She’d tried to convince herself this wasn’t a lie, but in the end, she felt like she was betraying what had happened between her and Beau when she told her mother it meant nothing. And when Beau cornered her in the hallway right after Loretta had refused to let Josie accompany her to church that Sunday morning, she’d lashed out at him in frustration only to immediately regret it when she saw what looked like real hurt in his eyes.
Despite her conflicted feelings, Josie decided to seek Beau out the next day at school and explain what was going on with Loretta, how she wouldn’t talk to Josie, but at the same time watched her like a hawk all weekend. Fool that she was, she’d thought maybe Beau could help her, or at least figure out how to get her mother to start talking to her again. Even after everything that had happened, she still considered Beau a friend.
But then on Monday, Beau had shown her everything Loretta had said about him had been right on the money. And strangely enough, his awful behavior was what fixed things with her mother.
When Josie came home in an obviously foul mood, Loretta spoke her first calm words to Josie in over three days: “What’s wrong with you?”
And when Josie told her what happened at school, Loretta had sighed and put a comforting arm around her daughter’s shoulders. “I told you about messing with them rich white boys.”
“I know you did.” Josie had to work real hard to keep from crying. Apparently, that was all she’d been to Beau, a pawn, and a means for getting back at Colin.
For the rest of her time at Forest Brook, she’d concentrated on her studies. She’d even shut down Colin when he’d finally gotten bold enough to suggest they try to be more than friends their senior year.
“Colin,” she’d answered with a beleaguered sigh, “friends is as far as it goes with me and you… and any other white boy.”
It had been a little awkward for them after that, but they remained best friends until they left for college: Josie to the UAB in Birmingham and Colin to Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Music in Pittsburgh. But he’d kept in touch over email, even after he’d gotten his first record contract his first year of college, dropped out, and made himself over into a country singer who was known for his songwriting skills and ability to play a mean fiddle.
They’d probably still be in touch if Wayne hadn’t started checking her email behind her back in college and flew off the handle when he found out how often Colin had been emailing her.
She could still remember their first real argument like it was yesterday. Wayne had instantly morphed from a perhaps overly attentive, but otherwise perfectly sweet boyfriend into a green-eyed monster, so mad he’d flipped her dorm desk over and sent all her books and papers flying across the room. She’d actually been afraid to defend her long-time friendship with Colin, he’d been so physically angry. It had almost been a relief when he’d stormed out of her room, even though she was fairly sure his exit signaled the end of her very first relationship.
But then he’d returned the next day with a tearful apology and asked her to marry him. She knew now that what she’d thought was a out-of-character moment on Wayne’s part had actually been the first sign of things to come. But back then she’d been a naïve girl, thrilled to have her first black boyfriend, the son of an Atlanta judge no less. And he’d ask her for her hand in marriage!
Loretta’s approval of the relationship also didn’t help when it came to Wayne. Her mother had been so happy when Josie called her with the news. And though, Josie had thought Loretta would be angry about her dropping out of school to follow Wayne to Atlanta, where he’d be working as a junior attorney at his father’s old law firm after he graduated, her normally stoic mother had been just as blinded as Josie by Wayne’s charm and the fact that he was both black and fully invested in Josie.
One time Josie had brought up how controlling Wayne was—how he kept nagging at her to only wear contacts, how he insisted she take out her braids and get a relaxer for the wedding, and how she hadn’t been able to invite Colin to the wedding because Wayne wouldn’t allow it. But Loretta had cut her off with a hard, “You bet put that Fairgood boy out your mind. You got yourself a good black man and he’s willing to marry you!”
Her mother said all of this like Wayne was a hero astronaut and not just a good-looking law student Josie had randomly met while studying for her sociology class in the library. So despite her reservations, Josie married Wayne Simmons, a man who looked just about perfect on paper, in a small wedding ceremony in the backyard of Wayne’s parents’ home in a tony Atlanta suburb.
Her mother had even bought a new church suit for the event. “Oh, you look just like a fairytale princess, baby,” she’d said afterwards. “You living the dream.”
If only, Josie thought now, climbing out of her old bed. She stepped into the shower a few minutes later, still thinking about what a mistake she’d made. What had started out as a dream come true had quickly turned into a nightmare once Wayne moved her to his hometown of Atlanta, a city where she didn’t know anyone and didn’t have a support network.
But the warm spray of the shower helped to wash those terrible memories away before they overwhelmed her as they still occasionally did. At least she had hot water, she reminded herself. And she was grateful for that.
Even if it came at the price of working for Beau Prescott.
Josie shook that unhelpful thought out of her head. It was a brand new day, a Friday, which meant she’d only have to work for eight hours, and then she could go put in some volunteer hours at Ruth’s House.
She got out of the shower feeling much better than when she’d woken up. If she could just keep her head down like her mother had done when she’d had this job, she’d be able to get through the next eight hours, no problem. She looked into the mirror and forced herself to smile.
But it ended up looking more like a grimace.
5
The doorbell rang just as Josie was walking through the foyer, on her way to the kitchen, and she found an older, but heavily muscled, black man on the porch.
He introduced himself as Mac, Mr. Prescott’s home aide, and Josie almost hugged him when he asked to be shown up to Beau’s room so he could help him get ready for the day. She was so happy Beau’s L.A. assistant had hired somebody else to take care of what Mrs. Prescott had called, “Beau’s most personal needs.”
Beau was an asshole, and he’d only grown into a bigger one since high school. But that didn’t mean she wasn’t still a heterosexual woman with eyes in her head that, unlike his, were still working. She couldn’t deny how hot he was—back then and now. And she had enough imagination to guess if Beau’s body looked as good as it had under a zip-up hoodie and jeans yesterday, then it would look doubly as good without any clothes on today. She didn’t think she could keep herself from staring if she was forced to attend to his most personal needs along with her other duties.
Mac, with his affable demeanor and down-to-business clipboard, felt like an extra buffer between Josie and her surly boss. In fact, it was Mac who came down to fetch breakfast for the both of them, which meant her mornings would be Beau Prescott-free from then on.
She gave Mac—or “her savior” as she privately referred to him—a huge smile, and pushed two plates of biscuits and gravy in front of him.
But Mac didn’t smile back. “What do you know about this injury of Mr. Prescott’s?” he asked her.
Josie shrugged. “Not much. His mother said it was temporary and that he just needed me to clean, cook, and do some general care-taking for him until it comes back.”
Mac frowned. “She said it was temporary?”
Josie nodded. “That’s what she told me Beau told her.” She had a feeling she really didn’t want to know the answer to this question, but she asked, “Why are you asking?”
“I can’t really get into it without breaking the confidentiality agreement I signed before taking this job, but Mr. Prescott’s expectations seem a little, how can I put it… high. When he requested
an aide with a football background, I figured we’d be a perfect match since I played all through college. But he’s refusing any kind of training to deal with his sight loss. Turns out he just wants me to run him through his training program. He says all he needs is for me to help him exercise everyday, so he’ll be ready to go back to playing football next season.”
“And you don’t think that’s what he should be concentrating on?” she guessed.
Mac didn’t answer, but the troubled look that flickered across his face was all the answer she needed.
“I’m not sure how well you know Mr. Prescott, but if you can get him to at least consider some adjustment to blindness training, that would help him considerably.”
This request made her heart sink. She knew Beau better than most, considering she had watched him grow from a boy to a man. But she couldn’t convince him to let her lead him across a room, much less take his blindness training seriously.
“I’m sorry, but cooking and cleaning is kind of all I’m really equipped to do in this situation.”
Mac gave her a “fair enough” nod. “In that case, do you usually make food this heavy?”
Josie, who’d been surviving on soup for the last few months, shook her head. “Not for myself, no. I was just making the same stuff my mama made for Mr. Prescott when he was playing high school football.”
Mac made a note in his smartphone. “Tomorrow, I’ll bring a cookbook for you. If he’s serious about staying in fighting shape, we need more protein and less carbs and gravy.”
“Okay, sorry about that,” Josie said. “I’ll just get these plates out of your way.”
But Mac grinned and said, “No, leave it.” He forked off a piece of biscuit, circled it in the gravy, and popped it into his mouth. “Now that’s what I’m talking about! My wife’s blind, too, so I do most of the cooking for us. That means I haven’t had biscuits and gravy this good in a month of Sundays—they require a woman’s touch, you know.”
He stated this with such authority that Josie decided not to correct him. Besides, it was a pleasure to see a man about the same age Loretta would have been had cancer not taken her too soon, enjoying one of her mother’s recipes.
After Mac left the kitchen, she settled on a plan for the rest of the day, deciding to use her mother’s old Friday routine of spot-cleaning every room in the house. However, when she went to clean Beau’s room while he was in another part of the house with Mac, it looked like a bear had gone through it.
The delicate, decorative bottles on top of the drawer and several houseplants had been knocked over. There were also various baubles scattered about the floor, the victims of a blind man’s attempt to find something.
What had he been looking for? she wondered. From the state of the room, she doubted he had found it.
It only took her a few minutes of picking up before she solved the mystery. She found a silver phone with large buttons under the bed and its blinking screen informed her that its owner had missed several calls.
Josie’s heart broke for Beau as she put the story together. The phone must have fallen (or maybe it had been thrown?) and slid under the bed. And then when it had started ringing, Beau hadn’t been able to figure out where it was well enough to actually reach it.
Why hadn’t he used the intercom to ask for her help? And what was with him pledging to work out every day but refusing to do anything that helped him navigate his blindness? She held the phone to her chest. Obviously, Beau was in a major state of denial.
Later on, she caught Mac by himself and pressed the phone into his hands.
“What’s this?” Mac asked. Then his face lit with recognition. “Oh, you bought him one of those low-vision cell phones! Good idea.”
Josie shook her head. “No, this is his phone. I found it in his room, but I need you to give it to him and tell him you found it this morning. Act like you’ve been carrying it around with you all day, but you just now realized you had it. ”
“I don’t understand.”
Neither did she. Why was she protecting Beau from his own asinine ego when she could have used the found phone to bring him down a peg, make him realize he needed her just as much as she needed this job and she wasn’t completely under his thumb? Maybe it was because at the end of the day, she understood something about keeping up appearances, even when your life was falling apart.
To Mac, she said, “If you don’t mind, sir, can you just please do that for me? No questions asked?”
Mac frowned but he must have given Beau the phone, because when she came up the stairs with his tray that night, she heard him having a conversation with somebody on speakerphone from the other side of the closed door.
“What do you mean I might be out next season?” he was asking.
A man with a nasally Northern accent answered, “The back up quarterback’s doing a better job than expected. And let’s face it, Beau, you’re getting a little long-in-the-tooth for the game anyway. A lot of QBs your age are thinking about retiring right about now.”
“We made the playoffs last year,” Beau said. “They didn’t seem to have a problem with my age when we came closer than we ever have before to the big game.”
“Yeah, but that was before you got hurt, and they’ve got the team doc telling them you most likely won’t ever be able to see again. He says the neurosurgeon he consulted with—”
“Carol found a neurosurgeon here at the UAB’s Callahan Eye Hospital who studies this kind of vision loss for a living. He told her he’s fixed hundreds of cases like mine, and he wants to meet with me next Friday,” Beau said. “So fuck what that other guy said.”
“No offense to your assistant, but the team consulted with one of the top neurosurgeons in the field—”
“Whatever, tell the coaches not to go offering that snot-nosed kid my spot, because I’m keeping in shape, and I’m going to be back on the field by this summer for practice. And also tell them next year we’re going all the way to the Bowl.”
On the other end of the line, the Northerner said, “I don’t know how long I can get them to hold off on making a decision.”
“You’re my agent,” Beau said with obvious scorn in his voice. “Do your job and make it happen.”
“Okay, I’ll do my best.”
“No, I want you do better than your best, or I’ll be replacing you like I’m replacing that crap neurosurgeon the team’s got in their pocket.”
Josie guessed he must have hung up after that because the bedroom went completely silent.
She tentatively knocked on the door.
No answer, even though she knew he was obviously in there. She switched the tray to her other hand and used her free one to open the door.
“Hi, it’s me,” she said as she came through, feeling like the worst kind of person because she hadn’t waited for an invitation. But she was supposed to be at Ruth’s House in an hour, and she didn’t have time to lollygag.
Beau was sitting in the window seat, his phone gripped tightly in his hand. “How long were you at that door eavesdropping?” he asked.
“I made three-bean chili with sour cream and some Ezekiel bread on the side,” she said, ignoring his question and trying to keep her voice as cheery as possible. She set the silver tray on top of the small table she had brought in from another room earlier so he wouldn’t have to fumble around trying to eat on the bed.
His head was turned toward her voice, and she could see his body was just about vibrating with anger. She wondered if it was because of the call or because, as he rightly suspected, she’d overheard it.
“I see you got your phone out,” she said, trying for a subject change. “When I come back to collect your dishes, we can program my number into it. That way if anything comes up tonight you can text me.” She realized too late that he’d have a hard time texting her. “Or call me. You can call me if anything comes up.”
Finally he spoke. “Why would I need to call you on the phone when I have the intercom?”
And though his beard and sunglasses did a lot to obscure his face, she could see his expression grow even colder. “Where are you going?” he asked.
Josie grinded her teeth. “With all due respect, Mr. Prescott, that’s none of your business. But just in case your mama didn’t let you know about my schedule, I’ll be in the house most nights, except for Friday and Saturday and Sunday morning, which I get off, just like Mama did.”
“So you’re planning on going out tomorrow, too?” he asked.
“Yes, I am,” she said, “I’ve got plans for all my Friday and Saturday nights, sir.”
She’d hoped the deferential “sir” might end this line of conversation, but there was open hostility in Beau’s voice when he said, “Barely divorced, just moved back to Alabama, and you’ve already met somebody new?”
She didn’t answer, but apparently her silence was answer enough for him.
He shook his head. “Should’ve known. Same old Josie, love ‘em and leave ‘em with a trail of wrecked hearts behind you. I guess that ex-husband of yours never stood a chance. Tell this new guy good luck.”
Josie’s brain just about exploded with righteous indignation. He thought she was the love ‘em and leave ‘em type? He had no idea what she had endured while he was working his way through a considerable number of groupies if the tabloids were to be believed. He didn’t know her! He didn’t know her life! He didn’t—
She took a deep breath and forced herself to calm down. She couldn’t answer Beau’s accusation with any of the retorts that were primed on the tip of her tongue without risking her job, she reminded herself.
“I’ll just be going now,” she said in as pleasant a tone as she could manage. Heat, electricity, hot water, she chanted in her head as she left the room.
And she would have kept on chanting it, but just as she got to the stairs, she heard a crash.
His Pretend Baby Page 18
