TITAN by Kate Stewart Page A

She
pulled him in for a kiss and he hesitated, but gave in and kissed her. They
were still chuckling as they entered the house.
     
    “Damn woman, what was is it this time?
Crack, cocaine?” he teased as he helped her up.
    “I am a very clumsy woman, Tite.
You should know that before we enter your house and probably hide your
breakables.”
    She followed him in and winced as
she felt her forehead start to pound. He led her to a huge kitchen fit for a
king. He picked her up and put her on the counter.
    “Let’s check you out my drunken,
drug addict,” he turned to the freezer and grabbed a frozen vegetable package
and handed it to her.
    “Here,” he said, “you have a knot
on the side of your head.”
     Jordy jumped off the counter
and went to the same freezer and grabbed another bag of frozen veggies.
    “Here,” she said, “you have a black
eye.”
    She chuckled at what a mess they
were.
    They both sat there looking at each
other surveying the damage and sharing a smile.
    “No fighting, no bickering, and no
bullshit ex talk, just us, okay?” she begged.
    “What the fuck else would we need
for entertainment besides you, Jordy?”
    He smiled at her and she knew he
had agreed.
    “Fucking Evil Knevil! That had to
have been a four foot drop flat on your back. Are you okay?”
    “Do you want to play doctor?” she
said, her voice raspy.
    “Well, you sure the hell aren’t going to be my nurse. I wouldn’t make it
out alive, even if you were just taking my temperature,” he chuckled.
    Jordy laughed too, snorted in fact,
and he paused to catch her doing it and laughed harder.
    “Fuck you Tite, you are flawed too,
I just have to find them.”
    “Oh, you will.”
    He sounded more scared than joking.

Chapter 10
     
    They ate dinner on his back deck.
His personal chef made them his favorite dish, some kind of fish Jordy had
never tried, and grilled vegetables. They had wine with dinner and Jordy
couldn’t believe he was drinking it. She tried to poke fun at him but he wasn’t
having it.
    “When you travel around the world
and still stick to the same shit, you have got a serious problem. There is so
much shit out there you adapt to whatever when you are wherever.  Some
things you pick up and put back down and some things you carry with you.”
    He paused, but finished with “I
stay here, in this city, to keep myself straight, to remember where I came
from. I drive around sometimes and just look around, keeping myself familiar
with it so I cannot forget how hard I have worked and all the shit…”
    His face went dark.
    “It makes sense.” Jordy said,
guzzling her fourth glass of wine.
    “Jordy, slow down, aren’t we past
that yet?” He was referring to her, pouring her fifth glass of wine, and the
fact that yesterday was the only time he had seen her sober.
    “Well let’s see…” She surveyed the
backyard. It was bigger than an entire housing complex.
    She was pretty intimidated by his
wealth and it was showing. But remembering her promise to be honest she kept
her reply short.
    “Nope.”
     
    He just shook his head and smiled
and kept talking, he told her about his upcoming tour in Europe, just a couple
of dates, he would be gone a month.
    She pushed down all feeling by
drinking more wine and nodding as he spoke.
    She would throw in a sentence here
and there, but he seemed relived to be talking to someone and she was happy to
listen to him talk.
    It was a beautiful night, almost
romantic. Everything was becoming fuzzy.
    “Are you tired Jordy?”
    The new, honest Jordy spoke. “Yeah,
a little.”
    They had been talking for hours and
she was exhausted from today’s shopping trip, their little office episode and
her back breaking fall.
    He gestured for her to come and she
did, following him through the kitchen, to a long corridor leading to the main
entrance of the house. The staircase was endless and behind it was an elevator.
    “Let’s take the elevator, I could
do without the ER trip