by Laura Carter
As I load the box of tackle into the truck, I think about Jess missing out on those times with her parents. I think about how I’d like to make it up to her and force her to go on the trips that no kid wants to go on because it’s not cool, until you’re there, with your old man, thinking there’s nowhere else in the world you’d rather be. I want to give her that.
Right on cue, Jess comes into the garage. “Hey, I’m ready.”
I stand, looking over the loud playsuit she is wearing. It nips in at her slim waist and emphasizes the curves of her ass and those fine breasts. Two tassels of feathers and jewels separate the two halves of the neck line. As I stand over her in her flat shoes, I glimpse enough of her cleavage to make me forget why I wanted to talk to her.
“Jake?”
I clear my throat. “You’re a five, babe. I’m not sure about the tassels. And that orange is hurting my eyes.”
She goes to hit my arm but I catch her wrist and bite the tip of her nose. “Behave yourself. Drew, give me ten minutes?”
He nods and carries on his conversation with Edmond. I lead Jess through the house and out to the beach by the hand. “Sit with me.”
She mirrors my position at the edge of the water. I roll up my jeans as high as they’ll go toward my knees and let the water touch my bare feet when it rolls gently up toward us.
“Wow, that’s cold,” Jess says, as her toes get licked by the sea.
“How are you feeling?” I ask.
Her eyes narrow, then she says, “A little hungover. Nothing a tough girl like me can’t handle.”
“That’s good, tough girl. But speaking of that tough girl attitude, what I’m really asking is if I upset you earlier, with the pancakes?”
Her eyes widen now. “Upset me?” She sighs as she turns back out to sea. “Oh, Jake, you can be dumb sometimes.”
Well, there’s not much I can respond to that. So I don’t. I take a moment, enjoying the fact we can be silent and comfortable together. Also knowing that, eventually, Jess will start talking. She doesn’t do silence when she’s feeling emotional. It’s like she thinks if she keeps moving and talking, her own thoughts can’t catch her.
“My dad put blueberries in my pancakes as far back as I can remember. He used to do it for Mum too. I remember there were times he’d scrap an entire pancake because the smile didn’t stay in place. And this one time, one of the blueberries popped, I guess under the heat of the pan. It was the eye of the face. And he put the pancake in front of my mum and he said, ‘It’s crying because you’re so beautiful it hurts.’”
She smiles, a slow steady curve of her lips. And I know she isn’t with me; she’s with her parents, wherever they are. She leans back on her hands, like I am, and I feel the push of sand against my own fingers where her hand comes to rest next to mine. “I can’t believe you remembered the pancakes,” she says. “I don’t even recall telling you about them.” She shakes her head. “If I wasn’t too afraid to accept it, Jake, I’d say you’d be the best man I could ever ask to spend my life with.”
I replay her words in my mind. Trying to work them out, her out. Trying to control the tightness that just took over my chest and made it difficult to find my next breath.
Spend my life with Jess? I can’t imagine my life any other way. Of course, I want her forever. She’s Jess. My Jess. Her and me, against the world. But I can’t work out that first part. If I wasn’t too afraid to accept it. Does she wish we could be more than friends? Is she saying she’d accept someone else for the rest of her life but not me?
I can say with certainty, I have never been as freaking confused in my life as I am this week. And usually, it would be Jess who’d talk me through a mess, make me understand the shit going on in my head. I’m afraid to push her. Yet, I need her. I need her to make sense of everything going on, the things in my head, the reason my chest feels crushed at the thought of her spending her life with anyone other than me.
Knowing that, like with Emily, that could be a real possibility one day.
“What are you afraid of, Jess?”
She glances at me and looks away just as quickly, as if she’s contemplating her next words. “I’m afraid that…”
“Afraid that what?”
She pulls her knees up to her chest and wraps her arms around them, still not meeting my eye. “I’m afraid that… That you could be… That you could be what my dad was to my mum.” She closes her eyes. “That you could be my fatal attraction. That you could be the person I can’t live without. The person who ends me. I think I’m afraid of you, Jake. The way… The things I feel here, with you, your family, Emily. I’m terrified of it all.”
I can’t tell you why my eyes start to sting. Why I feel like, for the first time since I was a kid, I could cry. I know how hard those words must have been for her. And it hasn’t occurred to me that… Fuck, she could love me the way her mum loved her dad?
The lump that builds in my throat makes it hard to breathe. And though I try to swallow it away, it won’t go.
“You let go of the fear once,” I tell her.
Her pfft of laughter, short and somber, doesn’t shift the heavy air around us. “Yeah, look how well that turned out.”
“Jess, you were nineteen when you and Danny planned to marry. You can’t cling to that failure forever. Don’t hold on to it for so long you let it ruin your future relationships.” My voice falters as it occurs to me that I’m not sure whether I’m talking about our relationship or relationships with other people.
“That’s a little ironic coming from you, wouldn’t you say? You were a kid when you fell in love with Emily and you’re still blinded by it.” Her voice shifts; there’s an undertone of something that’s possibly anger.
Love Emily? Yeah, I do. I did. But I’ve never felt anything like I just felt when Jess called me the person she can’t live without. “No. I always loved Emily but not…not like that. I wasn’t in love.” I’m only realizing now how true that statement is.
Jess finally looks at me. “So when? How did you know that she wasn’t only your best friend and you wanted more?”
I search the horizon, as if I’ll find the answer there. “I don’t know. I guess, the end of college. I was about to leave and she still had two years to go. It was going to be the first time since we were babies that we wouldn’t be together. It’s not like it happened overnight. I don’t ever remember suddenly wanting to rip her clothes off or anything.” Not like with Jess. I stare at her, at the wisps that have come free from her hair tie and blow around her perfect skin, around those big brown eyes.
“Have you ever thought that…maybe you were just scared to lose her? Maybe she and Brandon are the right couple?”
She swings my thoughts right back to that jackass and how much I’d like to punch him in the gut.
“Jake! You ready?” We turn to see Drew standing by the pool, shouting down to us.
I lift my cap from my head as if to say, I heard you. I’m coming. I stand and offer a hand to Jess.
“Jake, as your friend, I think maybe it’s time you made up with Emily. Let sleeping dogs lie and all that. Don’t ruin what you guys shared because she fell for a jerk instead of you.”
“I’ll think about that, Yoda.” I place my cap on her head and lift her chin. “Maybe you should think about whether your parents would have rather never met than loved the time they had here together.”
“You think the risk was worth it, huh?”
“You tell me, babe.”
I steal my cap back and press my lips to her forehead. “I’ve got to go.”
She nods and folds her arms across her chest. “Have a good day fishing. I can’t imagine anything worse.”
“That’s why you’re not invited,” I call back over my shoulder. “Enjoy painting the world pink.”
“Bring me back a tiny fish that is so small we can�
��t even cook it up.”
“Save me some cucumber face mask. You know how I love utterly pointless shit.”
I hear her laugh as I make my way up to the deck.
Chapter 14
Jake
I’ve missed getting out on the water since moving to London. Being brought up on Staten Island by a man who loved to fish, Drew and I were both taught how to captain a boat. But this is his week, so I’m playing designated driver to let Drew have a few beers with the others. Plus, I was itching to put this bad-boy boat into full throttle.
Water sprays from the sides of the bow and wind blows in my face as I steer us into the open ocean. The guys have cracked their first beers. Kit, Drew and Brooks stand by the cockpit, joking around. Edmond and Marty are sitting on the padded seats at the bow. Our gear is in bags on the deck at the back of the boat.
The ultimate big-kid playground. I crank the sound system loud enough to hear the rock tunes over the sound of the engines driving us forward. It’s a calm day, the chop is low, and we make good time out to the spot we’ve decided to fish.
I bring us to a stop around forty minutes from shore. Drew stands on the bow, brother team, directing me to a spot where he can drop the anchor. The others grab a second beer and Brooks throws me a club soda. As we unpack and set up the gear, Marty takes a suspiciously timed call, and does jack shit to help.
Edmond, being the one most happy handling bait, hooks up live bait to the rods and we take turns to cast into the water. I set my rod in its holster and sit on the edge of the boat. The clouds clear, opening up the sky to sunlight. The kind that appears to spray beams as it cascades toward the sea and illuminates the surface. I close my eyes and lean back, feeling the warmth on my face. And I remember something Jess once said to me.
“I see my parents every day,” she said. “I see them in the blue of the sea, the green of the grass. I hear them in the song of birds and the whistle of the wind. I see them in the beams that shine around the sun, as if they’re lighting up the sky to say hello. And I feel like they’re always here, always watching me from another time and place.”
Out here, on the open ocean, feeling insignificant in comparison to the world, I think maybe she’s right. Somewhere, out there, they watch her. They take care of her from afar. And they coexist with us, in another form.
Only Jess could make me see something like that. Only Jess could make me see how small we all are in the grand scheme of life.
I silently thank her folks, wherever they are, for sending her to me, or allowing her to stay with me. I thank them for watching over her and for giving her the strength to have come through everything in her life and still be incredible.
And I tell them that I wish I had known them. I can only imagine the kind of people they were. But I do know they must have had greatness in them, because Jess has it now.
“You sure you don’t want a beer, Jakey?” Brooks asks, pulling me from my own thoughts to look at him.
“I’m good, buddy. You guys go ahead and get wasted.”
Marty takes a bottle from Brooks’s hand and holds it up in my direction. “If you say so.”
I turn to Kit, who is sitting on a padded seat at the back of the boat, next to me. “Has he always been this arrogant?”
“Ah, yes, always. But I think maybe you’re a little sensitive to it this trip,” Kit says.
“It’s a wonder no one has socked that guy in the face at this stage in life.”
“Oh, they have,” Drew says, heading over. “When we were associates at the firm, Marty got too close to another guy’s girl and he paid for it with a purple shiner.”
I shake my head. “Yeah, I can believe that,” I say, glaring down the boat at Marty’s back.
“Although, I do agree with Kit,” he adds. “Maybe because Marty has showed Jess some attention you’re being a bit tetchy.”
“A bit of attention? He’s been giving her fuck-me eyes since we arrived.”
“All right, I’m lost,” Kit says to me. “I thought you were trying to get Emily back? Or, you know, get her for the first time. What am I missing?”
I contemplate telling him about Emily. Our saga. But I can’t be bothered. I realize, I’ve run out of steam on the whole Emily thing. I’d like her back in my life but…that’s all. I half smile and let out a short laugh as I realize, I’m over it. I’m over Emily. Maybe I should never have thought about changing our relationship. Then I never would have lost her.
That doesn’t mean I’m over the lies. It just means, I know I don’t want to be with her like that. Maybe Jess was right. Maybe I couldn’t stand the thought of losing Ems, and being in love with her was the only way I could think to keep her in my life.
The squeal of a line steals all our attention. “You’re on, Jakey!” Brooks calls.
I jump into action, flicking off my cap and taking control of my rod as whatever has taken my bait pulls the line far out to sea. I let it go until it calms, then I slow the reel and try to control the fish. Slowly, cautiously, I work the line, encouraging my catch back toward the boat. “She’s heavy,” I say, tugging back on the rod.
“Congratulations, you finally caught something you wanted.”
I turn to where Marty is standing, leaning on the screen of the cockpit, chugging on a thick cigar, his shades in place, his hair slicked to one side.
“Yeah, no thanks to you,” I snarl.
“Concentrate, Jake. This could be dinner,” Edmond says.
I try to focus on the fish and line. But Marty comes closer. “Are we still talking about the fish on your line or are we talking about the girl you’re too pussy to admit you’re into?”
“Is he fucking kidding me?” I ask, looking at Drew, knowing these guys are colleagues and for my brother’s sake, I probably shouldn’t break Marty’s jaw. “I know you didn’t call me a pussy, man.” This time I glare at Marty.
“Ah, come on. You’re like a brooding teen. Emily, I want you. No, Jess, I want you. Someone please want me.” He shakes his head and puffs on his cigar again, and I start to see red.
“Shut the fuck up, Marty. And stay the fuck away from Jess.”
The boat falls silent, other than the sound of Edmond taking the rod from me as I rise to full height, facing Marty from two yards away, willing myself to exercise some self-control. Knowing, if he keeps it up, one of us is going to wind up in the sea.
“Why? Shouldn’t someone make use of her, since you seem to have lost your balls?”
I close my eyes, trying to force away my desire to put my fist in his face. It doesn’t work. I open my eyes and all I can see is him and how much I want to hit him.
“Jake.” I hear Drew’s warning tone as I charge at Marty.
I drop my shoulder into his gut and propel him back, hard. Hard enough to take us both overboard.
We plummet into the cold salt water. I open my eyes, to make sure he’s okay, for some goddamn reason, then I kick up to the surface.
He breaks the water after me, coughing and spluttering. “Have you lost your goddamn mind?” he shouts.
“I told you not to fucking push me.”
“Christ, Jake. If you’re this nuts over her, fucking do something about it.”
“You think I don’t fucking want to, Marty? Huh?” I run a hand through my wet hair, pushing it back from my face. “There have to be two people to make a relationship, you asshole.”
“You don’t say.” He laughs. “Man, all I can tell you is, every time I’ve spoken to her, she talks about you. Every godforsaken word that leaves her mouth is some variation of how great you are, even when she doesn’t realize she’s doing it.”
I stare at him as we tread water. It is? “She’s crazy about you, Jake, whether she wants to accept it or not. Maybe if you took your head out of your ass long enough, you’d both see that you’re fucking perfect for each other.
You don’t want other men to fuck her? Do it yourself.”
He swims the few yards back to the boat and Drew glares at me as he gives Marty a hand up. I hear Marty say, “I thought you were crazy over Becky. Your brother takes it to a new fucking level, man.”
I take a deep breath and sink into the water, exhaling, trying to find the answer to what the hell I’m supposed to do from here. Knowing that I need Jess. I need her before I can find an answer or even the right direction to travel.
If what Marty says is true, if she feels like that, and she still won’t take down her walls, how can we keep going on? I can’t be the person who makes her afraid every day. But if I push, if I force her to take my hand and break down those walls with me, I have to be sure. Or, I lose her. I lose her like I lost Emily.
But the way the thought of losing Jess wrecks my body, makes my heart feel like it would rather stop beating than be without her, I know what I have to do.
I kick up to the surface and get back on the boat. “That was a two-hundred-dollar cigar you ruined, jackass,” Marty says.
“Just thinking of your lungs, man.”
“Crazy motherfucker.”
* * * *
We dock the boat, Drew and Brooks tying off the lines as I steer. We unload the boat and split into the two cars. Still wet from my dip in the ocean, I sit on a towel in the passenger seat of Brooks’s truck. He and Kit talk across the seats but I don’t hear anything. I haven’t heard much since my run-in with Marty. All I’ve felt is the increasing tightness in my gut. All I’ve seen is Jess. The way she looks at me. And I wonder why I never saw it before.
By the time we get back to the house, I’m a pent-up ball of emotion. Brooks pats my back when he, Kit and I stand on the driveway at the back of the truck. “Go do what you’ve got to do, man. We’ve got this.”
I take an unsteady breath. What the hell am I going to do? I pat his arm as I move past him. “Thanks.”
I hear the girls talking and laughing as I walk through the house. I kick off my wet sneakers and follow the voices out to the deck. The girls are sitting around, drinking champagne. I notice Emily there too and I feel her eyes on me, but I haven’t got time for anyone else. Only Jess.