Until We Touch

Larissa measured the openings, then checked against the list of basket sizes she’d gotten from the big craft shop outside of town.

“They’ll fit perfectly,” she said, showing Bailey the dimensions. “And the baskets have that cotton lining. I can wash it, so everything stays clean.”

Her massage table was already on order and she had a lease on the room for the next year. Talk about taking a big step. But it felt right.

The space was perfect for her. Large, with a couple of windows. Bailey was already talking Roman shades as coverings. There was a single sink in a narrow cabinet that gave her enough counter space to heat wet packs along with river rocks if she wanted to do hot stone massage. Even with the huge massage table Kenny and Sam had picked out, she would still have room for a desk, a bench and a corner storage unit.

Bailey pulled the paint chips out of her bag. “Okay, then, onto the next thing. What color do you want? I think we should narrow it down to your favorite three or four. Then we’ll go get samples and paint squares on the wall.”

“You can do that?”

“Sure. The hardware store will make up little cans of paint to try at home. It’s great. They’re, like, three dollars each. A chip is one thing, but seeing the paint in place changes everything.”

“How do you know so much about home improvement?”

Bailey shrugged. “I was raised by my grandmother. Money was tight, but that didn’t stop her from being creative. She was a big believer in turning trash into treasure. I know how to make a nickel cry for mercy.”

“Then you’re my decorating guru.” Larissa took the paint chips and flipped through them. “I need a neutral color that is calming and appealing to both men and women.”

“So not pink or lavender?”

“Probably not.”

They went through dozens of choices before settling on a couple of sage greens, two blues and a warm ivory.

“Perfect,” Bailey said. “The next step is to get the samples. Why don’t we grab some lunch and then go to the hardware store?”

Larissa wrinkled her nose. “You must have better things to do than babysit me today. What about Chloe?”

“She’s with a couple of her friends. It’s an all-day birthday party. She’s going to be exhausted when she gets home.” Bailey smiled. “Sorry, you’re stuck with me.”

“Not stuck. I love the company.”

“Good. Let’s go to Jo’s. I’m dying for nachos.”

Larissa couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt like eating. It would have been before things had ended with Jack. Since then she’d only picked at food. Nothing interested her and she was never hungry. But now she felt a little rumbling in her stomach.

“Nachos do sound good,” she admitted. “Okay, let’s go.”

They left the day spa and walked along Fifth. There were plenty of tourists in town for the End of Summer festival, but they mostly kept to the main streets, leaving the rest of town for the locals. It was a good system, Larissa thought. One that allowed the dollars to flow in while keeping things livable.

“I talked to my mom a few days ago,” Larissa said as they crossed the street.

“Did she try to talk you into moving back to L.A.?”

“Yes, but not very hard. I told her I liked it here, that I’d made a lot of friends and had a good life. She was sorry Jack hurt me but relieved it was over. She was very supportive.” There’d been an offer of money, but with Taryn, Kenny and Sam buying her the massage table, she could swing the rest of it herself.

“I promised to go home for Thanksgiving,” she continued. “So everyone can see I’m okay. By then I’m hoping to tell them my business is a success.”

“It will be,” Bailey said confidently. “You’re good at what you do and you’re going to have steady customers.”

Larissa nodded. Kenny and Sam were promising to want regular massages. For a second she wondered where Jack was getting his massages. Probably in Sacramento, she thought, trying not to let the knowledge hurt her. Or maybe there was someone else in town. Not that he or she would understand how to work the scar tissue so it didn’t—

Not her problem anymore, she reminded herself firmly. Jack had chosen to walk away from her. From what they could have been together. There were consequences to every action. He was going to have to deal with his.

“I should really be going on a diet,” Bailey said, “and all I can think about is what kind of nachos Jo is going to have on special today. Maybe I need food counseling.”

Larissa stared at her. “What are you talking about? You look great. You have curves. No one is going to think you look like a boy.”

“No one thinks that about you, either,” Bailey pointed out. She patted her hips. “I could lose ten pounds. Or twenty. I probably should. Maybe if I started walking or something. It’s just I’ve never been a fan of exercise. And when I see Taryn’s bony butt, I just want to eat a brownie.”

“She is intimidating.”

“Yeah, right. You’re the same size.”

Normally Larissa was a few pounds heavier, but she knew that right now she could easily fit into any of Taryn’s tightest dresses. Not eating had a way of doing that to a person.

“Not all exercise requires sweat,” she told her friend. “Have you tried yoga?”

“I’m not super bendy,” Bailey admitted. “Or coordinated.”

“Neither is necessary. All the moves can be modified to your level of flexibility and fitness. The nice part is it forces you to focus on your breathing and your body for an hour. There’s no escaping that. With running or weight training, you can get lost in what you’re doing. But with the emphasis on breath with movement, yoga brings you back to the present.”

“That does sound nice,” Bailey admitted, although she still sounded a little doubtful. “I’ll see if there’s a class somewhere I can try.”

They walked into Jo’s.

It took Larissa’s eyes a second to adjust to the dimmer lighting after being out in the bright afternoon sun. When she’d blinked a couple of times she saw the familiar bar, the specials on the chalkboard—pulled pork nachos today—and the tables and booths.

Speaking of which, several of the tables had been pushed together for a large party and several of the guests were already there. She blinked again as she recognized Taryn and Isabel, along with Felicia, Patience, Dellina, Fayrene and Ana Raquel.

“You’re late,” Taryn said as she approached them. “We’ve all been drinking and it’s not even one in the afternoon.” She hugged Larissa. “Hey, you. How are you feeling?”

Jo carried over pitchers of margaritas. “Nachos are coming up, along with chips, salsa and guacamole.” She gave Larissa a sympathetic smile. “Some men are jerks. The next one won’t be.”

Patience gave her a hug. “She’s right. I’m so sorry about Jack. Taryn says I can’t ask my husband to shoot him, but if that changes, let me know. Justice is an excellent shot.”

One by one Larissa’s friends welcomed her and offered words of support, threats to Jack or both. She was seated in the center of the group with everyone around her. Margaritas were poured.

She turned to Bailey. “You did this?”

“I put out the word that we’d be coming here for lunch,” the redhead told her. “The rest of it just sort of happened.”

Taryn grabbed her hand. “We love you. Where else would we be?”

Larissa felt a slight easing of the pain in her heart. Healing, she thought with relief. Finally there was going to be a little healing.

* * *

JACK WALKED INTO Taryn’s office and put the envelope on her desk. She barely glanced at him as she typed on her computer.

“What?” she asked.

He pointed to the letter. “That’s for you.”

She kept her attention on her screen. “I’ll deal with it later.”

She was ignoring him. He got that. He even liked it. But this was different.

“That’s my letter of resignation. I’m leaving the firm.”

He waited for her to react. Because they’d been together a long time. He couldn’t just go off on his own.

She glanced at the paper, then back to her screen. “Okay. Like I said, I’ll deal with it later.”

“That’s it? That’s all I get? I tell you I’m quitting and you’ll deal with it later.”

She sighed, then turned to face him. “What do you want, Jack? Should I cry? Should I beg you not to go? You’re a grown man. You can make your own decisions. If you want out of Score, fine. We have plenty of clients. Bringing in new ones isn’t that important. Kenny can handle that himself. So go.”

He genuinely didn’t understand. “Just like that? I deserve a hell of a lot more.”

She rose and faced him, her desk between them. “Do you? I guess I don’t agree. The Jack I used to know, the great guy who saved me from sleeping in my car when we first met, he deserves more. The man I married all those years ago, yes, I would ask him to stay. But you’re not that guy anymore. You haven’t been for a while. So no, I don’t feel a whole lot of obligation.”

Her violet eyes snapped with anger. “You’re a self-indulgent bastard who’s trying to ruin himself. I have no problem with that. What I object to is your attempt to take the rest of us with you. You were my friend, Jack. My best friend in the world. I trusted you more than I trusted anyone except Angel, and you betrayed me. You were deliberately cruel. But I can deal with that because there’s nothing you can do to me that can compare with what I’ve been through before. But not Larissa.”

He held himself steady as her words attacked. Each one was a cut or a body blow. Each made him a little smaller and if he stayed here long enough he would cease to exist. But he couldn’t move. He deserved this. All of it.

“Her only crime is loving you,” Taryn continued. “Loving all of us. She has the biggest heart of anyone I know. And you wanted that. You wanted her to be your front, so you could look like a nice guy. You wanted her causes because watching her take care of everyone around you made you feel alive. But you’re not. You haven’t been since Lucas died. You’ve been going through the motions.”

She leaned toward him. “You know why Lucas got sick and died? Because he still had a heart. You never did. You fooled us all. Well, not anymore, Jack.” She picked up the envelope. “You want to quit? Great. Because we want you gone.”

She lowered herself to her chair and returned her attention to her computer. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have work to do.”

CHAPTER TWENTY

LARISSA HELD HER brand-new certification in her hands. She had to admit, it looked really good. She had a frame waiting for it at the day spa. She was going to meet Bailey there and together they would hang it.

The past couple of weeks had been a lot of work. She’d chosen a paint color and learned what it was like to patch, sand, primer and paint. She’d ordered linens and oils, and arranged for the massage table to be delivered. She’d gone to her first estate sale with Isabel and Ford and had found a beautiful antique desk that would be perfect for any paperwork she had to do at her new location. She would officially be open for business on Monday.

She was moving forward. Painfully, slowly, but progress was made. The nights were the toughest. Not so much the evenings—she could keep those filled. But nights were long and empty and she spent them missing Jack.

Nearly everyone she knew was taking her side. Even Percy, whom she saw a few times a week, was trash-talking him. Larissa supposed she should have been gratified by the show of support. But all she could think was that he was alone in all this. Despite everything, she worried about him, wanted him, needed him. Loved him.

She accepted that maybe she was a one-man woman. That she would spend the rest of her days wanting what she could never have. And if that was the case, she was going to have to figure out how to be happy on her own.

“A problem for another day,” she told herself as she hurried toward the day spa. She went inside and used her shiny new key to open the door to her room. Once there, she paused to take it all in.

The walls were a cool, restful shade of sage. The massage table—the biggest, baddest one available—stood in the center of the large open space. To the left were the two storage units, now filled with pretty baskets of fresh sheets, blankets and towels. A corner cabinet held her oils. There was a bench by the door where her clients could sit to put on shoes and socks. Hooks and hangers gave them a place to hang their clothes. Her appointment book lay open on her small desk.

She reached for the small, backless, rolling stool that she would use during massages as well as at her desk, then sat down. After picking up the phone, she hit the talk button to access her newly acquired business voice mail.

“You have seventeen messages. Press one to hear your messages.”

Larissa frowned. Seventeen? Was she getting prank calls?

She pulled a pen out of her bag and a pad of paper from her single desk drawer, then pushed one.

“Larissa, it’s Eddie Carberry. I want to schedule a massage. One of those hot stone ones. But I don’t want any little rocks between my toes. That’s too weird. Thursday afternoons work best for me.” Eddie left her number and Larissa wrote it down.

The second call was from Mayor Marsha, also scheduling a massage. The next message came from Josh Golden saying he’d heard she understood about old sports injuries and he wanted to set up an appointment. And so it went. Seventeen calls with more than half of the people interested in standing appointments—either weekly or biweekly.