I rolled over, tucking the blanket under my chin. “Seriously, they have ADD medication. Make an appointment.”
He chuckled and pulled me back against him. His breath heated my ear as he whispered, “I do love you.”
Humph. I snuggled in closer and let myself absorb the heat from his body as I tried to digest what we’d done. Tried to wrap my head around it. What was I thinking? Truth told, I hadn’t been thinking one damned thing. Just feeling. Losing Keaton once almost destroyed me, shredded my heart, and here I was setting myself up again.
Keaton, tracing the bones of my spine with his hand, did nothing to help me work this out. I pulled away and whispered, “Go eat.” I needed to plot my next move, and his arms wrapped around me added to my confusion.
He chuckled, kissed me, and climbed out of bed.
Turning away, I tried to refocus on my issue rather than the thought of Keaton pulling on his clothes. I snuck a quick peak over my shoulder, and he laughed before leaning over the pillows to press his lips against mine.
When we broke apart, he said, “Joss, don’t overthink this, okay?”
I raised an eyebrow.
“For once, feel what you feel and don’t analyze it to death.”
I considered his words. “You’re only saying that because you believe if I think about it, I’ll come to the conclusion that this was a mistake, because we both know it--”
“Nothing about holding you in my arms, kissing you, or loving you has ever been a mistake.” He cradled my cheek with one hand. “Together, we don’t make mistakes. Together we are perfect. It’s when we’re apart, when we don’t have each other that bad things happen.”
He kissed me again and I wavered, fisted the front of his shirt and kept him from pulling away. “I thought you wanted a nap.”
“I do.”
“Should I stay?” He lifted the hem of his polo shirt, exposing enough of his abs that my body responded.
“Yes.”
Something about his earlier words gnawed at me even as I nestled my body around his and settled in to sleep, thinking about the biggest mistake of all.
Chapter 21
Past June Age 26
So much went wrong between me and Keaton. We fought over every stupid thing imaginable. If Keaton longed for a steak, I insisted on chicken. When he wanted to shoot pool, I wanted to go to the movies. If one of us craved chocolate cake, the other worked at a bakery and spent her days surrounded by the stuff. It didn’t make sense. We were losing each other, and while it broke my heart, I could only mourn our failure.
That morning, our argument morphed into a knock down drag out over who got to use the bathroom first before work. Work encompassed an entire other battle. We both worked long hours with schedules that kept us apart more often than we could be together. I left at four in the morning and stayed until at least seven at night, and sometimes later. He worked from ten in the morning usually until one or two the next morning.
But for our anniversary we both made an effort to be off early so we could go out. He’d spent hours on phone calls he thought were secret, planning a night of fun and romance. When the day arrived, he went to Simon’s after work to get ready. He’d left a message for me to meet him at the single bar in Storybook Lake. I spent extra time rehearsing what I would say to him to let him know I wanted to make our marriage work. Earlier in the day, I’d stood in front of the baking oven, practicing different ways to tell him I wanted to start trying again to have a baby, if he still wanted one.
I checked myself in the mirror one last time before zipping out and over to the bar where Keaton waited. I pulled the old wooden framed screen door and smiled at the squeak of its rusted hinges. The dim lighting made it hard for me to see as I stepped inside. The smell of stale beer and fried foods greeted me as I blinked trying to get my eyes to adjust enough so I could see. I stepped to the end of the bar, and my brother’s friend, Scott, smiled and handed me a bottle of beer.
“He’s in the back playing pool,” he said. “But you can’t go back there looking like that.” He looked me up and down with a slight frown on his face.
“Why not?” Panic rose in my chest and bubbled up my throat as I knelt on the barstool, checking my hair and clothes in the mirror behind him.
“Because I don’t want you two having sex on the pool table.” The butterflies in my stomach flew free.
“We’ll see.” Anticipation bubbled through me. I climbed down and headed to the back of the building. A long hallway ran between the front room and poolroom. I almost jogged in my hurry to share my news with Keaton.
As though I had been punched in a lung, the air left my body. My thoughts couldn’t even form complete sentences, only snapshots of what my eyes told me was happening right in front of me. Keaton. Kissing. Tall blonde whose entire body wrapped around his.
What the hell? Her legs twisted around his waist, her hands dug into his hair as she perched on the edge of the pool table. His hands balanced on each side of her. I couldn’t breathe, but found the strength to walk over to my husband intent on reminding him of the fact he was married to me. Those kisses belonged to me. He’d promised in front of God and our families. The damned liar.
His back faced me so he never saw me coming, but the blonde smiled against his mouth, her eyes catching and holding mine as she made a big show of moving to his neck, then nibbling on skin I knew to be sensitive.
I pushed her back against the green felt and yanked him away from her by his shoulder. “What the hell are you doing?”
“Oh, he’s just having a little fun,” Danielle said. “Leave him alone. As a matter of fact, leave us alone.” Her legs still circled his waist as though he belonged to her. She reached for Keaton with her octopus arms, and I stepped in the way.
“You have one minute to get out of here or they’re gonna need dental records to identify you.” I didn’t make threats lightly, and I hoped she knew it.
She waited me out for a minute, then turned around on her butt, scooted to the other edge of the table, and hopped down, shaking her moneymaker as she flounced out of the room.
“Jocelyn.” His body swayed far too drunkenly for the amount of time since he’d arrived. “I’ve been waiting for you.”
“Yeah,” I said, calmly. “It looked like you were waiting for me.”
“Oh, that. I don’t know what that was.” He laughed a little and reached out to put his arms around me, and I pulled away, backing hard into the wall.
“Oh, I’ll tell you what it was. It was you cheating on your wife, on your anniversary!” I shouted and not to out-do the jukebox. I shouted because in that one second, he transformed any love I held for him to pure hate.
He reached for me again, stumbling as he advanced. “Joss--”
“Don’t you touch me, you cheating bastard. I will tear your hands off and beat you to death with them.” Fury flowed through my veins. He'd cheated on me, and to make it worse, he'd cheated with her.
“I didn’t--”
“You were kissing that two-dollar slut when I walked in here. Her legs were all wrapped around your happy place.” He moved closer, backing me against the wall, nowhere to go. “If you don’t get the hell away from me, your little happy place isn’t going to be happy anymore.” I didn’t plan on using it ever again, what did I care if it suddenly became non-operational?
“I love you, Joss. Don’t do this,” he begged. He reached for my arm, and I jerked back, stepping to the side, knocking over the stand of pool sticks in a loud clatter of wood and concrete floor. “Joss--” He ran his hands through his hair and swayed on his feet. It took a minute to right his stance before his eyes filled with the realization poetic words wouldn’t mend the tear in our relationship. “Jocelyn, please don’t do this.”
I saw the tears forming in his eyes and steeled myself against the urge to console him.
“I hate you Keaton and you did this.” I grabbed my beer off the table, threw it a
t the wall, and listened for the satisfying shatter of glass to drown out the sounds of my heart breaking, then stalked out of the bar. As I passed Danielle, I said, “You can have him. I’m done with him.”
I drove around for a couple hours, crying, cursing, and wondering how we had come to this. Finally exhausted, I went home. I walked up the two flights of stairs to the apartment we shared and found him sitting outside the door, leaning against the wall asleep. Kicking him sounded like fun, but probably wouldn’t have done much damage, and I didn’t have the energy to waste. I unlocked the door, went inside, then twisted the deadbolt. He could damned well wait out there until I finished packing my things. Going back to Mom’s made sense to me for about ten minutes. After that, it became clear I needed a new plan.
I sat on the bed an hour later, hugging my knees to my chest, when the banging on the door began.
“Come on, Joss. Let me in. I can’t find my keys.”
The tears kept falling because I couldn’t get the picture of Keaton and Danielle kissing like lovers out of my head. A year passed at least since he’d kissed me so sensually. I knew some of the blame belonged to me, but I couldn’t escape the fact he’d put his hands on someone else, and God only knew what else happened because, damned sure, Keaton wouldn’t remember.
“Please, Joss. I’m sorry.” He knocked again. “I can’t find my phone. If you aren’t going to let me in, call Simon, or my mom, or someone, please!”
I dialed the phone. “Simon, it’s Joss.”
“What’s wrong?”
I could feel the alarm echoing through his voice.
“Keaton was at the bar all over that bitch, Danielle. I want you to take him and push him off the side of the earth.” A sob escaped my throat. “Please. He’s outside the apartment. Will you come get him?” The side of the earth may have been a stretch, but I knew I would never survive such close proximity to the one man I’d never be able to stand being around again. I stuck with my wish, but for Simon’s sake, so as to not put him in the middle, I said, “Take him to his mom’s please?”
“I’ll be there in five minutes.”
“He’s drunk.”
“Okay. I’ll take care of it.” His alarm turned to concern. “Are you okay?”
“I will be.” I had never, in my life, told a bigger lie.
Chapter 22
Present September 2009
When the alarm went off later I jumped out of bed completely refreshed, despite my lack of sleep and overnight exertions with Keaton. This didn’t have to be a mistake. It was a new beginning, one Keaton and I deserved. I needed to figure out what to do about his baby and it’s mother. But not now. Not when my brother needed me more. Keaton obviously planned to stick around for a while. He’d gotten his old job back, put down a root. We could go slow this time. Work on it one day at a time. Hadn’t that been his original plan anyway?
He and Simon barely looked up, enthralled in a blood spilling, car crashing video game, shouting and high-fiving as they attacked avatar drug lords and pimps. I ignored them and poured myself a glass of orange juice, then headed off to the shower.
It took an entire hour to pull Simon away from his game and get him out the door, then into the car. As I climbed in the driver seat, Simon jumped in the back and Keaton sat up front with me. “What’re you doing?” I asked, not having invited him along.
“I thought we could all hang out today, since you don’t have to work.”
I sighed as I backed out of the driveway, then looked at my brother in the mirror. “Have you been sleeping better?”
He shrugged. “No. Still only a few hours here and there.”
He’d developed a condition whereby he could only sleep for small periods at a time. The doctors couldn’t explain the reason or prescribe a cure, so Simon learned to deal with it. In the beginning, we’d stayed up and played cards or video games until he could sleep. Then he would sleep for an hour and be up again. I tried to keep up, but my body’s wiring remained intact and required a normal amount of downtime to function.
“Well, make sure you tell them.” I sounded like our mother. “And tell them about the headaches.”
“I got shot in the brain, doofus. I’m sure they know I have headaches.”
I kept driving. “What about your eyes?”
“I’m hungry,” he said, his usual lack of finesse in changing the subject. “Don’t you own a bakery?”
I’d been avoiding taking Simon to the bakery out of consideration for Lizette. She hadn’t seen him in all the time he’d been home because I told her he was still too sick for visitors. In light of his not remembering her as his girlfriend, I chose to protect her feelings. “Yeah, but it’s probably busy right now.”
“Oh.”
Somehow, I knew that wouldn’t stop him.
“Well, let’s stop by and see. If it’s too bad, we can hit a drive-thru.”
I looked at Keaton, my eyes pleading for help.
He shrugged slightly. “Okay. But I’ll run in. It’ll be faster.”
“Why don’t you want me to go to the bakery? What’re you hiding in there? Another brother, maybe?”
His brain injury sharpened his perception.
“No. I’m definitely not hiding another brother. One of you is enough.”
“Then what?”
Or his persistence.
I sighed. “The girl who owns the bakery with me is the girl you were going out with when you got shot.” I watched his face in the mirror, hoping for a tiny spark of remembrance that never appeared. “I don’t want her to get upset if you don’t remember her.”
“Well, maybe I will remember her.” He grinned. “Is she hot? Like Danielle hot?”
When had Danielle become the ruler by which we measured good looks? I shuddered at the thought. “Ick.”
“I don’t understand why you two can’t get along.”
I shrugged, not wanting to get into it with him. I didn’t look at Keaton. I couldn’t look at him.
“It’s nothing.” Nothing except her baby and my husband probably, maybe, shared more than their acquaintance with her. Dammit. Ex-husband.
But when I pulled up in front of my giant cake of a building it became something. I walked in to find Danielle standing inside the store talking to, or more like berating, Lizette.
“I asked for a cream filled donut, dumb ass.” She tore the pastry in half and threw it at my friend. “Does this look cream filled to you?”
I walked behind the counter. “Is there a problem?”
“Well, don’t I feel special? The owner herself here to see what’s going on.”
Someone swallowed her sassy pill that morning.
“She’s the owner, too.” Simon stood panting behind Danielle. “And I brought Simon.” Her eyes lit up. “To see her.” I jerked a thumb toward Lizette.
He reached out and tapped her shoulder.
She turned. “What is it you used to say? Chicks love scars? Not this one.” She whirled away from him and covered her eyes.
The sparkle left Simon’s entire being. Truthfully, the worst of the visible injury healed. It no longer looked red and inflamed, but simply a star-shaped puff of pulled together skin.
She turned to Lizette. “You two do belong together, I guess.”
Lizette moved the pastry knife to the other side of her body, away from me, as fire burned in my eyes. I wanted to cut Danielle’s heart out. Assuming one pumped inside her. I walked out from behind the counter. “You need to get the hell out of here before you become a nasty accident in an ugly dress.” Truthfully, her dress wasn’t that bad, a multi-colored, off the shoulder tube top with a pencil skirt and a wide belt at her ribcage. One like it in maroon hung in my closet.
She stood her ground. “Are you threatening me?”
I nodded, calmed my voice, and said, “A little, yeah.”
“Okay.” Keaton stepped between us and grabbed me by the shoulders to spin me towa
rd the back room. “Dani, go.”
She sneered angrily as though she just noticed him. Her hands popped to her hips. “You’re taking her side? After what we shared? And our baby?”
All the blood drained from Keaton’s face.
Simon, who caught on quickly despite his injury, in a lightning fast move whirled Keaton around by the shoulder and swung a fist, catching him square on the jaw.
Keaton’s shoulders twisted, and he stumbled backward a few feet.
“You had a baby with my girl?” Simon bellowed, back on the attack.
Lizette, who stood tall at six-three, grabbed him by the waist, and in a move of wickedly impressive strength yanked him behind the counter.
“I’m not your girl,” Danielle said, acid dripping from her voice, a sneer on her lips.
Seriously? That tone? With my brother?
“You just stay with your little tramp over there.”
I’d always been a big believer in working things out with words before any punches exchanged, but this skank pushed me too far. I advanced quickly, swung my arm in a wide sideways arc, and caught Danielle right in her perky little nose.
Immediately, she grabbed her face and plopped down on the floor. “You hit me! I think you broke my nose.”
Simon grabbed me by my hand, which throbbed from the punch, and pulled me to the door. “You two can go kiss each other better and leave us the hell alone.” He slammed the door behind us.
When we’d traveled a few miles down the road, I looked at my brother. His face burned a deep red and his breath came in short, angry puffs. “She hasn’t been your girl for years, Simon. And he’s been your best friend since eighth grade.” I couldn’t believe I defended Keaton, even if the words spoke the truth.
After a few moments and miles, he nodded, pulling my hand off the steering wheel for a quick inspection. It swelled to twice its normal size and bruised to a royal purple. “You better have it looked at.” He sat back, his head against the seat, when a gurgle of laughter escaped his lips. “I can’t believe you hit her.”
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