Between the Seams

by Aubrey Gross

  She opened the memory book, smiling at the memories and the thoughts of an eighteen-year-old girl hell-bent on changing the world. Or at least her little corner of it.

  10 Years From Now I…

  Will be Oprah’s go-to psychologist on all of her shows

  Will own my own practice

  Will be married with two kids—boy and girl—to a gorgeous man who owns his own business, makes a lot of money and will never cheat on me

  Will be a great mom who never cheats on her husband or abandons her kids

  Will be living somewhere super cool, like New York City or Chicago or San Francisco

  Will be making a six-figure salary with no debt, a nice house and driving a BMW

  Will no longer feel the need to be perfect

  Will know what love really is

  Will be a member of the Junior League

  Will be gearing up to run for office

  Funny how the only one of those things that had happened was number seven.

  Jo brushed away a lone tear that rolled down her cheek, hating herself for feeling maudlin but realizing that if she was there was probably a good reason for it.

  She hadn’t gone on to become Oprah’s therapist, and instead of opening her own practice had decided to help out high school kids. God knew as a high school counselor she certainly wasn’t making a six-figure salary, her student loan debt was mind-boggling and her dreams of owning a shiny new BMW had been replaced with the reality of driving a Ford Fusion. Mr. Right still hadn’t come along, and at thirty-two she was beginning to wonder if he ever would. The only guy she’d loved as an adult had been shipped off to Afghanistan, and he’d ended things before leaving the States. And she certainly wasn’t a member of the Junior League or planning on running for office any time soon. As for her current town…well, she sure hadn’t pictured herself back in Del Rio taking care of her grandmother, but she supposed her adopted town of Austin was pretty cool. At least that’s what people and dozens of weekly Top Ten lists always told her.

  Jo continued to flip through the memory book, smiling at the photos and random pieces of high school life she’d glued to the pages. Towards the back, folded up and tucked underneath a photo of her, Jenn and Chase, was a lined piece of notebook paper, which she unfolded.

  Dear Chase,

  I’m sorry.

  I’m sorry I haven’t been talking to you much. I think I’ve hurt your feelings. I never meant to do that.

  But I can’t. I can’t talk to you knowing that my mom has a thing for your dad. It’s weird and gross and makes me embarrassed and ashamed.

  My dad doesn’t care who she sleeps with. I think the whole town knows that by now. He probably doesn’t care if I sleep with someone, either.

  But I’m not my mom. And I can’t be around you because I’m too embarrassed and hurt and afraid you’ll hate me.

  You’re my best friend. You, Jenn and me. We’re the Three Amigos. I don’t want to hurt you.

  I’m so sorry.

  Love,

  Jo

  She folded the paper back up and placed it in the book again, tucked neatly under the photo of her, Jenn and Chase. They’d been going into the ninth grade, the best of friends since elementary school. Until that awful day when Jo had overheard her mom on the phone with Chase’s dad. The things her mom had said had made her hot with embarrassment and shame, and even though she didn’t think Chase’s dad would ever cheat on his wife, Jo still felt awful and as if it was somehow her fault. If she and Chase hadn’t been such good friends, her mom might not have ever met his dad. So she’d done what seemed best to a fourteen-year-old girl—she’d distanced herself from her best friend even though it had killed her.

  She’d written the note to him to try to explain, but in the end had chickened out. She couldn’t. She was too embarrassed and ashamed and didn’t want Chase to think she was like her mom.

  Instead, she’d folded the note and tucked it into her diary. That night, after eating supper with her parents and being told not to eat so much—that “thinness is perfection!”—by the woman everyone thought of as The Easy Mom, was the first time Jo made herself throw up.

  ~~*~~

  Chapter Two

  “I saw Chase the other day,” Jo blurted out to Jenn, her best friend since the third grade, as they waited for their server to bring them their food.

  Jenn raised an auburn eyebrow. “Reeeallly? And how was Mr. Straight and Narrow?”

  “Mr. Straight and Narrow?”

  Jenn sipped from her Diet Coke. “Yes, Mr. Straight and Narrow. It makes perfect sense.”

  “I guess. I wouldn’t really know.” Obviously.

  Jenn shrugged a shoulder. “He’s always been responsible, but he’s…changed.”

  Curiosity was getting the better of her, but Jo was afraid to give that away—even to her best friend. Casually, she swirled the straw in her iced tea before taking a sip. Unfortunately, ever since bumping into him at Walmart she hadn’t been able to get those melted chocolate eyes and that slow grin out of her head.

  “How so?”

  “He’s…” Jenn paused to take a sip of her drink. “He’s really serious now. I mean, he was always a little more on the serious side than Matt, but I guess as we’ve gotten older he’s gotten more serious. He owns his own business—commercial real estate—and is pretty damned successful. He also owns a big managed game ranch off the Devils River. He doesn’t really talk about his finances, but from what he has said I’ve gathered that it’s a decent money maker.”

  “Y’know, none of that really surprises me, though. Chase was always smart. I mean, come on, the three of us were separated by—what?—a hundredth of a grade point in high school? ‘Mr. Straight and Narrow’ just sounds so uptight.”

  Jenn stared at something behind Jo and said, “I think he feels like he has something to prove.”

  Jo twisted around to see what Jenn was looking at. Above the bar was a big flat screen TV, camera zoomed in on Matt Roberts’ face as he watched the game from the Wranglers’ dug out.

  “Matt again?”

  “Matt always, you mean.”

  Jo sighed. “I don’t get it. Matt’s obviously a great pitcher, but he’s also always been a bit, well, cocky. I mean, they’ve always been a bit competitive, but I never thought Chase would feel like he had something to prove.”

  “When you get a chance, do a Google search on Chase’s name. That’ll probably tell you a lot.”

  Jo raised her eyebrows. “Okay, now I’m really curious.”

  Jenn squirmed, as if she were uncomfortable. “Let’s just say Chase has been the target of some not so nice women.”

  Jo took another drink of her tea, suddenly wishing she’d ordered something stronger. Her best friend was obviously not telling her something, but Jo couldn’t figure out what or why. They told each other everything. Well, apparently not everything if Jenn’s current reaction was any indication.

  “Okay, now you have to spill.”

  Jenn sighed. “I want to tell you, I really do. It’s just that Chase kind of confided in me one day and was really embarrassed and asked me not to tell anyone. I told him I wouldn’t, and you know how I am about giving my word.”

  “Fair enough.” Jenn had always been the most loyal, trustworthy person Jo had ever known. If you needed to confide in someone you knew would keep your secrets, Jenn was the person to go to. “I guess I need to get to Googling.”

  Jenn breathed an almost imperceptible sigh of relief as their waitress arrived with their food. After thanking the waitress and taking quick bites of their lunch, Jenn asked, “Why are you so curious about Chase, anyway? You haven’t spoken to him or about him since you left for college.”

  Jo knew that her friend’s comment was a statement rather than an accusation, but Jo still felt guilty for
basically abandoning the boy who’d been her other best friend for most of her childhood. “To be honest, I’ve kept up with him a little bit. We ran into each other a couple of times in college at football games. And he doesn’t know it, but every time the Texas baseball team played Baylor in Waco I went to all of the games while he was on the team.”

  Jenn paused, fork in midair, before slowly setting it back down on her plate. “You never told me that. Any of that.”

  Jo shrugged. “I didn’t want to make a big deal out of it. You know what happened and why I stopped talking to him. I’ve always felt bad about it, but I was embarrassed and hoped that if I stopped hanging out with him that my mom would stop hitting on his dad. That obviously didn’t work, but by the time I figured that out the damage had been done.”

  Jenn reached across the table and squeezed Jo’s hand before picking up her fork again. “And yet you kept tabs on him while we were all at our separate universities?”

  Jo smiled. “It was pretty easy, considering he was the closer for the Longhorns. That, and I might have stalked him a couple of times via MySpace back in the day.”

  “Ah, the times before Facebook and Twitter.”

  “We’re getting old, Jenn.”

  “Nah. We’re just now hitting our prime.”

  At thirty-two, Jo sometimes felt old, especially after spending her days counseling high school students. There was nothing like being around teenagers all day to make you feel old, even if you were only in your early thirties. “Be that as it may, I was just curious. It was really good to see him. I’ve missed us, the Three Amigos.”

  “Chase is a good guy. Sometimes I wish he wasn’t like a brother to me—there isn’t exactly a dearth of attractive, successful, single guys around here. At least not our age.”

  “I think that’s the case everywhere.”

  They both dug into their lunches, Jenn eating her salad, Jo enjoying her grilled salmon. After long moments of companionable silence, Jenn took a drink of her Coke then asked, “So how’d it go?”

  “How’d what go?”

  “Running into Chase again. All you said was that you ran into him, didn’t really say anything about how it went or what happened.”

  Jo sighed, still a little embarrassed by the whole thing. “I bumped into him. Literally. With a box of Tampax Super in one hand and a box of overnight pads in the other. Just walked backwards right into him and then almost hit him with the damned tampons.”

  Jenn’s laugh was full and good-natured. Familiar. Welcome and missed. “Oh wow. I’m not sure which of you was probably more embarrassed.”

  “I think I was. At any rate, it was kind of awkward. He didn’t recognize me at first, and I kept almost hitting him with the box of tampons. I felt like one of the teenage girls who comes to my office at least once a week, crushing on the starting quarterback and miserable over it.”

  “Crushing, huh?” Jenn’s green eyes twinkled.

  “Maybe not crushing. But seriously, Jenn, you couldn’t have warned me that Chase grew up and got seriously hot?” Just thinking about those eyes and that smile made her feel like she’d just run a marathon—all hot and breathless.

  Jenn shrugged. “You’re the one who’s been stalking him.”

  Jo felt her cheeks warm. “True. It’s just…good Lord…I mean, he was cute before. But he was so tall and skinny in high school.”

  “He wasn’t in college,” Jenn pointed out.

  Jo finished off her tea as she thought back to the few times she’d seen him face to face in college and on TV during televised games. “No, he wasn’t. I guess I just didn’t really notice it at the time.” Liar, liar pants on fire. “I was still grappling with the shame of my mother’s actions and just too wrapped up in it and my own issues.”

  “Your mom was a slutty bitch who didn’t deserve you as a daughter.”

  Years ago, Jo would have jumped to defend her mom. After several rounds of therapy, though, she knew that her mom hadn’t done anything to deserve her defense. “Be that as it may, I hadn’t quite admitted that at the time. You know that by college I knew that Chase’s dad had put a quick end to her bullshit and had never once done anything to encourage her. Mom sure as hell took her sweet time telling me that, though, and by the time I knew the damage had already been done with Chase.”

  “Jo, it’s been like eighteen years since all of that crap went down. We’re all grownups now. Maybe you should think about, oh, I don’t know, just talking to Chase about it rather than avoiding it and him all together.”

  “Wait, I thought I was supposed to be the therapist here.”

  “I teach seventh graders, so I might as well be a therapist.”

  “So true. I don’t envy you teachers one bit.”

  Jenn clinked her empty glass against Jo’s. “And I don’t envy you guidance counselors one bit, so we’re even.”

  ~~*~~

  “Heard Jo Sommers is back in town.”

  Chase stilled before pushing his sunglasses onto his nose and climbing into his black F-350. Frank Wimbly followed suit, giving Chase a blessed few seconds to get his thoughts in order. “Yeah, I heard that, too.”

  Frank shook his head. “Damned shame what her mama did to that poor girl. And her daddy…didn’t care one damned bit about either of them.”

  Chase glanced over at his gray-haired companion before pulling out of the parking lot and onto Highway 90 to head back into town. As Lake Amistad grew smaller in his rearview mirror, Chase considered his next words. “Yeah, I think they did a number on her.”

  The older man stared out the window at the passing scenery. “You were probably too young to understand what was going on back then, and usually I wouldn’t speak ill of the dead, but if it hadn’t been for Nellie Anne, well, I don’t know how that girl would have survived and made anything of herself.”

  Chase mentally tried to connect the dots and figure out what the old man was hinting at. Despite the fact that he and Jo and Jenn had been best friends as kids, he’d always known that Jo hid stuff from them. He’d met her parents a few times, and they’d seemed ok. As an adult, he’d heard other rumors here and there, but nothing substantial. After both her parents had died in a car accident a few years ago, the rumors had kicked up a bit, but nothing solid or that Chase had thought had any merit. Now he was beginning to wonder.

  “That Chandra Sommers…” Frank shook his head, “now there was a woman who hit on anything with an XY chromosome. Like a cat in heat. All the damned time.”

  Chase had fuzzy memories of Jo’s mom in skirts that were just a bit too short, and tops that were just a tad bit too low. Very large breasts. Teased blonde hair. If he remembered correctly, she’d been a huge Dolly Parton fan, thus Jo’s given name of Jolene. He had a vague memory of Jo being embarrassed when a boy in their class had commented on Chandra’s breasts and how they’d grown in size over Christmas break. A few sizes, really.

  He slowed as they entered the outskirts of city proper and the speed limit dropped. They neared Walmart, and he was taken back to their meeting the other night. He hadn’t mentioned to anyone yet that he’d run into Jo. His thoughts had been uncharacteristically tangled since that night, and his dreams unfortunately just as confused.

  It seemed that maybe his high school crush hadn’t gone away after all.

  ~~*~~

  Frank had been gone fifteen minutes when Owen sauntered into Chase’s office and plopped into one of the big leather chairs in front of Chase’s desk.

  Chase looked up at his friend. “Don’t you ever work?”

  Owen shrugged. “Sure, every now and then.”

  The fact was, Owen worked his ass off, and had a capable crew that could more than take care of the day to day goings-on of his construction business.

  Owen propped his work boots up on the edge of Chase’s desk, folded his hands behind his head an
d said, “I hear Jo Sommers is back in town.”

  Chase pinched the bridge of his nose. “You and everyone else.”

  Owen raised an eyebrow. “Oh yeah?”

  Chase nodded his head and went back to looking over the details of the offer Frank had wanted him to draft.

  “You’re suspiciously silent.”

  “What am I supposed to say? I heard the same thing. So did Frank Wimbly. And apparently you, too. I’m guessing the entire town knows by now.”

  “Probably.”

  Chase flipped to the next page of the contract.

  “You gonna see her?”

  “Why would I see her, Owen? We’ve barely spoken since high school.”

  Owen snorted. Chase glared at him. “Come on, Chase. You were madly in love with her until we were in our twenties. You don’t want some answers?”

  Sure he wanted answers. But he didn’t want drama, and dredging up things long past did nothing but stir up drama.

  “I saw her the other night.” Why the hell had that come out?

  “And?”

  “And nothing, really. I acted like I didn’t recognize her, even though I knew it was her the minute she turned around.” He would recognize those eyes anywhere.

  Owen rolled his eyes. “Sometimes you are such a girl.”

  Chase threw a pen at him. Owen deflected and continued. “Seriously, man. It sounds like she’s gonna be in town all summer, helping take care of her grandma. Maybe now’s the time to get some of those answers you’ve been looking for for years.”

  He sighed. “It’s not important anymore, Owen. I’m over it. Her. Have been for years. I still don’t know what happened and I don’t care. I’m not a kid with an unrequited crush anymore.”

  “Says the man who’s sworn off women.”

  “Yeah, because they’re only using me to get to my brother.”

  Owen shook his head, his expression uncharacteristically hard to read. “Yeah, keep telling yourself that.”

  ~~*~~

  Chapter Three