Jack Griggs
“Another?”
I nodded at my brother’s suggestion and waited for the bar maid to hand me the beer bottle. “Romantic weekend cut short then, eh?”
“Welcome to my world and the world of kids. You know what, you pray for fucking five minutes alone time every day. I’m sick to death of having to take a shit with the door open, just in case. I don’t even get any peace then, but the minutes we got away, it felt like I’d hacked my arm off and left it somewhere.”
I paid attention to my brother’s emotions as he explained himself and I knew he was more than pleased to be home. “I thought it was Rebecca’s idea to come back?”
“It was. I kept her away long enough for her to actually get a full night’s sleep and a little something-something, then faked a strop and happily let her drag me out of there.”
“Liv was fine. She’s a good kid but has a radioactive butt. Something else she gets from her dad.” I laughed. My brother grinned, too, and in one of those moments that reminded me he was my true other half, we clinked bottles together.
Their arrival home was seriously untimely. Carly and I needed to get on the same page with what was going on with us and now that was delayed. I was certain we could make a go of it, but today held a lot of reminders of the damage we’d cause if our secret became real life. I needed to make sure we handled that with care.
My cell vibrated in my pocket and I tried not to panic when I saw Carly’s name appear, but my panicky fumble sent it spiraling to the bar top. Jake went to grab it, too, but I got there first and turned it face down, trying to get my shit together.
“You need to get that?”
“Nope.”
His face changed from confused to intrigued, and I had to head him off at the pass. The phone was still there between us like an elephant in the room and it was making me edgy. He knew it, too. “For fuck’s sake, answer it.”
“It can wait. Just a girl.” When the words left my mouth, I hated them. They felt all sour and wrong.
“Serious?”
“Brother, have you met her?” I asked with a raised eyebrow, dragging my game back in play. “Exactly. Not serious.”
“I worry about you,” he finally admitted. I wondered how much of him coming home had to do with getting the chance to talk to me. We both knew I’d been avoiding him.
“Don’t. I’m good.”
I saw his shoulders sag. He understood I wouldn’t be opening up and having the heart to heart he was hoping for tonight. “Well, if it’s not serious, I’m setting you up. Got a friend on the force who’s working near the college. We went through the academy together.”
This was the last thing I needed or wanted. My fucking head was all over the place and throwing another woman into the mix would not help.
I started to shake my head in protest, but he wasn’t going to be deterred easily. “You just said yourself you’ve got nothing serious going on. So, unless that’s a lie and I need to go detective on your ass then meeting my friend Jackie won’t hurt.”
“Jackie?” I spat my beer back in the bottle. “Jack and Jackie. Now I know I’m not going.”
“Do this for me. She’s nice, a strong woman, and needs a friend. Unless you want Mom, Dad, Dolly and Jonas in your shit then you need to do it. They’re worried, too.”
That would be a fate worse than a blind date with a woman. Mom’s phone calls would increase, she’d bleat to Dad, and he’d moan at Dolly. Dolly would make Jonas’ life unbearable and he’d get involved. He’d smoke my secret with Carly out in less time than it took to boil water.
No.
A blind date it was going to have to be, although getting Carly to see my reasoning could take some serious effort. I knew I’d rather pop my eyes out with a rusty spoon than let her fake it with Xavier-cunting-Burrows. This was definitely a conversation I was not looking forward to. “Okay. Drinks and no expectations. Your round.”
The call from Carly was playing on my mind, and she’d followed it up with a text, so I grabbed the cell and left the bar area to see what she wanted.
Carly : <Two lucky escapes. I don’t think we’ll get a third time lucky. It’s a sign we need to be smart.>
I felt my stomach plummet. The subtext of her message was not something to be done over fucking text.
Me : <Which means?>
Her reply was swift, as I knew it would be.
Carly : <I’m out. It hurts but I need to be the smart one.>
I was so annoyed I wanted to hurl my phone at the wall. I thought about waiting to talk to her, knowing a reply by text would turn into a war of words, but I needed to know. I couldn’t go out there and pretend with my brother with this lurking in my mind.
Me : <That what you want?>
I paced the hallway as I waited for the dreaded vibration.
Carly : <It is.>
I read those two words over and over. I’d been rolling it all around in my mind, wondering how to make us real, and she was fucking bailing. She was afraid, but if she wasn’t invested in making a go of it then why the fuck was I? Had this been a copasetic relationship, I would have marched round there and had this out with her, but it wasn’t. We were flying under the radar. I wondered whether it had only ever been a walk on the wild side for her, something dangerous to brag about after college. Maybe she’d had no intention of letting it get serious and as soon I ventured into the possibility of more, she just needed an excuse to pull the plug.
I should have felt great relief but I didn’t. I wasn’t there yet. My career was still intact and I’d had some epic sex. I should have felt free. But I didn’t. All I felt was disappointment and a level of hurt far worse than when Jake told me he’d slept with my girlfriend.
“Jackie’s waiting for your call,” Jake announced, having done the deed while I was gone.
“She wants to meet, just tell her Wednesday night. Dooley’s bar at 8pm. I figure she’ll recognize me.”
I could see my brother was confused by my complete one-eighty on the matter. A minute ago he’d had to twist my arm and now I was dishing out orders like I wanted her delivered on a silver platter.
I didn’t care. My life had just turned to shit, so I figured I might as well go full frying pan and fire on its ass.
I spent the next two nights in Hawkstown. The first was on my old couch at my old house, now inhabited by my brother and his happy family. I would have been happy to go to Mom’s but Bex wanted to see me. She still worried that Jake and I weren’t quite right after I caught him fucking my girlfriend. Our issues now were nothing to do with that. They were all me. It was the first time in our lives that we were growing apart and letting our lives go in separate directions. In the past, we’d made decisions for both us, but getting older meant that wasn’t the way of the world for us anymore. He had someone else to take into consideration and that was no longer me. In truth, I was still struggling to fill the gap my missing twin had left.
The one person who had come close didn’t think we were worth the effort any more.
So, Rebecca saw me as lonely and unhappy, and always worried that my self-isolation was just another way to make Jake feel bad about Meesha. It wasn’t that. I had no fucking clue what to do with myself. I drifted away and drifted into a job that I wasn’t sure about. And I was still drifting. I was so happy that he’d found his soulmate and fucking sick of the jealousy I felt because I hadn’t. Now, that jealousy had mutated from hadn’t into found her, but can’t have her. Clearly, I was still that aging fuck up who managed to make a mess of a new life, and that included screwing my best friend’s daughter.
On the second night, I stayed with Dolly and Jonas. It was more coupledom and happiness. I was in danger of becoming bitter because I felt constantly surrounded by something I couldn’t find or hold on to. The pisser of it all was that I was willing to upset the natural order of my life to be with Carly and she was the one not interested.
Maybe I’d had a lucky escape. But if that was the case then why the fuck couldn’t I stop thinking about her?
When Dolly went to put the twins in bed, I took the chance to open up to my brother. He was a guy who had found the illicit, unexpected happy ending when he had the bleakest of hope. Falling for your foster sister was never going to be easy at first, no matter how much you wanted it.
“Did you always know how you felt about Dolly?”
I saw him falter in surprise at my out of the blue question. “Shit no. I hated her before I realized what I really felt.”
“Didn’t it matter that you could destroy everything if it didn’t work out?”
He thought on his answer, and when I say thought, I mean squinted at me like he was trying to get to the subtext of my question. “Fuck yeah. That’s why I didn’t do anything. That’s why I left. Then when I came back, I realized life was too short. There something specific you wanna talk about?”
“No. Forget it. It’s over anyway.”
The last three words were not needed. I’d cracked under pressure and given him a sliver of information. I watched as he opened his mouth, getting ready to dig under my skin and question me. I didn’t want that, so I left, hoping that going to bed would show him I was done.
What would I say anyway?
Forget it. It’s over. I might have been ready to throw everything at it, but she wasn’t.
Talking this shit out was definitely not going to help me.