Authors: Lauren Gilley
When her lungs started to burn, she kicked and swept her arms through the water, breaking the surface with a gasp, water streaming down into her eyes. She treaded water and pushed her hair back, wiped her eyes, and found Tam waiting for her: stretched out on her raft, arms crossed behind his head, staring up at the sun with closed eyes.
“Thief,” she accused, swimming up alongside his head and gripping the edge of the raft, her feet kicking lazily through the deep, open water.
“To the conqueror go the spoils,” he countered, and she could tell he was trying to hold back a smile.
“Dork.”
“You like it.”
“Mmhmm.” Her eyes moved down his body, the water beading on his skin like a thousand tiny crystals. The smooth planes and grooves of muscle that were the result of a natural athleticism and not hours spent at the gym. Down over the wet, clinging blue swim trunks, and beyond his feet where her eyes collided with the bug-eye sunglasses of a curious soccer mom parked on a chaise down near the shallows. It was Mrs. Simmons who lived on Placid Oak and she lifted the magazine she’d been reading, pretending she hadn’t been scoping out Jo Walker and what had to look very much like her boyfriend.
Jo sighed as she scanned the other mothers – their caftan dress cover ups, floppy hats and bags of kids’ toys and sunscreen, all of them flipping through a book or magazine, all of them stealing peeks at her and Tam.
“Too many mothers here,” she said, resting her chin on the raft, cool water surging up around her neck.
“Motherfuckers?” Tam asked.
“No.” She snorted. “Actual mothers.” Her gaze flicked to him again. He was so close that if she pushed up on her arms, she could kiss him. And then he’d reach up and spear his fingers through her wet hair. He’d slide down off the raft with the grace of a seal and snatch her around the waist, and…
She was tired of swimming. “You know, we could always go to your place.” She’d driven past it once, curiosity gnawing at her. It was a narrow little gray bungalow with shaggy holly bushes on either side of the front steps. It had been clean, but paint was peeling in places and the landscaping had taken it on the chin. She knew he lived with his mother, and that she, according to the vague, evasive comments he’d made, “needed help with stuff.”
She watched his frown. “It’s not really up for visitors,” he said.
“I’m not a visitor.” Jo didn’t want to push him, she wasn’t one of those girls who made demands, and besides that, he was her…she couldn’t very well say friend and encompass what she was feeling…and she didn’t ever want to make him uncomfortable. “An unfortunate home life,” Beth had always said. And Jo could respect that. Give him his space. “But we can go back to the house if you want.”
The tension left his face immediately. She felt a pang of sympathy, hating that she’d even asked. “When’s your dad get home?”
“Six.” She grinned.
His head rolled toward hers, his smile megawatt, a hundred Shakespearian compliments about his eyes springing to her mind. “Race ya to the car?”
14
Now
On the rare occasion that Jo was up before the ass crack of dawn, it wasn’t usually because she was rushing to catch a plane to Ireland. At three thirty in the morning, she was dressed, her hair in a towel, applying her makeup at her dresser mirror, and overwhelmingly nauseas.
She told herself it was the product of staying up till midnight in a flurry of packing and prepping, then rising again at three fifteen. This was partly true. But she knew that her stomach was churning because of their imminent arrival at the airport. Their meeting with the rest of the wedding party.
Tam.
She took a deep breath and pulled her compact from her open cosmetics case, sweeping a light layer of powder over her ashen face. She had never gone overboard with makeup – no false eyelashes or garish colors – but between turning fifteen and sixteen, she’d decided looking a little prettier wouldn’t make her any less athletic, any less herself. A touch of mineral blush on her cheeks, a smooth blend of gray and green on her eyelids, liner, mascara, and her routine took less than three minutes.
She was running a comb through the snarls in her unruly mane when her mother came bustling into her room, her hair in curlers, a new magenta shell on over her pajama pants and slippers. “Morning, sweetie,” she said in a breathless, anxious voice. “Can I look through your jewelry?”
Jo glanced at the silver tree beside her on the dresser that held her everyday pieces: pendant necklaces that had cost maybe twenty bucks apiece. A howling wolf, a dragonfly, a CZ studded cross, a sterling silver letter J that had been a gift from, guess who, Tam. “The good stuff’s in the box on my chest of drawers,” she said, eyes lingering over the silver J longer than they should have. She still wore it sometimes, even though she shouldn’t have. “I thought you already packed the jewelry you wanted to wear, Mom.” She resumed combing her hair.
Through the mirror, she watched Beth behind her as she lifted the lid on the white, wooden box that housed the few rare pieces of nice-and-shiny that she wore once every never. “Well, I did,” Beth said as she began lifting out the little trays that separated each stone-classified set. “But it’s just that, well…my things are things I’ve had forever. And Louise - ” Delta’s mother “ – always looks so trendy and she’s always talking about wearing what the kids are wearing.”
“Mom,” Jo sighed, “you don’t need to worry about that. Louise Brooks is a self-important bitch who likes making everyone around her feel inferior.”
“You’re right, you’re right,” Beth conceded. “It’s just that…
oh my God! Joanna
!”
Jo knew, before she set the comb down and swiveled around on her bench, what her mother had found. She hadn’t eaten breakfast yet, but bile threatened at the back of her throat as she saw, with sinking dread, Tam’s family heirloom ruby dangling from Beth’s fingertips.
“Where’d you get this?” Beth demanded, and the accusation in her eyes stung, like maybe she thought Jo had decided to become a jewelry thief.
She stood and was across the room before she could come to the realization that she did not want her mom handling the thing. It looked just as it had that night seven years ago when Tam had set it in her palm and curled her fingers around it: brilliant red, ringed in diamonds, its shape undeniable. It felt like he’d been giving her his actual heart that night and even if that hadn’t been true, it was still a memory, an exchange of trusts, that now felt violated.
“I didn’t steal it,” she said and held out her hand for the necklace.
Beth eyed the ruby and then her. “I know you didn’t buy it.”
“No.” Jo fought the urge to grind her teeth. “I’m holding on to it for someone. For safekeeping.”
“Holding onto it for who?”
She didn’t want to say, which frustrated her and pissed her off. But because lying to her mother had never worked well in the past – and it made her feel beyond guilty, she sighed and said, “Tam.”
“Did
he
steal it?”
“Do you honestly think he would have?”
“No.”
“He said it was a family heirloom. That he couldn’t keep it safe at home and wanted me to watch it for him.”
Beth’s eyes widened, a look of understanding smoothing the lines in her face. “Oh.”
Jo frowned. “Oh, what?”
“Nothing.” She set the ruby back in the box. “It’s just nice of you to do it is all.” She almost seemed to be holding back a smile.
“What, Mom?”
“I think I’ll take your pearls, is that alright?” She avoided the question, much calmer, much happier than when she’d come into the room.
“Mom.”
“Dry your hair, sweetie. We don’t wanna miss our flight.”
**
Tam had a vicious headache. He was convinced six a.m. flights were for the clinically insane, which didn’t do him any compliments since he was slouched down in a chair at a concourse, nursing a Mountain Dew and watching his fellow crazies through mirror lensed aviator shades. He’d brought only one bag, a beat-up carry-on, and it sat at his feet. There was a Starbucks at this gate and the coffee smell was making him want to puke for some reason. That, or maybe it was the result of staring at Johnson seated across from him.
“Hey,” Johnson said and Tam mentally kicked himself for glancing at the guy and giving the impression he might feel like speaking. “You think we’ll get to see Nessie?” The guy chuckled, the comment obviously meant as a joke, but Tam wasn’t laughing.
“Loch Ness is in Scotland,” he said, dead-faced.
“But aren’t Scotland and Ireland, like, right next to each other?”
“You might wanna invest in a map.” He glanced away, out through the huge bank of windows beyond which the world was still the deep violet of pre-dawn. Pinpricks of light marked the runways and lanes. Their plane was snugged right up to the boarding ramp, ready to bear the Walker-Brooks wedding party to JFK in New York where they would catch a connecting flight across the pond to Dublin ,then fly over to Galway where a car service would take them to Cong, and the castle. Tam was having a hard time taking firm hold of the idea that he was actually leaving the country for Mike’s wedding. He supposed somewhere above the Atlantic, it might start to solidify in his mind.
Many of the other groomsmen were seated around him. Mitch Huddle and his wife. Ryan Atkins. Whatever-his-first-name-was Johnson. Mike’s personal trainer Lance who looked like a caricature of a weight lifter, his shaved head gleaming beneath the overhead lights. They were missing Dylan, Jordan, Walter and the groom himself. And of course, because he didn’t hear any maniacal hyena laughter, the bridesmaids hadn’t arrived yet.
Only the immediate Walkers would be coming. Mike had said that his aunts, uncles and grandparents hadn’t been up for the trip to Ireland, so it would be only Randy and Beth, Walt, Jess, Jordan…and Jo.
He wanted to see her, his chest ached with wanting to see her, but he knew she didn’t feel the same way. Just like he knew that all the reasons he’d ended things were still reasons, and that he had no right to mess with her head.
She deserved better than that.
Better than
him
.
He’d read a novel last year – part of a novel – a murder mystery, one that chronicled the fictional approaches of a fictional pair of detectives. The suspect, a serial killer who liked to strangle women and leave their bodies in public dumpsters, had been the victim of a traumatic childhood; his mother an abused spouse, her weakness generating hate and disrespect for women in the psychopath.
Tam had flung the book across the room, satisfied when the binding had come undone and pages had spilled all over the floor of his shitty apartment. That wasn’t him. He hadn’t been turned into some woman-hating monster. He
was not
his father.
But who was to say Jo wouldn’t have gotten hurt somehow anyway?
He scowled now as he thought about it. He would never hurt Jo. He had, and did, cherish her. It was anyone who wished to do her harm who ought to be worried; all bets were off when it came to her well-being. And in that respect, he understood his inner demons. They were what had put Nick Schaffer in the hospital all those years ago.
“Fam’s here,” someone said, and his head snapped around. The Walkers were coming up the wide, vendor-lined hall of the concourse in all their chaotic, Walker glory.