“Aw. I’m sure things’ll get better now that she realizes you’re not going anywhere.”
“I hope so,” Emily Rose said with a sigh.
Emily Rose and Meg started talking about mother-in-laws and wedding decorations and Jemma sat back with a sigh. She realized at that moment just how much she’d screwed up. She wanted what Meg and Emily Rose had with their men. None of the excuses she’d given Davis that morning were good enough. She hadn’t given one good reason for her to leave him behind.
She wanted that one who made her heart jump. The one she’d run off. She didn’t even know where he’d gone. He refused to return any of her calls.
“What’s wrong?” Emily Rose asked. “You look so sad all of a sudden.”
Jemma was about to reply when a man put a hand on the back of her chair and leaned over to talk to her. “I’m about to leave, but I had to come over here to tell you that I cannot leave this bar tonight without at least saying hi to you.”
“Do I know you?” Jemma looked up into the man’s tan, handsome face. He had dark eyes and a wide, charming smile. She didn’t think so, but there was something familiar about him.
“I know I want you to.” He straightened and extended his hand. “I’m Alex.”
“Alex . . .” She bit her lower lip, thinking. She did know him from somewhere. Suddenly, it hit her. Davis, that clown Parker, and Alex had been co-captains of the lacrosse team. “Alex? From Derring High? The lacrosse team?”
Alex looked a little thrown off, but he nodded. “Yeah. You are?”
“Jemma Jenkins.”
“Jemma?” Alex took a step back and gave her a scrutinizing look. “Jemma Jenkins? Really?” He scratched the back of his head, still looking unsure of what he was seeing.
“Yeah.” She knew she looked different, but she hadn’t realized she looked that different.
A grin slowly replaced the look of confusion. “Well, you sure changed a lot, huh?” Alex moved closer. His friends waved to him and he held up his hand and mouthed something to them. “I guess they’re ready to go, but wow. You are smoking. If only Davis knew what he was missin’ out on now.” Alex walked back to his friends who were waiting for him by the door. Little did he know; Davis wasn’t missing it all that much, apparently.
Jemma pushed her braids away from her face where they’d fallen. “Alex Ford,” she murmured.
“How about that?” Emily Rose said, and Meg agreed.
Jemma had to laugh. “Yeah, how about it?”
Later that night, Jemma lay with the side of her head pressed to Emily Rose’s, their bodies in opposite directions. They were lying on Emily Rose’s floor. The room was eerily empty as Emily Rose had packed up most of her things and sent them either to New York or put them in her parents’ attic. The Bradens were going to convert Emily Rose’s room into a room for Branson as part of their effort to get Tara to bring him to visit more often.
“I’m sorry,” Emily Rose said.
Jemma put her hands up in front of her face, staring at her polish, wondering how much longer she could go before her next manicure. Otherwise, her mind would go where she least wanted it to. “For? You didn’t do anything.”
“I took you to that bar. Alex brought back bad memories. I could tell.”
“Like you knew he was going to be there.” Jemma laughed. “You’re a horrible person, Em Rose. I’m never speaking to you again.”
“Yeah, yeah. Still, I’m sorry you had to be reminded of, um, him tonight.”
Jemma dropped her hands onto her stomach and looked up at the ceiling. “So how’s Michael doing with the job stuff?”
“He’s still interviewing, but he has a couple coming up next week he has really good feelings about. It’s always iffy, though. And money is going to be really tight until he finds something. I’m probably going to substitute teach until next year. I didn’t jump on the job search right away because I wasn’t sure if I’d go to work this year. We’d talked about starting a family right away. But with Michael having such a hard time finding a job and his shrew of a mother threatening to cut him off financially, we need all the money we can get. It’s kind of late in the summer now, but I’m going to see what’s available. Maybe I can still find a full-time teaching position.”
“She’s worse than I thought. You two will make it, though. But in New York? Shouldn’t there pretty much always be open positions?”
“Yeah, but I’m not sure I want to teach in public schools.”
“That’s the problem. They need more good teachers like you.”
“Yeah, well. We’ll see,” Emily Rose said.
Jemma sat up and fanned herself with a folded piece of paper she’d taken from Emily’s box of miscellaneous things and packing supplies. “You really don’t want to, huh?”
“I have this conversation with Michael almost every night. I’m tired of having it. Can we please talk about something else?”
“Okay. For now.” Jemma lay back down.
Emily Rose nudged the side of Jemma’s head with hers. “So you thought any more about this Smooth thing?”
When wasn’t she thinking about her impending visit to the prison? Oh, right, when she was thinking about Davis. “Yeah.” Jemma heaved a heavy sigh and rested her arm across her face.
“And?”
“I’m going to call down to the prison soon. See when visiting hours are.”
She’d put off scheduling the visit ever since she decided to go see him. It was time to stop doing that, though. She had to talk to him and she might as well get it over with as soon as possible. Dealing with Smooth was the next step she had to take in confronting her past. Whatever came of it, she knew what she had to do. She couldn’t run anymore. Running had always caused more trouble.
Chapter 25
Jemma woke up Saturday morning, still on the floor. She looked toward the rain spattered window across from where she lay. She’d been awakened by the sound of thunder, but the brief thunderstorm was already passing by the time she opened her eyes. She’d lain there for a while before admitting to herself she was awake.
She felt disgusting. She’d fallen asleep the night before without meaning to and was still in the same clothes she’d worn to the bar. Ugh, the bar. Her head hurt when she remembered seeing Alex. Because that, of course, led to thinking of Davis.
Despite her unsettled stomach and her cantankerous mood, she was going to see Emily Rose off with a smile on her face. She was going to miss Em Rose, but she reminded herself that it wasn’t going to be like their last goodbye. It wouldn’t be six years again before they next saw each other.
Jemma made her way downstairs and found Emily Rose in the kitchen with her parents. After chatting a bit with the Bradens and grabbing a piece of toast, Jemma wandered outside with Emily Rose.
“You okay? And by that I mean tell me what’s up with you. Because something obviously is,” Emily Rose said.
Jemma sagged onto the swing and pressed her chin into the chain that suspended it from the roof of the porch. “I blew my only chance at what I really want.”
“Are you finally admitting your real feelings?” Emily Rose sat next to her.
Jemma shrugged. “What does it matter if I am? He’s done with me now.”
Em Rose put an arm around her. “Don’t be so sure.”
She rested her head on Em Rose’s shoulder. “I haven’t heard from him since he left me at his house. He just—disappeared.”
“Maybe he’s waiting for you to call.”
“He wouldn’t answer when I called.”
“When was the last time you tried?”
“Yesterday. Afternoon.”
“Well, maybe after sleeping on it, he feels just as rotten as you do and he feels too stupid to call you first.”
Jemma chewed her lower lip thoughtfully. She wondered how much hope she should put into Emily Rose’s words. Hope had never gotten her very far in the past. Still, she couldn’t stop thinking about Davis and how if she already mi
ssed him so much, maybe going really would be worse than staying. Or at least going alone would be.
“You love him, Jemma.”
She looked down at her hands.
“You know he loves you, too, right? Anybody and everybody can see that.”
“So what do I do now?” Jemma asked, not really expecting an answer.
Emily Rose squeezed her shoulders. “This time, you stay.”
“Huh?”
“That’s it. That’s my advice. You stay.”
“That’s some crappy advice.”
Emily Rose laughed. “Maybe. Maybe not.”
They sat in silence for a while, enjoying the cool breeze that followed the morning’s quick summer thundershower. There were good reasons to leave Derring, weren’t there? But if she had to keep reminding herself of those reasons, were they really good ones?
“So you all were talking about Tara when I came in the kitchen this morning. Something about her calling last night?”
“Yeah. She only calls when she wants something.” After a brief pause, Emily Rose said, “I guess I do feel kind of sorry for her. I think I’m getting over any envy I ever felt for her. Thanks to—well, it’s not important who.”
“It’s okay. You can say his name.”
“Davis really did help me a lot on my wedding day.”
“What does she want?”
“It really does sound like she’s in trouble, so maybe it was mean of me to say it like that. There’s a lot going on with her. She’s fighting with Thom, her husband, again. They fight a lot whenever he comes back from being on his ship. He lets people fill his head with rumors of things she was doing while he was gone and then he jumps all over her. Last night, Mom said Tara was so out of it. Like she was strung out on something. And now Thom’s threatening to leave her and fight her for custody of Branson.”
“That’s messed up,” Jemma said, thinking back to the conversation she’d had with Tara on Em Rose’s wedding day. There was always more to a person’s story than what was on the surface. It was always too easy to judge without taking a closer look. “But I’m glad to hear you say that about how you feel about her. You should have stopped giving her power over you a long time ago.”
Emily Rose squeezed her hands. “Yeah.”
She pushed away thoughts again of wanting to know more about Davis and Tara and their marriage. It seemed to be such a sad and painful story. People didn’t always want to share, though. She should have known that better than anybody. She put her hands on Emily Rose’s shoulders. “Thanks for putting up with me. Through, you know, everything.”
Em Rose hugged her. Resting her head on Jemma’s shoulder, she said, “I’m sorry for yelling at you the other day. You really have been a good friend. There probably wouldn’t have been a wedding without you.”
“I probably needed you to yell at me. But you know what? No more apologies between us. We’re going to start fresh. Right now. There’s nothing to apologize for because we’re going to let all old wounds heal. No more festering.”
Emily Rose grinned. “Sounds good to me.”
“Me, too.” Jemma hugged her closer.
Later, after Emily Rose said goodbye to her parents, she and Jemma headed out to the car with the last of her things. Em Rose was still trying to convince Jemma not to give up on Davis when she opened the car door. Jemma put a blue tote bag in the back seat and shut the door.
“Jemma.” Em Rose gave her the I’m-trying-very-hard-not-to-cry look.
“Hmm?” Jemma said.
She threw her arms around Jemma and squeezed. “You know, I still believe that even in the worst of circumstances, we can be the very best of ourselves.”
“I want to believe that, too.” Jemma hugged back. She really did, but she didn’t know how to quite get her mind around it. She didn’t know how to see past the idea of being forever broken—emotionally mangled—by her past. She wasn’t sure it would ever be possible for her to trust things like love, forever, and all the other things people promised. She let go of Em Rose and sadness gripped her. The gloomy morning sky seemed to darken a little more.
“I told you, Jemma. Everything’s going to work out.” Emily Rose threw her a last reassuring smile. “I’ll call you later. See how everything’s going.”
“Have a safe trip back,” Jemma said, hugging herself as Em Rose slipped into the car. She waved one last time before pulling away from the curb.
***
Sunday morning, Jemma’s bare feet slapped against the linoleum as she paced the floor in Mary’s kitchen. She’d awakened at four in the morning and hadn’t been able to go back to sleep. Forcing herself not to think about Davis almost drained as much energy as thinking about him.
She’d finally gotten out of the bed after a few hours of tossing and turning and gone into the living room to channel surf. She’d still been in her pajamas, lounging on the couch, when Mary came home from work a little while after the sun came up.
It was time to stop stalling. She went to her room to get her laptop. She looked up the visiting hours at Smooth’s prison. She had to tell him to his face. To look into the face of the man who’d stolen everything from her and make sure he knew from her own lips that she wouldn’t let him steal anything else.
After that, she went back into her room to set down her laptop. She thought about her scrapbook, which she’d stuck in the bottom dresser drawer. She liked to keep it close, but didn’t like to keep it where she could see it—she didn’t like to be constantly reminded of what it contained. But maybe looking at it was just what she needed that day.
Retrieving it from beneath her nightshirts and hose, she walked over to the bed and sat down cross-legged with it. She opened it to the section labeled “The Davis Years” and flipped past the track listings for that CD she’d made for Davis before she could read the names of the songs. She scanned over some cringe-worthy poems she’d written about him while trying to remember what she’d put in the letter she’d written and given to him along with the CD.
All she could remember was how much she’d loved him. How much she always had. The one line she remembered from the letter was admitting to him the words that often ran through her mind: Your kisses are like home.
***
Davis woke up sore and wincing on Codie’s couch Sunday morning after sleeping most of Saturday away. He’d spent most of his time at Codie’s so far in a semi-comatose state. He stood up slowly, listening to his knees crack and pop. Just one sound effect away from Rice Krispies, he thought with a sour smile. He then limped to the kitchen. His knee was being a real asshole that morning. He poured a glass of water and pulled out the Vicodin bottle. He shook a few pills into his hand. Then he sighed and threw them down the sink. After a pause, he emptied the rest of the bottle into the drain and then switched on the garbage disposal. The last thing he needed was another vice.
He went to Codie’s pantry, where he knew she kept her over-the-counter meds, and found some aspirin. He gulped down a few of them with his glass of water. He rested his forehead against the side of the refrigerator.
“Davis?” Codie yawned. She was near the kitchen’s entryway. She stood there in flannel pajamas and an oversized yellow T-shirt. Possibly the ugliest T-shirt he’d ever seen.
“Hey there, canary lady,” Davis said, limping over to her and leaning against the counter next to where she stood, taking most of his weight off his right knee. On the days his knee chose to really be a pain in the ass, mornings were the worst.
“You’re so funny.” Codie rolled her eyes.
“Yeah, well, you know. I do what I can.”
She wrapped her arms around him. He half-heartedly hugged back. “You okay, Davis Hill?”
He shrugged. “Yeah.”
“You sure about that?”
“Codie, I—yeah.” He didn’t want to talk about it. He knew what she would say to that.
She gave him a little frown. “I don’t feel like things are the way they used to be bet
ween us.”
Davis smiled weakly. Nothing was the same. How could half a person give all he used to give to anyone? That was the main reason he had to leave Jemma alone. Even though he was angry and it hurt, he understood that what she’d done was for the best. She deserved more than half a person. She deserved everything in the world she wanted. He was not one of those things. And with good reason. He had to come to terms with that. To respect it.
He said, “Don’t go all Hallmark on me. We’re good. Hey, you’re obviously the first person I run to when things fall apart.”
“Yeah, if only you’d let me help put them back together.” She gave him a sad, tired smile. “You know, you should try to call her.”
“No. She was right. My head was clouded by what I wanted and I forgot all about what was right.” He wasn’t about to drag Jemma down with him.
Codie sighed and shook her head.
“I still think you should marry me and make me a kept man,” he said. They laughed although he was only half-joking and even then mostly about the latter part.
“Quit before I decide to take you up on that. The dating pool’s shallow these days after all.”
“I love you, Codie my friend. You’re the best.”
“Things are going to work out, Davis my friend. You two are gonna make it.” She grasped his elbows, shaking them for emphasis. “I can tell no one’s ever meant to you what she does. I’ve always been able to tell that. She brings out all the things that are great about you like no one else can.”
Davis rolled his eyes. “Yeah, yeah. Whatever.”
She slapped his shoulder. “Wait. You’ll see that I’m right.”
He gave her his best attempt at a smile. “I’m going to go take a nap.”
“Didn’t you just wake up?”
“Yeah.” He didn’t see anything all that great about being conscious at the moment, though. Plus, maybe the aspirin would kick in if he lay down for a little while. He noticed the wounded look in her eyes and said, “When I wake up, we’ll go for a walk or something?”
She nodded. “Yeah. Sure. I have some work I should be doing, so I’ll just go—do that.”
The Davis Years (Indigo) Page 19
