by Hannah Ford
Raven couldn’t believe what she was seeing, and her heart was breaking as she went and hugged him. As he embraced her, she sensed his weakness, much different than the strong man that had still been exercising and lifting weights four years ago.
But he’d also been smoking back then—chain smoking, actually.
“What’s wrong?” she asked him. “You can’t walk?”
He chuckled, but there was a wheezing sound in his chest as he laughed. “I can walk just fine. All of my extremities are intact and in fine working order. It’s my lungs that seem to have gone on strike.”
She turned to her mother and Danny. “I wish someone had told me what was going on with Dad.”
Danny made a face. “I think you made it pretty damn clear you didn’t want to hear from us.”
“But if something was wrong—“
“You didn’t care what was right or wrong with anyone but yourself,” he interrupted.
“This visit is going well so far,” Jake mumbled, only loud enough for Raven to hear it. He extended his hand to her father. “Jake Novak, pleased to meet your sir.”
Her father beamed, shaking his hand with enthusiasm. “Jake, I love your films. I’ve watched most of them, and I can’t tell you what an honor it is to meet you in person.”
“The honor is all mine,” Jake told him.
“Are you two hungry? Do you want to go to your room and decompress for a bit?” Raven’s mother asked.
“Our room?” Raven said. “I thought we’d stay at the Ramada.”
“Don’t be silly,” her father said. “You two can stay in the guest room.”
“What about my old room?”
“Your stuff went into the attic,” Danny said. “Now it’s my room.”
“You’re still living at home?”
He shook his head and snorted. “You haven’t changed a bit.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means, you just got home and you’re already making snap judgments and looking down on everybody.”
“Danny, that’s not fair.”
He waved her off. “Whatever, I’ve got to get some work done. Tell me when dinner’s ready,” he said to their mother, and then left.
An awkward silence descended on the room.
Jake smiled and looked at Raven’s mother. “So where’s the guestroom?”
“I’ll show you,” Raven’s mother said. “Come you two. We’ll get you settled in, plenty of time for catching up later.”
* * *
After Raven’s mother had shown them to the guestroom and left, Raven sat down on the bed and put her head in her hands.
Jake was opening his bag and rummaging around inside. “Hey,” he said, stopping for a second to look at her. “Are you upset that they put your stuff and storage and relegated us to the guest room?”
“This is just my brother’s old room, and no, I don’t care about that,” Raven said, running her fingers through her hair. “I just hate that it’s like this. This is exactly what I was afraid of.”
“Of course it’s going to be tense at first,” Jake said. “You haven’t shown your face in a few years and nobody knows how to act around you.”
“There’s a reason I haven’t shown my face in years.”
He went back to looking in his bag. “Families are tough. I mean, I see my family a couple times a year and they drive me crazy too. Me and my dad go at it sometimes like a couple of lions trying to kill each other.”
“Does your brother hate you?” she asked him, finally turning her head to look at him.
“No, my younger brothers both look up to me,” he said. “But that’s another thing altogether. Anyway, my point is that family is always complicated, Raven.”
“Well mine is more complicated than most.” She shook her head. “I still can’t believe that my dad is in a wheelchair with oxygen. He looks so weak and tired and old.”
“He wasn’t like that before?”
She blinked, trying to keep tears at bay. “No, he wasn’t. He smoked like a chimney so we always worried, but now it seems like he got sick and nobody told me about it.”
There was a knock on the door and Jake straightened up, rising to his feet. “Who is it?” he asked.
“It’s Danny.” His voice wasn’t particularly friendly.
Jake looked at Raven, silently asking what she wanted. She nodded at him and he went and opened the door, while she continued sitting on the bed.
Danny came into the room slowly, as if he thought he might be attacked. He seemed wary, especially of Jake.
Seeing them side-by-side, Raven was surprised at how small her brother looked in comparison. Danny had always had a big personality, so somehow she’d always thought of him as being a big guy. But in truth he was short, kind of flabby, and he seemed intimidated by Jake’s stature.
“When Mom told me you were coming to visit,” Danny said, “she didn’t really mention that you were going to show up like Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. I didn’t know this was going to be some sort of royal visit.”
“Danny, please, don’t start in on me,” Raven said. “We haven’t seen each other for years and the first thing you do is act rude and angry, like you want me to leave already.”
“Because I do want you to leave,” Danny told her.
“Wow, that’s really nice.” She looked up at the ceiling and prayed for strength.
“You can’t just leave for years at a time and expect to show up out of the blue and get the red carpet rolled out, Raven.” Danny glared at her. Then he looked at Jake and his expression got even less friendly. “And just because you’re seeing some big celebrity, don’t expect me to fall on my knees and kiss your feet. I couldn’t possibly care less who my sister dates.”
Jake smiled at him. “I get that you and your sis have problems, but I never did anything to you, partner.”
“You’re not my partner, dude. You’re just some jackass who sings and dances, and I really don’t appreciate you two coming here and getting Mom and Dad all stirred up. Dad’s sick, you know, and he doesn’t need the stress.”
“Why didn’t anyone even try and tell me he got sick? And what exactly does he have?” Raven said.
“He has COPD,” Danny told her, “caused by smoking.”
“What does that even mean?”
Jake glanced at Raven. “That means he’s got Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease. It’s a progressive disease, not curable, and the treatments are of limited effectiveness, although lifestyle changes can help.”
“What is this dude, a walking Web MD or something?” Danny said, gesturing to Jake with a complete lack of respect.
“No, I just have friends from the military who have COPD, so I’ve done a bit of reading and had some discussions with physicians about it,” Jake said, keeping his cool.
Danny wouldn’t look at Jake, instead training his attention on Raven. “You two should just go,” he said. “Why do you want to come here and mess with everybody? We were doing just fine without you.”
“If you want me to go so badly, I’ll go,” she said, standing up and meeting his gaze. “But I think you’re being a real asshole, Danny, and that’s saying something, even for you.”
They glared at each other for a long time and then Danny started to smile a little bit. Raven was cracking a smile too, and she wasn’t even sure why.
“This is silly,” Jake told them. “You two care about one another, that much is obvious. We’re only staying in town for a day or two at most. Can’t you just get along, ignore each other if you have to, until the visit’s over?”
Danny sighed, putting his hands on his hips. “Fine,” he said, his shoulders slumping as if he’d given in after all. “I’m sorry I was so rude to you and your boyfriend,” Danny told her.
“Thank you,” Raven told him. “And I’m sorry I didn’t call and check on Dad. That was wrong of me.”
“Whatever. Let’s just try and be nice,” Danny agreed. “Mom and Dad a
re happy you’re here, so I’ll be happy too.” He held out his hand. “Truce?”
“Truce,” she agreed, and then they shook.
Jake grinned at both of them. “We should go and celebrate this little victory with a drink. Isn’t there a bar around here we could go to?”
“What about dinner?” Raven said.
“We’ll just go out for one drink beforehand,” Jake told her.
“Not me,” Danny said. “I never go out to the local bars. The people in this town suck.”
Raven kind of felt the same way, but she also figured that at this time of day the chances of anyone she knew being out drinking was slim to none. And she wanted to spend some time with Jake. Getting a drink or two, loosening up, sounded quite right about then.
“I’ll get a drink with you,” she told Jake. “There’s a pub less than a mile from here, we could walk there and have a drink and then come back in time for dinner.”
“Now you’re talking,” Jake said, putting his arm around her waist.
Her entire body felt like it had been zapped with electricity.
Danny just shook his head. “Okay, but don’t say I didn’t warn the two of you.”
* * *
Someone had told at least a few members of the paparazzi of their whereabouts, because not five minutes into their walk, there were a couple of men following them a few yards back, with cameras. They hadn’t begun screaming insults or questions yet—in fact, they seemed content to merely snap photos.
Raven turned to Jake. “How the heck did the paparazzi find us?”
He shrugged. “Could’ve been anybody. Someone spots us and tips off a friend of a friend, or maybe someone leaked it. Hell, Kurt might’ve leaked it on purpose.”
“Why?” she said, horrified.
Jake grabbed her hand and held it tight as he answered. “Why?” he laughed. “We want these pictures to get out, baby. We want the story out there. That’s why we’re here.”
“I hate this,” she muttered. The truth was, she hated it because she also liked it way, way too much. Walking with Jake in the fading sunlight of a beautiful day in her hometown, seeing the shadows play on the sidewalk, listening to the trees as the wind blew across the leaves.
Jake next to her, feeling so solid, so real, his hand warm and strong, his body seemed made to protect her.
How could it feel so natural to walk like this together?
Even the way he’d handled her brother. Danny could be so difficult, so rude and condescending, and yet Jake had kept cool and never batted an eyelash.
It was sexy.
Jake Novak was beyond sexy and that was the problem.
“You should try and enjoy this more,” Jake said, grinning. His brown eyes looked at her with knowing affection.
“The problem might be that I enjoy it plenty,” she said.
He laughed. “That’s not a problem unless you make it into one.” And that’s when he stopped dead in the middle of the street and laid a beautiful, perfect, romantic kiss on her lips.
Faintly, Raven could hear the cameras clicking as the lucky paparazzi got some pictures that would likely sell for quite a bit of money.
She put her hand up and felt the scruff on Jake’s cheek, and it made her smile. Her eyes had been half-closed, but now she made sure to look at him.
When they made eye contact, she felt her whole body flush with warmth, as Jake’s liquid eyes seemed to melt her when she looked into them for too long.
He feels it too.
I know he does. There’s no way all of this is just for show, I don’t care what he says. His eyes tell a different story.
But then the kiss ended, and Jake cleared his throat, taking her by the hand and starting to walk again. “That was interesting,” he told her.
“How so?”
“Let’s just leave it at that,” he replied mysteriously.
By that time, they’d arrived at The Drunken Monkey, a neighborhood dive bar that Raven had often seen the older crowd go to after returning home from college.
But her memories of its clientele were from years past, she had no idea what the place was like now.
When they walked inside, the bar was relatively empty, with a few older men playing darts, a woman drinking a beer as she looked through the jukebox, and a couple of barflies sitting at the bar heckling the bartender drunkenly.
The bartender was a woman that looked vaguely familiar, but at first Raven thought it was just her imagination. Except, when the bartender saw Raven, her eyes immediately widened in recognition.
“Raven Hartley?” she said, sporting a strong Boston accent.
“Yeah,” Raven said. “Hey.” And then she remembered the bartender. Her name was Lola Price and she’d been in the popular crowd a grade below Raven in high school.
“You don’t remember me, do you?”
“Lola, of course I do. How are you?”
Lola’s eyes flickered to Jake and her cheeks went red. “Please tell me that’s not who I think it is.”
“Jake,” he said easily. “Pleased to meet you Lola.” He approached the bar and Raven uncomfortably followed suit, as everyone in the place seemed to turn and stare at them.
At least Lola hadn’t been one of the truly mean girls. She’d hung out with that crowd, but had never personally insulted Raven during the bad time at school.
“What are you guys doing here?” Lola said. She still looked pretty good, although she’d gained some weight and her eyes looked tired somehow.
“Came home to see the fam,” Jake said, winking at Raven.
“Oh, I get it.” Lola laughed, giggled actually. “Can I get you two something to drink?”
Raven ordered a beer and Jake ordered a Jack and Coke. He seemed oddly at home, not at all concerned with the people looking at him, or the general grunginess of the bar. He slung one muscular arm over Raven’s shoulder, rubbing her upper arm very lightly with his fingertips, watching as Lola made their drinks.
It was a very intimate gesture, and it made it hard for her to think.
Lola brought their drinks and Jake dropped a fifty dollar bill on the bar, thanking her.
She picked it up and examined it like it was an alien artifact. “You want change?”
“No, keep it,” he said, raising his beer. “Actually, how about a round for the house, on me.”
The few people in the bar clapped, hooting and hollering, and then Lola was kept busy getting their drinks for them. “Come on,” Jake said, pulling Raven off the stool and bringing her across the floor and over to a more private booth.
She slid in and Jake slid in beside her, but they were both facing the door.
Raven took a sip of beer and looked appraisingly at him as he took a deep swig from his glass, grimacing a little.
“I have to admit something right now,” she told him.
He glanced over at her. “Oh, yeah?”
She nodded. “I like having you here, Jake. I like being together.”
“I do too,” he said, and in that moment, his eyes softened. “The thing is…” he started to speak, but then the door opened and some people came in.
Jake must have instantly seen the look on Raven’s face, because he stopped talking.
She couldn’t believe her eyes, couldn’t believe what she was witnessing. It was like something out of her nightmares.
Four guys walked in as a group, and she knew them all. Worse yet, one of them was Caleb, her ex-boyfriend, and the other was Caleb’s best friend Andre. They looked a little different from four years ago, but other than being slightly filled out and more muscular, not a lot had changed.
Raven put a hand over her eyes and tilted her head down. “Fuck,” she whispered. “I think they saw me.”
“Who saw you?” Jake asked her.
She couldn’t answer. All she could hear was their loud, raucous voices, and it was bringing her back to the party—back to the time when she was seventeen and in love with Caleb and too stupid for words.
The four friends laughed in the bar and it was as though she heard them laughing back then instead, like some bizarrely twisted time warp.
Raven suddenly saw Caleb in her mind’s eye, holding her hand and bringing her into a dimly lit bedroom, kissing her deeply, touching her breasts, exciting her. “I love you, Raven,” he said, pulling her down onto the bed next to him.
“I love you too,” she told him, and it felt real. She thought that he was the most amazing thing that had ever happened to her.
She was drunk, giddy, impulsively getting off the bed and doing a silly little dance for him, trying to be sexy.
“Oh, I have to capture this,” Caleb laughed, pulling out his cell phone and holding it up toward her.
“Don’t record me! Caleb!”
“Come on, just for a second. I promise to erase it after. I just want to record you a little. You’re so fucking sexy, Raven.”
And he told her he loved her—she so wanted to please him, and it felt just dangerous enough, just bad enough to be hot. Already, she was worried because as a virgin she wasn’t giving Caleb sex like a lot of girls were giving their boyfriends at that time.
A little dancing and showing some skin was harmless, right?
“Hey, Raven. RAVEN.” Jake’s voice was concerned as he shook her shoulder gently.
“Sorry,” she said, snapping back to reality, still trying to hide her face from the group of guys that were now over at the bar talking to Lola.
“I know those guys,” Raven whispered, turning away from the bar as much as humanly possible.
Jake glanced over at the group and then back to her. “Okay. Were they jerks to you or something?”
“Yeah, you could say that. I need to leave. Now.”
And that’s when she heard Lola loudly exclaiming to the group. “Oh my God, you guys—you’ll never guess who just came in. Raven Hartley and she’s with Jake freaking Novak!”
“Really,” one of them said, in an almost too bored to care voice. That was Andre. Raven would have known his voice even if she hadn’t seen him in a million years.