She flew out of the car and said, “Hi! Is that for me?”
The deliveryman turned with an enormous bouquet of chocolate-covered fruits in one hand and a red box in the other.
“If your name is Miss Fine, it is,” he said.
Her heart leapt. Only Jett would call her Miss Fine! She thanked the deliveryman and hurried inside with her goodies, anxious to read the card. She set the vase and the box on the kitchen counter and opened the card as fast as she could.
Hope this helps you through the harder parts of today. Jett
She sighed dreamily at his thoughtful words. She opened the box, delighted to find a dozen chocolate-covered strawberries. She plucked one out, took a selfie biting into it, and sent the picture to Jett with the caption You can’t imagine how much I needed this! I’m dreading going through my uncle’s things. Thank you!! It will definitely help ease the sadness.
His reply vibrated a minute later. If I were there, I’d enjoy eating those off your body with my hands tied behind my back.
Holy cow…
Yes, please.
Another text rolled in from Jett. Distracted from the dread yet?
Oh, this man knew just how to get to her. She replied, YES!
She finished the strawberry, and as she reached for another, Jett’s reply came through. Good. We’ll get room service the night of the wedding. I can’t wait to see you. Maybe you should consider asking some of the girls to help you today. I’m sure they wouldn’t mind. She loved that he was trying to fix things for her from thousands of miles away. She replied, Strawberries, a sunset, and you. Sounds perfect. Maybe I will call a friend. Or maybe I’ll put it off for another few days and just enjoy this feast. Thank you!
As she carried the box of strawberries into the living room, she received another text from Jett. Heading into a meeting. Good luck.
She set the box on the coffee table, looking over the looming piles of Harvey’s things. She snagged another strawberry and sank down to the couch, trying to mentally prepare for a day of sadness. Her phone vibrated, and she hoped it was Jett. But when she pulled it from her pocket, she saw Jock’s name on the screen. A wave of disappointment hit her, and she knew that was unfair, since Jock had talked with her for nearly an hour yesterday afternoon about the idea of her moving into the cottage and using the big house for the productions.
She opened and read his text. I’ve been thinking about it and I think moving into the cottage is a great idea. She was glad he thought it was a good idea, because the more she’d thought about it, the more excited she became.
Maybe this process would be easier with a friend, and it just might do Jock some good, too, to gain some closure. She called him.
“Hey, Teg. What’s up?”
“I think I need you.”
He chuckled. “I always knew one day it would come to this. I’m sorry, Teg, but you’re like a little sister to me. I don’t think we should go there.”
“Very funny. I’m being serious.”
“So was I,” he said, his smile coming through loud and clear.
“Jock,” she pleaded. “I’m going through Harvey’s things, or rather, trying to go through them, and I just…I need help. Are you in the country? Is there any chance you can help me sometime in the next week? I can’t look at all these piles for much longer.”
“Aw, Teg, I’m sorry. I knew I should have stuck around to help you last summer.”
“You were pretty much a mess, too. If it’s too hard for you, it’s okay. Maybe tequila will help me through.”
“That’s never a good idea. Remember the night we played Never Would I Ever? Never would I ever have thought I’d end up holding your hair while you barfed.”
“Oh, right,” she said, remembering that hilarious night. “I owe you one, not vice versa. Never mind.”
“You probably owe me more like ten, but who’s counting? I’m at my brother Levi’s in Harborside, hanging out with him and my niece and visiting a couple of my cousins. They’ve probably had enough of me by now. I can be there in a couple of hours.”
“Wait. You’re with your family? You should definitely stay and visit.”
“The rest of my family isn’t here right now. I’ve been here for a week. Levi, Jesse, and Brent are working, and my niece, Joey, is at school. Give me a few minutes to wrap things up here and swing by the school to give Joey a hug; then I’ll take off.”
“Are you sure?”
“Absolutely. Besides, Harvey will probably strike me down if I don’t.”
JOCK ARRIVED JUST shy of three hours after Tegan had called, a welcome sight for her troubled eyes. Her clean-cut friend sported thick scruff, and his dark hair looked long overdue for a trim, giving an edge to his normally refined appearance. Tegan ran into his arms, and they hugged for what felt like forever.
“I missed you!” she said as he set her on her feet.
“I missed you, too, Teg. It’s nice to be back.”
“Do you want to move back to the cottage? Or you can move into the house if you’d rather.”
“Thanks, but no thanks. It’s time I moved on. But I’ll probably hang around the Cape. Maybe rent a room somewhere by the water so I can try to write.”
“Yes! At the resort! I have a great idea. You can take Daphne or Chloe to the wedding as your date.”
He chuckled as he grabbed his bag, and they headed inside. “Trust me, I’ve got more baggage than American Airlines. The last thing I need is to date one of your friends.” Jock had also met Harper’s friends last summer when he, Tegan, and Cici and her family had been in town for the funeral. They’d stayed for the Fourth of July and had run into Harper and her friends in Provincetown.
“I’m not talking about dating. I’m just saying you could be friends with benefits, like me and Jett.”
He dropped his bag by the front door and said, “How about you be my friend and feed me as a benefit? I’m starved.”
They went into the kitchen, and he snagged a piece of fruit from the bouquet. “Jett?”
“Uh-huh.”
“I don’t want to know what you had to do for this,” he teased.
They chatted about Jock’s travels and about her and Jett as he ate, and Tegan admitted that she’d been avoiding certain parts of the house, like Harvey’s bedroom. Which was why Jock suggested they start there. Like ripping a bandage off. By the time they made their way upstairs to start going through Harvey’s things, she was already feeling better. It was much easier to face the chore with Jock telling stories and joking with her. They worked through the bedrooms, boxing clothes and items to donate and heirlooms to send to her parents, and then they moved downstairs. They chatted the whole time, which made the process much less difficult. Now, as the sun dipped from the sky, they sat on the floor of Harvey’s office sorting through boxes of pictures.
They were separating pictures of Harvey’s life before he’d come to the Cape from the pictures of his life after he’d moved there. Tegan was also keeping a small stash of pictures of her and Harvey to show Jett. Eventually she hoped to get them all digitalized.
“They’re all mixed together without rhyme or reason. Why did he keep them like this instead of in photo albums?”
“Because he was a stubborn old bastard. I tried to get him to let me have them made into digital files dozens of times, but he wanted no part of it. He liked to look through them, hold them, study them.”
She set a picture of Harvey and Adele on a pile. “Really?”
“Oh yeah. He enjoyed the memories they brought.”
“Did he share them with you?”
“When he was in the mood, but most of the time when he snickered or appeared sad and I’d ask about it, he’d give me that look. You know the one, like you couldn’t possibly understand whatever he was thinking, and he’d wave me off.”
“He was such a pest to you. Why did you stay?”
Jock looked at the picture of Harvey he was holding, and a thoughtful expression came over him.
“We clicked. We were good for each other.”
“That makes me happy.” She took out another picture, one of Jock when he was much younger and Harvey standing by the amphitheater with a group of children. “Jock, look how young you are in this. You were so cute. It doesn’t even look like you needed to shave yet. And look how skinny you were.” She scooted closer and showed him the picture.
Jock snagged the picture and said, “I’m still young and cute.”
“I wasn’t saying you were old. But I definitely would not call you cute. Cute is the twenty-year-old kid in the picture.”
“Twenty-two,” he corrected her, gazing down at the picture.
“Close enough. You were cute back then, but now you’re a man, and strikingly handsome. I bet you couldn’t have grown that little beard you have going on when you were that age. You were brooding back then, too, which is understandable after all you’d gone through. Lucky for you, you’ve worked that brooding into a mysterious aura, like a movie star people admire and wonder about.”
“I’m nothing to admire or wonder about, Teg. I’m just a guy trying to figure out how to get through this life like everyone else.” He held up the picture and said, “This was taken the first year I worked for Harvey.”
“Wow.” She studied the image of her uncle standing beside Jock. Harvey was a bit shorter than him. He stood straight, with his slim shoulders pulled back, handsome and regal in a gray cardigan and dark slacks. “He’d been in a wheelchair for so long, I didn’t remember what he looked like without it.”
“He fought that wheelchair like he could actually win.”
“Of course he did. You know he fired every caretaker who worked for him before you within just a few months of their starting.”
“I know. He told me that they treated him like a dying old man, and he had a lot of life left to live. But he lost his battle with that damn chair just about two years after I started working with him. By then I had studied everything I could about emphysema, and I’d brought a nurse in after he was in bed at night for a few weeks to prepare and learn about the realities of living with a man in his condition and the care he’d need. I was as ready as I could be, but when it happened, when he could no longer take more than a few steps without his legs giving out, I swear I wanted to tear apart that stupid chair for him. He was so full of life, he deserved better than to be confined to a wheelchair and strapped to an oxygen tank for years on end.” Jock paused, as if he had to rein in his emotions, and a moment later he said, “Did I ever tell you how badly he scared me that first year?”
“No. You didn’t talk to me much until you’d been here for a couple of years, remember?”
He leaned his shoulder against hers and said, “Sorry if I was a dick, Teg.”
“You weren’t. You were grieving, and all that brooding made you fascinating to me. I remember before you told me what you’d gone through, I was always trying to make you smile.”
“You talked endlessly. Meanwhile, your uncle was torturing me in every way he could just so he could laugh.”
“He always said that nothing was more valuable than laughter,” she said as his voice tiptoed through her mind. “I loved his sense of humor.”
“That’s because he wasn’t scaring the hell out of you. Do you have any idea what it was like to go check on him and see him sprawled out, half on the bed, half off, with his oxygen tube around his neck?”
Tegan’s eyes widened with shock. “What?”
“The bastard would fake his own death every few weeks. I was a damn mess because of him. And when I made the mistake of telling him that my brothers and I always scared the crap out of each other for fun, he took it up a notch and actually hired a guy to pretend he was a burglar one night.”
“Oh my God. Are you serious?” She could totally see her uncle doing something like that.
“We’re talking about Harvey. Do you think I’m kidding? The guy he hired had a gun, which turned out to be a frigging play prop. So there I was, standing in front of Harvey with my arms out, protecting him from this guy and planning my attack, when the guy aimed the gun at my chest.”
“Oh no…” She winced, knowing Jock would have done anything to protect Harvey. “What did you do?”
“I acted on instinct and grabbed his arm, twisted and flipped, and had him on the ground in seconds. Harvey was laughing his ass off, but the poor guy suffered a broken wrist. That was the last time Harvey did anything like that, but he still did all sorts of other shit.”
She laughed and reached into the box. “That poor man. The fake burglar, of course.”
“I felt horrible.” Jock looked at the picture and shook his head. “I miss him, Teg. I miss Harvey every day.”
“Me too,” she said softly. She took out another picture, trying to keep the sadness at bay. In the picture, Harvey was in his wheelchair, dressed like a doctor, and Jock was dressed up like Frankenstein. “When was this taken?”
Happiness glimmered in Jock’s eyes, and he set down the picture that he’d just pulled from another box, taking the other from Tegan. “That was our fourth Halloween together. We both loved Halloween, so we put the word out to the groups that came through for the amphitheater that we were giving out candy. We’d decorate the outside of the house like a graveyard with smoke and that sort of thing. Or rather, I decorated and Harvey directed, and then we’d sit on the front porch dressed in awesome costumes and give out a trunkful of candy. He loved it, and I have to tell you, I did, too. But the best part of the night was after trick or treating was done. Harvey and I would watch horror movies together.”
“I didn’t know he liked horror movies.”
“That’s because you were his happy girl. He never wanted anything scary or bad in your life. I think he considered you and Cici the daughters he never got to have.”
“I’m sure he did. He would have made a great dad.”
They worked through a few boxes, talking about how much they missed him and the fun times they’d all had together. When they finished going through the pictures, Jock went into the closet and came out with a large wooden box.
“What’s that?”
“I don’t know. It was inside a cardboard box with Adele’s name on it.” He set it down and sat beside her.
Tegan opened the wooden top, revealing what looked like an endless number of handwritten letters. She picked one up and looked over her uncle’s shaky handwriting. “It’s a love letter from Harvey to Adele, written after she died. Listen to this.” She read the opening of the letter. “My sweet Adele, it’s been four hundred and eighty-seven days, and the pain is no less than the day I lost you. I hear you whispering my name in the mornings, and I open my eyes expecting to see you…” Tears stung Tegan’s eyes, and she lowered the letter to her lap. “I can’t read these. We should bury them in the garden where Adele’s ashes were spread.”
“Okay, we’ll do that.” Jock took the letter and placed it in the box; then he put his arm around Tegan, drawing her against him, and held her. Her back rested against his side and he pressed a kiss to the top of her head. “You okay?”
She nodded. “He loved her so much. She was so lucky.”
“I think they were both lucky.”
“Do you think we’ll ever find that kind of love?” She put her hands over his arm, which was belted around her, glad he was there and missing Jett fiercely.
“That would require dating first, and you know where I stand on that. But you…”
She closed her mouth to keep her thoughts about Jett from spilling out.
“The woman who never shuts up is being awfully quiet.” He wiggled his arm. “Teg, has chocolate-covered fruit guy turned into more than an FWB? Is he your one and only?”
She turned and buried her face in Jock’s chest. “I’m in so much trouble!” She banged her forehead on his chest but couldn’t keep from gushing about Jett. She sat back, her legs folded beneath her, and said, “I thought our benefits were going to far outweigh our friend
ship, but we’ve been talking every night, FaceTiming—”
“Oh God. No naked details please,” Jock said.
“No naked details, I promise, but it’s not just the sexiness. We talk for hours, about everything. I know him better than I know you, and I’ve known you for more than a decade. He’s complex, though, with baggage. Probably more than American Airlines, like you, but I don’t care. I want to be with him all the time. I count down the minutes until our calls, and I don’t want the calls to end.”
“You’re falling for your friend with benefits? Does he feel the same way?”
She fidgeted with the edge of her shirt, nervously admitting the truth. “I don’t know. When we’re talking, I feel like we’re both on the same page. I see it in his eyes and in everything he says and does. Even the fruit he sent today shows how much he cares. But he’d never say it, and he’s been very clear about not wanting more.”
“Then don’t make it into something it’s not, Teg. This guy is probably going to hurt you, and then I’ll have to hurt him. Why do women do this to themselves?”
“It’s not our fault,” she said vehemently. “It’s not a one-way street, Jock. You might not have dated much, but the guy always plays a role in things. He tells me he misses me, and he says romantic things that make me melt inside. And when we are together? I can’t even begin to describe what it’s like. I want to get lost in us and never find my way out.”
“I’m glad you found someone who makes you happy, but guys are pretty cut-and-dried. If he’s drawing lines in the sand, I’d bet he means them.”
“Maybe, but I think he’s just scared, and I understand that because of everything he’s been through. Plus, he travels all the time. He’s going to Louisiana tomorrow and, after the wedding, overseas for like a month, so there are valid reasons we can’t have more. But…” She lowered her eyes and said, “I can’t help it. I’m crazy about him.”
Jock lifted her chin and smiled reassuringly. “Crazy enough to not lose your mind when he’s gone for a month?”
“I think so.”
Bayside Fantasies (Bayside Summers Book 6) Page 25