by Cindi Madsen
“I do.”
She beamed and even clapped her hands. “I’ll work on it this week.”
“Thanks.” With the dough done, I scooped out a glob and popped it in my mouth. “Mmm. Cookies was the right call.”
After we ate more raw cookie dough than the salmonella police would allow, we shaped the rest of it, stuck the cookies in the oven, then returned to our movie and another round of drinks.
Which led to not hearing the cookie timer. I was glad that we’d eaten so much dough, because our cookies were flat puddles that were burned around the edges. We still ate a few, of course.
Savannah pulled out the bed in her couch, handed me a blanket and grabbed one for herself, and we relaxed back on the couch and finished our movie. And when it was done, she put in another DVD.
Our talking gradually slowed as the mix of food and alcohol and the late hour caught up to us. Then we crashed out on the couch, just like we used to back in college.
…
I groaned at the ridiculously loud rattling of keys coming from somewhere in the vicinity of the front door. I reached out, patting the area next to me until I made contact with Savannah, which meant someone else was at the door.
“I’m getting this strange sense of déjà vu,” Linc said, and I squinted against the bright light at him.
Savannah stirred and scooted up the sofa bed. She glanced around, clearly trying to get her bearings. Then she reached up and rubbed at her neck—mine felt pretty stiff as well. “Yeah, this is definitely a college throw-back.”
“Speaking of college…” The newspaper under Linc’s arm crinkled as he flipped it open. “I’m looking for something that means ‘studied in a hurry.’ It’s not cram, because it’s seven letters.”
“It’s way too early for crossword clues,” Savannah said, and I agreed with a slow nod that still made my head hurt.
Linc left his small roller suitcase next to the door and moved toward the kitchen. “I’ll make coffee.”
“Good idea,” both Savannah and I said. I smiled over at her, and she grinned back. Last night was just what I needed. Time with my best friend to discuss my career and laugh and take a night off from life in general.
Savannah stood and stretched.
“Wow,” Linc said. “You, uh, baked, hon.”
I covered a yawn. “We were craving cookies last night. The dough was so good.”
“What are you doing?” Savannah asked, and I glanced back to see Linc pulling out his phone.
“Taking a picture to send to Velma so I can tell her why the wedding’s off. I thought I was marrying a baker.”
Savannah’s mouth dropped. She walked over and smacked his arm, and he laughed and pulled her close, covering her lips with his.
Most of the time, lovey-dovey couples gave me a big no-thank-you reaction, but instead a traitorous thread of longing rose up. To have someone to joke around with like that. Someone who knew you that well and accepted you for who you were.
The stupid thing was I knew that I had a shot of having it for a little while. But I’d be me, and Jackson would be him, and we would constantly disagree, and eventually, everything would crumble apart. His family wouldn’t want to accept me—the “broken” girl who wasn’t good for him—in the place of some perky, composed debutant. Or I’d feel smothered and need to break free. We didn’t want the same things, and drawing it out would only hurt more.
If I was smart, I’d end it now.
The torn-apart sensation that’d plagued me lately tugged at me, fear over getting in too deep and an equal amount of panic over it officially ending.
The plan will keep me safe. No matter what, I stick to the plan.
I could handle another week and a half of fun without falling in love.
I was almost sure.
Chapter Twenty-Six
“Wait,” I said as Jackson pulled his truck and the attached U-Haul trailer up to the curb of a brick rancher that looked hauntingly familiar. “This can’t be it.”
“This is the address your mom gave me,” he said, rechecking the map on his phone.
Surely the house just looked the same, like a lot of houses in this neighborhood did, or the GPS had steered us wrong… The sense of foreboding prickling at my skin increased, suggesting this was why Mom had been so annoyingly vague about her new guy. Why she’d given the address to Jackson instead of me.
He and I had spent the better part of the day loading my mom’s belongings while she’d done a lot of pointing. Naturally, her fella couldn’t help, because he was at work. (Meanwhile, Jackson and my work schedule was completely inconsequential to her, not that I could even tell her about it.)
“What is it?” Jackson asked. “Why do you look like you’re going to punch someone?”
I realized my hands were fisted and worked to uncurl them.
“I hope it’s not me, because I didn’t say a thing when you changed my radio to that super crappy song, and that took a lot of willpower.” He reached over and took my hand, proving he wasn’t even a little bit scared of being punched. “Hey, that was a joke. I mean, the song was crappy, but you can push my buttons anytime.”
His voice sounded far away, and I gritted my teeth as I glanced out the window at the house. I’d only been here a few times, once to move her in, late one night for dinner, and once to move her out. Over the last few years, I’d gotten so used to using the navigation on my phone that I didn’t bother memorizing addresses and hardly paid attention to street names, but I was ninety percent sure this was the same house. It was definitely the same neighborhood. “She can’t be this delusional, can she?”
“Babe, what’s going on?”
I turned to find Jackson’s green eyes on me. All day he’d been a steady source of comfort, stepping in when I lost my patience with my mom, giving me reassuring squeezes, and hugging me when I needed it most. But this? This was some next level bullshit. “The guy that my mom was dating before she…before she took those pills and ended up in the hospital…”
Two creases formed between Jackson’s eyebrows. Then dawning smoothed out his features. “I’m guessing this is his house?”
I nodded, my jaw starting to ache from being clenched so tightly. “When I told my mom I thought she was moving too fast, she informed me that she’d known the guy for a while, so it wasn’t as fast as it seemed. She failed to mention he was one of her exes.” I shook my head. “It’s finally happened. She’s run out of men to date, and now she’s trying repeats. This is just like her, too. Choose the worst possible guy and then somehow be surprised when he’s, in fact, the worst.”
Mom’s silver Camry pulled into the driveway, and I climbed out and slammed the truck door, my anger rising fast and hot. “Really, Mom? Stan?”
“Now, Ivy, I knew that you’d react like this, but he’s different now, and so am I. You just need to give him a chance.”
A chance? Jackson and I had spent an entire day that we could’ve spent working on a project I loved, and instead I’d enabled her to reconnect with the very guy who’d sent her into a depression spiral.
The guy who hadn’t shown up, even though she’d called him from the hospital. Yeah, I’m sure she’d partially done it to gain his attention and make him feel guilty for dumping her, but the fact that he hadn’t cared enough to stop by anyway solidified my stance against him. He’d used up all his chances.
Now I regretted not telling her she’d have to pay movers, because I wasn’t foolish enough to think I could talk her out of this.
Still had to try, though. “I’m not unloading your stuff. We’re going back to your apartment and putting it all back.”
“I already turned the keys in to my landlord, and they have a new tenant moving in next week. It’s done.”
I paced the lawn, trying to keep from losing my temper. It wasn’t easy when I remembered those nights I’d stayed with her after her stint in the hospital, and how she’d told me about her ups and downs with Stan, and how she’d thought he
was really the one, and why didn’t he love her?
“I can’t do this anymore, Mom,” I said, my voice trembling. “If you insist on moving in with him, I’m not going to come get you when it goes south, which we all know it will. Why don’t we just save everyone a lot of time, effort, and pain, and skip to wherever you’ll move next?”
Mom looked over my head to Jackson. “If you’ll come on in, I’ll show you where to put the furniture.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose, that out-of-control feeling I hated overtaking my body.
“Give us a minute,” Jackson said.
Mom sighed, like she didn’t have time for us to dilly dally while we were giving up our whole day to help her move in with a guy who’d already crushed her once. She even pouted her lips a little and batted her eyes, but when she realized Jackson wasn’t as easy to manipulate as most men—or her dutiful daughter, damn it—she headed into the house and gave us some space.
Jackson’s hands came down on my shoulders, and I tensed, not wanting him to touch me. I was too scared I’d break, and I didn’t want to cry over my mom moving in with some guy, the way I used to in private back when I was a kid. With each impending move, I’d beg for her to let me just live with Dixie, but she always said no, a daughter was supposed to stay with her mama, ignoring everything her daughter truly needed, like stability and security and emotional support.
“Ivy,” Jackson said, so softly the breeze carried the word on past me.
I shook my head.
Using his grip on my shoulders, he turned me to face him. “What do you want me to do?”
My chest rose and fell with too big of breaths, but it was breathe or cry, so I inhaled and exhaled. Inhaled and exhaled. “Take him out.”
Jackson moved one hand up to cup my cheek, a crooked, almost-smile tilting his mouth. “I think you’re confusing me with your mobster boyfriend.”
A sputtered laugh escaped my lips. “Where is that guy when I need him?”
“Probably serving time.”
“Why are the best ones always gay or in jail?” I asked with a dramatic sigh.
“And here I thought the saying was gay or married.”
“Same difference,” I joked, and he laughed. Then he slowly pulled me close, like he was testing to see if I’d let him hug me, and I gave in.
What can I say? I needed to feel his strong arms around me for a moment before I gave in—yet again—to my mother’s whims and demands, even knowing she was making a huge mistake.
“It sucks that she didn’t give you a heads up,” Jackson said, moving his lips to my forehead for a quick kiss. “It’s a manipulative move, and it pisses me off, honestly. Do you want me to just dump all the stuff on the lawn? Make the jerk haul it in himself?”
I looked up at him. “You’d really do that?”
He let out a long exhale. “No. I can’t help it. I hear my ma scolding me for not being the bigger person.”
I couldn’t help smiling at that. I’d already known he was too much of a gentleman, and no matter how tempted to dump the contents on the lawn and tell my mom and Stan to sort out their own mess, I would also feel too bad to follow through with it. And that was coming from a girl whose heart was 75 percent ice. Although with Jackson’s arms around me, it felt more like 50 or maybe even 40 percent, and I worried I’d eventually regret not holding on to the numbing iciness.
“You’re definitely bigger than Stan,” I said.
“Good. That should help when I threaten him that he better take good care of your mom or else. I’m also planning on adding that if he so much as speaks a sharp word in your direction, he’ll regret it.”
I shook off the funk this discovery had caused and put on my game face. “Okay. Let’s just get this over with.”
“On it,” Jackson said, and then we went to work moving my mom into a house she’d moved out of not all that long ago.
The entire time I kept thinking my mom had to be delirious or in denial—or both—to think she could make things work with Stan the second time around, simply because she wanted to.
It wasn’t until we were pulling away, muscles exhausted from hours of labor, Jackson’s hand on my knee, that I realized I was doing the exact same thing.
…
Savannah came back from the full loop she’d done through the living room, kitchen, dining room, and back to the living room, where I was waiting—not super anxious or anything.
Okay, super anxious. “Well?”
“I can hardly believe it’s the same house; it looks so amazing.” Savannah ran a hand down the archway and then pulled a blue folder out of her bag. “If you and Jackson wouldn’t kill each other, I’d say you should forget everything I put in this folder and go into business together.”
I automatically scoffed at the idea, but for a brief moment, I paused and let myself wonder what it would be like. Finding old houses and flipping them into beautiful homes.
Arguing over fixtures, paint colors, flooring, and every other minute detail.
Kissing and christening homes across Atlanta.
Sounded like fun, especially that last part.
But it would never work. Jackson had his own successful business to run—a business I’d already taken too much time away from—and I had…well, my life to figure out. Plus, the girl standing across from me to worry about. “I did seriously consider strangling him earlier today. But there’s still too much work for me to do alone.”
“Ha-ha,” Savannah said with a shake of her head, like her brother and I were a lost cause.
Which we were, in more ways than one. I wasn’t lying about wanting to strangle him, either. The carpet sample he brought in and proudly displayed wasn’t even close to what I’d envisioned for the upstairs bedrooms. It was all wrong. Berber and scratchy (Jackson called that durable), a mix of brown, tan, cream, and—for some odd reason—green (the hides-the-dirt rational returned, and like with the tile, I still didn’t understand where all the dirt was coming from. Was that Charlie Brown character Pig Pen coming to visit? Cause I’d hose that little dude down before he stepped foot in my house.)
P.S., I knew it wasn’t my house.
Despite my reservations, I was about to hesitantly agree to “the steal” for the sake of my overburdened budget, but then Jackson huffed that he could get his guy to send over more similarly priced carpet samples, and I’d accidentally slipped and said, “Well, praise the Lord, because I can’t even look at a foot of this stuff any longer,” and I could tell that he wanted to strangle me. Mutual desire to kill all around.
With a side of wanting to rip each other’s clothes off. Our partnership might not be easy, but it was far from boring.
Speak of the sexy devil, he walked in, carting a large box. “Hey, Savannah.” His gaze moved to me, and he bowed his head. “Dictator Clarke.”
I rolled my eyes so hard I hurt myself. “The joke’s on you. I like that title.”
“Oh boy,” Savannah said with a sigh. Then she extended the blue folder I’d nearly forgotten about. “Here’s a list of options. If I found open positions in the area that matched, I also put them in there, because I’m cool like that. And if you don’t see anything that snags your interest, we’ll widen the net. We’ll find the perfect job for you, no matter how long it takes.”
“Job searching, huh?” Jackson rested the box against the wall and moved over to us.
“I asked Savannah to work her magic and help me find the right career.”
“Committing to a career? Sounds like a big step.”
My chest tightened. It was a big step. Maybe working as a bartender at Azure wasn’t some grand life-changing experience, but my life had security and stability now, and part of me wanted to stay in the safe place where I knew what to expect.
Savannah shoved her brother’s shoulder. “Stop, or you’ll freak her out.”
Jackson shoved her right back, making her sway on her heels. “She can handle it. I’m the one who told her she should go for th
e career she wanted in the first place.”
Savannah looked between us. “Really?”
“It’s true,” I said, and Jackson’s expression turned smug. “But before you go thinking you’re always right, you’re also freaking me out. So point goes to Savannah.”
Savannah grinned extra wide, like a kid who’d just earned a gold star. “Ooh, a point system. I approve.”
“Kiss-ass,” Jackson teased, and she stuck her tongue out at him.
That broke the tension, and I took a deep breath before opening the folder. There were tabs and charts, and Savannah had also placed hot-pink sticky notes with encouraging quotes on them. I smiled at her. “Have I mentioned how much I adore you?”
She sheepishly swiped a hand through the air. “Aw, stop. It was nothing.” But before I could study the materials that were clearly not nothing, she launched into an explanation of what she’d found. “So Atlanta is one of the top markets for flipping houses, although a lot of the foreclosed houses have already been scooped up by big companies who can flip them crazy fast and get them right back on the market.”
“Stupid big companies,” Jackson muttered as he leaned closer and studied the information over my shoulder. “They can afford to undercut people like me, even though the work isn’t as good.”
I don’t know why it amused me that he sounded so grouchy about the big companies, because I did feel for him, and I was sure that the work wasn’t as good. I rubbed my hand up and down his arm, wanting to soothe him the way he always managed to soothe me when I needed it most. “Your work speaks for itself. I know I wouldn’t hire any stupid big company.”
The corner of his mouth turned up, that one little movement enough to send my heart rate zipping faster and faster.
Then Savannah’s gaze homed in on my hand and quickly dropped it. Gah, how did I manage to forget for a second that she was here?
I held my breath, afraid she was going to comment on it, but then she turned the page and pointed at a list of company names. “You might not hire one, but you could work for one. That’s your best shot at continuing to do this exact type of work.”
