Previously, On Concrete Shelves…
- Having missed the opportunity to find out who her uncle’s mysterious employer is, Greta Wilkinson, was feeling out of sorts and went to her mother for advice, however, a chance meeting with Gillian Sutton Crenshaw, may have created a new opportunity for her.
- Not wanting to draw attention to herself, Kirsten Thurlow Sutton made her husband, Charlie, promise not to tell anyone that they were expecting their third child together. Though, unbeknownst to him, Kirsten made the realization that she was carrying her childhood friend, Adrian’s child instead.
- Jane Wilkinson has always been a daddy’s girl, and no nonsense best friend to both, Lark Maverick and Megan Sutton, but with the news that her father, Corey, may not be the man she has always known him to be, those rose colored glasses have began to lose their luster. Will she give into temptation? Or can she stay on the straight and narrow?
- There’s a storm brewing in Stone Creek, with the empire of Sutton Corp., in the grasp of so many, will anyone come up on top? Or will the entire legacy come undone from years of twists and turns?…
How Do I Say This Without Breaking It
October 12th, 2027
On Concrete Shelves | Revisited
015
Stone Creek
Sage Gardens; Wilkinson Cottage
The sun peeks through a thick layer of clouds. The unpredictable weather of mid-October has become increasingly difficult for Greta. She starts pulling on the cardigan she had thrown over her button-up blouse.
Her husband left for the police station early in the morning. These days, it feels as if he spends more time there than with his family. But the local news channels assure her it’s not by choice. Still, this doesn’t settle her mind.
“Oh, honey,” Diem Joplin greets as she moves closer towards her. Diem is draped in what one would call the prime autumn outfit for her age; a pair of silken flared out slacks, and a multicolored knitted shawl thrown over a white turtleneck. It isn’t something Greta would’ve picked out, but on Diem it looks wholesome.
“I’ve been meaning to stop by your house with a casserole. Your mother tells me you’ve been quite busy lately.” She does this thing with her eyes that would come off as judgmental if it were anyone else other than Diem.
Greta leans in for a hug. “It’s not necessary, you’re more than welcome at our home without having to bring anything.”
But Diem doesn’t let her take no for an answer. “Nonsense! What kind of guest would I be if I didn’t bring something? How about you shoot me a text message sometime next week when you don’t feel like cooking and I’ll be right over! It would be my pleasure.”
“I appreciate you so much.” Greta folds.
This changes something within Greta. She has always known Diem Joplin to be the direct opposite of any other Joplin she has ever met — including her daughter, Olivia, who herself has shown a much nastier side to Greta once or twice before. “I’ll let you know when to come by then. The kids always love spending time with you.”
“I do with them, as well.”
There’s a silence between the two of them as they stand near Penelope’s garden. She watches as Diem rubs a the leaves of a nearby white gardenia. Then Diem turns back to Greta. “Oh! I have been meaning to run something by you, if you have some time?”
“I have a few minutes.”
“It’s nothing too serious,” Diem acknowledges. “The other day I was rummaging through some old files about the kidnappings that happened to you and your mother a few years ago…”
Her voice dims a bit as she says the next few words. “It seems that Rodney Burnett was a busy man. Other than the family that he had with Cassie’s mother…”
Greta thinks back to when Cassie shot and killed her father to protect both Greta and Daphne. She remembers sitting on the floor for a few seconds just trying to make sense of everything. The smell from the gun. Her mother and Cassie mumbling words that made no sense…
“I don’t think it would surprise anyone if he had a million families.” Greta speaks up, interrupting Diem and turning her body away from the older woman. “I think maybe you should keep that information between the two of us.” Greta nods her head towards the kitchen. “It might be best for my mother to just keep that man buried in an unmarked grave.”
“He was cremated…” Diem responds.
Greta shrugs. “It was more figurative. I just mean… there’s no reason to worry my mother anymore with Rodney Burnett or his offspring. Cassie and Callum have been more than enough of a reminder before they left town…”
“You’re right.” Diem stands-up straight. “I should get inside then, make sure that your mother and the kids have everything before we head off to the baby shower… we will see you shortly, I presume?”
“After I run my errands, of course.”
“Of course.”
The thought of Rodney Burnett even fathering another child sickens Greta. There’s a heaviness to her stomach as she turns away from Diem and is thankful that she can release it through a tremor in her lip as she begins to walk back to her car.
“Oh, Greta!” Diem calls back.
She stops in her tracks, a deep breath to herself and then turns on her heel with a smile meant for Diem. “Yeah?”
“That dinner. I mean it.” Diem says. “Just send me a text. I’ll be right over.”
Greta nods. “Thank you.”
Stone Creek
Now Town; Sutton Enterprises
After his meeting with his aunt, Kimberly, he made it his mission to reconnect with Catalina. But after he stood her up to take the meeting with his aunt, to say it was an uphill battle would be the understatement of the fucking year. Now, however, as he can feel her rapid breath against his ear as he pushes their bodies closer together upon his office desk, he can feel a sense of euphoria.
A sense of relief as he nears climax.
Minutes later they are collecting their clothes.
Catalina turns towards him, her sweet honey eyes glistening. “It’s nothing.”
“It’s something if you’re acting like this was a mistake.”
“Not a mistake.” Catalina chimes back.
“Then what is it?” Panic begins to build up within him.
She finishes buttoning her black slacks. “I just feel that we are falling back into our bad habits. I’m supposed to be working here — seriously, not, fumbling around in your office with the blinds closed and the door locked..”
“Would you rather we gave everyone a show?” Peter perks.
It’s a thought that tightens his jeans once again.
“You’re not funny.” Catalina snips, she then goes to tighten her black pleated vest. “What I meant was that we should probably establish exactly what it is that we are doing here… I have work to do.”
“Yet you still came to my office after I sent you a text.”
Catalina grabs her blazer and throws it on over her vest. “Then, I guess, I should stop replying to your messages, Petey.”
“This entire conversation has gone so far off the rails, I don’t even know where it’s going. Let’s start this all over? Maybe we can go back to the beginning?” Peter begins to heft himself back into his jeans, zipping them up and buttoning them closed. “How about we just start over?”
But Catalina is already in a mood. “Which part?” She snips, grabbing at her thin, summer blazer. “The part where you pulled down your pants and stuck your penis inside of me? Or where you did the same to yourself?”
This garners a chuckle from him.
She makes her way to the tablet she had brought over in the first place and collects the device before moving closer toward the door, her ass swaying as she did so.
Peter moves in between herself and the door. His chest of fur presented to her, like a peacock, trying to win over it’s mate. He doesn’t know if it’s working, but he senses that he only has a few more seconds before she pushes past him and out of the room. So he tries to make it brief.
“I deserve that.”
“You deserve much more.”
“Noted.”
She pushes past him.
“Cat.”
“One day I’m going to get down on my knee and that is going to be the end of it for us. We will get married somewhere in the country, probably my father’s farm, with my stepmother cursing the marriage from the second we elope until the moment we have children — and even after we divorce.”
“What makes you think I want to marry you?”
Peter looks to his socked feet, and then locks eyes with her once more. “Because if you didn’t want to marry me you wouldn’t be here right now. You wouldn’t be working for Sutton Corp., you would be in some city, somewhere, making your own money and not giving me one ounce of a thought.”
This softens her just a bit.
“Y que?... we’re just going to do what, then? Live in a big house, have a few children and then hate each other enough to go our separate ways?” Catalina challenges.
“I’m not the best at putting other people first.” Peter admits. “Maybe one day I will change that — but it’s a matter-of-fact that I probably won’t. I want to do good by you. I want to make sure that I provide you with the life that you deserve. But until then, I want to feel alive…”
Catalina slumps her shoulders.
“I want to feel so alive with you here in the next few months, or years, until we decide to make that definitive decision that will change what we currently have together.”
She scoffs. “That’s the worst proposal I have ever heard.”
“That wasn’t a proposal.”
She rolls her eyes, but through a smile she replies, “Sí, eso fue.”
——————
The emergency room is ferocious at this time of day, the usual mid summer heat is, luckily, replaced with a more breezier atmosphere, as the nurses and guards work in unison to keep the place in order.
Jane Wilkinson appears at the front desk, communicating a list of instructions to one of the nurses who is currently manning the triage area. Through the stream of steady voices, it almost feels impossible to hear her own. So instead she writes these instructions down in order to get them across.
It’s been like this for hours.
Still, Jane, found it impossible to focus in on the invitation and left it on read. Sometimes, and she tries not to let it guide her judgement, but, Jane feels that she has matured more into an adult than her best friends had. Living on her own, paying her own bills… working as an attending in the emergency room.
She sighs as she catches sight of Mr. Jennings waltzing drunkenly into the place as usual, for his monthly check-in… or, for what it seems like they will be doing today, rehabilitation. Jane looks at the charge nurse, and then back at him. These were the grown-up things that Jane was dealing with while Lark got to sit idle and pretend like she was defying her parents, and Megan was blessed with moving in and back out of her parents home.
“Jane,” A nurse calls, and rushes to her side. She is fitted in blue scrubs, and a cute kitten pen in her front pocket, her name is Sienna, and she usually comes with terrible news. “There is a man in Triage Room 3, he says that he knows you.”
“Knows me?”
Sienna does this weird shrug that seems effortless and clumsy at the same time. “He mentioned you by name.”
“Did you catch his?” Jane asks cautiously.
Sienna fumbles around with his chart, going through the written form and then looks back up at Jane, satisfied. “His name is Jackson.” Then she looks back down and corrects herself. “Jacks. Hannigan.”
There it is.
Jane has done her best to avoid Jacks Hannigan over the last few years. He saved her life after pulling her out of the way of a coming car, he had also become more of a bad omen for Jane. She didn’t like things that messed with her chakra. Jacks didn’t do anything in particular, but he was frequently accompanied by Megan’s older cousin, Dylan Tyree. Dylan’s presence was undoubtedly a catalyst for both, her, and Jacks friendship.
It only takes her a minute, or two, to arrive at the doorway for Room 3. It does, however, take Jane an extra minute to walk through it. There, waiting for her, was a much older, yet dashing man… with a gash on his forehead. Because, of course he does… she thinks.
“There you are twinkle toes.” Jacks smirks.
Jane rolls her eyes. “Please don’t call me that hideous nickname. I don’t even understand what it means to begin with.” Jane says, moving over to his side with his chart in hand. “What are you even doing here, Jacks?”
He points to his forehead.
“I mean, what did you do now?” Jane teases.
“There is a story behind it. But it is a very long story, if I’m being honest with you.” Jacks states, a smile forms on his chiseled, bearded face. “If you’re up for it, that is, what I mean.”
Scanning through his intake form, it’s almost as ominous as the words coming from his mouth, which makes her wonder why she continues to entertain this man at any chance meeting they have. Jane places the clipboard on a side table and pulls on a pair of medical gloves before taking a seat on the stool across from him.
With a heavy sigh, she says, “Luckily for you, I’m not the attending physician in-charge on the emergency room, so I have some time on my hands. But try to speed through the details, I don’t have that much time.”
“I- I didn’t ask.”
He shrugs. “Even still, I couldn’t let him continue the onslaught so I cut him short and sent him on his way. The bartender was serving heavy last night — but we made sure to check IDs and call Ubers…” he says the last part a little louder, as if to be talking to someone else other than Jane.
The way Jacks looks around at the ceiling makes Jane realize he’s talking to the cameras around the emergency room. “Cut to the chase, Jacks.”
By this point, Jane has him in her grasp already. She places the empty needle of anesthetic on a grey metal tray, and reaches for the sutures and turns back to Jacks, smacking his forehead lightly.
He winces. “What was that for?”
“Just checking to see how much time we actually have.” Jane teases, making note to check again before stitching him up. “Carrying on, tell me how Dwight Yoakam has anything to do with your forehead.”
“You don’t seem to like me very much.”
Jane shakes her head. “Jacks, I’m working here. I don’t have time to go through this drawn out story about you and this drunk, and checking IDs… I just need to know what happened to this other guy so that if he ends up in my ER I know to cut his story shorter than yours.”
“He hit me, obviously.”
She shrugs. “With what? This can’t just be from his fist.”
Jacks winces. “There may have been a brick involved… but I don’t want to press charges. I don’t want to deal with the cops. I’m running the bar for Dylan while she’s on tour. The last thing I need is for her to think that I can’t manage it.”
His words feel odd coming out of his mouth. Jane furrows her brow, then lightly taps his forehead again, this time not getting much of a response from the man who is locked on her eyes. “I- I didn’t know that the two of you were still that close, I mean. For her to leave you in-charge of the bar while she’s away.”
“There’s a lot of things you don’t know about me.”
Jane once again feels a pull to him. As if there is an imaginary string that keeps getting shorter between the two of them. They then get interrupted by a knock on the door, and Sienna popping in. “Jane. Dr. Atkins needs you in Trauma Bay 4… I can take over in here if you want me to?”
She looks between Sienna and Jacks and lets out the breath of air she had been holding in frustration. “Yeah, sure. I was just about the suture him up. Mr. Hannigan, please be nice to my nurse.”
Jacks nods his head with a smirk.
“Sienna, be careful with this one. He bites.” Jane teases before leaving the room.
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