A Little Bit of Trouble Read online

  A Little Bit of Trouble

  By

  A. E. Murphy

  The characters and events in this book are fictional. Any similarity to real persons, either living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

  © 2013, [Alexandra Murphy]

  Amazon Kindle Edition.

  All Rights Reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the author.

  DEDICATION

  To my Nannan, Mary Murphy the woman who taught me to pinch pennies and to be independent. I’m sorry you’re not able to type up your own stories and live your dream. So I hope this will be enough for you, for now, by hopefully doing it for us both until we get the time to do one together.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  First of all I just want to thank my closest friend Jack Coll for being one of the few people who have truly supported me throughout this. Even going as far as to have my kids just so I can get this finished. You’ve been there for me through everything the past few years and I’m so damn proud of you for all you’ve accomplished with what little opportunities you’ve had. I’m lucky for ever getting to meet… let alone having someone like you in my life who loves me and accepts me for who I am. And for being there for my kids too of course! The feeling is completely mutual. Sorry for being a hermit as of late.

  Secondly, thank you Laura! I can’t express my gratitude enough for all of the help you’ve given me and all of the awesome conversations we’ve had. I hope that we’ll still be talking ten years from now as I genuinely can’t imagine doing all of this without you! (Emotional moment). You have literally been my rock through this, your family are lucky to have you as I am lucky to know you.

  Ali, need I say more? You’re an amazing man, one I’m lucky to have in my life. You’re an amazing father and so understanding. I don’t know what to put to show my gratitude to you as words just aren’t enough, so I’ll just say this. Thank you and I love you.

  Thanks to Linda for helping me even though you don’t know me. I’ll never forget! You are awesome!

  Also Nikki, from the WhatNikkiRead Blog. The first blogger to read my book, rate it and to interview me and to even read book three through for me. You’re an amazing woman and I love your blog.

  Lynette Creswell, another author from the same town I live in. You rock! Thanks for including me in the photo for the newspaper at your book signing. I hope we have many more interesting conversations to come.

  Big thanks to the ladies from the forum on Amazon and Facebook for supporting me throughout this and keeping me well amused to the point of distraction. I’d name you all but there are so many of you I’m worried I’ll miss somebody so I’ll just say, “You know who you are!” And leave it at that with a huge thanks!

  Loryn, your mom rocks for naming you so uniquely! I just had to have it! I hope you enjoy reading this as much as you did the first two and thanks for the conversations! Sorry I told you that every character died due to a zombie apocalypse and James eats Maya’s face. Me joke, me joke.

  And last but not least my Grandma Beattie who my last book (A Little Bit of Us) was dedicated to. Thank you for having me for an entire week just so I can finish this book. Everybody has somebody who they look up to as a role model. You are mine. One day I hope to have even a fraction of the goodness in me that you display on a daily basis. I love you and I’m not ashamed to say it. I’m a Nana’s girl until I die.

  Contents

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty One

  Chapter Twenty Two

  Chapter Twenty Three

  Chapter Twenty Four

  Chapter Twenty Five

  Chapter Twenty Six

  Chapter Twenty Seven

  Chapter Twenty Eight

  Chapter Twenty Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty One

  Epilogue

  THE END

  About Me

  Contact Details

  PROLOGUE

  Everyone looks so damn happy, not that I blame them. It’s a beautiful day, we’re all surrounded by friends and family. So why do I feel like shit? My eyes don’t leave her, Maya, every time she smiles I have to look. I want to catch it, it’s mesmerizing.

  Of course I’m happy, I have a beautiful daughter, a new family, friends and a great place to live. There’s something missing, I thought that certain something was Maya, now I see… she was just someone easy to love. Someone unobtainable, someone that I could never have, she was safe to love and safe to want. I think a part of me knew I could never have her, this made it safe. Safe to the memory of the one woman I loved and still love more than words can say, Crystal. She and Annie were the first two female loves of my life. Annie, my first born, my angel. Of course, make no mistake, I didn’t love Annie more than Amelia, they’re completely equal in my heart but there’s still that special first born bond.

  I lost both Annie and Crystal, in a car wreck. After that I never thought I’d be able to smile again, to feel content again. I have, I am… I hope.

  So now, as I watch James and Maya play with my five month old niece after a breathtaking Ceremony of Baptism, I find a certain peace in the fact I no longer pine over Maya. Yet at the same time I find myself in a certain amount of distress. It’s time to move on, time to put my deceased Wife to rest, Crystal, it has been two years since she passed and I can’t keep clinging to her anymore. This brings me a small amount of fear. She’d want me to be happy just as I would her if our roles were reversed. Amelia needs more than just a father’s influence. Not that anyone would replace her mom, no, just that she deserves a mother figure. I know she has Maya, Sylvia, Summer and Marie, so many amazing women but I don’t want her growing up and looking at Evelyn and wondering why she has Maya all the time. She needs someone constant, someone kind and loving, strong and patient. We both deserve our happily ever after.

  We both need it.

  “Photos!” Maya shouts above the noise of the large crowd. She waves me over, Amelia already by her side. As I walk across the soft grass I nod at people I recognize before taking my place by my brother’s side, Jacob takes his spot beside me. “Someone looks happy.” Maya smirks sarcastically at me.

  “Sorry,” I put on an honest smile, I am happy. It was just for a moment that I needed to accept my woes. We all have moments like this. Right? “Let’s do this.”

  “James, Lucas, Jacob, swap sides with us,” Maya whispers urgently.

  James rolls his eyes, clearly knowing what she means without her having to explain, “Babe, you don’t have a bad side.”

  “But from this side my nose looks big,” she hisses, a smile still on her face. “Now!”

  James goes to swap sides, I grab him by the back of his collar to stop him from taking another step, “Dude. Get a fucking backbone.” I notice Marie and Summer giggling to themselves, Jacob flips them off. Maya and James chose the four of us as godparents, definitely an honor. “She’s not bothered by her nose. She’s s
howing them how whipped you are.”

  He quirks a brow and stands his ground. Maya’s mouth drops open in shock, right as the camera dude takes the picture. That’s one for a Christmas card, James stood looking smug, Marie and Summer howling with laughter, Jacob looking at the ground to hide his smirk and Maya looking open mouthed from shock whilst cradling Evelyn to her chest.

  “Let’s try that again,” the camera guy smiles and motions for us all to regroup with a flick of his fingers.

  “Swap sides with me,” Maya whispers, her face set in a perfect smile. You can’t even tell she’s talking. “Now.”

  “No,” James bites back, you can definitely tell he’s talking.

  “Please!”

  “No.”

  “I’ll do that thing you like.”

  I hear him clear his throat, he shifts a little on the spot, “Really?”

  My smile keeps on getting wider, I must look like a fucking idiot. This guy is so whipped. It’s almost embarrassing.

  “Yeah, I swear.”

  “Okay.” He doesn’t even hesitate and suddenly I’m walking backwards as he pulls me by my collar, Jacob follows, now laughing. I groan as we switch sides with the women. The camera goes off right as Maya cracks an invisible whip with her right arm. It goes off again when Summer takes the baby from Maya and then again when James lunges for Maya.

  Welcome. To. My. Family.

  Sigh.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Who You Gonna Call? Call Lucas!

  My new fucking motto. Whether it’s to deal with a junkie, or lick stamps for hours, or if you need to host a low calorie cake party for females only but don’t have a venue… who you gonna call? Call Lucas!

  “Pass me the fudge sauce,” Summer demands. Is she fucking serious? It’s right between us both. I look at her in disbelief and fold my arms across my chest, meaning NO, in case you didn’t catch that. With an eye roll she grabs it herself and starts decorating the chocolate cake before her. My kitchen looks like it has been attacked by a tornado of flour and eggs. Fuck, this is so stupid.

  So many cakes, so many colors. I need to slip away, this is a girls only thing yet guess who gets roped into helping… and again… who you gonna call? Call Lucas!

  “Lucas, zip me up,” Maya asks and comes out of MY bedroom wearing a tight black dress with a long zip up the back.

  Why me?

  There are twelve other females here. TWELVE! I feel like I’m in the center of an episode of ‘Sex and the City’ on steroids. With a grunt I fumble with the tiny zip and pull it up, following the dip of her spine.

  “I’m going,” I say and step around her.

  “Lucas!” Maya whines and gives me the big eyes and pouty lower lip. “You promised you’d help.” Fuck my stupid promises, fuck that cute look on her face. She sees me relent and smiles… stupid, stupid, stupid.

  Sometimes I despise myself. This moment clearly being one of those times.

  “Done!” Summer suddenly shouts, startling us both. She wipes her arm across her forehead, smudging the chocolate sauce that was already there and adding flour to it too. “Shower time!”

  “She looks far too happy for someone who has been baking for ten hours,” I whisper to Maya who nods slowly in agreement.

  “She’ll crash soon. When we were in College together, she’d always do this. And then suddenly,” she clicks her fingers. “Gone for about twenty hours. She once stayed up for three nights and was fine until she started hallucinating.”

  “Oh my god, that was so funny,” in comes Marie, she takes one look at the mess in the kitchen and takes a step backwards out of the door. Apparently she’s going to stay there. “She kept shouting at us in a half awake half asleep like state. Apparently, if you leave a house wearing a jacket it’s called…”

  “Driving a truck,” Maya finishes and they both start cackling. I feel like someone just pierced my ear drum with something sharp. Ouch. They need to tone down their laughter a few notches. “And… and we have to… oh god I can’t breathe… so funny! We have to take the light bulb out and feed it to the plant.”

  “What did you do?” I ask, out of interest and maybe so I don’t have to clean this mess.

  “Took her to bed and watched a movie,” Marie responds with a shrug. “What else would we do?”

  Possibly attempt to feed the light bulb to the plant, I’ve seen you all do weirder shit.

  Someone knocks on the door and rings the bell three times. “Why couldn’t you do this at your place?”

  “Who was going to look after Evelyn?” Maya says as if I’m stupid. “And James for that matter. Where’s he going to go with Evelyn?” Umm… here? I’d rather have my niece and my brother than… this.

  Who you gonna call? “I would have had Evelyn, if you’d explained what would happen if I didn’t say yes.” Not that I would have said no. My niece is gorgeous, and so happy. Always giggling and smiling. “Look, I have to go to a bar and drink beer and shit. Make sure this is tidy by the time I get back.”

  “But…”

  “Let the man go, there’s plenty of us here,” Marie says with a wince as more screaming girls enter my apartment. I give her a grateful smile, kiss Maya on the cheek, ignoring her hand on my ass. She does this a lot, especially in front of James who just rolls his eyes. The best thing to do is ignore her, if you react… you give her fuel to do more. Actually even if you don’t react it’s pretty much the same either way. As I step past Marie she pinches my ass, I bat her hand away, grab my jacket, keys and wallet off the desk by the door and run.

  Finally. Freedom!

  I feel ready to go and get some dinner, some high calorie, full of grease and bad shit, food. The options in this area of food are endless unfortunately which makes it harder to choose what I feel like having.

  Amelia is with Sylvia at some charity function, Sylvia is my brother’s adoptive mother, James is probably sleeping and if he’s not he won’t want to take Evelyn out anyway unless it’s to the park, that man has it bad for his little girl. It’s almost sickening how smitten he is with her.

  Why do I have no friends outside of James and Maya and their group? Of course I’ve met people at work but nobody I’m close enough with to call and ask to lunch without them thinking I’m gay or weird.

  Crystal and I used to go to lunch together every Thursday, just time alone for the two of us. The girls went to nursery while we worked, so we’d take an extra-long lunch break every Thursday if possible and just sit and eat and catch up without the stresses of home and kids and life. It was our little escape from reality. It’s funny that those stresses, which seemed so bad at the time, now that she’s gone… they seem so tiny and idiotic.

  Now I’m just being fucking morbid, burger time it is.

  My cell rings not long after I finish my fast food lunch. I answer without checking the caller ID. I really should stop doing that. I’m not used to being so popular, the calls I get sometimes are just weird. Last week someone called, offering to pay me just under sixty thousand dollars for information on what Johnson’s, Maya’s pharmaceutical company, is currently working on. I hung up. I’ve had teenagers contacting me with conspiracies, asking if it’s true we create chemicals to be used in war.

  That was the funniest because in all honestly, Johnson’s is just a normal pharmaceutical company… I think. Either way, I don’t ask.

  “Hello?” I ask and finish my last fry. “Hello?”

  “Lucas, buddy!” oh fuck off. “It’s Patch!” Yeah, I can fucking tell. “Have you seen Dana?”

  “Nah, I haven’t seen Dana since the night she escaped from her cell.” Her cell meaning the room she stayed in whilst attempting to go cold turkey.

  “Ah, shit man. That puts me on a real downer. If you see her. Call me.”

  No fucking way. I hang up without replying. Patch, a stupid ass name for a stupid ass guy that I never want to see again. He’s a freak, although he’s also a really nice guy. But overly nice in a weird way, he met me one t
ime for ten minutes and went on about how cool a guy I am. He was high and is also one of Dana’s drug party buddies.

  I can’t help but wonder what the hell kind of shit Dana has gotten herself into now. A part of me wishes that I’d never gone round to her apartment when I was evicted with Amelia, this was just after meeting Maya. I didn’t know how bad she’d gotten and figured she’d let us crash at hers. Let’s just say I couldn’t get out of that mold infested shithole fast enough. It was disgusting, she had empty drug packets laying around, moldy food and old newspapers strewn about. Even a rat has better standards of living.

  Dana used to be Crystal’s closest friend through High School. We all hung out together and often as we shared the same group of friends. She was there when Crystal was pregnant with both of our girls and there up until Crystal and Annie died. So I feel obligated to her in a way, even though I’ve helped her already and it has amounted to shit, I know Crystal would want me to keep on trying. My respect for my Wife and the memory of the old Dana before she turned to heavy drugs are the reasons why, when she contacted me over a year ago asking for help, I went to her aid.

  Last I heard after that little debacle, she was clean. I haven’t seen her since I caught her after she came to me for cash. By ‘caught her’, I mean I threw her in the trunk of my car, fixed a couple of more locks on the door to her empty bedroom and even added a cat flap so Patch could feed her without causing injury to himself or her.

  This was not kidnap by the way, she wanted to get clean, and so the room and such was all her idea. Unfortunately though, during the process of cold turkey your desperation for a hit overtakes your willpower to succeed in becoming clean.

  I hope she’s dealing with her shit okay, I know she got away from Patch and his weird buddy Peanut… don’t ask… they’re still high ninety percent of the time and she needed to get away from that temptation. Definitely a smart move to make. Fingers crossed they don’t find her and fingers crossed she doesn’t relapse. If she hasn’t already that is.