Labor of Love

by Rachel Hawthorne

  I had no idea.

  I was in shock.

  “Are you okay?” Jenna asked.

  “Brady left. He just left.”

  “Yeah, I know. Tank called to let me know.”

  “I don’t get it. He’s been so understanding—this whole time. And now, when I really need him, he just goes ballistic.”

  It was a little scary to realize how much I’d come to depend on him being there. That was so not what I’d planned for the summer.

  Amber had left Sean and joined us.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I thought you’d be happy to see Drew.”

  “How could you possibly think that?” I asked.

  “I just thought since he wanted to be with you again—”

  “But I told you I was with Brady.”

  “Yeah, but I thought it was just for the summer.”

  It was. It was. But still.

  It was hard to stay mad at Amber. She just didn’t think, and I knew she hadn’t meant to mess things up for me. But still, she had.

  “Brady didn’t even give me a chance to explain,” I said. “He just said it was over.”

  Jenna sighed. “Probably because of Melanie. Don’t you think?”

  My heart did a little stutter. “Melanie? Who’s Melanie?”

  Jenna looked surprised. Startled, even. “He didn’t tell you about Melanie?”

  Shivers went all through me. This was worse than thinking I felt a spirit tickle me on a ghost tour.

  “Nooo. What’s this about?”

  She grimaced. “Oh, I don’t know if I should tell you, then.”

  “Jenna! I need to understand what’s going on here.”

  “Let me call Tank and see if it’s okay for me to tell you.”

  “You need Tank’s approval to help your friend?”

  “He told me, but I don’t know if I can tell you.”

  “Jenna.”

  She sighed. “Oh, all right. Melanie was Brady’s girlfriend.”

  “He had a girlfriend?”

  She nodded.

  Why was I surprised he’d had a girlfriend? Honestly I would have been surprised if he hadn’t. I mean, he had way too many smooth moves never to have had one. And he was so cute and nice. Of course he’d had a girlfriend.

  “When?” I asked.

  “I don’t know all the details. Tank just told me about how she broke up with Brady—because it was such a cold way to do it.”

  “What’d she do?”

  “She text-messaged him. He’s in class and he gets a text message: ‘I’m back with Mike.’”

  “Back with?” I repeated.

  “Yeah, apparently, she broke up with her boyfriend, then she was dating Brady, then she got back with the other guy.”

  “Did Brady like her? I mean, a lot?”

  She nodded. “Think so.”

  “This is so weird,” Amber whispered. “I don’t know if I should have come back.”

  “You should have come back,” I reassured her. “You just shouldn’t have brought Drew.”

  “No, don’t you get it? Saraphina said there would be things hidden. I thought she meant that stupid snake,” Amber said.

  Another shiver went through me.

  Secrets were things hidden. And Brady had one.

  Why hadn’t he told me?

  Then I remembered him saying how he hadn’t believed the psychic because life wasn’t good. But he hadn’t explained why.

  I’d finally discovered his flaw.

  My old boyfriend showed up and Brady just assumed I’d get back together with Drew.

  He was as untrusting of girls as I was of guys.

  Weren’t we a terrific pair?

  I’d never questioned why he’d been so agreeable to the terms of our agreement. Why a New-Orleans-only-no-breakup-predetermined-good-bye had been okay with him. Now I knew.

  He was as scared of getting hurt again as I was.

  “So what are you going to do?” Jenna asked.

  “I don’t know. I just…I just need to take some time.” I looked at Amber. “Go talk to Sean. That’s the reason you came back. And Jenna, go finish painting the bedroom. I’m just going to…I don’t know.”

  I walked away, walked across the yard to where we kept the ice chests. I opened one, searched through the icy water until I found a bottle. I closed the chest, twisted off the cap, took a long swallow.

  It didn’t help. My knees still felt weak. I sat on the chest.

  Maybe I’d just go home. Who needed this aggravation?

  Drew being here when I didn’t want him to be. Brady believing that I’d get back together with Drew—just because he’d shown up.

  Only I didn’t want to go home. I wanted to be here. I wanted to build a house. I wanted to be with my friends. I wanted to explore the city more.

  I’d run away once before because it had hurt too much to stay. But now, no matter how much it hurt to be here, I wasn’t willing to leave.

  I was vaguely aware of someone opening one of the other ice chests, the pop of a top being twisted off a bottle, the moan of the chest as someone sat on it.

  “Sometimes I hate it when the things I see really do happen.”

  I looked over to find Sara sitting next to me.

  “Amber’s back,” she said quietly. “And the black-haired guy with her? He broke something, didn’t he?”

  Oh yeah, big time.

  Sara looked sad. As sad as I felt.

  I nodded. “He used to be my boyfriend. And Brady was just so un-Brady about it. Do you happen to know any voodoo?”

  A corner of her mouth quirked up. “Voodoo?”

  “Yeah. I was thinking maybe a spell that would send Drew away and bring Brady back.”

  “You take three hairs from each of their heads, bury them in a backyard”—she jerked her thumb over her shoulder—“like this backyard, and jump up and down on the spot three times.”

  I looked at her, my eyes wide. “Really?”

  She smiled. “No. It’s never that simple, Dawn.”

  “Brady probably wouldn’t give me three strands of his hair anyway. He’s kind of protective of his hair. He has this fear of going bald.”

  She shook her head. “Huh. I don’t see him without hair.”

  I straightened up. “You mean, he’s not going to go bald?”

  She laughed. “Oh no, I don’t see him, see him. I just can’t imagine him bald.”

  “Oh. I thought if I gave him some good news…”

  What did it matter? It didn’t.

  I sighed. “I don’t suppose you see how all this is going to end.”

  She slowly shook her head. “Sorry.”

  I nodded. “That’s okay. Sometimes it’s probably better not to know.”

  “Yeah, sometimes it is.”

  And the way she said it made me think she knew more than she was letting on.

  “I hate leaving you alone,” Jenna said.

  We were back in the dorm. I was sitting on the bed.

  “I’ll be fine.”

  Amber shifted her weight from one foot to the other. “You sure?”

  Tank and Sean were coming to get them for a night of listening to bands. I wondered what Brady was going to be doing. I was a little afraid to ask.

  So I didn’t ask.

  So typical of me. Not wanting to face the truth.

  I could see him dancing shirtless on Bourbon Street, gathering beads. I wondered whose neck he’d put them around.

  I wondered why he didn’t tell me about Melanie.

  It was strange, so strange, that all I could think about was him. How much I wanted to be with him.

  After Jenna and Amber left, I just looked at the ceiling and thought about him.

  When my phone rang, my heart gave a little jump—until I saw who was calling.

  Drew.

  I almost didn’t answer. Mostly because, suddenly, nothing was there. The anger that I’d felt earlier—it was just gone.

  “Hey.
”

  “I didn’t think you’d answer,” he said.

  “Then why did you call?”

  “Just in case you did. I really want to see you, Dawn.”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay? You mean it?”

  “Yeah.” I gave him the address for the dorm. I changed into jeans and a knit top.

  I was waiting outside the dorm when he drove up.

  It was kind of funny. There was no excitement. No anticipation. It wasn’t at all like waiting for Brady.

  I walked over to his car and got in.

  “Where do you want to go?” Drew asked.

  “McDonald’s.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Yep.”

  I told him there was one near the French Quarter. As he drove, neither of us talked. There seemed to be so much to say and nothing to say.

  I showed him where to park.

  “Seems like we ought to eat someplace, I don’t know, Cajun, I guess,” he said as we crossed the street.

  “I like this place because the lights are bright. I want to see you.”

  That seemed to please him. Maybe it sounded like a romantic thing to say, but romance had nothing to do with it. I just wanted to be able to see him clearly when we talked. Wanted him to see me, so there’d be no misunderstanding about what was being said.

  Sometimes in the dark, you can misunderstand things.

  He ordered a burger and fries. I ordered a soft drink.

  “That John guy, he’s nice. He found me a place to stay, with some other volunteers,” Drew said once we were sitting in a booth.

  “Amber said you came here because you wanted to help.”

  “Yeah. That, and to see you.”

  I really, really, really wanted nothing more than for him to go back to Katy. But at the same time, I couldn’t help but think of him as an extra pair of hands. And New Orleans needed all the helping hands it could get.

  So I wasn’t here to tell him to leave. I was here to figure out how I could work with him. I didn’t think it was going to be as hard as I’d envisioned.

  “I thought you wanted to spend the summer doing water parks,” I said.

  “Yeah, me, too. But I was reading Jenna’s blog—”

  “Thanks for sending my mom that picture, by the way.”

  He blushed. “This afternoon, it looked like you were still seeing the guy.”

  “Yeah, I am.” Or I would be, once I figured that part of my life out. I wasn’t going to give Brady up nearly as easily as I’d given up Drew. I wasn’t going to walk away without talking to him.

  “How serious?” Drew asked.

  “Serious enough.” My arrangement with Brady wasn’t any of Drew’s business. “I just want you to know that I’m fine with you being here. I’m fine with you helping. I just need you to understand that you and I are over.”

  I thought about asking what had been wrong with me because I’d always thought it was somehow my fault. But now I knew there was nothing wrong with me. There had just been something wrong with us.

  There wasn’t much else to say after that. He drove me back to the dorm.

  It may seem cold, but I didn’t even bother with good-bye. I just got out.

  I heard his door open.

  “Dawn?”

  I looked back over my shoulder. He just stood there.

  “I’m really sorry. About prom night. You have to believe that. I was just getting so much attention from girls after being in the play that I let it go to my head. You were the one.”

  “Actually, Drew, I wasn’t. If I was, you probably wouldn’t have kept looking at the menu.”

  “What?”

  I smiled, shook my head. “Just something Jenna said once.”

  “Are you sure you don’t want to give it another shot?”

  “You broke my heart, Drew.”

  “Dawn—”

  “You. Broke. My. Heart. We’re over. Completely and absolutely.”

  Now all I had to do was figure out what I was going to do about Brady.

  I was lying on the AeroBed reading when Jenna and Amber came back to the room, just before midnight.

  “You can have the bed,” Amber said.

  “Nah. Our original arrangement was that you got the bed, I got the air mattress.”

  “You don’t sound mad at me anymore.”

  I sat up straighter, folded my legs beneath me. “I’m not. I saw Drew tonight.”

  They both sat on the floor.

  “What happened?” Jenna asked.

  I told them about our trip to McDonald’s.

  “You’re not going to get back with him?” Amber asked.

  I didn’t know how many different ways to say it, so I just said, “No.”

  She looked confused.

  “Are you going to get back together with Chad?” I asked.

  “Absolutely not.”

  “There you are.”

  “But I left Chad on my terms.”

  “And tonight I left Drew on mine.” Maybe in her spacey sort of way, she’d been right. I had needed some closure where Drew was concerned.

  “So you’re back with Sean?” I asked.

  She nodded. “Yeah. I can’t believe how much I missed him. And how much I missed you guys. I even missed the work. I’m thinking about going into construction after I graduate.”

  “Seriously?”

  She nodded.

  “But you left before we got to the really hard stuff.”

  “I know. But just the idea of it, of building. It’s something I really want to do. Besides, there are women builders.”

  “I think that’s great,” Jenna said. “I’m glad you’re back.”

  “Me, too,” Amber replied. She peered at me.

  “I am, too.” I smiled at her. I knew what it was to worry about what someone thought about you.

  “So what are you going to do about Brady now?” Jenna asked.

  “Do some rebuilding.”

  Chapter 20

  Much to my surprise, Drew was at the site the next morning. I hadn’t really expected him to stay. He was wearing shorts, a T-shirt, and flip-flops. Like maybe he was on his way to a water park. So maybe he wasn’t staying.

  He walked up to me.

  “Hey,” he said.

  “Hey.”

  In a way, it was sad that I felt so little for him.

  “So what do I do?” he asked.

  “What?” Did he still have hopes of us getting back together? Had I not been abundantly clear last night?

  He flapped his hand around. “Around here. How do I help?”

  “Uh, well, you should probably go talk to John.” And John is going to tell you to go home and change into jeans and boots, I thought. Drew really seemed clueless about what was involved in working here.

  “Can’t I just help you?”

  “It doesn’t work that way.” Usually. Well, okay, if Brady had wanted to help me, I would have welcomed him. “John gives the assignments.”

  And I’d totally kill him if he assigned Drew to me.

  “Okay. I’ll see you around, then.”

  “Yeah.”

  It was only after Drew walked away that I saw Brady standing a short distance away, watching us.

  He turned and went into the house, and I wondered what he thought he’d witnessed.

  I went to the bedroom to finish painting. Amber had brought curtains and rods. As soon as we were done with the walls, we were going to hang everything up.

  We still had a way to go with the last wall when I decided to take a water break. I went out the front door to the ice chests and grabbed four bottles of water. I walked back into the house, went into the kitchen, and waited while Brady and a couple of other guys finished putting up a cabinet. As soon as he turned around, I said, “Brady, catch.”

  I tossed him a bottle of water. He caught it, no problem. He had good reflexes—which I already knew.

  He studied me, like he was trying to figure out what I wa
s doing.

  I just walked out and went back to painting the bedroom.

  An hour later, I did the same thing—taking him a bottle of water like he’d always brought one to me.

  When we finished painting the bedroom, I went back to the kitchen.

  “You guys finished with the ladder?” I asked.

  “Sure,” one of them said.

  I closed it up, tried to carry it—and discovered it was a lot more awkward than it looked.

  I heard Brady sigh. Not sure how I recognized his sigh, but I did.

  “I’ll get it,” he said, lifting it. “The legs, remember, it’s all in the legs.”

  He carried it to the bedroom. “Where do you want it?”

  “By the window.”

  Jenna and Amber were in the room, reading the directions for how to hang the curtain rod.

  I took one of the brackets, some nails, and a hammer. I climbed up the ladder.

  “Do you even know what you’re doing?” Brady asked.

  Not really, but still I said, “Oh yeah.”

  How hard could it be to put up a bracket?

  I put the bracket against the wall, put the nail in the little hole, brought the hammer back—

  “You’ve got—” Brady began.

  And I missed the nail, slamming the hammer against my thumb.

  “Ow!”

  I jerked back, lost my balance, released a little shriek, fell—

  And suddenly found myself in Brady’s arms.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  I couldn’t help it. Tears started burning my eyes and I shook my head. My reaction had nothing at all to do with the pain in my thumb. It had everything to do with the pain in my heart.

  He set my feet on the floor and took my hand. “How bad is it?”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Amber and Jenna sneak out of the room, like partners in crime worried about getting caught. If I’d thought it was possible, I’d have thought they arranged all this. But it wasn’t possible.

  “Doesn’t look too bad,” Brady said.

  I hadn’t planned on hitting my thumb. I hadn’t planned on ending up in Brady’s arms.

  “Looks can be deceiving,” I said. “I know you saw me talking to Drew.”

  “You don’t have to explain. His being here says it all.” He moved away, picked up the hammer that I’d dropped.

  “Actually it doesn’t say anything,” I said. “He’s staying to work on the house. Not because of me.”