Chapter 52
Jake
I was lucky I hadn’t chopped off a hand, broken any bones, or destroyed anyone’s automobile today. Because I couldn’t keep my mind on my work. Hope was on my mind, and nothing else.
I wanted nothing in the world more than to go find her, grab her up in my arms and drag her off to the bedroom, the couch, where ever we could find, and make love to her… or have wild, naked monkey sex.
Since it was dead in the TLE, I punched out early and headed home, took a quick shower and pulled on some fresh jeans and a nice flannel shirt. It was cooler than it had been for weeks, and I kind of liked the idea of Hope ripping it off my chest.
I headed out to my truck but a shiny new Kia was parked right beside it. Leaning up against it was a very familiar mountain of a man.
Southie, aka Roy Jones: Hope’s big brother, and my best friend all through high school.
“You’re looking good, Jake Troy.”
Uh oh, he was calling me by both names, that wasn’t good.
Add to the glower he had on his hard as bricks face—and the pounds of hard fat and muscle he had kept packed on his six foot two frame—and I could just feels the bones in my legs breaking.
He’d been my best friend in high school.
But I hadn’t been sleeping with his little sister back then.
I gulped then said, “It’s been a long time, bro. Too long.”
Southie crossed his bulging arms over his chest and gave a little, mirthless laugh. The dress shirt sleeves rolled up to his elbows and the tie and collar pulled loose only made him seem more uncivilized.
“It’s been so long that now you’re… dating my little sis.”
Okay, he knew everything—this was going to hurt and probably leave marks.
And then the strangest thing popped out of my mouth.
“I love her, man.”
Southie blinked at me, and I blinked too. I hadn’t even said that to Hope yet, and here I was just confessing it to her big, readily-able-to-break-my-legs brother.
I was losing it.
“Dude,” Southie protested in a grumble, “That’s so wrong.”
“Sorry.” I shrugged and stepped a couple steps closer.
Southie scrubbed a big paw over the back of his neck. “I’m here to rip you a new one for macking on my little sister, and you go all Oprah on me and say you love her. Man up!”
“I know, I know. I’m sorry.”
He groaned loudly. “And quit with the sorry shit. It takes all the fun out of busting your ass if you’re all repenty!”
I smiled, I couldn’t help it. “Repenty?”
Southie puffed up his chest and turned his eyes into slits. “My girl likes watching Buffy. So what?”
I held up my hands in surrender. “You see the Avengers movie?”
“Of course.”
“What about Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D?”
He made a bull like snort. “That show freaking rules!”
Okay, we were both Whedon geeks. At least we had that in common.
Southie sighed and dropped his big bulging arms to his sides. “You know I’m supposed to threaten and intimidate you, right?”
I nodded sagely.
“So if you hurt her, I’m going to tear your arms off and beat you to death with them. We straight?”
Gulp…
I nodded again, temporarily unable to speak, the image of Southie beating me with my own severed arms was too gruesome to easily push out of my head.
Southie’s eyes flicked uncomfortably to my house. “She doesn’t live here anymore, right?”
Ah, he was talking about my mom.
“Nope. She lives in Florida with my sister.”
Southie snorted again. “Lucky her.”
I nodded again.
And then Southie reached out and punched me in the arm. A brotherly kind of show of affection… if you were an ogre, or a Titan, or The Hulk.
Good grief did it hurt.
Southie gave me a laconic, “Later,” and shoved himself behind the wheel of the shiny Kia.
I held my immobilized, aching, partially numb arm and watch my old best friend speed off into the sunset.
Okay, that was just too weird for words.
What had I been going to do?
Oh, yeah, I was going to go to Hope’s.
I got in the truck, since it was too cold to take Hope out on my bike, and headed to her house.
Her car was conspicuously absent, and as soon as I pulled up to the curb her neighbor, the curvaceous and scarily violent, Bette, came jogging out of her front door.
“She took off,” Bette said breathlessly, her hand to her bosom.
“What do you mean, took off?”
“I mean she packed a bag, got into her piece of crap Ford, and headed east on route 10.”
Okay, that was grim… and strangely detailed.
“How do you know she got on route 10?”
Bette smiled and handed me her cell phone. There was a map of Texas and a small blinking dot heading east, almost halfway to Houston.
“You lojacked Hope’s car?”
Bette shrugged. “I gave her a GPS to keep her from getting lost. It just happens to have a tracking device too.”
“Aha…”
“Hey,” Bette complained, “she looked a hot mess, and I didn’t want her getting so far away that you couldn’t go get her!” She shot me a scathing look. “By the way, what did you do to her this time?”
“Me? What makes you think I did anything?”
She shot me an even haughtier look. “Oh, please. She only gets all worked up over you.”
Really? My inner voice sounded way too hopeful.
“Otherwise she’s the dullest little photo snapper you’ve ever seen.”
Last time it had been me leaving. She had left it up to me. But now she had left.
But why?
What could have sent her running like that?
“Well, what are you waiting for?” Bette snapped, hands on her curvy hips. “Why aren’t you racing off to get her?”
I looked up into her violently green eyes.
Why wasn’t I chasing after her?
Chapter 53
Hope
I drove for over an hour and a half until I hit a town called Schulenburg, and then headed north on route 77. On the radio the girl from Twilight sang her song with the cups, Trisha Yearwood sang The Song Remembers When, and Tim McGraw sang about Southern Girls.
I expected to see Bette and Darla parked by the side of the road ala Thelma and Louise.
But this was reality, not one of my crazy dreams.
For some reason the town of La Grange seemed like a good place to find some food and use a restroom.
I didn’t want to stay very long. I wanted to keep going until I drove so damned far I couldn’t remember my own name anymore.
I stopped at a 7-11 and used the restroom, pumped some gas, and looked over their selection of pre-made sandwiches. I quickly decided to look elsewhere—I was depressed and hungry, not suicidal.
Trudy’s Eats looked promising, and the sign in the window boasted that today’s special was a Reuben on rye, with fries and coleslaw. Just reading the sign made my stomach growl.
I closed my eyes and shook my head. Even with my life falling down around me like the rubble of a dilapidated firetrap, I was still hungry.
Unbelievable!
I should at least be sick to my stomach and unable even to think about eating. That would be such a great diet.
I sauntered into the place like I owned it… well, I tripped coming through the front door, made the bell over the door clang like I was strangling it, and then stumbled about five feet into the restaurant before I slammed right into a large woman with a bleach blonde beehive hairdo, baby blue eye-shadowed eyes, fire-engine red lips, and a skin tight pink waitress uniform on.
The nametag clinging to her prodigious bosom was Flo.
Flo? Really?
; Flo gently pulled me from where I seemed lodged in her cleavage, and set me down on a stool by the bar.
“You okay, honey?”
“Ah, all things considered…” I felt my eyes start to well up with tears again just thinking how not okay my life had become.
“Oh honey, I didn’t mean to make you cry!” Flo said, a tear in her voice. She pulled some paper napkins from a dispenser on the bar and handed them to me. “I have a strict policy that no one cries alone in my presence.”
My tears stopped and I stared at the woman in front of me. There wasn’t a hint of sarcasm in her voice, or a hint of dishonesty on her face.
“You know that’s a line from a movie, right?”
Flo blinked at me.
Oh boy…
“Sorry, Buttercup, but I haven’t watched TV since they took M*A*S*H off the air. I started reading books after that.” She pulled a little leather case from the pocket of her apron. “Now I read on this Kindle do-hickey.”
She unzipped the cover, and with a few clicks of her inch long, hot pink nails, she showed me the rather familiar cover of the book she was now reading. Jake’s gorgeous body and handsome face glowed in dazzling color from her Kindle Fire.
“Olivia Lovelace is my absolute favorite.” She fanned herself with her hand. “And this cover might be the hottest thing I’ve ever had in my hands.”
A man back in the kitchen cleared his throat loudly, and Flo rolled her eyes up in her head. “I meant book-wise, Al! Don’t get your boxers in a bunch!”
T. M. I.
Flo continued on about her favorite Kindle authors. “I love Alice Clayton and Sandra Brown, Jennifer Crusie… and I adore Terra Banks! She really speaks to this woman’s soul.”
Flo held her free hand up to her breasts as they heaved dramatically.
I wondered what she would think if I told her Terra Banks was a man?
Probably not a damn thing. If the woman didn’t watch TV or movies, then she probably didn’t put a lot of stock in how people looked.
I was smiling too widely when Flo shot me through with a hard look.
I gulped audibly.
“You look half starved. Why don’t you let me get you some food?”
My tummy growled its approval. “That would be heavenly. Can I have the Reuben special, and an orange pop?”
Flo smiled, her teeth a dazzling white contrasted by the brilliant red of her lipstick. “I’ll have that for you in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.” She made a hand gesture as if she were chopping the lamb’s tail off with a meat cleaver.
Surprisingly that didn’t make me weirded-out at all. It just made me hungrier.
Flo called out my order to her do-rag wearing, hard and lean looking love interest behind the grill and then poured my orange pop from the dispenser in the waitress station.
The first sip was heavenly: ice cold, sweet, with real sugar, no saccharin or SPLENDA here.
I sat and watched Mr. Do-Rag Love-Muffin cook my Reuben, and listened as Flo charmed the tips out of her regulars. She was really very good. Her twang was so authentic that Paula Deen would be shamed… well, even more shamed than she already was.
A few minutes later Flo came over with my order and a bottle of Heinz ketchup. “Can I get you anything else right now?” she asked.
I looked at my food and tried not to drool. I was soooooooo hungry!
I shook my head and reached for the sandwich. I managed an “I’m good,” before shoving the Reuben in my mouth.
Flo chuckled and strutted away. “Call if you need anything. I’m gonna start my silverware rolling.”
I ate my Reuben. I ate my hot, crispy fries and the cold, tangy coleslaw. And I watched Flo’s graceful hands as she set up her Kindle by the silverware holder on the counter, and with practiced fingers, rolled a knife, fork, and spoon up in paper napkin after paper napkin.
Before I was even halfway through my sandwich she had half the large plastic container beside her full of rolled silverware. She read while she did it, intermittently turning pages with a swipe of her severely manicured finger, without once losing her rolling rhythm.
She was finished rolling by the time I finished my meal. I watched her stroll over to Mr. Do-Rag and give him a chaste kiss on the cheek, and from the way he jumped up in the air a little, a pinch on the old derriere.
I smiled for a moment, and then felt the storm of guilt and pain and longing inside me roil up.
Don’t cry, I admonished myself.
I didn’t want Flo to start crying too.
“Oh, honey. Whatever he did, he isn’t worth it,” Flo said, suddenly in front of me, taking my plate away and stowing it in a dish tub under the counter.
I pulled some oxygen into my lungs and tried not to blubber. “He didn’t do anything. It’s been all me!”
Okay, so I was blubbering.
Flo made some comforting hushing sounds. “I’m sure that’s not true, sweetie.”
“It is… it’s all my fault!” And I regaled her with the whole, pathetic story.
Flo stood there, listening, as I talked faster and faster. Some of the other customers started listening in, a few even coming over to the bar to hear it all better. Before I knew it I’d told them about Jake, the mini dates, the Jimmy Buffet concert—the AMAZING sex—and betraying him with the photograph and the cover.
As I went on about how he’d started coming back around, and then how we had been getting back together again, Flo blinked, pulled out her Kindle and stared at the Olivia Lovelace cover, shaking her head.
I ended by telling them about meeting up with my old best friend, Janie Gregory, and how she’d told me how he’d compared her to me, and how she didn’t see how I could ever live up to the perfect image he had created of me in his head.
“So, I packed a bag and started driving.”
Flo smiled at me like I was mentally challenged. “And so you came here?”
“It’s not like I’ve decided to buy a little pink house and put down roots!” I said defensively.
Flo and the other customers broke out in a chorus of laughter.
“No, honey, I’m just curious… why the hell did you run away?”
Huh?
“I mean, what woman doesn’t want her fella to be head over heels for her. And you said he’s been worshiping you since y’all were in high school?”
“I wouldn’t call it worshiping…” But there was a pretty hot memory of how he’d lavished my breasts with his oh-so-talented mouth—lips… tongue…
“Oh, honey!” Flo sang. “You’re so cute when you blush!”
I covered my cheeks with my hands. Talk about embarrassing!
“What were you thinkin’ about just then?” asked a woman in a plaid housedress and those thick-soled nursing shoes, her lopsided smile devilish.
Flo reached out and gave the woman’s arm a smack.
“Patty Gilbert! I can’t believe you would ask such a nosey question!”
Flo turned back to me, holding her Kindle out to me, the cover of Jake as we were sweating up the sheets glowing on the screen.
“So, Hope darlin’, is this him when you two were… doing the futon fandango?”
“Florence Bellweather!” Patty shrieked. “I can’t believe you!”
“What?” Flo demanded. “She just got done telling us all that they had been… doing the mattress mambo… the bedroom bolero… the Serta samba, when this cover was mistakenly snapped. How does that make me anything but curious?”
The two women smiled conspiratorially at each other, and then at me.
“So,” Patty said. “Is he following you?”
“What?”
“Yeah, honey. Do you think he’ll show up here and sweep you off your feet? Cause I’d sure love to get me an eyeful of that man!”
This was insane.
“No,” I said flatly. “He has no idea where I went. He probably doesn’t even know I’m gone yet.”
Flo bit her lips in thought. “So you never did te
ll us, why did you leave?”
I could practically feel the tears start to run down my face. I grabbed up some napkins from the counter dispenser.
“Because…” I sobbed into the napkins. “I’m a mess. I’ve always been a mess. I’ll never be able to live up to his ideal of me!”
Flo started to chuckle, that chuckle slowly growing into an all out belly laugh.
I stared daggers at her.
“What’s so funny?”
She put one manicured hand on her belly and the other gently over my hand.
“Oh, honey. You said he’s known you since high school?”
“Yes.” I sounded like a petulant child, but that’s how I felt right then.
“Were you a graceful, perfect beauty pageant queen back then, maybe Miss Pre-
Teen Texas?”
“Well, no…”
“Well, then why do you think he doesn’t already know that you’re not perfect? Hell, I knew that the second you stumbled in here!”
My jaw dropped. The woman, giant blonde beehive hair and blue eye shadow aside, was right.
She was so goddamn right.
Either she was a genius or I was just plain stupid!
I started rummaging in my jeans for my money.
“Where are you going?” Flo smiled at me, the look on her pretty face saying she already knew the answer.
“Back home. I’ve been a complete dumbass.” I dumped a twenty on the counter and started to stand up.
“That’s my girl,” Flo twanged.
I whirled around to start for the front door again, but stopped in my tracks.
Through the glass door I saw an old, beat up Chevy pickup truck pull in, stop, and Jake climbed out of the driver’s side door.
He looked so freaking good, all I wanted to do was run to him and jump on him.
“I told you he’d follow her!” Patty chirped.
Flo shushed her as I slowly walked toward the glass front door.
Jake took a look at my Taurus and then headed straight for the front door.
I met him at the door.
We stood there, him staring at me, me staring back.
Trudy’s Eats was pin-drop quiet.
Jake reached for the door and pulled it open, his intense green eyes riveted on me as that god awful bell clanged overhead.
I took a breath to say something, but nothing came out.
Love Him: A Love Him, Hate Him, Want Him Novel Page 34
