by KG MacGregor
Test…it took Joy a few seconds to realize he was referring to the GED practice test Amber had taken the night before at the library. “I forgot to ask. I was asleep when you got home.”
“Last night was the math part. Un-freaking-believable! The whole test took almost two hours. He’ll probably come back and tell me I should be in the sixth grade.”
“When will you find out?” With a pointed look, Joy snatched the basket of chips from her father’s hands and passed them on to Amber and Barbara.
“He’ll have it scored by tomorrow. I have to take the grammar and writing test next. Then on Saturday I do science, social studies and reading.”
“Is that going to be your schedule, three days a week?”
“Pretty much. Tuesday and Thursday from five to nine, and then on Saturdays from nine to three. But I’ll only have to study the parts I don’t pass.”
Joy nodded, working it out in her head that she could be home with her pop for those hours. “That should be fine.”
“What worries me is that I won’t be getting home until about nine thirty. And you can’t stay up that late, Joy.”
“I can come over if you need me,” Barbara said.
“It’s no big deal,” her father said. “I’m usually watching TV by that time, and they both have cell phones if I need anything…but you’re welcome to come over and sit whenever you want. It’s probably a good idea to have someone from the outside world check on my well-being every day.”
Dinner arrived and her pop ordered another round of beers.
“Make mine iced tea,” Joy said. “I’m driving.”
“Make his iced tea too,” Amber told the waiter.
“What the hell? I’m not driving.”
“No, but you’re taking anti-inflammatory medicine that makes your stomach hurt. I read on the package that alcohol makes it even worse. You don’t need an ulcer on top of what you’ve already got.”
“She’s right, Pop.” Joy was immensely impressed, not only that Amber had read the warning labels, but that she’d stood up to her father in front of everyone. It was hard to believe this was the same girl who, only a couple of weeks ago, wouldn’t even clean up after herself.
With a sullen look, her father acquiesced. “No more Goobers for you.”
* * *
In a move that had gotten to be old hat, Amber tugged on Shep’s shorts to help him swing into bed. Then she went into his bathroom to collect the towels, giving him privacy to strip down to his boxers and T-shirt for the night. She had no problem coming around when he needed help getting dressed or dried off after his shower, but that didn’t mean they were married.
“You dropped salsa on your sling. I’m going to toss it into the wash with these towels tonight.”
“Good! I can sleep late.”
“Like that would ever happen. Joy barely beats you out of bed and she’s up at four o’clock.” She started the laundry and came back to see if there was anything else he needed before she went to bed.
“Let’s just hope that burrito goes to sleep,” he said.
“Thanks for that mental image. Say, you and Barbara were looking pretty chummy there. Anything you want to share?”
“What do I look like, one of those Kardashians? I keep my business to myself.”
“Interesting…got some business, do you?”
“I like Barbara,” he confessed. “We’ve been friends for thirty-some years. Her husband Hank was a good man. I know she’s lonely. I guess I am too, but I’m carrying a lot of baggage here.”
“Seems to me like she knows that already.”
“Yeah, well…” His words were dismissive, but the look on his face gave away his interest. “I’ll say this for her. She passes all the tests.”
“What tests?”
“You know, all that stuff you put on your list that matters. She likes Joy. She and Hank never had any kids, but she took to Madison”—he snapped his fingers—“just like that. And like tonight…she fits in like family.”
“I think it’s sweet that Madison calls you Grandpa Shep.”
“God, that kid…I remember the first time Joy brought her out to visit. She was only five and I halfway expected her to freak out about seeing the wheelchair. Once she figured out I still had a lap, she was good.”
“Like Skippy.”
He chuckled. “Yeah, it didn’t hurt that I kept a few Goobers in my pocket…or in Skippy’s case, bacon bits.”
“You’ve been bribing my dog all this time? I thought he just didn’t like me anymore.” She got an extra blanket from the closet and spread it across the bottom of the bed where he could easily pull it up if needed. “In case your feet get cold.”
“Ha! Good one. I’m going to steal that. So what about you and Joy? Something going on there I should know about?”
“What the hell? Why would you even ask?” The idea that he’d picked up on her interest caused her to smile, no matter how hard she tried not to.
“Don’t give me that bullshit. I’ve been watching you two.”
Amber didn’t care that he’d noticed her looking at Joy. She was far more intrigued by what he’d seen that made him think Joy had been looking at her. “I think you’re seeing things. Maybe we ought to back off those meds.”
“I’m seeing things, all right. I’m seeing that Joy spends all her weekends at home instead of going out with women.”
“Maybe that’s because her old man’s gimpy and she thinks she ought to be home with him. And besides, she had a date this afternoon, somebody named Dani.”
“Pfft. Dani’s no date. She came along with us once to Great America—that’s one of those amusement parks—and all she did was watch everybody else ride. Hardly spoke to Madison. Joy isn’t going to go for somebody like that.”
The way Shep and Joy went on about that child, Amber figured she must walk on water. “That kid means a lot to you guys.”
“Family is family.”
Amber wouldn’t know anything about that. But if her feelings for Joy were to go anywhere, she understood she’d have to fall in love with this Madison kid as well.
Chapter Fourteen
Joy struck the perfect balance between her clutch and accelerator to hold the hill at Filbert and Hyde. When traffic cleared, she turned left behind a streetcar and started slowly downward toward the bay.
“I can’t believe you just did that,” Amber said. “If I’d been driving a stick shift on that hill, we would’ve rolled all the way back to Oakland.”
“You get used to it. What did I tell you about San Francisco? Isn’t it the most beautiful city you’ve ever seen?”
Amber couldn’t argue with that. The movies and travel guides didn’t do it justice, especially when they’d gone up to Twin Peaks and watched the fog creep over the Golden Gate Bridge. “I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s got so much character. It’s more like a person than a city.”
Joy nodded thoughtfully. “Good way to describe it.”
They’d eaten dinner in Chinatown and were making one last loop through the city at sunset before joining what Joy had described as throngs of commuters heading east across the Bay Bridge. Spending the afternoon together this way had been an unexpected treat, made possible when Shep and Barbara decided to take in a matinee movie and then dinner.
All day, Amber had been focused on any sign that Joy was interested in her. Whatever Shep had seen between them was still a mystery as far as she was concerned. Joy was her usual friendly and attentive self, but no more than usual, and hardly more than she was to everyone else.
One encouraging sign had come about by accident. Amber spilled her purse as she was getting ready to get out of the car at Twin Peaks, and before she could collect everything, Joy had walked around to open her door. It could have been simple impatience, but then she’d done that when they returned too, and that made it seem chivalrous.
“We’ll come back some weekend when we have time to walk around. There’s a lot more to see.
”
“Ever since I was a kid, I associated San Francisco with earthquakes. Don’t you ever worry about them?”
“You mean like the one we had back in eighty-nine? One of my mom’s friends was killed.”
“Now you’re just trying to scare me.”
“If I’d been trying to scare you I would have added that she was on the Nimitz Freeway, which is the road we took to get over here. That’s where most of the fatalities were.” They started across the Bay Bridge. “And a whole section of this bridge fell out.”
“Oh, shit.” Amber shuddered. “Now you’re freaking me out. I don’t know how y’all can stand it.”
“Every place has its problems. Didn’t you guys get flooded a few years ago in Nashville? I remember seeing pictures of Opryland under water.”
“God, that was awful. The Cumberland River just kept getting higher and higher. It didn’t reach our apartment because we lived up on the second floor, but Molly’s car almost floated away.”
“See, I’d rather have earthquakes than floods any day. It happens and it’s over in less than a minute. I’d be the one freaking out if I had to watch water coming up around my house and didn’t know how high it was going to get. And the other thing about earthquakes is you don’t have to dread them. There’s only so much you can do to prepare. It’s not like those hurricanes you have to watch for three or four days till they’re on top of you. Give me earthquakes anytime.”
Amber still couldn’t see how she didn’t live in mortal fear for her life. But then, the stories Joy and Shep had told about landing planes on a carrier deck in rough seas said a lot about both of them. “You navy types don’t scare easily, do you?”
“There’s a lot to be afraid of in the navy, but you just do your job and trust everyone else to do theirs.” Joy grew quiet, peeling off toward Alameda when they emerged from underneath the upper deck of the bridge. “I’m scared of losing people I care about.”
“Like your mom?”
“My mom, my pop…and I always worry about the people I’m responsible for on the planes, or when I was on the aircraft carrier. The one who keeps me awake nights is Madison.”
“Isn’t Syd taking good care of her?”
“I suppose, but I’d rather be doing it myself. I think I could do a better job.”
“You really want to be a mom that bad?”
“Not just a mom. I want to be Madison’s mom. If I had it to do over, I wouldn’t have given up so easily. I thought it was best for her at the time, but now I think she’d be better off with me and Pop.”
Amber had given up her baby so he’d have a conventional life—two parents with good jobs, a nice house and enough money that he’d never have to do without. Joy was lots of things, but conventional wasn’t one of them. Before she realized it, she’d let out a groan.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Just…I was…” She was caught without a decent lie. “Do you really think it’s a good idea to bring a kid to a home where you’re sleeping out in the backyard?
“Jeez, it’s not permanent. I usually stay in the house, but I moved out there when Madison came to visit so I wouldn’t wake her up at four o’clock in the morning. And in case you haven’t noticed, I’m out there now because somebody else has my room.” There was a teasing edge to her voice.
“You didn’t have to do that for me. I told you I’d sleep out there.”
“Oh, no. You’re the one getting paid to look after Cranky Pants in the middle of the night.”
“He’s not so bad if you’ve got enough Goobers.”
They pulled off the Nimitz Freeway and into the neighborhood, where Joy slowed the Jeep considerably. “I don’t intend to live with Pop forever, but I might want to stay close in case he needs me. I had my eye on a house on Fountain Street last year but I hemmed and hawed too much and someone else bought it.”
“I wouldn’t worry about your dad if I were you. I hear wedding bells in his future.”
“Yeah, maybe. I like Barbara.”
“Then you’d be off the hook.”
“It doesn’t feel like a hook, but I know what you mean. I never worried about Pop while I was in Norfolk until my mom got sick.” She pulled around to the carport in back. “But if he got married again, he’d be okay. And who knows? I might put in for a transfer back east to be close to Madison again.”
That would certainly be an ironic twist, Amber realized. Even if she got training and a good job out here, she’d have nothing at all invested in California if Joy left.
* * *
It was after eleven on the East Coast, way too late to check in with Madison. Joy intended to call her the next morning but talking about her with Amber made her want to connect now, if only for a few seconds. Rather than call she did the next best thing, which was to watch a video she’d taken of Madison shouting into the Grand Canyon in hopes of hearing an echo.
What would Madison think of Amber? Joy had been reluctant at first to let her know she’d picked up a stranger on the side of the road, and the more time that passed without saying anything made it that much harder to broach the subject. Once she did, Madison would probably get silly and say Amber was her new girlfriend.
The idea made her face heat up, not because it was far-fetched, but because she could imagine herself getting tongue-tied trying to answer. Of course Amber wasn’t her girlfriend but that would lead only to more questions, like why wasn’t she?
Because…Amber didn’t like girls that way. Joy wasn’t totally sure that was true. The only time Amber ever mentioned her ex-boyfriend was to call him an asshole, and she wasn’t shy at all about her sexual taste for women. Whether she preferred one or the other wasn’t even the real issue. Amber seemed to prefer what she happened to need on any given day, and that made Joy unwilling to take a chance. Syd had been that way too—whether she admitted it or not—and left the moment a better opportunity came along.
Then there was her father’s observation that she was always looking for a damsel in distress. Joy admittedly loved the feeling she got from coming to the rescue. It was one of the reasons Dani hadn’t appealed to her, because Dani didn’t need anyone, at least not in the desperate sense. She was strong and independent, and even the one time they were intimate, Joy had been left with the feeling that she hadn’t brought anything special to the party. Whatever Amber’s experience had been fooling around with her girlfriends, it was nothing compared to how Joy could make a woman feel when there was love between them.
A crack of thunder startled her and she closed her laptop.
“Come on, Skippy. It’s okay.” It was Amber’s voice just outside her camper door.
Though the yard was lit only by the porch light, Joy could see her crouching figure underneath the deck. “You need some help?”
“He’s afraid of thunder. He ran under there.”
Huge drops of rain begin pelting them as Joy tried coaxing him out with a cracker. Amber grabbed his collar the moment he came within reach. A bolt of lightning lit up the yard and they raced to the camper door with Joy shouting, “Let’s get in here.”
Once inside, she dried off and handed Amber a fresh towel.
“Thanks. Where the hell did that come from? I’ve been here nearly six weeks and haven’t seen a drop of rain, and then all of a sudden the bottom falls out of the sky.”
“Welcome to fall in the Bay Area. Once it starts, it can last for weeks. Just be glad you don’t work outside like I do.”
“Speaking of where I work, I hope Shep didn’t get caught in this.”
“He’s a big boy. I don’t think he’ll melt.”
“Maybe he’s holed up with Barbara making some lightning of his own.”
Joy put her hands over her ears and shook her head. “If he is, fine…but please don’t make me think about it.”
Amber set her towel aside and leaned back against the cushion of the dinette seat, her nipples straining against the wet cloth of her tank top. “Bet you d
idn’t know he’s been thinking about your love life. He asked me the other night if there was something going on between you and me.”
A deep breath…then another. “What did you tell him?”
“That I thought it was all in his head because I hadn’t seen anything…and trust me, I’ve been looking.” She leaned across the table until she was only inches from Joy’s face. “So if you’re trying to tell me something, you’re being way too subtle.”
Joy tried to swallow and found nothing but air. “I wasn’t…I didn’t…it probably wouldn’t be smart.”
Amber’s bravado dissipated instantly and she leaned back again, folding her arms over her chest. “That’s too bad. I kind of liked the idea, but I can see why you’d have problems with it. You want someone with a better track record who can take care of herself.”
“It’s not that, Amber.” Just hearing her disparage herself made Joy want to reach out and prove her wrong. “I like you…and of course I’ve noticed you. How could I not? You’re a pretty girl, you’re fun to be with…but I didn’t want you saying yes just because I have power over your job. It wouldn’t be right for me to push myself on you.”
Before she knew what was happening, Amber was beside her, pressing into her chest and forcing her backward on the couch. “What if I said it was okay for you to push?”
Joy surrendered to her kiss, tuning out all the warning sirens in her head. Amber was an adult, capable of making her own decisions, and after six weeks on the job had to be secure enough to know she didn’t have to do this. That made it okay to enjoy, and Joy squirmed in the tight space to pull Amber onto her lap, never breaking their kiss.
It was only when Amber’s hand slid upward to cup her breast that the ringing bells made themselves heard.
“No…no.” She grasped the hand and held it at bay. “I can’t do this with you, Amber.”
“Seemed to me like you were doing it just fine.”
With a gentle buck, she nudged Amber out of her lap and onto the bench beside her. In just those few moments, it was as if the temperature in the tiny camper had gone up twenty degrees.
