Loving Jessie

by Dallas Schulze

  She could remember Reilly standing in her bedroom, looking nearly as miserable as she felt, offering falsely hearty reassurances that she would soon be back on her feet and promising to take her to A & W for a root-beer float just as soon as she was well. And then, a few days later, when she was creeping toward recovery, there was another memory of Matt carrying her downstairs so that she could lie on the sofa and watch television. She could remember lying there, only half-awake, canned laughter chattering in the background as she watched her grandfather and Matt play chess.

  A bee wandered aimlessly through the glossy green leaves, perhaps too heat-dazed to locate the fat blossoms half hidden in the foliage. Jessie knew just how the bee felt. Only it wasn’t the heat that had left her dazed. Her life was about to be turned upside down, and the fact that she’d started the process herself when she’d decided to ask Matt to give her a child didn’t make her feel any more in control of what was happening.

  She frowned at the bee for a moment longer and then turned back toward the house. She needed to talk to someone. Communing with her grandfather’s roses just wasn’t going to cut it. Today was Lurene’s day off. If she was home, she would certainly make a better sounding board than a sun-drunk bee and a bunch of shrubbery.

  “So let me see if I understand the whole picture.” Lurene leaned back, stretching her long legs out along the black cushion of the deck chair. A shallow breeze drifted across the small balcony outside her condo, fluttering the fringe of the big canvas umbrella that blocked the sun. Lurene was the only person Jessie knew who, given a choice between air-conditioning and lying outside in ninety-degree heat, chose the heat. She claimed it was because she’d been born and raised in North Dakota and was still trying to thaw out.

  Wearing a pair of neon-green shorts and a hot-pink tank top that made the most of her generous curves and golden tan, her pale blond hair caught up on top of her head in a careless knot, Lurene looked like an ad for what every California girl wanted to be when they passed the forty mark.

  Jessie took a deep swallow of icy lemonade and leaned her head back against her own lounger. The heat was actually almost pleasantly enervating, sort of like sitting in a steam bath without the steam. And it was worth courting heatstroke to be able to tell someone what was going on. She felt better just for having let it all out. Any practical advice she received was a bonus.

  “You wanted a baby and decided your friend Matt would be a good candidate for providing the necessary chromosomes.” Lurene nodded approvingly. “Can’t fault you for that one. When it comes to prime genetic material, the man was clearly in the right place at the right time.”

  “Careful, that’s my fiancé’s genes you’re discussing,” Jessie said lazily and then had to swallow back a giggle. Referring to Matt as her fiancé, actually saying the word out loud, only made it seem even more incredible.

  “If you’re planning on making a baby, honey, you might as well start with the best ingredients.”

  Jessie choked on a laugh. “Like making a cake?”

  “Pretty much,” Lurene said, her dark eyes sparkling. “And your Matt is definitely a premium cut. But we’re getting off track here.” She ticked off the main points of Jessie’s situation on long, scarlet-tipped fingers. “You decided you wanted a baby. You asked your close and—coincidentally—extremely hunky good friend, Matt, if he’d do the honors. He stormed off in a cloud of righteous indignation, then came back and said he was willing to contribute the little wiggly guys, but only if you married him. And you agreed. And now you’re planning on getting married in a little over two weeks. Does that pretty much sum it up?”

  “Pretty much.” It sounded even more astonishing when someone else said it, Jessie thought uneasily. Like something out of a novel. People didn’t do this sort of thing in real life. Did they? She sat up straight—or as straight as she could on the curved seat of the lounge—and looked at Lurene, her eyes wide and uncertain. “I’m crazy, aren’t I?”

  Lurene shook her head. “Not necessarily.”

  “No one decides to start a family and then gets married. You get married and then think about starting a family.”

  “I don’t think it’s written in stone anywhere,” Lurene said, sounding calm and remarkably unshocked.

  “You’re supposed to fall in love, then get married. I’m not in love with Matt,” Jessie said, offering it as if it were a confession. “I love him. He’s my friend and I love him, but I’m not in love with him.”

  She couldn’t quite bring herself to admit that she’d been in love with someone else for most of her life. Her feelings for Reilly weren’t relevant to the current situation. She had no doubt about that. She hadn’t agreed to marry Matt because she couldn’t have Reilly. There had never been any question of that.

  Lurene shook her head. “I’ve been married twice, and both times I was madly in love. Dale spent half his time playing a guitar and the other half screwing every female in sight. Truth is, the man would’ve screwed a snake if someone would’ve held its mouth, and I pretty much suspected as much before we headed for Vegas. But I was twenty-two, madly in love and sure we were going to live happily ever after, so I married him.” She sighed regretfully over the naiveté of her younger self before continuing.

  “Chuck wasn’t nearly as pretty as Dale but he was attractive, solid, dependable, true blue, etc. etc. He was a walking billboard for mom and apple pie. The man had actually been a damned Eagle Scout.” She smiled when she said it, but her eyes were unfocused, looking back through the years, seeing dreams long gone. “I fell head over heels. We had a big wedding, white dress, rice, rose petals in the aisle, the whole shebang. And five years later, he asked me for a divorce so he could marry his pregnant girlfriend.”

  Responding to the remembered hurt that laced the other woman’s voice, Jessie shook her head. “He was an idiot. They both were.”

  Lurene blinked and seemed to almost physically shake off the memories. She smiled. “I came to that conclusion a long time ago. But idiots or not, I really loved them when I married them and, both times, I thought it was going to last forever. The point I’m trying to make, Jessie, is that I’m living proof that being in love with someone doesn’t offer any guarantees of happily-ever-after.”

  “There are no guarantees,” Jessie said. She turned her head and looked over the balcony rail at the distant golden hills that shimmered in the afternoon heat. “I’m not looking for a guarantee, but I worry that I want this too much. That maybe I’m not seeing something I should see because I just don’t want to see it.”

  “What do you want so much, Jessie? A baby?” Lurene’s dark eyes were shrewd. “Or Matt?”

  Jessie flushed and looked away. That was part of what was bothering her, she realized. She wanted both Matt and a baby. What had started out to be a means to an end had become an end in itself, and it bothered her in some way she didn’t quite understand. She felt vaguely wanton for wanting Matt so much that the idea of marrying him, sleeping with him, had an appeal all its own, quite apart from the child she hoped to have. It was hopelessly Victorian, she admitted, but then, here she was, still a virgin at twenty-nine, so what could you expect?

  When Jessie didn’t answer her question, Lurene sighed and leaned forward to pat the younger woman’s leg where it rested on the lounge. “The problem with you, girlfriend, is that you think too much. Maybe this isn’t as complicated as you think it is. You want Matt and he wants you, and you’ve been friends forever. Now you both want to give happily-ever-after a shot. Let it happen, Jessie. Take a chance.”

  Jessie’s laugh was uneasy. “You make it sound so simple.”

  “The basic choice is simple,” Lurene pointed out. “You either marry Matt or you don’t. You either take the chance or you don’t.” She picked up her glass of diet cola and gave the younger woman a questioning look. “How are you going to feel if you don’t take this chance?”

  Jessie looked away. Rotten. She was going to feel rotten if she chickened
out of marrying Matt. Logic be damned, she wanted this, and if she walked away from it now, she was going to regret it for a very long time. She’d never been much of a gambler, but this was one chance she was going to have to take.

  Releasing her breath on a faint sigh, she gave Lurene a rueful smile. “How would you like to cater a wedding two weeks from Saturday?”

  Chapter Eight

  The annual Labor Day picnic was a big event in Millers Crossing. Held in City Park, which sprawled in a sloppy oval just beyond the main business district, it was a combination barbecue and charity event. A nearby ranch donated the beef, and the fire department supervised the barbecue pit.

  Though there was nothing as formal as an entry fee, collection boxes were set up at several locations, and people put in whatever they could afford, ranging from pennies to an occasional hundred-dollar bill. The money went first to cover any expenses, with the remainder donated to a different local charity each year. It was a near-perfect blend—you could have fun and feel civic-minded while doing it.

  Aside from her years in Paris, Jessie had gone to the picnic every year since she was eight years old. When she was little, she’d enjoyed the three-legged race and the pony rides. As a teenager, the picnic had offered a nearly unrivaled opportunity for her and her friends to ogle the boys, who put considerable effort into pretending not to notice they were being ogled. In more recent years, she’d baked pies and cakes and helped organize the food service. This year she was taking half-a-dozen pies, three pound cakes, two cobblers and a fiancé.

  A fiancé. Matt. Her fiancé. Soon-to-be husband.

  No matter how she phrased it, it still seemed incredible. But it no longer seemed impossible. Sometime in the last week it had moved from impossible to amazing but conceivable. She was hoping that before the wedding, it would start to seem… What? Rational? Logical? Maybe just a little less crazy?

  Wearing a lacy peach-colored bra and matching panties, Jessie stared down at the clothes piled on her bed. In less than half an hour Matt would be ringing the doorbell, expecting to find her dressed and ready to go to the picnic. So far she’d managed to empty half her closet and she was no closer to a decision than she had been when she started. Everything from linen slacks and silky tank tops to ratty denim cutoffs and paint-stained shirts lay spread before her. Surely the right outfit lay somewhere in between those two extremes, if only she could make a decision.

  Closing her eyes, she released her breath on a small, frustrated hiss. This was ridiculous. She was going on a picnic, in a public park, a picnic attended by half the town. She wasn’t going to meet the president or present an Oscar.

  Refusing to allow herself to think about it another minute, she reached out and plucked a pair of shorts and matching T-shirt off the heap of clothes. Both garments were a soft yellow-green that hovered just on the edge of being chartreuse, not a color she normally would have chosen, but Lurene had talked her into it, and she had to admit that it suited her. The shorts were snug and short enough to make the most out of her legs, and the T-shirt was made out of a cotton knit so thin and soft that it had a sheen almost like silk. The scoop neck dipped low enough to hint coyly at cleavage without actually showing any.

  She slid her feet into a pair of strappy sandals and then stood in front of the mirror for a moment, her teeth worrying her lower lip. Were the shorts too short? And maybe the color made her light tan look a little sallow? God, was that a bulge above the waistband? She lifted her hand to her hair and frowned. She should have done something else with her hair. Almost-thirty-year-old women who were about to get married didn’t wear ponytails. Did they? Did she have time to do a French braid?

  She was reaching for the snap on her waistband when she realized what she was doing. No. She was so not doing this. Not again. This was the fourth outfit she’d tried on, and it was going to be the last. If it made her look like a sallow, overweight, tasteless hag, well, she would just have to live with it, and so would Matt. If she started the whole process over again, they would be lucky to make next year’s picnic.

  She shook her head as she turned away from the mirror. Two weeks ago she would never have believed that she could agonize like this over what to wear to spend the day with Matt. But two weeks ago she would never have believed that she would be planning to marry him, either.

  As Jessie walked downstairs, she found herself glancing at the simple diamond solitaire on her ring finger. Matt had given it to her several days ago, and the sight of it on her hand still startled her. She’d been surprised when he gave it to her. It seemed a very conventional symbol of their unconventional agreement, but she hadn’t protested. Not only was it a lovely ring, but she found she rather liked the fact that Matt was treating this like a real engagement.

  The doorbell rang as she reached the bottom of the stairs, and her pulse beat a little faster as she hurried across the small entry hall and pulled open the door. Matt stood on the porch, large and dark and male. And hers. He was wearing a pair of softly faded jeans that clung to his long legs like a pair of lover’s arms and a plain white T-shirt that did wonderful things for his tan. His running shoes looked as if they’d seen better days.

  Jessie spared a fleeting thought for the mound of clothes on her bed and wondered if he would laugh if she told him how much trouble she’d had choosing something to wear. But she wasn’t sure she wanted him to know how much it had mattered that she look nice for him. She’d never worried about looking nice for Matt before, and she was still struggling to adjust to the abrupt shift in their relationship.

  His eyes went over her in a slow slide that was both appreciative and possessive. Jessie felt her skin heat. She never knew quite what to do when he looked at her like that. There was a gut-level, feminine reaction to the warmth in his blue eyes, but there was also a nervous little voice that kept reminding her that this was Matt, for heaven’s sake, and should he really be looking at her like that?

  “You look great,” he said, sliding his arms around her waist as he stepped through the door. If he had any problem adjusting to this new relationship, it didn’t show.

  Jessie released her breath on a soft, contented sigh and pressed closer to his lean body as he lowered his head to kiss her thoroughly. This was something else she hadn’t expected—that he would take to the role of fiancé with such hands-on enthusiasm.

  She liked this part even better than the ring.

  It had been almost fifteen years since Matt had attended the Labor Day celebration, but, like the town itself, it didn’t seem to have changed much. In most parts of the country Labor Day signaled the change of seasons, summer’s last gasp before autumn drifted in. But Millers Crossing could count on several more weeks of warm weather before the rains came, and autumn was more fantasy than reality. There were really only two seasons in most of California—summer and winter, dry weather and wet weather, fires or mud slides.

  Still, even though the weather might not change much, there was a change in the pace of life. School was about to start; the holiday season was touching-distance away. There was a sense of summer’s freedom slipping away to be replaced by more sober concerns. The picnic helped bridge the gap between the two, a farewell to one and a somewhat resigned hello to the other.

  Like Jessie, Matt had fond memories of the event. His parents hadn’t been big on school plays or PTA meetings, but they’d always attended the picnic. Matt hadn’t known why until he found out that the manager of the bank where his father worked was a big supporter of the event and made attending the picnic more or less a requirement for bank employees. Whatever the reason, it was one of the few things the four of them had done as a family. It hadn’t exactly been a major bonding experience, but, when he was little, he’d treasured those rare occasions when he’d been able to pretend that his family was just like everyone else’s.

  In later years he’d gone with Reilly and other friends, and they’d perfected the art of checking out the girls while appearing to be magnificently indifferent.
The last time he’d gone to the picnic had been a year or two after he graduated from UCLA. He’d been dating a tall, rail-thin model whose name he could no longer remember. She’d viewed the small-town charm of the gathering with the natural superiority of a born-and-bred New Yorker. After nibbling daintily on the edge of a rib, she’d announced that she was stuffed and would he mind leaving early, since she had to be in L.A. for a shoot the next day.

  If someone had asked him what he’d missed about his hometown, he wasn’t even sure the Labor Day picnic would have made the list, but now that he was here, he found himself looking forward to it with more enthusiasm than he would have expected.

  He glanced across the car at Jessie. There were a lot of unexpected things happening lately. Like his engagement and the fact that, against all dictates of logic and common sense, it felt right. On impulse, he reached out and caught Jessie’s left hand in his, rubbing his thumb over the ring he’d given her. She turned her head to smile at him, her eyes warm.

  Who needed logic and common sense?

  “Isn’t that Larry Bremen over there? The guy in the pink and blue Hawaiian shirt?”

  Dana looked up from the wicker picnic basket she’d been unloading and followed the direction of Reilly’s gaze to where a middle-aged man with thinning blond hair and narrow features sat beneath the shade of a huge sycamore. The brightly patterned shirt concealed a modest paunchiness around his middle, and pale, thin legs stuck out from beneath a pair of bright blue walking shorts.

  “Hard to miss him,” Dana said, narrowing her eyes a little in defense against the brightness of his shirt.

  “I thought he and Sally were getting a divorce,” Reilly commented. He was lying propped on his elbows on the edge of the blanket they’d spread in the grass, long legs stretched out in front of him and crossed at the ankles. “If that isn’t Sally, it’s her evil twin.”

  “According to Sally’s sister, they changed their minds about the divorce,” Dana said.