Bachelors In Love

by Jestine Spooner

  Mari sucked in her lips to keep from smiling. “Sorry to spring it on you like that, but I didn’t think there was anything to spring. The way they were acting, I thought it was something you all already knew about. It was so obvious.”

  The door to the kitchen swung open and Laura backed into the kitchen, balancing dirty trays and plates on her hands.

  “Laura!” Jay hissed, beckoning her over. He needed a second opinion.

  Laura set the plates down and hurried over. She could sense gossip from a mile away. And she was anxious to have a good moment with Mari. Laura could tell that Mari had recognized her tonight, from the hallway in the gala, where Laura had been whispering Jay’s ear. In the way of women, Laura had sensed a small, but very real wall up between her and Mari. Laura’s feelings weren’t hurt over it, in fact, she recognized it as a good sign. It meant that Mari was capable of feeling a little jealous over Jay. That was a very good sign.

  But, eager to show that she and Mari were on the same team, Laura bustled over, tossed her light, curly brown hair over her shoulder and leaned in. “What’s up?”

  Jay, his brow still furrowed, eyed Laura for immediate reaction to his words. “Mari thinks that my mom and Ryan are together.”

  “Oh!” Laura laughed in surprised delight. “Are we finally allowed to talk about this? Excellent!”

  Jay’s mouth dropped open. “What are you talking about?”

  Laura waved a hand through the air. “Tia and I have been pretty much positive about it for months, but she said that we shouldn’t talk about it because you three are all so protective over Kat. She said we should wait until Kat and Ryan brought it up.”

  Jay’s mouth dropped open even further. “What do you mean? You’ve seen them kissing or something?” He knew he sounded extremely juvenile, but he found he couldn’t help it. He was spinning a little bit.

  Laura and Mari both laughed outright and it soured his mood even further.

  “No,” Laura said as she shook her head. “Nothing like that. It’s just the way they are together. You can tell.”

  “What do you mean?” Jay felt like a parrot, squawking the same question over and over again.

  “You know, when two people are really into each other, when they’re comfortable and intimate in a million different ways, there’s no way to hide that. Look.” Mari, demonstrating, stepped a few inches closer to Laura. “See, too close for an acquaintance or friend, but close enough for a lover.”

  Laura, immediately understanding the game, played along. “Right, see? Mari and I are at a dinner table together. I notice that her water glass is empty,” Laura mimed the next part. “I fill it for her.”

  Mari picked up the thread, also miming her actions. “I’m all full from a huge meal now and I have to lean back. Perhaps I’ll just lean my arm along the back of Laura’s chair.”

  “When Mari’s hair falls forward, I’ll brush it back. When she laughs, I’ll watch her mouth, when she tips toward me, I tip toward her.”

  “Alright, I get it,” Jay grumbled.

  “See?” Mari said, holding her hands up like she was presenting evidence.

  Laura smiled to herself, apparently neither Jay nor Mari had realized that all the things she’d presented as evidence could also be directly applied to things they’d done during dinner. Kat and Ryan were obviously intimate with one another, but it was nothing compared to all the subconscious ways Jay and Mari showed their feelings for each other.

  Actually, it was getting Laura a little hot and bothered just to be in the same area as the heat between the two of them. She and Jace were going to have an interesting night when they got home and she expelled some of this pent-up energy.

  Jay frowned at the two women. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe you’re both loony.”

  Mari rolled her eyes. “Your mother wanted us to bring out the desserts, right?”

  Relieved they were changing the topic, Jay nodded and the three of them brought out the cakes and ice cream, vegan variety for Jay and Mari, of course.

  Kat watched the way her son held the door for Mari as they came back into the dining room with the desserts.

  It thrilled her. And scared the hell out of her. His entire life Jay had been so calm, so collected. And here he was with a storm in his heart. With a mother’s intuition, Kat could see exactly how much Mari lit Jay right up. Like a Christmas tree.

  She was over the moon to see her son burning in that way. But she was also terrified.

  Mari was… hard to read. She was gorgeous and obviously very strong, inside and out. Kat had always imagined that her son would fall for someone a bit gentler. More open. Sweeter? But there was a toughness in Mari, a series of walls that Kat was having trouble navigating. It was almost like the girl had built a maze in front of her heart that everyone was required to find their way through.

  Kat didn’t dislike that, it just surprised her.

  Being a very fair, intelligent woman, Kat reserved judgment—anyone could tell that the girl hadn’t been expecting this intimate gathering of family and loved ones. She’d been uncomfortable from the first few minutes on. She couldn’t be blamed for that.

  It wasn’t until after dessert was cleared away, when Eli had started a fire in the hearth and all of them had gathered on the plush couches in the living room that Kat saw something that took her breath away.

  Mari asked about all the different swatches of color on the walls of all the rooms. And Tia had explained that she’d moved out of her smaller house to live in Eli’s. And that the two of them were still trying to figure out how they wanted to decorate.

  “I keep telling her that she can do whatever she wants,” Eli insisted from where he sat on the floor, his legs stretched out in front of him and his back against Tia’s legs.

  “Well, then you’re obviously missing the point, dummy,” Jay said. He was stretched out in front of the fire like a cat, laying on the floor like he always did when presented the option to choose between a couch or a good stretch of floor.

  “Excuse me?” Eli asked with a dry disdain that was effectively ruined by the smile on his face.

  “Yeah,” Jay punched at a couch cushion he was currently using as a pillow. “The point isn’t the paint, the point is the choosing it together.”

  “Disagree,” Eli dismissed his friend, closing his eyes in relaxation and pulling Tia’s legs into his side with supreme confidence.

  Ryan pursed his lips and decided that at 35, his son was old enough to learn this lesson without supervision.

  “What do you mean, disagree?” Tia asked pushing up to a sitting position on the couch.

  Eli cracked an eye. “I mean that no matter what, even if you and I come to a moment of blazing harmony over one of these paint colors, it’s not gonna matter. The only color we’re gonna go with is one that you don’t think is ugly. So just tell me which one you don’t think is ugly.”

  Tia’s mouth fell dead open, and across the room Mari began to really smile. It was weirdly satisfying to see that life was occasionally hard for everyone, including millionaire star quarterbacks who were about to play in the Superbowl.

  “Excuse me?” Tia asked, her eyebrows in her hairline and her voice enunciating every letter of those words.

  “What?” Eli asked, palms up and shoulders shrugging.

  “Jesus,” Marcus muttered into the hand he scrubbed over his face. “Even your two chronically single friends know the answer to this one, my dude.”

  “What?” Eli asked again.

  Jay sighed. Sometimes it was hard having all the answers. “First of all, Tia has great taste, so the colors you’re choosing from are never gonna be ‘ugly.’ Second, a little bit of ugly in a family home never hurt anybody. Third, home isn’t a noun. Or at least it shouldn’t be. It’s a verb. It’s about doing. Living isn’t passive.”

  Jay rolled his hand out in front of himself from where he lay, in a fancy, smug bow. And everyone laughed. Except for Mari. And except for Kat who watched Ma
ri.

  Kat watched as the girl’s eyes glued themselves to the side of Jay’s face. As a hundred different sadnesses raced over her expression. Kat watched as Mari leaned forward, elbows to knees, and absorbed the words that Jay had just spoken so easily. Kat watched as Mari dropped her head in thought, raked her hair back, and looked back up at Jay. This time, for the first time that Kat had seen, all the barriers that Mari had brought with her were smashed to pieces. Kat watched as Mari looked at Jay through those startlingly green eyes; there was tenderness there. There was fear and inhibition there. But more than anything, there was love.

  The expression on Mari’s face was there for only a matter of seconds before she rose up, made her excuses to leave.

  Kat bit her lip as she watched Mari say goodbye to each person there. She thought, perhaps, her first impression of the girl had been wrong. She didn’t think this girl was made of walls. She thought this girl was made of windows. And when you got the opportunity to peek through one, it was brilliant and blinding.

  When Mari made her way to Kat, Kat didn’t hesitate. She pulled the girl into her arms and gave her a hug, a real hug. A hug that meant something. Maybe it was a little too tight.

  When Mari stepped away, there was a blurriness to her eyes. Kat didn’t care if she’d embarrassed herself. All she knew was that this girl loved her son. Kat didn’t know what that meant, or if, roughly translated, it meant a hell of a lot more heartbreak for Jay. Kat didn’t care right then. All she cared about was the love she’d seen there. It was the look of love that she’d never forget.

  CHAPTER NINE

  A week or so later, Mari was quiet as she and Jay bobbed on the water right before sunrise, watching the dark swells roll in from the ocean. The sun was an electric red where it kissed the horizon. It was a clear, cloudless morning, so the sky was a deceptive, tame pink surrounding the sun.

  “Your mom hugs just like you do,” Mari finally spoke right as Jay was about to ask her if everything was alright.

  It was just about the last thing he’d expected to come out of Mari’s mouth but it made him smile, big. “Is that right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What do we hug like?”

  Mari side eyed him for a second, swirling her feet through the frigid water. Even with her inch-thick wetsuit on, she wasn’t gonna last much longer out here on the January ocean. “Too tight, all heart, nothing polite about it.”

  Jay threw his head back and laughed, hard, utterly delighted with the description. “Yeah, I’ve been told that we don’t have the lightest touch in the Brady family. Marcus and Eli used to complain when we’d wrestle as kids. Say I was way too rough. I never quite got it though. I was just doing what felt right.”

  Mari didn’t answer, she just smiled lightly and looked back toward the beach.

  Jay continued on. “She’s always been like that too, my mom. Kinda rough. She used to damn near take the hair out of my scalp when she’d dry my hair as a kid.”

  Mari smiled bigger but it fell away in thoughtfulness. She turned toward Jay, her eyes piercing his. “Your mom still keeps your dad’s last name?”

  A complicated expression crossed Jay’s face. “Nah. Neither do I. Brady is her maiden name. And it was always my middle name. But when I was eighteen we’d both really come to terms with the fact that one, he was never coming back and two, if he did, we’d never be a family in that way again. I told her I was gonna file paperwork to turn my middle name into my last name. She did the same thing. We changed it back together.”

  He paused, glanced at her, saw that she wasn’t going to ask. Which is exactly what made him willing to tell her. “It was Sayers. My last name for the first eighteen years of my life. Jay Brady Sayers.”

  Mari shrugged. “It’s a good name. Jay Brady is a hell of a lot better though.” She looked back at the beach and missed the way that he looked at her. In a way, he was relieved she hadn’t seen it, because he was sure his feelings were written all over him. And he was sure that they were definitely the kind of feelings she’d categorize as “a problem.”

  “So no middle name, then?” she asked.

  “Uh,” Jay scraped at the back of his neck. Either he was blushing or the sunrise was even pinker than she’d thought it was. “Actually, yeah. I, uh, picked a new middle name.”

  Mari raised her eyebrows. Sensing that it was more embarrassing than it was sensitive, she leaned across the water between them and nudged him in the ribs. “Tell.”

  He pursed his lips. “It’s Bird.”

  Mari cocked her head to one side. “You took Eli’s last name as your middle name?”

  Jay frowned and shook his head, paused. “No. Well, I mean yes. But it’s, uh, because of Ryan more than anything.”

  “Ah.”

  “Yeah, I asked him if I could do that and he cried,” Jay smiled at the memory. “He wrapped me up in his arms and just cried.”

  “So he really is like your dad then?”

  “Yeah,” Jay nodded sincerely, scrubbing a hand over the little bit of his face that was exposed by the wetsuit. “Even when my dad was still at home, Ryan was the one I would go to when I was hurt or confused or even just wanted somebody to mess around with. And then my dad left the same year that Eli’s mom died. And even then, even days, weeks after his wife died, Ryan still had so much,” Jay pounded a hand over his chest, at a loss for the right word, “so much that, still left over for me. For Eli and Marcus too, obviously. But I just remember realizing being in pain didn’t mean you had to stop loving the people around you.”

  Mari felt something constrict in her chest. He was doing it again, damn it. He was doing this again to her and she didn’t know how to stop it. Half of her wanted to catch the next wave and just get the hell away from this man. But the other half of her wouldn’t have left the water even if there was a tsunami coming.

  “And that’s not how my dad was, is, whatever.” Jay’s brow furrowed. “I see now that he was a really messed up guy. He’d had a hard life, for sure. But he let it affect his everyday interactions with his wife and son. He never showed love or tenderness. It was always just anger with him. And then he left and Eli’s mom died and I just sat back and waited for the same thing to happen to Ryan. I waited for him to get angry and bitter and withholding. With me and with all of us. But days went by and then weeks and months and years and he was sad, so inarguably sad. But he was still hugging the hell out of me, waking up early to surf with me so I wouldn’t be alone, going to Eli and Marcus’s football games, helping my mom mow the yard and fix the pilot light and…”

  Jay broke off, the golf ball in his throat cutting him off for a second. He could feel Mari’s gaze on the side of his face and it was more intense than the sun rising behind him.

  “You’re like that,” she spoke the words quietly. “You’re just like that.”

  He turned and looked at her, but she was framed by the sun behind her and he couldn’t see more than a red halo around her silhouette. “Like Ryan?”

  She cleared her throat and he could barely hear the sound over the shifting ocean around them. “Maybe, or maybe it’s just all you. But I remember thinking that during the hurricane. That no matter how scared or upset you were, you were never callous or angry. You were always so tender. So sweet to me. Even when your leg was damn near torn in two and you were bleeding out right before my eyes. You were more worried about me. You were still…” Her lips trembled and neither of them missed the way she stumbled over the next words. “Loving me.”

  She didn’t let the words hang there. She couldn’t let the words hang there. The longer they did, the truer they become. Mari knew that it would have felt like a lie not to say them. That her only choice had been to tell the truth. But it was a particular truth that suddenly made her life a hell of a lot harder.

  She’d brought love into it. Finally recognized out loud to him that it had been love on that island with them. And that made things different between Mari and Jay. And that made things dif
ferent between Mari and Linc.

  “I’m cold,” she said as she turned to him. Barely a second had passed since she’d last spoken.

  “Alright,” he replied easily, although his heart was beating a mile a minute beneath his wetsuit.

  ***

  It was three days later and Jay hadn’t heard from Mari since the morning they’d surfed together. He frowned down at the mountain of paperwork waiting for him on his desk. Metaphorical paperwork, of course; his company was extremely green.

  He knew she was currently somewhere in the same building as he was. He knew that she knew it too. And he also knew, somehow, that he couldn’t be the one to reach out first this time. Mari had said the L-word in relationship to the island. She’d drawn a line in the sand at the same second she’d crossed it. And as much as it thrilled Jay that she had, he knew that this was her issue to come to terms with. And he had to admit that coming to terms with it was a hell of a lot more complicated for her than it was for him.

  “Oh!” Rita, the head of HR, squeaked somewhere behind Jay and he couldn’t help but roll his eyes. She was typically stoic, reserved, just a touch sandpapery. But there was one person in this world who reduced her to a blushing high schooler.

  Jay swung around in his desk chair, faced the front door of his office. “Marcus,” he said, raising an eyebrow. He hadn’t been expecting his friend to come see him at work today.

  “Hey man,” Marcus said, tossing one devilish smile toward Rita before he crossed the office.

  Jay instantly saw that there was something off about it though. He rose. “What’s up?”

  “You got time for a lunch break?”

  Jay’s heart plummeted at the tone in Marcus’s voice. Something had happened. “Of course. Rita, I’m gonna take off. If I’m gonna be longer than my hour, I’ll log it in as personal time when I get to work tomorrow.”