by Serena Bell
They exchanged looks. “Uh, sure,” the mom said, shrugging. “That’s fine.”
She handed the scavenger hunt to the kids, and they began racing around the store. “What’s this?” one called.
It was a game she’d set out on one of the tables, called Leaps and Ledges.
Evan was there in an instant. “Let me show you this one. It’s super fun.” He sat down with the kid, and a few minutes later, had her fully engaged in the game.
There was another chime, and another, and within a few minutes, they were all so busy they didn’t sit down again for the rest of the day.
41
Jax woke Tuesday morning with his arm looped over Chiara and her warm, bare ass nestled up against his morning wood.
They’d left the shop Monday night tired but satisfied. It had been a long but incredibly successful weekend. Mid-day Sunday, Evan and Jax’s mom had arrived in a rental car, fresh from the Portland airport and her flight from Bakersfield. Jax didn’t try to argue with her about why she’d been able to fly now and not two weeks ago when Evan had most needed her. He’d learned a long time ago that to expect his mother to follow the normal rules of parenting was a recipe for disappointment.
To her credit, she’d worked like a fiend all weekend, flying back and forth from customer to customer and shelf to shelf like she’d been born to retail. She had singlehandedly sold more games on Monday than he and Evan combined. Of course, the three of them—Jax, Chiara, and Janice—had done everything they could to make sure Evan didn’t tire himself out. He didn’t seem tired, though. He was jazzed up about the store’s success, already planning for next summer.
Next summer was still a long time away, especially in beach retail terms, but the fact that it was even a possibility felt like a huge success. The shop had made enough that if Evan had a good fall and kept building on their progress so far, Meeples would make it through the barren winter months without having to close.
Evan had hugged and thanked Jax and Chiara so many times that they’d had to ask him to stop.
“You take care of yourself, stay healthy, and don’t blow my investment,” Jax said, ruffling his brother’s hair. “That’s the kind of thanks I want. Besides, it was fun.”
Evan cast a sidelong glance in Chiara’s direction—she was chatting with Janice in a corner of the store—and then a questioning one at his brother. “How fun, exactly?”
“That’s none of your business.”
“I just—I like her for you. You smile a lot around her. And you know what else? She was really serious before you came. She’s been a lot happier since you showed up. I think you should think about staying.”
“You know she’s leaving, don’t you?”
“Well, yeah, I knew she was looking at a job in Seattle,” Evan said. “I just—did she get it?”
Jax shook his head. “Not yet. But she will.” He examined his brother’s expression more closely. “You don’t think she will?”
“Oh, I think she will. I don’t think she’ll take it.”
“Why not?”
“Because she’s in love with Tierney Bay.”
For a brief, luminous second, Jax had thought he was going to say, Because she’s in love with you.
He frowned.
“Well,” Evan said. “We’ll find out soon enough, right?” He didn’t sound bent out of shape about it. “But either way, I think you should stay. Selfishly, it would be nice to have some help around here.”
Jax didn’t say that he’d thought about it. Or that he’d had a long chat with Trey after the two-on-two game last week, talking to him about the state of the development and contracting situation on the Oregon coast. He just said, “Keep dreaming, bro.” And gave his brother a one-armed man-hug.
When he and Chiara had gotten back to her place last night, they’d been so bone tired that when she’d rolled toward him in bed, he’d made a Help! face, and they’d both started giggling. Then they’d wrapped their arms around each other and fallen asleep without even having sex.
Which he was planning to remedy now. He was supposed to have brunch with Evan and his mom today before she flew back to Bakersfield, but there was still an hour until he was scheduled to meet them. Chiara, lying beside him, had lost her covers, and she’d gone to bed wearing a shorty nightgown that had ridden up to her waist, baring a pair of all-lace pink panties. The visual was killing him—and he’d had a night of dreams that had featured him licking, sucking, and fucking pretty much every available part of her. He decided it was time for her to wake up, and that the best possible way to accomplish that would be to kiss her awake. Starting with the pink panties.
He had her moaning and thrashing inside of a minute, her hand in his hair.
“Wow,” she said, when he lifted his face to smile at her. “That is a good way to wake up.”
He gently rested his chin on her pubic bone and grinned up at her. He was just catching his breath before he climbed up her body to give her another reason to celebrate this morning when he became aware of a chorus of vibrations in the room. It took him a second to understand.
“Our phones are both going nuts.”
Blame the success of the weekend or the high of getting Chiara off before she was even fully conscious, or maybe the amount of blood flow that had been diverted from his brain, but his first thought wasn’t worry. Instead, he thought maybe something good had happened with the store. Someone wanted to interview them. Or partner with them.
Her phone was closer and she reached it first. Her expression went blank, then alert. He felt the stupid grin slide off his face. His belly knotted.
“We’ll be right there.”
She ended the call. Her mouth was set in a grim line.
“It’s Evan,” she said.
42
Jax had not looked up from his hands for an eternity. He was in the waiting room, which was decorated in shades of brown that Chiara couldn’t imagine had ever cheered a sad person up. Or healed a hurting one. Or otherwise served any purpose other than the make a grim situation grimmer.
Evan was in emergency surgery; he’d spiked a fever which had turned out to be the result of an abscess, one of the most common side effects of his surgery. Sometimes you could drain an abscess without surgery, but this wasn’t one of those cases, so he was under general anesthesia again.
Janice had disappeared. She’d been pacing every bit of linoleum she could find, sometimes going back outside to pace in front of the emergency entrance.
“I don’t sit still,” she told Chiara. “Text me when there’s news.”
Jax, for his part, was sitting so still that Chiara was worried about him. He was like a statue—frozen.
“Hey,” she said, sitting beside him and putting an arm around his shoulder.
He didn’t pull away, but neither did he lean into her touch—or show any emotion.
“Mr. Walker?” The voice had a Caribbean lilt; Chiara guessed Jamaican. She and Jax looked up to see Evan’s surgeon, Dr. Henry, standing in the doorway, her mask down, one stray box braid escaping from her cap. Jax shot to his feet, but the expression on his face was flat. Chiara knew him well enough to spot the tight lines of fear etched at his mouth and eyes. Her stomach clenched.
“Your brother’s going to be fine. It’s good your mother made him come in. He’ll be awake soon and you can see him.”
Chiara watched the terror drain out of Jax’s face. His shoulders softened, but he didn’t loosen his fists.
“He’ll have another few days of recovery, but he should be home again soon. And it’s nothing he did. It’s just that this sometimes happens. Bacteria from the gut gets out during the surgery. We do everything we can to prevent it, but intestinal surgeries always carry this risk.” Her soft, dark brown eyes took in the slump of Jax’s shoulders, the defeated expression on his face.
“Crohn’s is tough,” she said quietly. “My daughter has it. She’s twenty-four. I was a cardiologist, but I switched specialties to be ab
le to help patients with inflammatory bowel diseases. Has anyone talked to you about any of the immunotherapies for Crohn’s?”
Jax nodded.
“I think they could help him. They changed my daughter’s life.”
“His insurance won’t cover them,” Jax said.
Dr. Henry closed her eyes, took a deep breath, opened them again. “I’m sorry,” she said, simply. “We hear that all the time. I’m going to give you an email address. There are some clinical trials that open up here from time to time.”
“Yeah?” Jax said. It was the first time he’d looked hopeful since before they’d seen his mother’s text message three hours ago.
“But if he does one of those, he won’t be guaranteed to get the treatment. He might get the control.”
And just like that, the hope was gone from Jax’s face, and Chiara felt a surge of anger and frustration so fierce it almost bowled her over. She had to do something to help. She had to.
Dr. Henry shook Jax’s hand and went out again. Jax came back and sat down next to Chiara. He didn’t look at her. She felt like he was a million miles away.
“I’m so glad he’s going to be okay,” she said, feeling like it was completely inadequate.
“He’s never going to be okay,” Jax said.
She wanted to argue with him, but she knew that wasn’t what he needed right now. He needed this fixed.
She wanted, desperately, to fix it. She wanted to take care of him, the way he did for everyone else. To make it so he didn’t have to bear this alone.
He sat heavily in the waiting room chair. “I’m going back to Bakersfield,” he said. “I’m selling my condo, I’m going to rent something dirt cheap, and I’m going to use the money to pay for Evan’s procedure.”
His shoulders were slumped and his posture utterly defeated. She couldn’t stand to see it.
She thought of what he’d said the day he’d told her what Stan had done to Evan: You take care of your family.
She wanted him to be her family. It was that simple.
“Don’t do that,” she said. “You don’t have to do that. I can help pay for it.”
He turned on her. “What?”
“I want to help pay for the immunotherapy.”
“What the fuck are you talking about? You can’t afford to do that.”
“Yeah, I can. I’ve got a little saved. I was going to help Auburn with a problem she was having, but then she came up with her own fix, and I have money saved for the move to Seattle, and—” She hesitated. “I know you weren’t able to get a loan, but I’m pretty sure I could—either against my business or my house—”
He flinched. She saw it. But she didn’t understand. Not then. Not yet.
He was shaking his head. “No. No way. You’re not using your Seattle move money on us.”
“No, I mean, I’ve been thinking about the move, and I’m not sure it’s the right thing for me. I’ve been thinking, what if I stayed—?”
“Stop,” he said. “Just stop. You’re not staying. You have the chance to take your dream job.”
“You’ve said it yourself. Maybe it’s not my dream job.”
It felt so good to say it out loud. Just like it felt so good to finally admit to herself how strongly she felt about Jax.
“No. You’re not going to give up the perfect job because I can’t do my own job.” His jaw was set, his mouth grim.
“It’s not because you can’t do it,” she said. “It’s because you shouldn’t have to do it alone. It’s like you said. You take care of your family.”
He looked at her like she was stark raving mad.
“Evan and I are not your family.”
The tone registered first. So much scorn that she shriveled.
And then the words, which served as an absolute, complete rejection of her.
She felt like she’d been punched in the stomach. She must have flinched, because he looked away, frowning. “I’m sorry,” he said. “That was—harsh.” He wouldn’t meet her eyes again.
“I know I’m not your family,” she said. “But I guess I thought—”
Suddenly it felt absurd, what she’d thought. That after two weeks of mad, nostalgia-fueled sex, he might want them to make a life together, when everything he’d ever done had pointed to the opposite of that fact.
Everything that had happened between them, all the intimacy and intensity, that had been in her head and her heart. She’d done again what she’d done the first time: projected her own neediness onto him.
“No,” she said. “I’m sorry. I thought this time was going to be different. But it’s not, is it?”
He hung his head for a long minute. And then he looked up at her. All the green had gone out of his eyes. They were dull and flat.
He shook his head, took a deep breath, and said, “This was always how it was going to to end.”
43
She got out of bed the next morning only because the shop needed her. She took a shower (but didn’t wash her hair because she didn’t have the energy to blow it dry) and pulled on a pair of jeans and a t-shirt. She picked up her phone and saw a text from Auburn: How’s Evan doing? How are you?
She started to reply: Evan’s fine. I’m good. But her fingers wouldn’t cooperate. It was like they knew it was a lie and didn’t want to participate. She put the phone in her purse. She’d reply soon. As soon as she got to the store.
She walked into town—it seemed to take forever, because her limbs responded slowly, like she was moving underwater. But eventually she made it to Meeples, opened up, and flipped the hours sign to Open.
She tried not to look around, but it didn’t really matter because even the smell of the game store made her want to cry. The mildew and dust and old book smells had gradually been replaced with a new and welcoming set of smells, of fresh cardboard and cut lumber and new paint, and all those smells had somehow, in her head, gotten tangled up with Jax. There was no getting away from him.
She didn’t have to look at the demo tables, though. Or the shelf that held Terraforming Mars. Or the blank wall behind her where he’d urged her to paint a mural.
No way that was going to happen now. She’d taken one look at her sketchbook this morning, still out on her nightstand, and almost been sick to her stomach. She’d closed it and shoved it in a drawer, along with the pencils. Where it all belonged. Where it should have stayed.
Where her feelings for him should have stayed.
Her phone buzzed.
I’m headed back to Bakersfield first thing tomorrow. Mom is going to stay with Evan a few days.
What did it say that her strongest feeling was relief because she wouldn’t have to see him in the store, pass him on the street, run into him in the diner? He was leaving and she was glad.
Her phone rang, and her heart took off like a jackrabbit—maybe? maybe?
But it wasn’t Jax at all. It was Greg Peppers from Buyathon.
“Hello?”
“Chiara?”
“This is she.”
“This is Greg Peppers at Buyathon, and I’m calling to offer you a job!” He was obviously delighted with himself. “HR wanted to make the call but I insisted.”
“Oh, wow.” She could tell he was waiting for her to say more. “Thank you so much, Greg.” She tried to put a little oomph in her voice. To convey the enthusiasm she knew he expected. The enthusiasm she’d expected to have. After all, it wasn’t his fault that she’d just gotten slammed in the gut.
It was her own fault. She’d lined up her belly like a soccer ball for a free kick. Hurt me again.
Chiara yanked herself back to the moment. “I’m thrilled to hear that. Obviously I’ll have to see the offer in writing before I can give you an answer, but I can tell you that I’m very excited about what Buyathon and I can offer each other.”
The business-speak struck her, suddenly, as painful. And pathetic. Why couldn’t people just say what they meant? Why did they have to play games? Greg, I’m going to take th
e job as long as you guys offer me the salary you know I'm worth. Because I don’t have a good reason to refuse it.
They chatted for a few minutes longer, and by the time she got off the phone, there was an emailed offer letter in her inbox. At $10K more salary than she’d been hoping for.
That’s my girl! Her father’s voice said.
But there was something ragged in her chest, something it hurt to draw breath around.
Of course she was going to take it. Because getting out of Tierney Bay suddenly felt like the only way she’d be able to breathe.
Everything here reminded her of Jax.
That night she had to go to family dinner. “Had to” was not a phrase she’d ever applied to family dinner, but tonight it felt like the worst kind of chore. Even getting dressed seemed impossible. But she made herself put on a clean pair of a jeans and a pretty top. She brushed her hair and applied a little bit of mascara and lipstick. She needed to do at least a passable job of convincing her family that she wasn’t falling apart, or Levi would murder Jax and go to prison for the rest of his life.
As soon as she showed up in the dining room at Beachcrest, they all looked up at her from the table. Auburn, with her emotional X-ray powers, said, “Oh, Kee, shit, Evan—?”
“He’s fine,” Chiara said quickly. “He’s going to be okay. It was just—scary. For him, for all of us.”
“You look—?”
“I’m fine,” Chiara said. “Really. Just hungry and tired.”
Auburn’s eyes narrowed.
“How’s Jax doing?” Hannah asked.
“He—”
Auburn’s eyes tracked her.
“He’s—”
If she were even a tiny bit better liar, she would say, “He’s doing okay now that Evan’s doing okay,” and she tried, she really did.