Page 38 of Power Play

Me: Is that a joke?

Dillon: No, this damn town is overrun with cats. It’s a fucking cat paradise.

Me: Okay. Good to know. Thanks for reaching out.

Hmm. Calico Cove. Nick lived in Calico Cove. If I just showed up there, the guy would have a coronary.

Still, Tess would probably like Calico Cove. When I found out Nick was from there, I looked it up. Small town on the ocean. Sun, beaches, lobsters, ice cream. Seemed like a kid kind of place to me.

I went back out to the living room where Tess and Kit were playing chess. Of course, the one game I couldn’t remember the rules to was the game she wanted to play. Give me Monopoly or Life and I could crush it. But Chess? Come on.

“Check,” Kit said and Tess flapped her hands like a penguin in distress. It was so cute, I smiled. For the first time in what felt like days, I smiled. Not smiling went against my nature. It was a relief to do it again.

Kit chased Tess’s king around the board before finally trapping him in the corner. “Gotcha,” Kit said, and Tess, like a total champ, reached across the board and shook her hand.

“Good game,” Tess said.

“Very good game.” Kit said with a twinkle in her eye. Of course, when she looked up at me that twinkle vanished like it had never been there in the first place. “Well, I better get going,” Kit said and pushed herself to her feet.

“No,” Tess said. “Stay.”

Honest to God, the girl had real distress in her face and I was starting to feel like the big bad wolf in the story books. I told Janice this was a terrible idea. I was fucking up on day three.

As a rule, I went with my gut. And my gut was saying:do not leave me alone with this kid anymore. “Do you have to leave?”

Kit’s eyes opened wide like I was proposing we rob a bank. “Um. Yeah.”

“Where do you need to go that’s better than a pool party at Harrison’s house?” I asked her.

“Mike Harrison?” she asked, like she might be tempted by my star winger’s party. Weirdly, the interest in her voice made me…jealous? Like she was happy to see that guy, but I was medicine she had to take every week.

Because you’re a jerk to her, I reminded myself. Purposefully.

See? Everything was off kilter. I did not get jealous over Kit. No. I got angry. I got revenge.

“The one and only,” I said. “He’s got a great pool and he’s having a BBQ and we’re going.”

“A pool!” Kit said to Tess like she knew something I didn’t. “That will be fun.”

Tess nodded like she was trying to make the best of it, and fuck, if I didn’t hate this.

“Please come,” the little girl asked Kit and that sealed the deal. Kit had to go to this pool party. I pulled my phone out of the pocket of my sweatpants and texted her.

Me: Come today and I’ll take 5 grand off your bill.

I watched as her phone buzzed in the back pocket of her jeans and she pulled it out, looked at the screen and scowled at me.

Me: Not joking.

Kit looked at me like she was trying to figure out if I was serious. I was more than serious. I was desperate.

“I’d love to come,” Kit said to Tess. “But I don’t have my swimsuit.”

“No problem!” I said, barely stopping the impulse to do a victory dance. “We’ll stop by your house on the way to Harrison’s.”

“My house is on the other side of town.”

“Then we better get going,” I said, and clapped my hands together the way my father used to when he was trying to get my brother and me excited about one of Mom’s plans. One of Mom’s plans that would inevitably crash and burn.

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