Jack Troy Marion Read online

  JACK, TROY, MARION

  COCKER BROTHERS NOVELLA 22

  FALEENA HOPKINS

  HOP HOP PRODUCTIONS INC.

  CONTENTS

  1. Marion

  2. Jack

  3. Marion

  4. Jack

  5. Troy

  6. Marion

  7. Troy

  8. Marion

  9. Troy

  10. Jack

  11. Troy

  12. Mar

  13. Jack

  14. Jack

  15. Mar

  16. Troy

  17. Mar

  18. Mar

  19. Jack

  Cocker EXTRAS

  About the Author

  But I always say, one's company, two's a crowd, and three's a party.

  ANDY WARHOL

  MARION

  How did I end up here, broken legged and broken hearted?

  I was Valedictorian.

  Also, the best ballerina in Atlanta.

  Better than Samantha Cocker.

  That’s for fucking sure.

  Throughout my school years, my nose was in books and my toes were en pointe. I hardly had any friends because I cared about studying and dancing too much. Also, I don’t like people. I don’t trust them. They can’t be trusted, that’s been proven.

  By my own mom.

  My parents were overachievers. Their ambition was the reason I was tossed into ballet classes at age three. In the beginning, I didn’t really care about dance for dancing’s sake.

  I did it to please them.

  And only them.

  It never occurred to me to please myself. I worshipped my parents. Those were the days. Sigh.

  My frigging Mom was the most beautiful woman in the entire world with sheets of gorgeous dark hair that hung to the small of her back and skin that shined like glitter was its main ingredient.

  Her curves are the one thing I didn’t inherit, thank God. You can’t have curves in ballet. Taut lines, perfect arches, yes. Curves, however, must be done away with by starving yourself and working yourself to the bone. Literally.

  It wasn’t just Mom I wanted to please with my ballerina skills back then in the earliest of my days. My father was like Zeus to me, albeit not as intimidating as the Greek god is said to have been. But to me, Daddy was everything. And the two of them together were so in love that I felt it my duty to not be the one thing they didn’t do right.

  So I danced and studied and followed their life code.

  They believed in work hard, work hard, work hard, and that’s pretty much all they believed in. Your parents pass down everything they know to you. They’re your foundation for how you view the world.

  What if what they know, and what they pass down, is utter and complete shit?

  I mean, how much expertise could they have had, considering the fact that she’d been cheating on him for ten whole years? Not the best foundation for relationship-success in my future, if I followed their lead.

  Who really knows what they’re doing, anyway? Why do we all have to follow a pattern set down by other humans who were just as lost as the humans before them? What is this ‘normal’ anyway?

  I don’t want it.

  Normal people don’t look happy to me. They look bored. That’s why they watch their neighbors and gossip about this or that drama someone else is going through—because they don’t create any of their own.

  I want drama.

  Chaos.

  Excitement.

  Not that I’ve found it yet.

  I’m stuck here on the couch with my leg in a cast, my dream thrown out the window by…who…fate?

  This injury has given me too much time to rethink my life. What I’ve figured out so far is pretty simple.

  I’m not happy.

  Dad found out about the affair when I was eight, back when it started. They fought. He forced her to end it. I felt my whole world vanish in a puff of fantasy-smoke.

  One minute I think my parents are in love, the next I realize Mom has been kissing other men. That’s all I understood then…kissing.

  Sex wasn’t even on my radar.

  Storks brought babies.

  But from their screaming and yelling, I learned kissing other men when you loved one man, was wrong.

  The foundation I lived on crumbled during that rough time, and I no longer felt safe in my own home. I didn’t know these people anymore. They weren’t who I thought they were. Dad didn’t call Mom a whore before. Mom didn’t call him rabbit-dick before. But now these and a whole slew of other weird words were thrown around like invisible knives that left real tears behind.

  To hide, I threw myself into dance, and simultaneously learned not to trust anyone. My studying at school I kept at, too, because it gave me something to think about other than fear, confusion and isolation.

  They stayed together and we all lived a lie. Mom didn’t seem that interested in my father, though in public she kept up airs. I heard her tell Nana that they were staying together for me. I didn’t have the vocabulary or the courage to tell them not to. The idea of living with my parents separated was too terrifying to me. What would that be like?

  I wish I’d told her to leave.

  I wish I’d told him to leave.

  Years of fights were worse.

  I wish.

  I wish.

  I wish.

  But I was just a kid.

  Their workaholism escalated. Years passed. I snapped at people and kept them at arm’s length so they’d never hurt me.

  Mom and Dad smiled to the public and went on with the facade of normalcy so many aim for. But then we discovered she’d never gotten rid of her boyfriend like she’d promised Dad. That was revealed to us one Christmas when her secret boyfriend decided he’d had enough of being hidden from her husband.

  Imagine my surprise when some guy named Kyle burst into my lumpy mashed potatoes and turkey feast proclaiming that he absolutely loved my mother, needed her, ached for her, yearned for her.

  Even worse was that Lorraine Bogdonavitz, my once-imagined-perfect mother, burst from her chair and rushed into his arms, sobbing.

  Happy Holidays.

  We eat the same thing on Thanksgiving as we do on Christmas because Mom always said she didn’t think one turkey feast was enough. Apparently she didn’t think one man was enough, either.

  To say that my father didn’t handle it well is an understatement from my worst nightmares. He started coming onto my also-eighteen-year-old friends.

  Immediately.

  I used to have girlfriends.

  Until Dad tried to bang them.

  There are tumbleweeds rolling through my phone now.

  And a sneering buzzard.

  It sucks, because over junior high and high school it took time to earn those friendships. I never found them in dance. I tried with Samantha Cocker and Logan Clark, but they were just too damn entwined to let me into their buddy-buddy fest. Sam and I always butted heads anyway.

  She was my competition.

  Is.

  Was.

  Oh, I don’t know!

  Maybe she bested me this time.

  I can’t even think about it. Dad called me whining about his love life again, blaming Mom for the millionth time and I really need it to stop. Which is worse? Mom leaving with some dude named Kyle, or Dad stalking my hot friends in response, and when that didn’t work, continuing to search in my age range?

  Great role models, people.

  Thanks for the inspiration.

  To.

  Never.

  Be.

  You.

  I have my roommate.

  Teeka’s pretty much it for me.

  And she’s a basket case. But that personality flaw make
s home-life interesting, so hey, what the fuck? Better than a snooze-fest who goes to bed at nine and asks me to turn the volume down on my favorite movies. Teeka really falls into the not-normal category. I never know when she’s coming home, what she’s up to, who she’s dating.

  As I shove Rocky Road into my gullet, thinking about my Dad, I groan, “Have some dignity!”

  This broken leg has finally worn me down. No longer able to worry about his mid-life crisis, my future, and my failed love life, I’ve called in reinforcements.

  Jack, can you help me?

  If anyone could, it’s him.

  Dad should stop coming to me.

  Dad should turn to Jack.

  I should turn to Jack.

  My father’s best friend, Jack Thornton, is a ruggedly stunning, imposing man with shoulders so broad they reach the borders of Georgia. A chin so strong you want to ask if kryptonite truly is his only downfall. There’s nothing feminine about Jack. He is chunks of muscle heaped upon more muscle. Eyes so blue you could disappear in them for days and forget you were lost.

  He never hugs me.

  I always want him to.

  Listen to yourself, Marion. Here you are judging your Dad for wanting younger girls when you’ve wanted Jack ever since you turned fourteen and realized your body wasn’t made for just dancing.

  Isn’t that why you called and asked for his help?

  I shouldn’t be thinking that. My father wouldn’t be the only one to vomit and then lose his shit. My cheating mom would, too. But her standards leave something to be desired. Ask Kyle.

  I’m too hard on her.

  She’s pretty awesome.

  But Mom, really?

  Did he have to ruin Christmas?

  That was the last time Jack and I laid eyes on each other. He came after Kyle bombarded us with bullshit, to support my dad. I was eighteen, and it became apparent that he wouldn’t look at me. Even when I talked, Jack would rub the back of his neck at the top of his tribal tattoos, his masculine necklaces quietly rattling as he stared at the ground, his palm, my father, or anywhere but at me.

  Something in my gut whispered that he was attracted to me, and couldn’t allow himself to be. It was the first time he’d acted that way, and I wondered if it was because I had recently turned legal, and he saw me in an inappropriately new light.

  I’m a November baby.

  Scorpio all the way.

  Just.

  Like.

  Jack.

  They say we’re the most sexual sign of the Zodiac. I wanted to know what would happen when you put two of us together. I had a feeling that for the first time, he wanted to know, too.

  Back when I was a tween, Mom encouraged me to call him ‘Uncle Jack,’ but he shot that down immediately: “Marion knows we’re not related, Lorraine. We don’t have to give me some fake title for her to love me.”

  So true.

  I needed no excuse to love him.

  He had this smooth way about him that made everything seem effortless — the swagger in his slow walk, the dismount of his Harley during summertime, how he rose out of his Tesla like he was bored. Simple things done by Jack, became art.

  I even caught Mom staring.

  No surprise there.

  And those eyes.

  Oh my God!

  Those piercing blue magnificent eyes that looked at me like he knew things he’d never tell me. Whenever Jack came over for dinner, or just to hang out and have a couple beers with my dad while they watched football on a Sunday, I would sit on the floor near his feet because it made me feel good to be there.

  Jack and Dad would be deep in conversation about things I never cared about, and then Jack would reach over and pat my head, shining those magnificent eyes in my direction.

  With him, I could relax.

  With my warring parents…

  Not so much.

  A text comes through and I slog over to where I left my phone on our messy coffee table, this brand new cast hindering my speed. As I spot Jack’s name shining back at me, my chest pumps fresh oxygen into it with a huge gasp.

  I’m almost to you, Mar.

  “You’re almost to me?” I whisper.

  Now here’s the thing about me. I might dance on my toes and wear fluffy dresses under beautiful lighting, but I am made of steel nails fermented into more steel.

  I’ve had to be.

  Life is a bitch unless you’re a bigger one.

  I wrote that. I even put it on a t-shirt. I get stopped all the time by women laughing and asking me where I got it.

  That’s why it feels weird that these five glowing words have melted my icy blood and have it sprinting. The only time I ever feel like this is when ambition is in play.

  But ever since this damned broken leg, I haven’t been my normal self.

  My roommate and pretty much only friend asks, “Why are you up so early?” as she throws her keys onto the floor and locks our front door. I notice fluffy traces of cocaine on Teeka’s nose-hairs as she hops around to take off her high heels. “I expected no witnesses.”

  “Yeah, well, I see you. Need some help? You have a body to bury?”

  She snickers and passes me for the faucet’s healing powers. We could keep a cleaner kitchen, but why? It’s better that it matches the rest of the apartment’s mess.

  “Not yet, Marion. But it’s good to know you’d be down for helping me.”

  “Wait until my leg heals,” I mutter as I thump over to make coffee for my soon-to-be-arriving guest.

  Teeka eyes the machine as she wipes her face with a dirty hand towel. “You like tea. Who’s that for?”

  “My dad’s best friend is coming over.”

  She rolls her eyes, not caring for more information, and tosses the towel on our cluttered countertop. “I’m moving out, Mar.”

  My jaw drops on the counter so hard it leaves a dent. “You’re what?!”

  Swallowing the coke-drip from the back of her throat, she winces. “I forgot to tell you I got fired.”

  “When?!”

  “Four months ago. No money left,” she shrugs.

  I scream in her face and hobble to my phone.

  JACK

  T his isn’t my fault that my Tesla is pointed at Marion’s. I stayed away from her for three years.

  She reached out to me, not the other way around. What am I supposed to do, ignore her plea for help? What kind of a man would that make me?

  Who am I kidding?

  If I was so innocent, I’d tell David she called. Did I do that? Hell to the fucking no.

  After Lorraine left him, I went over to console the poor bastard. Because of my work I travel a lot, hadn’t been to their house in a long time. He came over for poker at my place — which he still does to this day — so there was no reason to visit his.

  Little did I realize until I arrived, to hear his tormented story of a botched Christmas dinner and an even worse marriage, that Marion had ripened into such a sultry-lipped beauty. She opened the door and I was stunned into a moment of silence.

  “Hi Jack,” she smiled, huge eyes sparkling under eyelashes long enough to pet me if she leaned any closer.

  David walked up and clapped his hand on her shoulder. “Can you believe my girl turned eighteen last month?”

  I said something boring in response and averted my eyes because all I wanted to do was say, “So she’s legal?”

  My mind flew to places I wouldn’t allow it. I had to wrangle thoughts I’d never had about her. I’m a man of discipline. I am my own master. I didn’t like how hard it was to drive down that instinct to gather her into my arms and claim her as my own.

  Never.

  Went.

  Back.

  Nothing surprised me more than getting a call from her three years later asking for my help. I want to make sure she is okay. Partially innocent.

  But not all.

  I haven’t seen her since way back then for a damn good reason. That’s exactly what I told my buddy, Troy
.

  “Wait, what happened?” he asked, long, black hair hitting the table as he organized abandoned poker chips. The game just ended.

  Troy and I were the only two left.

  I downed my whiskey, empty glass dropped with a thunk. “She looked at me like she wanted to fuck me, that’s what.” Shaking my head I admitted, “It’s the first time I’ve said that aloud. To anyone.” Snorting I admit, “Who would I tell? Sure couldn’t tell David.”

  “Of course not,” Troy laughed, imagining the reaction of our friend who’d just left two hundred bucks richer despite his long face. “You don’t think Dave wants his best friend banging his daughter?”

  “Who wouldn’t?” I chuckled, the laugh dripping with sarcasm that vanished as I reached for the bottle.

  I believe a man is what he makes of himself. I am all discipline and no slack. Every muscle in my body has been sculpted on purpose. I could’ve sat on the couch eating chips, but did I do that? Not even close.

  I go downstairs to my personal gym I had constructed here, five days a week. Years ago I cut out carbs, alcohol, and all sugar save for the rare day when I shove some dark chocolate in my gullet just to get by. I brought alcohol back, but never to the point where I could get drunk.

  I figure I have this one life, why not make women drop their pants the second they see me? I’m rich, easy on the eyes, and a self-proclaimed man-whore. Been that way for years by choice and design.

  But I am getting a little bit bored of whoring. Been a while since I took someone to bed. Don’t know why.

  “She’s even more beautiful than her mother, but with a bite that Lorraine never had. Marion’s snark got me laughing so many times over the years when she was little. She’d deliver one zinger after another.”

  Troy shuffled the cards with one hand as his eyes glittered like he could see the appeal in that, too. At ten years younger than me, he was a stellar wing man because the two of us together turned heads everywhere we went. I met him when he was tending bar at a place that’s closed down now. I would have bet money that half the women there had fucked him or wanted to, by the way they watched him with lust. His tip jar overflowed with hopeful donations to the take-me-home-next fund.