by Kitty Parker
"I… I don't know," she shakes her head. "But who Spencer is or anything about him is none of your business. I didn't give Carolina the third degree when I met her."
She wants to ask Jack why he's so interested in getting to know Spencer but she hardly knows Jack and yet, she knows that if she asks him that straight out, he won't answer her.
Jack shrugs and crosses his arms over his chest. "Doesn' really matter to me if you did or not," he says. "Matty like him?"
She shakes her head again and crosses her own arms over her chest. "That's not really any of your business either."
Not as much as he likes you, she answers in her head.
"A person might almost think that you were jealous of Spencer in there," Daisy dares herself to say and she watches Jack closely for any kind of reaction. She finds herself hoping for some kind of reaction if not an actual confession from him.
Yes, I am jealous. Yes, I want to size him up so you can see that I'm a much better man for you. Yes, I want you to look at me and him and have you choose me.
She imagines Jack saying all of these things in her mind and she knows no words like that will ever leave his mouth.
Jack stares at her and his face is blank as it always is. He does nothing but stare at her and his eyes are so intently focused on her, she almost shifts under the scrutiny. It's almost as if he's searching her face for something but for what, she has absolutely no idea.
He then smirks a little and shakes his head. "There's no reason for me to be jealous."
And Daisy feels such a wave of sudden disappointment rush over her, she feels as if all of the air has left her lungs in one great whoosh. She knows Jack doesn't have any feelings for her. He has shown that more than once in more than one way but to hear that he doesn't see any reasons to be jealous of another man around her, it hurts. Physically hurts. Just as it did that morning when she watched him and Carolina coming down the stairs.
Daisy quickly turns away from him. She doesn't want to see him upset because there's no reason to be upset. She's with Spencer. She wants Jack – no. Wanted. She wanted Jack. Not anymore. She showed him that she wanted him but he made sure she found out quickly that he didn't want anything from her and she's done her best to forget him since then.
She can't be upset anymore that Jack doesn't want her. She has Spencer now. She doesn't need Jack. She doesn't need a warmth in her cheeks or butterflies in her stomach. She can live without those things and she will.
Without another word to him, she opens the door once more and goes back into the apartment without inviting him back in. She closes the door behind her with a click.
…
"These look good enough to eat, Daisyy," Johnathan smiles as he helps unload the cupcake trays from the trunk of her car where she carefully stored them for transport.
The animal shelter has set aside two tables for her and she now works on displaying all of the cupcakes she has baked properly. The animal shelter has two big events every year – once in the spring and once in the fall – to boost adoptions and receive more donations. Volunteers are already setting up other tables with animal care items that can be purchased, tying balloons or setting up the different play pens to show off the animals that can be adopted that day.
Daisy smiles proudly. "Thanks, daddy. And thank you for helping me today," she says.
"I am always more than happy to help. Especially since you pay me in cupcakes," Johnathan says with a twinkle in his eye and Daisy laughs, handing him one of the extra ones she had made and set aside just for him.
"Daisy, oh my goodness." Daisy turns her head to see Tana Ames, the woman who runs the animal shelter and who ordered cupcakes for today, coming up beside her, looking at the table spread with a slightly parted mouth. "These look amazing," she says,
Daisy can't help but smile proudly though her stomach still feels nervous. "Thank you so much for this opportunity, Tana."
"You have business cards?" Tana asked. Daisy nodded, pulling a stack from the front pocket of her apron to lay out on the table. "Good. I think you're going to get a lot of customers after today. Have you gotten a chance to look at any of the animals?"
"Yes, but unfortunately, I don't think I can get one. I have a woman who lives below me and she doesn't like any sort of noise. I think me getting an animal will infuriate her," Daisy explains, even as she looks at one of the dogs from the corner of her eye. She's always loved dogs and with her dad as a veterinarian who always took in strays, she was lucky enough to have dogs around her all of the time.
But she hasn't had one in years and she knows that even if she was to adopt a cat, Dawn would be knocking on her door, complaining about the noise.
The event lasts for four hours and Daisy runs out of cupcakes even though she had baked nine dozen and even Tana seems surprised that they are all gone because she had thought that number would surely be more than enough when she had placed the order. She gets to meet Tana's husband, the sheriff of their county – Sheriff Casey Ames – and Casey's partner, Adam Hersh, who manages to get two of the banana with cream cheese frosting for himself and both men say over and over again that they are the best cupcakes they had ever had. They make sure to get one of her business cards. One of the men at their station is retiring within the month and they now want cupcakes at his retirement party.
"Isn't that Jack?" Johnathan asks as he and Daisy load the empty trays back into the car.
Daisy instantly turns her head and sees Jack and another man – Latino with a shaved head except for a strip of black hair down the middle of his scalp – standing at one of the pens, Jack holding a skinny black cat in his arms. He's wearing a tee-shirt and his backwards baseball cap and Daisy can't stop herself from staring at his biceps for a moment. She then shakes her head at herself. Why does she has to be so pathetic anytime he's around?
He doesn't see her and Daisy quickly turns away before he can.
"I don't think that's him," Daisy shakes her head and she can feel her daddy looking at him, too, before back at her but there's no way she's going to look at him right now. "We should go so I can pick Matty up from mom," she says and goes to the driver's side of the car.
She doesn't care if it looks as if she's running away because that's exactly what she's doing.
…
He's a dick. He tells himself this again and again as if he has to remind himself of it though it's really the only thing he knows anymore. He's a Belton and he's a dick and that's just the way things are. And Daisy might not realize that right now but the sooner she does, the better off she'll be. One day, she'll look back and realize how relieved she is about the whole thing; that he pushed her away and kept her away and forced her to move on. She doesn't see it now but her life will be so much better in the long run.
So why the hell is he jealous? He figures that's what it is. He's been jealous enough times in his life but that was always when he was younger and directed towards other kids his age. Jealous of their moms and dads and bikes and toys and nice homes and perfect lives. He's never been jealous of a man before because of a girl. And Jack's figuring it's jealousy because every time he sees Spencer, he has the strongest urge to punch the guy in the face.
And that makes absolutely no sense to him because why hell should he be jealous? Daisy giving her attention to some other guy besides him is exactly what he wants. She was getting an obvious crush on him and Jack wanted that to stop before anything could happen because why the hell should that girl have a crush on him? She may not see it but he did her a favor being a dick to her and basically pushing her towards someone like Spencer. The guy is boring, a little bland, but he seems good enough. Jack admits that he's tried to get a feel for him and he gets no alarm bells going off when he's around the guy.
Wanting to punch the guy in the face just must be a natural reaction when seeing him around Daisy because… Jack actually has no idea. Why would it be a natural reaction? He shouldn't want to punch the guy. He may be a dick but he's not the sort t
o just go around, punching people he doesn't care for. That's more like Cletus. That's never been Jack.
There's no reason to want to punch Spencer.
Except that he gets Daisy to smile. That can get Jack's blood boiling.
He doesn't know why it would though.
…
He adopts the black cat.
He and Martinez had headed over to the animal shelter on their lunch break because Martinez's kids keep bugging him for a dog and he wants to go look to see what the shelter has available. Jack's not sure what it is but he sees the cat, too skinny and too scared to be around so many people and other animals, and Jack looks at that cat and thinks that maybe they have something in common.
"You're the first person that cat lets pick up," Tana Ames smiles at him.
And that settles it. He pays the fifteen dollar adoption fee and buys the cat a collar and food and a couple of bowls and kitty litter and Tana tells him that the cat will be waiting for him after work.
The shelter had named the cat Morris and Jack thinks that's a good enough name because he doesn't know what the hell else to name him.
"What the hell is that?" Cletus asks from his spot on the couch when Jack walks through the door that evening, Morris in his arms and everything else he bought for the cat in a bag hanging from his hand.
"What the hell it look like?" Jack asks back and then promptly ignores his brother as he takes Morris into the kitchen to fill the bowls with some of the food and fresh water.
He sighs at the sight of the ashtray overflowing with cigarette butts on the table and the collection of beer cans – empty and crushed – on the counter. Cletus is a slob. No way around that. He's never had an issue with living in his own filth. Just like their old man. But Jack keeps that thought to himself. A sure way to a black eye is calling his brother anything close to Will Belton. Jack isn't the only one who hates their dad and he's not the only one with scars.
So, Jack keeps quiet and he gets the cat something to eat and then begins cleaning the kitchen. He thinks of Daisy's kitchen. The kitchens in these apartments aren't anything special. Small and simple and Jack's cabinets are empty except for two plastic cups and two plastic plates that he had bought at the dollar store and a drawer of plastic utensils saved from the various nights he's gotten carry-out from somewhere. And he has one lone dishtowel hanging over the bar handle on the stove, one pot in the cabinet he can boil water in and one spoon to stir. He's never needed much more than that.
But he thinks of Daisy's kitchen with her real plates and glasses and real silverware and her yellow fancy mixer on the counter and jars on the counter filled with pasta and sugar and salt and flour and cookies and the large canister she has filled with all sorts of cooking utensils. Her kitchen is all white with shades of yellow mixed in and he thinks that he could probably just sit on one of the stools at the counter for hours and watch her move around that kitchen.
But something like that ain't never gonna happen and he knows it, he tells himself as he picks up the ashtray and turns it over, emptying all of the butts into the trashcan, followed by all of the beer cans. He then drags the trashcan over to the refrigerator and begins getting rid of anything in there that smells a little off.
Morris is done with his food now and he's silent but Jack can feel his eyes on him as he sits there, staring at him. Jack turns his head to look at the cat – now his cat from over his shoulder.
"What?" He asks as if he's expecting Morris to answer.
The cat just blinks at him.
Jack turns back to the refrigerator.
"I'm headin' out," Cletus says, already opening the front door. "Have fun with your new friend." And then he leaves, the door closing behind him before Jack can ask where he's going or what he's going to be doing – not that Jack was planning on asking.
Jack isn't Cletus's babysitter. It took him a long time to learn that and he's got it good here. A good job and a good place to live and Cletus just isn't the sort to want those things, too. And it's weird but Cletus seems to know that about Jack and has stopped asking him to always come along with him. Although he takes a lot of Cletus on as his responsibility, at the end of the day, Jack knows that Cletus does whatever the hell Cletus wants to do and nothing Jack does can stop him.
"You need to put that kid on a damn leash," Jack hears his brother growl from the hallway and in a second, Jack's sprung up and goes to open the door to look out into the hall.
Sure enough, Daisy, Matty and Cletus are all there, Cletus glaring at them both before heading down the stairs. Matty looks frightened for a moment but then he sees Jack standing in the open doorway and his grin is instant.
"Hi, Jack!" The kid greets him excitedly, Cletus completely forgotten.
Daisy only glances at him for a second before going to her own door, unlocking it.
"Hey, Matty," Jack greets him with a little twitch of his lips.
He then looks to Daisy. She's holding a brown paper bag in the crook of her arm and he knows she's going to go inside and start getting dinner ready. It's none of his business but he can't help but wonder what she's going to be making tonight. He thinks he's probably going to order in some Chinese.
He thinks of Carolina for a second. Carolina is nice and everything but she thinks she's his girlfriend or something. She's a little too clingy for only being a girl he's slept with a couple of times and he's promised her nothing and definitely hasn't called her his girlfriend.
That first morning waking up with her next to him in his bed, he had looked at Carolina and had confused her for Daisy before he quickly realized his mistake and every time since then, when he looks at Daisy, deep down he knows that no one can be compared to this girl. There's just something about her. There's some sort of invisible aura of goodness and light that surrounds her and he's never seen or experienced anything like that in his life before. he's never met anyone like her before and he wonders – for split seconds at a time – how it would have been if he hadn't pushed her away after that kiss in the waiting room of the urgent care; if he would have had goodness and light in his life by now, too.
Of course, he knows it's useless to think about things like that. He made a decision – the right decision – and went through with it and now there's no point in thinking of what ifs.
"Come on, Matty. Let's get dinner ready," Daisy says as he expected and she opens the door wider for Matty to go running through into their apartment.
Jack expects her to turn into the apartment without saying a word to him but instead, she lingers there for a moment and he can see on her face that she's debating something with herself. She then turns herself enough to be able to look at him.
"Would you like to come over for dinner?" She then asks him and it takes a lot to surprise him but Jack admits that this girl has just knocked him over with that invitation.
"You sure you wan' me to come?" He asks and as soon as he hears the question, he almost wants to slap himself. Why ask her that and give her the chance to back out of it?
Daisy doesn't stop and pause though. She nods her head. "If you like tuna, you can come in."
Jack likes tuna. And hell, even if he didn't, he won't turn down a chance for dinner.
Not with them.
…
He's not sure why she does it but she starts inviting him over at least three times a week. Sometimes, it's just the three of them – him, Daisy and Matty – but sometimes, Spencer is there, too. Those are never the most comfortable dinners with Jack hardly saying a word as Spencer keeps the conversation going with talks about cases and court that day. If he thinks it's weird that his girlfriend's across the hall neighbor is at dinner with them, he doesn't act like it.
Jack wonders why it doesn't bother Spencer because he knows that if some guy was coming over to his girlfriend's apartment to eat dinner with her and her kid, he might have a little problem with it. Maybe Spencer is one of those guys who just doesn't get jealous. Or maybe he's an idiot and doesn't realize that a guy
should be protective of a girl like Daisy.
Not that Spencer has to be protective of Daisy – especially because of someone like him. He doesn't want Daisy like that. He just likes hanging out with her and the kid. That's alright, right? He may have not wanted to pursue anything with Daisy but he did mean it when he told himself that he won't mind if they're friends. But he still doesn't know if she wants to be his friend. She doesn't seem to outright hate him though he knows that Daisy isn't the kind of person to hate anything or anyone in this world.
On the nights Spencer isn't over for dinner and it's just the three of them – those are the dinner nights Jack prefers – he sometimes will bring Morris over, too, which always gets Matty excited and he never seems to want the cat to go back across the hall at the end of the meal, always petting the cat and holding him and trying to play catch with him even though Jack and Daisy both tell him that he's not really a cat who plays fetch.
Daisy's in the kitchen, cleaning up after they've eaten, and Matty is in the living room, patting Morris as the cat has contently curled beside him on the couch and they watch television. Jack looks at them for a moment before taking the plates from the table and carrying them into the kitchen.
"You don't have to help," Daisy says as she scoops the leftovers into a Tupperware container but he just shrugs, opening her dishwasher.
"Leas' I can do with you feedin' me like this," he answers.
He then looks to her as she turns and puts the container in the refrigerator and then goes to the table to get the silverware and glasses. She's humming a soft song to herself and there's almost a smile pulling at her lips and if Jack doesn't know any better, he might start thinking that she's happy that night.
"Why have you been invitin' me over for dinner?" He then can't help but ask.
Daisy shrugs, not looking at him as she closes the dishwasher and then begins wiping down the counter with a paper towel. "Too much carryout gets expensive," she says.