Tessa Ever After

by Brighton Walsh

  “Have you actually talked to your dad about doing a different job within the company? Maybe he’d be okay with you taking on a lesser role in another department.”

  I shake my head. “Nope. No way he’d go for it. It’s all or nothing with him. He doesn’t know the meaning of the word compromise.”

  “So you’re total opposites, then, huh?”

  “When you start comparing me to my father, that’s my cue to leave.” I move to get up, but Tessa laughs, pressing both her feet on top of my thigh to get me to stay put.

  “I’m just kidding; don’t be so touchy. You’re nothing like him, not really. But you are stubborn. Which is why I’m so surprised you’re taking this lying down. Just try it. What have you got to lose? He might surprise you.”

  Or he might prove every thought I’ve ever had of him right, and I’d be back at square one.

  THREE

  tessa

  Being on top of everything is exhausting. I got up thirty minutes earlier than usual just so I could have Haley’s clothes set out for her and be able to make her something for breakfast other than cold cereal. It was only oatmeal, but hey . . . it’s a step. I diligently stayed on schedule all day, moving faster when my clients showed up late, working my ass off to make sure I was out of the door of the salon by five thirty so I could get to Melinda’s with time to spare.

  Dinner still isn’t up to Cade’s standards, but I figure with everything else I managed to do today, I’d cut myself a little slack. I pick at the broiled chicken breast and salad I made for myself while Haley retells every second of her day in between bites of her food.

  “. . . then we had snack. Apples and peanut butter. That’s my favorite, huh?”

  “Mhmm, I know, baby.”

  “And then we practiced our letters. We’re on j this week. Like jump and jelly bean and jog and Jay! And then—”

  And I try so hard to pay attention. To listen to her and stay involved, but the fact is I’ve been up since five o’clock this morning, and after getting Haley and myself ready, rushing her to preschool then myself to work, followed by eight hours on my feet at the salon, and another hour standing at the stove prepping dinner when I got home, I’m bone-deep tired. I want to fall face-first into my bed and not move for twelve hours. In reality, I’ll get to bed at nearly eleven and barely manage to squeak in six hours of sleep.

  “Mama!”

  Haley’s voice snaps me back to attention, and I lift my eyes to her. “What?”

  “Can I have a treat?”

  I should say no. She doesn’t need a treat, especially after the shit I’ve been feeding her, but the truth is, I don’t have the fight in me tonight. With a sigh, I relent. “Eat your green beans first.”

  She scoops up a giant bite on her fork and shoves it in her mouth, like there’s a time limit on my offer. And for a minute, I let myself just watch her, get lost in her deep, dark eyes as she tells me more stories from her day, in the way she purses her lips when she’s thinking of what to say next. Her hair is tangled, and she keeps pushing it out of her face. I’ve needed to give her a trim for a month but haven’t found the time. She’s amazing and gorgeous, and she’s mine. And no matter what happens, what goes on in my life, I know at the end of the day, she’s there with me.

  She’s a force of nature, this wild, crazy, vivacious little girl, and I love her more than anything in the world. She makes me laugh harder than anyone in my life. She’s kind and compassionate and the best part of my life.

  But sometimes . . . sometimes on nights like tonight when I’ve had a rough and exhausting day, I wish it weren’t just the two of us. That there was someone else here to take some of the burden from my shoulders. To help in the mornings, to take her to the park, to read her bedtime stories in funny voices. Someone to keep me company while I’m cooking dinner. To have a glass of wine with me after Haley’s in bed. To warm me up during the cold winter nights.

  And just like every time I have this thought—every single time—a crushing wave of guilt immediately follows it, and I regret thinking about it in the first place. Because what we have is pretty great, and thinking about filling our lives with something else, something more, feels like I don’t think she’s enough. Like we’re not enough, together.

  But that’s not it at all. I love her and would give my life for her. The times we spend together are my favorite in the world. But at the end of the day, when she’s in bed, it’s just me.

  It’s just me, and I can’t help but want something more.

  jason

  I should’ve gone out tonight. Should’ve called up Sean or Kyle and had them meet me at Shooters or, hell, anywhere. At least then I’d have the interference of noise and people to distract me from what my brain won’t stop gravitating toward, what it won’t stop focusing on—namely a girl with dark brown hair and a personality too large for her petite frame.

  But I’m just lying to myself if I think any of that would help. Because in the last nine months, I’ve done everything in my power to try and get Tessa out of my head, to stop this interest before it even started, and she just keeps working her way back in.

  I’ve tried to distract myself with women who are the exact opposite of her—leggy and blond and reserved. Hell, I’ve tried to distract myself with women who are seemingly just like her. Same build, same hair, same eyes. But it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t help. Because, at the end of the night, they’re not her, and my mind still snaps right back to her every single time.

  Every. Single. Fucking. Time.

  Groaning, I grab the remote and flip through the channels until I get to the football game on tonight. Taking a pull of my beer, I lean back on the couch, the leather creaking under me, and try to focus on the game, but my mind’s going a million miles an hour. Where Tessa’s not overwhelming my thoughts, the shit from my parents fills the void. There’s no avoiding it. No getting out of it. Nothing I can say or do to stop my future from plowing into me like a freight train.

  Maybe I wouldn’t feel the way I do about it if they’d just asked. Just asked what I wanted to do. If I wanted that. But of course they didn’t. Because it was a family business, they assumed I wanted to be a part of it. And I might have, if not for my dad. The firm was something my grandfather built from the ground up, but something my father turned so ugly I didn’t even recognize it anymore. It’s no longer the small firm with a soft spot for philanthropy my grandfather started. Now it’s all about the profits. In the years since my father’s taken control, he’s laid off good people only a couple years from getting their pension and hired recent grads for half the salary. He’s found every possible shortcut he can take so he can pocket more profits. And the thing that cuts the most is when he closed the foundation Grandpa created, building homes for low-income families—the only thing I was able to look forward to. The one thing I’d have so I could get past having to work for my dad. He told me he shut it down because it wasn’t good for the bottom line.

  In other words, it wasn’t satisfactory for him to be bringing in less than a small fortune every year, despite the reason for that being helping others in need. All that matters to him—to both my parents—is the next dollar that comes into the bank, the next brand-new car, the next vacation to Paris or Saint-Tropez or Tahiti. It’s always about the quality of what they have, how fancy it is, and to whom they can show it off.

  And that includes their one and only child.

  It’s on nights like this I miss my grandpa the most. My grandma died when I was young, in elementary school, so my memories of her are faded, but he talked about her like she hung the moon. And the stories he shared sounded like fairy tales to me, because the life I lived, the love I saw between my parents wasn’t love at all. It was a commitment built on mutual benefits . . . on what they could both gain. When my dad aligned himself with my mother’s family—the very epitome of old money—he married into the life he always wanted.

  The life my grandpa tried to show me there was so much more th
an.

  My phone buzzes in my pocket, and I take the welcome distraction, fishing it out. Tessa’s name flashes across the screen, and I close my eyes, blowing out a deep breath. Guess it won’t be much of a distraction at all.

  Bringing the phone up to my ear, I answer, “Hey.”

  “Jason?” Tessa’s voice is higher pitched than usual, panic seeping through, and I bolt upright.

  “Tess? What’s wrong?”

  “Oh, um, nothing much. It’s just—oh shit. Haley! Bring me another bucket from under the kitchen sink!” Her voice is loud and frantic as she yells to Haley, before she speaks into the phone again. “Yeah, um, do you happen to know anything about pipes?”

  “Like . . . water pipes?”

  “Yeah . . .”

  “Tess, what’s going on?”

  “I just . . . I forgot to leave a trickle of water running in the bathroom, and it was so cold today, the pipes froze. And . . . burst. There’s water everywhere. I don’t . . . I don’t know what to do.” Where it was frantic before, her voice has softened, wavering just slightly, and I don’t care that I know jack shit about plumbing. I set my beer down, thankful I’d managed to have only a couple swallows, and get up from the couch, grabbing my coat and slipping on my shoes before I’m out the door, phone still at my ear.

  “I’ll be there in ten,” I say, then hang up, rushing out into the cold November night to help a girl I’m trying my hardest not to think about.

  tessa

  There is so much water. Buckets upon buckets, and with every emptying of them, it’s another reminder of how I screwed up. Again. Of how this never would’ve happened if Cade had been here. He never would’ve let it happen.

  The pipes froze once, when I was nine. Though we’d been in the house for a few years by then, the previous winters had all been mild, so we’d never had to deal with it before. But that particular winter was harsh and brutal, colder than it’d been in a long time. It was after my dad had passed away, so it was just me, my mom, and Cade. And even though he was only eleven, Cade still stepped in and took charge. Like he just knew what needed to be done.

  Then every year after that, he or my mom were diligent in making sure to always leave the tiniest trickle of water running on days it got well below freezing. Every freaking year, they remembered to do that. And the one year I’m here by myself, I can’t even manage to turn on a fucking water faucet.

  I’m biting back a fresh wave of frustrated tears—which serve only to piss me off more—when the back door opens, and Haley calls out for Jason. He murmurs something to her, then the floors creak as he makes his way toward me.

  “Tess, what—” He stops in his tracks in the doorway, freezing as he takes stock of the situation in front of him. His eyes dart around—to the puddles of water on the floor, the bucket I’m holding under the vanity in front of the pipes, and finally to me and what a hot mess I’m sure I look like. I’m soaked from head to toe, and I don’t even want to imagine what my makeup is doing right now.

  Clearing his throat, he darts his eyes up to mine before he averts his gaze. “Did you, um, did you shut off the water?”

  I stare at him for a minute, and then a hysterical laugh bursts out as a fresh wave of tears spring up. Because, no. No, I did not shut the water off. I hadn’t even thought of that, and what kind of idiot does that make me?

  “Hey. Hey . . .” he says as he squats next to me, his hand rubbing tentative circles on my back through my water-soaked T-shirt. “It’s okay. I’ll go in the basement and get it shut off, then we can figure out what to do, okay? It’s fine.”

  As he stands to do what he promised, all I can manage is a shake of my head as I close my eyes and sink further into the failure I’ve been so good at.

  jason

  The water’s been shut off, a plumber called, and Tessa is hiding in her bedroom under the guise of changing. And while it’s a damn good thing she is, the part of me who’s been having fantasies about her can’t help but be disappointed.

  When I arrived, stepped into the doorway leading to the bathroom, and saw her sitting on the floor, her legs sprawled out in front of her, her makeup smudged down her face, her hair flattened against her head, and—God help me—her pale pink shirt plastered to her chest, I had to look away. Immediately. Because in those two seconds, I glanced at her body beneath a shirt that did absolutely nothing to hide it, and I got more of an eyeful than I ever imagined I would. Turns out, light pink acts the same exact way as white when soaked through. Which means I got a front-and-center viewing of Tessa’s breasts, as clear as if she’d been standing in front of me naked.

  I groan and close my eyes, scrubbing a hand over my face. Haley’s in bed, finally, and I’m waiting for the plumber to arrive, all the while trying to get the image of Tessa’s perfect tits out of my mind.

  “Hey.” Her voice is soft, defeated, and when I sit up and twist around to glance at her, she looks just like she sounds. Her hair is just damp now, settling into soft waves, her face clear of all the smudged makeup she was wearing before, and she’s changed into a plaid flannel button-up and some sleep pants, and it still doesn’t stop her from being sexy. In fact, if it’s possible, she’s even sexier.

  Could be the fact that I know the exact shape and size of her nipples now, and all it takes is a flash of my mind to conjure them up, despite the layer of dark blue and gray she’s hiding behind now.

  “Hi.” I clear my throat and avert my eyes, because I’m afraid I’m going to drop them right to her chest again, like it’s a fucking beacon or something. “I called a plumber. He should be here within the hour.”

  “Okay. Thank you. I probably should’ve just done that in the first place instead of dragging you into it, but this water was pouring out everywhere and I couldn’t even take a second to think.” She moves and sits on the opposite end of the couch, tucking her knees against her chest and bringing a throw pillow in front of her. Shaking her head, she stares down at her legs. “What an idiot.”

  My brow furrows as I look at her. “Hey, you’re not an idiot. Why would you think that?”

  A humorless laugh escapes her, and she rolls her eyes. “Only everything. It was my fault the pipes burst in the first place. I didn’t think—I didn’t remember to leave some water running so it wouldn’t happen. Do you think that ever happened to Cade? Not once in the thirteen years since the first time it happened. I’m here for five months by myself and I managed to fuck up the very first winter.”

  “Tess—”

  “And then I didn’t even think about shutting the water off or calling a freakin’ plumber. I just kept filling up buckets and dumping them out, and Jesus, Jason, how did I think I could do this on my own?” Her voice is wobbly, her eyes glassy, but she swallows, not letting any tears fall. She’s so strong. Why can’t she see it for herself?

  “It was stressful. And sometimes in situations like that, we have our heads up our asses. It could’ve happened to anyone.”

  “But it didn’t happen to anyone. It happened to me.”

  I turn to face her on the couch, my arm stretched over the back toward her. “Look, I know you’re stressed. And you feel like you’re failing. But you’re not.”

  She rolls her eyes again, and I reach out and yank on a strand of her hair. “Hey!”

  Shrugging, I say, “I figured that was better than flicking you in the forehead like I used to in high school.” She glares at me, and I keep on. “You weren’t listening to me, so I needed to get your attention. You are not failing.”

  “Sure feels like it,” she mumbles, avoiding my eyes.

  “Believe me, I get it. But you’re not. You get your daughter up every day, get her ready, take her to school, go to work, come home, feed her, and get her ready for bed, and at the end of the day, you’re both alive and happy and healthy. That’s not failure, Tess. So you’ve had a few bumps along the way. So fucking what.”

  She snorts. “A few? Try a fuck-ton.”

  “Fine, so you’v
e had a fuck-ton of bumps along the way. You’re still figuring all this shit out. You need to give yourself a break. You’re not going to step in and automatically know what to do all the time.”

  “You did. I mean, I didn’t even think to turn the damn water off.”

  “The only reason I did is because I remember the last time this happened. We were in sixth grade, and your mom was rattling off orders to Cade. Adam and I were here, getting in the way. First thing she said was to shut off the water.” I shrug. “Makes sense you wouldn’t remember. I think you probably locked yourself in your room, playing Barbies or whatever the hell you used to do for hours in there.”

  Through my explanation, her face has softened slightly until a frown isn’t pulling at the corners of her mouth, and her shoulders relax.

  “Are you finally back to being Regular Tess instead of Tess the Grouch?”

  She laughs her first real laugh of the night and tosses the pillow at my head. “You’re such a jackass.”

  Smiling, I catch the pillow and set it in my lap. Tessa’s legs stretch out from being up against her chest, and she doesn’t stop until her toes press into my jean-clad thigh. She gives me a light shove. “Thanks. For coming right away.”

  I shrug, waving her off. “It’s no big deal.”

  “It is,” she insists, her eyes intent on mine. “When it all happened and I was trying to figure out what to do, you were the first person who popped into my head to call. I can always count on you, and that means a lot. Especially now. So thank you.”

  Despite the part of me that likes knowing I’m the one she called first, that I’m the one who’s always here to help, me being here all the time is part of the issue. Part of the problem I have of not being able to get her out of my head. But as I look at her, a little lost, a little scared, a lot thankful, I realize there’s nothing I can do about it.