Chapter 27
Destiny
“If you can’t run with the big dogs, you’d better stay on the porch.”
~ Grandma Dixie
As much as I tried to fight drifting awake, I grew more and more conscious of my surroundings. The air smelled like bacon and coffee. My mouth tasted like I’d been chewing on cotton balls, and my head was as heavy as a bowling ball.
When I tried to open my eyes, I was unsuccessful. I hadn’t remembered using Elmer’s glue for eye shadow, but apparently I had. Finally, after some extraordinary effort, I was able to peel my lids up. The sun was shining so bright through the slit in my drapes that I immediately regretted that action and pressed my face back to the pillow.
The next thing I knew, a loud meow sounded against my ear. Captain Pickle’s wake-up call prompted me to weigh my options. On one hand, I was pretty sure that, if I lay still enough, I would fall back to sleep, which sounded heavenly. On the other, if I didn’t get up and feed my grumpy cat, his next move would be to knead my face until I did. The thought of little paws pushing against my pounding head was enough to motivate me to get up.
In a surprising turn of events, sitting up was easier than I’d expected. As my eyes adjusted to the light I noticed that the dress I’d worn the night before was lying over the chair beside my window. Looking down I realized I was wearing my Lion King Hakuna MaVodka shirt with Pumba and Timon doing a conga line while holding cocktails. I might not have had all the mental puzzle pieces to make out a clear picture of my activities the night before, but I did have enough of them to know that my hangover was well deserved.
Harmony, Cara and I had taken celebration to a whole new level. I was sure Cara was hurting as much, if not more, than I was. Neither of us were drinkers, and we should have known better than to try to party like we were. Harmony would be fine—that girl could drink a sailor under the table. Which must’ve been why she’d taken pity on me and was in my kitchen, whipping up all of those delicious scents filling my bedroom.
It was kind of surprising that the smells weren’t sending me running to the porcelain throne. Just the opposite, actually. As I stood on shaky legs, my stomach growled.
After a quick trip to the bathroom, my hair was piled on top of my head in a messy bun and my teeth no longer felt like they were growing moss.
“Thanks for making breakfast,” I called out as I shuffled down the hall. “You’re the best—”
My words caught in my throat as I entered my kitchen and found JJ in jeans and a T-shirt, standing at the stove with his back to me as he turned the bacon. The white cotton of his shirt was pulled taut across his biceps and the muscular planes of his back.
Glancing over his shoulder, he winked. “The best, huh? I’ve always suspected that’s how you felt. I’m glad you’re finally admitting it.”
“You’re not Harmony.” Yes, I was stating the obvious, but my brain was still suffering the effects of the alcohol bath I’d given it last night.
JJ mimicked the same tone that I’d had. “You’re not Trace.” Then, holding two plates filled with waffles, bacon, and eggs, he crossed my tiny kitchen in one step and set the plates on the table. “Are we playing another game? I think I liked Truth or Dare better.”
Truth or Dare?
Oh boy. Flashes of the night before started filling my mind like a movie montage. JJ carrying me out of the bar. JJ driving me home. JJ making me drink coffee and water. JJ kissing me. JJ making me…
“You’re blushing. Does that mean you’re not up for another round?” he asked as he filled two mugs with coffee.
“I don’t… I wasn’t…” Why did I feel like I was having that dream where I showed up to school naked? My oversized shirt hit my legs mid-thigh. Wait, speaking of which. “Did we…? I was wearing…”
“Last night, after you passed out, I put you in that. Your dress was cute, but I didn’t think it would be too comfortable to sleep in,” he explained as he sat. Then he took a big bite of bacon, casual as could be.
“Oh.” I nodded as I followed his lead and slid into the seat across from him.
“And, no, we didn’t.” He covered his waffles in butter then handed me the knife. “Well, you did, but we were fully dressed the whole time.”
Fully dressed?
Ooooh, right. Now, it was all coming back to me. Me asking JJ to play Truth or Dare. Me climbing on his lap. Me using his hand to…
“What’s wrong, Pip? Cat got your tongue?” JJ’s left eyebrow rose.
“Oh! The cat!” I stood to head over to the counter to feed Captain Pickles, but before I made it one step, I saw him eating from his bowl on the floor.
“I fed him while you were in the bathroom.” JJ handed me the syrup.
“You did?” I asked as I sat back down.
“Yeah,” he said as if it were no big deal.
Maybe it wasn’t. Maybe it shouldn’t have felt more intimate than all of the other things we’d done. But, somehow, it did. Somehow, JJ’s not only making me breakfast, but also feeding Captain Pickles felt…like more.
We sat in comfortable silence as we ate. I was grateful for the time to try to regain my bearings. JJ had taken me home last night and taken care of me—in more ways than one. And he was still there. Still taking care of me. And Captain Pickles.
I broke the silence. “Did you sleep here?”
“Yep. On the couch.” He motioned to the front room.
Trying to tilt the seesaw of emotion we were on in my favor, I teased, “Didn’t trust yourself to stay in my bed?”
His laughter filled the air. I loved that laugh, and I didn’t hear it nearly enough.
“No.” He shook his head as he continued chuckling. “I didn’t trust you. You’re pretty handsy when you drink.”
My cheeks flushed with embarrassment. It wasn’t that I was a prude. It was just that, normally, my sexual escapades were experienced in the safe walls of a monogamous relationship. Not…whatever was going on with me and JJ.
“You don’t have to be embarrassed. Last night was hot. Really hot.” His voice grew especially gravelly on the last hot, and it sent a tingle straight where his hand had been last night.
The last thing I wanted to do was address my tingle or where his hand had been, so I dipped my head and concentrated on the delicious meal sitting in front of me instead. The rest of the breakfast passed in silence. I was just starting to relax when I placed my last bite in my mouth. JJ stood and cleared the plates. I was still chewing when he turned and announced, “We need to talk.”
The earnestness in his voice almost caused me to choke on my waffle. Thankfully, I managed to get it down without anyone having to do the Heimlich.
“Okay,” I agreed then took a large drink of water. “Let’s talk.”
“Would you be more comfortable on the couch?”
I thought about it, but somehow, having the table between us sounded like a good idea. Plus, now that the kitchen was forever ruined for me because I would have the memories of the morning JJ made me breakfast in his backside hugging jeans, there was no point in moving.
My voice sounded much smaller than I’d hoped when I said, “Here’s fine.”
He stared at me for a moment. I wasn’t sure what was going on in his head, but his stare was making my lady parts wake up and say hello. Thankfully, before I started panting like a dog in heat, JJ returned to his seat.
“You asked me a question last night, and I didn’t answer it. Do you remember what it was?” He rested his forearms on the tabletop and leaned forward.
Question. Question. Question. It wasn’t ringing any bells, but I figured that it must have been one of the many that had been taking up space in my brain lately.
“How you got your mom to make the fried chicken?” I guessed.
JJ grinned. “Nope.”
Taking another shot in the dark, I asked, “How you knew about my college boyfriends?”
The grin grew wider, and he shook his head.
Okay, I was going all in. “Why you moved back home? Why you sent me flowers? If you’re really retiring, then why? Why didn’t you tell me? Why di—”
He held up his hand. “No, none of those. But I will answer all of your questions after I answer the one you asked last night.”
“Okay.” If I’d been a cat, I would’abeen dead, because I was about as curious as George on his best day.
When he ran his hands through his hair and scrubbed them over his face, my curiosity morphed into fear. What was so bad that he felt like he had to address it, but at the same time made him so nervous that he was stalling to answer? Did I ask him to marry me? Did I ask if I could have his babies? Did I ask for a kidney?
My patience got the best of me. “What? What did I ask? Was it that bad?” I snapped.
“No.” He reached across the table and took my hands in his. “No, it wasn’t bad. It’s just… I don’t know how to do this. Obviously.” Then he let out a forced laugh. “I keep messing up even though I’m trying to do things the right way.”
The look in JJ’s eyes made me feel like what he was saying should make sense, but I was as confused as a cow on AstroTurf.
“What things? What are you messing up?”
“This.” He waved his hand between us. “Us. You and me.”
I was still lost. “What do you mean? There’s an us?”
“The fact that you have to ask that, proves my point,” he mumbled, frustration radiating off of him as he ran his fingers through his hair.
Seeing him so out of sorts broke my heart. I tried to assure him that he hadn’t done anything wrong. “JJ, listen—”
“No.” He sat up straighter. “I need to talk and you need to listen.”
I shut my mouth. I’d known JJ my whole life. Which meant I’d seen him in all kinds of situations, but I’d never seen him this flustered.
He took a deep breath. “All my life, things have come easy for me. My family. School. Sports. Women. Any time I needed something, either my parents or one of my brothers were there to help. If I wanted something, I got it. School. I wanted good grades. I got them, I graduated with a four point two GPA.
“Sports. I was the starting quarterback and a pitcher junior and senior year of high school. In college, I was the Friday night pitcher and led the country in ERA and strikeouts. I won the Golden Spikes award. I only spent two months in the minors before I was called up to the majors, and I’ve stayed there. My team has won two World Series championships. And women—”
“I know,” I interrupted, not wanting or needing to hear about his many conquests. “You’ve never been lonely.”
“No.” He shook his head, his gaze growing more serious. “That’s the thing, I shouldn’t have been, but I was.
“I was going to say that women were always the easiest thing in my life. I never had to try with them—not in grade school, high school, or college. There was a steady stream.”
I really hoped he had a point and that he would be getting to it soon, because this was exactly what I hadn’t wanted to hear.
“But none of them, not one, mattered. I know that makes me sound like an asshole. And maybe I am. But the only girl that I ever wanted was the girl that I couldn’t have. You.”
At that moment, the entire world could have crumbled around me and I wouldn’t have noticed. When JJ and I had hooked up on the Fourth, he’d said some nice things. He’d told me that he’d wanted me for a long time. Which was nice. Amazing, even. But this sounded like his feelings were more than just physical.
“The question you asked me last night was why I didn’t call you after our weekend together.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I rushed in, hoping we could forget about that and get back to the fact that I was the only girl he’d ever wanted.
“Yes, it does. I know I screwed up. I thought… I knew that, if I heard your voice or even saw your text, I would come back here. I wouldn’t finish my PT, and I had to do that. I had to get back to one hundred percent, or as close as I could, before I could walk away from the game. If I didn’t do that, then I was scared I would have regrets. And I was scared you would think you were a consolation prize. I didn’t call you because I couldn’t. I had to focus on my PT. So I had my brothers keep an eye on you—”
“You did what?”
A sheepish smile spread across his face. “Yeah. I called in all of my favors so that I knew you were okay. I knew Brady was hanging around and I wanted them keeping an eye on him, and also to make sure that you didn’t start seeing someone.”
“What would you have done if I had started dating someone?”
“Sabotaged it,” he answered flatly. “It wouldn’t have lasted anyway, and we both know it. You don’t belong with anyone but me.”
His unapologetic response caused me to laugh. I couldn’t help it. JJ had a way of being so cocky that it was somehow comical.
“So that’s the answer to your question last night. As for the rest: My mom made the chicken because she knows how I feel about you and how ‘boneheaded’—her words, not mine—I’d been. She offered to make it because she took pity on me.
“I knew about the douchebags in college because I have a fake Facebook account, and if I had a dollar for every time I checked your page, I would be richer than Mark Zuckerberg.
“I’m retiring because I’m done playing professional ball. I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want you to feel responsible for my decision. Either way, if I kept playing ball or walked away, if I had talked to you about it, you would have felt like you had to shoulder some of the weight of my decision. It was mine and mine alone to make.
“Like I said, in my life, things have come easy, but there’s always been something missing. I tried to ignore it, tried to tell myself I was just restless, tried to distract myself with other things. But the truth is you’re the only thing that can fill it, and the only time I feel truly at peace is when I’m with you.
“I moved back home because I’m done fighting the feelings I’ve had for you since that damn day in the basement when we played Spin the Bottle. I want to be with you, Destiny. Which is why I sent you flowers. I thought it would be nice to start treating you the way you deserve to be treated.”
I wasn’t laughing anymore. In fact, I was stunned. Speechless. I was having such a hard time taking in all of this information. I heard the words that were coming out of JJ’s mouth, but my brain couldn’t seem to process them. I wanted every word that JJ had said to be true, but…
“I know this is a lot to lay on you and you’ll probably need some time to think about things. I don’t want you to feel any pressure. We can take things as slow as you need. I’ve waited for you for over a decade—I can wait a little longer. So…why don’t you go take a shower and then let’s go down to your new shop and figure out what your next move is.”
“My shop!”
In all the excitement of Cara’s announcement and then the girls’ day and the drinking and JJ’s bringing me home, I’d completely forgotten about the loan and the bakery. Before Harmony and I had headed to Dallas yesterday to meet up with Cara, I’d signed the papers for the loan and the lease on the retail space. I did want to go look at it and start making a game plan, but I had figured I’d be doing it alone. Plus, JJ had his house and all the retirement rumors to deal with.
“You don’t have to go if you don’t want to.”
A look of hurt flashed in JJ’s eyes, but it was gone as quickly as it had appeared. “There’s nothing I’d rather do today. But I know how hard you’ve worked for this, and if you don’t want me to go, then I won’t.”
“I want you to go,” I said without hesitation.
“Then I’m all yours.” His wide-open smile filled me with just as much hope as his words had.
All mine.