by Kitty Parker
…
She bakes three dozen cupcakes for Rosita's birthday and when she delivers them to Rosita's little house, being decorated with balloons and streamers, Rosita invites for her to come back for the party later that night. Daisy can't remember the last party she's been to that didn't have a superhero theme and she hears herself accepting the invitation.
She calls her parents to see if they can watch Matty for the night and she then returns home to get herself ready. Her mom knocks on the door as she's deciding which dress to wear and Daisy promptly pulls Annette into her bedroom to help her. She decides on a black – slightly short and tight – dress that Maybelle had bought her last year and she has had no occasion to wear it. She braids and pins her hair up around her head and she studies herself in the mirror.
She wonders how tonight will be. She's only twenty-three but she's always felt so much older than others her age. She supposes getting pregnant at seventeen and having a baby at eighteen could do that to a person. She wonders if tonight, she might act her age.
After kissing Matty a few times and making him promise that he'll be good for Grandma, Daisy leaves the apartment, feeling nervous and wondering how long she'll stay.
The party is in full swing when she arrives and despite the chill in the air that night, the front door is open and the house inside is stifling from all of the people. Music is pouring from the speakers and people are dancing in the living room and there are bodies everywhere. Somehow, though, Rosita spots her.
"Daisy!" She hurries towards her in a skintight red dress and a birthday tiara in her black hair. "My god, you look so hot!" She exclaims and is clearly a little tipsy but Daisy smiles and flushes all the same at the compliment. "Let's get you a drink!" She grabs her hand and with that, she tugs her towards the kitchen.
The counter is jammed with all sorts of liquor bottles and there is a plastic tub on the floor, filled to the brim with ice and beer bottles. On the table, there is food and Daisy sees that almost all of her cupcakes are gone already.
Daisy studies the bottles in front of her and she's not sure what to have but before she can tell Rosita that she doesn't think she'll have anything, Rosita is pulled away by another one of her guests and Daisy looks around, wondering where she can go. There are so many people and though she recognizes many of them, she is feeling so awkward for some reason though she had never been the sort to feel like that in a social setting.
"Know what you wan'?" A familiar gruff voice asks from behind her and she instantly turns, smiling as soon as her eyes fall on Jack standing there, looking down at her.
And cue the butterflies.
…
She admits to him that she's never drank alcohol before – doesn't even use liqueur in any of her desserts – and Jack doesn't seem too surprised when she tells him that.
Jack grabs a red plastic cup and she watches as he mixes her a drink. Cranberry juice and just a splash of vodka. He hands it to her and watches as she takes her first sip. She can barely taste the alcohol and she smiles at him. She may be wanting to cut loose tonight but that doesn't mean she wants to get home, trashed.
She wonders how Jack knows Rosita but Rosita is the kind of girl who knows everyone.
He pulls a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and he pops one in his mouth. He cocks his head towards the back door and she smiles, heading outside, Jack following behind and they walk towards the edge of the backyard where there are two empty lawn chairs. Daisy sits down, making sure her dress doesn't ride up too high on her thighs and Jack plops down, cupping his hands around the cigarette as he lights it and then blows the first stream of smoke away from her.
Even though the music is pouring out of the house and they can hear all of the people inside, it's quieter out here and Daisy tilts her head up, looking at the stars and she takes another sip of her drink.
"How do you know Rosita?" She finally asks, looking back to him, finding that he's already looking at her.
Jack shrugs. "Her cousin works at the same garage as me. She's always in there, complain' 'bout her mom to him." He takes another drag of his cigarette and she smiles at the thought, easily able to imagine Rosita doing that. "How 'bout you?" He asks.
"She's Matty's kindergarten teacher and I baked the cupcakes for tonight," she says.
"I didn' know that. Had three of 'em. They're good," he says and she smiles at the compliment before taking another sip of her drink.
"Is your brother back?" She asks though she doubts he is. The hallway is still quiet.
Jack shakes his head and taps cigarette ash onto the grass. "You'd know if he was."
She feels herself relaxing a little bit more and she settles back into the chair. They don't talk. Jack smokes his cigarette and Daisy sips her drink and sitting out here with this handsome, albeit slightly rough around the edges, man, she finds herself enjoying her first adult party quite a lot.
"The last party I went to was in high school," she begins speaking without even really thinking about what she's saying. She just knows that sitting there with Jack, even with the butterflies in her stomach, she feels relaxed in a way she rarely feels. "After that, I had Matty and I was in school and I didn't have time for anything else. I had a baby. I didn't want to go out partying. I probably missed so much that others my age do."
Jack is quiet and she doesn't expect him to say anything.
But he does. "Didn' miss much of anythin' except for people bein' idiots," he says before taking a drag and she smiles against the rim of her cup before taking another sip. "Figured you were young when you had the kid."
"Yeah…" Daisy doesn't really want to talk about that but somehow, she knows that if she tells anything to Jack, he'll keep it to himself and not judge her for it. "I was seventeen and thought I was in love. Isn't that how it usually goes? And my boyfriend at the time – Matty's dad – didn't think a girl could get pregnant her first time."
He snorts a little at that and Daisy looks at him. His eyes meet hers.
"Sorry," he says, looking genuinely apologetic but she just smiles a little.
"It's alright. Trust me. I know how stupid it sounds," she says and does her best to keep smiling though it's a part of her past that she really doesn't want to remember because it sounds so stupid. It is stupid. And because she blindly believed her boyfriend without question, she now has a child. She loves Matty with her whole heart but her entire life could have all been completely different if she had just done one thing differently.
Isn't that how it usually goes?
But if she didn't have Matty, she wouldn't have someone she loved completely and she wouldn't have someone who loved her. And if she didn't have Matty, she never would have moved into that apartment building and she never would have met Rosita and she never would be sitting out here in the cool night with Jack Belton.
…
When Daisy decides it's time for her to get home, she gives a very drunk Rosita a hug and Jack gives her a look as if she's crazy when she tells him that she's walked. He's got his pickup truck and he's driving her home.
Daisy does her best to hide her smile.
The ride isn't long and they don't talk during the short drive. Jack parks in the parking lot beside the building and they walk into the building together. They live on the second floor and they climb the stairs together and every once in a while, Daisy feels her hand brush against his and she feels tingles shoot directly down her spine each time.
She wonders if he feels anything like that, too.
She wonders if this is how a typical twenty-three year old feels after coming home late at night from a friend's birthday party.
"There you go. Safe and Sound," Jack grunts as they stop outside their doors.
And Daisy looks up at him and smiles and she tells herself to just say good night to him and go inside to relieve her mom of babysitting duty but she can't get herself to move.
She looks at him and there's just something about him. He's the most handsome man he's ever se
en. He's gruff and she doesn't know anything about him but she can't stop staring at him. Is it just because she just misses having male companionship? No, she's never had that. Because in high school, there hadn't been any men. Just boys. Jack is the first man she's not related to that she's ever really spent time with.
And she realizes that she really doesn't know how to act while around a man.
For not the first time in her life, she wishes she had her older sister's confidence.
"Good night," she says softly because she has absolutely no idea what else to say.
"G'night," Jack says but he doesn't turn to unlock his door.
He is watching her and obviously waiting for her to go into her apartment first. And she tells herself to. Tells herself that she has to go check on Matty and get to bed herself. Tells herself that she doesn't know Jack Belton at all and all he knows about her is that she's a young single mom who needs a lesson on birth control.
She tells herself all of this and yet, she somehow manages to ignore herself.
"Good night, Jack," she says once more and then without thinking it through, she pushes herself towards him and her lips find his cheek. It's just a split second but she feels the warmth of his skin and the scratchiness of his facial hair and she feels him stiffen.
She wants to run away, too embarrassed to do anything else.
But instead, she pulls her head back and looks up at him through her eyelashes and gives him a smile. A shy one but a smile nonetheless. Her heart is beating so fast in her chest, she swears that it's trying to break out through her ribcage.
"Good night," she says one more time before finally turning towards her door and unlocking it, she slips inside. Once it's closed firmly behind her, she exhales a deep breath.
"Daisy?" Her mother's soft voice calls out from the living room.
Daisy takes a step to go to her but before she can, she turns back towards the door and peeks through the peephole. She bites her lower lip and smiles to herself as she sees Jack still standing out there in the hallway. Still not moving. And then, his hand slowly lifts to his cheek, touching where she had kissed him.
…
If anyone asks him, he won't be able to tell them what's going on because he doesn't have the first clue. He likes to keep to himself. Not spend time with many people – especially women. And especially women with kids of their own. The whole thing makes no sense to him and he can't figure out why he's doing it.
He tells himself that he's just sick of peanut butter sandwiches and Hungry Man TV dinners.
He can't cook for shit. When he's out in the woods, he cooks whatever meat he's caught over the flames of his fire but that doesn't take much skill and all of his life, he's eaten frozen and canned food or fast food. Home-cooked meals have always been few and far in between. He tells himself that that's the only reason he accepted Daisy's invitation to dinner.
It's definitely not because she's the prettiest thing he's ever seen – especially when she smiles. Why would it be about that?
…
Matty's a pretty cool kid. Jack doesn't have that much experience with kids but he's been around some a few times – usually the kids of Cletus's friends. Kids desperate for any scrap of attention and kids in need of a bath. Kids who stayed in the back rooms while their parents were out in the front rooms, doing things that the kids didn't need to see though Jack knew it was no secret to any of them – even the youngest ones – that their parents were junkies.
Jack sometimes went along with Cletus when he had to make a deal but he didn't hang around. That didn't interest him. So instead, he hung out with the kids. Letting them show him the few toys they had, watching Sesame Street with them and just listening to them as they talked excitedly because finally, someone was listening.
Kids aren't scary. They're just little people and most are better than adults anyway.
He learns three things about Matty right away. The kid loves Halloween candy, dinosaurs and his mama. And Daisy loves him, too, smiling at her son as if she's never been more proud of him and all he's doing is wiping the corners of his mouth free of chili with his napkin. And he's pretty damn happy, too, spending most of the meal talking on and on and Jack wonders how the kid's able to breathe.
Their apartment is small – a mirror image of his own across the hall, just in reverse – but unlike the apartment he shares with Cletus, it's clean and it smells sweet. Like chocolate.
Cletus's gone. He sometimes does that. He disappears for a while and Jack doesn't know where he goes and he doesn't hear from him until he appears again just as randomly. Cletus's been drifting around since he was twelve and Jack doesn't expect him to stop now. But Jack's never been like his brother. He likes staying in one place. He likes having an address to an apartment that's actually not a dump and having a job with a steady paycheck. He even likes paying his bills and going grocery shopping because that's what most people do and all of his life, that's all he's wanted. He's just wanted that normalcy.
With Cletus gone, Jack is able to clean the apartment and it's straightened out enough at the moment but not like Daisy and Matty's place is. He almost asks Daisy how she cleans.
…
It's been days but he swears he can still feel the exact spot on his cheek where she kissed him and sometimes, he swears it's still tingling.
He has no idea why she did that and he has no idea why he doesn't seem to hate it as much as he would if anyone else had done that. And that just confuses him even more because why isn't he angry about that? He gets pissed if anyone ever gets into his personal space but here he is, Matty hugging him after dinner and then Daisy kissing his cheek after driving her home from Rosita's party, and he doesn't feel pissed.
He's just feeling so confused about the whole thing, he's giving himself a headache and he figures the only thing to do is stay away from them for a while.
…
Jack likes having Martinez as a boss. He's a bit cocky but he's harmless and he has no problem telling people that Jack is the best mechanic he has. Martinez took a shot on him and gave him a job when Jack came around looking for work even though Jack had no previous work experience for Martinez to judge his skills by. There was an old Chevy in one of the bays and Martinez told him that if he could get it started, he could have a job.
He has been a mechanic at Martinez's garage for four months now and sometimes, he'll leave work and head home and think of how pretty damn happy he is. He's never really been happy before – not that much in his life to be happy over – but Jack's pretty sure that this is what being happy is. Having a good simple life – a safe roof over his head, food in his belly. Not much more a person can ask for in this world.
"Jack!" Martinez hangs up the phone on the wall and then calls his name across the garage.
Jack goes to him, wiping his hands on the red bandanna in his back pocket.
"Lady just called. She got a flat out on county road two. Needs some help," he said.
Jack nods and takes the key for the garage's tow truck off the wall, not thinking much of it. A lot of people call Martinez's when they are stranded somewhere and can't get the car moving away themselves. They're the AAA of the town, Martinez says with a proud grin.
Finding the car out on road two is easy enough. It's one of those back country roads that don't get that much traffic to them and the car is pulled over on the gravel shoulder, the back left tire visibly flat as Jack drives closer. The driver's door is open and he sees the legs of the woman as she sits sideways in the seat and she pulls herself from the car as she sees the tow truck approaching.
Jack almost smirks to himself. Course it would be her.
She's wearing a green dress and flat black shoes and a jean jacket and she's pulled her blonde hair up into a ponytail that day and he almost hates how pretty Daisy is.
She gives a smile – almost a hesitant one – when he stops the truck behind her car and gets out. She doesn't approach him though and Jack smirks this time. Now she cares about
giving him his personal space? His damn cheek is tingling just at the sight of her.
As he walks closer, she goes to the trunk and pops it open and he goes to it without a word to her, finding her spare and the car's jack. He then goes to the flat tire and kneeling down, he gets to work changing it. He can change a flat tire in his sleep.
Daisy doesn't say anything to him until he's down and he's standing up again.
"Thank you," she says softly while giving him that smile of hers.
Jack wipes his hands on his bandanna again. "What the hell you doin' all the way out here?" He finally asks, aware of how gruff his voice sounds. She doesn't seem to mind though.
"There's a Christmas cupcake baking contest in Peachton next weekend and I was just signing myself up," she said. "First prize is $10,000. Can you imagine?" She's smiling again and there's something about Daisy smiling. It makes him want to almost smile himself but he doesn't. He rarely smiles. "I'd even be happy with second or third. $5000 and $2500. I'm trying to get enough money together for my own little shop."
He nods. He remembers Matty telling him all about it over their chili dinner.
"Well… good luck," he offers her roughly because he doesn't know what else to say to her.
He's never been one to talk to girls before. Especially girls that look like Daisy. And he sure as hell isn't used to girls who look like Daisy giving him the time of day.
"Thank you," she is still smiling. "And thank you for helping me with the tire. I would have called my daddy but I think he's getting too old for stuff like that though I would never tell him that."
"You can only drive so far on that spare," he warns her. "Make sure you get back to the garage in the next few days and I'll take care of you."
And he swiftly curses himself at his choice of words and the back of his neck flushes because suddenly, he's getting this image of doing just that. Taking care of Daisy, pushing her back against the rack of tires in the shop, inching his hands up her dress as he kisses the air from her lungs. He bet she tastes just as she smells. Like chocolate.
