by Lisa Cardiff
“Wait. You’ve been meeting Bre to surf?” Cam said, looking confused.
“Yes. You didn’t know?”
“No. She never mentioned it. I mean… I know she went surfing a couple mornings, but I assumed she went alone. That’s strange. When did that happen?”
“I taught her to surf the morning after my Labor Day party, and she liked it.” Jax shrugged. “I mentioned where I surf in the mornings, and I told her to meet me there if she wanted more lessons.”
“Huh… that’s interesting. I had no clue she was meeting you. Should I be mad?”
“Mad that I’m teaching her to surf?”
“No, mad that you two have some sort of standing date.” Cam laughed uncomfortably, shoving his hands in his pockets.
“It’s not much of a standing date if she hasn’t shown up in a week, now, is it? Besides, Marc and Alec came once, too.”
Cam looked toward Marc and Alec, who were setting up the equipment in the back of the room. They nodded in Cam’s direction.
“Why wasn’t I invited?” Cam asked, looking at the guys.
“Why would you be invited? You hate surfing,” Alec answered, rubbing his hands together, the heavy silver rings on his fingers clinking together.
“I do, but it’s weird that my friends are hanging out with my girlfriend behind my back.”
“Speaking of backs, I have to say I didn’t hate the view when she was there. She can surf with me anytime. She looked hot in that wetsuit,” Marc said, making a crude gesture.
Alec shoved Marc in the arm. “Shut up.”
“What?” Marc responded, shrugging his shoulders. “It’s true.”
“Don’t listen to them. It was just surfing,” Jax said. “So where’s she been?”
“She went home,” Cam responded, sitting on a wooden chair to tune his guitar.
Stunned, Jax stared at Cam. “What happened? Did you guys break up?”
“Nope,” Cam answered vaguely, not looking up from his guitar. “Her grandmother died. She had to take care of the arrangements.”
“When are you leaving to go to the funeral?” Jax asked.
Cam sighed and put his guitar on the ground. “I’m not. She wants me to go, but I don’t have the time to go home right now. I’m too busy between practice, setting up gigs, and my job. Besides, I don’t want to get sucked into her family drama, and if her mom bothers to show up, it will be ugly. That woman is a piece of work.”
“Wait—so she’s dealing with her grandma’s death all by herself? That’s harsh,” Jax said.
“She has my parents and her friend from college.”
“Is she pissed you aren’t going?” Jax asked as he handed Cam a beer.
“I haven’t told her yet.”
Jax whistled. “Wow. When’s the funeral?”
“In two days.”
“So, when are you going to tell her you can’t go?”
“I’m not.”
Jax struggled to keep his sudden anger in check. “You’re planning on being a no show to her grandmother’s funeral?”
Cam stood up from his chair and paced in front of his chair. “I’ll send some flowers and a personal note. She’ll hardly notice I’m not there with all her grandma’s friends hovering around her and I know my parents will be there. She’s like a daughter to them.”
“That’s ridiculous. Of course, she’ll notice if you’re not there.”
Cam ran his hands through his hair. “Look. I just can’t go back there for a while.”
“Why not?” Jax studied Cam.
Cam trained his eyes on the floor. “Fine,” he said, exhaling loudly. “Remember that chick that was hanging around the band a couple months ago?”
“Which one?” Jax said, his eyebrows furrowed.
“Mia.” When Jax didn’t respond, Cam elaborated. “The one with the red hair—short, obnoxiously clingy.”
“Oh, right,” Jax shivered, remembering how she indiscriminately hung on all of the guys in the band after every performance. “What about her?”
“She’ll probably be there. She went to high school with Bre and me,” Cam responded, strumming a few chords on his guitar.
“So? Just ignore her. That worked for me. She focused her attention elsewhere pretty quickly,” Alec interjected.
“Unfortunately, that won’t work for me. We hooked up in the parking lot after our performance a couple months ago.”
Marc burst out laughing. “That chick is crazy. Just being in the same room as her gave me the hives. I don’t have very high standards, but even I’m not crazy enough to touch her. She has all the makings of a stalker.”
“She was available, and I obviously drank too much, but thanks for rubbing it in,” Cam replied defensively.
“That’s all kinds of fucked up. Are they friends?” Jax asked as he tapped his beer bottle against the inside of his thigh.
“No. They hate each other. I dated Mia in high school briefly before Bre. She was always clingy and manipulative.”
“So ignore her,” Marc said. “I don’t think it would be too hard to play the ‘she’s crazy’ card.”
Cam groaned. “It’s not that simple. If she sees me with Bre, she’ll go crazy and say something to Bre. I can’t risk Bre finding out about it.”
“Maybe I’m overanalyzing this, but I’m pretty sure she could say something to Bre whether you’re there or not,” Jax offered diplomatically.
“Maybe, but if I’m not there, Mia will think we broke up, and she might not say anything because she knows I’m protective of Bre, and if she hurts Bre, I won’t talk to her again.”
“You’re still talking to that chick?” Marc asked, his lips twisted in obvious distaste.
“I respond to a text or call her every once in a while.” When he saw the guys’ shocked expressions, he rolled his eyes. “I thought talking to her would keep her away from Bre.”
“And your stupidity continues…” Jax said. He couldn’t wrap his head around the idea that Cam would jeopardize his relationship with Bre for a night with some of the girls he hooked up with after their shows, especially that Mia chick. Hooking up with her would take a liquor cabinet, a blindfold, and earplugs.
“Whatever. If I knew that she would be a leech sucking my blood for months after, I would’ve never touched her.”
“I’ll go with you,” Jax offered.
“What do you mean?”
“I’ll go to the funeral with you and run interference.”
“You’d do that?” Cam asked, looking almost hopeful.
“Yes. I like Bre, and I don’t want her to be hurt. She needs her friends around her.”
“What about the meeting on Friday with the event planners for the Seattle music festival? Somebody needs to go to that,” Marc reminded them. “Alec and I don’t know anything about the business side of the band. One of you needs to be here.”
Cam and Jax studied each other, not saying anything.
“You go to the funeral and I’ll stay here,” Cam said. “I’ve already met with the planners, and they know me. You can tell Bre that I sent you in my place because I had some band business that I couldn’t reschedule, which is the truth.”
Jax ground his teeth together, trying to suppress the urge to agree to Cam’s scheme. “Cam, I don’t know. It’s not right.” He wanted to see Bre again. He missed her, but visiting her to protect Cam seemed deceptive. Every morning during the past week, he’d waited for her to show up at the beach to surf. He cursed himself for not asking for her cell number, but while they had met to surf several times, it wasn’t a formal date, so he didn’t think he could ask her for the number without making her uncomfortable. Since the incident in his room, anytime he came close to crossing the line of propriety, she retreated, so he went out of his way to make her comfortable, and that meant keeping the surfing date casual.
“No, think about it. It’s perfect. You two are friends, surfing buddies, and regardless of whether I’m there, Bre would want you ther
e. It won’t make her suspicious of me, and it will keep that Mia at bay.” Cam smiled in a self-congratulatory manner.
“I could go. I wouldn’t mind getting Bre all alone, if you know what I mean,” Marc said, laughing at Cam’s expression.
“Shut up. You hardly know her,” Cam responded through gritted teeth. “No, Jax should go.”
“Fine. I’ll go, but I’m not doing it for you. I’m doing it for Bre. I know how complicated her relationship with her mom is.”
“She told you about her mom?” Cam asked, his eyebrows raised.
Jax hesitated as he walked to his microphone. “A little,” he said curtly. “Let’s start practice. Apparently, I have a trip to pack for.”
Chapter Twelve
Bre stood against the back wall of the memorial room of the mortuary, unable to catch her breath. The sickly sweet scent of the flower arrangements made the air feel thick and suffocating. The aisle appeared to grow longer with each moment that passed, and the thought of walking down it alone made her stomach lurch. She didn’t want to talk to anyone before Cam arrived. He’d told her he would meet her at the memorial service, and she didn’t think she would be able to confront the open casket in the front of the room unless he was with her.
As each person walked into the room she looked away, not wanting to make eye contact. No one minded. They clearly understood her body language, and they walked by without saying a word. Instead, they offered a soft pat on her shoulder, a quick embrace of her hand or a faint smile of pity.
Her mother still hadn’t responded to any of her texts or voicemails. She didn’t know whether she was happy or sad her mother was still missing in action. When it came to her mother, her feelings were complicated.
As a child, she’d adored her mother, constantly doing things that she thought would make her happy or make her mother love her, because when her mother focused her attention on her, the world seemed to come alive. Her mother had this special skill that sucked people into her orbit, and those people lucky enough to receive her attention went to great lengths to please her and make her happy. With a simple smile, she made you feel loved and special, and a look of disappointment brought you to your knees. However, just as quickly as her mother’s love was given, it was taken away, as if it never existed in the first place, and once it was gone, it rarely returned. If her mother had moved on, there was no way to change her mind.
Her mother didn’t value loyalty or promises. She believed in living in the moment at any cost. Bre remembered her mother telling her that she did what felt good in the moment because you don’t get second chances. While it was an appealing philosophy, she ended up hurting a lot of people in the process.
Looking at her watch, she realized that the memorial service was going to start in ten minutes. She arranged for the casket to be closed when it started. If she wanted to say goodbye, she only had a few minutes to do it. She closed her eyes and sucked in a deep breath, attempting to garner enough strength to make it through the day without falling apart. She couldn’t wait for Cam any longer. As she pushed her body away from the wall, she felt a hand on her shoulder.
“Bre,” the voice zinged through her body like an electric shock and her eyes flew open. She knew that voice.
“Jax,” she said in a whisper, her eyes searching his face, wondering why he was here. “Where’s Cam?” She looked toward the entrance of the room and the silence stretched uncomfortably making her anxious. “Jax, is he okay?”
“Yes. He’s fine, but he couldn’t make it. He had a business meeting for an upcoming event in Seattle and he couldn’t get the time off from work.” His voice was hard, and she almost felt as though he were angry with her.
Bre sucked in a breath. Her immediate anger and betrayal at Cam’s careless abandonment threatened to overwhelm her tenuous hold on her emotions. She swallowed hard, trying to push them away again. “Okay. Why are you here?”
The corners of his mouth turned up, and for a minute she forgot where she was, and smiled back at him. “I’m coming to support my friend. We are friends, right?”
“We’re friends, good friends.” And for some reason, she knew it was true. Seeing him here felt right, and her initial resentment toward Cam faded away. In that moment, it didn’t matter that Cam couldn’t come. She had Jax.
Jax grabbed her hand and squeezed it, but unlike the other acquaintances, who had done the same, he didn’t drop it, he pulled her closer to him and leaned toward her ear. “Are you ready to do this?”
She turned toward him, resting her head on his chest for a moment while he caressed her back with his free hand. “Now I am,” she responded, tilting her head up to look into his silvery eyes. “Thanks for coming.”
“I wouldn’t miss it.” He kissed her lightly on the forehead and led her down the aisle.
When they neared the open casket, she squeezed his hand so hard she thought she might be cutting off his circulation, but she couldn’t let go. Stopping about a foot from the casket, she released a breath that came out more like a whimper than an exhalation. Her grandma’s fragile age-lined face was covered in wax-like paint, and her long gray hair was pulled away from her face in a bun on top of her head.
Bre reached out, running her fingers across her grandma’s cheek. “She hardly resembles the woman I knew,” she said in a small voice.
“Were you close?”
“I don’t know how to answer that.” Bre stared, unseeing, at the flower arrangements that lined the back of the room, not wanting to remember her grandmother as she looked right now. “I loved her, but our relationship was strained. My mother left me alone with her for long stretches of time, and sometimes I think my grandmother resented being my primary caretaker. Don’t get me wrong. She wasn’t openly hostile or anything, but she seemed cold and detached at times, and I got the impression that she sacrificed a lot of things because she had to take care of me.”
“Knowing what I do about you, I’m sure she loved you. How could she not? Helping raise her granddaughter probably wasn’t in her plans, but I’m sure she didn’t regret it.”
“I hope she didn’t. She just seemed angry sometimes.”
Music started, signifying the beginning of the service, and Jax guided Bre to a chair in the front row. When they sat down, Jax kept their hands intertwined, and she noticed a few people staring at them with questions in their eyes. Everyone knew she had been with Cam since high school, but Cam was noticeably absent, and she was clutching some stranger’s hand as if it were her lifeline.
Sara slid into the seat next to her, and motioned pointedly to her hand that was now resting in Jax’s lap. Bre shrugged and turned away. She couldn’t bring herself to care what anyone thought about Jax’s presence. Holding his hand made it easier to breathe, and maybe that made her reckless or inconsiderate of Cam’s feelings, but she refused to give up his comfort for the sake of appearances.
Sara leaned forward, looking at Jax. “Hi,” she whispered. “I’m Sara, Bre’s friend from college.”
“I’m Jax, a friend of Bre’s,” he responded without elaboration, and Sara looked at Bre with raised eyebrows, indicating she wanted a full explanation later.
Bre smiled inwardly at Jax’s reference to her as his friend rather than Cam’s. It shouldn’t matter, but it did. She liked that he thought of their relationship as something separate from his relationship with Cam. During her last week in LA, she couldn’t wait to wake up and meet him to surf, and every morning since she left, she wished she could call him, but she didn’t have his number. She didn’t want to ask Cam for it because the idea of involving Cam meant having to answer questions about her relationship with Jax, and she didn’t want to explain it to Cam.
Bre didn’t hear much as the memorial service progressed. Instead, her mind wandered through her memories of her grandmother. Warmth and compassion weren’t her grandmother’s strong suits, but loyalty and reliability were. Unlike her mother, Bre’s grandmother never missed a conference, a recital, or anythi
ng of significance when she was in town. She was Bre’s rock. She wished she had the courage to stand up and say something profound, but instead when the service concluded, the only words she could summon were a brief thank you, and an invitation to join them at her grandmother’s house for drinks and food.
Chapter Thirteen
Every time Bre turned around at her grandma’s house, she found Jax waiting patiently at her side as she spoke to her grandmother’s friends. She didn’t know how she could have made it through the day without him. He helped arrange the food and performed all the tasks that the fog of grief prevented her from realizing needed to be done.
As the last few people trickled out of the house, Sara grabbed a bottle of wine and two glasses, and pulled her onto the front porch to relax. Sitting on a cornflower blue rocking chair, Bre closed her eyes and sipped the rosé. Nothing beat the intense afternoon Colorado sun and smell of the pine trees to help her to relax and unwind. LA was nice, but the mountains of Colorado were better.
“Where’s Jax?” Bre asked Sara without opening her eyes.
“Helping Cam’s mom and dad clean up.”
“Thank God. I don’t think I can face putting all that food away. I don’t know what I’m going to do with it. Did you see some of those crazy casseroles? Where do people come up with those combinations?”
Sara tapped her fingers on the wooden porch railing. “So, your mom didn’t show…” Sara said, letting the sentence hang in the air.
“Nope, but I’m okay with it. She would have found a way to make the day about her or cause a scene.” Bre rocked back and forth in her chair, controlling the rhythm with one foot.
“I don’t know her very well, but you’re probably right,” Sara responded softly.
Neither Bre nor Sara said anything for a few minutes and Bre refilled her already empty glass.
“Are you going tell me what the deal is between you and Jax?” Sara asked quietly.
