Carol Finch - Soul Mates

“Alice married Cody Phelps after he divorced Mandy Slater. You probably wouldn’t recognize Alice if you saw her. She was a late bloomer who turned out to be quite attractive.”

“Yeah? Well, I’d have to see it to believe it,” Nate said, and chuckled.

Before Katy could take Nate on a tour of the house, a sharp rap resounded on the back door. “Excuse me a moment.”

She scuttled off, quickly closing the door behind her. Curious, Nate tiptoed over to peek through the kitchen window. To his amazement, he saw a teenage boy standing at the bottom of the steps. The kid had his hands crammed in the front pockets of his baggy jeans. He wore his dingy baseball cap backward, pulled down low over his mop of unruly hair.

“Need lunch money, Chad?” Katy asked her visitor.

Nate watched the teenager nod, then shuffle his oversize feet. Nate’s heart twisted in his chest, knowing that he was staring at a younger version of himself. Chad’s clothes and self-cut hair indicated a shortage of funds.

“You know the deal, Chad,” Katy said. “No drugs, only food. Don’t let yourself be sucked into the pressure put on by the kids you hang around with. I know they are razzing you, but don’t give in to them. Promise me?”

Chad bobbed his shaggy head. “Yes, ma’am.”

Katy pulled a twenty dollar bill from the pocket of her jeans and handed it to the teenager. “I’ve requested funds from the city council to hire a janitor. If the funds are approved, the job is yours. It will give you an excuse not to get involved with those troublemakers who have befriended you.”

“It’s not easy to break loose from them when nobody else will accept me,” Chad grumbled sourly, then swiped a hand across his faded shirt. “I can’t dress well enough to be accepted by the ‘in’ crowd in town.”

“You can spiff up your wardrobe when you get the job,” Katy encouraged him.

“I can’t afford to buy duds fancy enough to make Tammy sit up and take notice,” Chad challenged.

Nate watched Katy bless the kid with a tender smile. “She notices now, Chad, but she is old-fashioned enough not to chase after boys, and she is just as self-conscious and unsure of how to approach you.”

“Yeah?” Chad asked hopefully.

“Uh-huh, so you’ll have to do the asking when it comes to dating.”

“Right, like I have pocket change for that,” Chad said, then scowled. “What am I supposed to do? Borrow the neighbor kid’s bicycle and ask Tammy out? Like, that would really impress her, wouldn’t it? Like, she’d leap at the chance to go out with a guy from the poor side of town to have a Coke date, because that’s all the cash I could scrape together to spend on her.”

Nate stepped away from the window and resumed his position by the door, so he wouldn’t get caught eavesdropping. Katy returned a couple of minutes later.

“Sorry for the interruption,” she said.

“No problem.”

When Katy limped upstairs, Nate followed in her wake. He appraised the grand old home, finding it as neat and tidy as he expected. It was a far cry from the disheveled, filthy shack where he’d grown up. His mother had never been around much. When she was, it was only to sleep off the most recent hangover. Nate had been responsible for all the handyman jobs he could manage and for tidying up the place. There was only so much you could do with a drafty old shanty that should have been condemned during the Dust Bowl days.

Nate wondered if the kid named Chad who came calling at the back door hailed from a similar background. Probably.

Nate halted abruptly at the door that was filled with Katy’s soft scent, then studied her bedroom. Vivid images leaped to mind; he wondered how the two of them would look cozied up in that priceless antique four-poster bed, improving on those intimate secrets they had shared in the back seat of his car.

Those stolen moments had been indelibly etched in Nate’s memory. Despite his bad reputation, his first experience with sex had been Katy’s first experience. He hadn’t known what the hell he was doing, only that his feelings for her demanded to be communicated physically, emotionally.

To this day Nate could still remember how sweetly and trustingly she had responded to him. And he wished with all his heart that he and Katy could have spent the past decade learning all the intimate ways of pleasuring each other. Instead, Katy had been used, abused and treated so abominably that she had lost faith in men, in herself.

The thought caused Nate to grind his teeth until he practically wore off the enamel. He clenched his fist, wishing he could retaliate against the men who had brought Katy such pain. Judge Bates and Brad Butler should consider themselves extremely fortunate they were dead, because Nate would have gladly reverted to his old habits and beat the living hell out of them.

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