She took a coffee, left the other for him, and walked away, her head held high, her shoulders back, as if she were free. As if there was nothing tying her down anymore.
He wanted to call her back, ask her how she did it. How she found the courage to be so open to the world. To make mistakes and let mistakes be made. To let pain happen. Disappointment.
His whole life was a sandbag effort to keep those things out. Away. Accepting that devastation, welcoming it even, sticking out her chin and asking for it … it was the bravest, craziest thing he’d ever seen.
The next forty-eight hours stretched in front of him with the potential for disaster at an all-time high, and he didn’t know how to handle it with her at his side.
Or with her not at his side.
But he didn’t know how to love her, either. The chaos of her, of love—it was terrifying. And he was shit at it.
The girl inside was proof of that.
The clouds burned off by nine a.m. and the day was brilliant with sunshine. And Jackson’s cell phone was ringing nonstop. His in-box was full, and he was being texted and tweeted and tortured.
“Why the hell aren’t you out here?” Sean asked on the phone. “I’m setting up these booths for the street fair all by myself.”
“I’m on my way,” he assured Sean and ran up the stairs to pound on Gwen’s door. Bubba was a snoring sentinel guarding it.
“Go away!” Her voice was muffled.
“Look, I’ve got … I’ve got a lot of things going on today but you and I aren’t over, Gwen.”
Silence answered him.
“I’ll be back to take you to the pageant tonight, but until then, you don’t leave this house. Do you understand me?”
The door opened. Gwen, stony in her anger, stared at him.
“I’m going to Shelby’s before the pageant,” she said. “Monica is doing my hair and makeup.”
Even the sound of her name stabbed at him. Called up some assurance buried in his gut that he was wrong. He was making mistakes, irrevocable and regrettable.
“Fine. I’ll take you there. But we have—” The door slammed in his face. “We have unfinished business, Gwen.”
The day roared by fueled by coffee and exhaustion and stress. The work was never-ending and he took a personal stake in all of it. He felt the weight of every single decision.
“Don’t you have more important things to do than this?” Sean asked as they hung parade signs that would direct traffic in the morning.
“Everything is important,” Jackson said, biting off the tape he used to hang a sign on a streetlamp.
“That’s your problem,” Sean said.
“Oh Christ. Not you, too.”
“You know, the rest of the world figures out what’s important. Not every single thing has to be code blue.”
“Yeah, maybe in your life,” Jackson said. “I mean, it’s got to be a real dilemma figuring out which beer to put on special.”
“That’s not fair,” Sean said.
Jackson knew it and he didn’t care. “This town is my responsibility, Sean.”
He barely got the words out before Sean was laughing.
“What the hell is so funny?”
“You. Well, not funny really. Sort of sad. After your folks died there wasn’t a person in this town who wouldn’t have helped you. But you wouldn’t let it happen.” His face screwed up in bewildered confusion. “And then you started trying to take care of everyone else. Like you didn’t have enough shit on your plate. The world won’t stop if you take a break, or mess up. Or just … I don’t know, act normal. You can’t fix everything. Some things just are.”
That nonsense again.
“Hilarious you would say that the day before we win this contest that will in fact save this town. You’re the one who said I swing for the fences—you can’t be pissed when it works out.”
“Well, when was the last time you swung for the fences for yourself? You’re so willing to take risks for this town and such a coward for yourself.”
“I’m fine.”
“Really? Things are just great with your sister and you and Monica …”
“There’s nothing between me and Monica.” He’d taken care of that.
“Now you’re lying.” Sean shook his head. “And if you blew that, then you’re an idiot. A bigger idiot than I thought.”
“Fine,” Jackson muttered, frustrated and furious that suddenly everyone had an opinion on his life and how he lived it. He gave Sean his handful of fliers and the tape. “You set the rest of this up.”
He checked his watch. It was time to go grab Gwen for the pageant.
Twenty minutes later he took the steps two by two to the second floor of the Big House. Just as he put his hand up to knock, the door swung open and a stranger stood there. A young woman, radiant in gold.
Only her eyes—furious and belligerent—were his sister’s.
“You …,” he gasped, feeling his head leave his body, his heart punch his lungs. “You look amazing. That dress—”
“It was Mom’s.”
He gasped again, couldn’t help it—the pain slipping through his rib cage was acute. Sharp and precise. He missed his mother, his father. He missed his sister as a girl. Himself as a boy. He missed every chance he didn’t take, every risk.
You can’t fix this, you can’t change it. You can’t control it. It is time and it’s moving by and you’re losing everyone.
“I’m so sorry,” he told her. “For what I said, earlier. About giving up my life—”
“It’s the truth, isn’t it? Just because you never said it doesn’t mean I didn’t know it. Let’s go,” she said, moving past him, leaving him broken in her wake.
On the drive over to the Art Barn silence filled the car, the kind of silence that couldn’t be punctured with words, though he tried.
“I’m sorry about going through your room,” he said. “I was just so worried.”
Her thumbnail got more attention than he did.
“I wasn’t looking for anything,” he said. “I wasn’t. I mean … maybe I was. I don’t know.”
She shifted, looking away from him, but he refused to be stonewalled again.
“Do you want to talk about the condoms?”
She laughed. “No.”
“Do you want to talk about Jay?”
“Double no.”
He sighed, wishing the ride to Shelby’s could be longer, but they were there already, and the moment he put the truck in park, she was halfway out the door. Before thinking about it, he’d grabbed her hand.
“I want you to talk to me,” he said. “I want … I mean, I know I’m not Dad. Maybe I’m not even much of a brother, and I know I’m not as smart as you, but no one is, Gwen. And … I’d like to be your friend.”
“Fine. You want to be a friend, how about you talk to me?” She shook back her hair and gripped his hand, her fingernails digging into his skin, surprising him with their ferocity. “When were you going to tell me you were going to leave? Where are you going to go? What’s happening between you and Monica?” She tilted her head and he realized he was gaping at her. A thousand words rushed through his brain and got caught, just there at the edge of his tongue.
“Why is this so hard for you?” she asked, clearly befuddled.
I wish I knew, he thought.
Monica stood at the door to the barn, waving Gwen in, and at the sight of her he was driven by a terrible need to make things right. Just one thing in his life. He had to make sense of what she’d revealed. He had to try to shove it back in its box. Make it manageable for him, so he could understand it.
He hopped out of the truck just as Gwen slipped inside the door and Monica turned to follow. “Wait,” he called. “Wait, Monica.”
She paused and turned to look at him, her expression stone.
I tricked you, he thought. I duped you.
“You love something that isn’t real,” he blurted, and her eyebrows rose.
“M
aybe … maybe it’s the sex, you know? The orgasm thing?”
Once, when Gwen was about thirteen and having a conniption about something he couldn’t remember, he told her that she was overreacting because she was a girl and she was hard-wired that way.
Gwen had looked at him exactly the way Monica was looking at him now: with pity and fury.
“Your magic penis didn’t save me, you jackass! I did, by being honest. Something I’m trying to do more of. And yes, the sex has a lot to do with it, but it’s not why I love you. I love you because you’re magic. You try so hard. You think of other people first. You don’t back down from a fight … except for when it’s on your own behalf. You’re the most caring and compassionate and selfless person I know, while at the same time being the most closed-off and selfish person I know. You’re a mess, and I love that about you, because I’m a mess too. But I’m figuring things out. But—and you’d better get this through your thick skull—I am not something that needs to be fixed.”
She closed the door in his face.
Chapter 24
Monica leaned back against the door and closed her burning eyes. Her heart, too heavy to carry on her own, slipped from her hands and shattered against the floor.
The orgasm thing?
Never in her life had she been more reduced. More marginalized.
“My brother is stupid.”
Monica opened her eyes to see Shelby and Gwen staring at her.
“I’m with Gwen,” Shelby said. “Jackson is an idiot.”
“I think maybe I’m the idiot,” Monica said. “I knew going in that this was just temporary for him. That … he wasn’t going to love me. And frankly, I wasn’t going to love him, so I can’t blame him for how I feel.”
“That’s awfully diplomatic of you,” Shelby said. “For a woman who looks so heartbroken.”
“Love sucks,” Gwen said emphatically.
Monica’s heart wrenched at the words, and she hated the idea of Gwen building herself a life behind walls like the ones that Monica had built for herself, or worse, the walls that Jackson had built. She pushed herself away from the door. “No, Gwen, it doesn’t. It’s … great.”
“Yeah, it looks like a whole lot of fun.”
Monica laughed at the girl’s razor-sharp sarcasm. “I’m … grateful that I love Jackson, because I don’t know what would have happened to me if I didn’t meet him. I was really alone. And I’d convinced myself that I liked it that way.”
“But …” Gwen looked puzzled. “Aren’t you still alone?”
“No. Look at us. Right now. I’m going to do your makeup and Shelby is going to pour me a stiff drink in a mug. And Reba’s all dressed up.”
All three women looked to where Reba slept in the corner, pink ribbons in her fur.
“She does look nice,” Gwen said. Monica laughed, though it hurt. She smiled, though she wanted to cry. It was like being torn in half by happiness and grief.
“I’m here because I was able to be in love. And I wouldn’t change that for the world. Now, let’s make sure you win this pageant.”
Three hours later, Jackson drove Miss Okra home. Her tiara, a gaudy number that had to stand about a foot off her hair, glittered in the headlights of the cars passing by.
“Congratulations,” he said. His chest ached with affection. With pride. With the bittersweet reality that she was leaving him behind to have a new life.
“Thanks.” She smelled the roses she carried in her lap. “I thought Ania had me there at the end.”
“I had no idea she could juggle.”
“I know, right?”
He turned left toward the Big House, through the square. “Whose idea was it for you to bring up the chalkboard?”
“Shelby’s. Monica helped me write the speech.”
His beautiful, genius sister, instead of playing the piano, which he’d expected, had stood up in front of the gymnasium full of Bishop residents, glittering and golden in the spotlight, and explained why there weren’t more women in high-level math and science jobs.
“I could play the piano for you, like I have every year,” she’d said. “But we all know I’m not very good. So … I’m going to show you my real talent.”
And then she’d flipped over the blackboard in the middle of the stage and found the area of an ellipse using integral calculus, explaining it as she went.
The audience had politely clapped, but they were whispering behind their hands, embarrassed for Gwen and her big, awkward brain. Jackson wanted to charge into the audience and knock heads together—silence all those people intimidated by his sister.
But Monica, standing in the back, a dozen feet from him, had stomped and whistled; she’d clapped hard and loud enough for a dozen people.
And he realized, to his chagrin, a deep and painful truth: that he was one of the silent ones in Gwen’s life—he was just as intimidated as those people rolling their eyes, whispering behind their hands.
Pinpricks of horror racing up and down his arms and back, he’d joined in with Monica, stomping and cheering for every single time he hadn’t in the past. He hollered, “That’s my sister!” through cupped hands.
Onstage, Gwen had bowed and done a funny little embarrassed curtsy, before running off the stage.
Monica had grinned at Jackson and for one second, one crystalline, fantastic second, it was just them, gathered and collected and bound together by Gwen’s big brain, Monica’s big heart, and Jackson’s giant, crushing fear. Monica, Jackson, and Gwen—nothing else. No expectations, no looming failure—just them. And it was perfect.
But then Monica walked away, taking the perfect moment with her.
And it was as though she had taken the color with her. The scent and textures of his whole life.
“I hope it doesn’t rain for the parade tomorrow,” Gwen said, peering up through the windshield as it started to sprinkle.
“It will be all right,” he said, and Gwen laughed.
“You have a plan to stop it?”
He shook his head. He didn’t want to talk about the rain, or the parade, or America Today, or even the factory. He wanted to keep driving around in his truck with his sister and her roses, her beautiful dress. Her beautiful self. Maybe they could find Monica and he could apologize for being an ass, for not being able to love as fast and as well as she could, and explain to her that it didn’t mean he didn’t feel anything.
They could all go to Masonville for frozen custard, see how much free custard Gwen could get if she wore her crown.
The fantasy was so deeply real that he smiled.
“Jackson,” Gwen said, pointing out her window. “You’re about to drive past the house.”
“Right.” At the last minute he braked and pulled into the driveway, up to the back of the house. “Wait here.”
He got out of the car and ran up to the back porch, where he grabbed his umbrella. And then he ran back down to the truck and opened his sister’s door, helping her down and running with her through the rain to the back porch. She touched her crown, then the glittering clip-on jewelry, as if to make sure it was all still there.
“Well,” she said. “I’m going to go change and go to bed. Early morning tomorrow.”
He nodded. “I’m so proud of you.”
The chance was there—right there—for him to hug her. To erase some of the years and the distance by giving her a hug, and she stood there for a moment as if she knew it too, and he wasted the moment by wondering when he should stop hugging her.
“Good night, Jackson,” she said, her voice quiet. And then she was inside, gone through the house, and he was left in the rain.
The night was suddenly huge, the darkness oppressive. He felt miles of distance around him. His loneliness was a radio signal bouncing off nothing. And sitting on a beach somewhere, or backpacking through Europe—it wasn’t going to fix what was wrong with him. Being out of this house, this town, he’d still be him. Carrying around all the mistakes he’d made.
&nbs
p; The idea of never being enough was going to haunt him everywhere he went.
Almost frantic, he walked through the kitchen in wet shoes, his hair dripping into his face. He jogged up the stairs to his sister’s door. Shut, of course. He touched the sparkly edge of a butterfly sticker she’d put there … God, years ago. A lifetime ago, before Mom and Dad died. When she was still a little girl.
He knocked, and the door opened. Gwen had changed out of the dress into a pair of shorts and a baggy tee shirt. But her hair was still up and her makeup was still on and she was part stranger.
The scared part of him recoiled, afraid of messing this up, afraid of getting it wrong. But the scared part of him had been in charge for way too long.
“Can I come in?”
She blinked in surprise but then opened the door.
He stepped in and, realizing he was soaking wet and couldn’t sit on her bed or at her desk, he put his back to the wall and slid to the floor. Bubba waddled over and collapsed by his side. Jackson put a hand in his short fur.
“You all right?” Gwen asked.
“No.”
The silence was thick and heavy, and he rested his head back against the wall.
“I … never knew how to love you,” he said. “I felt like … you needed something else from me. Something more, or bigger. You … you needed me to make things right. The fact that Mom and Dad died, the fact that you were stuck with me, that you … you weren’t very good at making friends. I had to make all of that right for you, somehow. Make it okay. And I didn’t … I was so ordinary. And you were so extraordinary.” He was gasping for air. “Loving you wasn’t ever going to be enough for you.”
She collapsed onto her bed, the posts shimmying, sending the princess canopy swaying.
“And I’m so … I’m so sorry for that. I’m so sorry that I wasted so many years trying to fix what was wrong, when you were perfectly … you all the time.” Was he crying? He was. He was crying. Exhaustion swept over him in a wave and he closed his eyes.
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