Fuck.
“Do you need to go?” she asks as the water shuts off.
“Yeah. But I don’t want to.”
“It sounds important.”
I scoot my chair back and stand. “I feel like a total asshole leaving without eating after you spent all of this time—”
“It’s fine.” She smiles widely. “Honest. No worries. It’s fine.”
I narrow my eyes. “Are you sure?”
“One hundred percent.” She looks at the table and then back at me. “I’ll … I’ll bag this up and then bring it over later. Or not, if you don’t want it.”
She nibbles on her bottom lip.
“I definitely want it,” I tell her. “Would you mind bringing it over later? Or I could come back and get it when I get back? My brother needs my help, which is very freaking weird, so I feel compelled to make sure he hasn’t lost his damn mind.”
She grins. “We’ll figure it out. Go. Make sure he’s okay.”
I get the feeling she wants me to leave. I’m not sure why. She doesn’t seem irritated or upset. Just ready for me to go.
“I’ll find you when I get back?” I offer.
“Sure.”
I head to the door. “Thanks for dinner. I owe you one.”
“No,” she says, opening the door for me. “This was because I owed you already.”
I grin. “Looks like it’s going to be a vicious cycle then.”
She twists her lips as I step onto the porch. “Have a good night, Boone.”
“You, too.”
I turn around to face her. Every fiber in my body screams at me to go back inside. It takes every bit of restraint I can gather to override the instinct.
“I’ll leave the door unlocked in case you need inside so you don’t have to go through the window,” I tease, hoping for one more smile.
She sticks her tongue out and closes the door instead.
I laugh to myself as I head across the lawn.
I wonder just how this is going to play out. While it might seem like Jaxi is a woman who will be in and out of my life in a matter of days, something in the bottom of my gut tells me it’s not going to be that easy.
Maybe it’s because I already feel like I know her. Elementally. Although it’s possibly also because I’m so intrigued by her. It’s as if she’s hiding, and strangely, I want to know her more. I want to put in the effort.
I need to get back here as soon as I can. This I know with certainty.
Eight
Jaxi
“And have a curve at your hip that’s hot as hell.”
My face feels hot and practically aches from the stupid, silly grin splitting my cheeks.
I’m sure he didn’t mean it—not like my brain wants to take it, anyway. He was probably being kind and gratuitous. I did make him dinner. It was probably just a reaction to that.
Still …
I feel like I’m walking on air as I make my way back to the kitchen. One glance around the room, and reality hits me like a lead balloon.
Crap!
I pick up my phone and find Libby’s number.
Me: Best place in town to get delicious (and cheap) spaghetti?
I wait for a long minute, but there’s no response.
“I bet they’re out doing some fun,” I say.
After sitting my phone next to the sink, I start cleaning up the mess. Boxes and paper towels go in the garbage, and spoons and pans go into the sink. I imagine Libby and Ted in San Diego, hanging out on the beach. Before I know it, I’m thinking about being in Hawaii … with Boone.
I imagine him in a pair of pineapple-print swim trunks. Warmth spreads through me as if the Hawaiian sun itself was shining from above.
He would be a lot of fun, I think.
I turn on the water and begin to rinse the tomato sauce off the cookware.
My brain wanders to what it would really be like to have a man like Boone—someone who’s calm and funny and seems to be inherently kind.
“If something seems to be too good to be true, it usually is,” I remind myself.
Just as I start to overthink everything, my phone buzzes.
Libby: Try Hillary’s House. Not sure if they’re open or not.
Libby: Didn’t you just make spaghetti?
I fire back my response.
Me: I did, and thank God Boone had to leave and didn’t eat any of it.
Libby: It was that bad?
Me: Yup. I took a bite and almost threw up.
I wait for her reply. It takes a couple of minutes for it to come.
Libby: I’ll call you later. Okay?
I furrow my brow. Weird.
Me: Sure.
Libby: xo
Me:
My stomach tightens as I re-read her text. It could be read so many different ways, and without context, it’s impossible to know how she meant it.
“You can’t overanalyze this,” I tell myself.
Instead, I blow out a breath and find the delivery app. The icon for Hillary’s House is beyond adorable with a pink and white double-h logo. In a few quick presses of a button, spaghetti and garlic bread are on their way to me.
I stand in the middle of the kitchen and look around. “I should get busy on the dishes.”
But I don’t.
The house is so quiet. The only sound is the hum of the freezer as it kicks on to fill the ice maker. Despite the chaos surrounding me, I feel at ease.
I can’t remember the last time I felt like this.
I make an effort to search my memories to recall the most recent moment of feeling completely at peace … and come up empty.
Every memory of my childhood seems tainted with the scent of alcohol. Even the Christmas that I got the pink and purple scooter that I had begged Santa for has a cloud over it thanks to Pete’s drinking problem and Mom’s quick defense of her husband.
My sister and I would huddle in our room. Jeanette would try to distract me with games of Riddle Riddle Ree and knock-knock jokes. She’d capture my attention with stories about middle school or high school—stories that I thought made my ten-year younger self cool by osmosis. Jeanette was my savior until she left on her eighteenth birthday. She said it was to find her father, which was a man our mom met in a bar in her “wild years,” as she called them. But I think she was just getting away from Pete and Mom’s co-dependency.
I couldn’t blame her.
I left on my birthday eight years later.
My heart drops at the thought of Jeanette and twists into an almost unbearable knot.
“What happened to you, Nettie?” I ask.
I mosey through the house, my mind still on my sister and how different my life might’ve gone had she not abandoned me. Would I have the scar on my sternum from the railing that Pete pushed me into? Would I still run my hand over the top of my head and feel the raised skin from the broken vodka bottle? Would I have left town with Shawn a month short of my high school graduation?
Would I have this sense of not belonging anywhere, to anyone, that I have now? That I’ve had all of my life?
I stop at the window in the living room and look outside.
The yard is the perfect shade of green, even in the almost-dark sky. Solar lamps give the white paint on Libby’s garage and Boone’s house a honeyed glow and the flowers in the beds lining the front walkways and window boxes scream less house and more home.
Even though I know what a bachelor pad Boone’s house is, I can still see the makings of a home there too. It’s easy to imagine little kids running through the grass, their voices shrieking through the moss-laden oak trees. The tall windows should have fingerprints marring the glass from sticky hands after a snack stolen from the pantry. I close my eyes and can imagine music playing in the living room and scents of roast beef coming from the kitchen.
He’s built for that kind of life. The way he talks about his family, how he ran out of here to help his brother, the way he is with Leo and m
e—he’s a people person. It’s not hard to imagine him with a wife and kids someday. Actually, it’s impossible to envision him without a host of people surrounding him.
It makes sense. It’s the natural order of things.
For most people.
I used to think I would be a wife too. I had daydreams as a little girl that I would be the mother to a little girl who looked just like me. We would play dolls, have tea parties, and bake cookies together just like the families in the movies I loved so much. My husband would come home and kiss us both on the forehead.
“It could be worse,” I say, tearing my eyes from the house next door. “At least I get Hawaii as a consolation prize.” And you never know. I might find my own Jason Momoa in Hawaii too.
I snort. “Keep dreaming, Jaxi.”
I head back to the kitchen, singing about staring at the blank pages in front of you, and feel my spirits rise.
Hawaii feels like such a stroke of luck. I kind of think it’s the universe’s way of giving me a fresh start, a break from a battle I feel like I’ve had to fight my whole life. First with my parents, then with Shawn and then my landlord when I finally started on my own.
I haven’t let myself think about it too much. There was too much to do, too many things to get rid of, too many plans to make to spend too much brain power on beaches.
But I’m ready for it. Lord, am I ready for it.
Just as I get to the sink, my phone rings.
“Hello?” I say, pressing the speakerphone button.
As soon as I hear the voice on the other side, I freeze.
The sound coming through the line, my eyes go wide.
“Libby? What’s wrong?” I say entirely too loud.
“Jaxi …” The single word is almost indistinguishable through the sobs.
I grip the edge of the counter. “What’s happening? Are you okay?”
“No.”
Her cries ricochet through the phone, landing smack dab in the middle of my heart.
“Are you safe?” I ask. “Where’s Ted?”
While this seems to be the absolute right question to ask, it also seems to absolutely be the wrong one.
Her sobs ease. The next words are clear.
“Fuck. Ted.”
“Libby …” My voice drifts off as I absorb the language my friend is choosing. This isn’t something Libby says—even when she’s super pissed off. “What’s going on?”
It takes her a few moments to get herself together enough to explain things. I pace across the kitchen and try not to rush her.
She’s alive. She seems well physically. And she’s mad at Ted, which seems like a fairly normal thing for a woman to be when it comes to her husband—at least sometimes.
Finally, after what feels like a million minutes, she sucks in a deep breath.
“It turns out,” she says, “that my husband has been having an affair with a woman in our neighborhood, Kimmy Curtis.”
I can’t imagine what Libby’s reaction was to this information because my world—as someone who doesn’t even particularly like Ted and doesn’t know the Curtis woman from a hole in the wall—is rocked.
My feet stop moving. I almost drop the phone as I try to process what she just said.
Ted? An affair?
My poor cousin.
“Are you sure?” I ask.
I roll my eyes. Stupid question. She even knows her name is Kimmy.
“Surely he wouldn’t tell me that if it weren’t true.”
“But I don’t get it. You said he begged you to go to San Diego with him. A mini-second honeymoon. He took you on a fucking romantic date last night, Lib,” I say, frustrated. “What the hell?”
She sighs. “Apparently, it was a last hurrah. Not even a test to see if things were better … than her.” She sniffles. “I guess he wanted a last memory or some shit.”
Fuck. Him.
My jaw clenches. “Okay. What do you need from me? Want me to throw his stuff on the lawn? Have the locks changed? I know this guy Leo now,” I say, surprised that I had the wherewithal to even remember that. “Does Kimmy Curtis have a husband? If so, I need to have a little convo with him—”
“No. I’m not doing that.”
My jaw unclenches and drops to the floor. “Do what?” I shake my head. “Look, Lib, I know you’re a nice person and all. Me too. Mostly. But all is fair in love and liaisons.”
“He did this to me. Not her.” She sniffles. “I honestly don’t care about her. She could live or die, and it doesn’t affect me. Him, on the other hand …”
“So, I need to have a little convo with him then.”
I imagine being face-to-face with Ted’s little pocket-protector-wearing ass. The pleasure I would get from sticking my fingernail into his chest, spitting words that I’ve cooped up through the last five years at his face, and watching him shrivel under the truth of the things I say that I know bother him in the middle of the night—
“This is still new,” she says, cutting off my thoughts, “so I might change my mind. But, right now, I want you to get the trunk out of my master bedroom and … take it somewhere. Maybe Boone will keep it for me.”
“I’m sure he would.”
“Ted is coming home tomorrow, and I’m going to my mom’s house in Vegas.”
I slow blink. “You’re not coming here?”
“How can I? I’m not seeing Kimmy, Jaxi. It’s the same reason you left Columbus. You don’t want to see Shawn, right?”
She has a point.
“But what about your things here? Your life? Your house? You’re not giving up all of this because he couldn’t keep his—well, you know.” I make a face. She doesn’t need reminded about where his dick has been. “I left Columbus because I had nothing to leave. You have all of this, and he doesn’t deserve any of it.”
“I guess … I’ll have to get an attorney. I don’t know. I just know I’m not coming there.”
My synapses stop firing a million times per second and let me think.
Ted is coming home tomorrow.
I cover my face with my hands.
“I know this is a mess for you,” she says, her voice clogged with unshed tears again. “I—”
“Do not apologize to me. Don’t. I’ll be fine. I’ll … I’ll go get a hotel room for a few days. It’s not a big deal.”
“I know you were saving money by staying there. And I know you needed to save that cash too.” Her voice breaks with the weight of everything that has just been placed on her. “I’m sorry.”
“I’m sorry I’m not there with you.” I start pacing again. “Want me to fly to San Diego? It’ll be closer to Hawaii anyway.”
She coughs. “No. I’m getting a flight out of here first thing in the morning. But thank you.”
I bite my lip and make a path against the tile floor. I wish there was something more I could do to help her.
“Is there anything else you want me to get out of here?” I ask her. “Clothes? Jewelry? Books?”
“My brain is so scattered right now that I don’t know. The trunk, for sure. It’s full of my grandmother’s things. Maybe my Bible if you can find it. Um … there are a couple of suitcases under the bed. Just shove some of my clothes in there too if you can.”
Her voice wavers, the tone softening as the shock starts to wear off.
I have so many questions.
How did he tell her? How long was this going on? What’s she going to do when she doesn’t even have a job? Is he going to cut her off so she has no money?
But I don’t ask them. They don’t matter.
“Of course, I can,” I tell her. “Just text me if you think of anything else.”
“Ted will be out of here on the first flight too, I think. I got a different room for tonight. The concierge was all too happy to move me out after the people next door complained about us fighting to the front desk.”
“I’m sorry that happened.”
“Me too.” She cries softly. “He should la
nd in the early afternoon. So …”
“I’ll be gone. And I’ll have your things gone.”
“Thank you.”
I look around, feeling helpless.
“I’m going to go,” she says.
“Are you sure? I don’t want you alone right now. I’m happy to talk you through all of this or just sit here and listen to you cry. I’ll cry too. We can be criers together.”
She laughs through her sniffles. “I need some time alone. I need to make some calls too.”
“I get it. Text me if you need anything. Call me. Anytime.”
“I will. Love you.”
“You more.”
She hangs up without another word.
I set the phone on the counter again and take in a long breath.
While Ted would not be my choice of husband—for me or Libby—I am shocked that he wants a divorce. Libby seemed so happy. And, in his own Ted way, he seemed happy too. But how could he not be? She’s wonderful and beautiful, and her kindness runs as deep as the ocean.
They were planning for the future. They had a five-year plan for crying out loud. I once heard Ted say that every couple should attend therapy regularly so they could avoid problems and keep their marriage strong.
I shake my head.
If Libby and Ted can’t make it work—if Ted couldn’t be faithful to someone as lovely and lovable as my cousin, there’s no hope for any of us—
Least of all me.
Nine
Boone
Ding!
The microwave stops whirling. I open the door and take out the bowl of spaghetti, cursing under my breath as the heat of it burns my fingers.
The kitchen is filled with the midmorning weekend sun. It always seems brighter on Saturdays.
Steam pours off the leftovers, and I blow across the bowl to quicken the reduction in temperature.
Reckless (The Mason Family Series Book 3) Page 7