by Debra Doxer
“Wait. I owe you your sweater back,” I blurted as I began to tug it off.
“Keep it for now. I like the way you look in my clothes.”
I paused with the bottom of the sweater bunched in my hands as I watched him disappear around the corner. Smiling to myself, feeling my skin grow warm, I released the sweater, letting it fall back down over my thighs.
As I walked down the hall toward my locker, inhaling his scent that still lingered on the soft cotton, my steps slowed when I spotted Parker there waiting for me.
“You and Jonah seem to have a lot of hallway conversations these days,” she stated, but it sounded more like an accusation. Her nose wrinkled as she stared at Jonah’s sweater.
“I guess,” I replied, looking pointedly at my locker, which she was blocking.
“What do you two talk about?” she asked.
“World peace.” I snorted at her serious expression. She seemed to think she had a right to know this information.
Parker placed a hand on her hip. “Candy, if there’s something going on with you two, you don’t have to hide it. I won’t be mad. I promise.”
Right. I knew a trap when I saw one. I almost wanted to mislead her and make her think there was more between Jonah and me, but I decided to respect Jonah’s decision to take the high road since aside from acting obnoxious, Parker hadn’t done anything directly to me. If she had, the high road wouldn’t be my first choice.
“There’s nothing going on. He helped me get a job at Dempsey’s. That’s it.” I went with the truth, maybe not the whole truth, but enough to get her off my back.
Meanwhile, Parker was wrinkling her nose at me. “Dempsey’s? Is that place still in business?”
I nodded, curious at her reaction.
“We used to go there when it was Annie’s. A friend of my mom’s owned it. But these weirdos bought it and kicked us all out, said we kids were too rowdy, and warned us to never come back.” She laughed. “I figured they’d be closed by now.”
“Nope. Still there.” That answered my question about why it wasn’t a hangout for anyone I knew, although Sam and Stephen seemed nice enough to me.
Parker laughed and shook her head. “Well, have fun. If that diner gets too creepy for you, I hear the mall is hiring for the holidays.” With that, she walked away, not bringing Jonah up again, and missing the way I snarled at her behind her back.
When I got home, I gathered some ingredients and started making a batch of chocolate chip muffins. I’d just made them a few weeks ago, but they were my favorite, and baking helped me relax.
When my phone alerted me that I had a message, I glanced at it on the counter absently, expecting the text to be from Theo or my father. It wasn’t.
Jonah: On my way home from practice. Can I stop by?
I set down the wooden spoon I’d been using. He wanted to stop by? Why?
I responded after a moment of hesitation: Okay.
Panicked, I looked down at the flour that dusted my clothes and raised my hand to the messy bun I’d thrown my hair into, wondering how quickly I could fix myself when the doorbell rang. My gaze shot to the front door. Crap. He must have already been outside when he texted.
Panic gave way to resignation since I couldn’t make him stand out there while I washed up. Brushing at my cheeks as I ignored the anxiety twisting in my stomach, I opened the door and there he was, blocking out the sun with his broad, muscled build. His dark hair was damp as if he’d freshly showered, and his gaze danced with amusement as he took me in slowly from my head to my toes, making my skin prickle with awareness.
“What are you up to, Seaborne?”
“Take a guess.” Smiling ruefully, I turned and went back into the kitchen as he followed behind me.
“You’re baking again,” he said.
“Very observant. Let me just get these in the oven.” I finished pouring the last of the batter into the pans before sliding them onto the oven rack and setting the timer. Then I turned to face him.
“Muffins again?” he asked, looking pleased.
I nodded.
His grin widened. “I really like your muffins.”
My eyes narrowed at how that sounded. “Maybe I’ll let you have some.”
“Oh, I know you’ll let me have some,” he said, raking his fingers through his hair.
Oh boy. Were we really talking about muffins?
Averting his eyes and surprisingly looking a little embarrassed, Jonah cleared his throat before dropping into a kitchen chair. “So I was thinking about our talk the other day, when you informed me that families eat dinner together, and I was wondering if you knew something easy I could make. You know, if I wanted to cook dinner for my dad and me.”
“Really?”
He nodded a little sheepishly.
“Sure,” I said, pleasantly surprised and flattered he’d asked me for help. “I think that’s a really nice idea.”
“I’d be doing it for entirely selfish reasons. I’m tired of frozen dinners, and if I’m going to cook for myself, I might as well make enough for both of us.”
I tilted my head at his disclaimer. “What’s wrong, Bryson? You don’t want me to think you’re nice?”
He leaned forward. “I don’t want you to get the wrong impression.”
“That impression being that you’re nice.” I shook my head, frowning. “What do you have against being nice? Being a nice guy isn’t a bad thing.”
Jonah sat back in his chair again. “I agree. I’m just not one.”
Was he making this point because of what I’d told him at the diner that nice guys turned me on? He didn’t want to be a nice guy in my eyes so I wouldn’t like him too much? If so, that was not sitting well with me.
Blowing out a frustrated breath, I picked up my recipe book, sat down across from him, and began paging through it.
“What’s that?” Jonah asked.
“My mother’s recipe book.” I stopped at the lasagna recipe and ran my fingers over her big loopy writing.
“It’s all handwritten,” he noticed, reaching out to tentatively finger the edge of the binding.
I nodded. “She took a lot of basic recipes and changed them around a little, experimenting until she came up with something she liked. Then she wrote it all down.” My fingertips skimmed over the lined paper. “It’s the one thing I have that reminds me the most of her. When I lived with my aunt, I cut a piece of molding out of the wall in my bedroom and hid it behind there so my cousins couldn’t steal it.”
“Would they do that?” he asked, sounding appalled.
I shrugged. “We didn’t exactly get along.”
“Is that why you like to cook? Because it helps you remember her?”
“Yeah, but I’m not as good as she was.”
I stopped talking when his hand moved over mine on the table. Taken aback, I looked from our hands up to his face. His gaze, which could be intense one moment and indifferent the next, was soft and tender, filled with compassion the same way it had been at the diner that night with Theo. Just as I realized my heart was pumping harder and my skin was heating where our hands met, he removed his.
“Is there anything in there I could handle?” He averted his eyes as he nodded at the recipe book.
Releasing a small breath, I took a second to shake off whatever I was feeling. Once I did, I noticed Jonah was looking down at my fingers still resting on the table. They were warm and red as my racing heart pumped blood through my body, and his small smile said that he’d noticed. He’d gotten my circulation moving faster than any heater could. My telltale fingers were speaking louder than either of us.
“Lasagna,” I replied, pulling my arms back and placing my hands in my lap. “I think you could handle lasagna.”
He grinned, sitting up straighter. “Then talk to me about lasagna.”
After deciding on lasagna, I’d copied down the recipe for Jonah, added some helpful notes, talked him through it, and returned his sweater, which he accepted th
is time. Then he went on his way, taking along some fresh muffins with no more innuendos about liking my muffins, just a sincere thank-you instead.
When Jonah first walked in, I wondered if the request for cooking advice was a ploy to see me. I even hoped it was, but after he left I decided it wasn’t. We mutually liked each other, I was fairly certain of that, but it was never going any further. Jonah made that clear each time he backed off from anything more, and since I wasn’t ready for more anyway, it was fine. Yes, I felt a little rejected, but I knew it was selfish of me since I hadn’t given Jonah a reason to think I was interested in him, at least no more of one than he’d given me.
It was all so jumbled and confusing, but fun and thrilling at the same time. Truthfully, I had no idea what I wanted, which was a strange kind of progress for me since I was dead set against dating and relationships after my ex.
Later that night, my father texted to say he wouldn’t be home for dinner again. I hadn’t seen him in two days, which meant I hadn’t told him about my job or the college applications I’d completed. As I ate dinner alone, I felt sorry for myself, thinking of Jonah making dinner and sharing it with his own father. Then I felt guilty for begrudging him that.
I cleaned up from my solitary dinner, set the alarm, and made sure the doors and windows were locked up tight. Then I checked them again before I picked up Pumpkin, who had been purring by my leg, and took him into my bedroom.
If my father were more sensitive, he would realize that being alone in the house after it had been broken into might make me uncomfortable. But if I said anything, he’d point out the fact that I hadn’t set the alarm or locked the door when the break-in occurred. So I supposed I wouldn’t be texting him about it.
As I sat on my bed, flipping through my schoolbooks, my mind wandered. Questions about Jonah soon edged out ideas of homework. Finally, I gave up on my books and gave in to my curiosity. Picking up my phone, I texted Lea to ask her the question I hadn’t wanted to ask Jonah himself, hoping she wouldn’t tease me for inquiring about him.
Me: What happened with Jonah’s mother and how does everyone seem to know about it?
Watching my phone, I was disappointed when she didn’t respond immediately. She texted me back about twenty long minutes later.
Lea: I know! That was crazy at lunch. His mom walked out on him and his dad and they haven’t heard from her since. She just up and left one day. This girl he dated last year told Parker and she told everyone. Ethan asked him about it and Jonah confirmed it. Poor Jonah.
Me: Yeah, that’s awful. Thanks for telling me.
A girl he dated last year? Katelyn? She’d cheated on Jonah, and then she’d blabbed to Parker about Jonah’s mother . . . a mother who’d left him? I hated Katelyn even more, and I didn’t think much of Jonah’s mother either.
Letting my phone slip from my hand, I lay down and closed my eyes. Jonah and I had a lot in common, a lot of bad stuff that made us who we were. I wondered if that was the reason why I’d always felt a pull toward him.
***
Theo: We are all faced with a series of great opportunities, brilliantly disguised as insoluble problems.
My father had successfully avoided me all week, leaving me no choice but to tell him by text that I’d gotten a job and that I needed him to drive me to it or leave me his car this weekend. He never responded, but he was sitting in the kitchen reading the newspaper when I woke up on Saturday morning, apparently waiting for me.
“Dress warmer, Candy. It’s frigid out today,” my father said when I met him in the hallway.
“I’m fine,” I muttered, pulling my wool hat down over my ears.
“So, how did you hear about this job?” he asked.
We were in the garage now, and I could already feel the chill nipping at me. “A guy at school told me about it.”
“What guy?” he asked.
“The new one I told you about.”
He nodded, and I figured he remembered. He had a mind like a steel trap, as my mother would say.
“I’ll come in and look around before I leave.”
“What?” My head snapped in his direction. “Why?”
Looking distracted, he said, “I just want to see the place. I’ve never been there before, even though it’s right in town.”
I eyed him suspiciously, hoping he didn’t intend to interrogate the brothers or embarrass me on my first day. I thought he might have some encouraging words about my getting a job after the way he’d criticized me before. Then again, maybe he was holding his congratulations in case I got fired right away.
“Where have you been all week?” I asked, knowing what he’d probably say.
“Working,” he replied.
That’s exactly what I expected to hear. He’d never said much before, but what he wasn’t saying now was louder than the actual words coming from his mouth. Something was wrong. I knew it, and there was nothing I could do about it.
“I wish you trusted me.” I hadn’t intended to say it, but I thought it, and the next second the words were coming out of my mouth.
He eyed me sharply. “I trust you, Candy.”
“Not enough to tell me what’s going on.” I twisted my hands in my lap, rubbing the smooth black cloth of my gloves together. “First you put in an alarm, and then someone breaks into the house. You disappear for nearly a week without telling me. Am I supposed to pretend I’m not worried about you?”
He sighed heavily. “I trust you. It’s not about trust. It’s about what’s best for you.”
I shifted toward him. “Keeping me in the dark is best for me?”
Rubbing a hand over his smooth-shaven cheek, he smiled slowly. “Yes.”
I turned away in frustration, wondering if his excuse was convenient or the truth.
At my reaction, he had the gall to laugh. “I know you think you’re like me, but you’ve always taken after your mother. You have a good heart, Candy. You don’t want to hear the details of my job. If I told you, you wouldn’t thank me for it.”
So my father thought I was self-centered and irresponsible, but with a good heart. How did those qualities even exist in one person? It made no sense. I’d have to be pieced together by Dr. Frankenstein.
“You don’t know me. Not really,” I argued. “You have no idea what I’m capable of and if you never give me a chance, you’ll never know anything more than what you’ve assumed. I’ve always wanted to work with you. I don’t know why you’re so against it. You’ve already admitted that you help people. Killing the bad guys in this world doesn’t make you one. If Osama bin Laden were standing right in front of me, I’d kill him without a second thought.”
My father scoffed. “Bin Laden is a no-brainer. So is Adolf Hitler. How about a better example?” He glanced at me. “A father of two who never misses a Saturday morning Little League game. He also works at a company that makes software for our missile defense system, and he’s selling source code to an unknown contact in the Middle East. Arresting him would only expose him and allow the foreign contact to use someone else. So he has to disappear instead. Could you kill him in cold blood if you were ordered to do it?”
I blinked my surprise at him. Had he just told me about one of his cases? “Our government ordered this?”
He shook his head. “I already told you I don’t work for the government. By the way, his youngest son is only seven. That same son will never know what happened to his father. His whole life, he’ll wonder. But you’ll always know that you were the one who took his father from him.”
He aimed a challenging look at me. He’d killed that man, whoever he was talking about, and he didn’t think I could do the same.
“He was a traitor, putting all of us at risk,” I replied. “I could do it, and I don’t blame you one bit for doing your job. You shouldn’t feel guilty about it.”
“But why would you do it, Candy? You’re not a flag-waving patriot or some do-gooder out to save the world.”
“Neither are you.”
“No. I’m not.” His chin dipped down and his expression turned dour. “You only want to do this because it’s what I do. Your mother did a good job brainwashing you, little one.”
My jaw flexed. “I’m not a child anymore. I may not be driven to save the world, but I want to do something worthwhile. I know your job is about the big picture, where the man you killed put our country in danger, and not the small picture of a father who went to his kid’s Little League games.”
His expression didn’t change as he pulled into Dempsey’s parking lot. Turning the engine off, he faced me. “It is about that, you’re right. But I don’t feel guilty, not even a little bit. You would, and that’s the difference between us.”
He pushed open his door and got out of the car, slamming it behind him forcefully, telling me that the conversation was over.
Unsettled and grinding my teeth together, I followed him, walking across the parking lot into the nearly empty diner. My father stood silently just inside the door, waiting for me. Taking a deep breath, I walked in and recognized the woman standing by the cash register. She’d been here the first time I came with Jonah. She wore a name tag today on her pink waitress uniform that read Carol.
“Why exactly do they need a hostess?” my father asked, looking around at all the empty tables.
From behind the counter, Carol laughed. “Stick around and you’ll see. Once that church lets out,” she pointed to the white clapboard building across the street, “we’ll be packed, and at this time of year, they run twice as many services. Lots of sinners looking for redemption around the holidays.”
I shot my father a sardonic look when Carol said the word sinners, and he winked at me, making me press my lips together tightly. He was already over our conversation, while it would gnaw at me all day.
“Well, Candy, good luck.” He clapped me on the shoulder. “Call me when you’re ready to come home.” Then he left, appearing relieved to be rid of me.
