Page 77 of The Fallen Man

Caitlin

Out of Town

Caitlin stared at her phone.

I’m going to be out of town for a few days.

What did that mean? What was she supposed to say to that?

Thanks for letting me know.

She hit send. And stared at the message again.

“Hey!” said Jessica, going by with a tray of glassware. She was back again a few minutes later. “What’s with the face?”

“Jackson said he would be out of town for a few days. I think he’s breaking up with me.”

“Breaking up with you?”

“Or whatever you call it when you stop fucking someone,” said Caitlin angrily. She was tired of Jessica’s jokes that she and Jackson were dating.

Jessica made take-it-easy gestures. “I meant, why does going out of town mean breaking up?”

“He goes out of town all the time for work. He doesn’t usually tell me unless it’s a Wednesday.”

“Right, because he’s what you do on your night off,” said Jessica with a grin, and then she saw Caitlin’s expression. “I’m teasing. OK, but again, I’m not seeing it. So he politely let you know that he would be unavailable. Why does that mean something bad?”

Caitlin opened her mouth. Jessica waited, eyebrows raised. “Things got kind of… weird last night.”

“In what way?”

“That guy who grabbed me last night? He was at my place last night.”

“I thought Vince gave you a ride?”

“He did, but I think he followed us. I didn’t notice him until Vince had pulled away. Anyway, I went upstairs, and Jackson and I were fooling around, and then he saw the marks on my neck and…”

“And what?”

“He lost his shit and went out to the park and beat the guy up.”

“Seriously?” demanded Jessica grinning.

“Yeah. Pretty sure he broke the guy’s nose.” She hesitated, remembering the gun but uncertain what to say. It hadn’t seemed important at the time. Jackson hadn’t treated it like it was.

“Cool.”

“I guess,” said Caitlin. Jackson dropped the gun on her kitchen table in utter contempt. It was a microcosm of the way he’d treated the owner. He thought nothing of that man. The gun had been gone this morning.

“Then what?”

“Well, then sex was a little… off.” She didn’t want to go into detail on that part. She wasn’t sure she could put it into words for herself, let alone Jessica. “But this morning, I thought everything was fine again. Only now, he’s saying he’s out of town. Maybe he… maybe he had time to think about it and decided he didn’t need my bullshit.”

“Your kind of bullshit? It’s not your kind of bullshit! It’s some random stalker asshole. And it sounds like he took care of him. How is that your fault?”

“I don’t know,” said Katie. “It feels like my fault.”

“This isn’t a fault situation. There’s no fault. Some guy threatened you. Jackson beat him up. And now he’s going out of town. It’s not a crisis. It’s not necessarily even linked.”