by Natasha Boyd
I took a deep breath and turned into the driveway. Perhaps the car had only been turning around. I climbed out and headed up the stairs. Jack had told me to come straight inside when I got back, but I knocked just in case. I heard voices inside, and then Jack flung open the door. His face was grim, and he hauled me inside.
“I’m sorry, Keri Ann. I didn’t know she was coming.”
“What?” I stumbled forward into the house and faced my worst nightmare. Jack’s firm grip on my hand didn’t detract from the impact of Audrey Lane, dressed casually in jeans and a white t-shirt, her long, glossy black hair swung over one shoulder. She was beautiful. I swallowed hard against the bile threatening to come up and glanced back at Jack with confusion. Why had he pulled me in here? I wanted to be as far away from this awful realization of my worst fears as fast and as soon as possible. I took a step back, trying to untangle my hand from Jack’s.
“Auds,” I heard Jack’s voice from far away, ”This is Keri Ann. Keri Ann, this is Audrey Lane.”
“Carry-Anne? How southern.” Audrey’s voice was soft like honey and way too familiar from her movies. “This yours?” She dangled my pink cashmere scarf on a finger, and then flicked it toward me.
“Don’t be a bitch, Audrey.” Jack’s voice lowered dangerously. He quickly picked it up and handed it to me.
“Why, Jack? How much does she mean to you? You’ve known her, what, a few days?”
How did she make it sound so trite and sordid? I ground my teeth but tried to remember she was fighting to save the man she loved. Wait, she’d cheated on him.
She turned her gaze to me and her eyes grew frosty. “Look, Carry Anne, I’m sure it seemed really special and everything, but just because—”
“At least he didn’t cheat on you,” I snapped and made to turn. I had had enough of her snide attitude, and I didn’t want to stick around any longer while they sorted this out.
Her brittle laugh grated my nerves. “Is that what he told you? Hilarious. That’s all he did to all his girlfriends. He was cheating on someone when he got together with me. The tabloids don’t always have it wrong, you know.”
A vague memory of Jack Eversea, the playboy, tickled my mind. No. I didn’t care, it wasn’t the Jack I knew.
“Besides,” she went on, “he really hasn’t broken up with me, so I guess that makes you the trashy piece on the side. Waitress, right? So cliché.”
“Fuck off,” Jack hissed at her. For a moment, Audrey looked shocked, but she recovered quickly and appraised us both.
“Oh God, Jack. You haven’t slept with her, have you?” She rolled her eyes like he was an errant little boy. And just like that I wanted to be sick. It sounded like they’d had this situation before. I knew she was a good actress, but surely not this good.
I swallowed. “Um, Jack ... I ... I better go. Let you two sort this out.”
“No,” Jack snarled, gripping my hand tighter. “Stay.”
“Jack, please,” I whispered. I was going to liquidate Amélie-style or lose my breakfast.
“You should stay, Keri Ann,” Audrey purred. “You may be interested in this, too.”
She walked toward Jack and ran a traitorous hand along his cheek. My cheek. He was mine. She took a deep breath and smiled a huge, winning, Oscar-worthy smile. “I’m pregnant, Jack. Pregnant with your baby.”
A tidal wave crashing through the plate glass picture window bringing a man-eating shark to flop around on the tile floor couldn’t have caused more shock. I wasn’t sure I’d heard the words right. But Jack’s hand on mine went slack. His face turned chalk white.
Audrey smiled gently, running her hand down Jack’s arm, disengaging his hand from mine and placing it on her belly. “I know how you’ve always wanted a family. A family like you never had growing up.”
I stumbled back, eyes darting between them like I was in a ridiculous daytime soap opera. I waited for Jack to look at me or get mad at her, or say there was no way it could be true. I thought it was only contractual. But he had mentioned a time when it was real. I just didn’t know it was … recent.
The moment stretched out, and I wobbled slightly before I turned and stumbled to the front door.
This time, Jack didn’t try and stop me.
T H I R T Y
Having been through grief several times before, I could honestly say the first stage of this traumatic loss was to be severely and violently sick.
I did manage to make it back to the truck despite the roaring in my ears and sudden lack of muscle tone in my legs, and I drove as far as the intersection of Palmetto and Atlantic before opening the door and heaving my guts onto the sidewalk. Great.
I wanted to blame the water leaking out of my eyes on the vomiting, but I could feel the traitorous sting. After retching nothing a few more times, the kind where it felt like my eyeballs were going to bug out of my head, I finally rose up in time to see a blurry vision of Brenda running toward me from the grill, holding a bucket and a glass of water.
“Oh my God, Keri Ann, are you okay?”
I gratefully took the water as she put an arm around my back, rubbing my arm soothingly. “Fine ... must be something I ate,” I croaked, swallowing and squeezing my eyes shut.
“Honey, are you pregnant?” she whispered, concern lacing her words.
“God, no!” I was about to make some quip about an immaculate conception, but bit my tongue, as I no longer qualified for that status. “Not me.” Not me, anyway.
A fresh wave of anguish lurched through my belly, leaving me breathless. “Shit. I need to get home.”
I eyed the bucket of water. At least I could clean up this mess. Brenda stayed my arm. “I’ll take care of it honey, you get on home. I’ll take your shift tonight.”
I nodded, grateful, and climbed back in the truck, making the last few minutes of the trip in a daze.
At home, I wandered through my empty house before heading to my room. I tried lying down, but just as I turned to curl onto my side, the smell of Jack wafted from a pillow.
Oh, God.
For a moment, I lay motionless. Then I buried my face in the pillow and inhaled deeply before hurling it across the room. The crash of upended pictures and trinkets and the sound of breaking glass was loud in the silence.
* * *
The thing I remembered most about the night my parents died was the terrible silence. We hadn’t needed to go to the hospital, there was no one to visit. Mrs. Weaton had come over while Nana left to identify the bodies. No one spoke, and no one said I should go back to bed and get some sleep. I mean who could do that anyway? The quiet in the house, as one would expect in the middle of the night, was that night, heavy and deafening.
Eventually, at about four in the morning or so, without saying a word to Joey or Mrs. Weaton, I walked up to my parents’ bedroom, crawled under the floral quilt on my mom’s side, and slowly breathed her scent in and out.
I must have fallen asleep because when I woke up, Joey was asleep in the bed next to me on dad’s side, and Nana was sitting in the chair by the window.
She smiled at me sadly.
To say there was a gaping hole inside me where my heart had been savagely and painfully ripped out was an understatement. It was a crushing and physically painful emptiness that gave way to a sense of sheer panic as I realized I couldn’t smell my mother anymore.
I sat up gulping for a fresh breath, and then threw my face back to her pillow, trying to catch the scent again. I tried this several times with increasing hysteria.
Joey woke and tried to hold me and I lashed out, pushing him away, realizing the awful broken howl I could hear was coming from me.
Eventually, both Nana and Joey had me, and we were all hugging and crying and rocking.
I slept in my parent’s bed for the whole summer and didn’t speak to Nana for eight days when she finally washed the sheets a few weeks later.
* * *
I stood up and walked past the mess I had just created in my bedroom and
headed up to the attic where I found my place to curl up again.
I came out of a deep and dreamless sleep to Jazz sitting next to me on the floor.
She reached out a hand and smoothed my hair back as I opened my eyes. “I’m sorry.”
“What for?” I whispered.
“Jack called the shop and told me Audrey was here and that I needed to check on you. What happened? I’m thinking the worst here, but he wouldn’t say anything else.”
“It’s the worst,” I confirmed tonelessly. “He’s not leaving her.”
I let out a breath and shifted onto my back.
“Oh, God, Keri Ann. I am so sorry.”
“Don’t be. It’s not your fault. I mean, seriously, how could I have imagined this would work out any differently? I should have stayed far, far away. Why would a movie star want to be with a small-town girl like me? Why would a movie star with a gorgeous girlfriend leave her for a girl like me? Why would—”
“Stop it!” Jazz interrupted, looking pained. “Just stop it!”
“Why should I?” I yelled back. “It’s fucking true! And this has nothing to do with my self esteem and everything to do with how fucking blind I was.” I sat up. “My point is not about not being good enough for him, it’s that I was too stupid to see the signs. He told me! He freaking told me it wasn’t over with Audrey! I chose to believe otherwise. No one but me. Anyone who gets into bed with an unavailable man should expect this. Why would this be any different? And now that she’s pregnant? Well, that just accelerated the inevitable, didn’t it? I should be fucking grateful this happened now before I became some sleazy tabloid byline.”
Jazz’s face turned pale. “She’s pregnant?”
I laughed hysterically. “Yes! Isn’t that great?”
“Did he know?” she asked, incredulously.
“No. But that’s not the point, is it?”
“Well, it changes things a little.”
“No, it doesn’t. You’re missing the point, Jazz. Regardless of whether he knew, he was cheating on her. With me. And I chose to ignore it. And apparently, it wasn’t the first time. They may actually deserve each other. I went against every principle I thought I had. Seduced by a six-pack and a dimple and an entire personality of honor that was based on a fictitious character.” I was yelling again, and to my horror, crying at the same time.
I thought back to Jack sharing his painful past with me, and for a moment, doubted myself until I firmly shut that thought back inside my head. I also again remembered past stories of Jack Eversea’s exploits in nightclubs with fast girls. Back when Jazz first became a huge fan and would talk about him the way only a sixteen-year-old with a massive crush can, he was endlessly linked with bevies of beautiful women, leaving a trail of broken hearts.
The conversation I’d overheard on the phone in my kitchen, where his agent had all but assumed he was messing around with someone on the side, should have been the biggest clue.
“I’m so, so sorry,” Jazz said again.
“Stop saying that, Jazz, it’s not your fault.”
“But it is. I encouraged you, I even told you I thought he cared for you. This is totally my fault.” She winced. “I was living vicariously through you, wanting you to do what I would have done. It was unfair to you. I’m so sorry.”
“I keep telling you all, I’m a big girl. It was my choice, Jazz. Mine. And the worst part is that he was so cautious ... so hesitant ... at every moment. It was me who pushed, me who closed every gap. It was me.”
I pressed my finger hard to my chest.
“It was me,” I finished quietly and firmly.
The fault was all mine. He couldn’t have played it better, really.
It was the perfect hustle.
T H I R T Y – O N E
If I’d thought Jack might come and find me, to either apologize or explain himself, I was mistaken.
Every day that went by with no contact from him stretched my nerves tighter and tighter. Somehow, I made it through the next week trying to block the entire episode out of my mind. I was a little numb, which made it easier, but not effortless. I tried hard not to think about whether Jack was still in Butler Cove. I knew if I even let myself start, it would all come pouring out.
Jazz checked on me constantly, and stayed over any chance she could, leaving early to get to work or class. I kept telling her I was fine, just annoyed, but I could tell she wasn’t buying it. I had overheard her talking to Joey on the phone one night in hushed whispers. I didn’t bother answering when he called me. I knew he knew, and I didn’t feel like talking about it.
The thing really threatening to make me lose my mind, with frustration, was that most of the household furniture was still out on the deck or upstairs. On the second morning of walking past the bare floors and glancing at the fireplace, I put in a call to Faith for help. She agreed to pre-purchase two of the three chandeliers she had asked for.
While stuffing my face with the chocolate pudding Mrs. Weaton had kindly brought over, I called the flooring company and asked them to reimburse some of the balance to the credit card used and take my money instead. They finally agreed and had an opening within days to come out and finish. I would still owe Jack for a large part of it, and would be working flat out to repay Faith, but for now, I could get my house back together.
I was functioning enough that I felt working and keeping busy were the only things that would help me heal without having to do too much thinking. Perhaps the healing could continue in the background while I went about my life. Hopefully, one day I could turn my full attention to the subject of Jack Eversea and feel only a slight annoyance. Perhaps a bit sad and maybe also a little chagrined that I fell for a pretty face; hook, line, and sinker, but the raw pain would no longer be there.
The following Thursday night, the grill was heaving with locals. I was busy and had perfected a happy mask on my face to all but the closest observers. Hector, of course, was ridiculously and uncharacteristically quiet. I had given him the stark news Jack was with his girlfriend and would no longer be in Butler Cove just as I had with Mrs. Weaton. I could tell he wanted to press me for details but wisely kept silent. Instead, he grabbed me in a swift, tight hug, and then set me away from him and work continued on as normal.
Jazz had managed to find a reason for her or the group to get together at each of my evening shifts. Tonight she was sitting with Liz, Cooper, Vern, and Jasper at a round table in the perfect spot to keep an eye on me.
I headed that way to offer drink refills. It was nearly closing time.
“You look like shit,” Jazz said to my brittle smile. “And I mean that in the nicest possible way. Please let’s talk about this tonight after work. You need some sleep, missy. I‘m not above stealing a Xanax from my mom.”
“Jazz. Please. I’ve said everything I want to say.” I swallowed. “And I don’t need to be drugged.” Although, a night of oblivion and deep sleep, rather than the fitful and tormented slumber I’d been attempting, sounded like heaven. “I’ll get over it.”
“Oh, my God, are you serious?” Liz’s voice broke through our tête-à-tête.
“For real.” Vern’s voice was dramatically conspiratorial. “He and his girlfriend are staying at the Mansion on Forsyth.”
The historic mansion, turned high-end hotel, was one of the nicest places in Savannah. A nagging dread unfurled in my belly as I predicted the next words out of Liz’s mouth.
“Jazz, did you hear that? Jack Eversea and Audrey Lane are staying in Savannah. Oh my God! We should totally go and have drinks there, it would be so cool to see them in real life.”
I could see Jazz struggling to act surprised and excited so as not arouse suspicion. At the same time, she gripped my hand as tight as she could. As for me, the blood had left my head again, and I swayed into the chair next to Cooper.
“Hey, girl, what’s up? You okay?” Cooper asked in that soft way of his. His brow furrowed.
“Tired,” I managed. I needed to collect m
yself and get up. For days everyone was told I was recovering from a stomach virus, but I couldn’t pull that off forever. They would think I had E. coli soon.
Vern was informing everyone he was a host at Casimir’s Lounge at the Mansion. He had been cagey about his new job for weeks, but now he was coming clean. He said he could totally hook us up if we all wanted a night on the town. I shot a look at Jazz and shook my head.
“What the heck is wrong with you two?” Jasper said, watching our weird exchange. “A fun night out in Savannah sounds awesome. When was the last time we all did that? Beats sitting around drinking PBR every night.” He took a swig of his beer and shifted an eye back to the animated Liz who was loudly wondering if the tabloids had been lying about Jack and Audrey breaking up. Every word was a needle sliding into my skin.
Of course Jasper would want an excuse to get us all out on the town. He wasn’t going to ask Liz out on a date outright, but an excuse to go out somewhere fancy in a group with her was probably a dream come true for him.
“Nothing’s wrong, Jasper,” Jazz said. “Keri Ann has to work tomorrow night so there’s no way she can go. And I have a ton of studying for midterms.”
Jasper’s face fell, although he still held a cocked eyebrow at the obvious undercurrent.
If I hadn’t felt like I was under a lead weight, I would have laughed at him.
“Wait, so Vern.” Liz was looking at him with wonder. “Why were you so embarrassed to tell us about your job at the lounge, that’s awesome. How cool.”
Vern ducked his chin sheepishly. “Well, it’s a little exotic ... and I ... well, I dress and ... act exotic there, too,” he finished quietly.
Cooper nudged him in the ribs. “Dude, we know you wear eye-makeup and shit. It’s cool. Whatever.”
“Seriously?” Jasper eyed him over his beer, like he was noticing Vern for the first time. We all were.