Nothing Personal: A Standalone Romantic Comedy Read online

  I lift up my arms in defense, the chicken’s claws going into my shirt, and now I’m shrieking, screaming, yelping, flailing back and forth in the bathroom stall while the bird beast starts climbing up into my hair, squawking hellishly.

  Somehow I manage to spin out of the stall, the door flying open until I’m slammed up against the wall and the chicken loses it’s grip enough for me to open the washroom door and take off screeching down the hallway, trying not to fall down as I run while struggling to pull up my pants.

  Just then Nova steps out of her office.

  Sees me with my disheveled hair and my hands clutching my waistband, my cock hanging out.

  I can’t imagine the expression on my face but it makes her stop dead in her tracks, ripping off her wireless headphones.

  “Kessler, what the fuck?” she cries out, her eyes darting between my face and my dick. “Are you…okay?” Before I can even try to form words she frowns at my dick again. “Why do you have a hard-on?”

  “This isn’t the cock we have to worry about,” I yell, yanking the rest of my pants up before pointing frantically down the hall. “It’s the cock in the washroom.”

  Her forehead creases. “A cock…in the washroom. Is it…Teef’s?” I can see she’s getting all sorts of bizzare ideas in her head.

  “Teef isn’t even here!” I yell at her. “It’s that motherfucking chicken.”

  Her mouth opens, trying to find words, just as the aforementioned cock lets out another warrior battle cry that rings through the office.

  “What the hell was that?” she cries out.

  “That’s the motherfucking chicken!” I zip up my fly and do up my belt, beckoning for her to follow me. “Don’t believe me, I’ll show you.”

  She doesn’t move. “I’ve already seen one cock today, I don’t need to see another.”

  She’s disarmingly blasé, although I can see she’s starting to bite back a smile.

  “This isn’t funny,” I tell her. “That thing is dangerous. It wanted to peck my eyes out.”

  “Really caught you with your pants down, huh.”

  “Well what the hell is a chicken doing in the washroom? Doesn’t that surprise you?”

  She shrugs. “It happens.”

  “It happens?” I repeat. “Since when? I know Oahu has a feral chicken problem but we’re on the tenth floor.”

  “Chickens can fly, people leave windows open. Maybe they’re using the service elevator.”

  “You do think this is funny.”

  Finally she cracks a grin and shrugs one shoulder. “It’s at least a little bit funny. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go.”

  It’s only then after all the commotion that I realize she’s got her purse on her arm and her car keys in her hand. “Well what am I supposed to do about it? I can’t leave it here until tomorrow.”

  “The cleaners will take care of it later. Or you can call up Bradah Ed from security, but I do recall him telling me he has a phobia of birds, so I’m not sure how much help he’ll be.”

  “Well I can’t work here knowing he’s in there.”

  “Kess,” she says, and for a moment I bask in the way she’s said my name, like we’re old friends, “it’s just a chicken. Deal with it. Go grab a hockey stick if you have to and have some target practice. I really have to go.” She moves past me.

  Against my better judgement I reach out and grab her arm, holding her in place. “Where are you going?”

  She eyes my grip on her bicep. “Why?”

  “I’m just curious,” I tell her. “Are you afraid I’m going to follow you?”

  She holds my stare for a moment and I wish I could read the myriad of thoughts that are running behind her eyes.

  Just give me an inch, I plead.

  “I’m doing volunteer work,” she says with a sigh, relaxing into my grip slightly. I’d forgotten how good it felt to hold her, even just like this, my fingertips on the warmth of her skin.

  “Where?”

  She rubs her lips together for a moment, thinking. “It’s for Honolulu Mental Health Services. Sometimes I work the call center, sometimes the front desk.”

  “That’s what you do on Friday nights?”

  “That’s the busiest night. Drugs, alcohol, payday for some. Least I can do is put in a couple of hours.”

  “What made you want to volunteer there?” It’s not that Nova is heartless. Even though she never quite opened up to me outside the bedroom, I knew she cared a great deal about many things in her life. Her parents, her sister, rescue animals, pollution.

  But as I thought, she doesn’t let me in.

  “Just want to make a difference,” she says, shrugging out of my hold. “I’ll see you on Monday.”

  And just like that, she leaves, not giving a second glance back to me or the chicken squawking in the washroom.

  IT’S dark when I pull into Mike’s driveway.

  Funny, I should start calling it home already. Even when I’m in a hotel room for long enough, I start calling it home. But even though Mike is running on the beaches of Southeast Asia with a porn star, this is still Mike’s house.

  You can feel him in every inch of the walls, because he’s covered every inch of the walls with hockey paraphernalia, from framed photos of him posing along various hockey stars like Sidney Crosby, Roberto Luongo, and even Wayne Gretzky, to a clashing mix of signed jerseys and replica Stanley Cups. As an ex-NHL player, I find it a little creepy and I have every reason to suspect that Mike never brought the porn star back here, unless she happened to have a hockey fetish. Which, you never know. There are many uses for hockey sticks.

  It’s a dark and damp place, too. It’s way up in the hills behind the city and even though it’s surrounded by other suburban houses, there’s this general feeling of uneasiness, like there are things in the house that don’t want us there. I’m guessing the fungal spores in mold.

  I try to ignore it though and get out of the car, getting inside just as the skies open up with a deluge of spontaneous rain.

  “You’re home,” Hunter says, appearing at the end of the hall by the kitchen. I can hear Loan doing the dishes.

  “I am,” I tell him, taking out the pineapple stress-ball from my pocket. “And I brought you a present.”

  He gingerly takes it from me, staring at it. “Another pine-abble?”

  “It’s where Sponge Bob lives.”

  I wait for him to have sort of issue with it, but I guess the mention of Sponge Bob helps because he clutches it to his chest. “Pine-abble under the sea,” he says and then runs off to his toy chest in the living room that’s already overflowing with over Kahuna Hotels pine-abbles.

  I poke my head in the kitchen.

  “Hey Loan,” I say.

  She glances at me over her shoulder and gives a nod. “Hello Mr. Rocha.” Then she goes back to doing the dishes.

  “You know it’s been a week, Loan,” I tell her, leaning against the doorway to the kitchen. “You can call me Kessler.”

  “I prefer Mr. Rocha,” she says.

  “Well if it’s what you prefer,” I tell her, happy that she’s talking at least this much. What’s with the women in my life barely giving me anything? “How was the kiddo?”

  “Good. He napped. We went to the park.” She pauses. “He won’t go to the washroom.”

  Uh oh. “What do you mean won’t go to the washroom? Is he constipated?”

  She stops what she’s doing and turns to face me, shaking her head. “No I don’t think so. He says he’s afraid of the bathroom. Says the leprechauns live in there.”

  “These damn leprechauns,” I say. “Do you know what he’s talking about?”

  She shrugs. “No. He’s been okay otherwise. Hasn’t cried much. Said he misses you.”

  My heart thaws into a puddle. “So if he hasn’t been going to the bathroom…”

  “He won’t go alone, I have to go with him.”

  I nod. “I see. We’ll I’ll have a talk with him and maybe
get to the bottom of it.”

  I head over to the living room where Hunter is playing with the stress-ball and a stuffed chicken I bought him at the airport. I’m already shuddering at the sight. I left the office with a note on the door for the custodians to beware of the cock in the washroom.

  “Hey buddy,” I say to him, easing myself down to the floor so I’m sitting beside him. “How was your day?”

  He doesn’t say anything. It’s like he doesn’t hear me.

  “Hunter?”

  He looks at me. “It was fine.”

  “Just fine?”

  “I saw a bird at the park.”

  “It wasn’t a chicken, was it?” I ask sharply. I’ll be damned if they start coming after my child too.

  He shakes his head. “It was a white bird. Miss Loan said it was a tractor bird because they drive tractors.”

  “That’s pretty neat,” I tell him. “Hey, speaking of Miss Loan…you like her, right?”

  He nods.

  “Good. Just wanted to make sure she was nice to you.”

  “I’m very nice!” Loan yells from the kitchen.

  Sheesh talk about supersonic hearing.

  “She’s very nice,” Hunter repeats. “She knows a lot about fish.”

  “Good, great. Look, Hunter, she mentioned that you’re afraid of the bathroom now. Because of the leprechauns.”

  “That’s where they live,” he says. “And under the bed.”

  “Did you want to show me?” I ask, hoping that if I play along, I can act like the leprechauns are our friends.

  “I caught one earlier,” he says.

  “Oh really. Can I see?” I hold out my hand.

  “Yup,” he says, twisting around to reach into his toy box.

  Okay, when he shows it to you, there will be nothing there, so just pretend it’s something special and magical and rare. Like, he’s a famous leprechaun hunter now for catching it. Oh wait, work in the fact that his name is Hunter, like it was meant to be. Hunter the Leprechaun Hunter.

  While these thoughts are going through my head, Hunter twists around to face me and plunks something in my hand.

  That’s when I know something is wrong.

  That he put something in my hand.

  I look at what it is.

  A giant fucking cockroach.

  Right there in my palm.

  “Oh my god!” I yell, throwing the cockroach across the room and scrambling to my feet.

  Hunter starts yelling with me.

  Loan comes running in.

  “What happened?” she asks, eyes wide.

  “Cockroach!” I yell. “Hunter just gave me a cockroach.”

  “Was it dead?”

  “I don’t know. Hunter, did you kill it?”

  But Hunter is staring at us wide-eyed and on the verge of tears, so I know I have to step up and be a motherfucking man for once. “It doesn’t matter Hunter, I’m very proud of you. You said that’s the leprechaun?”

  He nods, pinching his lips together.

  “Okay, great,” I say then look at Loan. “Want to keep an eye on him while I check out the bathroom?”

  “Yes but cockroaches are common here,” she says, grabbing Hunter’s hand and leading him over to the couch.

  “How common?” I ask, as I step inside the downstairs bathroom, the one that Hunter uses most often. Loan and I both have our own upstairs.

  “You’ll see one occasionally,” she says.

  I enter the bathroom but I don’t turn on the light as I would normally. Instead I bring out my phone’s flashlight and shine it on the floor near the toilet where I figure they would be.

  I only see them for a second before they hide but it’s enough.

  “Fuck,” I mutter.

  “Bad word!” Hunter yells from the living room. He seems to have picked up Loan’s crazy hearing.

  I step in further and crouch down in front of the cabinet beneath the sink. Other than putting in toilet paper, I haven’t been in this bathroom yet so I have no idea what I’ll find.

  I open the doors.

  Shudder at the sight.

  Double fuck.

  I close the doors.

  “Hey Loan,” I call out to her. “I think we have a major problem.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  NOVA

  “ARE you sure you don’t want to visit?” I ask my mom while pulling my Civic onto Queen Emma Street downtown. “I promise I can afford to fly you both. I have a big house and you know there is plenty of room for both of you. If you’re sick of dad, you can even have your own bedroom each.”

  My mother chuckles on the speakerphone. “Baby girl, you know we would love to. But I don’t think it’s a good time.”

  My heart pinches at that. It’s never a good time. Ever since I moved here, I’ve been the one going across the ocean to see them, they never come to see me, even if I’m taking care of them financially.

  I know my parents are stubborn and don’t want to impose on me. But this Christmas will be the first one I’m spending without them in a few years and I don’t like the idea of leaving them alone, nor am I thrilled about being alone myself. It’s been so hard without Rubina.

  “When will it be a good time?” I ask quietly.

  She sighs heavily. “Nova, you chose to move to a rock in the middle of the Pacific. You know your father hates to fly, especially with his arthritis now. We’re quite happy staying here.”

  “But…it will be just you two.”

  “I know,” she says, and her voices drops softly. “I know. But we have each other and we’ll get through it. I know it will be hard on us all without her here, but you know she’s in our hearts and that’s how we’ll see it through.”

  My mother has always had a voraciously spiritual side and I think it’s her faith alone that kept everyone from falling apart after Rubina died. She’s had to deal with the threat of Rubina dying for years and I suppose when you’re a mother, it’s only faith and love that can keep you going through it all.

  “Okay. But that won’t stop me from worrying about you both.”

  “I know. And it won’t stop us from worrying about you.”

  “You’re the one who tells me worrying doesn’t change anything.”

  “And yet we do it anyway.”

  “Okay, I’m at work now. I’ll call you in a few days to check in.”

  “You take care baby girl. We love you.”

  She hangs up and I can feel a thread being cut somewhere in the middle of the ocean.

  Feeling despondent and melancholy, I head up to the office, prepared for another day of nonsense with Kessler.

  I mean, seriously. The last thing I expected to see on Friday after work was his penis, but there it was. Just waving in front of me at half-mast.

  Thank god the whole story about the chicken was ridiculous. I didn’t doubt him because he did seem awfully shaken up and I think he would have thought up a better excuse to wave his giant cock around than to be attacked by another cock. But the ridiculousness of the matter kept it from being real.

  Because, lord, it could have gotten very real. I shouldn’t have even been the slightest bit turned on at the sight of him like that but there was a very raw and powerful part of me that was. It’s like my body remembered just what it was like to have that beast pumping inside of me and it was immediately game for more.

  My body is a traitor.

  Luckily my mind was able to shut it all down before things got weirder and I got out of there fast.

  That said, after I was done with my volunteer work and I drove back home, the first thing I did was crawl into my bed and bring out my vibrator. It doesn’t have the personal touch of Kessler’s cock, but it did the job. Several times over. Until the post-orgasm, late-night shame washed over me.

  Maybe shame is too strong of a word. It’s not that I’m ashamed that I’m still turned on by that man, it’s more that I’m disappointed. For five years I wasn’t even allowed to think about him when it came
to my erotic fantasies. I stuck to people like David Gandy, or Jeff Goldbum, or my surfing instructor who looked like Jason Momoa. Okay, so my vagina has eclectic tastes.

  But Kessler was off-limits. It was the only way to get over him. That and dating a whole bunch of guys who, sadly, never measured up in the end.

  Now, he’s been back for a week and not only is the sweaty monster setting my loins on fire, but he’s doing so in this weird dominant position of power way. He’s my boss, and as much as I balk against that term and the sad reality of it with every ticking second of my day, for some reason it just fuels my sexual fantasies.

  The forbidden and all that shit.

  “Good morning,” Kate says to me in her deadpan voice as I walk in. “Hey did you hear about what happened here over the weekend?”

  “What?” I ask, pausing by her desk.

  “I think some of the custodians had an illegal cockfighting ring somewhere in the building. Maybe even the office. There were feathers everywhere this morning.”

  I exhale loudly, feeling exhausted. “I swear, if we could just go a day without saying the word cock.”

  “You okay?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “You don’t seem fine. You seem wound up tighter than a whale’s asshole. You should have come out with us on Saturday night.”

  “Whale’s asshole?” I repeat.

  “Yeah. Because it has to be water tight. Otherwise the whale would be in a lot of trouble. Think about it.”

  I wave at her dismissively. “I’m going to go work.”

  “Okay but we need to have drinks this week because we still have a lot to discuss,” she calls out after me as I go down the hall.

  I close my office door, sit down at my desk and attempt to get to work.

  Normally on Monday mornings I have a meeting with Mike to go over the rest of the week. I don’t think Kessler ever got that memo and I’m not about to bring it up. The less I see him the better, and I have great satisfaction making him go through Mahina every time he wants to talk to me.

  The only problem with that is that Mahina has been called into his office frequently.

  And, well, not only is she a bright go-getter but she’s all sorts of gorgeous.

  Native Hawaiian. Expert surfer (her ex was that Jason Momoa-looking guy).