8 – Jeff

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“Mr. Charles?” Becky asked. Jeff’s head jerked toward her. “Mr. Charles, Dr. Maser wishes to see you.”

“Thanks, Becky,” Jeff said, waving her off.

He’d been daydreaming. His concentration level was almost zero, and had been since he’d woken up after saving the girl’s life. Allyson’s life. For some reason, he felt drawn to her, as if some magnetic force kept trying to orient him toward her. It definitely wasn’t a sexual feeling, but it was somehow intimate. As if she’d left a piece of herself in him, and that piece had taken his body over and wouldn’t allow him to function as a normal human until reunited with her.

Jeff rose and grabbed his jacket, sliding his arms into it. He buttoned the front of it as he left his office and headed down the oak paneled hall to Dr. Theodore Walden Maser’s corner office. He stood outside, took a deep breath, then knocked on the door.

“Enter,” Dr. Maser’s muffled voice said.

Jeff opened the door and stepped in, closing it when Dr. Maser, Ted, he reminded himself now that he was a partner, waved at it. He stood between two chairs in front of Ted’s polished cherry desk. The older, graying man behind it waved again for him to sit down. Continue reading →

6 – Jeff

Jeff pulled the BMW into the garage, making sure he gave Karina’s Honda enough room to get the driver’s side door open. He shut the car off and punched the remote, barely hearing the garage door descend from within the silence his luxury sedan provided. Jeff tried to get his emotions under control, but his mind ran in a thousand directions at once. He felt as if he were spinning out of control and reached out to grab the steering wheel with both hands. When the world and his brain only slowed down a little, he gripped the steering wheel as hard as he could, his thoughts only slowing down long enough to marvel at how white his knuckles were.

The instant he felt a tear slide out of his left eye, he crashed, his emotions boiling over. Within seconds, Jefferson Taylor Charles was a complete wreck, his wracking sobs, snot, and tears making him feel as if he were having a seizure from an allergic reaction. A small part of his mind, the strange, darkly humorous part, let him know that he most certainly was having an allergic reaction. He’d never really wondered if he was allergic to attempted suicide, but the black humor that was rooted deep inside him assured him that he’d passed that allergy test with flying colors. And tears. And snot.

Jeff was so lost within his inner breakdown that he didn’t notice the door to laundry room open. Karina stood in the doorway staring at him. She thought at first he might be listening to an interesting story on the radio, even at one in the morning. They were both NPR junkies, and she’d had to deal with Jessica’s incessant complaints more than a few times after being forced to sit in the car for ten minutes longer than normal while a story on “All Things Considered” or “Fresh Air” wrapped up.

She took two steps into the garage, angry it had taken him another hour to get from The Rest to their home, less than six miles away. Her initial fear that something terrible had happened to him during the short drive home was quickly replaced by the typical annoyance that he’d most likely received a phone call and hadn’t paid attention to the time. For Jeff, for any lawyer (as she soon found out after talking with the spouses of Jeff’s co-workers), it was an unfortunate side effect of the job. Continue reading →