Brought in from the foster system to live with Mama Joy when they were all in grade school, the boys ended up being adopted by Mama Joy and taking on her last name of Strong when they were in high school—and by then each was in some way ironically living up to the Strong surname. Kerry was constantly, even still to this day, questioned by her mother and anyone else with half a curious mind about her relationship with the guys and which one of them she was dating. As if any of them thought of her as little more than “Kerry Girl,” the shop fixture and a general nuisance to be tolerated.
Though Kerry’s mother was fine with her spending time in the shop and learning about knitting and business from Mama Joy, she could never quite get behind her daughter being in constant close proximity to the Strong brothers. Who knew—maybe her mother was right. With her track record for sniffing out heartbreakers and, let’s face it, general assholes, she was a bit of an expert in the field. Not that her mother had learned anything, being currently lost in love on yet another potential would-be asshole binge. Kerry prayed that this one would be the last. She’d had it with her mother’s disasters and, afterward, having to pick up the pieces. Besides, this last one had taken her ma clear out of state and given Kerry their apartment to herself. She loved her mom, but she loved having her own place almost as much.
It was then that a distinct beeping took Kerry out of her musings. Beep . . . beep . . . beep, beep, beep. Speeding up. Oh crap, the alarm!
Kerry ran behind the door to punch in the code. That would be everything she didn’t need. She was not in the mood to deal with explaining to the NYPD why she was in a shop that she may or may not still be employed at while the owner was not only not present, but recently deceased. Making sure the alarm was disarmed, she let out a breath, then looked around at the uncommon emptiness. The silence shrouded her as she walked forward and once again locked the front door, her eyes skimming across the flipped-over closed sign that had been in that position for the past week and a half, its possible permanence weighing heavy on her heart.
She shrugged. Nothing she could do about it. Whether the sign eventually flipped back or not was up to Jesse and his brothers. Well, mostly his brothers, really. What would Mr. Party All The Time seriously have to say about opening or closing the shop? What would he care beyond the fact that he’d have to find another place to park it when he was between women? As of late, when Kerry took notice, she couldn’t help but observe that he’d been more out of the house than home anyway. Taking longer and longer stints staying with whomever he was seeing at the time.
Still, she thought, it wasn’t as if Jesse didn’t care. He wasn’t that callous. He loved Mama Joy, loved her fiercely, in fact. All four of them did. But she knew they all had separate lives to live, and, thinking clearly, Kerry could not imagine those lives including keeping Strong Knits open. That hard truth said, she had to face the fact that it was time for her to move on and, once and for all, grow up and see her life clearly without the sanctuary of Strong Knits to fall back on.
Kerry headed back toward the small kitchen area, on the way passing some of the plants sent over to the funeral home as tribute. They were shoved over in the corner, as if they were purposely put down somewhere out of the way. Out of sight, out of mind. She could understand that. She caught sight of the peace lily sent from her own mother, who hadn’t made it up from Virginia but had sent her regrets, and shook her head. Maybe she’d take that one home and at least get one off the brothers’ hands. Or maybe she’d take it to the center when she went there to work later.
Kerry shrugged and turned, finally entering the kitchen and flipping on the lights, going to put her tote down on the countertop. She suddenly stopped short as her eyes widened. The counter was packed with covered dishes in every imaginable shape and color. Most likely leftovers from the repast after the funeral yesterday. Putting her tote on the counter was almost impossible unless she squeezed it between a mountain of cold chicken and what appeared to be a twenty-five-pound ham. Great. That was a ham, and no doubt it was honey glazed with pineapple, and it had been out on Mama Joy’s counter all night. Why didn’t the guys put anything away? Kerry shook her head as she opted for placing her bag on one of the old kitchen chairs. She let out a long breath and turned toward the coffee maker. Coffee was very necessary. Now. She’d deal with the ham and the rest of the dishes later.
Purposely without thought, which of course she knew implied thought, Kerry picked up the coffeepot and brought it over to the sink to rinse and refill it with fresh water. She wouldn’t look too closely at Mama Joy’s knitted dish towels or the multitude of photographs that hung haphazardly on the walls, some in nice frames and others clearly made out of Popsicle sticks and macaroni shells from kids she’d known over the years who’d come into the shop or were from the community center where Kerry now worked part-time. There was even a photo of Kerry from her high school graduation, now eight years past, in its cheap faux wood frame, but hung with loving care. Kerry blinked back tears at the photo of the young woman, her dark hair pressed within an inch of its life, glossy beyond belief and curled to perfection, with shining dark eyes, and full burgundy lips spread wide in a warm, welcoming smile that seemed to say the world was open and full of possibilities for her.
Dammit! She shouldn’t have looked. Looking led to feeling, and that was the exact wrong thing to be doing today. But how could she not? There was nothing but feelings all around this old shop, in every seemingly not-well-thought-out nook. And here it was, Mama Joy had gone and hung Kerry’s photo right along with her own boys’ graduation photos, just as if she were a part of their family too. She and Jesse graduating the same year, Noah the year before, Lucas and Damian just a couple of years before that. Kerry laughed to herself, a wry laugh that grated the back of her throat as she took in the kitchen wall. This whole gallery was so Mama Joy. She was the type of woman who never met a stranger. But that family was no more. Who knew, maybe they never really were in the first place—just something that only existed as long as Mama Joy did. Now would be the true test of that.
Kerry shook her head as a lump gathered in her throat, threatening to be followed by a sob. Nope, not this morning. Not today.
She turned back to the coffeepot, her eye catching on one photo on the way: Mama Joy sitting in her usual spot on the tall stool just off to the side of the front counter with all the boys around her. They must have been late elementary to middle school age. She guessed it was around when they had first been placed with Mama Joy by the people at Faith Hope group home, if she remembered the stories correctly. Though it was an old still photo, Kerry could clearly make out the boys all in motion around Mama Joy while she was intently trying to show them something with her knitting to little avail.
A much younger Damian stood taller than his younger brothers but, as usual, looked bored and slightly exasperated, his dark eyes showing little patience. Lucas, the next oldest, seemed to have gotten his yarn completely tangled, and Noah had put his knitting aside and was instead hopping on one foot, captured mid-spin in the photo. The only one paying any sort of attention, surprisingly, was the youngest, Jesse. He was mimicking Mama Joy’s motions and to Kerry’s astonishment had a pretty good-looking scarf started and a look of pure wonder in his soft green eyes.
What happened to that little boy? Kerry wondered, then snorted as the answer came almost as quickly as the question. She knew exactly what happened. Boobs. Sure, she shouldn’t say “boobs,” but that was what he and his brothers were calling breasts back then, and she could just about pinpoint the time that Jesse turned. It was when he put down the knitting needles and instead wrapped his hands around his first pair of boobs that it all changed.
Kerry stilled and found herself inadvertently looking down at her own perfectly adequate pair. She shrugged, then rolled her eyes before looking for the coffee filters in the mess of covered dishes. Who could blame Jesse? It wasn’t as if he had to fight for the boobs to come h
is way. Hell, it wasn’t as if any of the Strong brothers had to fight in that department. Since each of them had hit puberty and shot past six feet, they were like four boob magnets with eight good hands between them. As if all it took for the girls to come flocking was height, muscles, sexy eyes . . . oh hell. Who was she fooling? It honestly didn’t take too much more than that. Not once a person got a look at them. Not that she was magnetized or anything. It’s just that some girls were metallic in that way.
2
Jesse Strong was having a good dream. Well, maybe it wasn’t a dream, because when you were dreaming did you actually know it was a dream? Weren’t dreams supposed to convince you of their own reality? Thinking on it that way he irrationally reasoned that this wasn’t a dream. More like a waking memory, one that he was more than happy to hold on to, since it was a memory of a warm body, smooth-as-silk skin, dark curly hair, bright eyes and full lips that seemed to only know the word “Yes.”
“Yes.” His most favorite word ever.
But the dream started to change. The inviting “Yes” turned to a dark, whispered “No.” The warm body and bright eyes turned cold. Dead. No. She can’t be dead. Mama. Mama! You can’t do this to me. Don’t leave me, please. Not again!
“No! I said no.”
Jesse frowned.
“I’m sorry, no, we’re closed today.”
He frowned deeper as the opposite of his most favorite word hit his ears, bringing him out of the bliss of his waking memory of Tamala from three weeks ago—or was this memory of Erika from last week? No matter. The delicious memory was already fading, bringing him too close to the edges of the all-too-real present that he was not ready to face. Shit. Why did days keep cropping up every twenty-four hours? It seemed no matter how much he tried, drank, partied, fucked, whatever, he couldn’t seem to just sleep through and skip one. Skip just one day. Preferably the last day. Or days.
Jesse groaned as he ran a hand across his face and opened his eyes, wincing against the sharp rays of the sun that had the nerve to slip through the blinds and make it past the part of his curtain that wouldn’t shut all the way without a pin to hold it closed.
Screw you, sun. Shining bright on a day like today.
What the hell time was it anyway? Six? Seven a.m.? He contemplated just turning over but went on full alert as the sound of a bang from downstairs hit his ears. What the hell? Did that come from the shop? But they were closed today. They were now closed every day. Not to mention the fact that it was the damned crack of dawn.
More shocking than the sun, just then there was another sound, something like a crash, and he bolted upright, hitting his bedroom floor at top speed. They were closed today. Closed, and Mama Joy was . . . well, she was definitely not down there where the crashing sound was coming from. Jesse hit the stairs at a run, though not before he grabbed his old high school baseball bat, kept at the ready behind the back of his bedroom door.
Bat raised, heart pounding, Jesse was filled with more than annoyance when he rounded the corner to the shop’s back kitchen area only to meet the wide eyes of Kerry Fuller. Her fearful and shocked expression of having him come at her with a baseball bat raised quickly turned to clear anger as her eyes narrowed and she gave him a slow up and down.
Suddenly, Jesse was fully aware of the fact that he was clad in nothing more than his gray striped boxer briefs and an early-morning predicament that was totally normal but not one he was sure their sweet Kerry was used to. Though the look she gave him when her gaze came up once again and their eyes locked said, well, maybe she was, and maybe she thought he didn’t quite measure up?
Jesse snorted to himself. Yeah right. As if.
He watched as Kerry’s eyes shifted from him to the bat in his hand and then back to him again. “You plan to do something with that or is it just for show?”
Jesse felt his brow quirk as he fought hard to control his other extremities from doing the same and he let out a low groan. “Dammit, Kerry, what are you doing here so early? You scared the hell out of me and almost got your head knocked off in the process.”
Her look, followed by the low snort that came after, let him know she was completely unfazed. “Early? It’s past nine, and you knew I’d be coming by this morning. I was practically laying on the bell before. Didn’t you hear me?”
“Obviously not,” he said with a shrug and a slight wave of the bat.
The movement once again seemed to bring Kerry’s awareness to his near nakedness and he watched as her eyes roamed over his chest, but then she seemed to think better of it, turning away and walking toward the coffeepot. She poured herself a cup, and as the aroma hit Jesse’s nose—or maybe that was her smell, either way it was both sweet and smoky—he felt his brain starting to come to life, apparently catching up with his body.
“Don’t you want to head back upstairs and put some clothes on? Make yourself decent?” she said.
It took a moment for the comment to click in his brain. Once again, quicker body than brain situation. Decent. That word was so Kerry that Jesse couldn’t help the smile that tugged at the corner of his lips. In the midst of everything changing it was good to know some things never did. “No, not so much just yet,” he said, while reaching over her shoulder to take the cup from her hand. “What I want right now is some of this coffee.”
The quick turn and frown from her was just the reaction he was looking for. “Jerko,” she hissed. “There’s a whole pot here. Why do you have to take my cup? Can’t you make your own?”
Jesse took a sip and grinned. “I can, but yours is always perfect. It just tastes better. Besides, who says I’m not decent?”
Kerry shook her head before turning away from him. She grabbed another mug from the plastic dish rack by the coffee maker and silently made herself another cup. Jesse watched as she took a dainty sip before looking up. He knew he was being kind of an ass, screwing with her like he was, drinking her coffee while in his drawers and staring at her in this old kitchen that held too many memories. He paused and frowned. But he also knew that this moment was way more comforting than he was willing to admit out loud. Hell, he was happy to have somebody there, anybody, just to not be alone with his thoughts.
Not now. Not today.
So instead of moving, Jesse watched intently as Kerry brought the mug to her lips again.
The mug was yet another from their mismatched set. They had many that Mama Joy had acquired over the years. A mug from here, a plate from there—like everything else, nothing went with anything quite right in this old brownstone, yet it all seemed to fit together. It was how Mama Joy said she liked it. Things didn’t have to match up perfectly to fit, she’d always told him and his brothers. When he was still young, half-impressionable and full of hope and longing, he’d say—he didn’t know why, maybe just to see her smile, because she always did when he said it—“Like us?” “Yes, like us,” she’d answer back and kiss him on the forehead, warming him from the top clear to his toes.
Jesse closed his eyes for a moment against the sight of Kerry as the image of his brothers came to his mind. Four boys from different makeups and ethnic backgrounds, brought together by their shared need of, first and foremost, a home, but probably more so the love that the seemingly irreverent single Black woman had given them. They now had the nerve to call themselves brothers, so much so that they’d taken that woman’s name to seal the deal. But now she was gone, so what would they do with the legacy she’d left them when it was all said and done? Did any of them even know what the word “legacy” meant?
He opened his eyes and looked at Kerry again. They’d be here soon and Jesse didn’t have a clue how he and his mixed bag of misfit brothers would get their shit together and work it all out. Like the mugs in the house, there was nothing about them that really could place them one with the other. There was him, the youngest, or the baby as Mama Joy used to say, though being a baby was something he could n
ever remember, not even when he reached back to his furthest memories. And now at twenty-seven he could definitely not call himself anywhere near a baby anymore. Still, he was the youngest of his bothers, a mixture of Black from his biological mother and something else, maybe white, maybe not, from his father, who could be just about any middle-aged guy with green eyes and a take-no-responsibility attitude.
Then there were Lucas and Noah, who were at least partially from a matched set since they were the only two out of the four of them that actually shared a blood connection, having been born of the same Asian mother, though they had different fathers. Lucas, the older of the two at thirty, was full—or “ish,” because who really knew what without a DNA test—Korean, and Noah, the younger at twenty-eight, was half Korean and half Black—or Black-ish, because once again, DNA. Jesse had only been able to piece together parts of their past from what they had shared over the years, but what he did gather was that their mother died in a fire, which was tragic and more than plenty to mentally parse, given the fact that Lucas ended up being a firefighter. But Jesse got it, he guessed. Demons being what they were and all.
And lastly, though firstly, at least in age and his own ego-inflated mind, was Damian. He was a year older than Lucas and at least twenty when it came to general pain-in-the-ass-ness. Damian was Afro-Latino and, once again, “ish” like the rest of them, with a sketchy, not quite fully put together past, and the self-proclaimed leader of their little motley crew of misfits. As if anyone was fighting him for the position. Nope, not at all. Damian could have it.
As he drank Kerry’s coffee, Jesse’s mind continued to wander back in time, for the most part to when they were first brought to Mama Joy. After the shock of being in a new place, with a single mother and a yarn shop, he remembered the relief of being out of the group home and cautious joy over not being in yet another foster home where the kids were treated like little more than a potential source of income. He remembered the mistrust and weariness on his brothers’ faces and how long it took for those looks to go away. How long it took them all to stop with the territorial jockeying for positions and turn into the brothers they were today. That took years. Years of arguing, screaming, yelling, punishments, but also love and patience. And he—no, they—owed all that to Mama Joy. They were unruly messes, each of them, but somehow Mama Joy, already at what some would consider past her prime in age, was able to whip them into shape and turn them into so much more than the system ever expected them to be.
Real Men Knit Page 2