Our Song

by Savannah Kade

  JD couldn’t help the wry twist that curled the corner of his lip, or the thought that freight trained through his brain. There was a perverse joy he found in the irony. Of course she loved it, it was hers.

  After the wine had time to clear from her head, Brenda gathered her little boy and took him home. JD started to gather Andie, too, but the kids had made a monumental mess. Kelsey was scrubbing dishes and loading the washer, so he directed all three kids in clean-up.

  When Andie picked up an elf, and he realized that her pants were too short, too small. He told her so.

  “Nuh-uh!” The protest startled him.

  “Andie, they don’t fit.”

  Daniel looked up at him with a sage expression. “They fit fine. She’s wearing them like Mom does.”

  JD looked at Daniel wondering what in the hell the kid was talking about. “Your Mom does not wear high-waters.”

  Daniel obviously didn’t know what that meant, but he countered anyway. “They’re too tight.”

  JD thought about the way they hugged her curves, and how his hands itched to grab her. Those jeans made other parts of him itch, too. “You’re right, they are too tight.”

  He bent over, laughing to himself, to pick up another pastel colored pony and saw the heeled boots standing in the doorway. His eyes followed them up long thin legs, to where they created a small gap before her sweater, showing off a sweet piece of skin that he could no longer touch. The sweater clung to curves that were also hands-off. But her face was devastated, her mouth hung open, and she stood stock still.

  “Kelse?”

  “No, it’s okay.” She turned and fled down the hall while he blinked.

  For a moment he stood there unable to think of anything to say. He could explain that the jeans were too tight because they turned him on. But she sure as hell didn’t want to be reminded of ‘that night’, which was all that telling her about his thoughts would do.

  He looked around Daniel’s room for something sharp enough to cut a few good veins. So he could bleed to death before he choked on his own feet.

  Chapter 34

  Kelsey sang softly to herself as she did the dishes. The guys were in the back, playing video games with the kids. Bridget was egging them on. She’d gotten to know Bridget better in the time that the guys had been home now. She had to agree with JD—Alex had done well for himself. The girl was really very likable.

  She filled one of the pots with soapy water and sang through a squeal from the back room. Her brain wandered to JD. She wanted a family and a husband. JD would want a good time. He’d had fatherhood shoved down his throat, he wouldn’t want more responsibility now. She wasn’t kidding herself thinking that was why things fell apart. It was just that they wouldn’t have worked out in the end, even if everything had been different.

  The voice startled her, so she almost dropped the dish she was rinsing.

  It was TJ singing the next line.

  Her hand went to her heart. “You scared the crap out of me.” As soon as she said it she felt ten years older. That was something old people said.

  “Sorry.” Even his laugh and his apology were musical and charming.

  “Can I help?” As he asked it, he picked up a serving dish off the table, not waiting for an answer. “I talked to my mother today. She asked if JD was still seeing that hussy.”

  “Oh.” Kelsey scrubbed at the dish a little harder. She hadn’t known he was seeing anyone. “What hussy is that?”

  TJ laughed again. “You! I told her that JD was, in fact, still seeing the tramp.”

  “Thanks a lot.”

  He brought another pile of plates in from the table. “Hey, if she’d had anything good to say about you, I wouldn’t still be speaking to you.”

  Kelsey laughed herself. Although she wished his mother would like her, she wondered what good it would do anyway. It felt really good to talk to someone without the underlying tension she’d been living with for almost a month. “I thought you were her better son now.”

  “Please. JD was always number-one-son in more ways than just birth.” He shrugged and collected silverware like what he was saying didn’t bother him in the slightest. “By the time he ran off here, and she turned it on me, I was old enough to know better. I never bought in the way he did.”

  He grinned, and she couldn’t see it, but Kelsey bet there was a world of hurt under there. “You know, Andrew threw things and raged, but at least I knew he loved me.”

  “How did you get Daniel? JD said he was Andrew’s from a previous marriage. Why didn’t he go back to his birth mother? If you don’t mind me asking.”

  “No, I don’t mind.” Kelsey shrugged. “About a month before Andy died, he assigned me guardianship of Daniel. He showed me Daniel’s birth certificate, and the ‘mother’ line was actually blank.”

  “Andrew never told you?” TJ took the heavy dish from her gloved hands and loaded it into the machine like a pro. “Wasn’t he married to her?”

  “Oh, I have no idea about that one. He disappeared for three years. I didn’t know where he was or if he was alive. But he showed up one day, sitting in the living room in my mother’s rocking chair, with this baby in his arms.”

  TJ stopped what he was doing and stared at her. “You seriously let your husband disappear for three years, and show up with another woman’s baby that you raised?!? Kelsey, do you hate yourself?”

  “He wasn’t my husband.” She laughed. Oh, god, she had to straighten them all out. “He was my baby brother. I forgave him everything.”

  “He was your brother?”

  She nodded, tears welling up just from thinking about Andrew. “He was my pride and joy when he was born. And my mother had something in common with yours—she didn’t want anything to look less than perfect. So when we realized that Andy wasn’t normal she didn’t get him help right away. She figured he was so young she could just discipline him out of it. She didn’t want to deal with it so I took care of him.”

  “What was it that was actually wrong?”

  She shook her head, the tears falling. “I still don’t know. He was diagnosed as bipolar with poor impulse control, but he had elements of both paranoia and schizophrenia.”

  “Jesus.”

  She shrugged, her heart squeezing at the pain she knew Andrew had lived with. “The doctors loved him, he was a fascinating case. But sometimes he hated himself so much. And sometimes I think he planned the whole thing. I had just made the last house payment, and he knew I was so happy to be free of it. And him signing Daniel over to me—I didn’t question it. I was always so afraid that Andrew would disappear and take Daniel with him that I didn’t ask him why. I didn’t dig. And then he killed himself.” A fresh round of tears fell, and things she hadn’t known she’d hidden became clear. She bit her lip and pulled off the dish gloves before apologizing to TJ, “I’m sorry, I don’t know what this is.”

  “It’s okay, that’s what it is.” He held his arms to her, simply because she was a person in need. She walked into them cleanly, no baggage, no walls, and cried there.

  After a moment he stepped abruptly away. She’d probably gotten to be too much for him. He wasn’t his brother. But no one was, or ever would be. And she didn’t get to have his brother. So it was a bad situation all around in her estimate. TJ polished that off with, “I have to go.” And he fled the kitchen, calling for JD.

  Kelsey sniffled a few more times and then turned back to the dishes. It was as good an excuse as any to take a little time and get herself together. She scrubbed the dish TJ had brought in.

  It had been her grandmother’s—one of the few family heirlooms she hadn’t sold off to pay for Andrew’s treatment. So she loved it.

  That was where TJ found her when he returned about fifteen minutes later. “You doing okay?”

  She nodded, and figured changing the subject was the best way to not burst into tears again in front of an unwilling man. “What did you run off for?”

  He shook his head, like
he was getting rid of a bad memory. “I was after JD, but it seems he isn’t talking to me.”

  She washed another two forks, then handed them to TJ who had taken up a dishtowel and was graciously drying the silver, piece by piece. “Really? What did you do?”

  “What makes you so certain it’s my fault? You’re as bad as he is.” He put down the towel and walked out of the kitchen.

  JD was home most of the time. Kelsey walked Andie to school on the days the guys had radio interviews, and she walked along with her portable radio when they interviewed at a local station. He sounded great, intelligent and likeable, although there were a few listeners who called in saying they couldn’t distinguish the brothers’ voices on the air. Kelsey didn’t have that problem.

  JD’s was the one that sounded cold.

  He’d built some distance in between them again. Although she couldn’t really peg when it had started, she knew it was there. And she couldn’t really be sure it was just between them. He seemed pissed at everyone lately. Hence the cold voice on the radio.

  She had closed a loan that morning. She’d done it simply because she’d started it two months ago. It had taken forever, due to the couple changing their minds, then calling back and starting all over again.

  She wondered if it would be the last one ever and thought that it probably would. She’d banked some money for the studio, and JD had spared her spending that, so she had a small bundle of savings. She had shot a few portraits in there over the past week and the clients had been really happy with them.

  Tomorrow she would look at buying advertising space.

  Today she would pop open a bottle of champagne and celebrate.

  She pulled open the fridge and searched the back for the split that she’d stashed there. She closed the fridge without grabbing the bottle. Her heart sank. JD should be here, celebrating the last of the loans. He was the one who talked her into this. But he was barely speaking to her now. He handled the transactions between them, shuffling his child and her children back and forth. But that didn’t change her feelings for him at all.

  Okay, that was a lie. Now she hated him almost as much as she loved him.

  She forgot about celebrating the last loan, and slunk off to the back to work on touching up the photos.

  She was still neck deep in shading and lighting when the voice came from behind her. “Are you ready?”

  He didn’t call her ‘Kelse’. He just showed up, and barely spoke.

  He did much of the same on the walk to school to pick up the kids. He mentioned that he would be in Atlanta the following Tuesday and could she take Andie to school with them in the morning?

  She considered telling him she had to check her calendar.

  At least he was human to Andie. His daughter jumped and skipped, and chattered non-stop about her day. Only Daniel seemed sensitive to the tension between the adults. Just when she thought she’d gotten Daniel back on track, she knocked him off again. And the things that knocked them both off the track had all been related to JD.

  She considered just cutting him off. Tell him she was glad for the time they’d been friends but—

  “We’re going to California!” Andie skipped, her breath coming out in little puffs.

  “When?” That was news to Kelsey, but maybe Andie would tell the story if her Dad wouldn’t.

  “For Spring Break! We’re going on an airplane.”

  “Wow.” Daniel’s eyes got big. Kelsey didn’t think he’d ever been on a plane that he was old enough to remember. “That sounds like fun.”

  Kelsey questioned Andie herself. “Where in California are you going?”

  “Bear!”

  She hadn’t heard of any place called ‘Bear’, but JD filled in the blanks without any emphasis or excitement. “Big Bear Lake. Our parents took me and TJ there several times when we were kids. I always wanted to take my own kids there. And I can finally afford it, so we’re going.”

  Kelsey just nodded. “Is TJ going, too?”

  “No.” His voice so flat she would have thought it was recorded if she hadn’t seen his mouth move.

  Andie twittered on about fishing and boating and living in a cabin. Kelsey and JD both kept their mouths shut, until Andie asked Daniel what they were doing for Spring Break.

  Daniel shrugged. “I don’t know. We didn’t do anything last year.”

  Kelsey felt a spurt of guilt. It wasn’t that they hadn’t done anything for Spring Break last year. It was that they hadn’t done anything last year. She’d only wanted to get her feet under her. Daniel asked her if she had made plans for them. “We’ll do something.”

  She ruffled his hair, feeling like a bad mother, because it hadn’t really occurred to her to go somewhere or do something for Spring Break.

  Andie piped up. “You should come with us!”

  “Oh! No!” Kelsey felt the burning need to stop that one before it got started. Just the thought of vacationing with JD drained her.

  “That’s a great idea!” Daniel started jumping around, too.

  “Yeah,” Andie sang, “We have plenty of room, right, Dad?”

  JD didn’t even answer.

  That was it. Kelsey reached out and took Andie’s hand. “Listen Andie. The person who pays for the vacation is the person who gets to invite other people. So—” It was a good lesson, she just didn’t get to finish it.

  Andie turned to JD, “You have to invite them, Daddy.”

  JD stopped on the sidewalk, his hands in his jacket pockets. “It’s not a bad idea.”

  Kelsey was sure her mouth hung open. So she did the only thing she could think of to keep from being upset that he wouldn’t even say ‘shut your mouth, Kelse’ like he used to. “You kids run up ahead and let me and JD talk about this one.”

  She turned to him, “What are you thinking? You’ve barely spoken to me in the last week. You want to go on vacation together?”

  He shrugged. “I’ve missed you.”

  “Well, all you had to do was open your damn mouth!” She whispered it, and prayed that the kids wouldn’t hear, and that they were far enough from the gates of the school that there weren’t other people’s kids behind them to complain to their parents.

  “Come on, Kelse. There’s an elephant in the room. Maybe a week under the same roof will help get rid of it.”

  “You’re serious!” She couldn’t believe him. He barely spoke to her for weeks, then wanted to share a vacation? She wormed out of it. “I’m sure I couldn’t find flights at a reasonable rate anyway.”

  “I’ve got it covered.” His face still didn’t show any emotion.

  Kelsey simply didn’t answer him. By her counts the man had gone mental.

  A full block later he spoke again. “Is it because TJ isn’t coming?”

  “TJ?” God, the man baffled her. “What does this have to do with him?”

  He only repeated the question. “Is it because TJ isn’t coming?”

  She sighed. “Let me be more clear: this has nothing to do with TJ. It has to do with the fact that this is the biggest conversation we’ve had in a week.”

  His hands were still jammed in his pockets. “Is this how you want it?”

  She was exhausted from being so tense when she was around him, and she was still tense a good portion of the time she wasn’t around him, too. “Of course it’s not how I want it. I miss us being friends. I just don’t know how to go back.”

  “Then come with us.”

  “Fine.” She gave in. It wasn’t going to be a vacation at all. Not for her. He’d be looming over her, and she’d be wanting things she couldn’t have, and—

  She looked up and the damn man was smiling. A real smile.

  “What the hell are you grinning about?”

  He shrugged.

  Chapter 35

  They spent the next week getting ready. JD flew in and out of Atlanta in a heartbeat, just as Brenda had promised. They dug out Andy’s old fishing poles for themselves and bought some small ones fo
r the kids. Kelsey had no idea you could get Superman or Scooby Doo or even Barbie on a fishing pole. But they had one of each as proof.

  They also got little inflatable air mattress sleeping bags for the kids. JD wasn’t able to get a larger cabin at such late notice, so that meant the kids would be sleeping on the floor—a fact they were all quite happy about. They went back out later in the week to get her kids suitcase sets like the one Andie had. It came with wheels and an airplane carryon, and that seemed like a good idea for a cross country flight.

  JD asked her several times what he should pack for Andie, and was mortified at the amount she suggested. But he made her smile—really smile—for the first time in a while when she asked him, “You’ve never traveled with a kid before, have you?”

  They stood in line at the airport check-in waiting to go through security. Luggage was piled around them. He shook his head. “I traveled plenty as a kid.”

  “Not the same.” She held her hands up. “I didn’t make you do anything. But if a kid’s going to wet the bed or vomit, they’ll do it on vacation where things are unfamiliar.”

  He blinked. “Thanks, this is sounding like a lot of fun.”

  “I didn’t plan it, you did.”

  After that they fell silent. Even the kids kept their mouths closed in awe of everything swirling around them. Kelsey saw other families go by, harried mothers holding small hands, Dads who were lost, other families doing fine in the middle of their mountains of luggage. But the problem was they weren’t other families.

  She could dream about it every night until the moon exploded, but it wasn’t going to happen. JD didn’t want to settle down, and he was in the best position to never have to. These days he had plenty of money and plenty of groupies. She couldn’t—wouldn’t—compete.

  They made it onto the plane without any mishaps. The kids insisted on sitting together in the middle three seats. Leaving Kelsey and JD in two together. JD didn’t look like he’d ever be comfortable. Still, he got settled, and the kids sat down with their carry-on bags and each unpacked a book or a hand-held game and got lost in that.