I’d never had an adult man to cook for besides my dad. With Jake living next door, he bypassed my previous dating rules. I’d hoped that Rob would think of him as a babysitter and a neighbor. It seemed like he did. I had to be careful, though. I didn’t want Rob to get too attached to him and then have things not work out with Jake. It was hard enough to break up with a guy. I didn’t want to get Rob’s emotions involved in addition. I suppose with Rob knowing that Jake was only living next to us during the time that his house was being remodeled, he would understand that having Jake as our neighbor was just temporary.
I hoped.
As I talked with my mom, I assembled the chile relleno casserole that I’d told Jake about—green chiles, lots of cheese and eggs, and a whole lot of yum. It was Rob’s favorite meal, and I hoped that Jake would like it. I made a salad too, and cut up some vegetables to steam to counteract all of the richness of the dish.
I hung up with her, and at 6:25, there was a knock on my door. I looked through the peephole. Jake, not a process server.
I was secretly thrilled that he was early. I’d worried that he would call and not show up, or be stuck at work, like the workaholic he was. But no, he came home.
And even though I’d seen him at lunchtime, he was still a treat to see. His suit was more wrinkled than usual, but he still smelled great and looked even better.
But Rob was right there as I answered the door, so I did not launch myself at my hottie.
“Hey, come on in,” is what I said instead, being cool in front of my kid.
Jake looked tired, but perked up once he walked in. “It smells so good in here.” I was amused. It was like it was the 1950s—the way to a man’s heart . . . But I didn’t care. I wanted to take care of him. He didn’t have anyone looking out for him.
He leaned over and whispered in my ear, “I’m assuming no PDA in front of your son, right?”
“I’d appreciate that,” I whispered back.
“Well, consider the thought,” he continued quietly. “I want to kiss your adorable nose.”
For some reason this made me blush. He touched my cheek and then called, in a louder voice, “Hey Rob, can we put it in two player?” Then he took off his jacket, loosened his tie, and walked over to Rob, who was sitting on the floor. Jake joined him, wearing his tie and suit pants, and began to play Minecraft with my twelve-year-old son.
He’d learned how to play.
He’d let my son teach him how to play.
And just like that Jake had my heart. Completely.
Seriously.
That did it. Hanging out with my son, doing something simple and everyday. I was already falling for my charming neighbor, I’d admit it, and I was falling fast. I didn’t know what was going to happen with him and I didn’t know what kind of secrets he was holding inside him, but I was at the point where not going further with him would break my heart. I was taken by this man, who paid attention to my son, and paid attention to me, even when he worked as if he had to. As if working was a compulsion for him.
I was going to find out why and see if I could fix it.
Now I knew this was dangerous territory. I know that you shouldn’t try to fix another person, especially a man. People only changed when they were ready to change. You couldn’t force it. But I was still guided by that saying that I’d heard before—the busiest man in the world will make time for you if he is in love with you. I didn’t think that Jake was in love with me, but I knew that he was interested. Those drawings showed it. And I knew that he was trying to make time for me. So I was willing to risk it, willing to try a relationship with him. Yes, I knew I could get hurt. But I couldn’t not do it at this point. And I was also willing to see if I could show him that he could work less and still thrive.
Maybe I could convince him to show his work in public.
I didn’t want to think about what would happen if this went bad. I guess he’d move away and I wouldn’t have to see him again. But it felt too good being with him not to risk my heart. So I decided to try it.
I gathered us all at the table, and we lit candles. The house was decorated for Christmas, plus the Minecraft things that Rob and Jake had made the other day, so I put a few of them on the table. It was funny, but it worked for me. And it felt right for Jake to be there with us, chatting, telling us about his day, asking us about ours, and talking about what he intended to do in Minecraft with Rob as we ate.
And, to be even more perfect, Jake rolled up his sleeves after dinner, tucked his tie into his shirt front, and helped with the dishes.
I wasn’t sure where I’d found this guy.
Still, I knew, he had some demons that we needed to address.
But for now, it was enough just to do these simple, ordinary household things with him.
And since he didn’t really have a home, I wondered—were they simple or ordinary to him?
Later that night, after Rob had gone to bed, I sat outside with Jake on my little loveseat. He’d taken off his tie and unbuttoned the top button of his shirt. Because of a chill in the air, we huddled under a blanket, my feet in his lap.
“You could go change out of your work clothes,” I suggested.
“Good idea.” He lifted both of my feet over back to me, stood up, and said, “I’ll be right back.” He leaned over and gave me my first kiss of the night, a light one. And then he kissed my nose tenderly. “Thanks for dinner, Lucy. It meant more to me than you know.”
He went into to my house through the patio doors, and I heard him open the front door and close it. A few moments later, he stepped out onto his patio, wearing blue plaid pajama bottoms and a black t-shirt. He vaulted the low gate between our patios and sat down next to me, rearranging my feet over his lap again, putting his arm around my shoulders. I cuddled into him.
“I like you in your suit, but I also like that I get to see you out of it.”
He groaned and squeezed me with both arms. “You can’t say sexy things like that to me when your son is in there sleeping.”
“I meant it in a couple of ways, Jake. Not just the, you know, naked way, but also the private side of you.”
Very slowly, he turned to look at me. His eyes darted up and down my face and then he looked crestfallen.
“What?” I laughed, giving him a tiny push.
“If I kiss you now the way I want to, I’m not going to want to stop.”
“So talk.” Frankly, though, the self-imposed restraint on affection was hard on me too. I couldn’t get my fill of him. But I was enjoying his physical, comforting presence and for now, that would have to do. He put his chin on top of my head and held me.
After a moment, he started talking.
“I don’t know everything about my parents because I wasn’t around for some of it, obviously, but also as a kid, you don’t know all that is going on. So I know this. My mom was from a wealthy family back east, in New York.”
“Manhattan?”
“Westchester County. Back then, my dad was an artist. He did weird shit. Sort of post-Jackson Pollack. Throwing paint on canvas and seeing what happens. Mixed media too. They fell in love and when my mom announced to her family that she was pregnant by the stereotypical poor, starving artist, they threw her out.”
“No!” I yell-whispered.
“I’ve never met my grandparents on either side. So I guess that there was something about my dad that my mom loved and my grandparents couldn’t stand. They eloped and had me almost immediately.”
I liked the idea of Jake being a love child, born from passion, but his background was incredibly heart wrenching.
He continued. “Three years later they had my brother, Ethan. I think at first, it was very romantic for my mom. Here she was, married to this artist, you know, who was unpredictable. He’d do things, like bring home a monkey, which was fun for us kids, but there was bad stuff too, like him not coming home for three days, leaving her with us. And that got old real quick.
“The poverty also wore her dow
n. My dad didn’t seem to care, but since she had grown up used to being surrounded by things, it hardened her. When I was little, she was so soft. And then she got rougher and more brittle, like she was going to break if we touched her. We eventually made it out here to California and you know, Santa Barbara is both great and tough if you are poor. The weather makes it so that you can live outside for most of the year. But it’s expensive.”
Didn’t I know it. Santa Barbara was a place where people walked over the homeless to open the front door to Saks Fifth Avenue, not that I shopped at Saks. I’d never seen such a dichotomy between the rich and the poor as I’d seen in Santa Barbara.
Then I thought of something. “I thought you had said that your dad was a workaholic.”
“He wasn’t when I was really little. He just did his art and he didn’t make much money from it. He was obsessed with all these weird, creative ideas. Meanwhile, I thought it was a good day when I got dinner.”
I took his hand and squeezed it. What could you say to that?
“We got evicted often and I stayed in shelters sometimes. When that happened, normally I’d be with my mom and my brother. My dad had to stay in a different building, with the men. But the thing is, he had artist friends, so he’d just leave us, sometimes for days. He’d come back and I’d hear my parents fighting, and it was always about the same thing. Why wouldn’t he work more and make some money so that we could have food and a home.”
“Did your parents use drugs?” I was not able to comprehend people who wouldn’t sacrifice everything to take care of their children and thought that was the only explanation for this behavior. But maybe it wasn’t.
He nodded. “My mom especially. It was her way of coping. So I basically took care of my brother when she was out of it.”
His story just kept getting worse and worse.
“So when my brother was killed in a car accident—a freak thing, coming home from school—everything collapsed. My mom went into this zombie state, where she was almost catatonic. When she came out, she left us. She went back home to her parents. I talk to her every once in a while, but she has a new family now, with two kids. She lives in Arizona. We’re pretty much estranged.”
“And your dad?”
“He couldn’t paint any more after Ethan died. With my mom leaving, he checked out too, but he checked out by working. Finally, for the first time in his life, he got clean and held a steady job, working as a copy machine salesman in Ventura. But he does nothing but work now. I barely saw him in high school. I never saw my mom. Now I don’t see either. So I got the fuck out of there as soon as I could. I got a job at a grocery store bagging groceries the minute I was old enough, and kept working, making money to go to school, to go to law school, and to just—” He paused.
“Yeah,” I said quietly. “To get some security.”
“So since I was old enough, I’ve spent almost all of my waking life working to make sure I had a place to sleep and food. Now? I’m fine. Doing well. I won a few big plaintiff’s cases and I have plenty of money. But I can’t seem to get away. I’m so used to being in the office. I’m never home.”
It had to be a refuge for him. A safe place where this awful, unsafe, hungry childhood didn’t come to haunt him.
“Do you think you could work less?” I asked tentatively. “I mean, if there were a reason to come home?”
He looked at me for a long time and it felt like he was analyzing me again, the artist taking a picture of the way I looked when I asked. “Yes,” he said finally. “Growing up like that, the only dream you have, really, is to have enough money for a home and food and a family. The traditional shit. When you don’t have it, you want it because it looks so nice that everyone has it.”
“But no family is perfect,” I started, but he interrupted,
“I’m not interested in perfect. I’m interested in real.”
“But what about your art?” I asked, wanting to know why it was so important to him and why he hid it.
“What about it?”
“Where does that fit in? In your life, I mean?”
“It doesn’t.”
That couldn’t be true. No one could create art the way Jake did, have a separate room set up, even in a temporary house, just for it, and not have it be a major part of their life.
“Jake. It does.”
He sighed and was a little grumpy when he spoke. “Here’s the deal with my art, or whatever you call it. I’ve always doodled. I drew as a kid. But after Ethan died and my dad stopped painting, he buried himself in his work and I never saw him. Making a living off of art, in my dad’s mind, was equated with him losing my mom to drugs and divorce, and losing my brother. So he freaked out, stopped doing his paintings and his mixed-media, and started being addicted to work.”
He got the message that it was not safe for him to be an artist. Not with that background. “So your dad was your role model?”
“Sort of, yeah, I guess. I don’t really have a role model in my family. I mean I have no idea how you make it, Lucy, being creative for a living. Writing? Seriously? I don’t know how that works. I can’t believe that you can do it and make money off of it. I couldn’t do it, so I chose the law. Always wanted to be Atticus Finch, I guess.”
“Really?”
“I liked that movie with Gregory Peck.”
I snuggled into his chest. “It’s a wonderful movie, but the art. I know you still do it, regardless of whether you get paid for it, regardless of whether it makes sense. You have to do it. Right?”
“Yeah,” he said quietly, fingering my hair. “I have to do it. I can’t stop drawing. I started drawing for real after Ethan died. I didn’t want to forget him. I must have drawn hundreds and hundreds of pictures of my brother, so that I would remember everything about him. The way he put on his shoes. The way he rode his bike. The way he ate spaghetti. But between my dad working, and me working to get out of there, it was never something that I considered doing as a profession. Never something I could consider. It meant homeless shelter again and I needed to pay for school, a roof, and food.”
I nodded into his t-shirt.
“But I still had to paint.”
Pulling back from him, I hooked my hands low behind his waist. “Of course you did. It’s a gift and a talent that you have and you have to do it. You have to share it. By not creating what comes easy for you to create, or what you want to create, you deny all of us the chance to see it and to know that we are understood. To know that there is a connection. It is basic human nature to create.”
He looked skeptical.
“I can’t live on the streets again,” he said. “I can’t just be all free and creative. Life doesn’t work that way. I have no idea how you did it, but it’s not the way it worked for my dad, and it wouldn’t work for me.”
“You don’t know that,” I challenged, pulling a hand away from him but resisting putting it on my waist. I settled for walking my fingers up his chest. Yum. “It sounds like you haven’t tried.”
He stared at me. “It isn’t worth trying to do anything. It’s just something that I do. It doesn’t mean that I could make a living off of it.”
Now my hand was on my hip. “It’s more than that, and you know it.”
“So what if it is? Like I’m going to be some sort of slacker artist, who draws all day long and gets nothing done? No thanks. I’ll go to my office.”
“Do you like your office?”
He paused. “It doesn’t matter if I like it or not. It’s my life.”
“Jake, you said you have plenty of money. Think about it. Do you need to work so hard?”
“Yeah,” he whispered. “I do. I have so many cases, so much responsibility. So many people counting on me.”
I shook my head. “You need to do something for fun.”
“These days I hang out with you or your kid. That’s really fun.” He smiled an adorable half-smile on the last one, some of the grumpiness from his earlier words subsiding. Oh, I wanted t
o kiss him.
So I did.
I leaned over and brushed my lips against his and he wrapped his arms around me, holding me to him, warm and comfortable. I broke apart and snuggled back into his chest.
“When is the last time you took a vacation?”
“What’s that?”
“No jokes, guapo. When’s the last time you took a vacation?”
“Does going somewhere for a work conference count?”
I rolled my eyes and looked up at him. “Answer the question.”
He shook his head. “I don’t think I’ve been anywhere since I made partner, and I don’t think I’ve really ever been on vacation. Other than moving around a lot as a kid, I’ve never been anywhere just for fun.”
Oh my poor nene. “We’re going to fix that. For Christmas, I’m giving you a vacation. You and me. We’re going away for a weekend. Plan on it. We’ll pick a weekend when Rob’s dad has him and we’ll go.”
He looked interested but also worried. “The office will freak.”
“Your office will function just fine without you. You’re just scared that they will think something got into you if you’re not around. But they can handle it just fine.”
“That’s probably true,” he admitted. “But it’s going to feel weird to go somewhere.”
“That’s the point.”
He nodded.
“It’s also the point to get a really nice hotel room and make the most of it. Go get tested and I will, too.”
“Done,” he said immediately.
“I want to invite you inside,” I whispered, “but I don’t think it’s a good idea tonight.”
“Probably not. But Rob is with his dad this weekend, right?”
“More like with his grandma, apparently. But yes.”
“We’ll make up for it then.”
A few minutes later, he kissed me, rubbed my cheek with the back of his hand, kissed my nose, and whispered, “Good night, honey.” And then he hopped over the partition between our patios, and we both went in to sleep in our separate beds.
All the Waters of the Earth (Giving You ... Book 3) Page 11
