You & Me: The Complete Series (3 Book Boxset)

by Lisa Shelby

  Now, here I am driving like a maniac to get to her. The adrenaline that is coursing through my body is practically making me shake. I can’t wait to see her but I’m scared to death to hear what she has to tell me. Our only communication today was when I texted to tell her I had gotten called in and that I would be late getting there. I hate that there were hours that I could have been with her that were wasted.

  As I pull on to Mick’s street, I can see that my theory was correct and that everybody and their brother took today off. There are cars lining both sides of the street. I find a spot about a block away and take a couple of breaths before I get out of my truck.

  Walking down the sidewalk, I feel so amped that my hands are shaking and I have to put my hands in my shorts pockets to try to contain them. Just knowing that sometime tonight I will finally have the answers I’ve been needing has me going out of my mind. I have no idea what she’s going to tell me or if it will change my mind about her, like she said it would when we met, but I still have to know. I’m not sure if she knows how much her inability to trust her secrets with me all those years ago hurt me. I know I can’t dwell on that right now so I shake it off and walk around the side of the house to the backyard where I can hear voices.

  I walk through the yard and say my hellos, I grab a beer out of the cooler, open it up and toss the cap in the trash, all while my eyes are flying around the yard in search of her. I don’t see her, but I do see Devon and Gabby.

  I start to head towards them, but Mick stops me first with a hand shake that turns into a bro hug. Bro, brah, brofus, dude…these are all words that sum up Mick. You would think he lived in a fraternity but nope, that’s just Mick. He’s a dude’s dude and a player through and through. That’s why seeing Emily with him at Kells filled me with instant rage. I was never so relieved to hear him say the word sister. Except that does mean that Mick is her brother, and I want more than friendship from Emily. Things could get ugly if not handled correctly.

  “Bro! So glad you could make it! Sucks balls that you got called in on your day off, man. Glad you came by anyway.”

  “Of course, couldn’t miss your first big shindig at the new place.”

  “Well, thanks for helping me move in, dude. Help yourself to whatever you want. What’s mine is yours.”

  I don’t think he’s referring to his sister, but I thank him anyway.

  Mick takes off to say goodbye to somebody, and I take another look around but still don’t see Emily. I find Devon and Gabby again and head that way. They’re talking as I approach them and with a nod of her head Gabby signals to D that I’m behind him and they instantly stop talking. As soon as Devon turns around, something seems off with him.

  “Hey man, what’s up?”

  “Not much, J. Sucks you had to pull a shift today.”

  I can tell there’s something that he’s hiding from me and Gabby looks at me almost like she feels bad for me for some reason. What the Hell is going on here?

  “Yeah, it does. So what’s up?”

  “Not much, just the usual crew here tonight.”

  “Not what I mean, D.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Come on man, I can read right through you. Something’s not right and you aren’t telling me what it is.”

  Gabby speaks up this time and says, “It’s nothing bad Jonathan. Emily was just looking for you. She wants to talk to you about something.”

  “Why does this not make me feel any better?”

  “Just ignore him. Devon’s already had a few too many beers and he’s just being stupid,” she says and gives me a hug. “Glad you’re here, and I’m sure that Em will be back out in just a minute.”

  Just as she says that, the back slider door to the house opens and there she is. She is gorgeous as always and she doesn’t even have to try. I noticed at The Gym the other day that her body hasn’t changed much at all. She’s a bit curvier, but in the best possible way. She isn’t twenty-one anymore and it looks good on her. Tonight she’s wearing those tight as hell skinny jeans that are rolled at the bottom—just like in California—with some flip flops and a dark blue t-shirt. Nothing fancy, but to me she is perfect. Intoxicating.

  I’ve held so much hostility towards her these past years, but once I saw her again it all came back. That instant connection. It’s like I was an addict who had been clean and sober, and the moment I saw her I fell right off the wagon and started imbibing again. I feel a calmness overtake me just knowing I’ll be in the same room with her, but at the same time I’m nervous as hell. What is she going to tell me? Will it be enough to make me understand how she could just walk away from us?

  I start to make my way towards her and Devon pats me on the back and still has that strange look on his face. What. The. Hell? I feel like everybody knows what’s going on but me.

  “Hey there, Georgia, glad you could make it.”

  “Me too. Did I miss anything exciting?”

  “Nope, no drunk cop stories to tell yet. I see you got a beer are you hungry? Can I get ya something?”

  “I’m good right now. I’ll get something in a bit.”

  Tell me now!

  I hate this polite conversation and beating around the bush bullshit. Right when I’m about to lean forward and ask her if she wants to go talk we’re suddenly surrounded by people. It appears Emily was wrong and the drunk cop stories have begun. Eventually we all find deck chairs to sit in and the beers start flowing. I notice Emily still doesn’t seem to drink. She’s been sipping on a Diet Coke all night. I notice her sneak away into the house a couple of times. She must be keeping her own personal stash of Diet Coke in the house. Lord knows you have to hide things with this crew because anything out in the open is fair game.

  After a while Emily seems to be in a deep conversation with MacKenzie Theissen and her girlfriend Liz, so I take this time to sneak away to the bathroom.

  As I leave the bathroom I hear something coming out of the room just across the hall and notice there’s a small light on and the door is cracked. On instinct I take the two steps across the hall and peek my head into the door.

  In the bed talking to her stuffed animals is the cutest little girl I have ever seen. She has big brown eyes and curly blond hair. She sees me and gasps and closes her eyes to pretend she’s asleep.

  “It’s okay, I’m a friend of the person who owns this house. I won’t tell anybody your awake if you don’t want me to?”

  The sweetest little voice I have ever heard whispers.

  “You’re friends with Uncle Mickey and Frank?”

  Did she just say Uncle? What the…?

  “Yep, I sure am. Mick’s your uncle?” I ask as calmly as I can without hyperventilating.

  “Yep,” she whispers.

  Shit…

  “Who’s your mommy?”

  “My mommy is Emily. Do you know her too?”

  My heart starts to beat out of my chest as I try to calculate how old she is.

  “I do know your mommy, she’s an old friend of mine.”

  “Cool.”

  “What’s your name sweetheart?”

  Still whispering she says, “My name is Ireland, what’s yours?”

  Did she say, Ireland? This cannot be happening. I just keep hearing Emily telling me that she loved all things Irish back in California.

  “It’s nice to meet you, Ireland. My name is Jonathan.”

  “Hi, Jonafon.”

  I think she might be the cutest thing I have ever seen.

  Trembling I take a couple of steps into her room but not far enough to frighten her.

  “Ireland, how old you?”

  “I’m four with a half.”

  My heart has jumped out of my body, I just know it has. I was never great at math but even I can do this math. Just as I feel I might have a God damned heart attack right here and now I feel a hand on my shoulder. I startle and turn around to see Cami holding what I think is a baby monitor in her hand just as Ireland says, “Sorry, Aunt
Cami. I can’t sleep. This is Jonafon, he’s a friend of momma’s and Uncle Mickey’s.”

  Still with her hand on my shoulder Cami says, “He’s a friend of mine too, Ireland, and I’m glad you two could meet, but you really need to go to sleep. I was supposed to be making sure you were sleeping tonight and I’m gonna get in trouble if you don’t get to dreaming, little one.”

  “Okay, I’ll try better, Aunt Cami.”

  Cami walks over to the bed and tucks her covers in around her and gives her a kiss on the forehead. On her way back to the door she turns me around to leave with her.

  “Bye, Jonafon. See you later,” the cutest voice on the planet whispers.

  “What the hell is going on, Cami? She’s four and a half?”

  I can barely breathe.

  “Let Emily explain, Jonathan. Just listen to her. You may not like everything you hear and you may not understand it all but she’s worth it. But I think you already know that though.”

  I see her look over my shoulder and give a nod of her head.

  “I’m gonna let you two talk. I’ll stay in here and listen for Ireland and you guys go out front where you can talk in private.”

  I still haven’t turned to look at Emily, but I feel her as she gets closer and then walks past me and to the front door. She opens the door, walks out and leaves the door open behind her.

  Cami gives me a push and says, “Go. She’s worth it. They both are, Jonathan.”

  And with that Cami leaves me standing alone in the living room. I stand there for a beat because I’m just not sure I’m ready to hear what Emily has to tell me. I finally nut up and make myself go outside.

  When I get to the front porch I see Emily sitting out in the middle of the big grassy front yard. She’s just sitting there cross-legged, staring into the star filled sky and playing with the dragonfly on her necklace like she always does when she gets nervous.

  I walk out to join her but I just can’t sit right now. I have too many questions and too many emotions raging through me and I have to keep moving so that I don’t explode.

  “I see you met Ireland?”

  “She’s four, Emily.”

  “She is.”

  “Fuck, Emily! Is she mine?”

  Emily jumps up in an instant and is on her feet and standing right in front of me. Well, she’s trying to but I won’t stop pacing so she finally grabs me by the arms and stops me. I feel the connection as always but push it away. I’m too pissed at the moment to enjoy the feeling.

  “Jonathan, no. She’s not yours. I am so sorry that you thought that. You must be so freaked out right now. She’s not yours but every day I wish she was.”

  I bend over and put my hands on my knees and hang my head as I try to fill my lungs with air again. Oh, thank fuck! If she had kept my own child away from me, I could never forgive her.

  “I would never do that! I may have messed up plenty with us, Jonathan but I would never do that!” she practically screeches.

  Shit! I said that out loud. I need to pull myself together.

  “I am so confused, Em. Am I that bad at math?”

  “No, you aren’t. Let me explain, can we sit?”

  I don’t speak but I do sit my ass on the ground and she sits directly across from me. We’re sitting in the dark, in the middle of Mick’s front yard, but I can still see her face from the street lights. She’s scared to death and I give her the minute she needs to gather herself enough to tell her story. I think I need the minute just as much as she does if I am telling the truth.

  And then she begins…

  “The week before I met you I had found out that I was pregnant. I hadn’t even realized that I had missed a period yet but I had to go in for my drug test for the new job I was starting and when they called to say it was all good to go they congratulated me on my pregnancy. I was shocked. I couldn’t believe it was true so that night Cami and I went and bought two packages of pregnancy tests. There are two in each box and Jonathan, I took all four tests because I had worked too hard to get where I was and I only had one year of school left. Then I was going to get my masters,” she says as she hugs her knees to her chest.

  “Jonathan, every one of those tests came back positive. I wanted to die. How could I have been so stupid? It wasn’t like I slept around, in fact it was quite the opposite. I was so busy studying I didn’t really have time for guys but there was one guy that I did see from time to time. Harrison Flowers, you may have heard of him? He was a professional surfer and gone a lot. He would call when he was in town and we would hang out.”

  “I get it. I don’t need details, Em. Keep going…” I say just in case she was going to go into any broken condom stories that I really don’t want to picture.

  “Sorry, I just don’t want to leave anything out. I need it all out there. So, I found out on a Thursday and he called to hang out on Friday. When I met up with him I told him that I was five weeks pregnant and he said there was no way it was his because he had been on the road. It had only been two weeks since I had seen him last and about three weeks before that. Well, that’s five weeks.

  He lost it on me, Jonathan. We were at a party but had gone to a room to talk and he started calling me a whore and a slut and said that I was probably screwing every guy on campus when I wasn’t with him, and there was no way it was his. Then he stormed out of the room and just left me there dazed and confused. I was so hurt and embarrassed. I was scared to death and I had no idea what I was going to do.

  Cami and I left the party and I figured I would give him a day to cool off and try to talk to him again. I called and texted but he didn’t reply the next day. I knew he would be leaving again in a few days, and we knew they were always throwing parties when they were home, so we showed up without an invitation and you know what he did? He pretended he didn’t know me. Like I was some stranger. Even his friends, who knew we hung out, were confused and didn’t know why he was being such an idiot. But I knew why. It was okay to ruin my life but his was too important for an unplanned pregnancy or at least that’s how I looked at it then.”

  “What an asshole,” is all I can get out at the moment. The thought that some dickhead could treat somebody like Emily like that infuriates me. It’s probably a good thing I didn’t know when we were in California because I may have paid him a little visit.

  “That’s a nice way to describe him. He made it pretty clear that he didn’t want anything to do with me or Ireland. I tried again when she was born and he came to the hospital and saw her. But he wouldn’t hold her and said he didn’t want his name on the birth certificate.”

  She releases her legs from her chest, crosses them in front of her again and makes sure my eyes are on hers when she says, “Jonathan, I swear to you I wasn’t sleeping around. There wasn’t anybody but Harrison. I knew he wasn’t the one and he was only around from time to time, so it was perfect for my busy schedule of school and work. I didn’t love him. Hell, I don’t even know if I liked him. I don’t know how it happened, we always used protection but it happened.

  I met you exactly one week later. At that point I didn’t know if I was going to keep the baby or not. I was so confused and scared and had so many decisions to make that I didn’t know which way was up. That’s why I told you I didn’t date or do relationships. Between Harrison and my dad, I hadn’t had the best of luck and really couldn’t take any more rejection. I was some chick you met on vacation, and you were going away for nine months. Well, you would have come home and I could have very well had a baby. That wasn’t fair to you, Jonathon. What was I supposed to say…I know we just met, and we’ve known each other a week, but want to be a dad to some other guy’s baby? I would say that would be a little more than you bargained for.”

  “You should have given me that choice, Emily,” I say coldly.

  “I didn’t know what choice I would have been giving you. Like I said, I didn’t know what I was going to do. If I did tell you, and then didn’t keep the baby, I would have felt like a
slut for sleeping with you while pregnant with another man’s child. And if I did keep the baby, I didn’t want you to feel obligated because you had told me you loved me and I would have always wondered if you were only with me out of pity.”

  “I was in love with you for Christ’s sake! I deserved to know!” I see her jump a bit and realize I just yelled that at her.

  She whispers so low that I almost can’t hear her when she says, “I was so ashamed. I went from being the good girl who really never slept around to being knocked up at twenty-one with no baby daddy to speak of. I didn’t want to see the look of disappointment or disgust on your face, or to get rejected yet again.”

  I don’t know what to say because I do understand where she’s coming from, but I still wish I had known. I just stay quiet.

  “The thing is Jonathan, it’s because of you that I have her. If I hadn’t gotten to spend a week surrounded by love and joy—to see that good men really did exist out there in the universe—I don’t know if I would have made the same decision. What I felt for you was so strong and that week with you made me feel whole. I was in such a dark place, and without even knowing it you pulled me out bit by bit. It started before I even saw you. It was your laugh. I heard you laugh and it shook me out of the haze I had been wallowing in. You woke me up, gave me hope and for a short time, love. You gave me strength and confidence. You will never know how that one week of my life changed me forever. I haven’t felt that sense of wholeness again. Not since I walked away from you that day. Don’t get me wrong. Ireland is amazing, and I could not love her more than I do or be more proud to be her mom, but the love I get from her is different than what you gave to me that week.

  So, what I have really wanted to say to you since December 1, 2010, is thank you. There wouldn’t be Ireland without you. I thanked you silently the day she was born and I held her in my arms for the first time. I’m so glad that I finally get to thank you again in person.”