Finding Joy (The Joy Series)

by Jenni Moen

  Eminem and Dr. Dre yammered on in the background about guilty consciences. They were talking about robbing liquor stores and hiding out in blonde wigs. It was a far cry from anything I was dealing with, but still made me think of my own guilty conscience. It also reminded me that I owed the man who’d made my dinner a conversation.

  I’d grown accustomed to the constant stream of music that had moved in with him. If he was in the apartment, something was playing. I had never realized what I’d been missing before, but now couldn’t imagine living in silence again. No matter what the song was, the lyrics seemed to have some relevance to my mood.

  I sang along and began scrolling through the emails that I’d neglected all afternoon. “I’m stuffed,” I said, moving my feet to make room for Adam on the other end of the couch. “If you cook like that for me every night, I’m going to keep you forever. I’m going to be as big as a barn, but I’m never going to let you go even if I have to sit my big fat ass on top of you to keep you here.”

  “I was kind of hoping you were planning on keeping me around anyway. Here. Give me your feet,” he said, patting his own flannel-clad leg. “You have to be worn out after all that baking.”

  I obliged though I didn’t think cookie baking warranted a pampering session. After all, I’d only made cookies. In a shorter time, he’d made us an entire meal.

  “Hey, Tony’s coming by in a few minutes to pick up something.”

  I looked at him quizzically and then down at my pajama pants. “Really?” I asked with a shrug.

  Tony was my favorite doorman and had worked in the building for much longer than I’d lived in it. Since Adam and Tony shared a love of muscle cars, they’d become fast friends. He frequently came by after his shift to talk cars and had seen me in various stages of dress and undress during the past couple of months.

  “Yeah, just a couple of car magazines,” he said as he sat down on the opposite end of the couch and an ominous blare of trumpets blasted from my phone to alert me of the incoming call.

  I’d been steadily working through my issues. My phone was one of them. For years, my cell had been set on silent. The sound of it, which served as another reminder of that awful day, had been unbearable. That was true even before I had known exactly how awful that day actually had been.

  Adam had forced me to turn it on a month ago. He’d gone through my phone, picking ring tones for all of my regular callers. Carly was a barking dog. Ethan was chirping crickets. The barking dog and chirping crickets never scared me as much as the ominous trumpets. They were reserved for my father.

  “The king speaks,” Adam said under his breath.

  My dad’s face flashed up on the screen as it rang again, and I silenced it after almost no deliberation.

  “You can’t avoid him forever.”

  “I know,” I said, looking away. “But not today, okay?” My eyes fell on the basket underneath the coffee table. I had started a new project a few weeks ago. I’d spent hours in the fancy yarn shop on Broome Street, picking out the perfect yarn. The sea foam green skeins were silky smooth and perfect for a boy or girl. Whether Lizzie’s baby wore pink or blue when it went home from the hospital … and no matter who it went home with … he or she would be warm.

  “We have two options, babe. We can either meet this problem head on, or we can skip town.”

  “I’m scared of the head-on thing,” I said. “You know he’s going to shit himself when he finds out you’ve moved in.”

  “Probably so,” Adam said, with a shrug. He never seemed to be bothered by my father at all.

  “I’m scared of rocking the boat.”

  “You’re what?” he asked, laughing.

  “I’m scared of rocking the boat,” I said again. “What we have going on here is so perfect and, yet, precarious. It’s so new and so beyond anything I ever hoped for. I feel like if the wind blows wrong, it could sweep it all away. I’ll be left in a barren wasteland again. When I was there before, it was okay. I didn’t know any different. I know now. I can’t live there again.”

  “That’s no way to live, baby. You can’t be afraid that every little thing is going to ruin us. Rock the boat. If it tips over, I’ll right it, and we’ll climb back in. We need to face your parents. And mine. Besides I’m not scared of your dad. I’m bigger than he is.”

  I laughed, but there was nothing funny about what we were talking about. I didn’t want to imagine my dad and Adam going at each other, but that’s exactly what I feared was going to happen. He spent years trying to keep me away from Adam and his family, and now all that effort was for naught. Even now that all of the secrets had been revealed, I knew that my dad hadn’t given up on his mission. If I knew him at all, he was still planning to do every thing he could to keep us apart.

  “I vote no rocking. What was my other option? Yes, let’s skip town,” I said. “Let’s pack up and run away.”

  “And what about Lizzie?”

  Yes. What about Lizzie? Lizzie seemed to be the source of a lot of my angst lately.

  “I know,” I said. “I’ve been thinking more and more about moving to California, but keep coming back to Lizzie. I don’t know how to leave her behind.”

  “She can’t rely on you for everything. You have to live your life. We have to live our lives. Besides, she’s going to be an adult before you know it.”

  “I know,” I said. “I just … when I signed up, I just never imagined that I’d get so emotionally attached. I hate what she’s going through right now. I want to take all of her problems away.”

  “But you can’t. You can’t fix it all for her. You can’t clean up all of her mistakes. All you can do is help her find her way.” I watched the muscles in his hands and forearms flex as he kneaded my right foot. “And we have to do what’s right for us.”

  If I didn’t know better, I would think he was talking about more than moving to California. I couldn’t help but feel like he was taking a stand against Lizzie’s baby. But I hadn’t mentioned the baby to him at all, and I knew Lizzie hadn’t. He couldn’t know what I had in mind.

  Tonight wasn’t the night to bring it up. He might want me to rock the boat a little, but surely didn’t want me to capsize it. And Lizzie’s baby had the potential to drag our little boat down and sink us forever.

  He had made it clear to me since the beginning that he never wanted to change another diaper. Was it even fair for me to ask it of him? All of his life, he had been making decisions … making concessions … for the benefit of every one else. Before his sister had been born, he’d taken care of his mom. While his friends played catch in the yard, he had made dinner and done laundry in an effort to keep his father out of the know and his family intact. Then, after Joy had entered the picture, he’d had the additional responsibility of looking after his baby sister when his mother wasn’t capable. When I’d taken her from them and his mom had finally fallen to pieces, he had once again been relegated to caring for the woman who should have been taking care of him.

  Could I really ask him to concede anything else? Was it fair to make this man who had already given up so much give up more?

  No. I knew it wasn’t.

  And yet I knew what I wanted, and my upbringing had been the opposite of Adam’s. I was the only child of Garrett Harper. All my life, I had been given everything I’d ever wanted. Worse yet, I had been trained to expect nothing less. My mixed emotions had me hating myself a little.

  Rubber Cat stalked in from the kitchen, and I was glad for the distraction. I groaned when he sprang from the floor and landed on my lap. “Have you been feeding this cat mac ‘n cheese, too? He’s getting fat.”

  Adam let go of my foot to reach over and scratch the cat’s head. “He’s a specimen of stealth and grace,” he said, more to the cat than to me. “But, no … we may have shared a little tuna here and there, but no pasta for this lean, mean fighting machine. Besides, if he’s picked up weight, it’s your fault. I’ve seen you sneak him peanut butter.”

 
; The cat, who had once been my only companion, continued his journey down the couch until he got to my feet. In a traitorous move, he nipped at my ankle, causing me to gasp and yank my legs back away from Adam. Rubber Cat gave me a victorious cat grin before beginning his nesting ritual on Adam’s lap. He turned in circles, first to the right, then to the left, and finally settled into my former spot. I stared at both of them, my mouth agape. I would have felt betrayed if it hadn’t just occurred to me that my old friend had given me the exact segue I needed to relieve my own guilty conscience.

  “Well, well, well. Just look at the two of you. Do you remember the first time you slept over here?”

  “Of course, I do,” he said. “I popped your sleepover cherry.”

  I tried to look disgusted, but a smile snuck out anyway. “Uhhhh, yeah,” I said, shaking my head. “I caught you feeding Rubber Cat in the middle of the night, and you told me that you’d never have a pet.”

  “I still don’t have a pet. He’s your cat. I can barely tolerate him.”

  “Rigggggghhhht. That’s why he just sold me out to sit on your lap. And who was it that bought him food last week without being asked and before he was even out, I might add?”

  “Well, I’m not going to let him go hungry. He and I spend a lot of time here while you’re at work and I’m studying. We’ve come to an understanding.”

  “Is the understanding that he’s going to sleep on your side of the bed? Because that’s my understanding.”

  Adam shrugged. “Maybe. He gets cold on your side.”

  “He gets cold? Really? He has fur. You know what I think? I think you like cuddling with him.”

  “Fine. You win. He’s one sweet pussy, and it turns out that I have a soft spot for your sweet pussy. What’s your point?”

  I nearly spit out a mouthful of wine. “Boy, you’re on a roll tonight. That’s one filthy mouth you have.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about because I’m talking about Rubber Cat. You’re the one who’s filthy.” He jabbed me in the side with a finger and started to tickle me. “I should wash your mouth out.”

  “STOP!” I screamed, wiggling away from the finger inching up toward my armpit. I had never liked being tickled. As a kid, my Uncle John had been a tickler. He had thought it was so funny the way I’d scream and squirm. At every family event, he would tickle me until I nearly peed my pants. And the one time that I actually had, he had pointed and laughed, which had only humiliated me more. Humiliation wasn’t Adam’s game though. He had something else in mind.

  He pitched the cat off onto the floor and crawled over on top of me. He took the sloshing wine glass out of my hand and set it on the coffee table and then resumed his position over me. “Look what you’ve done to me. You’ve turned me soft. Only six months into this thing, and I’m a domesticated potty-training cat lover. I’m a fraction of the man I used to be. I used to be tough.” The gruffness of his voice was offset by the barely there laugh lines around his eyes.

  “Not true,” I said quietly. “You’re still tough. It says so right there on your shirt.”

  “That’s not what it says,” he said, looking down at the giant Captain America symbol on his chest.

  “It’s implied. Super heroes have to be tough. It’s in their DNA.”

  He shifted his weight from his hands to his elbow so that his mouth was hovering just over mine. The corner of his mouth turned up in a lopsided, lazy smile. “Hmmm. You know what’s not implied?”

  “This?” I asked, arching my neck to kiss him lightly on the lips.

  He brushed his thumbs across my cheeks. “I love you, Allie. You and me, we can take them all. Don’t worry so much.”

  His lips came down on mine then. It was a demanding kiss. One that said that he was done talking for now. He held my face in his hands, while his kiss consumed me. Consumed us. Maybe this really was all I needed. I mean, our all was a lot.

  I slid my hands up under his shirt, running them along the hard contours of his back. He sucked in a sharp breath in response, and I nipped at his bottom lip. He growled in response, and, though I hadn’t thought it possible, his kiss grew deeper ... more urgent. He pressed up against me, his whole body searing into mine. Melting us into one person rather than two.

  He ran his hand down my body until he brushed over my most sensitive of spots. Even through my clothes, I shuddered under his touch. Suddenly, I couldn’t get them off of me fast enough. I wanted to be pressed against him, naked and exposed. And I wanted him inside me, claiming me.

  Would it always be like this? Would there always be this need to own and be owned? I didn’t see how it could possibly be otherwise. Every time he crawled on top of me ... every time I straddled him ... we were grown adults groping each other like teenagers.

  The sharp knock on the door made me feel like just that ... a teenager caught in the act. Adam groaned, but rolled off me. “That will be Tony. Will you answer it? I need a minute,” he said, already heading into the bedroom. “And I need to find those magazines for him.”

  I stood up and straightened my tank top and pajama pants just as there was another knock on the door. I picked up my wine glass and took a swig on the way to the door.

  “Come on in, Tony, Adam’s getting some stuff together for you,” I said as I threw open the front door. My jaw hit the ground and my stomach dipped.

  The visitor at the door wasn’t who we were expecting at all.

  CHAPTER 4

  Adam

  I strode back toward the living room and glanced down at the magazine on the top of the stack. A vicious looking red ’68 GTO glared back at me. It was exactly what Tony was looking for.

  “Hey, I’ve got more of these somewhere. They may be back at my old place. I’ll look when I go back to pack up more stuff,” I said, before looking up into the cold and very unhappy face of Garrett Harper.

  Alexis

  “I knew it,” my dad seethed.

  “Dad,” I started, but Adam cut me off.

  “Come in out of the hall, Garrett,” Adam said, with no emotion whatsoever.

  If he was surprised or upset by the appearance of my father on our doorstep, he didn’t show it. My dad, on the other hand, wasn’t so restrained. He glared at Adam with such a ferocity that I thought Adam’s head might burst into flames.

  “Come in, he says, as if this is not my daughter’s house,” my dad said.

  “It’s his house, too, Dad,” I said quietly.

  “So he’s living with you now?” my dad said, pointing a long, accusing finger at Adam.

  “I am,” Adam said simply.

  My dad moved past us, walking all the way into the living room. I shut the door and followed behind him.

  Adam was on the move, too. He had gone into some sort of protective mode that I’d never before had the privilege of witnessing. The emotions in the room were overwhelming. It was almost as if they were alive. Anger rolled off my dad. As Adam stepped in front of me in an effort to shield me from the harsh words that were sure to follow, the move tugged at my heart. Chivalry wasn’t dead. Not in the Hill-Harper house.

  “This is unacceptable,” my dad roared. “He’s moving out.”

  Adam barked out a laugh. “I’m not going anywhere, Garrett, unless she asks. And she’s not going to ask.”

  “Stop calling me ‘Garrett,’” my dad said. “I have always been Mr. Harper to you, and I always will be.”

  “What do you mean, ‘always’?” I interjected. Adam was still standing in front of me so that I couldn’t really see his face, but his entire body stiffened at my dad’s words.

  “Obviously, you know about each other … I mean, how could you not? But have you met before?” I directed my the question at my father because I knew that if they had met it was his doing. Adam would never seek him out. His hatred ran too deep.

  “Just twice, Allie,” Adam answered for him.

  “Twice?” I asked. “Why?”

  My dad answered first, and venom drip
ped off every word. “Because he had no business snooping around you, that’s why. I took precautions to keep him away from you. I paid a lot of money to his family so that they could never hurt you.”

  I sucked in a sharp breath. “Dad, you didn’t pay them to stay away from me. You compensated them for their loss. The loss that I caused.”

  My dad’s eyes bulged, and it occurred to me that he’d told the lie so many times that he almost believed it himself. “He’s helping me face the truth, Dad. It’s okay. I’m okay. I want him here. I love him.”

  There. I’d put it out there.

  My dad shook his head and stared at his feet for a few seconds. When he looked up again, his expression had softened. “Allie, you only think you love him. You may even think he loves you. But he has an agenda. I’ve been dealing with his family for years. You’ve known him … for what? Six months?”

  Adam visibly bristled. “Leave my family out of this. They’ve done nothing to deserve any of this.”

  “The fact remains that the settlement stipulates that your family stays away from Allie and that includes you. If you don’t, I can take it all back.” He looked Adam up down like he was yesterday’s trash. “What’s left of it anyway.”

  “Think about it, Adam. The apartment. All the money. What’s your mom been living on for the past 10 years? How many times have I sent her to rehab?”

  “Get out,” Adam shouted in his face. He stepped around me and was back at the door, swinging it wide open.

  “Allie …,” my dad said, looking at me as if this was a defining moment … as if this moment defined my future.

  He was right. This moment did define my future. “Just go,” I said.

  My father’s words had slapped me in the face. They stung as if he’d spoken them to me instead of Adam. I was just seconds from my emotions getting the better of me. The tears were coming. It was inevitable, but I wanted him gone before they got here.