by Jadyn Chase
“You don’t have to do that anymore because I’m here,” I told her. “You don’t even like waitressing, do you? You told me you only did it for the money.”
“Yeah, but….”
“I make enough to support all four of us,” I went on. “You can keep freelancing with your accounting work. I know you like that, but there’s no reason you should keep working at the diner. Christopher needs you more in the evenings. Jackson, Ruby, Reggie doesn’t need you at all. He’s running a business, for Christ’s sake. You’re a number to him. You don’t owe him anything and you owe Christopher and your dad and yourself everything.”
She stared up at me in shock. I swear to God she never once thought about quitting the diner. She never thought she’d be able to.
I took her hand. I made the decision. That made me the man of the house. She would do it. Why shouldn’t she? Why shouldn’t she reap the rewards of sharing the responsibility with her son’s father? I sure as hell didn’t come up here to ride on her coattails.
I led her into the bedroom and pulled her to a stop next to the bed. I took off my jacket and laid it across the chair.
Now that I looked at it and fingered the worn, familiar leather, a strange ache seized my heart. “I guess I won’t be wearing this much anymore.”
She drifted to my side and circled her arms around my ribs. She nuzzled close, but she didn’t say anything.
I couldn’t remember a time since I moved to LA when I didn’t wear this jacket. I practically slept in. Now I was taking it off to move back to Barstow. This marked the end of one era and the beginning of another.
In a way, taking the jacket off made me more Los Diablos than keeping it on. I still carried the brand inked into my skin. I could never take that off.
Taking off my colors changed me more than anything. I felt lighter, less stable, more malleable. I could remake myself into anything I wanted and I wanted this. I wanted to be a father and a…..well, I wanted to live with Ruby and make this work.
That was what I wanted. Nothing stood between me and that but my own stubborn will to persist. I would do it. By God, I would do it. Nothing would stop me—certainly not some jacket.
I would put it back on for business, but it would never be my second skin again. Christopher wouldn’t see me wearing it. If anything, he would see me not wearing it. He would know something changed, that I wasn’t the same man he met when I wore it.
The jacket would feel strange when I put it on. I would only feel normal when I took it off and laid it aside. This moment would repeat itself every time I took it off. I would make that choice again and again, day in and day out, probably for the rest of my life.
Ruby’s warmth seeped through my t-shirt. She felt different without the jacket, too. I sensed her vitality and her erotic magnetism more. She vibrated through my life as never before.
Without thinking, I scooped her up and laid her on the bed. I eased in next to her and her velvet arms closed around my neck. I lifted her chin to kiss her. She rippled her body against me. My dream came true. Nothing could be sweeter than that.
The dark closed us in, but I didn’t see any more. I closed my eyes against the torrential sublime perfection of this moment. Past and present ceased. The world existed in an endless halo of primal existence, without end.
Her fingers threaded into my hair and along my skin and under my clothes. She infected my flesh with her crushing intoxicating softness. Nothing could match this.
Her tongue and her sighs and her delicious essence swallowed me in their unstoppable maw. I could disappear in her. I could erase everything I knew about myself and be reborn. Whatever I became, it would be good.
She rocked me over on top of her and her hands left blistering prints all over my skin. She found the secret nodes of vulnerability I hid even from myself. She protected me from the raw world that once took shelter under that jacket. She knew and understood. She would hold me together until I developed a new skin, a better skin, a more living skin that could interact with the world without my hard old shell.
16
Epilogue: Eli
Epilogue: Eli
I wound back my arm and tossed the ball to Christopher. It made its usual comfortable thumping sound when it nestled into his mitt. He pretended to dodge sideways and ran in a circle before throwing it back on the fly.
I laughed. “Go long, son!”
I lobbed the ball high and hard. He trotted backward keeping the ball in sight all the while. He ran a long way back before he raised his glove and let the ball plummet into his grasp.
“Woo-hoo!” I cheered. “Great catch.”
He called high and loud across the field. “Your turn, Eli!”
He cocked his elbow and fired the ball straight up. It soared into the sun so I couldn’t see it. I swiveled around and dashed down the field hoping to get somewhere near where it would land.
I ran and ran until I finally spotted the minuscule speck blurring into view. When it did, it screamed out of the sky so fast I couldn’t get into position quick enough. I raised my glove and squinted straight into the sun.
The ball whistled at me at terminal velocity. I adjusted my mitt, but not quick enough. The ball hurtled past my ear and pounded into the sod.
“Aargh!” Christopher howled. “So close!”
I picked up the ball. I tossed it into the air and caught it in my glove while I sauntered back toward him. “I’ll never be as good as you, son.”
He ran up next to me beaming from ear to ear. “That was so close! You almost had that.”
I chuckled. “Never mind. It’s time to go home anyway. Where’s your backpack and lunchbox?”
He bolted across the field and retrieved his stuff from the school steps. Then he rejoined me on the long, slow amble home. The sun dipped toward the horizon and cast long shadows from the light poles.
The air smelled soft and inviting, now that spring settled over the desert. In a few months, summer would blast that smell right out of the world. Barstow would smell like burnt dust until winter returned.
Walking home from the baseball field always made me thoughtful. So many things changed since I moved back to this town, but somethings would never change.
Christopher broke away and ran the last several blocks to the house. He got there long before me, but when I caught up, I discovered him sitting on the porch untying his shoes. He kicked his gear into a corner and got to his feet so we entered the house together.
Ruby stood up from the kitchen table when we appeared. Mountains of papers formed towers all around her laptop. She tapped away madly at the keyboard and stacked papers here and there.
“How’s work going?” I asked.
“I just finished for the day.” She slapped her computer closed. “I’m all yours.”
“Perfect.” I kissed her and gave her a swat on the backside. She laughed and pretended to slap my hand away, but her eyes sparkled and her cheeks flushed.
“How was practice?” She ducked into the kitchen and took a pan of lasagna out of the fridge.
“It went fine,” I told her. “Your son is going to be the next Derek Jeter.”
Christopher materialized at my side. “You were pretty good, too, Eli. That was some ball you almost caught.”
I shoved my mitt over his face and rubbed it in hard. “The key word being ‘almost caught’. I almost caught it. I didn’t catch it, but you caught yours, didn’t you? I’m telling you, Ruby. We should get this kid into a better league. He’s too good for the school team.”
“Can we, Mom?” he pleaded. “You know there are Little League teams competing for the Little League World Series. I could go out for one of them. Please, Mom? Say I can.”
She put her arm around his shoulders. “We’ll look into it and then we’ll decide. We won’t be deciding anything tonight, so you better go change out of your uniform.”
He took himself off to his room and Ruby came up next to me. “You’ve been filling his head full of ideas
again, haven’t you?” she whispered.
“Why not?” I returned. “He’s way too good to be playing on this team. Why shouldn’t we encourage him to pursue his dreams? He’ll only be young once.”
“What if he isn’t good enough? What if he dreams of playing in the Little League World Series and he fails?”
“Then at least he’ll find out from someone else instead of hearing from us that he isn’t good enough. I never want to tell him that. I want to always be the one to tell him he’s good enough.” I kissed her. “Come on. Let’s get changed.”
I took a shower and put on my nice evening dinner clothes. Ruby changed into a wine-colored dress that floated around her knees. She started to put on her makeup when someone knocked on the front door.
I answered it to find a young woman standing there. She carried a computer case under one arm. “How are you doing, Trisha?” I stood back to let her inside.
“Thanks for having me, Mr. Walch. Where’s Mr. Lewis?”
Ruby hustled out of the bedroom putting on her teardrop earrings. “He’s asleep in bed. He’s been there all afternoon. He almost never does anything but sleep and he never wakes up after eight. I’m sure you’ll have no trouble with him.”
Trisha settled on the couch. “What about the other one?”
“I heard that!” Christopher bellowed from down the hall.
Trisha, Ruby, and I laughed. “You two behave yourselves,” I told Trisha. “Dinner’s in the oven. Don’t let him stay up past ten o’clock and try to keep the yelling to a minimum. I don’t want to get another noise complaint from the cops.”
Trisha bit back a grin. “Yes, Sir.”
Christopher drifted out of his room. “You’re a dead woman. You know that.”
Trisha narrowed her eyes at him, but she couldn’t stop smirking. “Says you, chump. I hope you bought a fresh box of tissues for all the crying you’re gonna be doing.”
I chuckled and grabbed my keys. “We’ll leave you to it. Just try not to get blood on the carpet.”
I held the door open for Ruby. When I shut it behind her, Christopher was sitting down in the armchair across from Trisha with an evil glint in his eye.
Ruby hesitated on the porch. “Are you sure this is a good idea?”
“Why not?” I asked. “They both love that game. It’s just a little friendly competition.”
She shuddered. “I’ve never seen him so….so malevolent. I never thought a game could inspire such animosity.”
“It’s hardly animosity,” I countered. “It’s a friendly game of checkers.”
“A cutthroat game of checkers, you mean,” she muttered.
I waved toward the street. “Are you coming?”
She managed to tear herself away and I escorted her to the curb. I held the door open on our new Hybrid. Then I got into the driver’s seat and motored across town.
Ruby’s eyes popped when I parked in front of the diner. “Here? What did you want to come here for? I thought you wanted to go someplace nice.”
“This is nice, and I thought it would be the best place to celebrate our first anniversary.” I offered her my hand. “Besides, at least here we know the food is good.”
She got out, but she couldn’t stop staring at everything. She hadn’t set foot in the place since she quit.
Stan cracked a grin when he saw us. “Hey, folks! Where have you been hiding?”
Ruby colored. “Suburbia.”
Stan conducted us to a booth in the back—the same booth, in fact, where we ate dinner together so many moons ago. I waited until he took our order before I ventured further.
I slid my hand across the table and took hers. “This last year has been the happiest of my life. I owe you so much for everything.”
She caressed the back of my knuckles. “I feel the same way. I have the life I always dreamed of, and I have you to thank for it. When I think of what my life was before, I don’t know how I survived it.”
“I never want to go back to the way it was before,” I told her. “I want to know we’re going to stick together through thick and thin, no matter what.”
She became suddenly serious. “Always.”
I shrugged, more out of nervousness than anything else. “What do you say we make it official, then?”
She frowned. “What do you mean?”
“I mean….” I pulled a small box out of my pocket and dropped on one knee next to the table. “I mean, let’s make sure we never part, that we’re always there for each other, forever. We both want this. Marry me, Ruby. Let’s raise Christopher together and keep making each other happy. Please?”
Tears welled up in her eyes, and her hand flew to her mouth. She blinked down at the ring in shock, but she didn’t answer.
I let myself smile. “I guess that’s a yes.”
I took the ring out of the box and slid it onto her finger. Tears streaked down her cheeks, and she burst into sobs. “Eli! Oh, Eli!”
I clasped that hand, the hand wearing my ring. She really was mine at long last, but I didn’t feel any catastrophic tidal wave of emotion. I didn’t even feel particularly happy at the moment. I only felt a sense of relief, like something wrong finally fitted back into its right place. Now I could rest.
I kissed her, but her mouth didn’t quite work right. I tasted the salt on her lips. She kept sobbing and blinking away her tears to look down at the ring.
I stood up straight and looked around. Everyone in the diner stared back at me. I grinned and shrugged again. “Well, folks, that’s it. Congratulate me. I’m engaged.”
The whole place erupted in applause. Stan, whooped and pumped his fist in the air. People wolf-whistled and yelled, “Yeah!” in the background.
My ears and cheeks burned, but before I could retake my seat, Ruby launched out of the booth and grappled both arms around my neck. She kissed me still crying her eyes out. She kissed me all over my face and down my neck until she hugged me hard around the middle.
I patted her back and kissed the top of her head. We got that out of the way. Now we could truck on the end of our days together without every questioning again whether we would or we wouldn’t. We put that old doubt behind us, and now we could expect clear sailing.”
The End.
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