Between the Seams

by Aubrey Gross

  For such a private guy, he sometimes wondered how his name ended up in the news so often. Then he would remember that he’d inadvertently caused that to happen. As the city’s top commercial real estate broker—not to mention his relation to Matt—it wasn’t a huge shocker that people would reach out to him or that his name would appear in newsprint. He was well-respected by town leaders and local businessmen, sponsored the local Little League teams and held a pitching clinic in the fall.

  Living life between the seams? Ha! Whatever the fuck that meant.

  He decided a response could wait until tomorrow, and shut down his computer. Knowing he probably needed to leave the office but not yet willing to go back home and hang out with his brother and endure yet another Yoda routine, Chase debated calling Owen or Jenn to meet up for a quick beer.

  He’d pulled up Owen’s number and was in the process of texting him when he realized it was Friday night. Odds were Owen had a date and Jenn was probably doing…something. Knitting or reading or making lesson plans, since Chase couldn’t remember the last time Jenn had gone on a date. Now there was someone who lived life between the seams, or whatever you wanted to call it. Jenn spent her Friday nights knitting.

  Knitting!

  Whereas he spent his…hanging out with a dude in a bar, having one beer and then going home and spending the rest of the time with his damned dog.

  Screw Matt and his sudden I-care-about-you routine.

  Feeling adrift, he set the alarm and locked up, climbed into his truck, started it and stared at the front of the office building. Without really thinking about it, Chase threw the truck into motion.

  Thirty minutes later, lost in a fog of exhaustion and frustration, he realized he’d inadvertently driven to Nellie Westwood’s neighborhood. He shook his head and groaned. What the hell was he doing to himself?

  He slowed as he passed Nellie’s house, debated stopping and ringing the doorbell. He hadn’t seen or talked to Jo since the night of Matt’s injury. Oh, he’d thought about her, probably far more than any man sitting by his brother in ICU should have, but he hadn’t spoken to her.

  Not having her phone number had helped with that, he thought wryly. Then again, it wasn’t like he couldn’t have gotten it from Jenn.

  Instead of stopping, though, he continued down the street, feeling slightly angry at the clawing need that hadn’t gone away ever since he’d run into her that night at Walmart. Had that really been almost a month ago? In some ways, it seemed like years, and in others like it had been yesterday.

  Chase continued to drive slowly down the street, watching for children and toys as the late evening sun cast deceptive shadows over the neighborhood. He turned a corner, and another, circling back while deliberately avoiding Nellie’s, houses now on his left and a small park on his right.

  That’s when he saw her, standing on the edge of the grass, just inside the park, bent at the waist, her body shaking as if she couldn’t get enough air.

  He veered to the curb, slammed the truck into PARK before killing the engine, grabbing the keys and exiting the truck as if it were on fire. He ran the ten yards to her, worried and scared at the way her lungs were heaving.

  He reached her in seconds, placed a reassuring hand on her upper arm, and was greeted by having his hand ripped of her arm and a kick to the shin.

  “Get your hands off of me!” Jo yelled as she stood up, and Chase realized that her right hand was going for the fanny pack at her waist.

  Having no desire to find himself at the wrong end of what he suspected was in that fanny pack, he calmly said, “Jo! Jo! It’s me, Chase!”

  She stopped, hand poised over the black pouch, blinked her eyes and sunk to the ground, her legs crossed Indian-style. Her forehead smacked into her hands as she continued to cry.

  Gingerly now, clueless and just a little scared, Chase crouched down beside her. Jo had always been pretty even-tempered as a kid, so the few times he’d been around her when she’d been upset he’d been completely clueless as to how to make her feel better. Funny how in that regard things really hadn’t changed—he still had no clue what to do to make her feel better.

  But he wanted to try.

  ~~*~~

  Jo tried desperately to get her breathing under control and to make the tears stop as she sat there on the ground, Chase mere inches away from her.

  Why wouldn’t they stop?

  No matter how many deep breaths she took, the shaky feeling in her insides wouldn’t go away, and the tears wouldn’t stop flowing.

  She’d almost shot him.

  Rationally, she realized that she hadn’t known it was him when she’d felt a man’s hand on her arm. She’d been bent at the waist, trying to calm herself down from the panic attack that had gripped her while she’d been running. She’d been thinking about him and bitching and moaning to herself and bam! Panic attack.

  Jo hadn’t had one in years, not since after Ray—the one boyfriend she’d actually loved—had broken up with her after finding out he was being shipped off to Afghanistan. Panic—over being alone, over the thought of him being killed—had gripped her and sent her over the edge. Even then, though, it hadn’t felt like this.

  And then, to make things even better, she’d almost shot him.

  Shot him!

  Her body started shaking, and oxygen seemed harder and harder to come by. Numbly, she registered Chase’s hand on her shoulder, then smoothing her hair. And then she was in his lap and his arms were around her and he was saying something to her in a really soft voice. She couldn’t understand it, but it sounded nice and comforting.

  Air.

  Slowly, but surely, she found air.

  Jo wasn’t sure how long she sat there in his lap, vaguely realized anyone could be staring at them and the odd tableau they made. Stupidly, because she felt something needed to be said, she said the first thing that popped out of her mouth: “Why haven’t you called me?”

  She felt his muscles tense slightly before relaxing again, and felt stupid and childish and selfish for even asking such a thing.

  “I’m sorry, Chase. I shouldn’t have asked you that. You’ve been dealing with your brother, I know. Jenn’s mentioned it. I’ve just been…”

  Worried, she’d been worried, dammit.

  “So you almost shot me because I hadn’t called you?”

  She heard the teasing tone of his voice, but couldn’t keep her body from tensing. She’d almost shot him.

  “Oh, God, Chase. I almost shot you!”

  “It’s not your fault, Jo. I should have said something rather than just grabbing your arm. I know better.”

  She shook her head, knowing that he was right, but still feeling panicky over the entire situation. “I should have known it was you.”

  “How, Jo?”

  Her hands fluttered at her sides, as if searching for answers. “I don’t know. I just should have.”

  “You and I both know that’s a load of bullshit. I approached you without warning, without saying anything and grabbed your arm. You were protecting yourself.” He paused. “If anything, we need to work on your fighting moves and your draw time. Had I been a real threat I could have taken you out before you’d even been able to think about grabbing your gun.”

  She shook her head, but felt some of the tension drain from her body. “I still can’t believe that just happened.”

  “What did just happen?”

  “Other than me almost shooting you? Oh, just a mild panic attack.” The pitch of her voice raised on the last two words, making her sound and feel almost hysterical again.

  Jo closed her eyes and breathed deeply through her nose.

  In.

  Out.

  She seemed to do a lot of deep breathing exercises around him.

  “I think a bench might be more comfortable, what about you?” Chase asked.<
br />
  Jo took another deep breath and nodded. “Probably.”

  They got up and found a bench that afforded them some relative privacy, sitting in silence for long moments as Jo got her breathing under control.

  “I didn’t call because we hadn’t gotten around to exchanging phone numbers.” He sighed as they both looked straight ahead, as far apart from each other on the bench as they could get. She saw his Adam’s apple bob out of the corner of her eye. “We’re…are we even at the part where we exchange numbers? Is that what this is? Is that what we’re doing?”

  She considered his words for a moment before answering. “I’m not sure what we’re doing, Chase. I hadn’t planned on any of this happening. Honestly, when Gran asked me to stay with her over the summer I was scared to death of seeing you but figured it was bound to happen. I hadn’t really allowed myself to think about it beyond that.”

  “I,” his voice was tight when he finally spoke again, “don’t know what to think about that.”

  Jo sighed, her emotions in that weird place between high alert and frayed. “About what?”

  “About all of it.” He sounded angry, and she chanced a look at him.

  Yup, he was angry. Pissed, was more like it.

  “Chase, we haven’t spoken in years, and while that falls mostly on me it falls a little on you, too. I’ve been back here and there—and we both know you knew when I was in town, because Jenn knew and Jenn will tell us anything and everything as long as she’s not sworn to secrecy—and you’ve never once tried to talk to me.”

  “You--”

  She turned so that she was facing him and cut him off. “And that’s just as much on my shoulders as it is yours. Like I said, more on mine than yours, since I was the one who ended things all those years ago. So no, Chase, I hadn’t planned on seeing you or talking to you or kissing you or any of the whatever this is we’ve been doing. But we did see each other and talk to each other, and you did kiss me and I did somewhat drunkenly spill my guts. We can get mad about it—God knows both of us probably have enough stored up anger with each other to burn this town to the ground—but it is what it is, Chase. It just is what it is.”

  He’d turned his body during her tirade, angling it towards hers so that their bent knees were touching. She could feel energy and anger and tension coursing through his body, could see it in the way he held his mouth and his shoulders. As a boy, he hadn’t shown much anger, even though God knew he’d had more than enough reasons to. It figured that as a man, he would hold it in check, tense with it and probably angry that he was angry.

  Same, but different. The words whispered through her head.

  “Anger, Jo? What do you have to be angry about with me? You’re the one who ended our friendship. You. You just stopped talking to me. And then you left town. So please, Jolene, tell me what you have to be angry about.”

  “I wanted you to fight for me!”

  The words were ripped from her before she could snatch them back, loud and angry and clear as the laughter from the kids playing tag some fifty yards away. The truth, which she’d long denied even to herself, lay there between them, her angrily yelled words like a living breathing thing.

  They stared each other, breaths harsh as though they’d both just run a marathon, long moments of charged silence hanging heavy in the air.

  Finally, he spoke. “You sure had a funny way of showing it.”

  “I was fourteen, Chase. I’d just figured out that I wanted you to kiss me. I didn’t know what I was feeling or what I wanted, only that I was embarrassed by all of it and felt like everything was somehow my fault.”

  He considered her for long moments. “For what it’s worth, I wanted to fight for you, but I didn’t think you wanted anything to do with me. So I didn’t.”

  “We’ve both screwed up, Chase.”

  He nodded in concession. “Yeah.”

  “We were kids.”

  He nodded again, looked away. Breathed deeply before saying, “I was in love with you. While we’re at confession, I guess I should throw that out there too along with the rest of this mess.”

  Jo had been prepared for lots of different confessions from Chase; that he’d hated her, that he’d had a crush on her, that he’d wanted to kiss her that day beside the pool, that he wished she’d never come back. This one, though, took her breath away and caused her insides to feel jittery, like a bag of popcorn in the microwave. “Chase…I…when?”

  “Somewhere in the seventh grade.” He said it nonchalantly, but she still knew him well enough to realize he was anything but nonchalant. The importance of that piece of information was not lost on her either. Seventh grade. He’d definitely wanted to kiss her that day by the pool, she was pretty sure of that now.

  “Oh, God. I really did break your heart.” Hers felt like it was shattering into a million tiny pieces.

  He smiled, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Just bruised it a little bit, I think.”

  “Chase—”

  “Jo, it’s in the past.”

  “No, it really isn’t, Chase. Whatever this is that we’ve been doing? It’s all tangled together. You and I both know that. And you have to know that I never, ever meant to hurt you like that. I thought I was doing the right thing, and fuck did the right thing hurt like hell. You were my best friend. The first boy I wanted to kiss. My first real crush. In some ways you were my first love. So it might be in the past, but all that…” she searched for the right word, finally settled on, “shit has helped make us who we are today.”

  She turned and flopped against the back of the bench, tired and lonely, sad and still a little angry. Logically, her counselor’s mind knew that they could only let things build for so long and that they’d both reached a boiling point. She knew it wasn’t healthy—for either of them—to keep so many secrets and emotions locked inside. As a woman, though, she almost wished she didn’t feel all of the things she was feeling, because life would be so much simpler without all those pesky emotions she’d been feeling ever since she’d run into Chase almost a month ago in the feminine hygiene aisle.

  “How is it that even at our ages, we can still make each other feel like awkward, overly emotional teenagers?”

  Jo chuckled. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that no matter how old you get, somewhere inside of you lives an awkward teenager. Emotions are hard, and I don’t know that any of us are well-equipped to deal with them in a not-awkward way. And we never really got to go through that phase together. I guess we’re making up for lost time.”

  “If it’s any consolation, you make me feel like a teenager in other ways, too.”

  Jo turned her head and looked at him. “What?”

  He raked his gaze over her sweaty body and she blushed.

  “Oh. Fair enough.” She fought a giggle. “You make me feel like a teenager, too, for what it’s worth.”

  Chase smiled. “Well, I guess that soothes my ego at least a little bit.”

  They sat in silence. Jo had no clue what he was thinking, but her thoughts were a mess of memories and wishes and emotions. At least the panic had loosened its grip on her.

  “So how’s Matt?” They couldn’t avoid the emotional land mines forever, but there was no reason why they couldn’t take a short break from them, either.

  Chase huffed out a frustrated breath. “He decided he wanted to live with me for a few weeks.”

  “You sound thrilled.”

  “Absolutely. I mean, I am thrilled that he’s okay and that he’s going to be okay. I’m just not thrilled about him crashing at my place for so long.”

  “Understandable. Y’all always had a bit of a competitive relationship.”

  He snorted. “To say the least. We just got back last night. By the time I left the house before six this morning he was already driving me crazy just by being there.”

&nbs
p; “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s not your fault.”

  “Not the Matt stuff. Although, I am sorry he got hurt like that. And I’m sorry he’s imposing on you and making you uncomfortable. But what I meant was that I’m sorry for dumping more emotional crap on you, when you’ve already had a pretty rough past couple of weeks as it is.”

  Chase wrapped his hand around hers and squeezed. “Don’t apologize for the honesty, Jo, or the emotions. I’ve been carrying around the anger and the hurt for so long now I almost take them for granted. I know it isn’t the manly thing to say, but we needed to clear the air.”

  “We did.” She swallowed. “So what is this that we’re doing now?”

  Chase stilled beside her, long enough that she began to worry she’d said the wrong thing yet again, when he finally asked, “Can I have your number?”

  Jo smiled and let hope bloom. Maybe everything was going to be alright between them.

  ~~*~~

  Chapter Ten

  The words of Del Rio’s own Radney Foster poured through the bar’s sound system as people all around him laughed, talked and knocked back shots. Secretly, Chase had always loved “Nobody Wins.” It probably wasn’t the manliest song, but he’d liked it the first time he’d heard it on the radio back in junior high.

  Chase sipped his beer, quiet. The bar wasn’t packed since it was a weekday, but with tomorrow being the Fourth, there were enough people to provide a lively atmosphere. On the other side of the table, Matt steadily greeted fans and well-wishers. He still hadn’t fixed his hair; the half-shaved mess had apparently become a badge of honor.

  Or, knowing his brother, an attempt at picking up chicks. Against doctor’s orders.

  Chase rolled his eyes as yet another woman stuffed into a too-small shirt and too-tight jeans sauntered up to his brother. They were like moths to a goddamned flame.

  Apparently the half-shaved look was working for him.

  After Girl Number Fifty-Seven left, Matt swiveled his chair towards Chase. And just sat there. Staring.