I didn’t like getting my hands dirty too much, but I did like being her righthand man. She said someday I could even take over the company for her, but I told her there was too much dirt involved.
I didn’t like messes.
I liked things perfectly neat.
“Or he could come fishing with Derek and me,” Dad said as he walked into the doorway of my bedroom. “Do manly things for once in his life.”
I hated fishing.
I hated the idea of the worms.
I hated the idea of the fish flopping side to side.
I hated watching Dad gut them afterward.
But even more so, I hated how Dad always looked disappointed in me when I didn’t want to do the things he was into, like fishing, hunting, and sports.
I liked libraries, and spelling bees, and writing, and Kennedy.
Dad didn’t understand any of those things, which made it hard for him to understand me.
“Landscaping isn’t a woman thing, Cole. The landscaping world is mostly filled with men, and to make Jaxson feel bad about it is disrespectful,” Mom said, backing me up like she always did when it came to Dad being disappointed in me not being more like him.
I guessed that was why she was my best mom-friend. She always had my back.
“Yeah, but he doesn’t get dirty with the job. He doesn’t do any heavy lifting or actual work,” Dad argued. Every time he did this—put me down—my stomach would flip.
Last month, Mom said if he didn’t stop it, she’d leave him, but I didn’t think that was true. She had a way of loving him even when he didn’t deserve to be loved that much.
“Drop it, Cole,” Mom ordered.
He grumbled under his breath and raked his hand through his black hair, which was slowly turning gray. He looked at me for a second before walking out of the room.
I sat up a little, feeling a knot in my throat. “Maybe I should go with him so he’s not mad at me.”
“No. You are your own individual human, Jaxson, and your father doesn’t get to turn you into something you don’t want to be. If you don’t like fishing, that is the end of the conversation.”
I lowered my head. “I wish he was nice like you.”
She kissed my forehead then gave me a tight hug. “You’re perfect the way you are, son. Don’t you ever forget that.”
The next day, Mom tossed my suitcase into the car, and we headed off to camp.
After I got settled in and Mom cried because she was going to miss me over the coming weeks, we said goodbye, and I grabbed my gift for Kennedy and rushed back to the front of the main hall to wait for her to arrive. I sat on top of a giant rock for what felt like hours. When that yellow car with the markings all over it pulled around, my heart just about jumped out of my chest and ran straight into Kennedy’s arms.
When she saw me, she sprinted toward me, shouting my name so loud the aliens on Mars could probably hear her screams. “Jax! Jax! Jaxxxxxxxxxxxx!” she called out, running wildly in my direction with wild arms. Even though she was so embarrassing, and people were staring at us like we were insane, I didn’t care. Kennedy did that for me. She helped me not care that much about what other people thought.
She crashed into my arms, and we laughed as we tumbled over to the ground like complete dorks. The more Kennedy laughed, the more I did, too, because she had the kind of laugh that made everyone chuckle along with her.
She pinned me down and straightened my crooked glasses. “You got new glasses!” she exclaimed.
I sighed.
She noticed.
“You have purple hair.”
She sighed. “You noticed.” She hugged me again.
“I missed you, Sun,” I said, hugging her tighter.
She smiled big, which made me smile bigger. “I missed you, too, Moon. I missed you so much I got you a present!”
“I got you one, too!”
We scrambled to our feet, and I handed her my perfectly wrapped gift. She went digging into her backpack and pulled out her perfectly imperfect gift, which was wrapped in newspaper with way too much tape.
“You first!” She nodded as she jumped up and down with glee.
I rushed to rip the paper open and smiled big when I saw what she’d made me. It was a friendship bracelet with a moon charm on it.
She then held up her arm to show off her matching sun bracelet. “So people will always know we’re best friends.”
I slid it on really fast and couldn’t stop smiling.
“Do you like it?” she asked, biting her bottom lip.
“I love it! I’m never gonna take it off. Now, open yours.”
She tore off the wrapping paper, and her eyes got big when she saw the notebook. “A book of birds?” she asked, reading the cover.
“Yeah. I researched a lot of different kinds of birds and wrote all about them. There’s over thirty! I even drew pictures of them so we can see what we can find when we go on our hikes. And I have two sets of binoculars in my suitcases if we want see the birds up close and—”
Before I could say anything, Kennedy was crashing into me, laying her lips to mine, and she was…?
Wait.
Is this my…?
Did she just…?
Ohmygoshsheiskissingme!
We were kissing!
Kissssssing!
Jax and Kennedy sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G!
Okay, we weren’t sitting in a tree, we were standing next to a rock, but it didn’t matter because I’d just had my first kiss. My first kiss with my best friend, Kennedy Lost.
I freaking love summer camp!
I didn’t know what to do, so I just stood there with my arms at my sides, wondering if this was what it was supposed to feel like. It was as if my heart was going to tear out of my chest and do somersaults on the sidewalk, as if I could run a million laps around the camp and still not be out of breath, as if I was flying. Am I flying?
Am I kissing her back?
I couldn’t tell. I didn’t know how to kiss. My older brother always told me I wouldn’t have to even worry about kissing until I was like forty-nine years old, and I was nowhere near forty-nine years old.
She stopped kissing me.
Dang.
Do that again.
I stood there like a dork, unsure what to do. Kennedy stepped back, and her cute cheeks turned red. I didn’t remember her cheeks being so cute last summer, but that was the thing about Kennedy Lost, I supposed—she got better and better each year.
“Basorexia,” she mumbled. She mumbled! Like me. My heart was still trying to run away.
I narrowed my eyes. “I don’t know what that means.”
She smiled. “I looked up a lot of words in the last year, and basorexia was one of them. It means a desire to kiss.”
Oh.
My new favorite word.
I couldn’t form words because I was too busy looking at Kennedy’s perfect cheeks. She combed her fingers through her loose curls and kept pushing her cheeks higher when she smiled. “I just really love this gift, Jax, so I felt basorexia. Thank you.”
She came back in toward me, only this time she gave me a hug.
Double dang.
“Sorry if that upset you,” Kennedy said, growing nervous, which was weird because I hadn’t known a person like Kennedy could ever be nervous. “But that was my first kiss, and Yoana was telling me your first kiss should always be with someone you care about, and well, you’re my best friend and all, and I thought—”
She stopped her words, because I kissed her. This time I knew it was me kissing and not just me standing still, all because I had intense basorexia.
16
Kennedy
Present day
I went out to the field of flowers every day that week. I’d sit in the middle of the beauty and practice my breathing. One breath in, one breath out, heart still beating, I’m still here.
I’d stay in that field as long as possible, feeling as if I was returning to my
roots, getting back to the person I used to be. Late one evening, as I sat amidst the daisies, Jax appeared, looking a bit shaken up. The moment he noticed me, he took a step backward, as if he was going to retreat, but some kind of heaviness sat in his eyes as he stared my way.
I wondered if he saw the heaviness in my eyes, too.
I patted the spot beside me for him to join, but I had strong doubts that he would take the invitation.
My breath caught in my throat as he took a step forward and walked in my direction.
In the stillness of the night, Jax sat beside me.
After that night, I learned when he traveled to the field, and he learned my periods of meditation, too. I couldn’t stop myself from arriving whenever I knew he’d be there, and he kept showing up whenever I was sitting upon that bench. Time would speed forward and somehow stand still all at once when I was out there with Jax. When it felt as if nothing in the world made sense, at least sitting in that field calmed me. We didn’t talk out there. It was as if words weren’t even needed for us to find our common thread of peacefulness. His stillness felt so comforting, as if his silence was the warmest blanket he was wrapping around me.
Never in my life had I known silence could feel so good until I sat beside Jax Kilter.
It wasn’t until late one afternoon, after about an hour of sitting, that I built up the courage to finally break our silence with words. It was quiet, almost a whisper. If nature hadn’t been so still, he would’ve missed the words falling off my tongue.
“Daisy,” I said, staring out at the field of flowers. “My daughter’s name was Daisy. I named her after my favorite flower.”
Jax turned toward me with a perplexed look on his face. “So when you came upon this field…”
I sniffled and brushed my hand beneath my nose, then nodded. “It kind of knocked me backward. The day before, I’d asked my parents for a sign, a sign that everything would be okay, that somehow I’d find my footing again, and then I went for a walk in the woods and found a field of daisies. I figured that was the sign my parents sent me.”
His elbows rested on his knees, his hands clasped together as he stared forward. “I don’t believe in signs.”
“What do you believe in?”
His brows furrowed, and a vein in his throat throbbed as he stayed quiet.
Nothing.
He believed in nothing.
That had to be hard. If I didn’t have my little beliefs, my small trusts in the universe, I was almost certain I would’ve died a long time ago right alongside my loved ones.
“It must be tough…not having anything to believe in.”
“I’ve made it through this far.”
“That doesn’t mean it was easy.”
“You’re right, it doesn’t. It’s good that you believe in signs. I wish I could myself sometimes.”
I smiled. “It’s never too late to start believing in something.”
“It probably is for me. Old dog, new tricks and all.” He scratched at the scruff on his chin and cleared his throat. “So, the tattoo on your wrist is for her?” he asked. “Your daughter?”
I looked down to the daisy tattoo with the backward D inside it and nodded. My mind went back to my last night with Penn when Marybeth asked about my tattoo—the way he scolded me for being unable to control my emotions, the way he shamed me for falling apart.
“Yeah, it is.”
“Why is the D backward?”
“It’s…I…” My chest tightened, and I felt myself starting to lose the battle with my mind.
Jax must’ve realized it. “You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to,” he said.
But that wasn’t it. I wanted to talk about it. I needed to talk about my little girl. It was how I’d been able to keep her alive in my mind, but Penn was so against any conversations that related to her. He said it made it too hard for him to move on. Maybe that was our biggest problem: he wanted to move on while I wanted to hold on. We were pulling one another in two completely different directions. Of course it wasn’t going to last. It was only a matter of time before our seam ripped.
“No, I want to, it’s just that I get emotional talking about it. My husband hated that about me—how emotional I became when I talked about our daughter. He hated whenever I brought her up.”
“No offense, Kennedy, but your husband sounds like an asshole.”
I laughed. “He had his moments. I’m sure I wasn’t the best wife in the world. I didn’t make things easy for him.”
“Yeah, well, I still get to hate him. But go ahead,” he said, nudging my leg. “Talk about her.”
I inhaled deeply and released it. “She was with me for six beautiful years. When she began writing her name, she’d write her Ds backward, every single time. I’d correct her over and over again. One day when I was telling her yet again that she was writing it wrong, she told me, with her hands on her hips, ‘It’s fine, Mommy. Don’t take life so seriously. Ds can be backward, too.’” I laughed, wiping the tears that had fallen from my eyes. “I got the tattoo to remind myself of that idea, that I shouldn’t take life too seriously. I’m still working on absorbing that message.”
“What else?” he asked me.
I arched an eyebrow. “You want to know more about her?”
“Yes, if you want to share.”
My broken heartbeats began to take shape again. I shifted around a bit and sat up in my chair. “Well, okay. She loved—and I mean loved—bubbles. Whenever we were upset, we’d blow a million bubbles into the air and keep doing it until we were laughing. It became a fact to us that you couldn’t be sad if there were a million bubbles surrounding you.”
He smiled.
Jax smiled.
Gosh, I hadn’t known I needed his smile until he gave it to me.
“What else?” he asked me.
“What do you mean?”
“What else do you want to share about her?”
I arched an eyebrow. “You want to know more about her?”
“Yes. If you want to share.”
I gave him more. I gave him all the details about my sweet little angel, and the way she changed my life for the better. From her favorite television shows to her favorite color. From the way she loved butterflies and chocolate cake. Then, he let me talk about my parents. How Mama’s singing voice sounded like an angel. How Daddy would tell the worst jokes in the world, and they would still be funny. How Mama snorted, how Daddy laughed like a hyena. How Daisy loved to dance in the rain.
Once the words started pouring out of my mouth, the tears that were falling turned into laughter. Laughing. I was laughing from the memories. When the laughter died down, we both sat there quiet as the sky grew darker and darker.
He cleared his throat. “I have to go visit my father at the nursing home.”
“Oh, okay. Do you need anything? Is there anything I can do? If you need someone to talk to about—”
“Sun.”
“Yes?”
He gave me a sad grin. “I’m not there yet.”
I could respect that.
He stood to his feet and held his hand toward me. “Can I walk you home through the woods?”
I took his hand. The spark was there—it never left.
We walked in silence, and when we reached my house, I thanked him.
His hands were stuffed in his pockets, and swayed back and forth in his shoes as if he had something on his mind that he was trying to share.
“What is it?”
“Daisies were my mother’s favorite flower. I planted them out there for her and to hear that that was your daughter’s name makes it feel…” He snickered to himself and shook his head. “Kismet.”
I smiled ear to ear. “What is this? Is Jax Kilter believing in destiny as we know it?”
“Don’t hold your breath. I’m just saying.” He shifted uncomfortably as he stared at my yard. “I can help you with the landscaping at your place if you need a hand. I’m sure Lars pulling out m
ade it tricky to find someone else. My mother was a landscaper. I used to help her when I was younger, and I did the work in the woods. If you need a hand, I can do the landscaping for you.”
My mother was a landscaper.
The word ‘was’ stood out more than I wanted it to.
Oh, Jax.
Let me hug you.
My lips parted in shock from his offer. “Really?”
“I don’t need the commission. Connor will help me out with the project.”
“I…that…” I fought the urge to wrap my arms around him and breathe him in. “Yes. Please. That would be amazing.”
“I’ll get supplies and get started later this week. If you have a plan, let me know. Otherwise, I can whip some blueprints together to go over with you. Just make a list of your favorite flowers and what not, any concepts you want included, and we can go from there.”
“That would be great.”
“Okay. I better get going.”
“Thanks again, Jax—for listening to the stories about my parents and my daughter.”
“I’ll listen to every story you ever tell about them whenever you want to share.”
He disappeared back into the woods, and the butterflies he left with me? They kept on fluttering.
17
Jax
“Time out, rewind. Deep breaths. You’re telling me, we are diving into the world of landscaping?” Connor asked as he sat at my table eating the pizza I ordered for us. He didn’t know the pizza was a bribe yet. Normally, I would’ve made him kale chips and a protein shake.
He shoved the pizza into his mouth, unaware of where this conversation was about to go. “Holy shit—”
“Language,” I order.
“Holy balls!”
“Not much better.”
“No, don’t you see, Jax? This is great! Everyone knows my lucky number is three, which is exactly what this next business venture will be for me! I’ll have three businesses before I’m even eighteen. How many businesses did Bill Gates have at seventeen? I bet you it wasn’t three, that’s for sure.”
“Seeing how you only have one business up and running, let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”
Southern Storms Page 14
