“I make them too, Mom. And I love you, too.”
God, it was so good hearing those words come from his mouth. I knew that this wasn’t happily ever after. There were going to be tough times ahead of us; it was just part of being a mom and raising a child. I just hoped and prayed we would always have moments like these where we could say we loved each other. Where we could admit when we’re wrong and forgive each other too.
“Okay, that’s enough loving for now. I’m going to need you to get out of here. Now,” Linc said, his gaze bouncing around the hallway.
And just like that, the moment was broken, but I didn’t mind one bit. My boy had forgiven me, so all was right in our world.
The door to Eli’s guest bedroom swung open, and then a pair of heavy feet stomped across the floor and over to the window. When the curtains were jerked open, sunlight streamed into the darkened tomb of a room. Swinging an arm over my eyes, I growled, “Go away.”
“It’s three in the afternoon.”
“I don’t fucking care what time it is.”
The next thing I knew, Eli had jerked my hand away from my eyes and was staring daggers down at me. “Oh, I’m well aware you don’t care about the time. You also clearly don’t care about any type of personal hygiene since you haven’t showered for days, and you obviously don’t give two shits about your liver since all you’ve done for the last week is drink vodka like a fucking fish.”
A week ago when my relationship with Rae had gone down in flames, I’d taken refuge at Eli’s townhouse. Like a pussy, I couldn’t bring myself to go back home because I didn’t want to be reminded of my time there with Rae. When I was completely smashed, I’d seriously contemplated burning the place down. Now I was a little more sober, I’d decided to put it on the market and start fresh somewhere new. Of course, that would require me getting out of bed and putting on clothes, which I had no desire to do.
With a grave expression, Eli shook his head at me. “I can’t continue watching you do this to yourself, bro.”
Sitting up, I glowered back at him. “Fine. If you’re going to give me shit, I’ll just go home.”
“I’m not giving you shit. I’m genuinely worried about you.”
Deep down, I knew he was. It was written all over his face. Especially in the dark circles under his eyes. While I tended to sleep when I was worried or depressed, Eli experienced crippling insomnia. “I do appreciate your concern. But I’d really prefer to go back to sleep.”
When I started to lie back down, Eli punched me in the arm. Hard. “What the hell?” I demanded as I rubbed my aching muscle.
“You’re not going to drown yourself in more booze while swimming in a pity-party. You’re going to get your sorry ass up and figure out how to get Rae back.”
“And what if I don’t want Rae back?” I shot back. Yeah, I didn’t believe me either. I was just spouting lies to cover for the fact I would never get Rae back.
“I can’t be sorry for something I really don’t feel remorse for. As far as undermining your parenting, maybe someone needs to do it since you’re screwing up your kid’s happiness because of your own warped issues.”
God, how could I have said something so hurtful to her? Rae didn’t have warped issues. Next to my mother and sister, she was the most devoted mother I’d ever seen. Nothing she had ever done warranted my extreme criticism.
“Give me a break, G. You call out her name in the night.”
Oh shit. Had I really been doing that? “Yes, you have,” Eli said, answering the questions in my mind.
“I don’t know if I can get her back.”
“But you haven’t even tried? Have you once tried to call or text her?”
“No.”
“Then how to do you know?”
My mind flashed back again—like it had ten thousand times in the last week—to our horrible showdown behind the curtain of the elementary school auditorium. The insults we’d hurled at each other might as well have bullets or grenades. They’d had the same wounding power. “The way we ended was brutal.”
“But what if it’s not the end? You may have lost the battle, but there’s still a war to be won, but only if you’re willing to fight.”
“You’ve been watching Saving Private Ryan again, haven’t you?”
Scowling at me, Eli replied, “Would you please focus on you and Rae?”
“I am. The opening beach scene at Normandy? Yeah, that was what happened between us.” With my hands, I imitated bombs bursting and machine-gun fire while simultaneously making the noises with my mouth.
I must’ve sounded and looked fucking crazy because Eli frowned at me. “I think we need to get some food into you. There’s an IHOP right around the corner. Nobody will be expecting to see us there.”
Raking my hand over my face, I groaned. “I can’t look at a plate of French toast.”
“Oh Jesus,” Eli muttered. It seemed he remembered me telling him about going to Rafferty’s to get Rae’s favorite breakfast. Although he looked ready to run out of the room and never look back, he surprised me by easing down on the bed beside me. “There’s something I feel I need to tell you.”
Since his tone was slightly freaking me out, I replied, “Uh, okay.”
“I envy what you have with Rae.”
My jaw dropped down to my chest. I didn’t know if I was still intoxicated, or if I’d actually heard Eli say he was envious of me. Me. The man who had the world at his feet was jealous of me? That was unfathomable. “Seriously?” I croaked.
He nodded. “You found your true other half. Rae is everything you’re not, and you’re everything she’s not. You complete each other.”
“Wow,” I murmured.
“Don’t you realize how special that is? I’ve been searching for the last two years, and I can’t find it. I gotta say I’m pretty pissed that you weren’t even looking, and something truly incredible fell right into your lap.”
That was the truth. Rae had been incredible from the very first moments I spent with her. All sass and spark. Oh, God. Even though I was still angry at her, I knew she was the most amazing thing that would ever happen to me. She hadn’t that I was just a musician and not better for anything else. That was on me. So on me. She’d rightly criticized me for undermining her place as decision maker for her son. For their lives. Her anger had been justified. And her son? That kid? Fucking phenomenal. There was no way if I walked away from her, I would ever find something so indefinable with someone else. But if there was one thing that was also completely clear, it was this. It wasn’t just about her—I would never find another Linc.
Tears stung my eyes. Feeling like an epic pansy, I ground them away with my fists. “But the things I said to her.” I cringed. “I don’t think I can come back from that.”
“I can’t imagine there’s anything you said that could have been that terrible.”
“I told her she was screwing up her kid’s happiness. I compared Rae to her mother, who ran away with a musician. Told her that she’d just been desperate for some musician dick.”
Eli recoiled back from me. “What the fuck, man?”
“She’d wounded me, and I wanted to wound her back.”
“You did a fanfuckingtastic job.” Yep. That about sums it up.
“I’m well aware of that.”
Eli raked his hand over his face. “You of all people should know the power of words.”
“Once again, tell me something I don’t know.”
“I am. You’re going to have use your power for words to get Rae back.”
“What do you mean?”
“Come on, asshole. Think of what brought the two of you together.”
My fucking writer’s block brought us together, but I had to con my way into her world to be anywhere near her after that first inspiration hit. She’d hated me. Despised me without giving me a chance. But I had been a dick to her, so I had deserved it. How did Eli think that would help win her—
Fuck.
I
’m such idiot.
The power of words.
Rae understood me within the words of my songs. She had right from the beginning when I showed her the lead song on the album.
I love the symbolism of the man being a prisoner of his own insecurities, which causes him to be incapable of love. And then he finds the woman who sets him free.
Was I truly incapable of love? Or had I not found the right person to love?
One thing I was absolutely certain about was that Rae had set me free. In more ways than one.
It had been right in front of my face all along. All the things I wanted to say to Rae but I didn’t think I express verbally I could put into a song. “I could write her a song and then sing it to her.”
“Exactly.”
I nodded. “Okay, I’m going to need some things from you.”
“Shoot.”
“First, I need some Thai or Indian takeout. Something about spicy food gets the juices flowing.”
Eli grinned. “As well as your sinuses.”
I laughed, both the sound and sensation of it feeling so foreign. It had been well over a week since I’d found anything remotely funny to laugh at. “Exactly.”
“What else?”
“While you order the food, I’m going to grab a shower.”
“Thank God. You seriously stink to high heaven, bro.”
“Whatever.”
Cocking his head at me, Eli asked, “Once you have a shower and takeout, what next?”
“I’m going to need some privacy. Do you think you could manage not to burst in here for the rest of the night?”
“Now that I don’t have to fear you’re in here impaling yourself on your drumsticks, I will be happy to leave you alone. In fact, I’ll go one step further and call Ashton to see if I can go over to her place.”
Ashton was one of the backup singers for Jacob’s Ladder, and Eli had been on and off again with her for over a year.
“Still trying to make it work with her?”
“Yep. Even though she’s not the one, she’s a lot of fun to be with.” He waggled his brows. “Not to mention she gives the best head I’ve had in years.”
I groaned. “Like I needed to know that.”
“She sucks like a Hoover.”
Holding up a hand, I replied, “Enough. If you don’t stop, I am going to impale you on one of my drumsticks.”
Eli laughed. “Okay, okay. I’ll shut up and go order both Thai and Indian takeout.” He winked at me. “I don’t want there to be anything stopping you from penning just the right words to get Rae back.
“Why, Eli?”
“Because you’re a great fit, G. She’s your one.”
When he started to rise off the bed, I reached out for his arm. “Thanks, Eli. I owe you hell of a lot.”
A sincere smile spread across his face. “Glad you came to me.”
“Always be there for you, man.”
“I know that. You’re my brother—my twin.” Eli started for the door and then stopped. Turning around he said, “You know, Gabe, it’s not just you having Rae that I envy.”
My heartbeat skidded to a stop before restarting. “It’s not?”
“I know you think—that you’ve always thought—you got the short end of the talent stick between the two of us and with Micah and Abby, but you are so much more than you realize. What you do with the words and the music you weave together is something I will always be envious of.”
I swallowed hard, willing myself not to cry. “Fuck,” I croaked.
With a chuckle, Eli said, “Now there’s something. I’ve made the master of words speechless.”
“You have, and it pisses me off because I would really like to tell you what it means to me.”
“It’s not necessary. I can see everything you want to say in your eyes.”
I furrowed my brows. “You can?”
He nodded. “And you’re welcome.” Jerking his chin at the bathroom door, he added, “Now go clean yourself up. No woman would want your stinky ass.”
With a laugh, I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, yeah, I’m going.”
Seven days. No, I wasn’t referencing the horror movie The Ring, although my appearance had started to resemble Samara’s over the last week. I was talking more about how long it had been since I’d seen or heard from Gabe. The last image remained burned into my mind—the one of him hugging Linc before I blew out of the auditorium and started my Forest Gump run to see Kennedy and Ellie.
For the first few days, I continuously checked my phone every other minute to see if he’d reached out to me. After I didn’t receive a text or call for him, I stopped checking every few seconds. Yesterday I’d made it half the morning before I checked.
I wasn’t sure why I expected him to call—I certainly hadn’t left him with any indication that I wanted him to. That day at Linc’s school, we’d both slung enough hurtful words at each other that I wasn’t sure who had said or done worse. For the life of me, I still couldn’t bring myself to be the bigger person and call him. I wanted to tell him I had been wrong about Linc playing the guitar and knew I had completely overreacted about him giving Linc a guitar.
But I didn’t. I moped around the shop and the house. While I barely ate, I did manage to drink a little too much. It was quite unseemly, as Aunt Sadie would say, since I did a lot of it alone in my bedroom.
This day found me sitting outside in the front porch swing. I didn’t know how long I’d been staring into space, when I heard a voice from the doorway. “Would you like some company?”
“I’m not sure I’m one for company these days,” I answered honestly.
Aunt Sadie bobbed her head before ambling down the porch to the swing. Jabbing her cane at me, she said, “Scoot over.”
“Fine,” I muttered.
Once I’d given her adequate room to sit, she plopped down beside me and peered at me with a wry smile. “In a small town, it’s much more proper if you do your grieving inside the walls of your house, rather than on the front porch.”
“Is that what people are saying? That I’m grieving for Gabe?”
“No. I think the people in town are still hung up on the fact that you had a public breakup at the elementary school talent show.”
I groaned. “I figured as much.”
“The part about grieving inside the house came from my meddling Great-Aunt Alva after I lost George in the war.” Aunt Saddie patted the bottom of the swing we sat in. “I don’t know how many months I sat here, hoping against hope, that somehow the military had been wrong and he would come bounding up the sidewalk for me.”
“I’m sorry for your loss, Aunt Sadie, and I really mean that. I’ve always felt so sorry for you that you lost the only man you ever loved.”
Aunt Sadie swung her knees over to where they bumped into mine so she could face me. “Do you know why I never married?”
“Because you lost George.”
Slowly, she shook her head back and forth. “George was the first love of my life, but there was a second love, one that almost broke me.”
“Holy shit,” I muttered. Normally, I would’ve tempered my language some in front of Aunt Sadie, but this earth shattering tidbit warranted a little cussing. Leaning closer to her, I asked, “Who was he?”
“His name was Elliot, and he worked at Hart Collision with your father.”
Suddenly, it hit me. I remembered a man name Elliot. He had always had candy for me and my sisters when we were really little and visited my dad at the shop. I also remembered him being at the house once or twice. “Wait, did this happen like over twenty ago? Like before Kennedy, Ellie, and I were in school?”
“No, it was more like forty years ago.”
I furrowed my brows at her. “But I remember an Elliot.”
“As you should. He worked at the shop until he died twenty years ago.” A ghost of a smile appeared on her lips “Just because we broke up, that didn’t mean I had him wiped off the face of the earth or fired from his job. I
can be pretty petty, but not that petty.”
“What happened between you two?”
“While there were other men after George, none of them were Elliot.” Drawing her shoulders back, she added, “I’ll cut to the chase and leave out what led to me finding true love again at fifty, because the most important part of the story is how I lost him.”
“Okay,” I said tentatively.
“There was another woman in town, Viola, who Elliot had dated before me. When she saw we were getting serious, she started a campaign to make me believe Elliot still loved her. One day he didn’t come over to walk me to church, and when I went by later to check on him, I found Viola leaving out his back door.”
“Oh, hell no!”
“Yes, I thought as much too.”
“What did you do?”
“Why I marched right up the front steps and banged on the door. When I confronted Elliot, he promised me nothing had happened, said he’d been sick and stayed home from church then when he woke up, he found her there in his house.” Narrowing her eyes, she said, “He tried to say she still had a key from when they had dated, but I wasn’t buying it. I told him he must have thought I was an idiot to believe such a story, and I left. For days after that, Elliott pleaded with me to believe him. He swore on his life that nothing had happened with Viola and said he could never love anyone like he loved me. Finally, he got so frustrated, he stopped calling or coming by. Although I would see him in town from time to time, he never talked to me again.”
Since I knew how the story ended, I asked, “Why couldn’t you believe him?”
“Plain and simple stubbornness.” She gave me a knowing look. “The same kind of a stubbornness that is keeping you from calling Gabe and trying to make things work.”
“Wait a minute. What happened between you and Elliott is not the same as what happened between Gabe and me,” I protested.
“Is it not?”
“No. You believed a lie of betrayal perpetuated by a jealous woman where Gabe truly betrayed me.”
“Betrayal is a pretty strong word for what Gabe actually did.”
Jacob’s Ladder: Gabe Page 22
