CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“I haven’t seen your house yet,” I reminded Jason the Friday after Melanie and Dominic’s wedding. We’d spent every night together this week, but always at my apartment. Of course, it made more sense because I lived only three miles from work while Jason’s house was a twenty-mile commute over freeways. But I was curious about what kind of habitat Jason Roma had made for himself. And since we’d chosen to have dinner at a steakhouse all the way over by Arizona State, I knew we couldn’t be too far away from where he lived.
He looked up from his plate of steak and potatoes. “We can stay there tonight,” he said, sounding a little surprised. “It’s actually a good thing, since I’ve been neglecting the place all week. I only stopped in for fifteen minutes here and there to grab some clothes.”
I chewed my own steak over our late dinner and wondered if I shouldn’t have said anything. Staying at my place would be easier tonight because I was planning to come into work early tomorrow despite the fact that it was Saturday. This week I’d been so preoccupied after spending all my time with Jason that, even with twelve-hour workdays, I was falling behind. A stack of subcontractor invoices sat on my desk needing to be approved or denied by Monday. Since spending influenced the project’s bottom line, I verified each one with care. Jason had offered to take half of the pile off my hands, but he’d been busy all week running around to a variety of meetings, and our division of labor meant those invoices were my responsibility.
But Jason seemed pleased that I wanted to see his house, so I said nothing about work or invoices or the fact that I’d need a ride back from Chandler early in the morning.
We left the steakhouse after nine, and I yawned as Jason opened the passenger door of his car for me.
“Don’t tell me you’re worn out this early,” he said.
I stood beside his car and stretched my arms. “We’ve been up since six, worked from seven a.m. to seven p.m., and we didn’t exactly get eight hours of sleep last night.”
“Or the night before.” He grinned.
“Or the night before that,” I added, blushing over a few naughty flashbacks.
“You complaining?”
I wrapped my arms around him and leaned in for a kiss. “Never.”
Jason responded by grabbing my ass right there in the parking lot. “Good to know. I’ve got plans.”
“What kind of plans?”
“You’ll like them. Very low maintenance. You won’t even need to wear clothes.”
“Thank god,” I quipped. “Clothes can be such an impediment. Now take me to your house and do bad things to me.”
The town of Chandler, east of Phoenix, swarmed with stucco master-planned communities and shopping malls. Jason pulled into a neat but unremarkable neighborhood called Lake Cove.
“Where’s the lake?” I asked.
“The lake is an artificially constructed giant puddle filled with recycled wastewater.”
“Charming.”
“Yeah. My neighbors like to zip around in there in paddleboats and pretend they don’t live in the desert.”
I laughed as he turned onto Beach Drive.
Jason’s house was a typical one-story, two-car-garage tract home in a neat cul-de-sac. It seemed like the kind of quiet, comfortable place a growing family might choose. I was having some trouble picturing Jason here amid the boxy homes and neat front yards, but he opened the garage door and pulled in.
“I should have stopped by my apartment first and grabbed some clothes,” I said as the garage door groaned shut at our backs.
Jason stroked my thigh. “I thought I told you that you wouldn’t be needing clothes.”
“You did.” I opened the car door. “But first I’ll go check out your house.”
Jason unlocked the door and I walked into the dark kitchen. Maybe I was subconsciously expecting mirror balls and inflatable dolls or a variety of bachelor-pad trappings that would remind me he was only a very recently reformed party boy. But Jason turned on the light and I blinked at a kitchen—neat and clean and completely ordinary.
“You want a beer?” he asked as he opened the fridge. Then he winced. “Fuck, I’m sorry.” He searched the fridge and removed a pair of cans. “Here. Let’s each have a soda instead.”
I sighed. “Jason, it’s okay. I told you the other night at dinner you can drink whatever you want. Have a beer. Have two. I promise I won’t rip it out of your hands.”
He looked slightly embarrassed as he set the cans down on the counter. “A glass of water is healthier.”
“Great. I’ll have one too, in that case.”
Jason started flipping on lights as we wandered into the living room with our glasses of ice water. The furniture looked as if he’d ordered it from an office supply store. Maybe he had, given our hours. A large television shone from one wall and a huge industrial-style clock from the other, but otherwise the living room walls were bare.
Jason fiddled with the television remote. “I’ve just got to run outside for a minute and check on the irrigation system.”
Arizona heat never lets up. I smiled at him. “You care if I wander around in the meantime?”
He raised an eyebrow. “Not as long as you eventually manage to wander into my bed.”
Jason exited through the back sliding-glass doors, and I took a walk. The master bedroom possessed a little more personality than the living room. The light green walls formed a nice contrast to the dark wood furniture. I ran my hand over the dark gray down comforter on his large firm bed, feeling a deliciously wicked thrill about the fact that we’d be defiling its surface shortly. On the wall hung several small paintings—vibrantly colored, almost dreamy landscapes. I looked at them more closely and felt a jolt of recognition, because I’d gone through an artsy phase before I discovered sex and alcohol.
In those days I’d been a great admirer of painter Maxfield Parrish. Apparently Jason was too, although I’d never heard him mention anything remotely art related.
The bathroom was surprisingly neat for a single man, only a razor and a toothbrush visible on the white marble vanity. The closet yawned just beyond the bathroom, but I didn’t really want to go thumbing through his wardrobe.
Outside the master bedroom I found a linen closet with no linen, a half bathroom, a small study with a bare wooden desk and a half-empty bookcase, but at the other end of the hall appeared another bedroom with an adjoining bath.
This room held a smaller bed covered with a plain blue quilt. On the opposite wall stood a single chest of drawers with a folded red polo shirt on top. This room did have a television. And the walls were also decorated with several Maxfield Parrish paintings. I sat on the bed to admire the view of one that looked like a Technicolor rendering of the Grand Canyon.
I was still sitting there lost in the picture when Jason found me.
“Guest room?” I asked him.
He sat down on the bed beside me. “In a way.”
I pointed to the print I’d been staring at. “We have similar tastes in art.”
“Those are originals.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Nope.”
“All of them?”
He nodded and looked up at the paintings. “My father bought them decades ago. They used to hang throughout our house. The collection was larger but it was sold off, along with just about everything else after he lost his company.”
I could tell the topic troubled him. “It was a construction company, wasn’t it?”
“Yup. I was in college when it all went sour. Combination of the housing crisis and shitty management. Can’t say that losing his fortune did anything to improve my dad’s personality.”
I remembered the terrible things Jason had said about his father the night we went to Esposito’s. I picked up his big hand and moved it to my lap when he sighed.
“He was already in his mid-forties when I was born,” Jason said, frowning. “Maybe he had more patience when he was younger, but I doubt it. He didn’t ever plan on being a father. Telling me that was the closest he ever came to an apology, I guess. Like I should understand that by the time I came around, he was a proven motherfucker. He wasn’t going to adapt for some snot-nosed kid who accidentally scratched his Ferrari while running by with a stick. His mood would turn on a dime, and when that man snapped, you either ran for the hills or you wound up bleeding.”
“What about your mother?” I asked.
He shrugged. “She saw what she wanted to see and spent half her time at the spa. Anyway, she found another meal ticket when the money stopped coming.”
“He lives close by? Your dad?”
Jason turned quiet, staring at one of the Parrish paintings. I could feel all the old hurt emanating from him in painful waves. My own heart ached as I pictured a vulnerable little boy at the mercy of a monster. As much as I hated thinking about certain episodes in my own past, I had never endured the kind of trauma Jason had.
Suddenly Jason made a funny sound, kind of a half-smothered laugh. “Maybe I turned into an extraordinary douchebag because I was expected to be one. Looking back, there’s a lot I’m not too proud of, Audrey. I treated people carelessly, especially women. I think you’re probably aware of that. And, except for Dom and his family, I sure as hell never let anyone get too close.”
“Oh, Jason,” I soothed, resting my cheek against his shoulder and hoping the contact helped him feel less alone. We sat like that for a few minutes in comfortable silence.
Jason coughed suddenly. “You asked me if my father lived around here,” he said.
I turned his hand over in my lap and stroked the palm. “Does he?”
“This is his room.”
I straightened up with surprise. “Your father lives with you?” I asked, seeing the room with new eyes now. Not a guest bedroom, but an elderly man’s. It didn’t make sense, though. There were hardly any personal belongings visible in the room, and I was sure I hadn’t seen anyone who looked like he might be Jason’s father while I roamed about the house earlier. “Where is he?”
Jason shook his head. “He doesn’t live with me. Sometimes I bring him here to stay for a day or two if he’s not under any medical watches. He lives in the nursing home two miles down the road.”
“That’s why you moved here to Chandler,” I said, beginning to connect the dots. “To help take care of your father.” If Jason moved close to where his father was living and brought him home whenever he could, they must have repaired their relationship. “I’m sure he appreciates it.”
“He doesn’t remember me, Audrey,” Jason said abruptly.
I was startled. “What?”
“My father had a stroke three years ago that left him with brain damage. His dementia has advanced over time, and at this point he doesn’t remember who I am. Doesn’t remember he even had a son. As far as he knows, I’m just some nice kid who brings him home sometimes, feeds him ice cream, and lets him watch all the television he wants.”
“My god.”
He responded with a bitter burst of laughter. “He sure as hell doesn’t remember what a bastard he was either. He’s downright fucking cheerful most of the time. Always happy to see me, even though he couldn’t separate my face from that of the orderly who changes his bedpan. It’s impossible to even hate him.”
I let Jason’s words sink in.
I felt like I understood, or at least I was beginning to. Jason hadn’t forgiven his father for his terrible mistreatment as a child.
But how do you hold a grudge against a man who has become helpless?
How do you hate someone who doesn’t remember what he did or who he wronged?
Jason was doing the right thing. He was a much better son than his father deserved. All the times I had thought to myself that Jason Roma was nothing but a selfish, hedonistic prick, I had no idea what I was talking about. I had no idea who he really was.
“I sure as hell never let anyone get too close.”
I leaned over to kiss his cheek. “Thank you,” I whispered in his ear.
He looked at me oddly. “For what?”
“For letting me get close to you.”
Jason’s eyes softened and he tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. “Thank you for taking the chance, Audrey.”
I stood up and faced him, placing my palm tenderly against his cheek. He pressed my hand to his face and then kissed it before rising. Wordlessly I led him down the hall to the master bedroom. Once we were there we undressed each other carefully, our breathing and movements growing increasingly frenzied as passion began to take over. We didn’t usually make love gently and it wasn’t gentle now. We collided with unrepentant force again and again, crawling beneath the covers only when we were too sweaty and spent to do anything else. There in Jason’s bed I cradled his head on my breasts and stroked his hair, letting my fingertips wander over his skin, feeling the small indentation behind his shoulder where a terrible scar lived. He sighed in his sleep with contentment, but I stayed wide-eyed in the darkness of his room for a long time, thinking how much more alike we were than I’d realized.
I had also long been out of the habit of letting anyone get close to me. But as I kissed Jason’s head while he slept, the thought occurred to me that I’d never felt this close to anyone.
The problem was I wasn’t sure if that fact frightened me more than it thrilled me.