Read Fire & Brimstone: A Neighbor from Hell Online
Authors: R.L. Mathewson
Fire & Brimstone: A Neighbor from Hell (2 page)
Chapter 2
“He fired me again,” she admitted as she tried to go for casual while she walked through their loft-style apartment and headed towards the bathroom.
“Gonna be sick?” Melanie asked around a yawn from where she lounged on the couch with a magazine, a Coke and her reason for living, a double chocolate fudge Pop-Tart.
“No, no of course not,” she lied, barely resisting the urge to place her hand over her stomach, dive for the wastebasket by the kitchen island and finally find some relief from the damn nausea that had been plaguing her since breakfast.
“Really?” Melanie asked, cocking a brow as she continued thumbing through her magazine, pausing only long enough to push back a thick strand of her honey blond hair.
“I'm fine,” Rebecca swore, forcing herself to stop a mere twenty feet from her salvation.
“Really?” Melanie asked, not sounding as though she really believed her, which of course was a problem since Rebecca really didn't want to go to this appointment. But, unless she was able to convince Melanie that she was fine, she-
“You're not getting out of this appointment,” the bossy woman announced with a bored sigh, making Rebecca regret offering to share her juice box back in pre-school.
“I'm fine,” she bit out, outraged that her best friend refused to believe her.
“Then explain why you're pale,” Melanie demanded, still not looking up from her magazine. Then again, Melanie probably didn't need to after all these years to know when she was sick.
“Because I'm Irish,” she reminded her inconsiderate friend.
“And the trembling?”
“Leftover adrenaline surge from my meeting with Lucifer,” she explained with a small sniffle, hoping to play on her best friend’s sympathetic heart to get out of this since the last thing that she wanted to do was waste her day at another doctor’s office just so they could tell her that it was all in her head.
“Nice try, but you're not getting out of this,” Melanie, the cold hearted bitch, said, sounding bored while Rebecca stood there, bottom lip trembling, eyes tearing up as she hugged herself, making sure to look appropriately traumatized.
“It was so t-terrifying,” she said, waiting two crucial seconds before she added a little sob at the end there, hoping that it would be enough so that they could end this charade and get on with their lives.
“Uh huh,” Melanie mumbled, still not bothering to grant her the courtesy of a glance as she sipped her Coke.
“I don't think I'll ever get over it,”
Rebecca whispered harshly, taking a discrete step in the direction of the bathroom, praying that the traitor hadn't noticed.
“First off,” Melanie began, only pausing long enough to take another sip of her soda, “you are probably the only person alive that isn't terrified of Lucifer Bradford.”
Rebecca began to argue, simply to argue, but the damn woman wasn't done yet. “Secondly, you're not fooling anyone with that pathetic lip tremble. If you're going to be sick then get it over with, because you're not getting sick in my car, again,” Melanie announced on another bored sigh that earned her a glare.
Rebecca continued to stand there glowering at her best friend while a thousand arguments ran through her head, but her damn stomach decided that it was time to take this to the next level and start cramping, nearly knocking her on her ass and guaranteeing that Melanie won this match.
That didn't mean that she planned on going quietly to this appointment, because she didn't. She'd get out of this appointment like she'd gotten out of so many before. All she had to do was-
“Tick, tock,” the annoying bitch that she loathed more with every passing second, said mockingly, forever earning her hatred.
“This isn't over!” Rebecca snapped, simply because it was and they both knew it.
“Whatever you say, sunshine,” Melanie said in an annoying singsong voice just to piss her off even more.
Rebecca opened her mouth to argue, but ended up slapping a hand against her mouth as she narrowed her eyes on the woman that should have rightfully been her nemesis and decided to make a tactical retreat to the bathroom before she did something that would prove the gloating bitch right.
The door had just shut behind her when she lost the battle and her breakfast, something that she was doing more frequently lately. It was also something that she’d been trying to avoid doing today, knowing that it would be her downfall. She didn’t want to go to this appointment today simply because she was sick and tired of listening to doctors tell her that there was nothing wrong with her all while giving her that look that made her feel worthless. They all thought that she was a hypochondriac and the scary part was that they might be right.
She couldn’t remember a time when she hadn’t been sick. In school she’d set the record for most absences. Her parents had been terrified that they were going to lose her. That is, until she hit middle school and the doctors that she’d depended on to make everything better had come to the conclusion that she was faking it for attention.
It hadn’t mattered how many times she’d sworn up and down that she wasn’t feeling good, her parents had refused to listen. They’d followed the doctor’s orders, sent her to school every day and when the nurse called them to tell them that they needed to pick her up from school they’d refused.
The only person that had ever believed that there was something wrong with her was the evil woman in the other room, waiting to ambush her and drag her by the hair to see the latest doctor, who in two hours would explain in the politest way possible that there was absolutely nothing wrong with her seconds before he suggested that she may benefit from seeing a psychiatrist. She used to argue, determined to make them realize that they were making a mistake, that they’d missed something, but none of them had ever listened. Eventually, she’d stopped trying, stopped keeping her appointments and eventually stopped hoping for an answer.
She just wished that Melanie would accept the fact that there was nothing anyone could do and let this go so that she could live the rest of her life in misery, but the frustrating woman refused to listen to reason. No matter how many times she’d begged, glared and bitched, Melanie refused to drop it. Melanie had always believed that she was sick and had always been there for her. She’d understood when she was too sick to do anything and never got pissed when she had to cancel plans so that she could spend some quality time curled up in bed, trying to pretend that she didn’t hate her life.
It had meant the world to her to have someone in her life that didn’t think the worst of her. Having Melanie in her life was the one thing that had kept her sane all these years. It was just too bad that her best friend was driving her insane with all this nagging and threats of violence. She didn’t want to go see another doctor, but unfortunately for her, Melanie didn’t seem to care about what she wanted. Her best friend was determined to figure out what was wrong with her and fix it even if that meant dragging her kicking and screaming to see every doctor in the world.
Even though it annoyed the hell out of her, it meant the world to her having someone who believed in her the way that Melanie did. No matter what anyone said about her, Melanie always had her back, which was why she resisted the urge to throttle her best friend when she refused to back down and just accept the fact that there was nothing that anyone could do to fix her.
*-*-*-*
“What about the specials?” Rose, a waitress he’d hired a few months ago on the recommendation of his sister-in-law, asked.
“What about them?” Lucifer asked as he leaned back against the wall, looking through the time cards.
“Are there any changes?” she asked as she glanced at the menus for the night.
There should be, but the new recipes that he’d been working on weren’t ready yet. “No. They’re the same as last week,” he said as he glanced up at the whiteboard by the clock to see what last week’s specials were.
He looked over the list before deciding that the dessert menu was a little weak. “I’ll make a call to Dixon Bakery and see if they have anything they can spare for tonight’s dinner service,” he said, deciding that it would probably be for the best if he went in person and had a Bradford special to help him recover from this morning’s disappointment.
She really was going to be the death of him, he thought as he initialed this morning’s time stamps. All except two. He set the first one aside and looked for the matching time stamp. It only took him a few seconds to find it.
Sighing, he said, “Aimee?”
“Yes?” Aimee said, shifting nervously and for good reason.
“You’re fired,” he said, not bothering to look up from her time card.
“But-”
“You have five minutes to clear out your locker,” he said, placing her time stamp aside before selecting the other time card that she’d decided to stamp this morning and making him wonder why he was having such a hard time firing Rebecca.
“You can tell Kelly when you see her that she’s fired as well,” he said, putting a line through Kelly’s timecard.
She didn’t say anything else as she quickly grabbed her stuff and left, because she knew better. He didn’t take any shit from anyone and he rarely gave second chances. There was a reason why everyone called him Lucifer to his face and asshole to his back. He didn’t have a problem with either nickname, because he’d earned both.
Even as a kid he hadn’t been someone that you wanted to fuck with. He never took any shit from anyone and if you had a problem with that, he’d always been more than happy to clear up any misunderstandings. Although he was an asshole, and he had absolutely no problems with admitting that, he wasn’t a bully and never pulled any shit. If you left him alone, he left you alone, but God help you if he caught you fucking someone over because he’d be in your face before you had a chance to blink.
He wasn’t like the rest of the men in his family. They were more laid back, easy going while he was straight-laced and probably took everything too seriously. He’d always been like that and had never thought about changing and why should he? He was happy with the way that his life had turned out.
He had the restaurant of his dreams, which he would admit was still a work in progress, decent friends, a good place to live and a family that accepted him for the asshole that he was. His life was fucking perfect.
He set his own hours, worked on whatever he wanted and ensured that one day his restaurant would be the best in the city. When he accomplished that he would look into opening more locations and hopefully one day he would be able to sit back and enjoy his success. Until that day happened, he was going to put absolutely everything that he had into making this restaurant great even if that meant spending all his time and every last penny he had to make that happen.
*-*-*-*
“Move your ass, Shaw!” the controlling bitch that she loved more than anything, said in a chipper voice as she walked past the bathroom. “We’re leaving in ten minutes.”
“No, we’re not!” Rebecca snapped back even though she knew damn well that she didn’t have a choice.
She was going or Melanie would beat the living shit out of her and then drag her unconscious body to the doctor’s office. As much fun as it would be to wake up by being poked and prodded, she was going to have to pass and accept the fact that she was going to have deal with another doctor telling her that it was all in her head.
Yup, it was going to be loads of fun, she thought dryly as she grabbed her toothbrush and cleaned her teeth, telling herself that she didn’t have a choice. She either went of her own free will or Melanie would walk in here, grab her by the hair and drag her down the backstairs, out the door and shove her unconscious body in the trunk of her car.
Since she really didn’t feel like being shoved into the trunk with Melanie’s gym clothes that hadn’t seen the inside of a washing machine in five years, she decided to suck it up and accept the fact that she was going to sit there and smile politely while another doctor explained in the subtlest terms that she was insane. She was going to-
“Get off me!” Melanie suddenly yelled, sounding pissed and making Rebecca sigh heavily, because by this point Melanie really should have learned how to deal with their sweet, little baby. As Rebecca rinsed her mouth and put her toothbrush away, the bloodcurdling screaming began.
“Screaming will only make it worse!” she yelled over the screams, wondering why Melanie couldn’t remember that one simple rule.