One Day After Never (The Second Time's the Charm STANDALONE Series Book 1)

by Whitney Walker

  “Would you mind if we ate in the living room?” he asks, voice strained, pushing the words around an obvious lump.

  “Of course not.” It isn’t the food. It’s the memories.

  We make our way to the living room, he with the wine glasses and I with the plates, while he composes himself. “She would have never let us eat in the living room.”

  I smile in remembrance of hating the simple fact. I thought all of my friends got to eat in front of the television, but no, my mother insisted on “family dinner” in the kitchen until I was old enough to escape home for as many hours as possible. “Oh, don’t I know that one, Jack!”

  He returns my smile. “I bet you do.”

  I tuck my leg under me on the couch, and set our plates on the coffee table, as Jack sets his wine glass on the floor next to the beige patterned chair. He nestles in, and uses the ottoman for a makeshift table.

  When he looks comfortable, I ask my first burning question. I might as well start at the beginning. “So, how did you and my mom meet?”

  “At school. I taught at Hillman too. Actually, I teach at Hillman. We met when you were pretty young. Right after you started ninth grade.”

  A whole decade. How has an entire decade gone by and I don’t know this?

  “She wasn’t interested at first. She said it was complicated. I kept pursuing her because she had one of the kindest souls I’d ever met. I couldn’t walk away. Good thing I am tenacious because she was definitely more than a bit stubborn.”

  He takes a sip of wine, probably to give me time to confess to sharing her character flaw. I flatten my lips into a thin line and smile sweetly, not taking the bait.

  “It took me nearly a year to get her to agree to a first date. It was in August, an obscenely hot night, when we finally went to dinner for the first time. We went to Monty’s. You know it?”

  I nod quickly, wanting him to continue.

  “We sat outside until we nearly melted and then laughed like crazy when each of us said we were being polite and had wanted to go inside an hour before. Both of us were too old to do anything but get to the point on what we wanted for the rest of our lives, and that sparked a fierce dialogue. It just so happened our plans coincided quite nicely.”

  I am all in for the storytelling. “How so?” I ask.

  “Well, for one thing, we both wanted to run away to Australia.”

  My eyes widen as I question the origin of my own escape plan, and J.T.’s reference to the same. Jack is into his story and carries on without noticing my reaction, “But then, she shared why she wasn’t going anywhere.” Sadness washes over his face. “Nor was I. My mother was also sick.”

  I hear also sick but don’t want to interrupt. Was my mother sick for ten years and kept it hidden?

  “We decided our paradise at home would be building an amazing garden where we could read, and hitting as many of the states as possible. We made it to thirty-six. Unfortunately, California was our next stop. We were planning to come next June.” He looks away, likely needing a break from the intensity.

  I am confounded by the mysteries being revealed with each passing minute and can’t decide if I’m delighted or fearful to have Jack uncover the rest of my mother’s secrets. Does he know about my childhood too? Can he shed some light on the father I’ve never known or had every detail I’d never managed to garner from my mother died along with her?

  Before Jack can continue, my phone rings in the kitchen. My wine glass is nearly empty so I grab it and head to the kitchen for more. “I’m sorry, I need to grab that.” The ring is a tone Kyle had chosen for himself. I picture him laughing as he scrolled through the list of potential options, choosing the one called ‘chaos’.

  I swipe the phone to answer, pushing it to my ear with my shoulder while I pour. Carrying the bottle back to the living room, I raise my eyebrows, questioning Jack. He lifts his glass to be filled. I mouth, “Be right back,” then climb the stairs to my room for privacy as I try to make sense of what I’m hearing on the other end of the line.

  It sounds like fireworks exploding in the background, and I wonder where Kyle might be viewing fireworks and why he would call in the middle of them. Clearly not the ideal time for a conversation. I also hear women laughing. Multiple women, more specifically. Bedroom door closed behind me, I lie back on my bed in the dark wishing I was still on the couch, enraptured in what I was learning about my mother. In my answering Kyle’s call, guilt had won out. I knew if I didn’t talk to Kyle when he called, he might suspect something was up. The tables have turned, however, as now I am the one wondering what the hell is going on. Not saying a word, I just wait until a woman says, “Hello? Hell-ooo?” Slurring, high-pitched words pierce my ear. The voice grows more distant. “Kyle, I think someone wants you.” Laughter. Kyle’s muffled voice. “Who doesn’t want me?” Boisterous laughter. “Hello?”

  “Kyle, it’s Peyton. You, or somebody, called me.”

  “Pey, baby. Where are you?”

  “Detroit, Kyle. Where I’ve been for days. Where are you?”

  “I’m on a boat,” he sing-songs.

  Screw a mermaid, Kyle, not another woman.

  “Somewhere. I’m not sure where. Remember Smitty? Remember his yacht? He’s got a new one. Even bigger than the one I brought you on. It’s motherfucking incredible.”

  I close my eyes, trying to block out the memory. Now I am keenly aware of what is in the background. My muscles clench. It isn’t fireworks, but gunshots, echoing off the water. The last time we had ventured out sailing with Smitty there was plenty of booze, and more cocaine and guns than in any movie I’d seen. Only it wasn’t a movie scene, it was real life, and I had feared for my own.

  At first it was fun to pretend I was rich and famous, hanging with the A-listers that were also on board, but like they say, “It’s all fun and games, until—” Someone blows their head off. Each drink and line transformed testosterone to larger-than-life caricatures of their sober selves. I felt the need to ante up my own personality to conform, not wanting to reveal that I was much more sober than the rest of those in attendance. Kyle had become an entirely different man, his alter ego not a desirable one, with his voice and aggression rising in unison. When I’d watched his fingertips running over small guns, big guns, and guns of all sizes in between, my stomach churned. Some men touched babies or puppies in the wistful manner he had admired the destructive metal. I had wished I could see it as sexy and powerful, but villainous and evil won out.

  The others, stoned out of their mind, retreated to the back of the boat, boasting of their shooting ability, and round after round ricocheted into the black night. I escaped to the opposite front corner of the boat, as far from the danger as I could get, even if choosing lonely among many sucked. Thank God I did. One of the vow-you-will-never-say-who, no names mentioned celebrities on board decided to emulate Leonardo’s famous Titanic “I’m flying” scene. Drunk off her ass, there was a good probability that if I hadn’t dragged her from the metal rail she would have fallen to an untimely demise. The woman had swatted at me and nearly knocked me to the ground in protest—no good deed goes unpunished—and then I had decided if I couldn’t beat them I had better join them.

  With no way off the boat for hours, I proceeded to lead the consumption of several rounds of toasts culminating in shot after shot of liquor, until the night blurred into sunrise. I could never recall what took place after the third (or maybe fourth or fifth) shot downed. What I will never forget is the bruise that encircled my left wrist, and its counterpart around my right bicep, severe enough to color the purple, green, and yellow spectrum over the next few weeks. While I was sure the shape of both bruises resembled four fingers each, I was unsure how either got there.

  I cringe. And not even because of the memory. After a loud thud it grows quiet on the other end of the line. “Kyle, are you okay?” I hear nothing for several seconds, then indiscernible noise.

  “Okay, baby, sorry about that. I just shut myself i
n the bathroom. Wow, this ship is really rocking.”

  Or maybe you are wasted, Kyle. My inside voice. “Please be careful, Kyle.” I wonder what percentage of people grow out of their partying phase. What if it isn’t a phase? Where does the line cross from fun to addiction?

  “I miss you, Peyton. So much. More than I’ve ever missed anyone. When are you coming back again?”

  He declares he misses me but doesn’t remember when I will be home? “Thursday.”

  Pounding pulses through the phone line such that I am forced to pull it away from my ear. Muffled screams follow. I’m done with this conversation.

  “Oh yeah, okay. I’ll see you Thursday then, Pey. I gotta go as these animals are going to rip the door to the john down if I don’t get out of here. I love you. I mean it. I love you.”

  “Yeah, you too.” I know it’s a lackluster response, but he probably can’t hear or comprehend anyway.

  I hurry back downstairs, freezing in place on the bottom step. Peering across the room to where Jack is kneeling on the living room floor, pictures and paraphernalia that tell my life story scattered around him. My hand lands across my heart as my breath catches. I had no idea my mother had saved all of this. I’d felt so disconnected from her, and though she would ask repeatedly for information on my friends and activities, all the rage and blame I placed upon her had prevented me from giving her the satisfaction.

  Sensing my reaction, Jack stands, motioning me toward the items on the floor with his left arm. “Holy shit.” I look at him incredulously. “What is all of this?” I kneel, and he kneels beside me. I pick up a yellow third-place ribbon from fifth grade field day. Sack Race is scrawled across the back in black marker. Smooth satin slides between my fingers and the matching smoothness of my cheek as I wipe away a tear that falls. A little piece of rectangular, worn cardboard indicates my first swimming lesson at the age of five proclaimed me a guppy. Playbills from each high school production predicted my future, and every report card from kindergarten to senior year was neatly piled and bound with a rubber band. I pick up the cap I wore for graduation, peacock blue with a white tassel. The strands slide over the top of my hand, tickling my skin. I’d been so bitter that some kids had a crowd there to celebrate, or at least their mother and father, when I only had one single solitary person. One picture of the two of us from that day is near the cap. We are both stiff and straight, uncomfortable, with too much space between us. Jack looks at my hand as I reach to pick it up, then into my eyes. “You were beautiful that day.”

  My eyebrows rise. “How do you know?”

  “I took the picture. I wasn’t a helpful stranger,” he chuckles, releasing some of the tension, “I was there for all of it. Your plays,” he says picking up one of the folded papers with Annie scrawled across the front. “Never missed one. And your graduation? I wouldn’t have missed it for the world. You have no idea how much I had to hear about how proud Caroline was of you.”

  “But—” I can’t finish the sentence, unsure of what can possibly come from my lips to make sense of this. Out of the corner of my eye, to the right, I notice several tubes of rolled-up cardboard. I lean over and pull one from the pile, rolling the rubber band from the middle down the length of it and unrolling the scroll to reveal the Scream 4 movie poster. I open the next, and the next, until the curling-edged rectangles cover the floor. Every movie I’d been in, even if only half of my head was visible on the big screen, is accounted for.

  “I’ve got one more thing for you,” Jack says scrambling to his feet. He heads toward the stairs. I hear his footsteps stop overhead at the top of the stairs, knowing he’s entering their bedroom. He might need a minute. I lift a stack of pictures tied with a ribbon and untie the bow. It is arranged from the beginning. Me as a newborn in a small tub in the kitchen. Me on a tiny two-wheeler. A picture of me pointing to the gap where a bottom tooth had been. I flip this one. On the back in her writing is My first tooth lost and the date. All my first are here. My first dance. My first car. Friends throughout my life. Pictures I don’t remember being taken and didn’t know existed. I lose track of time but realize Jack has been gone quite a while.

  “Jack?” I call out but remain captivated by what lies before me. Hearing no reply, I ascend the stairs and round the corner to see Jack sitting on the bed. He clutches a pillow to his chest, tears streaming silently down his face. I sit beside him.

  “It still smells like her.”

  I thank God he has had the chance to return home before her smell has vanished.

  “I’m so sorry, Peyton.”

  Why is he apologizing to me? I am the one who has been awful to my mother. “You don’t owe me any apology, Jack.”

  “Yes, I do, Peyton. We should have told you that she was sick.”

  We. My mother had been part of a ‘we’ and I never knew.

  “What she had was called bronchiectasis.”

  “What is that? How did she get it?”

  “A lung disease. And bad luck. They don’t know what caused it. Half the people who get it, they just don’t know why. She was taking antibiotics, and everything seemed to be under control. I can’t believe she’s gone. I miss her so much.”

  “Me too, Jack.” I know his missing her one-ups mine. It’s different to lose someone you have every day. My handful of days from the last few years isn’t the same. But we’ve both lost the chance to have more days. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “She insisted. She wanted you to follow your dream. She didn’t want to be a burden. She was fiercely independent. We were both in denial about how sick she was. Pick your day, pick your excuse. I’ve spent a year convincing myself she was right, but she wasn’t. If it’s any consolation, it doesn’t make it any easier having known, because I didn’t get to say goodbye either, and I’ve spent an awful lot of the last year scared and sad.”

  Dark shadows dot the legs of the gray pants that he is wearing, remnants of the fresh tears sliding down his cheeks. I reach for the tissue box on my mother’s nightstand. He blows his nose then takes a deep breath. “It was weird. She didn’t seem that sick. We even thought maybe it was fall allergies aggravating her condition, because we’d had a late stretch of Indian Summer. We went to bed one night, and I reached over and could tell she had a fever because she was burning up. She couldn’t breathe, but that was nothing new, so we waited it out for the day. Her coughing got worse through the night. I didn’t like the lack of color in her face in the morning. She refused to let me call the doctor, so I literally carried her to the car and took her to the ER. By the time they had her in a bed and were admitting her for pneumonia it was too late. They filled her with antibiotics, but I watched her go from vibrant to—” He couldn’t continue to push out the words through the tears. Dead. The word escaping his lips would make it permanent. He doesn’t finish the sentence. “It was so fast. I should have called you right away. You might have made it. I was so hopeful I wasn’t even thinking about saying goodbye. I didn’t call you and I didn’t say goodbye. They said her lungs were just too damaged from years of disease. I just didn’t know. I’m trying not to be pissed at her too! Lot of good that would do me, huh? But if she had taken it more seriously, she might be here, and I am mad at her for leaving me way too early. Can you forgive me for not calling you in time?”

  I look toward him reassuringly. “I think I am the one who needs to be asking for forgiveness. I left her long before she left me, Jack.”

  He turns toward me with understanding eyes. “We’ll get through this together?”

  It’s a question, not a fact, but I feel a great sense of peace in his offer. I fear being alone in the world more than I fear the risk of letting Jack in. “I’d like nothing better.”

  Relief washes over Jack, visible in the way his face softens, the deep crease between his eyes smoothing. The wrinkles that had formed from smiles through the years became more prominent as his lips turned up at the corners. His eyes surveyed the room longingly, and then he breathed into
the pillow he was still clutching. I knew that he was stealing every last memory, trying to feel her presence in her smell and her things.

  We stood up and he instinctively reached to smooth the comforter until no evidence of our presence remained. “I should go,” he barely whispers into the air.

  It felt a little crazy but seemed the right thing to do as I offered, “Do you want to stay here tonight?”

  His eyes meet mine. “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, Jack, you are more than welcome.”

  By his look of gratitude, I am sure I have made the right decision. It is about time.

  NOVEMBER 12

  CHAPTER 8 | Peyton

  I wake to the smell of coffee. Coffee I haven’t had to make. It’s a nice benefit to having Jack in the house. I grab my one and only sweatshirt from my suitcase and pull on my leggings. The bed is freshly made across the hall.

  “Good morning, Jack! It sure is great waking up to this smell!” I say cheerily while reaching for a mug and filling it to the top. Jack’s stare is piercing and I look up to meet it. One eyebrow is cocked in my direction. He looks ready to proceed with caution.

  “You’re a morning person?”

  I take a large gulp from the cup and let the hot liquid scorch my tongue and throat. I could be. Maybe someday.

  In my hesitation, he answers for me, shaking his head and chuckling, “You are your mother’s daughter, Peyton Jennings. Right down to the denial part. It’s okay, I am used to it. The only difference being that your mother just used coffee as a vehicle for cream, and you seem to have nearly finished that cup without a thing in it.”

  I am glad that he called me out, and that I share another trait of my mother’s. He loved my mother, flaws and all, so maybe he can let my transgressions slide too.

  “I’ll be heading out shortly, but I want you to know I have enjoyed our time together. I have plans tonight, and you leave tomorrow, yes?