Jacked - The Complete Series Box Set (A Lumberjack Neighbor Romance)

by Claire Adams

“How long has that been?” I ask.

  “Since fall after I graduated,” he says. “We got a huge influx of animals a couple of weeks after I started working there and, being a no-kill shelter, that can become pretty expensive if people aren’t adopting as quickly. They were either going to have to fire someone or start turning animals away, so that was that.”

  There’s a pause, but this time it doesn’t feel quite so ominous.

  “I think it’s really cool that you do that,” I tell him.

  “Thanks,” he says and he even starts to smile a little before his eyes are back on the notebook in front of him that I honestly hadn’t seen until just now over the mound of cans, wrappers and other clutter piled two-feet high over most of the table.

  I know we’re not together anymore, even if we haven’t said the words, but I’m still sensitive to the fact that Ian is going through a stressful time right now. That’s no justification for the way he spoke to me after the demo, but I can’t see any way that he’s going to have his head straight by the time the Midwest Championships actually happen.

  There are only two days left.

  It’s not my job to take care of him anymore, though, if it ever was. It’s not cruel, it’s just reality.

  I just wish things were different.

  “How’s your dog?” I ask.

  “Gerald?” I ask with a smile. “He’s good,” I tell him. “He’s got a surprisingly loud bark for such a small dog.”

  “Yeah,” he says. “He’s a bit of a handful. He was actually the runt of his litter, but even by the time you came and picked him up, he’d already outgrown his sisters.”

  “He was born in the shelter?” I ask.

  “Yeah,” I answer. “His mother was brought in pregnant and she gave birth to three puppies, two girls and a boy. Does he still do that thing when he pretends like he can’t understand you unless you have a treat in your hand, then he’s the master of all dog tricks?”

  I laugh and scratch the back of my head, “Yeah. I was really proud when I found out he’d sit and shake, but when I went to show my dad, he wouldn’t do it. My dad had to suggest trying it with a treat.”

  “You know,” Ian says with that little smirk he gets before he says something clever, “you’d think that, being a student of psychology, you would have remembered Pavlov’s dog. There wouldn’t have been a response to the bell if there hadn’t been food involved.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” I say, and chuckle a bit with relief.

  It’s awkward. It’s so awkward, but at least the tension isn’t quite so palpable anymore.

  “You want a drink?” he asks.

  “Sure,” I tell him. “Grab me a beer.”

  “You’re too young,” he comes back, but he gets out of his seat and heads to the fridge anyway. “Let’s see, we’ve got beer and…” he moves a couple of things to get a fuller look at the contents of the fridge, “beer,” he concludes. “Looks like all we have in the fridge is beer, but I can get you some water.”

  “Water’s fine,” I tell him.

  He opens a cupboard and removes a glass from inside. He fills it with water and brings it over to me.

  “Thanks,” I say, taking the glass from him.

  “Yeah,” he says.

  “So,” I start and take a quick sip before continuing, “how are you doing?”

  “I’m fine,” he says. “How are you?”

  “The competition’s almost here,” I tell him. “Are you still going to go through with it?”

  “I don’t know,” he says. “After everything with the demo, I’m kind of soured on the idea.”

  I’m quick to defend, “Hey, I was just reacting to the fact that you were being very disrespectful, and—” He puts up a hand to stop me.

  “I didn’t mean that,” he says. “That was all me, and I’m sorry. I didn’t even know what I was doing. I was just so frustrated, angry. I never thought I’d actually come in last.”

  “You weren’t—” I start, but he puts up his hand again.

  “It doesn’t matter,” he says. “Nothing excuses the way that I spoke to you. It wasn’t fair and it wasn’t cool, and I’m sorry.”

  My brain and endocrine system are all geared up for a fight, but it doesn’t look like there needs to be one. We both agree that he was being a jerk.

  “I can still come to the competition if you want,” I tell him.

  “I don’t even know if I’m going,” he says. “I want to try, if for no other reason than to say that I gave it my best shot, but I really don’t think I could deal with another disappointment right now.”

  “Fair enough,” I tell him, “but do you really think you’re going to come through everything easier if you bail on it? That kind of seems like the sort of thing you’d regret.”

  “Yeah,” he says, looking past me, sucking the inside of one of his cheeks, pulling it inward, “I guess so.”

  “I’m not going to tell you what to do, though,” I tell him. “It’s not my decision.”

  “Do you really think I’d have a shot at making an impact?” he asks. “Not the ‘fall on my face’ kind of impact, but do you think I can actually do this thing without humiliating myself? After getting my ass handed to me by those kids, I just… I don’t know if it’s going to be worth it to torch my career.”

  “I don’t think you’d be torching your career,” I tell him. “I think you’re still young, and even if you don’t take home the first spot in the competition, you’ve still got as much of a career ahead of you as you want. Vert was never your thing anyway, you said so yourself.”

  “Yeah,” he says hesitantly, scratching his earlobe. “It’s kind of the only thing I can think about, though. Now that I can drop in… I just wish the competition was a few months further out,” he says. “If I had a little more time to get comfortable and really work on my overall vert performance, I might be able to integrate it into my overall…” he trails off. “You weren’t really asking for a big explanation, were you?” he asks.

  “It’s fine,” I tell him. “I just don’t know what’s got you so scared? Yeah, your first vert performance wasn’t what you wanted it to be, but you did it. Now you can build on it. If you want to start doing vert as well as street and park, I say do it.”

  “There’s nowhere around here to practice it, though,” he says. “Apart from that one big drop-in at the park, there’s nothing that would even adequately simulate the experience.”

  “Who says you have to stay around here?” I ask.

  “What?” he returns.

  “If you’re going to go pro, you’re going to be traveling around quite a bit, right?” I ask. “So, while you’re out there on the road, start keeping an eye out for places you might like to live—places that have everything you need to practice what you need to practice and do what you need to do.”

  “I can’t just move,” he says.

  “You moved in with Rob,” I tell him.

  “That’s different,” he says. “I had no choice. I had to move in with Rob because my dad kicked me out. Even if your rosy painting of the future does come true and I do end up going pro, I can’t just leave my mom here. She’s the whole reason I’ve been pushing so hard to make this happen.”

  “How’s she doing, by the way?” I ask. “Is your dad letting you come by and see her?”

  “Yeah,” he says. “The old man wasn’t to thrilled about the idea for the first week or so, but I finally convinced him that if he didn’t let me see her, I’d start letting his business associates know how he’s been treating his family.”

  “What’s that going to do?” I ask.

  “My dad only cares about reputation,” Ian says. “It’s not about money, it never was. Money, for him, is a means and a prop. Some people put classic literature on their coffee tables to look smarter to their visitors, and that’s my dad’s whole life. It’s all about the appearance of success, but what it really comes down to is that his world is just a big collection of books on a cof
fee table. It’s all appearances.”

  “I guess I can see that,” I tell him, “but who’s saying you have to leave your mom behind? Why don’t you take her with you where you move?”

  “I still have school here,” he says. “Actually, I don’t really know if that’s going to be true after this semester. I can always apply for student loans, I guess, but that’s one of the biggest rackets on the fucking planet.”

  “Maybe so,” I tell him, “but if that’s what you need to do to get an education—assuming you actually want one and it’s not just your dad that was pushing you into it—maybe you just need to do it. Besides, nothing says you have to stay here to go to school. You can go anywhere you want once you’re pro.”

  “Yeah,” he says. “I can’t help but notice that you’re not in any of these plans.”

  Strained silence returns for a few seconds while I try to figure out a decent way to respond to him.

  “Yeah,” I mutter.

  I feel like I’ve planned to say more, or at least there’s more that I should be saying right now, but nothing else is coming out.

  “Well, I guess that’s just the way it goes, huh?” he asks.

  “Yeah,” I answer. “I guess so.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  The Long Drumroll

  Ian

  So, this is it.

  I rode down with Rob, Nick, and Marci, Nick’s new girlfriend.

  Nobody said a word the entire ride.

  Rob knows how big a deal this is. I’m not sure that Nick has the whole story, and I’ve certainly never gone too in-depth with him about what’s going on with my mom, but he knows enough that neither he, nor Marci broke the silence on the way here.

  Now, I’m all signed in, checked in, registered, whatever, and I have a couple of hours to kill before things are going to get started.

  I usually like to show up right before a competition, so I don’t have time to mindfuck everything, but today, I wanted to get as many practice runs in on the vert ramp as possible.

  After my near-second performance in the street competition, I’m even going to break down and take a couple practice runs there, too.

  The last one was to prove to myself I could actually survive a vert competition. This time, I need to win.

  Not only do I need to win vert, but I need to win everything.

  As much as I’ve liked to console myself with the possibility that I’d make a solid enough second or third-place showing to convince the sponsors to pick me up as well as whoever actually wins the thing, but that’s just a pipe dream.

  If this is going to pay off the way I need it to pay off, I can’t come in second. I need this to be a sure thing.

  I visited my mom today, long before we were getting ready to come down to the competition. She wasn’t having one of her better days.

  In the back of my head, I think I was hoping for some indication that she’d be well enough to come, but that was just a pipe dream, too. I actually feel pretty stupid about that one.

  I’m here, though, and whether mom is or not, this is still for her and about her.

  I just wish I knew they weren’t opening up the venue, even for practice runs, for another few hours.

  Signing in was easy enough—I just found somebody with a clipboard—but having to stand out here in the parking lot as the first few spectators start to arrive, bragging about that time they saw Ryan Sheckler at Dunkin’ Donuts or Mike Vallely getting into an argument with one of the guys at a record store, and it’s really not helping me focus.

  “What do we do now?” Marci asks and both Rob and Nick gasp.

  “It’s fine,” I tell them, waving off their shock that Marci would be so careless as to say something when I’m trying to get in the right headspace for the competition. “I guess we just hang out and try to pass the time until they open the doors.”

  “I’m going to go see when they’re going to open it up so you can get in there and practice,” Nick says, still giving Marci the stink eye for breaking the no-talking-before-a-competition rule.

  To be honest, the only reason I ever instituted this particular rule is because I started getting sick of Rob blathering on about the last time he got faced every time we got in the car to head to a competition.

  Nick starts walking and Marci goes with him. Rob looks at me, even lifts his hand to about the level of his eyes and opens his mouth, but only ends up telling me that he’s going to go with Nick.

  As soon as their backs are turned, my hand goes into my pocket and I pull up Mia’s number. My thumb hovers over the send key, but I just end up turning the screen off again and replacing the phone in my pocket.

  I apologized, but that hadn’t reversed anything.

  The fact of the matter is that I was really shitty to Mia and she absolutely didn’t deserve it.

  Thinking back on the expression on her face, how the corners of her eyes and the corners of her lips were pulled back as she grinned, the perky enthusiasm of her voice and then the way those eyes went wide and that mouth came open when I started going off on her right in front of about two dozen strangers, and those are just the people who I’m absolutely sure could hear every stupid, fucked up word out of my mouth.

  I don’t blame her for a damn thing.

  Still, it’d be nice if she was here.

  I pull my phone back out, but it’s in my pocket again just as quickly.

  What exactly am I supposed to say to her? “Hey, I know I was a jerk to you last time we were at one of these things, but you should come down here so I can feel better about everything?”

  It doesn’t seem like the classiest move.

  I try to get my mind off of Mia and back on the competition, but every time I visualize myself on the vert ramp, even though I haven’t come off my board again since that last run at the Richfield Community Skate and Ride, I’m falling off, crashing to the ground and seeing any hope I had of making a living at this go right into someone else’s hands.

  I take a deep breath and close my eyes, trying to relax and focus, but no matter what I do, in my head, I’m crashing every time.

  Rob, Nick and Marci come back over, saying that the park course and the vert ramp will be available for pre-competition practice in about an hour, leaving about another two hours before the competition actually begins.

  I tell them thanks for checking on that, and add that I’m just going to skate around to clear my head for a while.

  Nobody objects. Nobody really says anything.

  Of the few people that are waiting in line to get in, as far as I can tell, I’m the only competitor here. There are a few people tooling around on board in the parking lot, but none of them seem that advanced with it.

  I’ve been to the park before, but only once a few years ago, and that was before they had the vert ramp inside the repurposed warehouse that is the venue. It wasn’t a competition, just me and a couple of buddies wanted to see if it was really as nice as everyone said it was. It’s funny how much easier everything seemed back then.

  My mom had already been diagnosed, but I was starting to really distinguish myself on the board. I knew there was a long way left to go, but I was making progress and, before I knew it—or so I told myself—I’d be in a position to take the turn and go pro.

  Well, that’s today, and it doesn’t seem like much time has passed at all right now as I skate around, feeling more unsure of myself now than I did back then.

  When I get to the end of the parking lot, I look both ways down the street and just keep going. It’s not like I’m going to be late if I take a little detour and explore the area.

  They say that forward motion, whether it’s walking or riding a bike or driving or skating or whatever, helps the mind work through things, but all I can see is Mia’s face after I climbed off of that stupid fucking vert ramp.

  Forward motion isn’t helping my mind work through shit.

  Nevertheless, I just keep going.

  The town of Greenville doesn’t
really have much to boast about other than the skate park. It’s a small town, less than 10,000 residents, and the most interesting thing I’ve found on its streets so far are the bronze statues of horses every fifty feet or so along the main drive, painted in various ways, some as advertisements while some are painted to look like normal horses.

  I get a few blocks away from the skate park and take a right, going from the road to the sidewalk to let people past as they walk. Another couple of blocks and I turn again to head back.

  This isn’t helping, and the fact that it’s not helping is actually serving to frustrate me more. I’ll be stupefied if I end up making any kind of a decent showing in the competition.

  I’m trying to meter my breathing and just tune into the feel of the board beneath my feet, but it’s all I can do not to hyperventilate.

  I was afraid of this.

  Given any opportunity to think, I can generally figure out a couple dozen unique ways to poke holes in anything, and I’m having a really difficult time seeing any way that I’m going to come through this with a smile on my face.

  I take that final right turn and it takes me back to the edge of the parking lot.

  It couldn’t have been more than fifteen minutes since I skated out of here, but the crowd seems to have at least tripled in size.

  So recently on the verge of hyperventilation, it’s all I can do right now to breathe at all as I see the first of my competitors in the crowd, chatting. It’s Mike Onomato.

  Mike, now Mike’s a nice guy, but he’s one of those people whose parents wanted him to be the Mozart of skating, so they spared no expense on instructors, mentors, ramp construction, and on, and on. It’s always been a source of pride for me that I can beat his ass in street comps, but I’ve seen him on the vert and he’s no slouch.

  Still, I don’t want to be rude, so I skate over to him to say hello.

  “Ian Zavala,” Mike says over the head of a short, teenage girl for whom he’s signing an autograph. Seriously, where does this guy get his PR? “Glad you could make it,” he says. “It never feels like a real street x when you’re not around.”

  “Hey, somebody’s got to come and knock you off the top of the mountain,” I tell him. “I’m just doing my public duty.”