Southern Fried Blues (The Officers' Ex-Wives Club)

by Jamie Farrell

  “You too, sugar.”

  Louisa dragged the loser out the front door. Momma heaved another big old sigh. “Your grandmother must’ve loved her,” she said with a nod toward Anna.

  Jackson couldn’t answer.

  Couldn’t talk through laughing.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  It took him years to find love, minutes to discover loving and being loved were not one in the same.

  —The Temptress of Pecan Lane, by Mae Daniels

  DESPITE ANNA’S FEARS that she was entirely too attached to Jackson, she found herself humming at work Monday morning.

  Until she realized Jules had mis-color-coded half of the work she did over the long weekend.

  The re-color-coding didn’t bother Anna. Days like this restored her faith in her job. Not that she didn’t like her job. Exactly. She appreciated the paycheck. The tuition assistance. The security.

  But it wasn’t fun.

  Nor was thinking about how Jules worked all weekend. If Jules had been at work, she wouldn’t have had the good family time she and Brad needed. They’d looked good together lately too. Jules had announced her pregnancy. She was gaining weight, glowing even.

  Being nice.

  But when she dragged herself in to work Monday morning, she plopped up on Anna’s desk, skewing the calendar, and started rearranging the desk organizer. “Enjoy meeting the parents?” she asked Anna.

  “Not really, but his grandmother’s cool. How about you? Nice Thanksgiving?”

  “Brad made nice with his parents this weekend. Got too touchy-feely, so I came in here.”

  “But otherwise good?”

  Jules plunked the staple remover into the Post-it Note holder. “I ate too much. Don’t suppose you have leftover pie?”

  “Nope. Sorry.”

  “And here I thought we were friends.” She slid off the desk, but she was as smiley as she used to be, which wasn’t very smiley for most people but looked positively psychotically happy on Jules. “Quit goofing off. We’ve got work to do.”

  “Yes, your holy maternity-ness,” Anna said.

  And Jules—irritable, screwed up, snarky Jules—laughed.

  FOR THE FIRST TIME in almost two years, Jackson was hunting.

  Alone.

  That made him one happy hunter.

  Or it should’ve.

  The weather was perfect. A bit on the crisp side, overcast skies, wind carrying the chirp of the fall birds. He was snug and alert in a prime deer-watching spot.

  Hunting heaven.

  But the first time a deer wandered past his blind, Jackson picked up his rifle quiet-like, got his shot lined up, put his finger to the trigger…

  And couldn’t do it.

  Because he practically saw Anna Grace looking at him with her own doe eyes, and he heard Louisa chattering away about how after her best friend from kindergarten showed her Bambi, she used to lie awake at night and cry for Bambi and his mother.

  Son of a biscuit.

  He was lonely. Didn’t even have Radish here to keep him company, since she tended to scare off the creatures.

  He lowered the rifle and grunted. The doe bounded off.

  Going home wouldn’t much help the lonely since Anna Grace was organizing. That was his fault. He needed to keep his trap shut about having a girlfriend who’d put a guy’s kitchen away for fun.

  But maybe Mamie was around. He waffled a minute or two, but soon, he was packing it in and heading up to Auburn.

  He’d been worried about bothering Mamie this early, but she was sitting on her porch with a guest.

  A guest who probably needed her time more than Jackson did. But they waved at him, so he pulled over and joined them for a cup of sweet tea. “Morning, ladies.”

  “Well, now, sugarplum, isn’t this a nice surprise.” Mamie moved to stand, but Jackson gave her a head shake. She reclined in her flowery wicker chair. “Louisa here was telling me how she broke up with some silly boy who thought she was going to fund his art.”

  “Right sorry to hear that,” Jackson said. The Louisa look of death told him she saw the party he was having inside over that bit of news. He snagged a glass from Mamie’s tray and propped himself up on the top step. Hadn’t heard much from either of them since the game last Saturday.

  Louisa pulled her legs up beneath her. Her death look faded behind mild speculation. “Mamie says Just Anna kicked your butt in bowling.”

  “Sure did. Wouldn’t cross her in redneck golf neither.”

  “Are you going to marry her?”

  Jackson almost dropped his glass. “Ain’t you a little young to be talking about marriage?”

  “Not yours, old man.”

  Maybe he should’ve stayed hunting.

  It was cool out there in the woods. Unlike the heat that was growing under his camo here. “Not everybody’s meant to get married.”

  She snorted into her tea. Mamie hid a grin behind her glass.

  “Military life’s hard on a family,” he said, even though he didn’t have to justify anything to these two busybodies.

  But maybe he needed to justify it to himself. Because much as he didn’t want to stop seeing Anna, the thought of being responsible a hundred percent of the time for someone other than himself—worrying about what would happen to her if he got deployed, if he got shot, if he got killed—it near about choked him.

  The thought of packing her up and taking her with him next time he got orders, that wasn’t so bad. But knowing what she’d leave behind, the life she built for herself on her own, her independence, her schooling, her job… she’d blossomed, his Anna Grace had.

  She knew well as he did that every assignment had a different feel, a different flow. Never knew if he’d have a ten-minute or hour-long commute. If he’d be on the road all the time or home for dinner every night. If he’d be able to plan vacations in advance or have to ask his family to roll with whatever the job threw at him.

  She’d signed up for that life once, and she’d made it clear she wouldn’t do it again.

  Shouldn’t have to do it again. She was making her life for herself this time, and good on her for it.

  Wasn’t right of him to ask her to choose between her career and his.

  So he’d enjoy her as long as he could, and deal with the pain later.

  Louisa rocked back in her chair. “Sounds like you’re making excuses for not taking responsibility for yourself. Ain’t nobody gonna give you what you want in life. You gotta get out there and do it for yourself.”

  Jackson blinked at her.

  Then had to blink again.

  “She hear herself?” he asked Mamie.

  “Just the words, sugarplum. She’ll figure out what they mean later.”

  Louisa wrinkled her nose. “Why are you here? Me and Mamie were having us a girls’ day.”

  Jackson sighed and got to his feet. “Just passing through.”

  Just passing through, wishing he were back in Georgia with Anna, even if all he did was bring her food and something to drink while she was putting some other guy’s kitchen to rights. Awful sad state of affairs to his way of thinking.

  So was settling on spending the rest of the day working on making more rights with Momma and Russ, but it did them all some good, or so he reckoned.

  TWO WEEKS AFTER Thanksgiving, Anna took her biochemistry final. It was her last class commitment until next year. When her feet hit the sidewalk in the darkening evening outside the James Robert chemistry building, she drew in a breath of temporary freedom.

  Her brain had melted into some new form of organic matter, but she was done.

  Done.

  Until her molecular spectroscopy class started in January.

  The thought made her molecules radiate as excitedly as an ice cube’s. Two semesters down, nine more to go. She was so tired.

  Plus she had two more certifications to slog through at work.

  Tonight, though, she’d earned a late dinner at Jackson’s house. When she arrived,
he had chicken baking, potatoes boiling, and salads already made. He was washing dishes while Radish snored beneath the table. She greeted him with a kiss on the cheek.

  “Hey, there, pretty lady.”

  “I’m impressed,” she told him with a smile.

  “Suppose you earned it.” He dried his hands, then brushed a thumb over her cheek. “Talked to Louisa. She offered to wash your car if you’ll talk to her about biofuels.”

  Work and school. Yuck. But if it helped Louisa figure out what she wanted to be, Anna was in. “Sure.”

  “How’d that test go?”

  “It’s over.”

  She poked at the potatoes. Jackson shooed her away. “Sit. Look like you’re fit to pass out.”

  She would’ve argued, but if he was brave enough to tell her she looked bad, she’d sit. She scratched Radish’s ears, said hi to Enrique in the corner, then plopped down at the table to watch the show part of dinner. “My adviser says I might be able to test out of organic chemistry,” she said over a yawn.

  “If studying for the test doesn’t kill you first.”

  If it hadn’t been for the affection in his voice, she might’ve been offended. “Gotta do what I’ve gotta do.”

  He carried the potatoes to the sink. “Still think chemistry’s your thing?”

  Yuck again. “You betcha.”

  Through the steam coming off the potatoes, he pinned her with a look. “I know you’re a busy lady, Anna Grace, but you can stop now and again to ask if you’re doing what makes you happy.”

  His washing machine buzzed in his mud room. “Don’t you touch anything,” he warned. “Be right back.”

  Anna snitched a slice of red pepper off her salad. She was tired, but was she tired of school and her program, or just tired?

  If she weren’t working forty hours a week, would she still feel that knot of dread every time she faced the drive to James Robert? What if her classes were closer to work and home? The quality of her education was top-notch. And the homework only seemed worse because she was rusty at studying. Plus, she was already tired from work by the time—

  “Son of a biscuit!” Jackson yelped.

  Anna shot out of her seat behind Radish and darted to the laundry room. “Jackson? Everything okay?”

  He eyed a spot on the floor. His chest was heaving in that coming-down-from-a-fright kind of way. He held out a hand. “Hold on there.”

  Radish growled low in her throat. She pointed at the intruder on the baseboard.

  “Dal-gurn thing jumped out of the washer,” Jackson said.

  Anna clamped a hand over her mouth, but the snicker had to go somewhere. It came out in an unladylike snort.

  Jackson’s lips twitched too. “Get it, girl,” he said to Radish.

  The dog sniffed the little green lizard. It wove drunkenly toward the garage door. Radish growled again. The lizard opened its jaws as if it could take on something a lot bigger than an old spaniel.

  Radish whimpered and cowered down on the tile floor.

  Anna clapped her other hand over her mouth too, and she snorted again.

  “You women,” Jackson said. “Always afraid of a little lizard.”

  The lizard misstepped and tumbled off the wall. Radish inched closer to it. The poor thing darted for the safety of a clothes basket, and Radish skittered back.

  Jackson choked on a laugh.

  Anna whimpered from holding it in, but soon they were both laughing so hard Anna had to lean against the wall while Jackson clutched his stomach. The lizard stumbled about like somebody had spiked its dinner, and it snapped at Radish, who alternated between cowering and growling until the little green guy disappeared beneath the washing machine.

  Jackson wiped his eyes. He blew out a contented laugh and grabbed Anna by the waist. “I love you.”

  “I lo—” Anna caught the word before it made it over her vocal chords. Her heart drummed on her rib cage, her lungs seemed to fill with thick, wet clay, but it didn’t change the truth.

  She did. She loved him.

  She would’ve driven all the way out to his house to spend five minutes with him on a work night, simply to give him a hug and a kiss and listen to him Anna Grace her.

  She would’ve baked him a hundred pies every time he threw a redneck golf game for her.

  She would’ve given up her job and school and independence for him.

  All she wanted was to know he’d love her forever.

  But he wouldn’t. They worked because they didn’t want forever. They worked because they didn’t need forever. They worked because they didn’t believe in forever.

  Except she did.

  She needed the promise of forever along with the promise he’d let her be her own independent woman, but his cheeks and lips were taking on the green hue of a confirmed bachelor being shackled with the ol’ ball and chain.

  Her perfect, neat, scheduled and labeled world ripped to pieces like a calendar in a shredder. The laughter caught in her throat came out as a hysterical sob. “I have to go.”

  “Anna.”

  He gripped her tighter, but she pushed back until he let go.

  “Anna, wait.”

  “No. No.” She snatched her bag out of his bedroom. “I can’t do this. I can’t.”

  “I’m not asking you to. Wait. Listen.”

  The desperation in his voice tore at something bigger than her job, bigger than school, bigger than her life. But she stumbled through the kitchen, blinked through tears, and counted the steps to the front door, to her regularly scheduled life.

  “Anna. Please.”

  She had a hand on the door knob. Two strides out the door, then across the porch, down those steps, around the cute little curved sidewalk to her car on the driveway three paces away from where she’d seen her first live armadillo, and she’d be free.

  Empty.

  But free.

  And alone.

  She hadn’t had to think about alone for a while. That was a hole her fish couldn’t fill. She slowly swiveled back to face him.

  A deep groove wrinkled between his eyes. His lips turned low as she’d ever seen them. He reached for her, then shoved both hands in his pockets and went up on the balls of his feet. “I’m not good at this, Anna Grace. I don’t know what it means, and I won’t pretend I have all the answers, but I love you.” The husky note in his voice, the longing, the uncertainty, it was all so un-Jacksonlike.

  But it wasn’t something she could fix. “For how long?” she asked.

  He blinked. “How long?”

  “When does it expire? When do you get tired of me?” She didn’t mean to shriek, but once she got going, she couldn’t stop. “When does my label maker start giving you heartburn, and my calendar and my plans and my life not fit into yours anymore? What happens when you get orders? What if I get a job in Minnesota? Or California? Or—or—I don’t know, Iceland? What then?”

  Radish whimpered and covered her nose with her paw.

  Jackson stiffened. “I’m not him, Anna.”

  “No, you’re not,” she agreed. “But you don’t believe in forever either.”

  “I believe in you.”

  He reached for her. She backed away and grabbed the door handle. “Please stop making this worse. I have to take care of myself. You can’t do it for me.”

  He ducked his head. “More to life than work and school, Anna Grace.”

  “I have friends and I have family. That’s enough.”

  “Never pegged you for an “enough” type of woman.”

  Her tears threatened to spill over. It wasn’t enough.

  Not by a long shot.

  “You’re a good man,” she whispered, “but I can’t do this anymore. I’m sorry.”

  And she turned and fled the man she wished she’d met first.

  IN HIS ELEVEN YEARS in the service, Jackson couldn’t think of another day he hadn’t been all there at work. He walked around the office, talked to his program managers, briefed the colonel, but he fe
lt like his arms and legs and chest were empty tubes on strings being tugged by someone else.

  The colonel suggested he take the afternoon off.

  He wondered if Brad would be around to give him some payback. Instead, he texted Lance about lunch.

  Should’ve specified he meant alone.

  “Oh, sugar, you went and fell in the L-word, didn’t you?” Kaci clucked the minute the honeymooners arrived at the Mexican dive just off Gellings. Her eyes went wide, and she paused without leaving room for Lance to scoot into the booth after her. “You didn’t hurt my Anna, did you? Lance, kick his ass.”

  Lance flashed a cocky grin that went too well with his flight suit. “Man’s kicking his own ass, Kace.”

  “If you dumped her—”

  Jackson held his hands up. He tried to explain, but the words were rolling in his stomach like one of Radish’s rawhide bones.

  The problem with spitting out I want to marry her was that his mouth wasn’t wired to put those sounds all together like that.

  If he couldn’t say it, could he do it?

  Didn’t much matter if she didn’t want him, did it?

  “Got it bad, man,” Lance said. “Could marry her.”

  Kaci slugged him in the chest, eliciting an oomph. “You hush on up,” she said. “You know how many schools that girl’s been to without finishing a degree?”

  Lance dug into the chips and salsa on the table. “Internet age, babe.”

  “Not for lab work,” Kaci said.

  Lance pointed a chip at Jackson. “If you marry her, you can transfer your GI bill to her.”

  Yeah, Jackson had thought of that himself sometime between Anna’s fleeing his house as though her pants were on fire and that darkest part of the night where the loneliness had taken him down an unmanly road. The very act of scrounging in his mind for a way to keep her told him he was swimming in a creek he hadn’t checked for cottonmouths.

  Jackson stared at his hands. “She likes to work. Likes to earn it herself.”

  “Being married to the military’s earning it,” Lance said. Jackson felt Kaci nodding her agreement. “She could go full-time, let Uncle Sam pay for it. Could finish up a degree before you get orders.”

  “And then have to find a new job when we move. Take a chance we end up somewhere that doesn’t have need of fuels specialists and chemical engineers, and then she’d start all over again.” His throat was getting thick, his voice clogged up.