She had two months’ worth of savings, and considered it the grandest coup. Half a year’s salary in the bank? It probably wasn’t going to happen for her in this lifetime.
This month was looking good. She could sock a little away, and maybe ask JD to take her on as an investing client. If he would take a commission, it could be good for both of them.
She made about six calls that morning before gathering the kids up to take them to McDonalds. She took them because there was an indoor playground, and that would be good exercise for them. And because it was her last day with all three of them.
The coming weekend was Labor Day weekend. On Tuesday, Daniel would start first grade and Andie kindergarten. Allie would most likely go home and cry all day. She so desperately wanted to go to school like the big kids. She just wouldn’t be old enough until next year.
Also JD’s birthday was Saturday. Kelsey had gotten him two passes to some whitewater rafting on the Tennessee River. She’d wanted to get four, for the whole band, but just couldn’t afford it.
The kids lasted several hours, climbing, sliding, chasing each other and squealing with delight. They wanted her to watch what they did every moment, so she thumbed through a parenting magazine and looked up or cheered them on what must have been every twenty seconds or so.
After they were home again, she turned on the sprinklers for them. As she stood at the edge of the water’s reach, she wasn’t sure why she was so nostalgic about it already.
They were soaked and worn out by the time they asked to come inside at three o’clock. Kelsey plunked each of them into the tub and scrubbed them good, knowing that JD had been having a tough time getting Andie to oblige him. And no wonder, if Stephanie had been through what he thought. Truth be told, any five-year-old girl should refuse to let a strange man bathe her. Andie would come around as she came to trust JD.
An image popped into her head, as she remembered that bathing Andie was the first thing JD had mentioned he needed done—right after she’d volunteered to show Andie he was trustworthy. In Kelsey’s head the tub was larger and deeper, one of those luxury models that was big enough for two, even if one of the two was a grown man. There were bubbles everywhere, and Kelsey imagined JD washing her hair.
Yup, Andie would get the picture. She’d probably grow up to be a flaming slut if she saw that one. But, hey, Kelsey would be in a seriously good mood.
The real problem was, it was crazy.
JD didn’t return her feelings. He’d want a younger woman, one who didn’t come with two children of her own. Kelsey told herself they weren’t really ‘feelings,’ were they? Just unbidden images.
Kelsey stopped thinking about it and dried off and dressed each kid, then let them watch a few short shows on television. She sat on the couch with them flipping through the magazine she’d barely started earlier.
That was how JD found them when he tried the door. It gave, and in he came.
Kelsey had no issue with him just opening the door. But she didn’t know this JD. Her jaw hit the floor.
She didn’t move.
“Shut your mouth, Kelse.”
His hair, the fresh cut she’d seen this morning, no longer hung into his face. It was combed up and back revealing all of his wonderful bone structure, and making him look handsome, or maybe dashing, and older. That may also have been due to the serious expression on his face that she couldn’t quite read.
Added to all that was the suit—looked like Armani—in a beautiful silver grey. He was decked out from his new haircut to his shiny black wing-tips. He looked even better than she had imagined after he’d told her about being a stock analyst and wearing suits every day.
He looked nothing like her JD.
“Can we get a sitter for tonight?” He asked.
She shrugged, still bewildered by the sight at front of her.
His mouth quirked. “I’ll call.”
“Okay.”
He looked her up and down. “You should wear something other than jeans.”
What? Suddenly she wasn’t up to his standards?
That was unfair, and she knew it. So she simply responded with, “Okay,” again.
It was a full hour and fifteen minutes before Bethany arrived. Kelsey sat there in her cream colored dress and wondered where JD had gone. Was she even safe with this stranger?
Still she left the house with him. It seemed she was in for surprise after surprise. There at the curb sat a shiny new gold sedan. He ushered her into it.
“Is this yours?” She was incredulous. “Did you go out and buy the suit? The car?”
He had barely opened his mouth to speak when she caught on and railroaded him. “Did you get signed?!?”
Her chest swelled as she realized, and she knew her eyes showed how excited she was for him. And maybe also just how much she had come to care for him.
“No.”
She deflated. “Oh, then what?”
“I’ll tell you over dinner.”
Kelsey tried so hard to hold her tongue and not pester him with questions. Luckily he started speaking and he told her a few things, if not the big picture.
“The car is a rental. I couldn’t go out today in my old clunker. The suit is from the back of my closet. I kept a couple.”
“Uh-huh.”
JD wasn’t smiling. He was far too serious to smile.
Kelsey was worried. What had he done?
He pulled into a restaurant in the nicest section of town. Two valets immediately appeared to help them out of the car. She could see into the parking lot, and this was about the cheapest car there.
JD walked in like he owned the place and spoke to the woman at the front. As she led to them to their booth Kelsey assessed the black dress the hostess was wearing and was certain it had cost more than her own.
Their booth was a semicircle and they each slid around to practically the middle. She found herself a little uncomfortable. This wasn’t the man from her fantasy earlier. This JD had all the qualities she would have said she wanted. He was self-assured, confident, clean-cut. He was uber-alpha-male.
He was also invulnerable and impenetrable.
She didn’t like it one bit.
Their booth was very private, and she was glad, because if he didn’t tell her what was going on, and soon, she was going to bust.
He ordered some drink she’d never heard of, and then upgraded the vodka in her bay breeze. Finally, the server left and she squared up to him, arms crossed, and demanded, “Speak.”
“We’re celebrating.”
“What?” She didn’t feel festive.
“I have my choice of two jobs.” He grinned, but something wasn’t right.
She didn’t speak. The old Kelsey that didn’t participate simply took over, and she waited.
“I had two interviews today, I had two offers. Both excellent money. One closer than the other. Less travel. Less money, but still plenty.” He raised his glass as the server set it in front of him.
She raised hers, too, unsure what else to do. Her heart shrank. She clinked his glass, but to her ears even that sounded dull. “Doing what?”
“Making money. I’m good at it.”
She nodded, and took way too big a drink of her bay breeze. Luckily he’d ordered her a very smooth vodka, but it still didn’t go down easily.
He leaned over the table at her. “Say something. We’re happy.”
The server showed up again wanting their orders.
Both men looked to her, but she hadn’t had a chance to study the menu, nor had she been able to listen when the server was spouting about the oh-so-delicious specials. “I haven’t been able to think. You know what I like, you choose for me.”
This JD didn’t seem to think that was weird at all, and turned to the server ordering an appetizer and their meals. He also put in for a chocolate soufflé at the end.
Kelsey fought down a feeling that was far too close to one she’d felt before. The one she remembered from when she turn
ed away from the oak tree in her DC back yard, and away from the body of her brother hanging from the sturdiest branch. The feeling of shock and disbelief.
JD turned his attention back to her, and it was like a physical thing. She could feel it. She’d felt his attention before, and it always made her focus on him. Now it made her shrink back.
“Say something, like ‘congratulations’.”
“Congratulations.”
“Wow, your enthusiasm is overwhelming.”
She shrugged, and fought for what little decorum she had. “I’m whelmed.”
They sat in silence until the meal came. With each passing minute he tuned in a little more to her distress.
As he took the knife to his steak, Kelsey could see how upset he was becoming. And finally the dam burst and he spoke. “What, you don’t like this? That you’re not better than me anymore?”
She tried to break in on that one.
But he kept going, “I know you thought of me as some child, but I . . .” He just didn’t finish.
Kelsey took the opportunity to counter with that one. “I never thought you were a . . .” Oh, God, she had thought of him that way.
He must have read it from her face. All he did was nod and look off.
She set down her fork, none too gently it turned out. “Okay, I admit it.” She moved side to side until she got him looking at her again. “But I was wrong, dead wrong, and I figured that one out pretty damn fast. You have to admit that you do look a lot younger in torn jeans and old tee-shirts. But I’m not stupid. I realized really quick that you were an adult.”
“Come on Kelsey. I saw your age on your driver’s license.”
She tried so hard not to wince.
“I know you see me as this younger kid. You have it all together; you took care of your mother and Andy for years, and I can’t even take care of one five-year-old.”
She shook her head. He hadn’t been taught how to be a parent. He didn’t get to start from the ground up. And the kid he’d been given fought him tooth and nail the entire way.
But she didn’t get any of that out of her mouth.
“I was acting like a kid. I know it. I’m responsible for this child, but I don’t even have a job. I can’t go chasing some silly idea anymore.”
She unclenched her teeth, searching, hoping for the right thing to say. “Tell me you want this job. That you’re excited to start.”
He didn’t really smile. It was somewhere between a shrug and a head shake. “I’m excited to start earning money again.”
“That’s not the same.”
“I know.” He started eating his steak again. “But it’s the right thing to do.”
“Is it?”
“Yes.” He muttered it around a bite of steak. She couldn’t even taste her fish. Technically she could tell that it was flaky and tender. In her mouth it turned to cardboard.
Several bites later, she asked another question. “Have you told the guys?”
“No.”
That started another round of silence, during which JD finished his steak and executed a perfect cross of his silverware atop the completely empty plate. From nowhere a server appeared and the plate disappeared.
Kelsey tried another tack. “Let me ask you something.”
JD looked resigned. “Shoot.”
“Don’t you want Andie to follow her dreams?”
“Of course, I do. That’s what this is about. So she can go to the right schools and have the right classes, and do whatever she wants.” He pulled his napkin off his lap and slapped it on the table, looking angrier than she’d seen him all night.
“It doesn’t matter what schools she goes to, or what education she has if she doesn’t know how to go after what she wants. If she sees you dragging yourself to work every day, then that’s how she’s going to think life is supposed to be. Don’t you want her to do what she loves? Don’t you want her to chase after her dreams? Then you have to show her how. That’s more valuable than any prep school time.” She punctuated it with a huff.
He was still looking at the ceiling when he spoke. “You should have been a lawyer. Sometimes I really hate you.”
“Because I’m right?” She was really hopeful. She tried not to be.
“You’re not right, Kelse.” He looked her square in the eyes, the JD that she knew, somewhere under the gracefully combed hair and perfectly cut suit. “You’re all talk.”
“What?”
“What are you teaching your kids? Did you want to write home loans for a living? Why did you do that?”
Her mouth hung open. This was supposed to be about him, not her.
“Close your mouth, Kelse.”
God, he’d said that too many times.
She erupted. “I was at Brown, one year away from a pre-law degree. I tried to chase my dreams. But I had to quit! My family needed me.”
“I have to, too. My family needs me now.”
“It’s not the same.” Anger boiled in her that he thought any of it compared. “Andrew was suicidal. If I didn’t stay home to take care of him, he would have died. There was Daniel, who was just a baby. I couldn’t leave him with Andy. He wouldn’t have been safe.”
“My Andie needs me.”
“Not like this!” Kelsey waved her hand at him indicating his hair and his suit and his grim expression. “She’s clothed, she’s healthy. If she had cancer and couldn’t get treatment because of your situation, I’d be first in line behind you. But this isn’t that.”
“Listen to yourself!” His voice graveled. “You’re right, but you’re wrong. Andrew is dead. So stop living the life you had to when he was alive. Your kids are healthy, they’re clothed. You’ve had time to grieve. Where are your dreams now? Why are you still writing loans?”
The fork she held in her hand clattered to the plate. The entire world shrunk to a space inside her head.
A few moments later, as it all soaked in, she emerged from her tiny shell to find JD watching her very intently. His eyes were warm and brown and full of concern. His voice was soft and comforting for the first time all evening. “You know I didn’t expect all this from you. I thought you’d say ‘If that’s what you want.’ and tell me you were happy for me.”
She shrugged. “I’m not happy for you. But it’s not my life. It’s not my decision.” She ate a few more bites of the cardboard fish before declaring herself done. “I told you I was working on flying off the handle a little more.”
He laughed, and it was like something warm, that had been waiting inside, broke and ran, filling her.
He smiled a real smile that went across his whole face and filled his eyes. “We were supposed to be doing this in front of the kids.”
She countered, “We’re supposed to compromise.”
He shook his head. “The band is breaking up anyway.”
“Really!?”
“Well, we just can’t stay together. We have nowhere to go. We lost our last studio, it was borrowed. I haven’t sold a song, and neither has Craig, in over ten months.”
She cocked her head to one side, thinking. “You’re a garage band, right?”
A chuckle bubbled out of him. “I suppose.”
“I have a garage.”
“Kelsey.” It was long and pleading, and had an underlying please-don’t-go-there.
But she went there. “Andie will be in school next week. You can practice in the daytime when it won’t annoy the neighbors.”
JD shook his head. “Craig works days.”
“He works at Starbucks. He can change his shift.”
“We don’t fit in. That’s part of why we’re having so much trouble.”
“Exactly.” She wanted to strangle him. “That’s why you guys are so great. You have your own sound. And it’s going to carry you so far, once you get over that threshold.”
“It’s been two and a half years.”
She badgered him, just like she had all night. She would have made a good lawyer. “Do you want it?�
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“Of course I do.”
“Then why are you taking the one course of action that guarantees you won’t make it?”
“I hate you, Kelsey.”
“That’s okay, the feeling’s mutual right now. I hadn’t planned on having this turned back around on me.”
“All right. I’ll cut you a deal. We use your garage, we keep going, and you apply to law school.”
“I can’t.”
“Fine then. I’m taking the job.”
“Let me finish.” She ground her teeth, thinking even as she did it that it was such a JD thing to do. “I’d have to take two more years of undergrad just to get to where I could test to go to law school. It’s too much time. I’d be away from my kids too much. I might go when they are older.”
“Cop out.” He leaned back, and the server arrived with a mound of chocolate soufflé, surrounded by classy little dollops of whipped cream and a raspberry sauce strewn about.
“Hear me out.” She held up her hand, and ignored the chocolate that would have called to her like a siren song at any other time. “I may go to law school when the kids are older.” By his facial expression, he was still disgusted with her. “I always waffled between law school and ditching it all to become a photographer. I’ll put my money where my mouth is. But I’m investing in photography equipment.”
He nodded. “Then your garage should become a photography studio, not a band studio.”
“It will. As soon as you guys move out. Which I have faith will be faster than I could get a photography set-up in there anyway.”
He leaned forward. “If I don’t take this job, I can’t afford this dinner.”
She laughed out loud, startling another diner near her. “I’ll get it.”
He shook his head. “You can’t afford dinner here either.”
She blinked, and remembered she hadn’t seen any prices on the menu. “Dutch?”
He nodded. “Credit card.”
Kelsey held one of the spoons out to him. “Then we had better enjoy this for all it’s worth.”
Our Song Page 10
