Just a Little Bet (Where There's Smoke)

by Tawna Fenske

Leo was quiet a long time. “Why do you jump out of airplanes for a living?”

  Tony looked up at him. “Because it’s what I’ve always wanted to do. Back when we started fighting fires in college, I watched those air-attack crews, and I knew that’s what I wanted more than anything.”

  “Even if you might die?”

  Tony frowned. “Well, I guess that could happen.”

  “But you take precautions, right? Same as I do when I’m in the cockpit or back when I was jumping. Hell, even in the goddamn sewing room, we’re repairing chutes and checking jumpsuits and going over every damn stich on every harness at least a million times.”

  “Yeah, I guess.” Tony thought about that. “And we train like hell. The pilots are pretty kick-ass—”

  “Damn straight.” Leo smiled. “And we maintain the shit out of all the aircraft.”

  Tony sighed. “All my teammates are great.”

  “You trust them with your life, right?”

  “Right.” There was a metaphor in there somewhere, but Tony hadn’t quite grabbed it. “You’re saying it’s not about being perfect. That shit might still go wrong. But taking precautions might minimize the risk.”

  Leo laughed and shook his head. “I didn’t say any of that. You did.”

  “Jesus.” Tony buried his face in his hands. “I’ve been reading too much self-help.”

  Leo was quiet a long time. “I know you barely remember your dad, and maybe he was an asshole. But you’ve gotta remember mine. That time he took us fishing?”

  Tony nodded as middle-school memories bubbled to the surface. “He was so damn patient. We kept hooking ourselves on logs or bushes or rocks, and he probably should have knocked our asses into the lake.” A smile tugged one corner of his mouth. “He didn’t, though.”

  “He never did.” Leo paused. “I know you think you’ve witnessed too many shitshows to have any sense of what a good relationship is like. Maybe that’s true. But you’ve been around good people. Good men who’ve got more in common with you than the douchebags who’ve been your father figures.”

  Tony swallowed hard, fighting back the prickle of tears. “Where would I even start?” he asked. “It’s not like there are classes on how not to be an asshole in a relationship.”

  “Sure there are.” Leo stood up and clapped Tony on the back. “You’ve got about a zillion books on the subject.”

  “I’m familiar.” Maybe he should have paid more attention to that Patience O’Toole book.

  “Or therapy. That sure as fuck helped me after my divorce.”

  “No kidding?”

  Leo sighed. “It’s okay to be scared, dude. To worry you’re gonna fuck it all up. But good men—smart men—they work their asses off to figure out how to get it right. Don’t you think that’s better than running?”

  He looked his old friend in the eye. “Yeah. Maybe so.”

  Leo clapped his back again. “That’s a good start.” He laughed and walked away. “I think you’ve earned your stew.”

  “I haven’t earned shit.” Maybe a punch in the face from Kayla, which he surely deserved.

  As Leo clanged around in the kitchen, Tony closed his eyes. What if he’d made a horrible mistake?

  It’s time to reclaim your mistakes, Dr. O’Toole had written. It’s time to own them, embrace them, and ask them what they can teach you.

  Opening his eyes, he stood to go help his buddy with dinner.

  Chapter Twenty

  “We brought wine and Cheetos.” Willa presented her gifts, framed by the rectangle of Kayla’s front door. “Oreos, too.”

  “And tissues,” Aislin added, hoisting the box with a sympathetic smile. “The kind with lotion, so your nose doesn’t get all chapped and gross.”

  Kayla felt her eyes filling with tears, which was stupid. Hadn’t she cried enough the last few days?

  “Come in.” She pushed the door open, pausing to hug each of her friends. “Oh, good, you brought Stevie.” Kayla stooped down to pet Willa’s blind dog as Fireball pranced over, then skidded behind her ankles in a sudden show of shyness.

  “Hey there, cutie.” Willa stooped down and coaxed Fireball out, scratching slowly behind his ears. “You taking good care of your mom?”

  “He sat on my lap the whole drive home.” Kayla stood up, smoothing her palms down the legs of her jeans. “I think he was confused about what was happening.”

  “That makes two of us.” Willa flopped onto the couch and pulled a corkscrew out of her purse while Aislin ran to get glasses.

  “Three!” Aislin called from the kitchen. “Plus Kayla, of course.”

  Kayla sighed and eased herself onto the sofa beside Willa, who promptly threw an arm around her shoulders. “How are you holding up?”

  She shrugged. “Okay, I guess.”

  Willa studied her face, clearly not buying it. “Does the thumb still hurt?”

  Kayla glanced down at it. She’d already swapped out the bulky bandage for a regular old Band-Aid, and she hardly felt the tug of the stitches. “It’s fine. I barely even notice it.”

  “Good.” Willa dropped her arm. “Do you want tough love or supportive?”

  “Um, tough love?” She accepted a glass of wine from Aislin, who carried her own glass to the loveseat on the other side of the coffee table.

  “Thanks, Ais.” Willa picked up the glass Aislin had set in front of her as she turned back to Kayla. “Tough love. You’re sure?”

  Kayla wasn’t sure about anything, especially not what happened with Tony. But she nodded anyway, swallowing back emotion. “Lay it on me.”

  Willa took a sip of wine. “He’s a commitment-phobic idiot who never deserved you. You’re better off without him. Also, those punny diner shirts he wears are stupid.”

  “I kinda like the shirts.” Aislin crossed her legs and swirled the wine in her glass.

  Willa shrugged and gave a sheepish smile. “Me, too.” She squeezed Kayla’s hand. “He’s also not an idiot. And I’m not even sure about the ‘better off without him’ thing.”

  Aislin rested her glass on her knee. “Sorry. We suck at tough love.”

  “It’s okay.” Kayla sighed and sipped her own wine.

  Aislin regarded her over the rim of her glass. “You do look pretty sad.”

  Kayla spun the glass on her knee. A rosé from Sokol Blosser, it had notes of strawberry and pepper and peach.

  And, like everything else, it reminded her of Tony. Of that night at Soliloquy sipping rosé and fending off jerks when a real, honest-to-God good man sat watching over her from the bar.

  “I just don’t understand,” she said, setting her glass on the table. “One minute, I could have sworn we’re on the brink of making it work. Real commitment, a future, the whole works. The next second, he’s practically shoving me out the door.”

  “Not unlike how most of his relationships have ended,” Aislin mused.

  “He sounds scared,” Willa agreed. “And being scared doesn’t bring out most guys’ best sides.”

  “He’s a freakin’ smokejumper,” Kayla argued. “He jumps out of airplanes into flaming forests for a living. You can’t honestly tell me he’s more afraid of a relationship.”

  Willa shrugged and sipped from her glass. “For some guys, the prospect of death is a lot less scary than being emotionally hurt.”

  “Or rejected,” Aislin added.

  Willa nodded. “Or hurting someone they love.”

  “Or having their heart broken.” Aislin plucked a Cheeto from the bag. “Or any number of things that involve more emotional pain than physical.”

  They did have a point. “Emotional injuries do suck more,” Kayla acknowledged.

  She stared at her wineglass, considering that. She’d held back a few personal details of what happened with Tony. The story of abuse—not just the physic
al stuff with Joel, but the years of verbal and psychological stuff—that wasn’t hers to share.

  Still, she’d filled them in on some of it. “Did you know there was this study done looking into how childhood trauma impacts people as adults?” She glanced at Willa, hoping this wasn’t dredging up too many awful memories. God knew she’d had it rough as a kid. “It literally alters their DNA.”

  “My therapist told me about that study,” Willa said. “It changes the genes at a cellular level, which means it’s something people can pass on to their own kids.”

  “That’s awful.” Aislin’s expression filled with sympathy. “Says a lot about you, Willa, that you turned out so normal.”

  “Ha.” Willa made a face, then turned back to Kayla. “Seriously, though—I don’t know what Tony’s dealing with—”

  “And we totally respect you keeping his privacy,” Aislin put in. “Even if he broke your heart.”

  Willa put a hand over Kayla’s, leaving Kayla blinking back tears. “But whatever’s going on with Tony, you can’t take it personally. You’re amazing and wonderful, and, deep down, he knows that.”

  She couldn’t hold back tears any longer. One slid down her cheek, and Kayla swiped it away with her shoulder. “I feel dumb,” she said. “I broke up with him a year ago because he wasn’t ready for a relationship with a future. Why on earth would I have expected he’d be ready now?”

  Willa propped her feet beside Kayla’s, nudging her with the toe of her cute ballet flat. “Because he changed. Can you imagine the Tony you knew a year ago agreeing to ask a bunch of his old girlfriends where he screwed up?”

  Aislin laughed and threw her feet up on the table. “The Tony I first met would have run screaming from the idea. Whatever you did to him must have gotten through.”

  Kayla shifted her feet to the side, making room for her friends. Her ankle bumped the hardback copy of Go Get It, knocking the book to the ground. Sighing, she picked it up. “It wasn’t me. It was this.”

  Her friends exchanged a look.

  “I don’t think so.” Willa took the book from her hands and began thumbing through it. “I mean, yeah, maybe some of the ideas resonated, but you’re the one who introduced him to it.”

  Kayla glanced at the pages as Willa flipped through. There was the grease smudge from when Tony dropped half an Oreo frosting-side down on the page. And there was the chapter with the mirror affirmation, which made her flush with the memory.

  “I guess I learned a few things,” she said, struggling to find the bright side. “If the point of all this was to work on myself so I’d be in a better place to find a relationship, I definitely did the work.”

  Only right now, the one person she could imagine a relationship with was Tony. How messed up was that?

  “We’ve got you.” Willa put her wineglass down and pulled Kayla in for a hug. “No matter what happens, we love you and support you. How’s that?”

  “Perfect.” Kayla squeezed her friend, grateful for the unconditional love. “Thanks for being here.”

  “No problem.” Willa drew back, and Aislin moved over to Kayla’s other side, plopping herself up against the sofa arm. Fireball growled and scooched aside.

  “We love you, sweetie.” Aislin squeezed her tight. “Want to talk about it more, or are you ready for a break?”

  “Break, please.” Kayla stroked her dog’s ears as he settled on her lap. “Did I tell you I’ve got almost half the photos edited?”

  “No kidding?” Willa broke into a round of mock applause. “Wait, does that mean you stayed up all night?”

  Kayla sighed and blew a lock of hair off her forehead. “Maybe?”

  Aislin frowned, but Willa’s expression filled with sympathy. “The sleepless part of heartache is the worst.”

  “It’s not so bad,” she said. “At least I’ve been productive.”

  She’d had to be, to keep her mind off the fact that she hadn’t heard from Tony at all. She’d texted to let him know she made it home safely. Just one message, three words long.

  I made it.

  His reply?

  A heart emoji.

  Well, three of them, whatever the hell that meant. She’d given up trying to interpret it. If she could just keep herself busy, maybe her real heart wouldn’t hurt so much.

  Her phone buzzed on the table, and Kayla felt hope surge into her throat. She glanced at the screen and cursed her own disappointment.

  “It’s my mom.” Kayla disentangled herself from her friends and reached for the phone. “You guys mind if I grab this? I’ve been trying to catch her since I got home.”

  “No problem.” Aislin stood up to let her out, earning another grumble from Fireball. “I’ll go put the snacks in bowls.”

  “And I’ll refill the wine.” Willa stood up, too, and headed for the kitchen.

  “Deal.” Kayla scooped up the phone and beelined to her office. She pulled the door halfway closed, then hit the button to answer. “Hey, Mom.”

  “Are you home, sweetheart?”

  “Yeah. Drove straight through. Just a little over seven hours.”

  Her mother huffed. “I still can’t believe that awful boy would leave you stranded in the middle of nowhere.”

  “He gave me his Jeep,” Kayla pointed out. “I was hardly stranded.”

  “Still.” Her mother made another indignant sound. “Any word on how his mother is doing?”

  “Not a peep.” Kayla had tried calling the hospital, eager to learn something new. But privacy laws prevented her from learning much. “I texted with one of the nurses who took care of her. Nyla couldn’t tell me much but did say she’d seen Tony.”

  “And how is he?” Her mom’s frosty tone indicated she’d be happy if the answer was “unconscious.”

  “Fine.” Kayla settled into her desk chair, bumping the mouse. Her screen flickered to life, revealing one of her images from the trip. Tony, silhouetted against the backdrop of the sunrise, his dark hair curling around his ears as he bent to pet Fireball.

  “He’s staying with his friend, Leo,” she said. “I don’t know when he’s coming back.”

  On the other end of the line, her mother sighed. “Can I give you a little advice?”

  Kayla pinched the bridge of her nose. “If I say no, will it make a difference?”

  “Probably not.” Her mother took a breath. “Sweetheart, you’re beautiful. And smart. And kind, and clever, and funny.”

  “This isn’t sounding like advice, but I appreciate it.” The praise made her insides feel warm, but Kayla knew there was more. “Why do I sense there’s a ‘but’ coming?”

  “No but,” her mother said. “I just want you to remember those things. You are a strong, independent woman who doesn’t need a man to be happy. You know that, don’t you?”

  Tears pricked the backs of her eyelids, surprising her with their sudden rush. “You’re my mom. You have to say that.”

  “It’s because I’m your mom that I know it,” she said. “I’ve met plenty of the men you’ve dated over the years, and some of them were nice enough boys. But none were really worthy of you.”

  Kayla bit her lip. “You never met Tony.”

  “I didn’t; you’re right. Why was that again?”

  Because he’s broken. Because he’s scared. Because he doesn’t think he knows how to be happy.

  She’d never say that out loud. Had never even realized it until last week.

  “Too busy,” she told her mother, which was also sort of true.

  “Well,” her mother said, clearly not buying it. “For what it’s worth, I heard the way you always lit up when you talked about him. So I know he’s something special.”

  Wait. What? “I thought you just called him an awful boy?”

  “We’re all awful from time to time,” she said. “Your father can be the
absolute worst.”

  “Then why—”

  “When love is right, it’s not about being perfect,” she said. “And it’s not about needing the other person, either.”

  Kayla held her breath. “Then what is it about?”

  “It’s about feeling like a better version of yourself when that person is around. It’s about knowing you’re capable of making it on your own, but you’re consciously choosing to be with someone who brings out your best qualities.” She laughed and lowered her voice. “Also, it’s about great sex.”

  “Mom.” Kayla blinked back tears, not wanting her mother to hear it in her voice. “I haven’t been a very good daughter.”

  “What?” Her mother sounded genuinely shocked. “What on earth are you talking about?”

  “I haven’t been there for you guys. Or for Kristin and Katie and—”

  “Sweetheart, you live thousands of miles away,” she said. “You have a life there in Oregon.”

  “But I have you in Ohio,” she said. “And I don’t come home like I should, because I hate feeling like some out-of-place spinster aunt when everyone’s happy and married and bouncing babies on their laps. I’m jealous, and I hate myself for being jealous, and there it is.” She gulped. “I’m not proud.”

  “Oh, honey.” Her mother’s voice wobbled with emotion. “Is that how you’ve been feeling? What it’s like for you?”

  She nodded, feeling ridiculous, since her mom couldn’t see her. “I know it’s dumb. And selfish. And—”

  “Stop right there,” her mother said. “I won’t let you talk bad about my little girl.”

  Kayla laughed, a choked sound clogged with unshed tears. “I’m sorry, Mommy.”

  “There’s nothing to be sorry about,” she said. “Families ebb and flow. Sometimes you’re in each other’s faces all the time, and sometimes you’re only in each other’s thoughts. But no matter where you are or how often you come home, you’re always in my heart.”

  A tear slipped down Kayla’s cheek, and she dashed it away. “Thank you,” she said. “I love you so much.”

  “I love you, too, baby.” Her mother paused. “Why didn’t you tell me? I would have planned girls’ nights or family things for just us girls so you wouldn’t feel left out.”