Painless by Derek Ciccone Read Free Book Online Page B

the freckles around her nose, and made her look even younger than her twenty-five years.
    “Expecting someone else?” she asked in a calm, but accusatory voice.
    “You ever hear of breaking and entering?”
    “I heard noises in here last night and I was concerned about your safety. And by the way, you’re living on my property.”
    “Where is…”
    “That bimbo you brought here last night? She left fifty bucks for you on the dresser. I would’ve thought you could get more.”
    “Perhaps you should try it sometime. Maybe you’d loosen up a little. Get rid of those frown marks on your face.”
    She forced a condescending laugh. “Oh, so did last night cure your pain, Mr. Happy?”
    “You’re a pain in my ass, so no. Where’s Kaylee?”
    “We came to an agreement. She would get off my property and I wouldn’t tell her father she was boinking our pool boy. That might get her suspended from his payroll. It was amazing how fast she ran out of here.”
    Billy stood in all his glory. He purposefully took his sweet time in putting on a pair of shorts, simply because he knew it would annoy Beth. So far, he hadn’t found that to be much of a challenge. “I don’t remember anything in our agreement about me turning into a monk. Nobody held a gun to your head to let me live here.”
    Beth reached down and picked up one of the many empty beer bottles littering the loft. She had her pick of many. She remained calm, which worried him. “I don’t know the exact source of your pain, but I can guarantee you the answer is not in the bottom of one of these bottles.”
    “I’m a writer, I like an occasional cocktail. So what? So did Fitzgerald and Hemingway.”
    “One who drank himself insane and the other put a gun into his mouth and turned himself into a dead writer.” She sighed deeply and said to nobody in particular, “I can’t believe I allowed this suicidal man around my daughter. God help me.”
    Billy’s job for the Shoreline Times didn’t begin until Monday, but he felt he was onto something and put his reporter hat on. “Sounds like you’re talking from experience. What pain were you trying to numb with the bottle, Beth?
    Beth’s face bristled, her calm suddenly swept out to sea. “This is not about me. This is about you and your self-destructive behavior, and how it affects my daughter.”
    “If it was about being abandoned by your family, I hope you’ve figured out by now that it’s not worth it. Just because your family messed you up, doesn’t mean you’re to blame because Carolyn got kicked out of school. I happen to be an expert on shitty families—birth and married into.”
    “My daughter is a sick little girl. Not only does she have constant fevers that the doctors can’t diagnose, but now she’s displaying mental instability and harming herself.”
    “Mental instability? C’mon, Beth, the only thing you should be blaming yourself for is what a great kid she is. She pulled a practical joke—she’s a kid—don’t go handing down your straightjacket just yet.”
    Beth stood, frozen like a statue. Just like Carolyn did when she didn’t want to deal with something—a handed down trait.
    “And as far as the fevers, I’m sure there are plenty of parents with a truly sick kid who would love to have a child as healthy as Carolyn. Chuck told me he can’t even remember her getting a stomachache, and she didn’t even cry or complain when she cut her eye.”
    Beth let down her guard. “I drank when I was pregnant with her. Are you happy?”
    “So?”
    “Haven’t you ever seen the studies about what that can do to your child?”
    “Everybody’s different. My great-grandfather smoked three packs a day his whole life and lived to be ninety-six. I went to high school with a guy who was a world class triathlete who never ate a cheeseburger, and he dropped dead of a heart attack at twenty-six.”
    Beth wasn’t listening. “I shouldn’t have. Chuck was always on the road playing hockey