Barefoot in the Rain

by Roxanne St Claire

  “Straight ahead, just a few more blocks,” Jocelyn said instead, and they drove in silence until they reached a two-story stucco building with meager landscaping and, oh Lord, bars on the windows.

  “I thought you said this place was in high demand.”

  “I got that impression from the marketing materials,” Jocelyn said. “Maybe it’s nicer in the back. Plus, the octogenarians probably don’t notice.”

  “He’s in his sixties, Joss,” Zoe said as she threw open her door. “Not eighty, which, correct me if I’m wrong, is what an octogenarian is.”

  Jocelyn didn’t answer, but came around the car and headed to the front door. As they got closer she saw chipped paint, a flowerless trellis, and rust on the giant doorknob. Inside, the reception area was dim, just two beige sofas and a plastic panel hiding the top of a woman’s head. Jocelyn approached her and waited. The woman didn’t look up.

  “Excuse me,” Jocelyn said.

  “Hang on.” The woman continued to write something. Finally, cold gray eyes met Jocelyn’s. “Yes?”

  “I was contacted about an opening and came for the tour.”

  “Patient’s name?”

  “Um… well, I just really wanted to look around first.”

  “Insurance?”

  “Some, but I really don’t—”

  “Hang on.” She pressed an earpiece Jocelyn hadn’t noticed earlier. “What is it, Mrs. Golgrath?” She closed her eyes and let out an impatient sigh. “Well, that’s the only channel you pay for, so you have to watch Singing in the Rain one more time, dear.” She paused, biting off the last word. “No, an aide cannot get to your room for at least two hours. So watch the movie. I’m sure it’ll seem like brand-new every time. Good-bye, now… What?” She shook her head, still focused on the voice in her ear, impatience rolling off her like body odor. “Mrs. Golgrath, you will get your lunch when you get your lunch. Have we ever forgotten? Ever since you’ve been here?” She waited a second, then looked back up to address Jocelyn. “We can have someone walk you around after lunch. Maybe three o’clock. We’re seriously shorthanded today.”

  Jocelyn swallowed. “No, that’s all right.”

  “We have a video you can watch in the waiting room.”

  Jocelyn backed away, bumping into Zoe, who was right behind her. “I don’t…” Want to put even my worst enemy in this hellhole. “… have the time.”

  The woman shrugged and returned to her work.

  “Let’s get out of here,” she whispered to Zoe, practically dragging her back outside. “It looked a lot better on the Internet.”

  “Most things do,” Zoe said drily.

  They couldn’t get outside fast enough, both of them sucking in the fresh air after all that stale, miserable sadness.

  “I’ll cross that one off the list,” Jocelyn said as they reached the parking lot.

  She waited for a Zoe quip, but none came. Zoe just adjusted her sunglasses and Jocelyn could have sworn she reached behind one lens to wipe her eye.

  “Maybe this is a bad idea,” Jocelyn said. “I should have come alone.”

  “No, no. It’s just…”

  “You’re thinking about your Aunt Pasha?” Or… Oliver Bradbury.

  “No, that poor Mrs. Golgrath.” Her voice cracked. “I hate that stupid movie.”

  Jocelyn sighed and nodded. “The first place I saw was better.”

  “Really?”

  “I swear it was.”

  Zoe stopped in the middle of the parking lot and took off her sunglasses, looking right at Jocelyn, not hiding the moisture in her eyes. “Do you remember that night you got drunk?”

  Seriously? “Jeez, how often are we going to relive it?”

  “Do you remember it?” she insisted.

  “Well, since I was pretty much pickled on Southern Comfort and orange juice, I’m going to say no, I don’t remember the details, just the fact that I never wanted to be that drunk again. And I haven’t been.”

  “Then you probably don’t remember what you said to me. You told me that the only thing in the world that mattered was seeing your father go to hell.”

  Jocelyn swallowed. “Did I?”

  Zoe gave her a squeeze. “Guess some dreams die hard, don’t they?”

  Chapter 20

  Will didn’t trust himself to stop at Guy’s house when he got home from work. No, he’d be too tempted to give the old bastard a taste of what a fist in the face felt like.

  For the first time in months, probably in well over a year, Will bypassed 543 Sea Breeze Drive and pulled into his own garage next door. He didn’t bother with the mail, threw his tools on the kitchen table, and didn’t waste his time opening up his laptop looking for an e-mail from his agent that wouldn’t be there anyway.

  Restless, tense, and itching for a fight, he stripped off his work clothes, yanked on a threadbare pair of jeans, and took the stairs up to his old room two at a time.

  Halfway there, he paused, closing his eyes.

  He’d been in this room a thousand times since that dark evening fifteen years ago. Somewhere along the way, it had stopped reminding him of Jocelyn and even of Guy.

  But now he’d have to remember. Remember how the early-evening light had cast Jocelyn in shades of gold as she curled up on his bed and sniffed his comforter. He’d have to remember the way they’d kissed and touched, the sheer breathlessness of knowing it was finally going to happen. He’d have to remember how far they’d gone: He’d had his fingers inside her and she was begging for more, rolling against him and—

  “Hey.”

  He spun around so fast he nearly lost his balance, grabbing the handrail and barking out, “What are you doing here?” at the sight of Guy standing at the bottom of the stairs. “You never come over here.”

  “Thought I’d change that.” Guy drew back, out of the shadows of the landing, into the fading light. “Something wrong, son?”

  “I’m not your son.” He spoke through clenched teeth, squeezing the handrail like it was a bat—and he wanted to use it on Guy’s head. “What do you want?”

  The words felt foreign and ugly on his tongue. Will didn’t speak like that to Guy; he hadn’t said a harsh word, except for the occasional reprimand when Guy didn’t follow instructions or tossed the remote in the trash.

  Guy was too helpless, too old, too lost to be spoken to like that.

  Will closed his eyes and let his brain see the purple bruises on Jocelyn’s thin teenage arms and the eggplant-colored shiner that had closed her eye to a slit.

  “What do you mean, what do I want?” Guy came up the first few stairs, reaching for the railing.

  “Don’t come up here,” Will said.

  The older man frowned, then adjusted his crooked glasses. “I just wanted to know if you like what I’m wearing.”

  What? What the hell was he wearing, anyway? Bright-yellow pants and an orange sweater.

  “You look like a Creamsicle.”

  Guy tried to laugh, but it came out more of a cough. “That good or bad?”

  “Why are you dressed up?” he asked, wishing he didn’t care or even want to know.

  “For the party!”

  “What?”

  “They’re having a party at my house tonight,” he said, his voice implying that everyone who was anyone would know this. “The whole Clean House crew will be there, is what Blondie told me.”

  “Blondie?” Zoe, of course.

  “And you know who will be there.” He wiggled his finger and sang the sentence like a second-grade tease.

  He knew who.

  “C’mon, William.” Guy took a few more steps, each one an effort, but he was clearly driven by happiness. That was what really irked.

  He looked like a great big orange-and-yellow splash of happiness.

  Wonder how happy he’d be when he found out what the “Clean House” crew was really planning? How happy he’d be to take a good long look at those pictures of “Missy” and be told flat-out that it was his ha
nds that had battered her?

  How happy would the old fucker be then?

  Will waited for the words to form, the accusations to fly, but he stood stone silent, his whole body itching and sweating.

  “You do like her, don’t you?” Guy asked. “I mean I might be old and have more holes in my brain than a sponge, but I can see what I can see, and you two like each other.”

  “It’s none of your business,” Will said brusquely.

  That earned him a flicker of surprise as Guy held up his hands and then wobbled as he lost his balance.

  “Jesus,” Will muttered, lunging to make sure the old man didn’t fall.

  “Oh, oh! I’m okay.” Guy stabbed in the air, finally finding the railing and righting himself. “Not the first time I nearly went down today.”

  “It’s not? You fell today?” Why, oh Good Christ, why did he care?

  “Capsized, I mean.” He grinned, his teeth nearly the color of his pants. “In the boat, William. My old rowboat! We took it out today!”

  “Who did?”

  “The girls and me.” He shrugged both shoulders in a fake giggle. “I bet we’re not supposed to call ’em girls anymore, but that’s what they’ll always be to—”

  “What girls?” Surely Jocelyn hadn’t gone out in a boat with him today? Surely she hadn’t left Will—kissing her and holding her and making all kinds of emotional breakthroughs—to take Guy out on a boat ride? After—

  “Blondie and Missy, of course.” He clapped his hands. “And we saw Henry the Heron, William! Oh, I’m going to have a surprise for you soon. Not yet, but soon. I’m starting a new project.”

  Exhaustion pressed and forced him up the stairs backwards, still facing Guy so he could be sure the old man didn’t follow.

  “I can’t come to your party,” he said gruffly. “I have too much work to do.”

  “Work?” Guy whined. “You worked all day, son. You have to learn to have a little fun. To…” He made fists and a pathetic attempt at some kind of dance. “Let loose once in a while.”

  Will inhaled slowly, and then shook his head. “Can’t, sorry.” Why was he apologizing?

  “What work?” Guy challenged.

  “Your bills, for one thing,” he shot back. “Your insurance forms and Medicare. Your mortgage and your utilities. You’re a full-time job, Guy!”

  Guy’s happy face fell like whipped cream thrown against a wall. “Oh,” he said. “I see.”

  No he didn’t, but Will didn’t feel a damn bit better after that outburst. He felt like shit on the bottom of a heel, which he was.

  The pictures. The bruises. The pain.

  “Just let me get a workout and a run in, Guy,” he said quickly. “I’ll check on you later.”

  “Zoe actually doesn’t know how to throw a bad party.” Tessa sidled up next to Jocelyn on the cracked vinyl cushion, setting the swing in motion and looking up at almost threatening skies. “Even if it rains, she’ll figure out a way to take this thing inside, bring out the games, and have your father playing Truth or Dare before nine o’clock.”

  Jocelyn smiled as she watched Guy claw his way through a game of Egyptian Rat Screws with Lacey’s teenage daughter, Ashley. “I can’t believe she still loves to play that game and keeps teaching it to people. It’s like she’s spreading a sickness.”

  “I refuse to play it with her,” Tessa said. “And let me tell you, when I lived out there in Flagstaff with Zoe and her great-aunt, they’d play four-hour Rat Screws marathons.”

  “I have a feeling this card game is Guy’s favorite new pastime.”

  Tessa looked around. “Then Will ought to learn the game. Where is he, anyway?”

  “I have no idea,” Jocelyn said, but of course she knew exactly why Will wasn’t here. He was too angry with Guy to come to the impromptu party. But that wouldn’t last. He’d forgive and forget, too warmhearted to hang on to hate.

  But she could, and would. Even if that meant she never had a chance to explore her feelings for Will or wallow in the sweetness of the confessions he’d made this morning.

  He’d been her everything.

  She stared at her father, the thief of her happiness.

  Across the patio, Clay and Lacey stood arm in arm by the barbecue, laughing as they flipped burgers, punctuating almost every sentence with a kiss, a touch, a shared look of affection. No one had stolen their happiness, she thought glumly.

  “You want to go try and find Will?” Tessa asked. “You’d think the aroma of cooking meat alone would get a bachelor out of his house and onto the lawn.”

  Jocelyn attempted a careless shrug.

  “Hey.” Tessa put her hand on Jocelyn’s arm. “Go find him. You’re staring at his house.”

  She looked away. “I am not.”

  Puffing out a breath, Tessa popped off the swing and nearly knocked Jocelyn on her butt.

  “Excuse me,” Tessa said, walking over to the table. “Guy, have you seen Will?”

  Jocelyn watched her father, expecting his usual blank stare, his big bear shrug. But, instead, emotion flashed in his eyes, so fast probably no one else saw it. Only a person who’d spent every minute of her childhood watching that face for a clue to when it would happen would see it.

  They’d talked. Jocelyn knew it instantly. What had Will said to him? And was that why he was conspicuously absent?

  “He was in his house last time I saw him,” Guy said.

  “When was that?” Tessa asked.

  Now he went blank and lifted a shoulder.

  “In the last hour or so?” Tessa prodded.

  “I saw him out jogging,” Ashley said, her next card poised over the playing table. “He was running up toward the high school when we got here. Okay, you ready? Slap!”

  Ashley threw down a card and Guy was right there with her, the conversation forgotten as Tessa came back to the swing.

  “It’s going to rain in the next half hour,” Tessa said. “Probably when we’re eating, so I better see about setting a table inside.”

  Jocelyn stood. “I’ll help you.”

  “No, you won’t.”

  “I don’t want to just sit here, Tess.”

  Tessa gave her a look. “Go find him. Tell him whatever it is that has you sighing and staring upstairs at what I can only assume was once his bedroom.”

  “I—”

  “I’ll cover for you. Go, quick before it rains.” She held out her hand to help Jocelyn up, adding a knowing smile. “I saw you two arguing on the beach this morning,” she added softly. “He’s probably waiting for you to invite him to our little party.”

  Jocelyn just laughed softly. “Secrets are so overrated around here.”

  “They are with me.” She bent over to the cooler of drinks that Clay and Lacey had brought, snagging a beer. “Take him this as a peace offering.”

  “We’re not at war.”

  Tessa just lifted her brow and gestured for Jocelyn to go.

  A few minutes later, Jocelyn had escaped out the front, unnoticed. Tucking the beer in the pocket of her white cargo pants, she traced her old familiar route toward the high school.

  If she knew Will—and she did—she knew exactly where he was.

  Twilight hung over the Mimosa High baseball field, and the clouds that had rolled in from the east made it even darker.

  But Jocelyn didn’t need the field lights. She just followed the familiar ping of a baseball knocking against a metal bat. Rhythmic, steady, a whoosh of wind, a ding of noise, and the soft plop of a ball hitting the outfield.

  Was he batting alone?

  She walked behind the home dugout, pausing as she always did at the numbers painted on the back wall, each circled with a baseball and a year. The Mimosa Scorpions’ most valuable players.

  And there was none more valuable than the superstar of 1997, number thirty-one, team captain William Palmer.

  Whoosh, ping—that was a long ball—thud.

  She trailed her fingers over the red paint of his name,
then walked around the dugout, staying far enough from the chain-link fence to see him but not be in his field of vision.

  Speaking of visions.

  He wore nothing but hundred-year-old jeans, hanging so low she could practically see his hipbones and the dusting of dark hair from his naval down to his—

  She forced her eyes up, only to stop on his chest, bare, damp with sweat, every muscle cut and corded as he took his swings.

  Low, deep, and inside her belly, desire fisted and pulled.

  He held the bat on his right shoulder and tossed a ball up—she spied a white plastic bucket full of baseballs next to him—then, in one smooth move, he’d grip the bat and take a swing, sending the ball high in the air or straight down the middle. There was a name for this practice. Fun something? She couldn’t remember, but the sight of him swinging took her back in time, when the same sensations of need and want had rocked her young body.

  She’d nearly given in to them. What would have happened if Guy hadn’t walked in on them that night? How different would their lives be? Would they have made it in the long haul? Or would she still be living in L.A. and so, so alone?

  Foolish even to think about it, she chided herself. The past couldn’t be changed.

  Still, it could be remembered. For at least ten swings of the bat, she just stood next to the dugout and drank in the sight of Will at the plate, his swing a little different now, a little slower, a little less confident than when he’d been a cocky high school superstar. So much was different about Will now.

  His hair had curled at the ends from sweat despite the black bandanna he’d wrapped around his head. His body had lost that sinewy look of youth, but had grown into broader planes, more mature muscles, even better shoulders to lean on.

  Without thinking, she took a step forward, closed her fingers over the cool metal of the chain-links, and—

  Instantly got his attention.

  For about as long as it took a fly ball to reach the fence, they stared at each other.

  “I brought you a peace offering,” she finally said, holding up the beer bottle.

  He leaned over and picked up another ball, tossed it left-handed, then took a powerful swing. “That’ll go down nice after hitting infield fungoes.”