But she was the one who’d slept with this man and created Annelise, the heretofore fatherless child. The onus was on her to manage this and make it right for Annelise. Because like it or not, this guy was her father. And it was either now, or maybe never. This moment, this opportunity, might not ever come again.
“. . . and . . .” he pressed.
“I meant to say, the idea of you being her father? She’s been wondering more about who her dad is lately. And you may not be what she has in mind. And she does have a mind of her own.”
“That’s odd, considering her mother is so easygoing and mild-mannered.”
“Ha ha. Anyway . . . you’re going to just have to be yourself and let the chips fall where they may.”
“Okay.”
A little silence.
“I think I’d like another beer,” he said suddenly.
“Didn’t you go to rehab? I mean, if you have any dependencies, congenital diseases, it’d be good to know.”
“I didn’t go to rehab. I went to Cozumel.”
She stared at him. “Come again?”
“My manager at the time thought rehab sounded more glamorous than the fact that I’m afraid to fly so I get drunk first. I hardly ever drink because it makes me fat. I hate to fly, and I don’t like working out. So I watch my weight like an old fart, and I’m only thirty-five. I do get stage fright, believe it or not. I sometimes get a little drunk before I go onstage. I smoke a little weed.”
“And that’s all?”
“These days,” he said. After a moment of what appeared to be genuine brain-racking reflection.
She wasn’t certain she believed him. Rock stars usually only truly repented all their bad habits right about the time they got their second liver.
He stuck his tongue out, folded neatly in half. “And I can do that.”
She smiled at that, somewhat reluctantly. “Annelise can do that. I can’t.”
“Dominant and recessive traits. See, I’m no dummy.”
“Never thought you were, Jasper. Not now, not then.”
“I’m not a saint, either. If you have any cute friends, I’ll probably hit on them a little. It’s a reflex. In the spirit of full disclosure.”
She sighed. “If you could refrain from ever doing it in front of Annelise . . .”
He went still.
“Does that mean . . .”
She paused. “Let’s . . . let’s talk some more.”
Gabe had bashed the crap out of the ball every time it was pitched to him, sending the outfielders scrambling and alternately fuming or whimpering.
They won by three points.
It wasn’t a pretty win, but somehow that made it even more satisfying. He was in the mood to fight to win something. A win was a very decisive thing: You either won or you lost. No guessing, reading between the lines, no wondering or worrying or waiting.
Still, the restlessness set in once he wasn’t playing anymore.
As per usual, they all repaired to Pasquale’s for cheap pizza and pitchers, because it was nearest the high school field where they played, and because the hard-core no-frills atmosphere perversely appealed to all of them. That, and the cheap pizza and pitchers.
“Hey, Wade, where’s your ten bucks? Wade!” Gabe bellowed from the order window while the surly employees glared at him.
He glanced over his shoulder.
Wade was frozen and staring straight at the back of the restaurant, and muttering wonderingly to himself. “What the ever loving . . .”
“Wade, didn’t I tell you not to stare at women with your mouth open? It creeps them out.”
“Dude, it’s not a woman,” Mike said sotto voce. “I’m looking at Jasper Townes.” He held a ten-dollar bill out to Gabe without turning his head away.
“Didn’t you have him in your pervert pool, or whatever you want to call it?” Bud reminded him.
They all laughed. Gabe held up three fingers to the guy behind the counter for how many pitchers they wanted to get started with.
“Hey, Caldera, you spike the Gatorade? Wade’s hallucinating,” Louis chimed in.
“Nice try, trying to blame your inability to hit a damn thing on the Gatorade. Why would Townes be anywhere near here?” Gabe collected one of the pitchers.
And then suddenly Wade was half indignant, half vibrating with the thrill of certainty. “No, man, I swear, that really is Jasper Townes! And check it out! He’s with a wo—”
Suddenly Mike grabbed Gabe’s elbow and pivoted him up against the counter like a cop about to tell him to spread his legs.
“Hey, I think I might want something different this time. Or maybe we should get Chinese instead of pizza. And . . . and . . . German beer. Let’s just stand here and read the menu for a while. They might have added something new. We don’t do that often enough.”
“Get off me, man.” Gabe extricated himself. “What the hell are you doing? German beer? Did you get hit in the head? You don’t like change. Of any kind.”
“I’m just not in the mood, suddenly. And . . . oh wait . . . I think I left my wallet at the high school. We have to go back right now!”
Gabe frowned at him.
Suddenly all of the guys were still, forming a little phalanx between him and whoever was in the back of the restaurant.
Something was up.
He deliberately sidestepped Mike and stared toward the back of the restaurant.
He went motionless.
Mike saw this, closed his eyes, and swore softly.
The rest of the guys went still and stone silent.
The rest of his team hovered behind him, and three of them reflexively, absently, removed their hats and covered their hearts, as if they were at a funeral for Gabe’s love life.
Or perhaps saluting Jasper Townes, the way one stands for the national anthem.
No one said a damn thing. Nothing snarky, nothing profane.
Which made it even more horrible. Because that alone confirmed it was indeed as bad as it looked.
He felt himself moving before he was aware he’d given that command to his feet.
“Gabe. No, Gabe. Stay, buddy.”
Lloyd said this as if he was talking to his dog, Hamburger.
But Gabe didn’t hear him over the strange roaring sound in his ears, which he supposed was the beat of blood. He couldn’t stop moving if he tried, anyway. He moved as if he was mounted on a dolly, tugged forward by a hideous fascination, like peering over to get a close-up view of a cobra even if you knew it would bite you.
He had to see it up close because he was no fucking coward.
He had to see it with his own eyes.
He knew it was going to hurt; it already hurt.
His gut was wall-to-wall ice.
Eden was pale. She fidgeted with the wrapper of her straw. She’d already tied three knots into it.
Townes looked up. He didn’t even give a start.
“Oh, hey, dude. Sorry, man, I don’t have a pen on me. But I can sign with a french fry and ketchup if you have any.”
He cheerfully, resolutely wiped his hands on a paper napkin.
Chapter 15
Color fled Eden’s face and left her as white as the napkin.
“Gabe.”
“Yeah,” he said with great irony. “Hi, Eden.”
“I didn’t . . . I didn’t know you’d be . . .”
He watched color rush into her cheeks as she realized there was no way she could end that sentence that wasn’t incriminating or insulting.
Townes was watching all of this alertly.
“I guess it must be your lucky day, then,” Gabe said evenly. “Or mine.”
“Did I get in the middle of something here?” Jasper said in that distinctive raspy speaking voice so many of the best singers seemed to have, in Gabe’s experience. He sounded amused.
“Did he get in the middle of something?” Gabe delivered those words to Eden like little bundles of silk-wrapped ice.
It was a truly s
hitty thing to do to her. It put her on the spot to define something they hadn’t yet defined. Some part of him was aware that he was being a jerk. A part of him that had bypassed his usual reason and control. He didn’t care.
Eden’s jaw took on that hard set, and her eyes flashed hot as the blue center of a flame.
Wow. Was she pissed.
It was gorgeous to witness.
Also a little scary.
But he was fine with that.
Ultimately, she ignored the question. “Forgive me,” she said evenly. “Where are my manners? Jasper Townes, this is . . . my friend . . . Gabe Caldera. He’s the principal of Annelise’s school.”
Townes leaned back and studied Gabe with shiny dark eyes. “That’s not the expression of someone who’s just a friend, man. He hasn’t blinked once since he got here.”
Gabe turned his head slowly and aimed an expression of pure incredulity at Eden as if to say, This guy? Really?
“Jasper . . . says things.” Eden was aiming that flamethrower glare at Jasper now.
“Children say things, too,” Gabe said with a deceptively offhanded bonhomie. “It stops being cute around the age of twelve, though.”
He’d sounded so pleasant that the insult worked on a time release. Townes’s friendly smile vanished as if it was on a dimmer switch.
“How do you know Eden?” Gabe said this pleasantly, too, though it was absolutely none of his business. All’s fair, however.
“We go way back, me and Eden. Way in the back of my tour bus, that—”
She slapped her hand down on the table. Jasper jumped. “Are. You. Out. Of. Yourfreakingmind.”
The whispered words hissed from her like launched missiles.
Townes’s eyes widened and he put up his hands as if she were mugging him at gunpoint, then brought them down again.
Gabe stared down at Jasper’s long-fingered, narrow, nimble hands. Three chunky rings glittered from them. A collection of bracelets. It seemed odd that a guitarist would want to weigh his hands down that way, but maybe he liked to look down at glittery things when he played.
Was he strumming Eden with those hands?
The thought was literally agony, and nothing relieved that sort of agony—temporarily, anyway—except acting like a dick.
“Look, I think I get what’s going on here,” Jasper said soothingly, as if he was in the business of humoring plebeians like Gabe all the time, “beautiful women have a way of getting under a guy’s skin, brother. You didn’t expect to find her here with me, of all people. I know people like me can be pretty intimidating. Sorry if I wandered into your territory, but you know how it goes.”
This was many things: hilarious, insulting, condescending, annoying (brother?), and so wrong Gabe was very nearly tempted to laugh.
The “me of all people” was nearly farcical; it ground against his nerves, because (let’s face it), Gabe was already kind of thinking that: Jasper Townes, of all people.
Eden listened to this with her jaw dropped.
Then she clapped it shut again.
“I’m not anyone’s ‘territory.’” Eden was getting more and more furious by the minute. Her jaw was white with tension.
Gabe, at the mercy of testosterone at the moment, longed to beg to differ regarding the territory bit, though he was pretty positive she wouldn’t enjoy that argument, and he knew in his rational mind that it wasn’t remotely true.
“Nice necklace,” he said instead, and pointed at the leather thong around Townes’s neck.
“Thanks, man,” Jasper said kindly.
“When I was a navy SEAL I learned not to wear the kind of jewelry the enemy could use as a garrote.”
Townes’s magnanimous plebeian-humoring expression froze.
And then gradually, his eyes got hard and speculative.
“Good word, garrote,” Gabe mused. “Maybe you should use it in a song. Rhymes with throat, bloat, high note, turncoat, showboat—”
BAM. Eden thumped her iced-tea glass on the table hard. “Gabriel. A word, if I may.”
“Wow, you used every syllable in my name. You sure we have time for that, Eden? Isn’t ‘brief’ what we do?”
He seemed to be channeling some glib macho monster. Every word that exited was both delicious and painful, as if he had a gut full of them, all icy and jagged, and saying them out loud brought a momentary relief.
Both Gabe and Jasper gave a start when Eden leaped from her chair, seized Gabe by the bicep with a surprisingly strong grip that owed some of its persuasion to fingernails, and frog marched him over to the corner by the currently silent jukebox. Frog-marching Gabe anywhere was not an easy feat.
She had the element of surprise on her side.
“I would ask you why you’re being such a dick, but we probably don’t have time for the answer.”
He stared at her, stunned.
“Damn,” he said, finally, impressed. That was some opener.
Despite himself he ferociously admired it. He admired fighters. And it was all the worse, because it just, perverse fool that he was, made him like her even more.
She barreled into that moment of stunned silence. “Gabe, I’m genuinely sorry I had to cancel on you and meant it. And I’m sorry you had to run into me here with all your buddies, and for however you’re feeling now. I have a very good reason and I will explain it to you. But I’m not going to explain it to you now. I can’t.”
Her words were rushed and terse, only very faintly placating. She was furious and tense and on edge. Was it just about being caught with Townes?
Their gazes locked. He had a million questions, it felt like.
Suddenly he knew the right ones to ask.
“Would you have ‘explained it to me’ if you hadn’t run into me today?”
It was both the right question.
And the wrong one.
Because he could see that it got to the crux of the matter pretty quickly.
She hesitated.
“I . . .”
The following little pause was like a spear in the gut. Something about Townes was a secret she’d been keeping.
Never fall for an enigmatic woman, his friends had warned.
“Yes,” she said finally. “I would have told you. Probably. Eventually.”
“So he’s not your cousin or a dear friend of the family, and he’s not your invisible brother Jesse?”
She drew in a breath. Like she was siphoning up courage. Sighed it out. “No. He is exactly who he looks like. He is Jasper Townes.” She said this reluctantly, as though she were up on the witness stand testifying against herself with painful but necessary words.
“And you do have a previous acquaintance similar in nature to the one he so charmingly described.”
She was within rights to say, I don’t owe you any information at all.
And he didn’t have the right to ask that question while they were standing just a few feet away from the guy. The knowledge that he had no actual defined rights did nothing to assuage the sensation that his guts were in a vise.
But after another little hesitation: “Yes.”
Oh, fuck me, Gabe thought. Why had he even asked that question? No part of her answer made him feel better. It didn’t illuminate much of anything. And asking made him feel like even more of a jerk.
“It’s okay,” he said softly, reasonably. “I get it, Eden. Who wouldn’t cancel a date for a chance to sit across from the guy who dressed up as a warlock in his last video?”
She stared at him, jaw set.
He stared back at her. There was no way she saw anything yielding in his face.
Her cheekbones had gone dark red.
“You don’t get it. It isn’t what you think it is, and my word on that matter should be enough for you.”
It really should be.
Shouldn’t it?
Were they there yet—relationship wise?
Were they even in a “relationship”?
Maybe they have been there from the
very beginning? Because wasn’t that the premise of their whole relationship? Radical honesty? Cutting to the chase?
But he’d heard it—the faintest bit of doubt in her voice. As if she suspected that the blind acceptance she was asking of him wasn’t entirely reasonable, but she was throwing a Hail Mary. Hoping he’d be noble and just let her slide.
He honestly didn’t know what to say.
All he knew was that he wasn’t feeling noble, or selfless, or magnanimous.
Finally he just turned around and examined the dusty jukebox. He fished through his pocket, dropped a quarter in the slot, and punched in a song.
Then he fished out another quarter and punched in another song.
In the reflection of the glass he saw that Eden was standing motionless behind him. He couldn’t see her expression.
He put another quarter in the jukebox and punched in a song.
He emptied his pocket of quarters and punched buttons five times.
He could see her standing behind him for the first three.
And when he heard her chair scrape back again, he went back to his buddies, whose heads all swiveled in tandem toward the wall-mounted muted television to pretend they weren’t watching him with the same avidity they watched any sporting event.
He went back to them without another word.
“I was saying hello to Eden. She was having lunch with Mr. Jasper Townes, who is apparently an old friend in town for only a short time.”
He reached for the pitcher and tipped it.
Beer glugged out into his glass to the sound of near total silence.
Apart, that was, from the John Mayer song on the jukebox.
The song he’d chosen.
Five times in a row.
He hoped Jasper Townes thoroughly enjoyed that.
His body was jangling with a cacophony of emotions. He couldn’t isolate any of them for inspection. The net result was a sort of numbness that seemed to result from all emotions, the way all noise was white noise.
He finally looked up.
He’d never seen so many subtle variations of the Pitying Gaze before. All limpid-eyed, fidgety, sympathy from this grizzled, disreputable bunch. And they weren’t even drunk enough to be sentimental yet.
He supposed he could add “moved” to the variety of very complicated things he was feeling.
The First Time at Firelight Falls Page 18