Searching for Sunshine

by Linda Seed

  “Tell Kye I’m up for going out if she is,” he said without preamble. “That is, if you’re cool with it.”

  “I’m not,” Mark said. “But, hell. She’s not gonna go out with me, so she might as well go out with somebody. And you’re an okay guy, I guess.”

  “Well, thanks,” Jake said. “I think.”

  “But what about Breanna?” Mark asked. “Is that over?”

  Was it over? Had it ever really started?

  Jake scrubbed his hand over his face. “Ah, jeez. I don’t know. Just … tell Kye what I said, okay?”

  * * *

  They went to Ted’s, which should have been a tipoff to Kye that Jake had issues. What kind of guy took a woman to Ted’s on a first date? The place was a dive with sticky floors, a bad smell, and bathrooms that were usually out of order.

  But Jake wasn’t interested in impressing her—he was only interested in soothing the sore spot inside him that Breanna had put there when she’d held him at arm’s length for so long.

  They met at the bar on a Friday night, with the jukebox pumping out rock over the chaotic noise of a bigger-than-average crowd.

  Kye came in about ten minutes after Jake, wearing what looked like some kind of short schoolgirl dress with a pair of socks that reached halfway up her thighs. The outfit drew so much attention to the three inches of exposed flesh between the tops of the socks and the bottom of the dress that Jake could barely take his eyes off of it. She was wearing a bright red bow in her hair that he supposed was intended to be ironic.

  They found seats at the bar and ordered their drinks—a beer for Jake and a white zinfandel for Kye. It seemed like an unlikely choice for her—with her self-conscious coolness, shouldn’t she be drinking some kind of local craft beer? He wondered if the selection, like the bow, was intended to project coolness through its very lack of the same.

  She turned to him, her fingers brushing the stem of her wineglass, her lipstick the red of strawberries, or maybe Dorothy’s ruby slippers.

  “I’m glad you decided to do this,” she said. “I didn’t think you would.”

  “I didn’t think I would, either,” he said honestly.

  “Because of Breanna Delaney?” she asked.

  Jake rubbed the back of his neck with his hand, chagrined. “Yeah, well … I am seeing her. But we’re not exclusive, so …”

  She gave him a slow, seductive grin. “I’m seeing someone, too, but we’re not exclusive, so …”

  “You wanna play some darts?” he asked.

  She scooted down off her barstool in a way that was blatantly sexual, though he wasn’t sure what made him think so.

  “Lead the way,” she said.

  * * *

  Jake wasn’t sure when Breanna’s brother came into the bar. All he knew was that he was drinking beer and playing darts, flirting with Kye, having an okay but not excellent time, when he looked up and saw Liam Delaney glaring at him from a table in the center of the room, where he was sitting with his fiancée.

  His first reaction was, oh shit. His second reaction was to remind himself that he wasn’t doing anything wrong. He and Breanna weren’t exclusive, as he’d told Kye, and anyway, he didn’t answer to Liam Delaney.

  And it wasn’t like he was screwing Kye in the middle of the dance floor. They were playing darts, that was all.

  Until that night, Jake wouldn’t have called himself childish. He wouldn’t have considered himself someone who would play games to make someone else jealous. He would have thought himself above using an available woman in a drama that had nothing to do with her.

  But that night, he found out he was wrong about all of that.

  With Liam’s eyes still on him, Jake turned back to the dartboard, put his arm around Kye, and then slid his hand slowly down to rest on the small of her back. Kye shot him a look that was both surprised and pleased, and she leaned into him, shaping herself to fit the side of his body with the sinewy grace of a cat.

  Her move made Jake’s nether regions spring to attention—a reaction that flooded him with an irrational and yet powerful guilt.

  A few minutes later, when he looked back toward where Liam had been, the table was empty.

  We’ll see what happens now, he thought.

  26

  Breanna was upstairs in the laundry room, moving a load of clothes from the washer to the dryer, trying not to think about the fact that she was doing such a thing on a Friday night.

  She could have been out with Jake and the boys, eating pizza and bonding as a potentially happy foursome, but she’d turned him down, and so here she was, taking the last sheet of fabric softener out of the box and contemplating how to get her whites whiter.

  She heard a commotion in the house and had just started to contemplate the nature of it when Liam came charging up the stairs, Aria at his heels.

  “Breanna? The goddamned laundry can wait. We need to talk.” His face was all outrage and thunderstorms—not an unusual state of affairs for Liam—and he took her arm and started to pull her toward her room.

  “Liam, stop. Just calm down. Think about what you’re doing.” Aria had hold of his other arm and was trying to calm him down. Usually she was good at that sort of thing, but right now, her efforts seemed to be having no effect.

  “I’ve thought about it all I need to. She’s my sister, and she needs to know.” Liam’s jaw was tight and his eyes were narrowed in an expression that more than once had made the ranch hands wonder who’d fucked up and was about to get fired.

  “What’s going on? What is this about?” Breanna disengaged her arm from Liam’s grasp and faced him with indignation.

  “If you need to tell her, then tell her,” Aria said to Liam. “But for God’s sake, calm down first.”

  “Yeah. All right.” Liam ran a hand through his hair, his face red, his eyes shooting rage.

  “Aria? What’s this about?” Breanna asked again.

  “That asshole Jake Travis—”

  “Wait.” Breanna interrupted Liam before he could say another word. The boys were home, in the next room. She didn’t want them to hear whatever Liam had to say. “Let’s do this outside.”

  * * *

  It was dark out, and the big wrap-around porch was illuminated only by the light beside the front door and the warm yellow glow filtering through the living room windows. Liam was pacing angrily with his hands on his hips, Aria watching him with concern.

  “All right,” Breanna said, her hands clasped in front of her, unsure about what was to come. “Just tell me.”

  “Did you know he was seeing somebody else?” Liam demanded. “Did he tell you? Because if he’s screwing somebody behind your back, I’m going over there to kick his ass.”

  “You’re not going to kick anybody’s ass,” Aria said soothingly, her hand on Liam’s arm. She turned to Breanna. “But, did you know? Oh, Breanna …”

  Breanna’s brain was having a hard time processing what she was hearing. None of it made sense. “Wait. Just wait. What are you talking about?”

  “Maybe you should sit down,” Aria suggested.

  “I don’t want to sit down. Just tell me what’s going on.”

  Aria looked like she didn’t want to say what she was about to say. “We were over at Ted’s. Liam and I. Jake was there. And … he wasn’t alone.”

  Was that all? That didn’t mean anything. He might have been with a friend. He might have run into someone he knew. The fact that he was at the bar with another woman didn’t mean he was seeing her. Even as she thought it, she knew it was a steaming load of horse shit. But she clung to the idea anyway.

  She deliberately made her voice sound casual, unconcerned. “Oh, well, that’s not—”

  “He had his hands on her,” Liam interrupted.

  Stunned, Breanna looked from Liam to Aria.

  “He did,” Aria confirmed. “Oh, Breanna, I’m so sorry.”

  Breanna felt as though the ground were crumbling out from beneath her feet stone by stone. Soo
n she would go tumbling into the deep beyond, lost, unmoored.

  “What?” Her voice was barely a whisper.

  “That asshole,” Liam ranted. “That fuckin’ … I’m telling you, I’m going to rearrange his goddamned teeth. And Kye goddamned Ferris? Not enough that he’s cheating on you, he’s gotta do it with a damned teenager?”

  Breanna blinked a few times in shock. “Kye Ferris?” Breanna knew the girl, if only to wave hello to at the supermarket. Kye Ferris was at least ten years younger than Breanna—maybe as much as fifteen. She was legal to drink, surely, but not by much.

  Was there anything more certain to make a woman feel old, used-up, and past her prime than hearing that her boyfriend was cheating with someone barely out of adolescence?

  Not cheating, Breanna reminded herself. Not that. Because hadn’t she insisted to Jake that they keep things casual? Hadn’t she refused every effort he’d made to take their relationship to another level?

  “Breanna? Are you okay?” Aria peered at her with concern.

  “Of course I am.” She wasn’t, but she was determined not to show it. “And he’s not cheating.”

  “Oh … I don’t know,” Aria said. “The way he touched her …”

  “I didn’t mean that,” Breanna said. “I meant, he’s free to see anyone he wants. So am I. He can do whatever he wants with Kye Ferris.”

  The thought of what he might be doing with her made Breanna feel ill, but she had to be an adult about it. She had to be mature. She had to put her heart’s tender feelings aside to look at it rationally.

  For the first time since he’d arrived, Liam stopped looking pissed-off and looked surprised instead.

  “You two are”—he made a vague gesture with his fingers that suggested dancing, but that Breanna was sure meant sex—“but you’re still seeing other people?”

  “We’re not”—she motioned toward his hand gesture—“whatever that’s supposed to be.”

  “You’re not?” Aria gaped at her.

  “No,” Breanna said. “We’re not. I mean, there was the one … But we’re … Jake and I have decided to take things slowly.” Of course, Jake hadn’t decided any such thing. Breanna had decided for both of them. But still.

  “Are you bullshitting me?” Liam demanded.

  Breanna composed herself, smoothed the front of her T-shirt with her hands, and said, “Thank you both for worrying about me. And thank you for coming here to tell me. Really. But it’s fine. Jake’s free to do what he wants. And you don’t need to worry about me. It’s good. I’m good.”

  She wasn’t good—not at all—and she had an intense need to do violence to Kye Ferris. But Breanna, unlike Kye, was a mature woman. She would handle this. Hadn’t she kept her distance from Jake to protect herself from exactly this? To keep herself safe?

  She didn’t feel safe at the moment. She felt gutted. But it would have been so much worse if they’d taken things further.

  Wouldn’t it?

  27

  Jake got home that night feeling like shit. Breanna probably knew by now that he’d been out with Kye, and she was probably hurt and angry. Kye had probably figured out that Jake had been using her, and she probably didn’t feel too good about it, either.

  Basically, he’d fucked up on more than one front, and he was starting to wonder why any of these women wanted anything to do with him in the first place.

  “Come on, Sam.”

  He snapped on the dog’s leash, went outside, and walked the huge beast in the darkness of the rural night. A couple of porch lights here and there allowed him to see his way, and a brilliant blanket of stars overhead reminded him of his relative insignificance in the greater universe.

  He’d thought going out with Kye would make him feel better—make him feel like he was moving forward instead of being stuck in one place—but it hadn’t. It had only made things worse, and now he felt as though he’d dug himself a hole that he didn’t know how to climb out of.

  He didn’t want Kye Ferris. He wanted Breanna, and he’d had some childish notion that sending her a message through her brother would make her jealous and send her running into his arms.

  But he knew Breanna well enough to know that her mind didn’t work that way. She rarely acted on impulse, and she wouldn’t suddenly want to commit to him just because he’d gotten handsy with a cute younger woman at Ted’s.

  She’d be hurt, but she’d be quiet about it, feeling the hurt deep inside in a place other people couldn’t get to. He hadn’t thought about that—the hurt—when he’d put on his little show for Liam. But now that he was fully considering how Breanna was going to feel, the bitter burn of regret settled into his stomach, making him wonder if he even deserved her.

  “You should try to find a better person for yourself,” he told Sam. “Somebody who’s not a dick.”

  Sam looked at him briefly, then went back to sniffing a clump of weeds by the side of the road.

  * * *

  Breanna tried to put it aside.

  What she’d told Liam was true: She and Jake didn’t have a commitment. They weren’t exclusive—or, at least, they’d never said they were. Jake could see whomever he wanted, even a preteen like Kye Ferris.

  She went through her normal routine, finishing the laundry, making sure the boys turned off their phones at bedtime, answering her e-mails—there was one from Julia, her sister-in-law in Montana, and another from the PTA president about next week’s fund-raiser—and then tucking herself into bed at a reasonable hour.

  She lay there looking at the ceiling, telling herself not to call Jake and not to text him, no matter how much she might want to tell him everything she was feeling. Yes, it would be satisfying to tear into him and pour out all of her disappointment and jealousy. But what purpose would it serve? What would it change?

  If he was really dating Kye Ferris, he was unlikely to stop just because Breanna was mad. And even if he did, where would that leave them? You couldn’t build a relationship on I’m faithful to my girlfriend because I don’t want her to get pissed.

  And what did those words even mean? What was faithful, when they didn’t have a commitment? What was girlfriend, when she’d told him she wanted to keep things light?

  She’d known getting involved with Jake was a bad idea. And yet she’d done it anyway. If she was lying here feeling like crap, she only had herself to blame.

  She picked up her phone from the bedside table, opened her texting app, and then forced herself to put the phone back down. She was not going to text him. Even if he was with Kye right now. Even if every molecule in her body was screaming out for her to stop him from sleeping with her.

  What if she was too late? What if Jake and Kye had already slept together?

  What if they were at it right now?

  Be an adult, she told herself. Act like a damned grownup.

  Breanna closed her eyes and tried to sleep. It didn’t work. Every time she began to drift off, she imagined Jake with that girl.

  Finally, she threw off her covers, got out of bed, and changed out of her pajamas and into a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt.

  Screw it. I’ve got to know.

  * * *

  The thing about driving across town on a Friday night to find out whether your man was screwing someone else was that it was so full of contradictions. You wanted to know, but you didn’t want to know. You wanted to catch them and feel that triumphant, indignant rage, but what you really wanted was to find out it was all some big mistake.

  Add a heaping dollop of self-recrimination for being sad and desperate enough to do it in the first place, and you had a perfect storm of shame, anger, and betrayal.

  All of that was surging through Breanna as she drove up to Jake’s place and parked her car at the side of the road. He was here; his truck was in the driveway, and the porch light was on. She was probably here, too. What were they doing? Were they talking, laughing, making out?

  Were they in bed?

  “Shit. Shit.” Breann
a wiped a couple of hot tears from her cheeks as she sat in her car and pondered what to do.

  She realized that she needed some excuse for going to the door. She couldn’t just say that she suspected he was with someone else and had shown up to catch him in the act. She needed a cover story.

  A few possibilities came to mind:

  1) She was here to tell him she was sorry for nixing the idea of going out for an evening with the kids.

  2) She wanted to talk about something regarding the house. A new idea for the kitchen countertops, maybe, or a thought about window coverings.

  3) She wanted to apologize for Liam’s rudeness. She wasn’t sure if Liam had even said anything to Jake that evening, but he was Liam—it was a safe bet that he’d been rude.

  The last one had some appeal because it allowed her to position herself as the better person—she wasn’t here to break up impending sex. No, she was simply here to maturely observe that Liam had no right to interfere in anyone’s life.

  Gathering her courage, she got out of the car, went up the front walk, and knocked on the door. She didn’t bang—banging suggested an urgency she was trying to pretend she didn’t feel. Instead, she knocked politely but firmly, in a way that suggested she had all evening to wait for a response.

  She steeled herself for the possibility that he would come to the front door mussed and half-dressed, smelling of guilt and young woman.

  When she got no answer, it was both a relief and a conundrum. He was here, clearly. Was he hiding out on the chance that it might be her?

  She knocked again, louder this time.

  “Jake?” She called his name through the door.

  “Breanna?” The voice came from behind her, and she jumped a little, startled. She spun around to find him coming up the front walk with Sam. They were alone.

  “Oh … Jake.” She’d forgotten all of her scenarios for what to say to him and just stood there lamely, relieved that he wasn’t naked and in the arms of another woman.