by Liz Crowe
“Oh, honey.” She sniffled and kept rubbing the dog’s exposed belly. “Oh, Jay.” She rose and paced then snapped Dexter’s leash on to take him on a long walk, hoping to clear her head. But it didn’t help, and she spent the entire night wide awake in the dark room, wondering how in God’s name he could even breathe air every day having lived through that. And he buried himself away in that horrible dumpy cabin, making the trip to Ann Arbor and back weekly to see Mia. Abby could not comprehend how many tears she shed in a twenty-four hour period over it, but guessed it paled in comparison to what the man himself had lost.
“Hey,” she said, when Lynn called.
“Hey yourself. What the fuck is wrong with you? You haven’t answered your phone for two days. You sick?”
“No.” Abby sat on her small back porch, smelled the usual combination of dumpster and exhaust. Dexter panted, and leaned on her. She put her arm around him.
“Okay….” Lynn let the silence stretch a bit. “I’m coming over.”
“Fine.” She had to share this incredible turn of events with someone. Might as well be her oldest friend. “Bring wine.”
Chapter Seven
On the morning of the fourth day, after she’d fallen into bed late and most likely in sympathetic love with the handsome, wealthy widower, Abby woke to her phone’s buzz. She ignored it, figuring it for another credit card collector. On the third buzz, she grabbed it and glared at the number from a 734 area code. She answered, putting her feet on the new dog-shaped floor mat by her bed.
“Hi,” Jay’s low voice rolled into her ears and around her brain. She shivered, knowing she’d give anything to see him again. “You surviving Dexter’s huge piles of shit and shedding?”
“Sure.” She bit her lip, unsure how to even talk to him anymore. Then she squared her shoulders and decided to be herself. “How are you? Back at the cabin?”
“No, I’m gonna be here another day. Is that okay, or should I call the teenager down the road?”
“Oh, we’re fine. He’s taken over my couch, mind you, but I don’t care.” She bit her lip then jumped in with both feet, hoping he’d meet her halfway. “I’ve been thinking about us…I mean, about what we did that day. And I want you do know something—I really like you and hope we can be friends. Nothing more, because it was a one-time thing, something we needed or whatever. I’m okay with it. But you have a lot of healing to do, and I—”
“Abigail,” She shut her eyes, adoring the way her name rolled off his tongue, afraid he could hear her racing pulse through the phone. “I assume you did some research. Got the whole story?”
“Yeah I did. But I remember when it happened.”
“So I have to sit through another day of these assholes bringing in character witnesses attesting to the fact that they are remorseful, seeking my forgiveness and whatever else while a slide show of my family flashes overhead. My attorneys are expensive and very good at what they do. Hence the pull-the-heartstrings bullshit I have to endure for hours.”
“I’m sorry, Jay. What about Mia?” She clutched her sheet, hoping he wouldn’t mind her asking. Images of the happy, blond, perfect family she’d been looking at for the last three days wafted across her memory.
“Mia is still alive, if that’s what you’re asking.” His voice flattened out again.
“Oh, okay, well. I’ll see you day after tomorrow then.”
“I’m sorry,” he whispered.
Abby’s heart stuttered. “No, Jay, I’m sorry. There is no way I or anyone else can know what you’re going through. What you went through. Don’t apologize for anything.”
“I’d give anything to see you right now.”
Abby’s spine tingled all the way up to her scalp. “Jay, I told you.”
“I know what you told me. And you’re probably right. I will never ever get over this. I wouldn’t want any part of me either.”
“No, that’s not what I meant.” She attempted to keep the frustration out of her voice.
“It’s fine. I’ll see you in a couple of days.”
The device went silent in her hand. She cursed, and heaved it at the wall. Dexter jumped up and sniffed at it, found it un-fetchable, and returned to sit at her feet. This could be a lot more complicated than she’d counted on, if the ache in her heart and her deep need to hear his voice told her anything.
***
“Jesus Christ in a sidecar Abs, don’t you think you have enough problems in your life without adding…all this?” Lynn waved at the laptop she’d been studying for the last half hour. “Honey, seriously.” She sighed then put an arm around Abby’s shoulders and let her cry a few minutes.
Once she’d gotten over herself, Lynn poured them another serving of cheap, headache-inducing red wine and held up her glass to make a toast. “To Abigail Powers, future nurse!”
Abby clinked her glass, then settled into a deeper blue funk at the realization her acceptance letter to U of M had still not arrived.
“I think I may love him,” she mumbled after another glass.
“No, honey, you do not. You feel sorry for him. You got laid. He got laid. Now walk away from it. It’s more than you can take on.”
As if to affirm Lynn’s assertion, her mother chose that moment to call and ask for money to help buy her groceries for the month.
***
Jay pulled into the now-familiar, shabby driveway, taking comfort in the smallness, the non-importance of the place. He’d spent so many of the last twenty years trying to Be Somebody, with Money in the Bank and Success on the Books, the fact that he was nobody here, in a shitty, rental-quality cabin in the woods beside a lake soothed him more than any number of months spent in talk therapy or taking anti-depressants ever did. By the time he unlocked the door and flipped on the lights the clock shone an ungodly early morning hour. His stomach grumbled. He grabbed the lasagna, tossed it in the microwave, and ate, standing by the sink, from the serving dish.
After brushing his teeth and sipping some water, he lay on the couch, prepared for his nightly battle with sleep. The approach was easy but after about an hour and half he always woke, heart in this throat, Christy’s dying words in his ear. “Don’t blame yourself, Jay. I know you’ll try. But don’t. I love you.” He had been within a foot of where she lay in a pool of her own, dark red arterial blood, in the grip of temporary paralysis from a hard kick to his spine. The other noises, the grunts of the men violating her, and her own whimpers then screams as they hurt her then her final begging for her baby’s life—they were as clear as if they happened yesterday. So he gave up and sat up for three hours sunk in despair. Then dozed for another two. A routine that had become intimate to him by now.
He sighed and rolled his shoulders, trying to force a new and not unwelcome image from the stew of memories. Abigail’s rich, dark skin and eyes, the tangle of her hair, the full globes of her breasts in his hands, and the mind blowing sensation of connecting with her as she held him tight inside her body made him groan in consternation and his cock leap to attention. His sister had given him a funny look when he arrived at the hospital. He always brought flowers, and a new Disney DVD to have playing in Mia’s room. She had loved her Disney movies, once.
“You got laid,” Madison proclaimed, making his face flush and his scalp tingle with the memory. “Hallelujah.”
“Fuck off, Maddy.” He’d sat and taken his daughter’s small hand and kissed it, kissed her forehead and cheek, whispered his usual message to her that Daddy was so very sorry he couldn’t have protected her better. By the time he looked up, Maddy had left, tending to her life as head of the ER at the University of Michigan hospital. But he’d felt ever so slightly lighter in the heart this trip.
That was, until he hit the courtroom and saw the fucking slideshow—his beautiful wife and children, his life before, and the un-watchable tape of his testimony in the hospital after emerging from the coma. Then, of course, the photos—of his wife’s battered face and body and his son’s caved-in skull, and
Mia, in her deep, unreachable sleep. His attorneys were damn good, and the assholes who had ruined his life were ordered to stand trial for murder in the first degree, aggravated rape and assault, and attempted arson and sent back to their maximum security prison.
After waking at ten a.m., he stretched and walked out to the deck to take deep breaths of air. Air he felt guilty about accepting into his lungs on one hand, but that invigorated him on the other. He’d spend months being told by mental health professionals that he would emerge from this, that he had a strong will to live and dynamic personality and bullshit and blah blah but never until this exact moment believed any of it. The deep cavern of guilt-ridden depression had come close to killing him more than once, even if from neglect of his own nutritional needs.
But for the first time in months, he felt eager about something. He would see Abigail again, today.
Chapter Eight
After a long, hot shower, Jay pulled on fresh jeans and a light sweater, as the Traverse City weather had taken a cool turn in the last day or so. He studied himself in the mirror, noted how his clothes hung on him, saw the sharp outlines of his cheekbones, and admitted he looked like shit. Gripping the sink edge for a second to let the wave of remorse and unhappiness pass through him, he took a breath and resolved to take better care of himself. Christy, Jason, and Mia deserved that. He would bring the fuckers who hurt and killed them to justice if it took every blessed penny he had. And he had a new friend—Abigail, with the heady, beautiful smile and calm nature. His body started to react to his lizard brain’s not so subtle request for sexual release again. But he forced it away. He would be her friend. Period. Nothing more.
He palmed the smart phone he’d brought back, after leaving without letting Mia go yet again, much to his sister’s frustration. “Call me,” he’d said, when she gave him a fierce hug. “Let’s talk about it some more.”
“Go,” she’d said. “Get your head straight some more. Bring the woman back with you. Whatever you need. But know this, brother, that little girl is a vegetable now. There is absolutely nothing left that was ever Mia Jane Longmire. And the sooner you admit it, the better off you will both be.”
He hit the recent calls icon and then the one labeled Abigail. “Hey, I’ve got Dexter with me at the coffee shop, if you want to come by now. Later is fine, too, whatever works.”
“What are you doing tonight?” he asked, his heart pounding and his mouth dry.
“Uh, why?” The coffee shop noises in the background soothed him, recalling all the days he would sit there and let those very sounds roll over and through him.
“Because, I want to take you out. To thank you for keeping the dog monster.”
She hesitated. “Jay, I thought we—”
“We are, Abigail. We are friends. I am taking you out, as a friend, to a nice dinner.”
“Oh. Um. Sure. What time?”
“Seven, but I’ll come by and get Dexter in the next few minutes.”
He hung up before he lost his nerve and cancelled the whole thing.
Abby blinked, shocked to her very soul at this little turn of events. A date? With the sad, wealthy, gorgeous man who haunted her wet dreams after their hot hookup? Holy hell. This could be bad. She should have said no, politely, but no.
“You are going on a date with him, aren’t you?” Lynn hissed in her ear. “God, I’m so jealous.”
Abby shot her a glare. “You just got through lecturing me not two days ago not to get involved.”
“Yeah, I know. But hey, what do I know?”
She elbowed her friend in the ribs. “I shouldn’t go, should I?”
“No. But when has that ever stopped anyone?”
“What are you babbling about?” She fiddled with her hair, nervous and excited and buzzing with a definite undertone of horny.
“I mean, dear naïve one, when love calls, we all answer, no matter how badly timed the ring tone.” Lynn glanced up. “Oh, goodie, here he is now. Ringie dingie.” She put her hand to her ear, miming a phone and walked to the back room.
The open look of relief in Jay’s eyes when he saw her smile made her entire body go on alert. “Hey,” he said, his hands in his jeans pockets. The dog leapt to his feet and barreled around the end of the service bar, slipping and sliding on the hardwood floor in his haste to get at his master.
“Whoa, hang on there.” He smiled, which lit up his face and made her stupid girlie-heart do flips in her chest. Jesus. She had it bad. She clamped down on her urge to throw herself at him, choosing instead to grip the edge of the counter and watch the dog and master reunion. “Okay, I’ll get him out of here and stop risking a health department fine for you guys.”
“Sure, thanks,” she choked out. Her phone buzzed. She glanced at it and saw her mother’s name. “I have to take this.”
“Seven, I’ll pick you up—text me your address? You have my number?”
She gaped like the village idiot at the way the soft blue sweater brought out the hue of his eyes to perfection. And the way his lips kept trying to smile, as if he’d forgotten how. Her skin burned and her eyes ached. Friends, Abby. That’s all.
“Oh.” He turned, as he lead the exuberant dog out the door. “Dress up.” He shot her a look so full of meaning she made a little sound down in her throat and had to hang onto a chair to keep from following him out.
“Oh, dear lord.” Lynn came out from the office and put an arm around her shoulders. “He is like a dreamy man-sicle isn’t he? Tragic aura and all…wow.” They stood watching him lead the dog down the sidewalk as three different women turned their heads to watch him. “It’s got the potential to be a real mess, Abs.”
Abby put her head on Lynn’s shoulder. “Nobody knows that more than me.”
But her brain had already gone in hyper drive, flipping through her closet for something she could call “dressed up,” when her mother called again.
“Mom, I’m working, and you know it.”
“I’m in a tough spot, honey. I wouldn’t call you otherwise.”
“They’re all tough spots lately, Mother. What is it now?”
“My electric is off. Can you lend me a hundred and fifty bucks to get it turned back on?”
“The only way I’m doing that is if you promise me you’re going to AA.”
““I know, baby. I’m going and I’m clean and sober. Scout’s honor.”
“And the job—at the library? You’re doing that, too, right?”
“Yes, I am, and I love it.”
“Well, okay. I have a date tonight so I’m gonna leave a hundred and fifty dollars in an envelope for you at the coffee shop.”
“A date? With a man?”
“No, Mother, with a walrus. Yes, with a man, and I don’t want to talk about it right now. Your money will be here for you.”
“I love you, baby.”
“I love you, too, Mom.”
***
By the time she got home, soaked in the tub, washed and dried and finally gave up on taming her hair, Abby was a complete wreck. She settled on a classic little black dress she’d had for about five years after discarding four other potential outfits. She despised clothes shopping, but right now she would have given anything for a few hundred bucks and two hours to find something new. Smoothing the linen-silk blend fabric over her hips, she turned every which way in the mirror, worried the black seemed too funereal, then stripped it off in favor of a cream colored skirt and a black sleeveless blouse. After tucking a few more bobby pins in her hair, hoping it appeared like a casual up-do and not a desperate attempt to control the uncontrollable, she grabbed a dark denim Salvation Army vintage jacket and walked to the door, a little wobbly in heels after four years in tennis shoes or flat boots.
When the doorbell rang, Abby took a long, deep breath and opened the door. Jefferson Taylor Longmire stood there, manly perfection in khaki pants and a blue and white-striped button down shirt, his blond hair smooth and his jaw the same. She gasped and put a hand to her mou
th.
“What?” He looked over his shoulder.
“Your face.” She blinked a few times.
“Oh, yeah.” He rubbed his cheek. “Feels weird.” He narrowed his eyes at her. “Don’t tell me you like the bearded version better?”
She nodded but glanced away before making a fool out of herself by gawking at him any longer. Dear God in heaven, his gorgeousness made her a nervous wreck. But he was so…damaged.
She plucked her purse from the mess on the kitchen table and turned to find him towering over her, way too close for comfort. She gulped and stepped back, holding out a hand. “Um, yeah. So no personal bubble invasion. It’s too tempting for a poor divorced gal.” He grinned, and she matched the first real smile he’d shared with her. Her heart pounded but she kept her voice light. “Okay with that, handsome?”
“Sure.” He held out his arm. She glared at him then tucked her hand into his elbow and accompanied him to the parking lot of her apartment building. “Your chariot awaits you.” He opened the door of his car, a late model domestic SUV of some kind, and handed her up into the luxurious leather seat.
He climbed in behind the wheel and smiled at her, his eyes neutral. She had a brief moment of relief, thinking that guilt wouldn’t be part of this night at least not at first.
“You good with a Mission Peninsula winery?” he asked. “I know one that’s very nice.”
“Uh, sure.” She’d never been to one. Wineries were not in her meager budget, especially the ones up on the peninsula, many of them part of bed and breakfasts or resorts.
He pulled out into the light traffic, and an uneasy silence settled between them. Abby fidgeted with the strand of her hair that kept tumbling around her face. Jay kept his eyes trained on the road. After a while she gave up and decided to do the jumping-in-with-both-feet thing. If he were indeed a friend, she’d ask him the same sorts of questions after all. “So, court. How did it end up?”
