Summer on Main Street

by Crista McHugh

  She didn’t follow the conversation, her mind occupied with what she was going to say to her sister once she got her alone.

  She was so eager, she started clearing the table before everyone was ready, but she appeased them with the promise of pie.

  “Jess, will you help with dishes?” she asked from the kitchen.

  Jess gave Mercy a pointed look, rolled her eyes, picked up the glass of wine and followed Brioney into the kitchen.

  Brioney wished there was a door between the kitchen and dining room, so their conversation wouldn’t be broadcast to everyone. She turned to Jess, bracing her hands on the sink behind her.

  “How are we going to fix this?”

  “Your betrayal? Sleeping with my ex?”

  Brioney glanced toward the dining room. “Yes. That. You want me to end this with him?”

  “That goes without saying.”

  Brioney thought the pain of that would drop her, and it was all she could do to stay upright. She nodded once. “And then?”

  Jess took a drink, held the wine in her mouth for a bit before swallowing. “I don’t know. I’m still processing.”

  “Do you still love me?”

  Jess’s gaze sharpened. “Of course. You’re my sister. I’ll always love you. But that’s what makes this so crazy. You were there, for all of it, the beginning, the middle, the end. You of all people know what he meant to me.”

  “Not as much as your job in Austin, in the end.”

  “He’s the one who left me.”

  “If you’d loved him like you said, you would have found a way.”

  Jess lifted her hands to her temples. “How would you feel if our roles were reversed?”

  “It would be awkward,” Brioney admitted.

  Jess laughed roughly. “Is that what you call this? Awkward?”

  “More than you know.” God, the more she thought about telling Blue good-bye, the sicker she felt. She’d only just begun to allow herself to start thinking about a future with him, and the thought of letting go of that dream made her dizzy. “Will you do me a favor? Will you go see him? Will you go talk to him? See how he is now. Please. Before you ask me to do this, will you go to him?” Her chest squeezed as she made the request, but it was all she could think of to protect herself.

  “What do you really expect will happen if I do it? That I’ll forget what was between us?”

  “I don’t know. But you’re asking me to do this thing that I can’t imagine doing. Please, first, will you do this?”

  Jess drained the wine and set the glass on the counter with a thunk. “Mercy! I’m going to need a ride.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Blue looked up from the sink at his mother’s and saw Brioney’s car coming up the drive. Heart lifting, he tossed aside the towel and hurried toward the front door. By the time he opened it, though, he knew something was wrong. Two women were in the car.

  But when the door opened and a tall brunette stepped out of the passenger door, it wasn’t Brioney.

  Jessamy. He knew she was in town, but what was she doing here?

  “Jess. Long time.” He managed to keep his voice cool. She looked good, different, though, polished, the woman she’d been on her way to becoming when he left her in Austin.

  She pushed her precisely cut and straightened hair back over her shoulder and looked up at him. “Blue. You look good. Clearly you needed the island.”

  He looked past her for Brioney and saw Mercedes behind the wheel instead. “Bri isn’t with you?”

  “She sent me.”

  “She did. So you know I’m in love with her.”

  She staggered and rested her fingertips on the hood of the car. “In love with her?”

  He frowned and walked down the steps toward her. “Why did you come here?”

  “No one said anything about love. No one but me.”

  He didn’t understand what she was playing, and the front porch was no place for a conversation they should have had seven years ago. “Why don’t you two come in?” He gestured toward the front door.

  “Your parents. Your dinner.” She seemed to just realize that.

  “I’ll make sure we have privacy.” They could go into the back room. “Come on in.”

  She hesitated, then turned to Mercedes and gestured. Mercedes waved her in.

  “She can come too, if she wants.”

  Jess shook her head. “No, she’ll wait. I don’t…I don’t think I’ll be long.”

  She mounted the steps and he stepped back so she could precede him into the house. Honestly, she was moving like she was walking into a trap.

  “This way,” he said, leading her around the dining room so she wouldn’t have to face his parents. He didn’t want to deal with them right now, not when he was trying to wrap his head around why she was here, and why Brioney had sent her.

  She looked amazing, her hair the same shade as Brioney’s piled on top of her head, her brown eyes huge, the make-up beneath smudged, her face still that perfect heart shape. She’d put on a little weight but she’d needed to. It filled her out beneath the button-down, business-looking top and slacks.

  “You look great, Jess.”

  “Ah, thanks.” Her arms were wrapped so tightly about herself, he didn’t know how she could breathe. “So you’re sleeping with my sister,” she said when he closed the door behind her.

  “I’m in love with her, Jess.”

  Jess dropped to the padded wicker couch. “She said it just started, that you hadn’t been together very long.”

  “Since Halloween.” But she hadn’t clarified that it was more than sex?

  “Why her? You can have any girl you want, and you go after my sister? Why? Because she looks like me?”

  He pressed his lips together. “Maybe, initially, part of the attraction was that. But I’ve been watching her, paying attention to her, and there’s…she’s…” He couldn’t explain to her sister, to the woman he’d once loved, to the woman he’d once changed his life for. “She’s got this way about her. The way she is with Joy, and with Brandon, the way she’s always smiling, even though you know this isn’t the way she thought her life would turn out. And she tries hard at everything she does, being a mother, school, singing, her job.”

  “You used that against me when we broke up,” Jess accused. “You said I always needed to be good at everything.”

  “And you did. But for you, that was about you. For Brioney, it’s about the people she’s with, the people around her, the people she cares for. Even now, Jess, tell me. Who do you care for?”

  She shook her head. “That’s not even the point. The point is that you’re fixated on her, not because of how wonderful she is, but because of me. Because of what we had.”

  “Wow, do you really think that? I mean, yeah, I’ve been thinking about you more lately, since Brioney and I got involved, but what I’ve figured out is that we never would have made it. What we had was love, sure, but it wasn’t selfless. Both of us were selfish. We weren’t willing to change for the other. That never would have lasted, if I’d stayed in Austin, if you’d come home with me.”

  “And you’d change for Brioney? You’d become something other than a beach bum?”

  He held in a breath for a moment to calm himself. He didn’t mind that that was how people saw him, but to use that against him was unfair.

  “I’d be what she needed to make her the best of herself, and I’d be what Joy needed to be a good father figure.”

  He saw the pain in her eyes, but didn’t understand it. “You’d change for her but not me?”

  “She wouldn’t ask me to change who I fundamentally am, do you see the difference? She and I are probably more alike, anyway, and all we do is refine each other.”

  “You don’t know any of that after a month.”

  “You’re right. You know, you’re right. But it’s what I believe, and it’s what I hope, and I’d like to have a chance to prove it.”

  “Blue, I—” His mother op
ened the French door, then stopped short when Jess turned toward her. “Oh, I’m so sorry. I thought it was Brioney, and I was going to ask you to bring her in for dessert. Hello, Jessamy.”

  He’d never heard his mother’s voice so cool, and kind of wanted to laugh.

  “Hello, Patricia. It’s good to see you.”

  Jess’s tone matched his mother’s, but that wasn’t a surprise. The two had never really gotten along.

  “Would you like to stay for dessert?” His mother’s voice was painfully polite.

  “No, thank you. Brioney has pie at home. I just came to see Blue for a bit.”

  “After seven years?”

  Okay, that wasn’t so polite.

  “I thought it was time.”

  “Because of your sister. She makes him happy, Jessamy. The last I heard, that was what you wanted for him.”

  No one had ever accused his mother of being a fool. Blue smothered a smile of pride when his mother gave Jess another nod, then backed out of the room, closing the door behind her.

  Jess turned to him. “It is what I wanted for you. But I’m asking you to find it somewhere else.”

  She didn’t even give him a chance to react before she turned and strode out.

  After she left, Blue couldn’t bring himself to go back into dinner with his family, to face the questions. He rolled Jess’s words around and around in his head, and knew what she was saying, but he had to hear it from Brioney.

  He grabbed the keys to his bike, and, with a glower at the darkening clouds on the horizon, headed toward her house.

  The rain hit as he pulled into the neighborhood, and he was drenched when he pulled up to the house, his hair dripping, his clothes clinging to his body. He knew he should be chilled, but he was too worked up. He banged on the front door, and stepped back when Fitz swung it open with a glare.

  “What the hell, Blue?”

  “I need to talk to Bri.”

  She appeared before Fitz could call her. “Geez, Blue, get inside.”

  “Come out,” he said, not wanting an audience. Too late, he knew, since her whole family, Mercedes and her mother were all gathered behind her, staring.

  She glanced over her shoulder, then nodded quickly, stepping out onto the porch and closing the door behind her. The wind swept the rain sideways, under the porch, but Blue couldn’t care about that right now.

  “You sent her to me? Why?”

  She lifted her hands like she didn’t know what to do with them, then hooked her hair behind her ears. “She was pissed when she found out, and was saying all these things and I wanted her to see who you are now, so she can’t say she still loves you and mean it, you know?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, she was pissed because she said I was wrong to be sleeping with you when she still loved you.”

  He shoved his wet hair back from his face, his head swimming. “How the hell can she say she still loves me when she hasn’t seen me since I left Austin?”

  “She says that you’re the only man she’s loved that long, that you were her first love, and I said she didn’t know who you were any longer.”

  “And now? Since she saw me?”

  Her expression was pained, and she looked like she was going to collapse in on herself. “She’s my sister, Blue. We knew this might happen. She’s my sister, my friend, my family. I have to choose her.” She reached out a hand when he stepped back. “We knew this might happen,” she said again.

  “Just to be clear, you’re breaking this off.”

  Tears filled her eyes. At least, he thought they did, because damned if he could see through his own tears.

  “I have to, Blue. I’m so sorry.”

  He didn’t wait around to hear any more. He got on the wet bike, took a couple of tries to start it when his foot slipped off the kick start lever. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her come down the steps, her arms wrapped around herself just like Jess’s had been, before he let the engine roar and sped off down the street, skidding just once before he turned the corner and headed home.

  Chapter Twelve

  Brioney was happy as hell to be working the day after Thanksgiving, and happier that Mercedes had the later shift. She wanted out of the house and away from everyone, especially her sister. And that hurt like hell, because damn, Jessamy had been her first friend, her closest friend, all her life. Yes, they’d gotten on each other’s nerves, and yes, maybe living three hours apart was good for them to become their own people. She’d just never expected Jess would try to tell her how to live her life. Fitz, yes. Jessamy, no. But damn if it didn’t seem everyone was trying to do just that lately, with heartbreaking results.

  Not too many people checked out on the second day of a four-day weekend, even though it was raining, so she mainly restocked supplies, straightened, made beds, all while listening to her angriest ‘90s music on her earbuds. She had to work around a lot of people who weren’t leaving their rooms because of the weather, but at least she wasn’t related to any of them.

  She debated over going to sing at The Wharf tonight. She wanted to get some of these emotions out of her, and what better way than to sing, but her association with The Wharf included Blue, and she couldn’t get the last expression she’d seen on his face out of her mind.

  But Jess, in a suspiciously good mood, insisted that she wanted to see her play, so she picked up her guitar, dressed in one of her favorite dresses to make herself feel better, and the three of them, Mercedes included, headed down. The rain hadn’t let up, so the restaurant wasn’t too crowded, which was a relief, because she definitely wasn’t in her best form tonight.

  She didn’t know what she’d do if Blue showed up.

  Which he did, about half an hour into her set.

  She looked from him to her sister, who sat at the bar with Mercedes, in the spot Blue usually occupied. He followed her gaze, then approached the stage.

  “Where’s your notebook?” he asked.

  “I’m not taking requests tonight.” In fact, she’d pretty much eliminated every love song from her usual playlist. Which didn’t leave much, to be honest. She could only play so many heartbreak songs before she started chasing off customers.

  His jaw tightened, his eyes flattened, the usual sparkle gone. Then he turned, reached between Jess and Mercedes at the bar and grabbed a napkin. He leaned over, scrawled something on it, then tossed it onto the stage at her feet. She stopped playing long enough to look down at it.

  The Bon Jovi song he’d written on the napkin popped into her head instantly, about being there until the stars no longer shone, until the heavens were no more.

  “Blue. That’s not fair.”

  He took a step back, looking up at her. “Sing it, Bri.”

  Her fingers formed the first chord as she held his gaze, and her voice was shaky when she sang about a broken Romeo. By the time she reached the chorus, she’d choked up and couldn’t sing anymore. She excused herself into the microphone and set her guitar in its stand. When she stood, needing something to drink, he backed away, toward the door, and disappeared.

  She didn’t have the courage to go after him. Instead, she stumbled to the bar, where Sal passed her a soda. She looked longingly at her sister’s frozen margarita, but didn’t meet either Jess’s or Mercedes’s gaze. If she did, she knew she would burst into tears.

  “You know, Sal, I think I’ll call it a night,” she said, pushing her half-empty glass back toward him. “You’re not too busy, and I’m just not up to it.”

  “Are you taking these two with you?” He forked his fingers at her companions.

  “You can keep them,” she said, pivoted on her heel and walked out.

  *****

  Mercedes was working the early shift with Brioney the next day, but Brioney made sure she got there earlier so they wouldn’t have to work together. She wasn’t mad at Mercedes, exactly, but damn, she hadn’t had a minute to herself to grieve over Blue. She didn’t want to hear Mercedes tell her “
I told you so,” damn it.

  “What the hell, Bri?” Mercedes demanded, standing in the doorway between Bri and her cart, hands on her hips.

  “Just getting my work done.”

  “You never start without me. And you bailed on us last night.”

  “Have you thought that maybe I’m just not in a talking mood?” When Mercedes drew in a deep breath, Brioney held up a hand. “And I really really don’t want to hear about whatever you have to say about Blue, all right? Not a word.”

  “I was just going to remind you how excited you were about Jess coming for a week, how close the two of you are. Don’t forget that over a guy.”

  Brioney made a charge toward her cart. “I said I didn’t want to hear it. Now let me get finished so I can go home, you know, and hang out with my sister.”

  When she got home, her house had been invaded. She’d never realized how small it was until five army guys sat around her living room, taking up all the seats and sprawling on the floor.

  Fitz bounded to his feet when she pushed through the door. The light in his eyes was brilliant. She knew he’d been excited about his friends coming, but this was more. This was pride.

  “Brioney, I want you to meet everyone. Well, not everyone. Jackson and Tavitas aren’t here yet. They’ll be in Monday. But these are my buddies. That’s Davis, Boller, Tschirhart and Balderrama.”

  The men stood as Fitz introduced them, and leaned forward to shake her hand respectfully. Lord, they were a big, good-looking bunch. She needed to make sure Mercedes kept far away.

  “So glad to meet you. I can’t tell you what it means to Fitz that y’all are here.” She placed her purse on a hook by the door. “I will say we’ve already done the hard part, getting it cleaned out.”

  “We saw the dumpster,” said one of the dark-haired men—Tschirhart? She couldn’t keep them straight. “You did a lot.”

  “Yeah, well, don’t think you guys are getting off easy,” Fitz said. “Next up is sledgehammers and sheetrock.”