by Laura Drewry
That made her smile again. “You sound like you’re in cahoots with Jayne.”
“Cahoots?” Jack laughed. “Do people still use that word? What are we cahooting about?”
“The ‘lots of other guys’ thing. Jayne considers herself our group’s Cupid, and while she’s been knocking herself out over finding me someone, she’s really bad at it, and I’m…well…”
“Let me guess: It’s complicated.”
Maya’s blue eyes twinkled. “How did you guess?”
“Just a hunch.” He managed to grin back at her for a second, but then had to look away. Those eyes were just too…too Maya…for him to keep looking into them right then. “So what’s the problem? What’s making everything so complicated?”
She laughed, but it wasn’t genuine enough to fool him for a second.
“Well, let’s see. For starters, it turned out that what I thought was forever actually wasn’t, so I’m a little gun-shy now when it comes to things like who I can trust.”
“Oh. Right.” Brilliant response, moron. “Well, if it means anything to you at this point, Will’s really sorry for what he did, and I know Stella feels awful about it.”
“It doesn’t, but thank you.” If anyone deserved to get a dig in right there, it was Maya, but she didn’t. Instead, she stooped over to grab a stick, and instead of throwing it for Pete right away, she stared down at it for a second. “Can I ask you something?”
Second only to the phrase “we need to talk,” that had to be the most feared question ever, not just because it was so vague, but because you couldn’t ever really say no to it.
“Yeah.”
She took a deep breath, threw the stick, then turned to face Jack, her eyes filled with a wretched mix of dread, desperation, and misery. “Did you really not know about Stella?”
“About Stella? No—not until Will sent me pictures of what you did to the house when you left.”
And just like that, Snip’s expression softened and the dread vanished.
It was true. He hadn’t known about Stella, and even though he was plenty pissed off when he found out, he wasn’t totally surprised, either, not after what happened at Will’s bachelor party. How many times had he wanted to tell Maya the truth about that night, and how many times had he chickened out because it would be like throwing Will under the bus? Not only that: Jack didn’t want to be the one to hurt her, to make her look the way she’d looked at him a second ago.
And what good would it do to tell her now? It wasn’t like she could hate Will any more than she already did, and it wasn’t like she could divorce him all over again, so it would serve no good purpose for anyone.
Best to just leave it in the past with everything else.
Exhaling slowly, she started walking again, but Jack took a second to catch his breath before following. Scooping up the stick Pete dropped, he hurled it as far as he could into the trees.
“So tell me about these setups Jayne arranges,” he said. “They can’t be any worse than the chick in the catsuit.”
“No, you win on that one. I’ve never had a catsuit.” Snorting softly, Maya rolled her eyes and sidestepped a low-hanging branch. “The first time she did it was at one of her New Year’s parties. Brad Something-or-Other. He was okay, but I wasn’t even divorced yet and he wasn’t any more interested in me than I was in him. That didn’t stop Jayne, though, and once Ellie hooked up with Brett—”
“I met him the other day.”
Maya’s smile slowly crept back. “He’s good people, that one—best thing that ever happened to Ellie.”
“That’s what he said.”
“He’s right. Anyway, when they got together, it left me as the only single one in the group, so Jayne’s been after me constantly.”
“She didn’t seem the pushy sort to me.”
“She’s not usually, but this…ugh…She’s starting to drive me crazy.”
“Can’t be that bad,” he said. “When was the last one?”
“Couple weeks ago.” Snip’s cheeks flushed a little when she looked up at him. “Tomorrow’s a whole ‘nother adventure.”
“Tomorrow? Who’s the lucky guy?”
“The guy who runs the bike shop. And I know it’s horrible for me to even say it, but the only thing I’m looking forward to about the whole night is the baked stuffed potato I’m going to order with my steak.”
The trail curved to the left, taking them away from the river and deeper into the naked woods.
“We could work out a signal,” Jack said, only half joking. “You send me a blank text and I’ll come rescue you. Or I could call you with some kind of emergency.”
“Thanks, but Tim’s an okay guy; I’m sure it’ll be fine.” Her laugh, low and quiet, whispered against the air. “I could have used your help with the last guy she set me up with, though; all he wanted to do was talk about was ticks and bedbugs and how they pierce the skin and…yuck!”
Every inch of her shuddered, but before Jack could say anything, he spied movement farther up the trail, near a slight curve. Another quick whistle brought Pete plowing back through the trees and straight to Jack, who immediately clipped on his leash until the joggers had passed.
Maya moved over, opening up space for Jack beside her. “What’s the new project you’re working on?”
“It’s supposed to be the next game in the Apollo series. Apollo4.”
“Supposed to be?”
“Yeah,” he muttered. “So far it’s nothing but a blank page with a giant ink splotch on it.”
“You’re blocked?” Maya stopped and turned her frowning face up to him. “Is it bad?”
“It’s not good, that’s for sure.”
“Hmm.” Nodding slowly, she started down the trail again. “What are you doing to work through it?”
“Everything I can think of.”
“Have you tried listening to music?”
“Yup.”
“Exercise? Writing something else? Cleaning?”
“Yup, yup, and nope; housekeeping at the hotel doesn’t like it when you do their job.” Jack lifted his right shoulder in a dismissive shrug. “It’s only been a few days, Snip, I’m sure I’ll figure it out.”
Except he wasn’t sure at all, and talking about it only made the doubt push deeper.
“Remember that time you took Will and me to that cosplay party?”
Uh, yeah, he remembered. Will had dressed up as Han Solo, Jack went as Chewie and Snip was Princess Leia. Sure, she’d been in the long white robe with the cinnamon-bun hair thing, but in Jack’s eyes—which were thankfully hidden behind a big hairy mask—she might as well have been wearing the gold bikini.
“You’d been working on the second Apollo game and couldn’t figure out one of the plot points, but ten minutes after arriving at that party, you had an epiphany.”
“And I took off, leaving you and Will to find your own way home.”
He’d never told her she’d been the cause of his epiphany. If it wasn’t for Snip standing there in her Leia costume, Jack might never have come up with the character Mercy, a kick-ass heroine who captained her own ship through his fictional galaxy. Of all the characters in the Apollo series, Mercy had become an instant favorite with gamers, to the point where he’d actually seen a few people dressed like her at the last Comic-Con.
And even though he’d purposely set out to make Mercy the exact opposite of Maya, from her physical appearance to her personality, every time he wrote anything with Mercy in it, it was Maya he saw.
Clearing the thought from his mind, Jack shrugged. “So what are you suggesting—I should go to another cosplay party?”
“Normally I’d say yes, but it might be a little tricky finding one here in Newport Ridge.” Her soft laughter drifted for a few seconds before she looked up at him, her smile a little sad, a little pensive. “The three of us had some fun times, didn’t we?”
“Damn right we did.” He tried to sound upbeat but it seemed forced. “Sometimes it to
ok a little work to find the fun, but—”
“Like when I dragged you guys to the Tulip Festival? God, Will hated that.”
“Exactly, like the Tulip Festival. Wasn’t that…yeah, that was where we had those really good waffle things. What were they called again?”
“Stroopwafels.”
“Yeah, those. And that honey truck…shit, I don’t remember anything about the tulips, but those food trucks were freakin’ amazing. Was that the spring before or after you decided you were going to learn to ski?”
“After. And then I only went the one time. Trying to get on the lift—do you remember that—I finally got my butt against the seat and then fell flat on my face, and Will couldn’t get off to get back to me so he went up the mountain and I had to scramble to get out of the way for the next couple.”
Yup, Jack mused, that’s what Will had wanted them to believe, but it would have been easy enough for him to get off before the lift started up the mountain; he just chose not to.
“Good thing you showed up.” Maya laughed. “Otherwise I’d have spent the whole day trying to get myself up on that damned thing.”
“Yeah, and we no sooner got moving when the stupid thing broke down—remember that? How long did we sit there?”
“Couple hours. I still think you probably could have jumped.”
“Maybe, but you weren’t going to, and I couldn’t leave you there by yourself.”
“Will was so mad at us.” She laughed. “Like it was our fault the lift broke down or that we were purposely making him stay on the mountain so long when all he wanted to do was go home.”
“Well, he did have papers to grade…”
“Yeah.” Maya tipped her head a little and frowned. “But now that I think about it…he seemed to get mad at a lot of things we did.”
“Like the time we were trying to get your stupid wardrobe up the stairs—”
“That wasn’t my fault!”
“And you were laughing so hard you went and dropped your end and took a chunk out of the wall.”
“Because you kept yelling ‘Pivot!’ I couldn’t help it!”
“Thought for sure he was going to kill us, especially since he was stuck on the top side and couldn’t get down the stairs.”
Maya’s laugh bounced off the trees. “And then you went and made a sandwich and left me there listening to him go on and on about how ridiculous we both were.”
“Yeah.” Jack grinned. “Good sandwich, too, if I recall.”
“How did we even get it up after that?”
“I don’t remember, but I’m guessing you didn’t take it with you when you left?”
“God, no. I only had Jayne with me when I went to get my stuff that day, and there was no way the two of us were going to be able to lift that thing. For all I know, he’s taken a chainsaw to it by now.”
The trail curled around again, opening up on a narrow rocky beach along a low part of the river. Pete headed straight for the water and stood waiting, barking, until Jack threw another stick for him.
“Isn’t it great here?” Maya swept some of the sand off one of the overturned logs and plunked down on it, laughing, when Pete ran back, opting for a tug-of-war instead of dropping his stick.
“Drop it.” At Jack’s command, Pete immediately released it and backed up, his tongue wagging, his eyes locked on the stick until Maya threw it. “What’s after ‘for starters’?”
“Sorry?”
“The problems with Jayne playing Cupid—you said not knowing who to trust now was ‘for starters.’ ”” Head down, Jack wandered along the rocks looking for a few good skippers. “So I figured that meant there was more at play here than Will messing you up.”
“Oh. Um…” Then silence.
When he turned to look at her, she had leaned over, her face in her hands, and it took her a couple seconds before she finally sat up again. By that time Jack had stopped moving and was just staring at her, waiting for the absolute worst to come out of her mouth.
“I, uh, I haven’t really wrapped my own head around it yet, so…”
“Are you sick?”
“No.”
Jack’s next breath came out in a giant whoosh. “Jeezus, Snip, I thought you were going to tell me you were dying or something.”
“Nothing quite so dramatic,” she said, laughing lightly. “Just something I need to sort out before I decide whether or not to drag anyone else into my life.”
And that “something” obviously had Griffin Carr written all over it. Why did that bug him so much?
“Okay.” Jack lowered himself next to her then leaned his elbows on his knees and stared straight out at the river to where Pete was busy trying to catch the rippling water in his mouth. “But if you want to bounce any of it off someone…I’m not doing anything, and the blinking cursor on my laptop will attest to that.”
“Thanks, I appreciate that.”
She might appreciate it, but would she take him up on it? Probably not. Why would she? He’d up and deserted her two years ago, hadn’t responded to a single email she’d sent him, and then suddenly walked back into her life as though nothing had happened. She had no reason to trust him with anything.
Jack must have stared at Pete for almost a minute before he realized the dog had nudged the stick right between Jack’s feet. He picked it up slowly, studied it for a second, then hurled it as far as he could.
“Well, whatever it is,” he said slowly, knowing he should just leave it alone, “do what’s going to make you happy, not anyone else. You’ve earned at least that much.”
Maya shifted on the log a little so she could reach a large flat stone a couple feet away. “It would definitely make me happy.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
“Jack.” Her gaze fell to the stone in her hand for a long moment. “I know you want to help, but you can’t. Not on this.”
“How do you know? Maybe I could—”
“Jack.”
“Okay, sorry.” Clearing his throat, he ducked his head a little and then laughed quietly. “I’ll shut up now.”
“Or,” she said, tipping her head to the side. “We could just change the subject.”
“Or we could do that.” He nodded. “Sure.”
“Then come on.” Maya pushed up off the log and started back toward the trail. “The trail loops around up here a little ways and winds back.”
With a quick whistle for Pete, Jack fell in beside Maya and immediately dismissed any topic that had to do with Will’s or Maya’s love lives.
“So your Tuesday group—how long have you all been doing that?”
Maya’s face immediately broke into a warm smile. “A few years now. At first it was just the three of us; me, Regan, and Ellie. Regan knew Jayne from high school, so when Jayne moved back to town, we sucked her in, too.”
“Where were they before they moved back?”
“They?” Maya frowned. “Oh, her and Nick. No, Nick’s always been here. He and Jayne had been best friends since kindergarten, but then she left town after high school and didn’t move back until…actually, it was right around the same time I found out about Stella.”
Ignoring the bit about Stella, Jack grunted. “Best friends that whole time? Wasn’t that kind of weird, him having a girl for a best friend?”
“Not for them,” she said, shaking her head. “It worked. I mean, sure, there were a lot of bumps and bruises along the way, and Nick was even married to someone else there for a while—she died in a car accident—but eventually they wound up where they were supposed to be.”
“Sounds like quite a story.”
“It was. It is. In fact…they all have good stories like that.”
“What do you mean?”
“How they got together, you know?” Her forehead wrinkled as she worked it all out. “I’ve never thought about it until now, but Will and I didn’t have a good story. I met him at a party and that was it. God, how boring.
“Jayne and Nick
were best friends for twenty-five years before they got together, and actually, he set Jayne up on a date with another guy when she moved back here. Even Brett got involved there for a bit. That’s a story. And then Ellie and Brett…” Her smile crept back slowly. “That shocked the hell out of all of us. God, I can’t even count how many times she told him to stick his badge up his ass.”
“What?” Jack choked over a laugh. “And they still ended up together?”
“It was crazy. He revoked her license, her mom got involved somehow, and then there was a whole thing with her crazy ex who was stalking her…next thing you know…bam! Another good story.”
“What about the other one? Regan—what’s her story?”
That made Maya roll her eyes. “Have you met Carter yet?”
“No.”
“Well, suffice it to say their story can be summed up in one word: sex.”
“I’m sorry?”
“So am I.” She laughed. “They’re nauseating, those two. They started out as a one-night stand and have somehow managed to stretch that night out for the better part of two years—and they still can’t go five minutes without pawing each other.”
And going by how that made Maya smile, she was obviously happy for Regan and Carter. It was just too bad that smile gave way to a distant, haunted look that she had to blink hard to get past.
“There’s a lot more to all of their stories,” she said, giving her head a quick shake. “But you get the gist. When they’re all old and gray, they’ll have great stories to tell their grandkids about how they met.”
“You’ll have a great story one day, too. Can any of them lay claim to being a one-woman wrecking crew?”
Finally a laugh, albeit short and maybe a little self-conscious. “That was the scariest, most freeing, and best thing I’ve ever done. I can’t believe he didn’t call the cops.”
“He thought about it.” Ugh, he hadn’t meant to say that out loud.
“I bet he—” She stopped dead in her tracks and wrapped her fingers around his elbow, bringing him to a stop, too. “Was it you? Are you the reason he didn’t call them?”
Jack shrugged and tried to take a step, but she tightened her grip, her touch warm against his skin. How could something as small and soft as that hand sap all the strength from his entire arm?