, grabbing her
hand and pumping it up and down in a light, friendly shake.
***
Nick and Kara walked along the tents side by
side, Kara munching on her apple.
“Do you want one?” she asked, pulling the extra apple from her
pocket. Nick nodded, holding out a hand
as she tossed the apple to him.
“I’ve never been much of a fruit fanatic,” he
said sinking his teeth into the ripe, red skin.
“It just always seems easier to get fast food.” In fact, he couldn’t remember the last time
he had even had any fruit. That was
unless you counted Fruity Pebbles in the morning drenched in chocolate milk as
a fruit?
“Wow, I can’t even imagine. When I was little, we lived with my
grandparents on their farm, so if it wasn’t fresh, it wasn’t allowed in the
house.”
“Yeah, well, when I was little, if it wasn’t
stale and or in the ninety-nine cent bin at the Quick Mart, it wasn’t allowed
in our house,” Nick said, rolling the apple over to start in on the other side.
“Ewwww, that’s icky.” Kara laughed.
A light, sweet laugh. The kind of
laugh Nick hadn’t heard in a long time.
Most of the girls he met laughed with loud, annoying cackles from too
much alcohol or too much sex or something in between.
“Hey, I
want to go and check out those pictures.”
Tugging on the hem of Nick’s shirt, Kara weaved across his path, walking
in the direction of one of the smaller tents that had a dozen or so watercolor
paintings on display.
“Hey Kara,” Nick began, as she paused in front
of a beautiful painting of a sunset. A
sunset almost identical to the one he had witnessed the night before.
“It’s wonderful, isn’t it?” she asked,
noticing Nick staring intensely at his memory brought to life on the canvas
before him.
He nodded silently, reaching out to touch the
incredible colors.
“Hey, were you going to say something?” Kara finished her apple, tossing the core
into a trashcan beside her.
“What?”
Nick looked up, his fingertips just short of connecting with the
swirling firestorm of oranges and pinks.
“A second ago you said, ‘Hey Kara.’”
Nick backed away from the painting, his hand
moving again to the comfort zone of his hair, tugging at the short tips as he
looked around.
“Well… I was going to ask if you really slept
with that guy cheesy guy? But I changed
my mind. I don’t want to ask now.”
“Too late, you already asked,” she said,
moving away from the watercolor tent.
“And if you must know if I really slept with Roy or not, the truth is, I
don’t know?”
“What do you mean, you don’t know? How can you not know if you slept with somebody?”
he asked as they continued walking along in tandem steps, bumping hips.
“Well, let’s see. Bachelorette party.” She put one hand out. “Lots of alcohol.” She put the other hand out, and then she put
both hands together. “Viola!’”
Nick winced.
“It’s just that… well… you don’t seem like that type of girl.” As he said the words, he let his eyes travel
over her, from head to toe. She had
beautiful, chestnut-colored hair and piercing green eyes. He liked the shape of her slightly up-turned
nose, smattered with light freckles, as well as her long, lean limbs, clad in a
modest blue-and-white-striped tank top and cut-off shorts.
Kara laughed, slugging Nick in the arm and
making him drop his apple
“I’m not that kind of girl!” At least she
didn’t think she was, but losing one’s parents did strange things to an
otherwise sane young woman.
“Hey, you made me drop my apple. You owe me another one!” he whined, turning
his mouth down in a frown that hadn’t even worked when he was three years old,
let alone twenty-three.
Stooping to retrieve it, Kara shoved him
playfully from behind. “Oh quit your
pouting, Blondie. There’s plenty more
where that came from,” she said, hooking her arm in his. “Follow me.”
Kara zipped quickly in and out of the crowd in
the direction of her grandparents’ fruit stand.
Once close to the stand, she ducked down behind the crowd of people
vying for the best positions to shout out their requests for the ripest
produce. Popping her head up once to
make sure that her grandparents and sister were busy filling the orders, she
grabbed hold of Nick’s hand and made her way between the two tents to where her
grandfather’s truck was parked.
Nick followed close on her heels, enjoying the
feeling that he was on some sort of Mission: Impossible, with the way Kara kept
swinging her head around to check over her shoulder. He wondered for an instant if they were going
to hotwire the old blue pickup truck and go for a joyride when Kara stopped
short, Nick bumping into the back of her with a dull thud.
Leaning over the tailgate of the truck, Kara
grabbed two apples, tossing them to Nick, and then she grabbed two more and
signaled him to follow her as she ran in the direction of a large, vacant field
to their right.
Once hidden by the tall grass, Kara stopped
running and tumbled to the ground, laughing as she sunk her teeth into one of
the apples in her hands. Nick rolled to
the ground beside her, gasping for breath.
“Did we just steal?” he asked, polishing the
apple on his t-shirt.
Kara kept laughing as she pointed at Nick a
wonderful twinkle in her eye. “You
should have seen your face!”
“What about my face?”
“You had this look on your face like if we got
caught taking some apples we were going to end up in jail!”
“Wait a minute.” Nick held the apple up, inspecting it from
all angles. “This is from your
grandparents’ farm. They sell fruit
here, don’t they?”
Kara nodded with a loud snort that made Nick
snort back.
And suddenly, he felt like he was eight again,
running and playing make believe with a childhood friend.
---
“Okay, Nicky, let’s play cops and
robbers. I’ll be the cop, and you be the
robber.” The little girl was as new as
he was in the neighborhood, so neither one of them had any friends.
“But I’m always the robber.” Nick sighed,
tugging on one of the little girl’s ponytails with a grin. They had formed a close bond in the two
months they had known each other. And together, they had done a pretty good job
of warding off the neighborhood bullies who liked to zero in on the new kids
and make their lives hell.
“But you’re a good robber, Nicky. You can run real fast like a good
robber.” She grinned at him poking her
tongue through the missing space of her two front teeth, a trick that always
made Nick laugh.
“Okay, okay you win. Let’s pretend that I stole some fruit from a
market and I happen to pass by you while I’m running from the guy who owns the
store?”
The little girl nodded, always in awe of
Nick’s crazy imagination.
---
There used to be a time when Nick could make
anybody believe anything if he really put his mind to it… even himself.
But a few months ago, that all changed.
“What are you thinking about?”
Shaken from his childhood, Nick turned to see
Kara staring at him with questioning eyes.
“Cops and robbers,” he said with a smile
***
