Lee
The following month was cold. The weather was definitely growing crisp; we were well into November. I was feeling the climate change. I was used to the consistent heat in the South; the erratic snowstorms and cold fronts here were playing havoc with my natural body temperature.
I had been sick over thanksgiving with a vomiting bug and thankfully had used it as my excuse to avoid eating a holiday meal with Kyle. We hadn’t spoken much since Halloween. The atmosphere was thick and strained between us now.
Everyone noticed, especially since Kyle walked around the house with a black cloud hanging over his head. He snapped at Cam, argued with Derek and as usual ignored me.
I was still recovering from my illness when Cam asked me to go for a walk with her. I agreed, even though I still felt weak, but it was better than being inside the house and walking on eggshells around Kyle and his mood swings.
We took the trail veering west from Chautauqua Park.
“You okay there Lee?” Cam called out. She was a good ten feet ahead of me. The cold air was cutting into my face and my eyes were burning.
“No, I need to take a rest,” I said, panting. I had a sharp, stabbing pain in my side and needed to sit down. I sank down on the snowy path and held my side.
“Good grief, you are so unfit,” Cam joked when she reached me.
“It’s not funny.” I really did have a sharp pain in my side. I felt the need to lie down. “Could we head back Cam? I don’t think I can walk much further.”
Cam reached out her hand and pulled me to my feet. “Yeah sure, you should have said you weren’t feeling one hundred percent Lee.” I brushed the wet sludge and gunk from my jeans. “That bug really took it out of you didn’t it?”
I nodded, grateful that we were going home. Cam threw her arm around me, as we made our way back to the car.
The phone was ringing in the kitchen when we made it back to the house.
I plopped into a chair as Cam went over to answer it.
“Hello?” Cam said in a playful tone, “House of all things kinky, the resident sexpert speaking.” I shook my head at her. I didn’t know why she always had to answer the phone with suggestive comments. I guessed she was as sick as I was of answering calls from women looking for Kyle.
Cam’s face paled, as she held the phone out to me. I stared at the phone for a moment, wondering who the hell would be calling for me.
Standing slowly, I took the phone from her. “Hello, this is Lee?”
My heart dropped into my stomach at the sound of the voice on the other line.
“Daddy?”
Kyle
I would like to say that Derek and I had our own lives outside of our female roommates and that we didn’t mope about all day waiting for the girls to return, but if I said that, then I’d be a liar. Where the fuck were they? I hadn’t seen either one since yesterday.
Lee still wouldn’t look at me and I needed to talk to her. I needed to apologize for everything and make things right.
My eyes were glazing over from the amount of time we had spent playing the Xbox.
I wasn’t even that into the game. Derek sighed loudly, for the fiftieth time in the past hour and I snapped. “If you do that again, I’m gonna stick my foot up your ass and give you a fucking reason to sigh.”
Christ, he was getting on my last nerve. I was trying to keep my mind off Lee and how fucked up the situation between us had become and Derek was irritating the crap out of me.
“Dude we are so pathetic, sitting here like a pair of ninnies. Fuck the girls. We should be out on the tiles, munching some bush.”
I groaned and tossed the remainder of my sandwich down. There went my appetite.
How was I friends with this freak? “Munch some bush? What are you the pussy patrol? Dude you have a girlfriend, you remember Cam right?”
Derek dropped his controller down on the coffee table. Thank God. I tossed mine down quickly before he changed his mind. I couldn’t take another minute of that game.
“Yeah, I remember and I also know where she and Lee are right now.”
Wait, what? Where was Lee? I glared at his sulky face .“Where are they right now?”
Where the fuck had Cam taken her? Didn’t she realize Lee was innocent?
“Fucking Montgomery,” Derek sighed and my blood boiled.
“As in Louisiana? What the hell? Why?” How did I not know this?
“Lee had to go home, or some shit, Cam went with her. They left last night.”
I was on my feet and moving before my brain caught up. “Dude, you waste half my day and about fifty chromosomes I’ll never get back playing that shit, when you knew the girls’ were gone to fucking Louisiana?”
Derek groaned. “Fuck them Kyle, Cam’s probably honky-tonking her little ass around some bar by now and not giving two shits about me.” Could he hear himself?