by Witt, L. A.
So maybe that was why I was worrying myself stupid. I was trying to find little pieces of Jesse that matched up with Sean so I could say, Nope, he doesn’t stack up, and have a reason to move on, because that would hurt a hell of a lot less than what might happen. Which was probably totally irrational, but rational kind of went out the window when you’d watched your husband’s casket get lowered into a hole in the ground.
“Like I said,” Scott’s voice pulled me back from my increasingly dark thoughts, “it’s up to you if it’s too soon or not. If you feel like it is, then by all means, don’t push. But if you’re ready, don’t let anyone tell you you’re not. Or that you shouldn’t be.”
Nodding, I swallowed. Then a heavy feeling settled in the pit of my stomach. “What if I think I’m ready, but I’m not?”
“That’s okay too.”
“But I don’t want to hurt him, you know?”
“I know you don’t. And I think most people would understand. Just be honest with him. If he’s someone worth dating, he’ll stick around as a friend anyway, and maybe you can make it work down the line.”
I nodded again but said nothing. I didn’t mention how my husband had weighed in on the possibility of me dating again after his death. I wasn’t sure why I didn’t bring it up. Maybe because the conversation had been excruciating in the moment, and even now, the thought of it made my throat tighten. Or maybe because I was afraid if I told Scott, he’d tell me in no uncertain terms I was being an idiot by holding back with Jesse. Which didn’t make a lot of sense—Scott was never forceful with his advice—but nothing made much sense these days, so what the hell?
And for that matter, I didn’t want to dissect the subject any further. I’d see how things went with Jesse. Not much more I could do right then. Maybe I was ready. Maybe I wasn’t. Maybe I was latching on because he reminded me of Sean. And maybe he was just an incredibly attractive guy who probably had better things to do than spend time with a shell-shocked widower twice his age.
And maybe, just maybe, I was too fucking stoned to figure any of this out.
Turning my head toward Scott, I asked, “So how goes the wedding planning?”
Scott groaned. “If we’re going to get into that topic . . .” He picked up the paper and weed and started rolling another joint.
I laughed. “That bad?”
“That bad.” He scowled. “The guest list keeps getting bigger, which keeps making everything more complicated, and . . .” He paused to lick the edge of the paper to seal the joint. “I swear to God, half the Wolf’s Landing cast and crew will be there.”
“Oh, star-studded. Nice.”
He shot me a glare. “Says the man who doesn’t have to feed, accommodate, and entertain two hundred people and counting.”
I gaped. “Two hundred? Seriously?”
He muttered something, then put the joint between his lips. He lit it, pulled in a deep drag, and held his breath as he passed the joint to me. I took some in too and held it until my eyes started watering. Then, slowly, we both exhaled. Renewed calm immediately settled over me. How much of it was the actual drug and how much was psychological, I had no idea, but it was pleasant either way.
Scott took the joint back and took another hit. After he’d exhaled some more smoke, he said, “It’ll be fine. It’s just . . . chaotic right now.”
“I believe it.” The memory of my own wedding and all the planning leading up to it made me seriously sympathetic. For once, it didn’t make me sad either. That was probably the weed.
We leisurely smoked and talked as the midafternoon turned into early evening. He didn’t have any appointments at his family counseling practice, and I didn’t have to work tonight, so we had every intention of spending as much of today as possible reliving our high school stoner years. By the time I clocked in tomorrow afternoon, my head would be as clear as it ever was these days, weed or no, and I’d be able to do my job with ease.
This wasn’t something we did all the time, and we were careful not to smoke in the house or at all when Scott’s fiancé was home. The company Jeremy worked for had been cracking down on everything stronger than caffeine or NyQuil ever since one of their employees had fucked up on the job thanks to being fucked up on the job. Not good for a bodyguard. So, he couldn’t partake anymore, and we made sure not to do it when he was there so he didn’t get smoke on his clothes. And because it was just mean—those longing looks he’d give us while we smoked were kind of a buzzkill.
When Jeremy was at work and neither of us had to be anywhere for a while, though? Game on.
Eventually, Scott’s phone buzzed, and when he looked at the screen, his glazed eyes lit up. “Looks like Jeremy’s on his way.”
“Party’s over?” I asked with mock disappointment.
He laughed and offered me the mostly smoked joint we’d been slowly working on for the last two hours. I shook my head. He took a shallow drag, then snuffed out what was left of the joint. We sat out there for a while, until Scott was sure Jeremy would be home momentarily, and then went back inside. We both still smelled like marijuana smoke, so Scott changed clothes while I swapped my T-shirt for one I’d brought with me for this exact purpose. I put the smoky one in my car, then joined Scott in the living room.
Not long after, Jeremy came home, grabbed a beer, and sat beside Scott on the couch. He gave his fiancé a quick kiss, then made an exaggerated gesture of sniffing him. Grinning, he said, “You two been having fun?”
“What?” Scott eyed him innocently.
Jeremy rolled his eyes. He wrapped an arm around Scott’s shoulders and kissed his cheek. “Stoners.”
“Hey,” I said. “Don’t judge us.”
“Oh, I’m judging you.” He shot me what was probably supposed to be a glare, but all three of us laughed.
As we all sat there and talked—mostly Jeremy filling us in on his day—I was more relaxed than I’d been in a long time. Not high and loopy, but grounded. Collected. Like I always was after Scott had helped me get my thoughts in order.
I also felt better about Jesse and what might happen there. I didn’t need Scott’s permission to think about dating or hooking up with someone, but the advice helped. He was a good sounding board. Someone to remind me I wasn’t disrespecting my late husband’s memory.
Jeremy started to get up, jostling me out of my thoughts. “I’m getting some iced tea. Either of you want any?”
“No, thanks,” I said.
Scott shook his head. After Jeremy had left the room, Scott faced me and offered a friendly smile. As he did, I realized he never smiled at me with pity. Not like everyone else who knew me. There was empathy there—and sympathy —but mostly he was soft and kind. A friend who knew I still existed as something besides a grieving widower. Up until recently, even I hadn’t been so sure about that part.
“Thanks,” I said, then realized I hadn’t given him any context. “For the talk earlier.”
“Any time. I just hope I didn’t muddy the waters or anything for you.”
“No, you just gave me some things to think about.”
A moment later, Jeremy came back in and sat beside Scott with a glass of iced tea in his hand. They exchanged one of those looks that were forever passing between them. They were so ridiculously in love, and even the trials and tribulations of planning an ever-growing wedding hadn’t begun to temper that. I was glad. Especially after all these years, Scott deserved to be this happy. And maybe that meant there was hope for me down the line too.
“You want my honest opinion right now?”
I looked at Scott, thinking he was asking Jeremy, but he was looking right at me. I straightened. “Oh. Um.”
I hesitated. Even Jeremy fidgeted a bit, eyeing his fiancé. Scott was usually the type to just give his opinion, so that question was his warning I might not like what he was going to say. Or that I might not be ready for it.
I was curious, though, so I nodded.
Scott glanced at Jeremy, then met my gaze. “I
f Sean were here now, he’d be reading you the riot act for not already having that kid’s number in your phone.”
My gut clenched. Shit. No wonder he’d warned me. And he was right too. Sean had pretty much told me exactly that. “Even if he isn’t my usual type? Or he’s a bit too much like . . .”
Gnawing the inside of his cheek, Scott seemed to think about it for a moment. “Look, I’m not suggesting you marry the guy. But obviously there’s some sort of chemistry or a connection. Maybe that’s what you need right now. Just don’t lose sight of the fact that you’re still grieving, okay?”
I nodded. I moistened my lips, then offered a tight shrug. “And yeah, I know Sean would want me to pursue this, but I think he’d also be okay with me being cautious right now.”
Scott’s expression softened. “Probably. And I am too, believe me. Just . . . I guess what I’m saying is, be careful, but that doesn’t necessarily mean to fight this or ignore it.” He paused. “You are interested in him, right?”
I chewed my lip, mulling over the question despite the blazing neon FUCK YES inside my head, before I finally nodded. I’d already told him so, but it felt weird, acknowledging I was interested in a man. Like I had no right to be putting my sights on someone this soon, never mind someone who kind of hit the notes Sean had. At the same time, it was this huge relief that I still could want someone.
“Then go for it,” Scott said with an encouraging smile. “And good luck.”
“Thanks. I’ll probably need it.” I laughed dryly. “I’m not exactly the king of charm, you know.”
They both laughed. Fortunately, they also let the subject go.
As the conversation moved on to other subjects, Jeremy rested his hand on Scott’s leg, and a flurry of emotions jumbled together in my chest. I missed that kind of contact. For the last several months, I’d found myself hyperaware of the lack of Sean’s hands on me or his absence beside me, but tonight, I caught myself longing for the contact itself. Maybe that meant I was finally accepting that I’d never have Sean against me again. Or maybe it was because someone else had piqued an interest I’d thought had been gone forever.
Not that it mattered. The bottom line was that there were wants and desires in me that were waking up again, and there was a man who was waking them up.
Whatever this was that had my heart fluttering every time I so much as thought of Jesse—and going utterly crazy whenever I saw him—wasn’t something I could ignore. I didn’t want to rush it or force it to happen faster than it wanted to, and I wanted to be careful, making sure I really was in this for Jesse and not someone to fill in for Sean.
My mind kept circling back to that last bit, but I dismissed it again. Jesse wasn’t Sean. He couldn’t be if I wanted him to be, and I didn’t want him to be. I liked him.
And maybe I needed to make the effort to telegraph that to him. Not that I’d been all that great at communicating that sort of thing in the past. Hell, Sean and I never would have made a connection at all if Jose Cuervo hadn’t scrambled our brains one fateful night. With Jesse, there was no company party to give us an excuse to get shit-faced enough for a clumsy bathroom fuck, so I needed to figure out some other way to let him know he had my attention.
And maybe I had an idea . . .
Chapter 7
Jesse
The day after Charlie torpedoed my good mood, I was still in a funk. I’d made it through the rest of my shift on autopilot. I’d slept—sort of—and still felt like shit. Even disinfecting my computer of all traces of Charlie hadn’t helped. It had been kind of cathartic, but . . . meh.
Thank God I had my job to keep me busy, and it was definitely going to keep me busy today. The bosses must’ve known I needed something to occupy my hands and brain, because they’d left a long to-do list for me and Dexy. That or they just needed all this shit done. Either way, I wasn’t bitching.
List in hand, I stepped out onto the shop floor in search of Dexy, who I found doing some paperwork by the cash register. “Hey, Dex.” I gestured toward the back. “Boss-people said one of us needs to put out the new comic book issues, and one of us needs to rearrange the window display. Your choice.”
Her lips quirked. “You’re better at the displays, so I’ll take care of the comics.”
“Hooray!” The comic task was insanely tedious, and everyone knew I loved putting stuff in the windows. Probably more than I should have, from what my bosses had said, but whatever. Shelving displays were fun. Windows? Fuck yeah. And at least this was something creative, which had a shot at eventually cracking through the shittiness that had been weighing me down since yesterday. It hadn’t cut through it yet, but once I was knee-deep in my project, I had no doubt I’d . . . well, maybe not feel great, but better.
Feeling a little less like shit on Charlie’s shoe, I went into the back and put together a box of supplies. I had a few ideas for how I wanted to set this one up. Simon, Ian, and I had built some Wolf’s Landing scenes out of LEGOs a few weeks ago, and they’d just been waiting for a chance to be displayed. Especially the one Ian had done of the World Tree. Trust him to make something cool to put my interrogation room and Simon’s “some shit going down in the forest” scene to shame.
With Dexy’s help, I moved the LEGO World Tree to the window. No way in hell could I move that thing myself, and we all would’ve had kittens if I’d dropped it. I was pretty sure Ian was still traumatized from his actual set piece being destroyed by a couple of stuntmen horsing around on the Wolf’s Landing set, and I didn’t want to be the one to tell him about a casualty like this.
Once the World Tree was in place, I made another trip to the back to get my box of supplies and the LEGO sets Simon and I had built. I checked to make sure I had everything, then hoisted the heavy and somewhat imbalanced box into my arms.
As I crossed the shop floor toward the window, the door opened, and out of habit, I looked.
Just in time to see Garrett walk in.
And damn if the box of display supplies didn’t slide right out of my hands.
Of course, I instinctively tried to catch it instead of letting it drop straight down. I got one hand under it, the other not so much, and instead of landing upright, the box somersaulted. Shit went everywhere. In the space of two seconds, the gray industrial carpet was littered with office and craft supplies, figurines, a strand of Christmas lights, and at least a million LEGOs. Plus the Altoids tin I used for pushpins had come open, so there were colorful pins scattered all over the place too.
Yeah, that was so what I needed today.
Our eyes met over the mess. Garrett raised his eyebrows like, Uh, what now?
I made jazz hands. “Yay! Confetti!”
He snorted. “I must be just in time for the party.”
“Yes, you are.” Chuckling despite the warmth in my cheeks, I bent to pick up what was left of the LEGO interrogation room I probably should’ve glued together like Simon had suggested. But seriously, who glued LEGOs together? Where was the fun in that? Besides, now that it had broken, I’d have no choice but to rebuild it. On company time. God, I loved my job.
To my surprise, Garrett crouched beside me and started helping. He collected the rolls of two-sided tape and some markers and put them in the box. Then he held up a pair of scissors. “They let you use these?”
“Hey!” I laughed and held out my hand. “I’ll have you know they let me use all kinds of sharp shit.”
“Probably against our better judgment.” Simon’s voice turned both of our heads. He surveyed the mess. “What’s . . . uh . . .”
“It’s part of the new display.” I held up a handful of LEGOs and some pushpins. “We make people walk over LEGOs and thumbtacks, and if they make it, they get a discount.”
His eyebrows rose.
“What?” I shrugged. “I saw it on Pinterest.”
Garrett snickered as he carefully picked up some pushpins and collected them in his other hand.
Simon gave me a really? look—I got those daily
—then rolled his eyes and showed his palms. “I don’t even want to know. Holler if you need a hand.” With that, he returned to the back, where he’d been working on payroll or something.
Garrett and I made quick work of containing the disaster, then we both stood. I toed the box aside, and now that I wasn’t distracted by cleaning up the floor, I realized . . . Garrett was here. In the shop. And sometime in the past few minutes, between the moment he’d walked in and now, that disgusted and disgusting feeling from yesterday’s confrontation with Charlie had dissipated, replaced by something a lot stronger and a lot more pleasant.
It was the first time I’d seen Garrett in the daylight. The white in his dark hair was less dramatic now. There must’ve been a black light somewhere in the bar that had picked out the white and made it seem more striking. The dim light of the Alehouse had also muted some of his features, and while his gray was subtler, the lines on his face were more pronounced now, adding a few years to him I hadn’t noticed before. He’d said he was forty-two, but he looked a few years older than that. Why that made him even more attractive to me, I had no idea, but I wasn’t questioning it.
The multicolored neon hadn’t done his eyes a damn bit of justice, either. I’d sworn they were just an unremarkable shade of brown. Here in the sunlight that poured through the shop’s front windows, they were a richer color—almost coffee black with some warmer undertones. Holy fuck, but a man could get lost in eyes like that.
Which I was doing.
By way of staring.
Like an idiot.
I cleared my throat. “Um. So. This is unexpected.”
“Yeah, I . . .” He slid his hands into the pockets of his jeans and looked around the shop. “You mentioned you worked here, and I realized I’ve never been in before. I was curious about it.” Some tension crept into his posture. “That’s, um . . .” His eyes flicked back to me. “That’s not weird, is it?”
“No, no. Not at all. Just a surprise.” Okay, it was kind of weird, but not in a bad way. “So are you into comics?”
