They know that he’s sick, which reminds me. “Hey, by the way, I heard from mom; dad’s going to be taking part in some medical trial that’s supposed to help.”
“What? And you’re now telling us this? This should’ve been the lead-in, not that airhead. We need to celebrate.”
“Not now, Chad. Can’t you see the captain’s trying to pull himself together?” Henderson gave him a look that had him piping down. Those two have the strangest damn relationship: the silver spoon-fed Bostonian and the Louisiana bayou Cajun giant. I think Henderson keeps Chad grounded since their first meeting when the latter almost got dunked on his head for being a douche. Damn, we’ve come a long way since then.
Three years of being together, and we’re more like family. Now it looks like I’ve thrown something else on their plates. I know they’ve been worried about me to some extent, even though they enjoyed the more relaxed party-going version of me, but Henderson has always been the one watching from the sidelines, not saying much, just biding his time.
I owe him for saving me that night along with Chad when Susie was up to her shit. “We’ll celebrate later once we know that it worked; for now, I need to take care of this thing with Susie; I should’ve taken care of this a long time ago.”
“Parker’s on the way.” Chad put away his phone and got up to go to the refrigerator.
“Damn, no beer, you’ve really gone dry, haven’t you? Oh well, it was fun while it lasted. So, once we find out that it was her who sent it, as we’re all sure it was, what then?”
“Then I annihilate her.” It’s one thing for her to come after me, but a whole other story when she goes after Lisa. Lisa’s too sweet to know how to deal with someone like her, and I don’t want her hurt again.
It’s going to take me a minute to forget the look on her face when I walked into that room tonight. She’d looked so small and defenseless with pain in her eyes and tears still drying on her cheeks. It says a lot about my growing feelings for her that this thing had taken over my thoughts when I should indeed be celebrating the fact that there might be a way to save my dad.
Not that I’m not excited about that, because I am. I’m just in that place of holding my breath and not wanting to get my hopes up, so this whole Susie thing is just the kind of distraction I need to keep my mind off things. Once Parker works his magic, and I know for sure that it was her behind this, I’m going scorched earth on her stupid ass.
I hadn’t even called my baby to say goodnight. I guess I’m still a little salty about her thinking the worst, but I’ll get over it. Tonight was indeed supposed to be a celebration. I wanted to celebrate with her, something else Susie had destroyed, but no bother, I’ll make it up to Lisa sometime.
Right now, I was too angry to think straight, and doing my best not to go overboard with my anger. The last thing I want the pampered beauty to think is that I’m a Neanderthal, which, truth be known, is exactly what I am. I don’t want any of that filth to touch her because, for me, she was sent to smooth out the rough edges, to help me get back on track, back to the way things used to be when I had my head on straight.
Screw it! It was way past her bedtime, but I still sent her a text because, knowing her, she’s probably still up worrying about things. Though I’d usually call her, there’s no way I’m doing that in front of this bunch. I tend to go into lover mode during our nightly goodnight talks, and the last thing I need is Steve in my shit; he’d rag me to death with it.
There was a knock on the door, and Parker’s impatient ass called out to be let in. Showtime!
LISA
After my talk with dad, I still didn’t fall asleep right away, but this time it was for a whole different reason. I was angry. Anger is such a new emotion for me that I had no idea what to do with it. Not that I’d never been angry or hadn’t felt it before, but I’d never been allowed to hold onto it for too long.
I was always made to think that it was wasted energy, and my favorite of all, I had no reason for anger along with a whole list of other things because I came from a wealthy family and had no worries; worrying was for the less fortunate of the world.