by Laura Drewry
He thought Will was a fuckwad for what he did, but he couldn’t say that out loud; it would’ve been disloyal to the Carsons, and after all they’d done for him, the least he could do was keep those kinds of thoughts to himself. The easiest way to do that had been to avoid Maya until he was sure he could talk to her without throwing Will under the bus, where he clearly belonged.
So for two years he’d avoided Snip and tried, mostly unsuccessfully, to distance himself from Will, especially where Stella was concerned. He’d skipped any Carson family gatherings if Stella was going to be there, and whenever one of them mentioned her name, Jack did what he did and kept his mouth shut.
Two years was a long time, and even as Maya had come tripping and spiraling toward him last night, he still hadn’t been sure how he was going to handle it; but she’d made it easy for him, as she always had.
God almighty he’d missed her.
Pretty as ever. Her blond hair hung a little longer than the last time he’d seen her, her eyes were a blue he’d never been able to describe, and her scent…it was the same warm, smooth perfume she’d stopped wearing because Will hadn’t liked it.
Jack liked it. He always had, and knowing she was wearing it again made him smile even more.
He parked his Jeep next to a black truck at the Luna Building and let Pete out to have a sniff around. Keith had sent pictures of the grounds a month ago, but since then, the landscapers had been in and turned the rock-filled lot into an oasis of granite slab walkways and what would be, come spring, an abundance of color.
This late in September, though, the only colors were green and brown.
The side door of the building opened and out stepped a guy in a faded Garth Brooks T-shirt with a clipboard in one hand and a travel mug in the other. Pete barked once then wagged his butt over to make friends.
“Hey, pup.” Shifting the clipboard under his arm, the guy seemed only too happy to oblige Pete with a good head scratch before grinning up at Jack. “You Jack?”
“Yeah.”
“Nick Scott, good to finally meet you in person.” He chuckled slowly as he shook Jack’s hand. “This must be Pete, then. I hear he’s part of the reason you made it out of there alive last night.”
“Yeah.” Jack laughed. “I’m pretty sure I would’ve got my ass kicked if it wasn’t for him.”
“Probably.” He waved the clipboard toward the door. “Wanna come up?”
“Sure, I’ll just put Pete back in the—”
“Bring him,” Nick said, already waving Pete through and up the stairs. “How’s Keith doing?”
“Surgery’s booked for tomorrow morning down at St. Mark’s, and if I know Keith, he’s not going to stay down there a second longer than he has to.”
Nick nodded slowly. “My cousin’s a doctor at St. Mark’s, and he tells me Keith’s got the best orthopedic guy working on him.”
“Good, but he seems more concerned about what you were doing here than what they were going to do to his knee,” Jack said, forcing a grin. “Made me promise to keep him updated.”
“Go on in, then, and have a look.” Pushing open the door, Nick led Jack into the massive space, then stood back and let him take it in.
“Holy shit.”
The entire south wall of the loft was nothing but glass giving an unobstructed view of both the sound that fed in from the Pacific as well as The Chief, an enormous granite dome that attracted rock climbers from all over the world.
Jack was all for exercise and challenging himself, but to his way of thinking, it was a whole new kind of crazy to let your life dangle two thousand feet up with just a rope and a couple carabiners.
“Is this your first time in town?” Nick asked.
“No.” It took him another second, but Jack finally blinked away from the view. “Pete and I used to come up when Will first moved here, but it’s, uh, it’s been a while. I’d forgotten what the view was like.”
With a brief nod, Nick tugged the blueprints off the wall, where they hung by the door. “From what Keith told me, this place will be a smaller replica of the Seattle unit, so you probably already know what’s what, but if you want, we can do a quick walk around.”
“Yeah, sure.”
As Pete wandered, nose down, tail swishing, Jack followed Nick back through the framework of two-by-fours erected throughout the space.
“Reception area of course, and this wall we’re putting up here will divide the bulk of the space in two; this side will be the ‘business’ end: conference room, three offices, and the theater, just like Seattle. The other side of the wall, though, is where the good stuff happens.”
TMJ Games never skimped when it came to encouraging creativity in their people, and this place would be no different, but listening to Nick describe it made Jack appreciate it all the more. Bright open spaces, gaming stations, screening rooms, a full kitchen stocked with food and beverages for the taking, and a large fully equipped gym would surround the two huge semicircle couches in the middle, where they could gather to brainstorm or just be comfortable while they worked.
Hammock chairs would hang by the window and there’d be a separate room at the far end filled with arcade and board games.
“Art Hague will do the inspections,” Nick said. “He’s tough, but he’s fair. He has our schedule and has already penciled us in, so that’ll help keep everything moving.”
When Jack blinked back at him, Nick frowned.
“What?”
“No offense, it’s just…Maya tells me if anyone can get this done on time, it’s you, but I’m looking around here and there’s…”
Nick nodded. “A lot to do.”
“Yeah.”
“You’re right,” he said. “It’s a big job on a tight schedule, and you don’t know me from Adam, so I get your concern, but here’s the thing: I have jobs lined up for the next eighteen months plus, and if I’m late on this one, that makes everything else late, too, and I don’t do ‘late.’
“You want to be in here by the first part of November, then that’s what’s going to happen, because that’s what you’re paying me to make happen.” He paused, shrugged and grinned slowly. “And because Keith promised me one of the first copies of the new Apollo game.”
If Jack hadn’t already liked this guy, that little speech would have sold him ten times over.
“So what you’re saying then is that the biggest help I can be right now is to get the hell out of your way and let you work, is that about right?”
“Pretty much.” With a low chuckle, Nick lifted the rolled prints with a shrug. “Sounds like my crew’s coming up the stairs now, so hang around if you want, but don’t be offended if they don’t stop to chat.”
And they didn’t. Delmar, Kyle, and Brett filed into the space, shook Jack’s hand, ruffled Pete’s fur a little, then got straight to work.
“Is that it?” Jack asked, glancing over his shoulder. “There’s only four of you?”
Nick laughed as he strapped on his tool belt. “It’s a good day when we have four; Brett’s a cop, works four on, four off, so he’s not always here. You met Ellie last night, well, Brett’s her…I don’t know…what are we supposed to call you and Ellie, Brett?”
“I’m the love of her life.” The guy’s expression didn’t so much as flicker, just stayed stoic and even. “Best thing that ever happened to her. She’s lucky to have me.”
He hadn’t even finished saying it before Nick and the other two barked out laughs.
“Yeah, right,” Nick choked. “I think you got that backwards, buddy.”
For a second there, it looked like Brett was going to smile, but that was as far as it got before he bent down to get his tool belt.
“Do you need anything from me?” Jack asked. “No? Then come on, Pete, let’s get out of their way.”
After making sure Nick had his number, Jack led Pete down to his Jeep and headed back to the hotel, where his own work waited.
Starting a new project was always a l
ittle scary, and this one was no different, but he’d stared down enough blank pages over the years to know the only way to squelch the fear was to just start scribbling until an idea germinated and took on its own life.
The difference this time, though, was they’d all agreed Apollo4 needed something new in it, something the previous three games, and games like it, didn’t; and for the life of him—and the rest of the team—he had no idea what that should be.
Sitting there at the narrow hotel desk, there was no scribbling or germinating going on. All he could do was tap his fountain pen against his legal pad until the ink seeped through the paper, leaving a growing black blot through to the next sheet. It might not be the “norm” in his profession to write with ink and paper, but he never took an idea to the computer until he had it sorted out first, and at this rate, it was going to be a while before that damn cursor did anything other than blink at him.
To save the tip of his pen—a shiny black Montblanc Will and Snip had given him—he finally gave up and walked away from the desk. Music was always good inspiration, so he dug his headphones out of his bag, plugged them into his phone and tried to get comfortable in the wooden-backed chair by the table. Eyes closed, feet up and Avenged Sevenfold cranked loud enough to drown out a nuclear explosion…that should do it.
Song after song…nothing.
Okay, maybe some TV. If he focused on something else, his brain might relax enough that the missions for the new game would make themselves clear.
A couple episodes of Criminal Minds, a round of Family Feud, and an hour of laps in the hotel pool later, Jack’s brain still felt like the black inkblot on his notepad. All he could think about, all he could do, was stare at his cellphone and wonder how long he should wait for Snip to call before it’d be okay for him to call her.
When his phone did finally buzz in a text late that afternoon, it wasn’t from Maya, as he’d hoped. It was from Will.
I’m home. Come on over.
Shit. He hit reply and started to type out an excuse then stopped and deleted it. He’d put it off far too long already and now that he was in the same town, there was no chance he’d be able avoid it indefinitely.
Wasn’t like he was getting any work done anyway.
On my way.
It took him a couple minutes to actually move after he’d sent his reply and even then, he opted to leave his Jeep at the hotel. It wasn’t a very long walk to Will’s and it would give him a few more minutes to try and square things up in his mind. So what if he hadn’t been able to do it in the last two years; he always worked better with a deadline, and that deadline was now about ten minutes away.
“Get your leash, Pete, I’m not doing this alone.”
Good dog that he was, Pete was only too happy to go with him; so with the bulk of his leash clamped in his mouth, Pete sat patiently by the door, his tail thumping against the floor while Jack tied his shoes.
“It’s fine,” Jack muttered to himself. “You’ll go, you’ll play nice, you’ll leave. Shouldn’t be that hard, right?”
Wrong. Because no matter how hard he’d tried, Jack had never been able to get past the fact that Will hadn’t just cheated, he’d cheated on Maya, and that ground away at Jack every time he talked to Will and every time Stella’s name was mentioned.
And Will mentioned her a lot.
He’d never fully explained what happened between him and Maya; he’d just moved on with Stella without so much as a hiccup or a speed bump, and Jack hadn’t pushed for an explanation because…well…because he was a chickenshit. Genie still hadn’t gotten through her grief over losing Burt, so the last thing she needed was Jack making everything worse by going a couple rounds with her son over the whole mess. So he’d done what he’d always done and kept his mouth shut.
It wasn’t like he hadn’t seen or spoken to Will since the split, because he had. And every time, it was like they’d made a silent pact to just not talk about it; so the tension lingered, but they both pretended to ignore it.
The few times he’d talked to Stella on the phone, he’d managed to make small talk with her without too much difficulty; but this would be the first time he ever met her face-to-face and he wasn’t entirely sure he’d be able to keep his mouth shut this time.
So with the late afternoon sun on his back, he rounded the last corner and headed straight for Will’s house.
The last time he’d been there, Maya had only been gone a few days, so there were still signs of her everywhere; hanging baskets bursting with color, gardens that didn’t dare let weeds in, and a lawn that was mowed in perfect straight lines.
Now…well, the grass was cut, so that was something.
“Jackie Boy!” His smile wide, Will jerked Jack in for a quick slap-on-the-back hug, then stood aside and waved him and Pete into the house. “Come on in. How you been?”
“Good. You?”
Pete didn’t wait for either one of them, just made a line for the back door, the same thing he’d always done when they’d come to visit. As Jack followed Will through the living room and into the kitchen, he mentally flipped through the pictures Will had sent him the day Maya left—the day Jack learned just how much of a dick Will really was.
Since then, Jack had discovered that Maya’d known about Will and Stella for the better part of a couple months before she finally left, and yet neither she nor Will had said anything to Jack about what was going on. He could understand Maya not saying anything, but Will? God, how many times had they talked and Will had never so much as hinted that anything was wrong.
If Jack hadn’t seen photos of the damage himself, or been part of the cleanup crew, he never would have believed someone as small and sweet as Snip had that much rage inside, but even now it made him smile a little. Broken dishes, the contents of the fridge dumped out all over the kitchen floor, the shattered plasma screen, chunks of a crystal vase embedded in the wall, and that damn nine iron sticking out of the computer monitor. The best picture in the batch, though, was the one showing a steady trickle of water that had seeped down through the ceiling from the leaking water bed upstairs.
“Sorry we couldn’t meet you last night,” Will said. “But Stella drags me to dance lessons on Tuesday nights—can you believe that shit? Says she won’t have me looking like that Seinfeld chick at the wedding.”
“She’s not wrong, dude, I’ve seen what you call dancing and it ain’t pretty.” Jack tried to laugh as he took the beer Will offered but it was pretty pathetic. After letting Pete out, he slumped back against the counter. “Does that mean you set a date?”
“Yeah, it’s—”
“Is that Jack?” Stella’s voice made it into the room a second before she did. “Jack! It’s so good to finally meet you in person.”
Before he knew what was happening, she had her arms around him and her cheek pressed up against his chest.
“Uh, yeah,” he forced out. “You too.”
If they’d met under ordinary circumstances, it was possible Jack might have liked her. She seemed happy and friendly enough, and with her dark hair cut short like that, she kind of looked like a pixie or something, but these weren’t ordinary circumstances, and no matter how friendly she was to him, it took an enormous effort for him to be anything more than civil to her.
When she finally stepped back, she walked right over to Will and tucked herself up under his arm.
“Did Will tell you the news?” She didn’t give either of them time to answer, just kept talking. “We set the date for November seventh.”
“What—wow!” Jack choked. “That’s…soon.” Like six or seven weeks soon.
“I know, but Will thought it’d be easier for you if we did it while you’re here, and it’s not going to be a big deal, just a simple ceremony with close friends and family.” She gave Will’s arm a squeeze, then pointed to the bowls of chips and pretzels on the counter. “Why don’t you guys take those outside and get comfortable? I just have a few things to finish up, and then I’ll bring the tu
x catalog down so Jack can see what we picked out for him.”
Jack held his breath until he heard her hustle up the stairs.
“Are you shittin’ me?”
“About what?”
“About the tux! You don’t expect me to be your best man again, do you?”
“Yeah.” Will actually looked confused for a second as he handed Jack the bowl of pretzels then led him out to the back deck. “Why not?”
“Really?” Jack snorted. “Does the name Maya McKay ring a bell?”
“She’s got nothing to do with this.”
“Wrong; she’s got everything to do with this.”
“God almighty, Jack, she left me two years ago, and yeah, it was my fault and I’m sorry about that.” Sighing loudly, Will blinked away from Jack and shook his head. “I don’t know how many more times I have to say it before you get over it.”
“I don’t know either, because that’s the first time I’ve ever heard it come out of your mouth, and I gotta tell you, buddy, it didn’t sound even a little bit convincing.”
Jack didn’t know if it was because this was the first time he’d called Will on it, or if it was because Will was honestly sorry, but something made Will actually stop, sigh, and nod slowly.
“Hand to God, Jack, I’m sorry. I was a total prick, I know, but come on, are we really going to do this now? Does it even matter anymore?”
It was on the tip of his tongue to say no, to let it go again. So why was he nodding?
“It matters to me. I’ve had your back this whole time, you know that, but if you want me to stand up there with you again, then you need to explain what happened with Maya and make me understand why you think this one”—he thumbed toward the house—“is going to be any different.”
“You’ve never asked before.” Will swiped his hand across his mouth and sighed. “I didn’t think you wanted to know.”
“I didn’t.”
“But you do now? Why?”