Jed Had to Die

by Tara Sivec

  Sliding a mug I brought with me that says “I love coffee” under the nozzle of Baby Cecil, I press a few buttons and watch as liquid gold comes pouring out of him, filling the cup with steamy goodness, the smell perking me up and giving me a little extra courage. When it finishes, I slide the mug out, turn and hand it to Leo without saying anything, my eyes meeting his briefly before I quickly turn back to the machine. Just that one glance into his eyes was enough to make my hands shake and my knees almost give out, but I forge ahead. Grabbing the other mug I brought with me, the one Leo gave me that says “Bald Knob” with a giant red heart around it, I fill up my own cup of coffee, grabbing it and turning back around to face him with a deep breath.

  Leo takes a sip of coffee and I almost want to chuck my cup at his face for looking so casual and relaxed when I want to throw up. I refrain from doing that, though, since I really like his face and don’t want to mess it up.

  He leans to the side to look around me, nodding at Emma Jo.

  “I see you brought pies,” he states.

  I try not to let it get to me that he hasn’t said anything to me yet, but again, I deserve this and I’m just happy he hasn’t called Buddy to haul me away in cuffs.

  “Yep! I’ve got some apple and cherry to sell,” Emma Jo exclaims brightly.

  “What, no blueberry?” he asks with a twitch of his lips, raising one eyebrow.

  “I decided to retire from the blueberry pie making business. They cause cancer, didn’t you hear?” she replies sweetly.

  Leo chuckles softly, the sound making my stomach flop as he turns his eyes toward Bettie.

  “Emma Jo’s selling pies, what are you selling?” he asks her.

  “Oh, I’m not selling anything. I’m just here to watch Payton make an ass of herself. Got any popcorn?” Bettie asks.

  I remove one shaking hand from around my mug of coffee and flip her the middle finger over my shoulder without taking my eyes off of Leo. I watch as the smile he gave Emma Jo and Bettie slowly slips away when his eyes finally land back on mine.

  “So what are you doing here?” he asks in low voice that gives me goose bumps and makes my heart beat faster.

  “Just sharing my coffee with the town of Bald Knob,” I reply, my voice sounding shaky and high pitch in my ears.

  “I heard your coffee has been a big hit.”

  He speaks with absolutely no emotion, taking another sip from the cup in his hands.

  “What can I say, my coffee is very loveable,” I tell him with a shrug, feigning nonchalance.

  He stares at me quietly for a few minutes before sighing and setting his cup down on the table next to him and then slides his hands into the front pockets of his shorts.

  “It is, but it’s also stubborn and a giant pain in my ass,” he retorts and I immediately realize he’s not talking about coffee anymore.

  “But my coffee can also be really sweet, and knows when it made a huge mistake, and will do anything to make it better, because the customer is always right.”

  I finally see the corner of his mouth twitch as he looks down at me, and my courage goes up a few notches knowing he’s trying really hard not to smile and the chances of him kicking me out have lowered extensively.

  “Even though you returned your cup of coffee because it was bitter, is there any chance you’d take it back and love my coffee again?” I whisper, setting my own cup down and taking a step toward him.

  I hold my breath until he slowly pulls his hands back out of his pockets and takes his own step to me until we’re toe-to-toe.

  “I never stopped loving your coffee, I was just mad at it for burning me,” he replies, his eyes staring deeply into mine.

  “I’m so sorry it hurt you. My coffee sometimes does things without thinking and then regrets everything immediately,” I admit with a choked voice filled with emotion as my eyes cloud with tears.

  Leo points to my coffee cup that I set down on the table.

  “Do you really love Bald Knob?”

  I smile up at him through my tears and nod my head.

  “I think I fell in love with Bald Knob the first day I came back. It just took me a while to realize it and not be so afraid of loving it,” I explain.

  “I always thought coffee and Bald Knob made a great pair, but it really sucked when some people didn’t agree. How can I be sure you won’t change your mind and stop loving Bald Knob?” he asks softly.

  Bringing my hands up between us, I place my palms on his chest, one resting right over his heart and I can feel it thumping rapidly, just as fast as my own.

  “The same way I can be sure that you won’t change your mind about loving coffee. Because I trust you. And my coffee is fucking delicious,” I state with a smile.

  He finally laughs deeply and aside from just the sound of his voice, it’s the best thing in the entire world to hear. Shaking his head at me, he slides his hands around my hips and finally touches me, clasping his hands at my lower back and pulling me against his chest.

  “Most delicious thing I’ve ever had in my mouth,” he whispers with a cocky wink as I push up on my toes and he lowers his head, pressing his forehead against mine. “I really, really love your coffee.”

  Sliding my hands up his chest, I press them to either side of his face.

  “Good, because my coffee loves you more than anything, and would like to stay here in Bald Knob forever and ever, live on this farm, and someday make little cups of baby coffees with you,” I inform him.

  “Sweet mother of pearl, will you two kiss already? All this coffee talk is confusing, and I need to get home and take my arthritis pills.”

  Leo and I look back to see Starla standing on the other side of the table, surrounded by half the town, looking at us expectantly.

  “Yeah, can we hurry this up? I need some coffee,” Mo Wesley complains, getting a smack in the arm from Andrea Maynard.

  “That coffee is Leo’s, weren’t you paying attention? He’ll kick your ass if you touch his coffee,” she reminds Mo.

  “What a waste of perfectly good battery life,” Bettie mutters, pressing a button on her phone to stop recording and tossing it onto the table in irritation. “You could have at least put up a fight or thrown a few ears of corn at her.”

  “Alright, everyone, who wants coffee and pie?!” Emma Jo asks loudly, turning the attention away from Leo and I as everyone starts shouting and moving closer to the table.

  Leo takes that opportunity to walk us backward until we’re out of the tent and away from the crowd of people scrambling to get a piece of Emma Jo’s pies and a cup of my coffee.

  “One last question before I kiss you. I know it was ruled an accident, but we both know that’s not true. Are you ever going to tell me what you know about Jed?” Leo asks, his arms still wrapped tightly around me and no trace of anger in his words.

  Twining my arms around his neck, I hold onto the back of his head and pull him down closer to me.

  “I promise, I will never, ever keep anything from you again, but this isn’t my secret to tell.”

  Leo looks into my eyes for a few seconds, moving them away from me to look back over my shoulder when Emma Jo laughs loudly at something someone said.

  “Son of a bitch…” he mutters under his breath, which makes me start to panic just a little bit.

  “She’s happy, Leo. For the first time in her life, she’s happy and she’s free. I know it’s your job and I know-”

  He cuts me off mid-sentence, quickly dipping his head and pressing his lips to mine. I immediately open for him, moaning into his mouth when his tongue touches mine, wondering how I managed to survive for a week without his kisses, let alone my entire life before I came back to Bald Knob.

  Leo ends the kiss much too soon, but considering we’re out in his yard in front of half the town and we’re both panting heavily just from that one, short kiss, it’s probably for the best that he stopped before we went too far and gave the town an X-rated show along with their corn, coffee, and pi
e.

  “If Emma Jo is happy, you’re happy, right?” he asks, bringing his hand up to tuck a strand of hair behind my ear.

  “Yes,” I reply quickly, nodding my head.

  “Then that’s good enough for me.”

  I smile so big that I’m afraid my face might crack, launching myself against him and tightening my arms around his neck. His arms band around my body as he lifts me up until my toes leave the ground.

  “My coffee really, really wants to pour itself all over your body,” I declare happily.

  “Jesus, get a room, you two, before I puke from all this happiness!” Bettie shouts over to us.

  Leo kisses me with a laugh. He lifts me up higher into his arms, and turns to head toward the house, doing exactly what Bettie demanded – getting us a room, in a big white house, on a sweet corn farm, in Bald Knob, Kentucky…my home.

  EPILOGUE

  One year later…

  “I heard they had to have it out here on the farm because she tasted the coffee they were going to serve at the Bald Knob VFW, chucked her cup at the president, and was kicked out.”

  “Yeah? Well, I heard she was running late earlier because she spent the night in jail after Buddy caught her stealing booze from Pickerson’s again.”

  “No, no, no. I heard they had to do this because she’s pregnant.”

  I let out a little squeak of surprise and jerk away from the huge oak tree where I’ve been standing, when Leo comes up behind me and kisses the side of my neck.

  “Are you hiding behind a tree listening to gossip, Mrs. Hudson?” he asks, coming around in front of me and pulling me into his arms.

  “How else am I supposed to know what I’ve been up to lately?” I question with a smile, wrapping my arms with a bouquet of white roses in my hand around his neck.

  Today, I became Mrs. Leo Hudson, in a small ceremony on the farm. We set up white tents in the front yard and said our vows in front of our family, friends, and the entire town, as the sun set behind the house in the distance.

  I promised to never keep secrets from Leo again, make slop for him every Sunday, give him advanced warning if I’m going to do something crazy, and distract him with sex as much as possible, for the rest of our lives (I whispered that last part in his ear. No need to give the town anything else to gossip about.)

  Leo promised to cherish Cecil and Baby Cecil, not die from an aneurism if I do something crazy, bring me back a coffee mug if he ever goes out of town without me, use his handcuffs on me for fun, and not to arrest me (he whispered that part in my ear) and to love my coffee forever and ever.

  The last year has been insane, but I wouldn’t change anything about it. After I groveled at Leo’s feet and he forgave me, Bettie went back to Chicago to take over running the original Liquid Crack. I didn’t let myself get sad about her leaving, because a few days later, Leo took a week off of work and flew back there with me so we could pack up my things and ship them to Bald Knob. I thought I would be sad saying good-bye to Chicago, but I knew I’d be back to see Bettie and to check on Liquid Crack from time to time. And I knew there was nowhere else I’d rather be than at home in Bald Knob, with Leo.

  In the last twelve months, Bettie has done an amazing job running the flagship Liquid Crack, just like she said she would. There are now twenty Liquid Cracks throughout the U.S., including the one right on the town square in Bald Knob, with more coming soon.

  When Leo and I got back home from Chicago after packing up my things, I moved in with Emma Jo, much to his annoyance. When I explained to him that I couldn’t move in with him until we at least went on our first date, he stopped being annoyed and immediately booked a reservation for us to go into Louisville for dinner that night. Where he proposed, by having our server put the ring at the bottom of my after-dinner cup of coffee.

  Sadly, poor Leo didn’t think this plan through too much, and he quickly realized the error of his ways when I took one sip of the coffee and spit out on the white table cloth, refusing to drink another sip. After ten minutes of arguing and trying to get me to finish the coffee, he finally grabbed the cup, stuck his fingers in the hot liquid, and pulled out the ring.

  Like Bettie told me, the people of Bald Knob welcomed me back with open arms as soon as I stopped hating the place I grew up and the people who stuck their noses where they didn’t belong. They continue to meddle in my business, but at least they do it behind my back like normal human beings. And they continued their crusade of good will when Leo and I officially got engaged by throwing us an engagement party and striking the words “home wrecker” from their vocabulary.

  “Everything hurts, nothing is good, and I’m so hot I think I lost one of my toes when it melted off,” Emma Jo complains, walking up next to us with one hand on her stomach and the other on her lower back.

  “Honey, why aren’t you sitting down? Do you need some water? Are you hungry? I can fix you a plate of food if you’re hungry. Here, sit down,” Buddy tells Emma Jo, following behind her with a white folding chair, opening it up, and gently pushing her down into it next to the tree.

  He gives her a quick kiss on the cheek and then he’s off, in search of food, water, and whatever else he can think of that Emma Jo might need.

  “I can’t believe how much I love that man,” she says softly, staring after him as he moves through the crowds of people milling about the yard, drinking, talking, and listening to the music of Caden Jefferson’s band.

  “I can. It’s been a year and you’re still staring at his ass all the time,” Bettie laughs, coming up to us with a bottle of beer in her hand.

  As much as Emma Jo tried to deny it last year, she liked Buddy Lloyd. A lot. And the entire town knew how much Buddy liked her right back and did everything they could to pry into their business and push them together. Buddy understood the kind of life Emma Jo had lived for twelve years and he didn’t rush her. He taught her how to trust someone not to hurt you, he treated her like a princess, and he showered her with all the love and compassion that she’d never had with Jed. Even though they wanted to take things slow, the universe had other plans.

  “How am I only seven months pregnant? I feel as big as a house,” Emma Jo complains, rubbing her hand in circles around her huge stomach.

  “You should see your ass,” Bettie snorts, which earns her the middle finger from Emma Jo and a smack on the arm from me.

  As much as this town loves gossip, no one batted an eye when Emma Jo’s stomach started expanding, nor did they put up a fuss when Emma Jo told everyone her and Buddy wouldn’t be getting married until after the baby came, because there was no way in hell she wanted to be pregnant and unable to drink wine at her own wedding. Everyone in town knew Emma Jo had lived through enough hard times, and they were just too happy for her to bother with gossip and rumors.

  Not only did Emma Jo finally have someone who loved her the way she deserved and they had a baby on the way, she was no longer a housewife without any money of her own. As soon as I made the decision to open a Liquid Crack in Bald Knob when I returned from packing up my things in Chicago, I hired Emma Jo as my manager, and the first Liquid Crack to have a pastry chef. She runs the business when I’m not there or helping Leo on the farm, selling her pies alongside my coffee. The night I offered her the job, she broke down in tears, finally blurting out everything that happened the night of Jed’s murder. This obviously happened after several bottles of wine, and it wasn’t my intention when I started pouring the Moscato down her throat. I just wanted her to finally admit she was in love with Buddy, not come clean about killing her husband.

  From what I could understand through her slurring and crying, Jed started blowing up her phone with calls and text messages after he’d been punched in the face by Leo in the parking lot of Pickerson’s Bar. Since I was passed out in her living room, Emma Jo decided to take matters into her own hands and tell Jed to come over so they could talk. She never had any intention of killing him, she just wanted to finally stand up to him and tell hi
m it was over. She grabbed the award from the front table for protection and snuck out into the backyard to wait for him. Jed met her out there and immediately started threatening her. As he charged in her direction, she wasn’t fast enough to pull the award out from behind her back and hit him with it. He wrestled it from her hands and tossed it to the ground behind him. When he laughed at her attempt to overtake him, she kicked him in the balls and shoved him as hard as she could, which resulted in Jed tripping over his own feet and falling backward…right onto the award that pierced his skull. She panicked, yanking it out of his head, and ran deep into the woods, burying it where no one would ever find it. Since he was still breathing when she came back from her trek to the woods, Emma Jo really was just as shocked as me when we saw his dead body in the back yard the next morning. She honestly thought he’d wake up and crawl away after she locked herself back inside the house that night. Still in shock and not wanting to believe her shoving Jed to the ground was what killed him, she took hold of the poisoned pie theory and ran with it, until that idea was blown out of the water after the whole dead raccoon’s incident.

  Her drunken ramblings then led to even more crying and her apologizing to me for hiding the truth and letting me take the blame, never thinking in a million years that all fingers would point to me. She was scared and she freaked out, and she lied to me and everyone so well that I couldn’t be mad at her. I could only be proud that she’d finally found her strength and used it for evil.

  “I love you assholes,” I state from the comfort of Leo’s arms.

  “I love you guys more,” Emma Jo replies softly.

  “You’re both a bunch of idiots, but I guess I’m stuck with you,” Bettie complains, tipping her bottle of beer in our direction.

  The three of us share a look, one filled with friendship, love, and the silent promise that we will keep each other secrets for the rest of our lives.

  “This has been a good chat, but if you’ll excuse us, I’d like to dance with my husband,” I tell Emma Jo and Bettie, grabbing Leo’s hand and pulling him a few feet away.