by L. B. Dunbar
Jacob takes a sip of his drink, and I realize it’s my turn to share. “My siblings and I weren’t close as kids. We were just typical, looking out for each other, but not really tight, not until our father passed.”
Jacob turns his head to me.
“Jess and I are eleven months apart. He’s thirty-seven to my thirty-six. Tom is the eldest and still a class clown at forty, and my youngest sister, Tricia, was the perfect last child.” There’s mockery in my tone, but I’m not envious. It’s just difficult having a beautiful sister who’s younger than you are and married before you did. She’s also a widow, and my heart broke for her when her marriage fell apart. We all had our suspicions her first husband was a loser, but we were never aware of the total asshole he’d been until after his death.
“My sister is pregnant and got engaged.” The words fall flat despite my happiness for my youngest sibling. The announcement was a huge part of my mood when I arrived. While I’m at the beck and call of a man who isn’t mine and never will be, my younger sister is getting married for the second time.
“You don’t sound pleased. Is he a tool?”
“Leon—”
“Leon Ramirez?” Jacob cuts me off. “I’ve met him. He seems like a nice guy.”
“Yeah, he’s amazing. Really devoted and loving. He had a rough childhood, gangs and stuff, and Tricia’s so opposite him, but good with him. He’s good for her, too. She deserves happiness after her first marriage.” My sister’s new man can be rough around the edges. However, he’s nothing like her first husband in how he treats her. Devoted and loving describe Leon best. He’s also very affectionate toward her. Throw in the fact he’s extremely good-looking in a rugged, edgy, sexy way, and my sister has the full package in him.
In some ways, Jacob is like Leon. A bit rough around the edges, maybe standoffish even, but where Jacob is defensive and moody, Leon is easygoing and sweet. The serrated edges to Jacob include sarcasm and flirting as a way to shield any real emotions underneath his tough exterior. My family knows Leon is a giant softy underneath his outer shell.
“Anyway, our parents didn’t have favorites. They just loved us for our differences,” I state, trying to get back to the original topic.
“Your brothers own their own shop, right?” Jacob asks, surprising me that he remembers something about my siblings.
“Yeah, Sound Advice is their electrical business they inherited from my dad. QuickFix is a side hustle that Tom had before the boys took over Dad’s shop.”
“You’re lucky to have siblings,” Jacob mutters.
“So are you,” I remind him, as he has Ella. He stays quiet after that, lifting his glass for another sip.
The dim afternoon quickly melts to a dark evening, and the room remains lit only by the fireplace. There isn’t enough light to read, and Jacob doesn’t push me to finish.
“Why did you start writing?” I eventually ask him.
“Because Jacob has always loved reading, his favorite books include the classics such as The Strange Tales of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and Frankenstein, a personal favorite, but who can discredit the master of horror Stephen King and fantasy like J.R.R. Tolkien. Inventing a fantastical world or alternate universe of his own feeds his creative imagination. Jacob Vincent lives in an undisclosed place, perhaps one of his own making.”
I laugh. “Well, that’s very textbook and thank you for reciting what I’ve written about you. But maybe you could be real with me for a moment?”
“Aren’t I always real with you?” he mocks.
“I don’t know. Are you?” We stare at one another from our opposite ends of the couch. Jacob breaks first, rolling his head so he faces the fireplace once more.
“Is this an interview for Blood and Blossom?” he asks with sarcasm.
“This is just for me.”
Jacob sits up, leaning forward to balance his elbows on his knees, and stares into the amber liquid in the glass he dangles between them. “I needed an escape. The mind is an amazing machine, and if I dug deep enough, I could create a safe place with words. Invent a land where I was the hero and killed the bad guys, or shifted into something otherworldly and saved the hurting people.”
He takes a deep breath and scrubs a hand down his face.
“I wrote for me at first, to clear my head and also to fill it with something other than the reality of what I lived. As you know, I lost my way for a while.”
When I’d met Jacob on that second day in the hospital, I told him about my father and how I’d thought he hit my dad. It was more a confession. If only in my head, I’d felt guilty that I accused an innocent man of killing my dad. Stunned at my apology, Jacob told me who he was, and I’d recognized his name. He admitted that day that he had issues he was trying to work through. He’d been writing since he was twenty-two when he got his first publishing deal as a senior in college. He’d lost his creativity and felt tapped out after fifteen novels. He was going too fast. He’d had too much to drink. He asked for my forgiveness, suddenly feeling his own guilt that it could have been him who hit my dad. It wasn’t, but he could have hit someone else in his state. He promised me he’d never drink and drive again, and to this day, he’s kept that promise. Drinking and sitting at home was a different story.
Jacob clears his throat, drawing me back to his living room.
“Anyway, then I met you, my muse, and my inspiration returned.” He smiles without it reaching his eyes, but the compliment is genuine. He’s called me his muse on many occasions.
What I’d really like to know, though, is what would make him give me a genuine smile?
Chapter 11
Fire In More Than One Place
[Jacob]
Two and a half years ago, I was on my way to Mackinaw Island. I’d rented a red Corvette to travel the two-lane highway, passing through small towns on my way north through Michigan when I’d had one too many hits on a joint mixed with too much to drink . . . while driving. It’s hard to admit I could have killed someone. I wasn’t thinking of others, only myself, and I didn’t care about me. It’s a moment I’m not proud to recall. I was stuck on a story and late on a deadline. My creativity felt tapped out. My love-hate relationship with a younger woman was draining.
I don’t even remember how it happened, but when my eyes opened, I saw the brightest blue eyes I’d ever seen. The night was black behind her, and her effervescence glowed as her blond hair shone like a halo around her head.
I asked her if she was an angel.
The next day, she came to see me all hell-bent, devil at her heels, and ready to rip into me. While she no longer thought I’d killed her father, she was angry that I could have been the one. When she apologized for accusing me of a crime, though, it startled me. No one had ever apologized to me for anything, and she meant hers. She was genuine, and I was attracted to her instantly.
Then she explained how her father had died while in transit. While she saved me from the wreckage, she lost her dad. God, I’d never felt so guilty, and I hadn’t even been the one to hit the man. I confessed everything to her, like she was the angel I called her the night before. I told her my name and my issues. She recognized who I was, but it went deeper than that. She knew me. She knew what I needed and helped me get back on track. From that day forward, I saw her as my muse, my inspiration, my lucky charm or what have you. I needed her in my life.
After her little interview question, I take another sip of my scotch and then curse myself as this shit is what got me into trouble that night. More memories return to me.
“Work for me, Lilac,” I said to her at the end of our meeting in that hospital room the next day.
“Why’d you call me Lilac?” she’d questioned, tipping her head, and I remembered that blond hair like a halo around her face.
“Your scent.” Entering my room on that second day, her scent triggered me, perhaps lingering somehow in my head that she was the woman who saved me. Her brows rose in surprise at my admission.
“
But you also look like a woodland nymph, the one tempting that guy.” I snapped my fingers.
She laughed. “Pan, the one desperate for sex with Syringa.”
“Yeah, desperate for sex.” My eyes roamed her body on that day, and I instantly knew she was too good for me. To cover my blatant perusal of her, I also noted, “You’re wearing all purple.”
She laughed at herself when she realized she was.
I almost laugh to myself as she’s wearing a light purple sweater tonight.
“I’d never print what you just told me,” Pam says, interrupting my memory. “But thank you for sharing the real reason, the real Jacob with me.”
I smile half-heartedly. The real Jacob. I don’t even know who that is most days.
“Have you ever considered therapy for the things you can’t work through with writing?” Pam asks, her voice quiet.
“I don’t need to be psychoanalyzed, Lilac.” I fall back onto the cushions, placing my feet on the hearth of the fireplace.
“Maybe you need someone to talk to you,” she mutters.
“I’m talking to you,” I remind her. It’s not that I’m against therapy. My sister is in it and has been for months. I just don’t think I need it. I have my writing, Pam, and . . . I stare at the glass in my hand.
Shit.
What I really need is a good round with my punching bag. I’m tense and tight with the urge to fight, but it’s not Pam I want to battle.
“I’m sorry. I’m a dick and in a mood.” It’s true, but that’s as much as I’m telling her. My mood has to do with her. She’s avoided me all week, and I don’t want her going on a date with some slick surfer dude even though I don’t have the right to tell her not to go. However, my mouth cannot stay shut on the subject.
“Are you going to go out with that guy?” I blurt out.
“Who?” she replies with surprise.
“That surfer wannabe.”
“Spencer?” she questions.
“Spencer,” I mock.
“Why does it freaking matter?” Pam asks, shifting her body to face me, and I turn to mirror her position.
“Because I don’t want you to go out with him.” Fine, there’s the truth, the whole fucking truth. Analyze that. Only, she doesn’t. She stares back at me, setting her wineglass on the hearth of the fireplace away from the fire.
“He’s not good enough for you,” I add. I’m aware I’m not making sense or being fair. I’ve had Mandi for years, but I can’t help the jealousy I suddenly feel that Pam’s been with someone recently or could go out with someone in the future.
“You don’t even know him,” she retorts.
“Do you?”
Her lips clamp shut, admitting more without words. How well does she know the chump?
“I kissed him back when I was eighteen,” she says, a giggle in her voice and heat on her face. Is she blushing over a kiss? What must she think of what I did to her then?
“I didn’t take you as a demure damsel,” I tease. Pam loves medieval things.
“Oh, I’m no innocent.” Her voice turns deep, sarcastic even, and now I’m truly interested.
“Pray, do tell,” I inquire, mockingly holding a hand to my chest over my heart.
“I am not giving you my sexual history.” She snorts.
“Oh, please give me your history . . . the sexual parts, all the sex and parts.” My eyes lower, roaming over her lush body. I don’t want her history. I want to make the present—the here and now—a sexual memory.
Easy, man.
Her eyes narrow, and I tip a brow waiting.
“I’m the relationship type. I tend to date people for long periods of time, but after my last breakup, there were a few dalliances.”
“Dalliances.” I laugh. “What is this, a historical romance instead of your sexual past?”
“Alright. I’ve had sex with a handful of men and done a handful of other things with more than those men.”
My mouth falls open. “You hussy,” I joke, although her mention of long-term relationships suggests loyalty. Sticking with me for over two years proves her commitment qualities, even if we aren’t a couple dating one another.
“I wasn’t, and then I was, I guess.”
I don’t believe it. Not one bit. “But you’re so . . .”
“So what?” she snaps, crossing her arms.
So beautiful. So perfect. So standoffish. She has her boundaries, and I can’t imagine men crossing them. Then again, any man who does would be lucky and apparently several have with her.
“You’re so you,” I offer weakly, and she turns her face away from me, hurt by the lack of explanation.
“Well, apparently that wasn’t good enough.”
“Lilac,” I groan, hating when she puts herself down, and decide to offer her more about me. “I had the wild years throughout college and into my twenties. Then I met Mandi and decided it was better to have one kind of crazy in my life than a multitude of crazies.”
“Because it’s always the woman who is a little off balance?” Pam snarks, and I arch a brow. “Okay, maybe in your choice of woman, the shoe fits.”
“You know, clichés are unbecoming,” I remind her. “But I can’t seem to do normal.” There’s a strange comfort in the fight with someone like Mandi. The volatile personality. The hate sex. Maybe it’s because fighting is what I grew up with. Fighting was my perspective of love.
“I bet you could.”
“I don’t even know what normal means.” I huff.
“Dates. Holding hands. Kissing. That’s the normal progression.” Pam and I certainly didn’t follow that course with what I did the other night, but I also haven’t really been on dates, even with Mandi. We’d be mad at one another, and then see each other at a party, a club, or somewhere mutual. Arguments ensued and sex followed in a bathroom, a hallway, or someone else’s bed.
“Okay, so let’s pretend this is a date. What happens first?” I ask, lifting a knee and leaning an arm along the back of the couch. My fingers twitch to touch her. The tips of her hair. The edge of her shoulder. The lower curve of her lip.
She looks at me skeptically but then decides to play along. “Surely, you’ve been on a date before. What would you do first?”
“Dinner,” I say. “Although, does any of it matter? It’s all a precursor to sex, the ultimate goal.”
“Really? Sex is the only goal of a date?”
“You tell me.”
“No, no, it’s not,” she scolds. “Dating is the discovery of another person, seeing how someone else might fit with your parts.”
“Sex is about fitting parts together, too.” I chuckle.
She huffs again, looking away from me. She can’t disagree with me, but I want to know her thoughts. “What are you thinking?”
She shakes her head, ignoring the question.
“Why aren’t you married?” I blurt out next, with no filter or feeling to what I’m asking. Her answer is a shrug, and I’m sensing there’s more to the tip of her shoulder.
“Come on. Tell me,” I tease, pushing her walls while my heart races at her potential answer. “Your parts never fit with someone else?”
“I was engaged once.”
Fucking shit. I instantly see red.
“I thought we were in love and going to spend the rest of our lives together. It turns out, he was fucking my best friend, who happened to be my maid of honor, and they got married instead.”
Motherfucker. “Lilac,” I say softly, but her eyes remain focused on the crackling fire.
“I was twenty-five, and in a small town, word gets around when you get jilted. Thankfully, it was before we hit the altar, but it still stung, and it was still far enough along in the planning that I had a church to call, a reception to cancel, and gifts arriving daily that had to be returned. You can’t return a wedding dress, though.”
She’s quiet for a second, thinking before she speaks next. “When all your friends are long-standing sweethearts and marry each o
ther, they tend to pick sides, and then there you are, in the middle of your thirties, still by yourself.”
Is this why she was upset with her sister’s engagement announcement? Pam was extra feisty earlier, and while she was mad at me for demanding she come to my house, I’m wondering if there was more going on in her pretty head when she arrived here.
“Who was he?” I ask, deciding to avoid any questions about her sister’s new status. I’m ready to look up the toolbag who hurt her and pummel him into the dirt where the scumbag belongs.
“It doesn’t matter,” she says, but it does. Someone hurt her. Ripped her heart out. I don’t understand. She’s an incredible woman—smart, well-read, and beautiful to boot.
“Do you still love him?”
“God, no. It’s been eleven years. I’ve moved on, and clearly, he did before we even exchanged rings.”
“Did you love him then?”
“I thought I did. I mean, I really thought he was my forever, but in hindsight, I see he wasn’t any more than the rest of the long-term relationships I’d had. He was comfort and commitment, until he wasn’t, and I’m the fool who is loyal to a fault.”
She reaches for her wine and sips the rest. She’s certainly been loyal to me, and maybe I’ve taken advantage of that trait of hers.
“I told you my father would say you have to love yourself before you can expect someone to love you back. Maybe that’s been my problem. I haven’t always loved myself first.” The sadness in her tone rips my cold heart in two, like a physical cutting down the middle.
“Lilac.” The call of her name is sympathy and surprise. She must love herself. She’s too confident and pulled together. She’s one of the strongest people I know.
“Don’t pity me,” she says under her breath, using my words against me.
“I don’t feel sorry for you. I feel sorry for the dickhead who missed out on you and the world of schmucks who didn’t appreciate the dedication of a fantastic woman.” Holy fuck, I could be speaking about myself. “I feel sorry for me as the most selfish of asshole because I don’t let you know enough how I feel about you.”
