Her eyes glitter. She exhales and thumps me lightly on the chest. “Fuck you,” she says, but I can tell I’ve won the argument. “It wouldn’t have been a burden.”
“It would. Would you really have held out against the urge to strangle my ex? You said it yourself: you were tempted.”
Josephine sighs. “Fine,” she says. “But for the record, I think this is insane and far too soon.”
“Noted. Come on. Come and meet Jody. You might even like him. He’s nothing like Sebastian.” That is assuming Jody hasn’t got in touch with his paternal DNA and vanished like Jimmy Hoffa. There’s a clatter in the kitchen and I peer around the door. Yes, he’s there, setting a kettle to boil on the stove. He turns to face us, nervous as a deer, but still impossibly beautiful, with his long-tailed dark eyes and high, delicate cheekbones. I cross the room and cup his face in my hands. He’s uncertain, I can tell, but he trusts me enough to stay put when I plant a kiss on his mouth. A stamp of ownership. My love. My heart. Right here in my hands.
“Jody, I want you to meet my sister.”
When he shakes her hand his face is far too pale, and Jo’s switched to a much more maternal expression – one of deep skepticism and suspicion. I pray that she’s going to play nice.
“I don’t bite,” she says, baring her teeth in a smile that doesn’t quite reach her eyes. Jody has the look of a scared woodland creature.
“I’m sure you don’t,” he says. “But I can imagine what you’re thinking?”
“Oh?”
“Yeah. How this isn’t the ideal situation and stuff…after everything Chris has been through.”
My sister is taken aback, the same way I was the first time when I encountered Jody’s cheerful, shameless candor. Maybe she has a shot of understanding after all.
“We didn’t mean to fall in love,” I say. “It just sort of…happened.”
“Happened?”
“He’s a force of nature,” I say, wrapping an arm around Jody’s waist. “Like gravity.”
Josephine narrows an eye. “I’m aware of how gravity works, Chris. That doesn’t mean I understand exactly how the bed ended up in the living room or whatever.”
“Socks,” says Jody.
She blinks. “Okay. Indulge me. How heavy were these socks?”
“Not very,” he says, with a shrug. “But I guess they were the last straw. There’s, like, a lot of gravity going on around here.” Josephine eyeballs the sagging corner of the kitchen floor, and Jody keeps talking. “It’s a physicist’s wet dream, when you think about it.”
“Yeah, and everyone else’s nightmare,” she says. “You can’t stay out here. The place is literally falling to pieces.”
“We’re working on it,” I say.
“With what? Chris, if you don’t come back to New York soon you’re gonna be out of a job. They’ve been real patient with your little…sabbatical or whatever this is, but come on…”
“Actually I’ve been thinking of working from home.”
Jo stares at me. “You mean to tell me this place has wifi?”
“Um…sometimes?”
“Chris.”
“I’m working on it, okay?”
“She’s right,” says Jody, surprising me. “You do need to show face in New York. You can’t afford to lose your job right now, especially if we don’t get tax breaks.”
“Tax breaks?”
“Yeah,” says Jody. “We applied to the National Register of Historic Homes or whatever. There’s tax relief if you get saddled with an expensive ass house that you can’t afford to fix but aren’t legally allowed to demolish. There’s even a chance we might get a grant to help fix it up—”
“—but it’s a government thing, and you know how long these things take—”
“—yeah, it’s probably not gonna show up until Barron Trump become president. Or God Emperor, or whatever we’ll have in the future.”
“Regional warboss,” I say.
“Yeah,” says Jody. “So we’re gonna need the cash. Especially if you don’t want me doing porn.”
Josephine does the Hawaiian goose thing again, and this time I don’t blame her. I stare at Jody, who just shrugs.
“What?” he says. “I’m not ashamed of it. You gonna tell me you don’t want me to strip, too?” Oh God, what’s going on? He’s gone into some kind of self-sabotage spiral. “I’m a stripper,” he says, lifting his chin. “Available for bachelorette parties, birthday parties, sorority parties. If you ever need to hire someone to come round, take all his clothes off and do stuff with whipped cream and a banana, I’m your guy.”
“Ri-ight,” says Jo. “And how did you meet my aunt?”
It’s a simple enough question, but Jody has the devil in him all of a sudden. They’re both at their absolute worst right now – he’s defensive, she’s judgmental and all my hopes of them being nice to one another are going down in flames.
“I know what you’re thinking,” he says, with a defiant look in his eyes.
“You do?”
“Oh yeah. You think I glommed onto your aunt on some girls’ night out and banged my way into her will.”
Josephine frowns. “Aunt Becky? On a girls’ night out?”
“Jody took a class at the community college,” I say. “That’s where they met. Please don’t be like this.”
“Like what?”
“You know what,” I say. “Both of you. Just stop. Jody was here, Jo. He drove Becky back and forth from chemo when she was too sick to hold her head up. He rolled her joints, listened to her stories. And he was here when she died. He was the one holding her hand at the end.”
Josephine doesn’t say anything for a moment. She doesn’t have to, and it doesn’t take twin telepathy to know what she’s thinking. That he did what we should have done. And didn’t. “Okay,” she says quietly. “Well…thank you.”
Jody shrugs. “I liked her. She was a cool person.”
“She obviously liked you,” she says, and still manages to make it sound like an accusation.
“Please,” I say, again. It’s hopeless. They’re both determined to make this difficult.
“Chris, what do you want me to say?” says Jo. “Congratulate you? You just got your heart smashed into tiny little pieces and now you’re…you’re…” She shrugs, lost for words.
Jody comes to the rescue. “Shacking up in a ruin with a stripper and part-time porn star?” he says. “It’s okay. You can say it.”
She starts to laugh, and I exhale. Just a little. “Oh my God,” she says, pinching the bridge of her nose. “Do you think she planned this?”
“Who?”
“Aunt Becky. Maybe this was her way of setting you two up.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” I say. “She would never think of a thing like that.”
“Wouldn’t she? She fucking hated Sebastian.”
“Did she?” says Jody.
“Hell, yeah. Maybe this was her way of edging him out of the picture – by throwing you together with someone better.” She sees Jody’s raised eyebrow and laughs. “You might be fucking other people, but hey, you’re doing it professionally and you’re honest about it. That’s still about a dozen steps above the beast that was nearly my brother-in-law.”
Brother-in-law. It sounds surreal now, in retrospect. Sebastian was almost an official member of my family. “Have you seen him?” I ask.
Josephine shakes her head. “Nope. Don’t wanna. Dad has, though. He’s still projecting his own infidelity issues all over your breakup.”
“Oh boy.”
“Fraid so. You forgiving Sebastian has become all about him forgiving himself for his mid-life crisis marriage. From what I can gather it’s not looking so great with him and Shelby.”
“Shit. He never said.”
“Of course he didn’t,” she says. “Why would a goddamn psychiatrist talk about his problems when he could be avoiding them by trying to fix everyone else’s?”
“Physician, heal thyself
,” says Jody.
Josephine snorts. “If only. He gets so deep in his own head that he can’t see beyond the end of his nose.” Jody gives me a knowing, sidelong look, making her laugh. “But I see you’ve experienced that particular Solomon trait for yourself.”
“Me?” I say. “What?” But I don’t mind them joking at my expense. Not if it brings them together.
It gets easier after that. We show her around the house and point out the parts that haven’t collapsed yet, and have a great time describing the moment when the dining room floor sank and almost dumped us in the cellar. It’s only when the sky starts to darken that she says she needs to be getting back to the baby.
“Good luck,” she says, as I walk her to the car.
“What? You think I need it?”
Jo shrugs. “I hope not,” she says. “But it’s very soon.”
“You’re killing me with your enthusiasm here, Brosephine.”
She opens the car door and sighs. “Chris, I kind of like him, and I can see you’re crazy about each other, but…”
“Ah, there’s always a but.”
“Your timing,” she says. “Forgive me if I’m skeptical. I want this to work for you, I do.”
“Yeah, yeah,” I say, before another but comes back to bite me. “I know. I guess I’m not so far gone that I can’t see your point.”
She squeezes my wrist. “Come to New York, okay? You need to check in. People are worried about you.”
“I’m okay.”
“I know. So show them.” She leans forward and hugs me. “Take care of each other.”
“We will. Drive safe.”
“I will. I love you.”
“Love you, too.”
I watch her go, her taillights disappearing through the trees and the gathering dusk. Jody slinks out onto the porch and slips under my arm. He gazes out into the darkening wood and snuggles in. His breath freezes.
“So I hope you had car insurance,” he says. “Because Jack’s gone with the wind.”
“Of course I had car insurance,” I say, although it was the last thing on my mind this afternoon. I turn to him and kiss his cool, dry lips. A last sliver of the winter sunset makes its way through the trees and lights up the garnet shades in his dark brown eyes. He looks tired and anxious. “Are you all right?”
“I don’t think your sister likes me.”
“She does.” I smooth the corners of his eyes with my thumbs. “She just thinks our timing sucks.”
“She’s not wrong.”
“No.”
He gazes up at me, and I can’t get enough of him. Just the sight of him makes my heart beat faster and my blood flow warmer, and God knows, it is too soon, but it’s not like I had a choice in the matter. It just happened.
“I keep trying to think of the exact moment when I knew I was in love with you,” he says. “But I can’t do it. I don’t think there was any one moment. It…it snuck up on me.”
“Me, too.” I can smell snow in the air again, and it reminds me of the day we both threw up our hands and gave into it. And the night that came after it, rolling over and under each other in that cheap motel bed, our mouths and legs open and our hearts full to bursting. “Although I remember thinking I was in deep, deep trouble when you bought that little boy a Christmas tree.”
His kiss is blood hot against the chill air. My car has most likely been stolen, but I don’t give a shit, because all I want to do right now is take Jody to bed. “You are just the most amazing person,” I tell him, and he curls his fingers tighter into the back of my hair as we kiss again.
He pulls me towards the door, but then we hear an engine, and to my surprise I see headlights through the trees. Jody pulls away and stares into the lights. “No fucking way,” he says, not entirely incredulous. Hopeful, maybe. Or cautiously impressed.
Jack’s back.
“So…um…how was your day?” says Jody, as if he’s speaking a language he’s still learning.
“Long,” says Jack. “But check this out.” He whips out a spiral bound notepad. It’s covered in notes and calculations, in a shaky, spidery hand that might once upon a time have been graceful, before our hero discovered booze, crank and heroin. “First place you sent me to? Goddamn rip off. So, I took the initiative and went round a few more lumberyards to find the best deal. Wrote it all down for you. See what you think.”
“Uh…wow. Thank you. This is great, Jack. Thank you.”
“Ah, you’re welcome,” he says, waving a hand. “You need all the help you can get, I figure. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I ate a gas station hot dog a coupla hours ago, and I’m gonna need some time wrangling this one out into the open, if you catch my drift.”
That little light of surprise in Jody’s eyes has gone out, replaced by that pewter look that says he’s got his guard back up. “Assuming these lumber yards even exist,” he says, narrowing his eyes at the notepad.
“You weren’t even expecting him to come back.”
“I know.”
“Then why are you looking like that? Come on. Why aren’t you willing to entertain the possibility that he’s cleaned up his act?”
Jody shrugs. “Because dashed hope hurts, Chris. It hurts more than if you had none at all.”
13
Jody
One of the things I learned from Jack growing up – among all the other bits and pieces of platitudes, partial accuracy and total bullshit – was that Inuits slept in the nude. Their homes were made of ice, but they’d strip off all their clothes, snuggle under a big pile of furs and stay warm the whole night through. And if there was someone to cuddle, even better, because you couldn’t beat body heat. That’s why, if you happened to get hypothermia, the best thing you could do was strip off and find a warm body, one who was also willing to get naked and let you climb them like a tree.
I was always skeptical, until now. The hair under my arms is damp, even though there’s ice on the inside of some of the windows. The most either of us has worn all night is a condom, but Chris and I are perfectly warm, the proverbial bugs in a rug.
He reaches for his phone to check the time. The pale glow fills the tent. It’s just gone five, and I’m already wishing the sun would stop in its tracks.
“I don’t want you to leave.”
The bluish light from the phone brings out the green in his eyes. “I know, Pumpkin,” he says, shuffling even closer, so that our noses touch. “But I gotta. I won’t be long. It’s just to show face and reassure them that I’m not in your sexual thrall or whatever…”
“You’re not? God, I gotta work on my sexual thrall game.”
Chris laughs, his lips against mine. “You’re plenty enthralling. But you know what I mean. And I do need a job.”
This again. “You know I can always…”
He shakes his head. “I…no…not that, Jody.”
“Chris, it’s just sex work. It’s not like this.”
“I know,” he says. “Rationally, I know, but I’m not ready. Just the thought of someone else touching you right now…”
“Okay.” I stop pushing. Zoolander has fucked him up, and I still have so many questions. Like did he ever love him the way he loves me? Did they ever stay up all night just talking? Did he pick out a pet name? Was he better in bed than me?
“We will figure something out,” says Chris. “Once I get back from New York, okay?”
“Yeah.”
“Just let me convince my family that I’m not completely dickmatized.”
“You’re not? I really am losing my touch.”
He doesn’t smile this time. “Baby, they were always going to be concerned. Look at us. I’m…I’m raw. And it is too fast. It’s the worst time in the world for me to be falling in love again. Some of my stuff is still in boxes in my ex’s apartment, for God’s sake. This is a disaster waiting to happen.”
My heart does a slow roll. “What are you saying?”
The light blinks out and his lips brush mine. “That I re
gret nothing,” he says, running his hands over my body in the dark.
I arch to meet his touch. Last night I was inside him, with him lying half on his stomach and half on his side. He was so tight at first, and I’m still dazed from it. The air mattress creaks and squeaks beneath our bodies, and while it’s not a sexy sound in itself, in my head it takes me right back to that thrilling moment when I first entered him by the light of the phone. He opened slowly to me, the mattress protesting at the pressure of his knees, and we sank down, my hand on his hip, holding him in place. He didn’t make a sound louder than a sigh, until the moment where he whispered “Oh Christ, yes,” and closed tight around me as he came.
If he has to leave, I’m going to give him something to remember me by. He’s as hard as I am as we rock together, tongues twinings, dicks rubbing. “You were incredible last night,” I say.
“So were you.” He pulls me even closer, so close I imagine I can feel every vein and curve of his cock against mine. It’s pitch black, but we’ve got so used to doing this in the dark that I know every scrap of him by touch, taste and smell. “You wanna do it again?” he asks, and I’ve never wanted anything so much in my life.
I reach for the phone and the light fills the tent again. The lube is alongside the mattress, but I can’t find the condoms. As I search Chris kisses and nuzzles the back of my neck and shoulders.
“Quit it and look for the condoms already,” I say, laughing to cover my impatience.
“Do we need them?”
I turn to look at him. Oh God. He’s serious. “Are you nuts?”
He runs his tongue over his top lip. “We’re both clean,” he says. “Right?”
The ‘right?’ makes my heart beat even faster. I kiss him and brace myself to tell him no, that we can’t do this, but his fingers curl around me and pull me in, wrapping us both together. If I’m unsure, my dick isn’t. It’s already pulsingly hard, filling my head with the sense memory of his flesh stretching around me, and I can feel warmth at the tip as it drools in anticipation. The bleach-salt scent drifts up between our bodies, and I know he smells it too, because he moans into my mouth and bites gently on my bottom lip.
The Other Half Page 19