As she got up and left my room on comically wobbly legs, my cum running down the inside of her thigh, I contemplated what just happened.
Even if this all went bad, it would be a nice point for my bucket list. Maybe I should do something similar with Claire and Danielle before I finally left, so they also knew exactly what they lost. Though, I thought Claire had probably already gotten what she wanted when she stayed the night with me.
Chapter 10
I made my way to the kitchen and got breakfast started. When I saw Ava make her way to the front door, I had to keep myself from teasing her about the way she walked. But then a thought struck me, and my mood switched from being amused to being more than a little concerned.
“Want me to give you a ride?” I asked her.
Yes, it was a four-hour ride there and back, if there was no traffic whatsoever, and I didn’t like her enough to offer something like this under normal circumstances. But I had absolutely no desire for her to die in a car crash because she couldn’t concentrate on the road! She blinked in surprise for a moment, but then gave me a big smile as she answered.
“No, but thank you! John will drive me back, he has to get there too.”
“John came back too?”
“He’s home.” she informed me in a casual tone. But when she saw my eyes narrow and my eyebrow rise, she quickly elaborated. “He had to clear something for work first.”
When she left the house, I didn’t hear a car door slam. I went outside to look for her and saw her walking in the direction of John’s house. How did she even get here without a car? It also wouldn’t make sense for her to drive to John’s, spend the night at his place, then walk over here at six in the morning to take a shower, and then walk back to hitch a ride to the hotel. What the hell was she up to!?
When I still couldn’t make sense of the situation after a minute, I simply decided that I didn’t care anymore. I was taking the day off from worrying about my family’s antics and trying to figure out their schemes.
The sex with Ava had me thoroughly relaxed and content with life, especially since there was no pain in my stomach despite how long and intense we went at it. I simply didn’t want to deal with anything at that moment. Who would have thought that, after drinking eased my anxiety only marginally, sex would work wonders on it.
Honoring my new resolve, I decided to simply eat my leftover pizza as breakfast. But when I made my way into the living room to drop on the sofa, someone had cleaned up my leftovers from last night. I checked the fridge but couldn’t find it in there either. Thinking Ava had already gone back to her old ways, I checked the trusty old trash can for my food, but only found the carton.
When I went up to my room, I noticed that someone had also cleaned up my empty beer bottles. But most confusing of all, someone had swiped my damn painkillers! The ibuprofen was still there, but the Zydol was just as untraceably gone as my pizza. It must have been Ava, since she was the only one I knew was home.
I pulled out my phone to ask her, but noticed four more calls from Claire I had missed last evening. That made me remember that I wanted Golden Boy to let me know about his attempt to call his bookie, so I decided to call her back.
“Tim? You alright?” I heard Aaron answer, sounding like I just woke him up.
“Aaron? Didn’t I call your wife’s phone?”
My anxiety suddenly came back with a vengeance, as my mind made up one worst-case scenario after the other to explain why Claire wouldn’t be able to answer her phone. The fact that Aaron was still at least half asleep when I called, and therefore shouldn’t be in any distress, didn’t even register with me until much later. Aaron not answering right away only fueled that fear until, after a few moments he finally spoke up.
“My Wife, whom I’d prefer to hear you call ‘your mother’, is in the shower after her morning workout.” he answered in a nauseatingly preceptive tone, that wasn’t lessened in any way by his chuckle.
“Well,” I countered, mocking his tone and chuckle, “your son ‘Tiny’, whom I’d have preferred to hear you call ‘Tim’ for the last few years, doesn’t give a rat’s ass about what you want anymore.”
“Son, we... ”
“Your daughter stole my painkillers.”
“ ... What!?”
“At least I think it was her, since she was here this morning. What’s with that anyway? I thought we agreed on you guys hiding out for a few days, and then she shows up to get her damn homework!?”
“What homewo... ” he stopped mid-word and thought for a moment. “Oh, yeah ... Well ... Her grades are important, you know? Last year before college and all that.”
He wasn’t a great actor. Ava had lied about coming back for ‘school stuff’, as she had first put it, and he was trying to cover for his little princess. She probably made that up when she panicked after she took my painkillers. Thankfully I didn’t necessarily need them anymore.
“Sure it is. Anyway, I missed a call from Claire yesterday, ‘cause I collapsed into bed after I came back from getting my stitches out. I was expecting one from your Golden Boy, though. What happened?”
“Oh, Logan tried to call them a few times, but couldn’t get a hold of them. Claire said you mentioned that would be a good thing?”
“Yeah. It means they’re ... they’re probably out of business. Make sure he tries again today. If nobody tries to reach him by tomorrow, it should be safe for you all to move over to Granny’s for the rest of the week.”
“Are you still not gonna join us?”
“No.” I answered. He seemed to expect more of an answer, though, because the only thing I heard for the next few seconds was his breathing.
“Why not!?” he finally asked.
“If they come looking for you, I’d rather know as soon as possible, so I can deter their search. If they come looking for me personally instead, I don’t need you to be in the way.”
“Son, if it’s not safe for us to be home, it’s not safe for you either. Why can’t you just joi... ”
“Because after the shit I’ve been through the last two days, the last damn thing I need while worrying about those guys coming after me, is to listen to you all happily fuck each other! Is that so hard to understand, Aaron!? Be a parent for once in your life and keep your remaining children away from the damn house! If those guys show up, I can’t deal with them and worry about your asses being around!”
Throughout my tirade, I was unable to keep my voice from rising. By the time I hung up on him like I did on Claire the day before, I was sure he was holding his phone a good foot away while still being able to understand everything I said.
The next three days were basically routine. I spent the morning going through my online courses, rapidly working through all the assignments the school had made available to me, then went to work for the afternoon. At work, however, I sat around half the time staring at the safe, thinking about what I was supposed to do with all that money. It was a hopeless task. It was a lot of money, sure, but nowhere near ‘start a new life’ kind of money. Especially since I had no means to spend it on anything more than an expensive TV or another junker car.
I finally realized why Bill didn’t want any of it. I couldn’t put it in the bank without legitimizing it first, but I also couldn’t just write made up invoices and pay them in cash, since it would only take a single phone call for the IRS to know they were crap. I couldn’t open an offshore account to funnel the money through a shell company and make the invoices more believable either, since I wasn’t eighteen yet and lacked the contacts to get the cash into those offshore accounts in the first place. And even if I could find someone to launder the money for me, without word of it reaching the people I stole it from, they would take at least a sixty percent cut for laundering it before I’d have to pay income taxes on what was left. Maybe I should just use it for all the regular shopping over the years.