Normally, Jane was a second-guesser. It wasn’t like her to do something as impulsive as a random weekday day trip to Niagara Falls. And if she did decide to do something so out of character, she usually spent the hours following agonizing over it.
That was not happening in this case.
“See?” said Elise, holding up a small square of ragged-edge beige paper so all the girls clustered around the table could see it. “This sample is a little too mushroomy, but that’s what the white felt is for. They say that we can get it to look more solidly ecru if we add more white felt. You should see it. It’s really something. It’s like this big blender you put all this stuff into to make the pulp that will form the paper.” She sighed happily and took a sip of her wine. “I was going to use regular recycled cardstock, but I love that this option is even more environmentally friendly.”
“But not really,” said Wendy, setting her empty pint glass on the bar table with a thunk. “I mean, if you have to buy felt for it—”
“Already bought!” Gia chirped, shooting Wendy a quelling look and producing said felt from her handbag. Gia always carried one of those giant, ugly designer bags that cost as much as a small sedan. She placed a square of felt in front of Elise. “Now, I made a little bit of an executive decision here. This is a one hundred percent wool felt from Mongolia.” Elise cooed as she ran her hand over it. “I thought that would be a better option than synthetic. I’m friends with one of Karl’s drapers, and he hooked me up with a local source.”
“Lagerfeld?” Elise asked, even though they all knew that if Gia was referencing a Karl, it could only be Lagerfeld.
Gia nodded.
“OMG, Ladybug, you are the best.” “Ladybug” was Elise’s pet name for Gia, dating back to their university years, and it only came out when Elise was extra emotional. Elise looked around at all of them, getting a little teary, and placed her hand over her heart. “You’re all the best. Honestly, I love how everyone is coming together around this wedding.”
“I’m so sorry I’m going to have to miss the big papermaking and calligraphy session tomorrow,” Jane said, coughing to cover the yelp that bubbled up her throat when Wendy stamped on her foot under the table.
“I know,” Elise said, turning and grabbing Jane’s hand. “But that’s what I mean. Everyone on this team is really contributing, leveraging her strengths for the common good.” She brought her hand back to her heart, but took Jane’s along, too. “And you especially, Jane. You have the hardest job of them all. Thank you.”
“Oh, he’s not that bad,” Jane said.
“No, he is that bad,” Elise said emphatically. “He’s hardly spoken to Jay, and you should have seen how he smirked at me when we were introduced this afternoon. But I knew you would be able to manage him. You just…you have such an air of responsibility about you. You’re my most levelheaded friend.”
“Uh, thanks?” Jane ventured, tugging a little to try to get her hand back.
“Let’s do shots!” Elise clapped her hands together, which had the side effect of releasing Jane’s hand. “On me! I’ll run and get them at the bar. Be right back, squad!”
Jane had trained herself not to wince when Elise referred to them as a “squad,” but she still bristled internally. If they weren’t careful, Elise would decide it would be “fun” to re-enact Taylor Swift’s Bad Blood video as part of the wedding festivities. And with Gia in town, they even had their own model.
The moment Elise was out of sight, Jane and her fellow bridesmaids slumped back in their chairs.
“Are you going to finish that?” Gia asked, eyeing Jane’s untouched wine. She hadn’t been planning to drink but hadn’t wanted Elise to get on her case for being a party pooper.
“Be my guest,” Jane said, but before Gia could grab the glass, Wendy swooped in, stole it, and chugged it.
Then she slammed it down next to her already-empty beer glass and said, “Mongolian wool, Gia?”
“Actually…” Gia leaned forward and gestured for them to come in close. “It’s from Dollarama.” Then she rummaged around in her fifty-gallon handbag and produced a crinkly plastic bag, presumably holding the rest of the felt, with the chain store’s logo on it.
“Oh my God, I freaking love you,” said Wendy, throwing her head back and performing the signature cackle that always made Jane smile.
“Look who I found at the bar!”
They all started a little—they’d been so huddled in on each other that they hadn’t noticed Elise’s return. Gia shoved the dollar store bag into her purse with such force that she started to slip off her chair. The only thing stopping her was the insertion of a large, masculine arm breaking her fall.
Jane was next to Gia, so her back was to the newcomers, but she didn’t need to see them to recognize those tattoos. The idea that she had woken this morning with that arm draped around her made her face heat.
“This must be the famous brother!” said Gia, eyes twinkling up at her rescuer.
Elise, looking less thrilled than she had a moment ago when they were talking artisanal paper, made introductions.
Jay was carrying a tray of tequila shooters and lime wedges, which he proceeded to pass around. Jane was about to decline when he set a different one in front of her.
“Cam said you’d want this instead.”
It was a B-52. She glanced at Cameron, who winked at her. Wow, that was…thoughtful. Jane was, frankly, impressed that Cameron was here with his brother. It meant he was keeping to his word about the no hookups thing, honoring the terms of their bet.
He plopped down on Gia’s other side and leaned over like he was intending to speak only to Gia, but Jane, since she was paying such close attention, heard what he said. “Well, I don’t know about famous.” Was it just her or had he turned up that slow, not-quite-southern drawl?
Also: crap! She had been fixated, for some reason, on the idea of him accidentally picking up one of Jay’s friends or neighbors and triggering an unexpected chain of fallout that led to disaster.
She hadn’t even thought about Gia.
Gia was gorgeous. Jaw-droppingly gorgeous. Jane was used to it—it was like she’d had exposure therapy or something—but when you were meeting Gia for the first time? Well, just hope you weren’t simultaneously operating any heavy machinery.
Also, Gia was…how to say it?
A little…slutty.
In the best possible, sex-positive, non-shaming, feminist sense of the word.
But still. If Jane was in a five-years-and-counting dry spell, Gia was more than making up for it. Jane could only hope that Gia’s sense of loyalty to Elise—dollar store felt aside, she was taking her maid of honor duties seriously—would mean she would consider Cameron off limits.
Gia scooched her chair closer to Cameron. “So you’re just back from Iraq?”
Apparently not.
“I am indeed,” he answered.
“And what’s up next, Cam?” asked Jay, who, like Jane, must have been listening in on the conversation. “I don’t think you ever said.”
On the surface of things, it was a benign question. Jay’s eyebrows were slightly raised, as if he’d merely asked about how his brother’s day had been. Aside from those elevated eyebrows, Jay was his characteristic cool and unflappable self. Still, though, there was an unmistakable undercurrent of…something there.
“Not sure yet,” Cameron said. A muscle in his jaw twitched.
“And how’s Christie?” Jay asked, so immediately on the heels of Cameron’s answer that it brought to mind a lawyer badgering an opposing witness in court.
“Who’s Christie?” Elise asked.
“Christie is Cameron’s girlfriend,” Jay said, not taking his eyes off his brother.
What? Hadn’t Cameron proclaimed himself “single, young, and back on Canadian soil” just yesterday?
“Christie is my ex-girlfriend,” Cameron answered, staring back at Jay.
Jane found herself strangely relieved. But only because she was glad Cameron wouldn’t be cheating on his girlfriend when he finally got around to checking “hook up with some randoms” off his return-to-civilian-life list.
She was also very curious about this Christie person.
“And how long did you wait after you got back to downgrade her status?” Jay asked.
Elise opened her mouth like she was going to say something. But then she closed it. Jane didn’t blame her. It was hard to know how, or whether, to intervene in this brotherly “discussion.” But she did kind of want it to go on, if only so she could learn what kind of woman Cameron had been with.
But Cameron wasn’t having it. He stood and said, “I’ll see you tomorrow, Jane.” Then he walked away, leaving everyone else staring at the spot where he used to be.
Elise sat back down with Jane and the other girls and stage-whispered, “See? He is that bad.”
* * *
“What the hell is your problem?” Jay asked as he returned to the condo a couple hours later.
Cam was watching TV. Well, okay, he was half-watching TV while reading reviews on Amazon of Jane’s Cloudless Cave books, but whatever. “I might ask the same of you, dear brother.”
“When did you dump Christie?”
It never occurred to his brother that perhaps Cam was the dumpee. But Cam wasn’t about to correct him. “I’m not sure that’s any of your business.” Because it really wasn’t.
“You stay with her while you’re overseas and then dump her the minute you’re back?”
Yeah, that was about enough of this conversation. If Jay hadn’t gotten that message when Cam left the bar earlier, he would just have to keep delivering it. He stood, mock-saluted his brother, and headed for the hallway.
“Have you called Mom yet?” Jay called after him.
Cam sighed and turned around. “Mom doesn’t want to hear from me. I’ll see her soon enough.”
“Are you kidding me? She’s been texting me incessantly, asking about you.”
That gave Cameron pause. When he was deployed, his mother had sent him cards on Christmas and his birthday, but that was the extent of it. Not that he blamed her. His fuck-ups had caused her disappointment after disappointment. He had caused her disappointment after disappointment. Because he was pretty much indistinguishable from his fuck-ups at this point.
He started to turn back toward the hallway when Jay said, “You forgot your phone.” He strode over to where Cam had been sitting and picked up the phone—and of course saw the pile of papers underneath it that Cam had been perusing earlier. Aww, shit. He tilted his head to the ceiling. He so didn’t want to have this conversation right now.
“Are these…financial aid forms?” Jay started pawing through the pile of what was indeed info on financial aid at a couple local universities. Cam had been looking into attending Lakehead University in Thunder Bay after his last deployment—which of course hadn’t been scheduled to end as early as it had. You couldn’t become an officer in the Canadian Forces without a university degree. He hadn’t told anyone about his plan.
When his military career came crashing to a premature halt, he’d assumed that was the end of that. But today, after hanging off the CN Tower with Jane, and hearing her echo back his “Sometimes you have to open your eyes and jump” advice, he’d had a moment of bravado and thought, what the hell? Why not do it anyway? Since Thunder Bay was no longer home, he had gathered info from the three universities in Toronto. Just to look. Just out of curiosity.
Of course, he had been deluded. Besides the tuition problem—yes, he had money saved, but the cost of living in Toronto was astronomical compared to what it would have been sharing an apartment in Thunder Bay. Anyway, what had he thought? That he could show up on a regular campus, a big twenty-seven-year-old punk with a GED, and fit in with the freshman class who all had dreams and aspirations bigger than his? He’d been thinking he’d study history, but he already knew the most important lesson, didn’t he?
History always repeats itself.
Jay finished ruffling through the papers and lifted a surprised gaze to Cam. “Are you thinking of…going to university?” The incredulity in his tone told Cam everything he needed to know.
“No,” he said. “No, I am not.” He turned and headed for the guest room. Time for bed. Alone. Thanks to Jane. He stripped and climbed in, catching a whiff of her lingering scent as he pulled the covers over himself. He hadn’t noticed her wearing any overt scent before. In fact, hadn’t he been thinking that first day at the bar that she smelled like Ivory soap? But somehow, now there was this other smell, and he recognized it as hers. It was…bubble gum? No. He turned his face to the pillow she’d slept on and inhaled deeply. Watermelon?
Whatever the fuck it was, it tented his boxers. Which wasn’t saying much because pretty much everything tented his boxers these days. That was what five months of celibacy followed by sudden immersion in civilian life did. In the field, he tamped that shit down. Of course, there were women around. His best buddy over the past two deployments had been a woman. And Rebecca Mannerly had been, objectively, an attractive woman. But those types of feelings and the brotherhood—for lack of a better word—didn’t mix. For him anyway.
He’d known that Becky took a lot of shit from a lot of guys, including their commanding officer. Captain Biggs had been on her for months before that night. Nothing you could ever really put your finger on, but he’d needle her in ways he wouldn’t any of the guys. Which wasn’t a surprise, really, because Biggs was a grade-A dick. Cam’s CO on his first tour had been a stand-up, honorable guy. He’d been the reason Cam started entertaining the idea of university as a path to becoming an officer. But Biggs? He fulfilled every stereotype of the hyper-masculine soldier who picked on those he perceived as weaker and got off on the power he held. Cam and Becky were part of a group of reservists who’d been called up to fill some gaps in Biggs’s reg force team, and as such they were used to being ribbed about their second-class status. But Biggs’s behavior went way beyond that.
He could still feel his fist connecting with that asshole’s jaw. He wanted to regret his actions that day. He did regret them, in the sense that they’d destroyed his career. He definitely regretted that after he’d landed the punch that had dislodged Biggs and summoned the others, he didn’t stop.
Cam followed his own code of honor. One that dictated that you put your dick on ice when actively deployed. One that dictated that you protect someone—man or woman—when they’re being hurt. Ironic that it had turned out to be his downfall.
The flip side of that code of honor, of that long period of celibacy combined with stress, meant that when he came back, he was ready to go. It was like someone turned on the TV with the volume at full blast in what had been an utterly silent house. And, after his first deployment, Christie had been happy to see him. Or so he’d thought. She’d been happy to fall into bed with him anyway.
He wasn’t sure what the hell had happened to him this time. He should have been able to get laid ten times over by now. The tiny waitress. Sherry of the too much perfume. That Gia girl in the bar earlier. And those were without him even trying.
But no. Instead of ticking that item—the most important one—off his return-to-civilian-life list, he was in bed alone with his hand in his pants and a head full of watermelon.