He bent forward, his heart thundering in his ears, and touched his lips to hers. Soft, because that’s what she made him feel. Safe. Like everything, with her, was different.
And it must have been, because she kissed him back.
16
New Leaf
It could have been very awkward. When Jack got done kissing a woman light-years out of his league, at the workingman’s midnight of ten o’clock, and they were alone in his room with no distractions to break the ice.
Taking it further than a kiss wasn’t an option, not that she knew that.
But Mari made a joke. She made it easy. She made it okay.
Long after she went back to her room, Jack stayed awake, thinking about Vernon. About Leroy and Brad. About Mari.
Mostly what he decided was that she deserved better than what he’d been.
* * *
—
“We’re having a meeting.”
It was what Jack grunted the next morning at work when the men piled out of their trucks. Mari’s eyebrows shot up. A meeting? Jack didn’t believe in meetings. He said if there was anything that wasted more time than meetings, it was managers. And if there was anything that wasted more time than meetings and managers, it was probably a politician.
As if that weren’t weird enough, he looked at Mari after he said it. “You can come, too. If you want.”
“Let me just get my umbrella for the rain of frogs,” she said, but he didn’t hear because he was already striding over to a spot in front of his truck’s bumper. Joey and Gideon heard, though. The apprentice snickered, and the older lineman gave her a quiet smile that somehow made her feel understood. She’d talked to him only a few times but he’d always been kind to her, and she got the idea that he saw a whole lot more than he ever let on.
Mari hurried to get into the circle of men, because Jack was already drawing a breath to speak.
“I been a dick.”
He faced his crew squarely.
“It’s dangerous work out here. You ain’t pushing pencils, and ain’t nobody there to catch you if you fuck up. I buried two men in my years on this job, and I ain’t looking to bury more.” He cleared his throat. “I don’t need to tell any of you the other reason I push you so hard, but I will because y’all know it anyhow. I want you to understand that I know it ain’t right. Rod’s son, Junior, is running the crew down the row from here, and he’s so lazy he’d hire somebody to lift his own peck—” He glanced at Mari and broke off. “His daddy wants us to pick up all his slack because he’s slow. But y’all ain’t slow, for as much as I’ve ragged on you. Shouldn’t have done that. You’re good, hard workers. ’Cept for you, Kipp, and you’re out on your ass next week if you don’t shape up.”
The mustachio’ed man made a squeak of protest, and Mari held her breath so she wouldn’t start laughing. He really did spend more time talking than he did working, but she got the idea that none of his other foremen had ever called him on it.
Jack pointed at Ricky. “And you’re fired.”
Mari blinked, swapping a stunned look with Gideon as Jack walked away, then tensing when the crane operator chased after Jack.
“What the hell, man? You can’t fire me without cause. I’ll have the union all over your ass.”
Jack didn’t stop until Ricky grabbed his shoulder, and then he whirled, throwing the other man’s hand off and backing him up with one, ferocious movement. “You been inappropriate with the women, and I’ve seen you do it myself. Already lodged a complaint with the union this morning. Now, you can get off my job site, or I can do what I should have done before and punch the shit outta your face. You pick.”
Jack glared, his face so close to Ricky’s the other man was forced to breathe only the air that had already been expelled from Jack’s lungs.
“The ladies didn’t mind, or they would have complained, not you.” Ricky smirked. “Maybe you’re jealous of my effect on the fairer sex, hmm, Wyatt?”
Jack was going to hit him. It was absolutely clear in the shift in the air, even before she saw his biceps flex and his arm draw back. And she leapt forward to stop him.
In her mind went the lightning-fast debate of They’re not talking about me, I’m not important enough for men to fight over but who else could they be talking about and how many women are on construction sites anyway?
“I minded,” she said.
Breathlessly, uncertainly. She sensed something behind her and glanced back to see the whole crew had moved in. To back Jack up, or her? Somehow, it felt like both, and it steadied her.
She met Ricky’s eyes, and his additional inches of height somehow felt puny. “I minded,” she said again, calmly.
“Well then, you should have said something. I was just joking around, didn’t mean anything by it, didn’t know you’d be so uptight and—” Ricky started sputtering, and Gideon stepped forward and took his arm. It looked gentle, but he must have thumbed a pressure point or something because pain spasmed across Ricky’s face and he rushed to keep up with the pace Gideon set when he led him away.
“I’ll give him a ride back to the yard” is all Gideon said.
“Lose him off a cliff before you get there, if you want,” one of the other men muttered.
Mari flushed, the hairs on the back of her neck rising in a rush of goose bumps. She hadn’t known any of the men objected to Ricky’s behavior. What he’d said in front of Jack, and the other things he’d tried or said, when no one else was looking, she thought the other guys just sort of . . . agreed. Or didn’t care. Or a mix of both. She hadn’t thought they might be keeping silent for the same reason she had, which was that she was shocked and wasn’t sure what to say, and then the moment had passed.
Only when Ricky was most of the way to the truck did Mari think to let go of Jack’s arm. He scowled at her. “That idiot needs a decent punching.”
“And I think you would have delivered a more than decent one,” she said, smoothing his sleeve. “But for today, you’re his boss, and if he has a violence complaint against you, it will undermine any complaint you made against him. Tomorrow, you can punch him.”
She tried to keep her hands from shaking at the thought of going back to the motel today, when Ricky might be moving out, or might not move out at all. Jack would be there, and Lisa and Marcus, if she asked them to. She swallowed down the tightness from her throat.
She wasn’t alone. Not today.
* * *
—
Ricky’s truck was gone by the time Jack made it back to the motel, and he wasn’t sure whether to be disappointed or relieved the crane operator hadn’t stuck around to pick a fight. Mari was quieter than usual through dinner, and they watched one and a half renovation shows together before she glanced over at him and said, “It was brave today, what you did.”
He tried to think what she might be talking about, so the silence lagged long before he said, “The meeting?”
“Yeah.”
He snorted. “The hell is brave about how long I been running my crew like some kind of asshole? Like Rod.”
“Not like Rod.”
The show came back on and they subsided, letting the screen soothe the crackle of tension between them. The couple on the show were installing some exotic stone counters, which were blue.
Jack could not see the sense in blue counters.
When a Swiffer commercial blasted on, Mari’s hand covered his on the remote control and pushed the mute button.
“It was brave,” she said, “because most people can’t stand admitting when they’re wrong.”
Swiffer gave way to Brawny paper towels.
Brawny to Home Depot.
They were halfway through a Mr. Clean animated commercial when he said, “Your ex was an asshole and a coward, yeah. Still don’t make me brave for trying to turn around before I end up anything like hi
m.”
His thumbnail picked at the rubber buttons of the remote, accidentally changing the channel so he had to change it back.
“My daddy—” A tickle came into his throat so he had to cough before continuing. “Daddy had the same temper. So did my brother, who mostly raised me. Ain’t no excuse.” He turned to her, and she was already looking at him. “If I can’t hold it together—if I don’t get better from here, I want you to change crews.”
By the time they looked back to the screen, the show was on again, and it had moved from countertops all the way to bathroom mirrors.
* * *
—
Mari stayed late that night, all the way past the new episodes and into the reruns. Well past the point when they could get a full night’s sleep before work the next morning.
They didn’t talk much, though their glances bumped into each other more and more. He brought her a plastic cup of tap water, because neither of them seemed much in the mood for beer.
When she finally scrubbed her hands down her jeans and forced herself up from the bed, he was off the mattress after her in a second, walking her to the door like he always did.
She wanted this night to end differently. For something, anything in her goddamn life to end differently. It made her ache to think of his words earlier, the determination still so palpable in the room that she could feel it quivering in the air.
He wanted to be someone she could trust.
Not someone who lost his temper, or lashed out in anger. Except in the short weeks she’d known him, he’d already done both. He’d hinted just enough at his history that she knew it was like hers, like Brad’s. She was drawn toward him like he was something she’d been craving, but she knew better than to trust her instincts, because she remembered.
She remembered the intensity with which she’d loved Brad in high school.
She remembered the night they got engaged, when he came to her with a tiny diamond ring, tears glittering in his eyes and a knees-bent vow sworn on all the years that diamond had existed that he’d never be like his father, or her stepfather. They would make a life away from all that violence and drama.
She wished she could say the diamond had been a cubic zirconia, only a year or two old, but it had been real. As had been his vow, every day until he broke it and probably even after. He’d meant it, and she’d known him well enough both then and now to realize that.
It’s what made it so hard to leave him. He never meant to hurt her, but he always did. He wanted, so badly, to stop. And yet he couldn’t. Hadn’t. She still wasn’t sure which.
It was part of the reason all her mail went to a PO Box and she lived in a truck. She knew Brad. He wouldn’t let her go. As long as she rejected him as unfixable, he’d hate himself for it and her, too, and he’d look for her. And if he found her, he’d kill her.
Mari reached out, her heart in her throat, and her reckless hand landed on Jack’s chest, crinkling his T-shirt when her fingers clenched.
“You’re a good man,” she said hoarsely.
In his eyes, it was clearer than words that he didn’t believe her.
She wanted to be right about him, that he was a good man. She wanted to shake the part of her that warned that a guy with a temper and an abusive father was a risk she couldn’t afford to take twice.
She wanted, just one time, for things to be different.
17
Pizza Doesn’t Lie
Mari did not like this coffee shop as much as she remembered liking it when she’d come here with Lisa. The chandelier draped with Mardi Gras beads seemed kitschy instead of funky. The air scented with vanilla and freshly roasted espresso was heavy and cloying instead of delicious. The chairs looked butt-sprung and sagging instead of soft.
It might just be her. Even her clothes itched today, like nothing in her life fit the way she wanted it to. Not long ago all she wanted was to be left alone, and now she wanted so many things. A job that didn’t change every few weeks. A home and friends. And a man who unfortunately didn’t mix with a single one of those other goals.
A man she wasn’t even sure she should want.
She caught Rajni checking her expression and she threw what she hoped was a reassuring smile at her companion as they waited in line. It was the first time she’d invited the other woman to do something outside of work. She was relieved Rajni had agreed, and was hoping that buying her a coffee would at least somewhat make up for the fact that she needed a favor, even though she and Rajni weren’t really close enough for her to justify asking.
Mari couldn’t stop thinking about last night. That awful, sick feeling in her gut when she met Jack’s eyes at the doorway of his room. He had looked ashamed and maybe even guilty. Even in the midst of that, she’d loved the way his eyes always came back to her face, as if there was nothing else worth seeing in the room. He was like that when they were outside, too, with the whole sky and world rolling out around them for miles.
She trusted Jack. She would have sworn on her life that no matter what the situation was, he’d only move to protect her, not hurt her. Except that the reason she was hiding here, with no permanent address and a motel room under a fake name, was because she’d trusted another man with her lifelong vows. That one couldn’t even obey her restraining order, much less resist his compulsion to break her body into pieces.
She knew, as deeply as you could know anything, that she made the wrong choices when it came to men.
Which was why she was here.
She and Rajni both ordered the homemade chai, and she slid her card across the counter to steal the tab while controlling her own grimace, because Rajni had ordered the medium, which was an entire $1.20 more. Her budget was pitiful enough that even that was a blow, but it was worth the investment to get her advice. Making the right choice now might save her from a new medical debt to duplicate what she already owed.
“Thanks for the chai, but what’s the deal with the coffee date?” Rajni asked, grabbing their cups and giving her a sideways look as she led them to a table by the window.
Rajni was an ex-marine that Mari had worked with on two or three other jobs. She had her Toyota truck rigged to the hilt, with solar panels to run a little refrigerator, and custom cubbies built in under her bed to hide both weaponry and more outdoor gear. She’d done the wiring on the fridge herself, and customized the .45 pistol she hid beside her bed. Most people would say that was too high a caliber gun for a woman’s small hands, but they hadn’t seen the custom grip, or the steadiness of her siting gaze when she practiced on targets way out in the desert.
Mari was a lot more interested in Rajni’s history with boyfriends than guns, at the moment, but both were informed by the undercurrent of efficiency and utter lack of bullshit that always characterized Rajni.
“Well, I probably owe you a drink for something, and this chai is something special.”
“That’s no lie. For a free cup of this, I’d date plenty gnarlier people than you.” She winced. “Not that I don’t like you. I just meant, I’m not usually your first choice.”
Mari shifted, at a loss. Had Rajni wanted to spend more time together? They got along, yes, but Lisa was the only one who sought her out. She just assumed no one else really wanted to get closer, but maybe they were assuming the same thing about her.
“I’m . . . almost as rusty at the friendship thing as the dating thing,” she said. “But not because I wouldn’t like to spend more time with you when we’re not digging up burrows or scrambling around on scree slopes.”
“Understood.” Rajni smiled, her smooth, light brown skin setting off the red of her tank top so the simple cotton looked runway-flashy.
The other biologist had never had a stitch of trouble getting a boyfriend, which was part of the reason Mari had chosen her to ask for dating advice.
“Lisa told me you had a pretty rough divorce,” Rajni said
. “Takes time to get back to real life after all that.”
Mari’s fingers twitched. She had suspected Lisa wasn’t the best at keeping secrets, but it still hurt to hear that she’d been telling her private business to the other bios.
“Yeah. It does.” She toyed with the sleeve on her cup, shifted in the too-soft armchair. “I need some advice, actually. And Lisa . . .” She tried to think of a kind way to say that Lisa was a little gossipy, and more than a little judgy when it came to the construction workers, who she mostly saw as Ford-truck-driving, climate-change-denying jerks.
“Let me guess, Lisa hates the guy.”
Mari stopped, her eyes widening. “How did you know it was about a guy? And how did you know—”
“Lisa hates all the guys. She’s got a real good one, and somehow she still manages to be cynical.” Rajni crossed her legs, amusement playing around her lips. “And you’re all fidgety today. It’s-about-a-guy fidgety. Color me officially curious.” She leaned forward. “C’mon, please tell me you need advice because the sex is too kinky or something.”
Mari smiled. “Would I need advice if we’d gotten to that stage?”
“Depends on how kinky is too kinky.”
She broke out laughing. “Well, let’s hope I’m having those problems next week.”
“What problems are you having this week?” Rajni’s face was still alight with amusement, but her eyes were kind, and Mari realized the other woman had been trying to break the ice.
“How much did Lisa tell you about my ex?”
“Enough that if I see him, he isn’t going to walk away in one piece.” Rajni smiled. With a lot of teeth. “There’s a whole lot of desert out there. A man could get lost.”
Mari glanced down. She was warmed by the reaction, but at the same time, she felt off-balance knowing other people knew.
Breathe the Sky Page 13
