The shouting continues. I don’t know what she’s saying and I’m not sure who she’s yelling at but there are only two possibilities.
Please let it be Greta.
I bite my tongue in penance for the awful thought, but then why should I not hope it’s Greta? Should I wish that my mother is yelling bloody murder at my father?
When I hear the loud roar of a male voice and a crashing sound, I jump and my heart jackhammers and then I run out of the kitchen toward the furious argument.
Greta meets me in the hallway and stops me.
“Leave them be, sweetheart. I’d say welcome home, but I’m not a mean person.” She hugs me and I give her a stiff hug back. I don’t like feeling like a hypocrite. Pushing away from her, I turn away, trying to hear what my parents are saying. But I can’t make out their words through the haze of my fear.
We head back to the kitchen but it no longer holds the welcoming warmth of a happy home. I don’t know what makes me more unsettled, being alone with Greta or hearing my parents argue. But of course it’s the horrible combination as we listen to the uproar together. Getting up my courage while my heart goes ballistic and I pray I don’t have a stroke, I ask Greta the obvious question.
“What’s it about, Greta?” I hold my breath, waiting for her answer.
She turns away and hides behind the refrigerator door and I have my answer. It’s about her. It’s about my mother’s affair with her. Being stuck in here with Greta is unbearable now that I know, the last place I want to be because I don’t trust myself to stay civil.
But I can’t run away from this, no matter how shaky I feel.
Grabbing another cinnamon roll, I wish Jack was here so I could draw strength from him. Then I immediately feel ashamed. I need to deal with my life on my own. I’m not a child anymore. I’m not a princess.
“We’re having scrod casserole for dinner,” Greta says, false cheer in her voice as if I really care what we’re having. I hear a door slamming and my parents’ shouts are muffled now. They’re in Dad’s study. I remember the last time I saw him. It was from a distance at a football game and we didn’t talk, didn’t wave, only an acknowledging glance. I shiver.
The last time I saw my mother was the day I left for college back in August. She was full of her usual hyper cheer, yet all buttoned up and proper with barely a hug goodbye. Three months ago.
In her defense, she does call me every week.
I collapse onto a kitchen chair as Greta bangs pans and sets dishes on the table for the two of us. They can’t go on like this forever. The argument must be exhausting. It’s exhausting me and I’m only listening from afar.
“No need for us to starve just because your parents are in a bad mood,” Greta says. I laugh at the absurdity of her comment because it’s too obvious that this argument is well beyond a bad mood. They never fight. They’re not in the habit of confronting problems, exposing their emotions, or opening cans of worms. I can count on one hand the times my parents have argued because I remember them all. They were as memorable for being rare as they were for being volatile. And each one of them made me sick and worried that my tenuous excuse for a family was going to fall apart and I would truly be alone.
But it’s different now. I’m an adult. I have my own life and I know who I am separate from them. Besides, I won’t be alone because I have Jack, right? Or not. Remember who he is. Remember what Izzy told me. Jack belongs to no one.
Maybe I have him on loan for a while. Do I even want him permanently? Maybe. It seems possible sometimes, but I need to be careful about wanting what I can’t have. From every objective rational viewpoint, Jack is impossible. The Big Man on Campus who thinks himself a fraud even as he plays the game and goes for the brass ring anyway. He’s the very definition of an impending disaster. Or the impossible dream.
Greta puts the super-looking meal on the table and it nearly turns my stomach. My ears strain and I don’t hear shouting, but I still hear voices. They’ve calmed but they’re still talking. I jump from my chair. This is my chance, to go in the study and confront them both at the same time, make them include me, make them talk to me about something real, about how they feel.
“Where are you going?” Greta’s voice shakes. I don’t give a rat’s ass.
“I’m going to talk to my parents.” I turn to her as I push through the door. “Do not even think of interfering.” She sinks back down into her chair, her face white, no words coming from her mouth. I rush across the hall to Dad’s office, praying they didn’t lock the door.
When I reach it, my head throbbing with the rush of blood pumping by my wild heart, I put my hand on the knob and turn. The door opens. I take a deep breath as if I’m going on a deep, death-defying dive, and I rush inside the room.
“Joni,” Dad says, staring at me, stern and trying to stop me with his eyes and his voice. But unless he uses brute force, he’s not going to stop me from being part of this conversation. Mom turns and has the grace to look emotionally wrought, like I’ve never seen her before, or at least not since that day I found her with Greta, before she got herself all buttoned up again emotionally and physically.
I walk to my mother, drawn by her vulnerability, compelling in its rarity, and realize I’ve relied on her cool, steady demeanor all these years.
“Joni, you weren’t meant to hear this,” she says.
“I want to hear it. I want to know what’s going on. I’m part of this family and I’m an adult now, not some kid you need to hide things from.”
Dad says nothing, keeps staring, but his eyes show strain, maybe a peek of emotion, just the slightest hair.
“Your father doesn’t want you to see Jack Hunter. Not that I knew you were officially seeing him, but I did hear things.” Mom sounds calm, but she’s breathing hard, like she’s just run a race and the look on her face says she’s lost the race.
I flash a look at Dad, letting my outrage show, giving it full permission to be, to exist, feeling it out and taking strength from it.
“Is that true?”
“Of course it is. I already told you I wanted you to stay away from him. And you defied me. It’s not like you. But let me warn you, I’m prepared to do whatever it takes to make sure you don’t continue—”
“How dare you?” I’m speechless with rage and shock.
“She can see whoever she wants, Charles.”
“No. She can’t. There are things she doesn’t know—that you don’t know.”
“He’s a good man. I’m not going to listen to you no matter what you say.” I stalk up to him and I want to hit him or slap him as I shout into his face, my blood hot and my soul sick.
He puts his hands on my shoulders, pushing me back. “Get out.”
Mom comes to me and I back into her arms.
“Leave her alone,” she says, her voice calm, but loud, her hands holding me in a firm yet shaky grip.
“You leave her alone. You’re a terrible mother. You and your mistress—” She slaps him.
“Your father was in love with Jack’s mother,” Mom says. “Maybe he still is.” Her voice is matter-of-fact, but her entire body shakes with rage and my head pops with a sickening understanding.
Dad stands still for a long time in the face of her accusation. He doesn’t deny it. Dread gathers in my stomach and falls in a dense ball.
Dad’s face turns red, but the rest of him looks like a glacier, filled with cold rage. Mom has her arms clamped on me, tears running down her face, silent, pleading, maybe even sorry for the slap. I can barely breathe, my eyes riveted to my father’s as he stares my mother down, deciding what to do.
Then he cuts his eyes to mine, glares, and says, “Stay away from him. He’s trouble.”
“You’re ridiculous. He’s about to win the Heisman Trophy. He’s—”
“Save it. He’s no good. I can tell you that underneath all the trappings of respectability he’s nothing.”
“Stop it. Just because he’s poor and has no father you can�
��t—”
“He has a father.” The derision in my father’s voice, the look of hate on his face, gives me a Silence of the Lambs chill.
Mom says, “Stop it, Charles.”
“You know who Jack’s father is,” I say, and my heart stutters. I feel faint, but I grit my teeth. “Tell me.”
“No!” Mom shouts.
“She should know—”
“That’s enough, Charles. Get out.”
Dad picks up his briefcase, shovels some papers in and then the laptop and shuts it with a sickeningly final click. Then he brushes past us and out the door to the front hall. My mother holds me in place when I want to run after him, ask him, make him tell me what he knows about Jack’s father. None of this makes sense to me.
“Let him go,” Mom whispers in my hair. “And don’t worry. He’s not Jack’s father.” My knees collapse at her words, but she keeps her arms wrapped around me.
“I never thought—”
“Shh. Of course you didn’t. You would never think anything so terrible.” I feel small in spite of the fact that I’m a foot taller than her now. She has a hold on me, the kind that mothers have on their children whether they’re good mothers or not, close or not, so I don’t struggle. The sound of the front door opening makes me flinch. Then it slams shut and I throw my hands over my face and cry.
Greta comes into the room and stops, looking at Mom, expecting her to say something. I swipe at my tears with my sleeve. Mom drops her arms from around me.
“I’m filing for divorce.” Her voice is matter-of-fact. She’s talking to Greta. I look between the two of them as they remain silent and then it hits me that I don’t belong in this scene. Not anymore. I run upstairs to my room.
I need to talk to Jack. I reach the top of the stairs, winded. Does it make me a weak person to need the solace of a friend? I think of Dooley. Maybe I should call him. He’s my best friend. He knows the history of my family.
But he’s not the object of my parents’ disagreement, not the final straw that’s come between them to the point of filing for a fucking divorce.
Somehow Jack is that flash point. And me. We’re the cause of the rift. And Jack’s father is at the root.
Opening the door to my childhood bedroom, I know there’s so much more to my parents’ animosity than me seeing Jack. And I know it’s not all about Mom’s affair with Greta either. The image of Dad’s face when he said Jack has a father, spitting the words. I half expected him to spew deadly moths from hell like in The Green Mile.
I need to talk to Jack about his father, to see him. I need to find out what’s going on and what it is about Jack’s father that makes my dad so angry, so unlike the man I’ve been presented with all my life. Was my mother’s crazy accusation true? Did he have a thing for Jack’s mother? Has all this mysterious undercurrent of dissatisfaction I’ve felt between my parents my whole life been about unrequited love and jealousy?
Could it be that my parents are that petty and stupid and emotionally broken?
Pacing around my room, I’m wound tight, but my head is working. I haven’t collapsed into self-pity. In fact, I don’t care about myself right now. The split of my parents doesn’t touch me. All my emotions are wrapped around Jack.
I need to see him. Even knowing he hasn’t been to Moreland in four years I need him to come here now. I know he’ll want to find out the answer to the mystery of his father.
Resisting the call of my childhood bed where I’d spent so much time crying about Jack, hating him, wishing he were dead, I slip my phone from my jeans pocket and stab at his name with a shaky hand.
Full circle. I’m hoping we’ve come full circle, hoping that underneath everything he’s not the same angry bully, not the same insecure, deprived kid, that he’s soaked in some of the confidence he’s been pretending to have, some of the sense of his own self-worth. Some of the love that I’ve been showering on him.
I choke back a sob, feeling the pain of his father’s betrayal, forfeiting his son, and I listen to the ringing. Three times. He must be at Tristan’s house by now. A house full of people. Maybe he won’t hear it. But he keeps his phone in his jeans pocket all the time. He’ll feel it vibrate. Four rings. Five rings. Feeling the tears forming, flooding my eyes, I shake my head and take a ruthless cleansing breath, preparing to end the call, shut my phone down and deal.
“Joni.” His deep raw voice shudders through me.
“Jack.” Emotion shakes my voice
“What’s wrong?” Everything. Where do I start? With him.
“Did you know that my Dad knows who your father is?” My words grow steadier as I speak. And then I wait, listening to his breathing.
“Fuck, Joni. What the fuck are you talking about?” The pain is so clear, cutting through me, tearing at my heart, reaching in like my parents’ shouting couldn’t do, getting to a place I thought was covered up and protected. My breathing gets shallow, but he needs to know, so I force the words from my veins.
“My parents were fighting, an ugly, loud, slap-across-the-face fight. And I had to find out, had to go there, to make them tell me what was going on.” I pause to scrape the well for any last crumbs of my courage, worried I’ve used it all up by now.
“What did they say to you, Joni? Tell me.” His words are low and icy and I shiver, but I obey his command.
“My father said he didn’t want me seeing you and I argued with him, telling him he had no reason to be against you, that you’re smart and accomplished, because I know that’s what he values. Or that’s what I thought. But he said you were no good and I told him he couldn’t hold your not having a father against you.
“And then he told me you have a father. He made a horrible face, like your father was a monster. He said he knew who your father was.” I pause, but all I hear from Jack is his breathing, struggling like he’s drowning. Closing my eyes, I finish.
“He said your mother knows who your father is.”
“That can’t be true. He’s lying. Fuck, Joni.”
“I asked him who your father is, but Mom stopped me and Dad left.” Tears are streaming now and I don’t know how I can talk anymore, so I don’t.
Now Jack’s end of the call goes silent too. I don’t even hear him breathing.
“I’ll be there in a couple of hours.” Then he’s gone.
“Jack?” I stare at the phone, but I don’t bother calling him back. He’s throwing aside years of pain, secrets and distance to come back here. Not for me. I know that.
To face his demon, the specter of his father’s ghost, the center of his hell, the black hole of his soul.
A wrenching sob runs through me, but I don’t cry. Instead I strip my clothes as I head for my bathroom and turn on the shower as hot as it’ll go. I stand under the water, gradually making it cooler and cooler until it’s ice cold and I aim my face directly into the spray, feeling myself turn blue. I’m tough enough to stand this.
I can be strong for Jack. I can let him lean against me. Because whatever pain I felt about my parents splitting doesn’t amount to a puddle compared to what I feel for Jack. For the vulnerable lonely fatherless boy he was and, underneath it all, he still is.
When the tears mingle on my face with the icy water, I shut it off. I’m ready for him.
Chapter 18
Jack
It’s dark and cold as I head from the road up the driveway and around the back of the ginormous house, my backpack bouncing, puffs of air coming from my mouth. The lake gleams in the moonlight beyond the back lawn, but I don’t stop to appreciate the daydream setup, the place where Joni grew up, because right now where she came from doesn’t seem much different than the nightmare of my childhood except the window dressing is fancier.
Stepping up onto the back porch, I walk lightly past the tall windows to the door at the far end and slip my phone from my pocket to text Joni.
Within ten seconds, the door opens and she’s in my arms.
“I can’t believe you’re here. Come i
nside.” She talks into my mouth as she kisses me, her arms around my neck and my arms holding her tight. The tension that built on the drive here uncoils in my butt, releasing through my back, and my breathing eases.
“What’s the plan, princess? I need to have a conversation with your dad.”
She pulls me inside through a mudroom and into a massive kitchen, low nightlights gleaming off the stainless-steel appliances and marble countertops.
“He’s not here. He hasn’t come back,” she whispers. I study her face and don’t see swollen eyes or a red nose or any signs of crying. Her expression is nervous but resigned, maybe even determined. I back her against an enormous refrigerator, lowering a hand to her ass, cupping it, grinding my hips into hers.
“I’ll stay and wait,” I say, nuzzling her ear.
“Of course you will. Did you think I was going to turn you out at night in the middle of Moreland with nowhere to stay?”
I smile and kiss the corner of her lip. “You’re not as broken up about your parents as I thought you’d be.”
“You’re the one I’m worried about.”
My heart stutters, reminding me what brought me here. Resolving the mystery of my father’s identity. “After all these years of not having a father, no clue who he is, I can handle another night, but we’re going to have to confront your dad before I leave this place. Any idea where he went?”
She shakes her head.
“What about your mom and Greta?”
“They’re in her office. I wouldn’t be surprised if they spend the night there. But I don’t care if they do or not and I don’t care if they know you’re here with me. You’re spending the night in my room with me. We’ll talk to Dad in the morning. He has to come back sooner or later. I’ll call him if need be, to make sure he comes back sooner.”
I nod my head, impressed with her spunk, her spirit, the light of passion in her eyes giving my cock something to get excited about. Making it easy to push the specter of my soon-to-be-revealed father to the back of my mind.
Big Man on Campus: an Enemies to Lovers College Romance (Big Men on Campus Book 1) Page 24
