Keep You (22 page)

             
And that he’d thrown it away.

             
Jo slicked her hands back along either side of her ponytail, a move that squeezed her breasts together and gapped the front of her tank top. Her shirt was gray, the sports bra beneath neon yellow. The girl had never been able to match lingerie to her outfit and he’d always loved that.

             
That October morning he kept thinking about, when he’d parked behind a shopping center that hadn’t come alive for the day yet because that had been her birthday wish, to do it in the backseat, she’d had this barely-there pink-and-purple polka dot bra on beneath her black thermal knit.

             
But the look she was giving him now was not full of rapturous worship like it had been then. She had her hips cocked, her eyes challenging.

             
“You wanted to see me,” she repeated, and then made an unhappy sound in the back of her throat that was half-cough, half-laugh. “Unbelievable.”

             
Tam had never had any trouble picking up a girl. The jacket, the eyes…give them one of those slow, shark smiles and
they
were asking
him
if he was busy later. Right now, it wasn’t a skill he was especially proud of because he knew he couldn’t use on Jo. She liked the shark smile, the jacket, the eyes, but not in the way the other girls did, not because she thought any of it made him mysterious. She had never been a one-night with the lights off, shameless kind of girl. And when it came to Jo, he wasn’t that type of guy either. He didn’t want to charm her, to lure her, to trap her. He was embarrassingly, devastatingly in love with her. She was fresh air and freedom, everything bright, shiny and warm that had ever been in his life. She was home. And all the drinking and screwing in the world wasn’t going to make him feel that way about some other girl.

             
For all those reasons, he turned into a desperate, sappy dumbass in her presence. He had no tricks up his sleeve. And as she stared huffily at him, he knew telling her what she was to him would fall on deaf ears. If he was going to mend fences, he had to do it slowly. And he’d be lucky if she would even let him try.

             
“It’s not what you think,” he lied, holding his hands up to her palms-out in a classic defenseless pose. “I just wanted to talk.”

             
Her eyes narrowed with suspicion. “Four years later and suddenly you wanna talk.”

             
He’d underestimated her level of bitterness. “We gotta try sometime, right?”

             
She folded her arms beneath her breasts, looking very much like her older sister, only with better tits. “Why would we?”

             
Tam sighed and raked a hand back through his hair. He deserved this, he really did. “Because this is awkward.”

             
Her mouth twitched. “I can stand awkward for a week.”

             
“Joey,” he said, and watched her whole body tense, shock smoothing all the tension off her face and leaving something startled behind. The nickname, he realized with grim satisfaction, still pulled strings inside her. “Mike and Jordie and I are all still friends. And they’re you’re family. Can’t we just let all that old stuff stay old stuff and at least be friendly?”

             
He watched her chew it over. Pain flickered across her face and then was shoved to the side. Her eyes moved away from his, getting lost in the mist somewhere. She looked a hundred miles away. “There’s an awful lot of old stuff.”

             
“I know.”

             
“I don’t wanna unpack it.”

             
“Me neither,” he lied. Well, sort of lied. He didn’t want there to be anything to unpack. He wanted to rewind time and make himself turn around. He’d imagined it a thousand times: he pushed the wet hair off his face and charged back through the rain, back to where she was shaking like she meant to come apart. He covered her body with his own, sheltering her from the driving downpour, pulled her to him with hands on her hips and told her how sorry he was against her damp, curling hair. She took him up to her dorm and they shed their wet clothes on the bathroom floor, the hot water a shock on their cold skin when they climbed into the shower.

             
“How ‘bout a truce?” he asked. “For the family.”

             
Her eyes flicked up to his and she chewed at her lower lip. “For the family, huh?”

             
“There’s enough drama this week without us adding to it.”

             
She conceded him a point with a nod.

             
Tam knew Jo, knew her inside and out, and he knew the smile she attempted wasn’t true, nor was the shrug that made a go at casual. “You’re right. Enough drama.”

             
They stared at one another, fog swirling around them, the scent of dew and dawn shooting up Tam’s nose and making him nostalgic. There were a hundred things he wanted to tell her and he wondered if the same were true for her.

             
“So truce?” he finally asked.

             
“Truce.”

             
The light sound of Jordan’s sneakers signaled his perfectly-timed arrival, which made Tam wonder if he’d been lurking in the mist, listening to them. “Let’s go, drag-asses,” he called, never breaking stride.

20

Now

             
Jo had made peace with the fact that she was going to gain ten pounds on this trip. Breakfast was a stack of miniature pancakes topped with fresh fruit and some kind of light, honey-flavored syrup, little mint sprigs on the side. Big silver buffet warmers were full of bacon, sausage links with the ends burned the way she liked, more fruit, potatoes that resembled home fries, milk and every kind of juice imaginable. It was still early, sunbeams like lasers blasting through the fog beyond the open French doors, the lake surfacing from the vapors in a dazzling shimmer. All the guests who’d made it into the dining room so far were either elderly, or families with young children. She saw none of the wedding party.

             
She and Tam and Jordan sat alone at a table, all beside one another rather than spread out, Tam in the middle. If this was what having a truce with the love of her life and destroyer of worlds felt like, then she supposed it was going well.

             
“Running,” Jordan told the little old biddy who looked like a fat quail wrapped in foil – her jacket a gold that hadn’t made an appearance since the eighties – who had inquired as to their apparel from the neighboring table.

             
She was adorable, with papery hands and coke-bottle glasses, her accent making Jo think she was British. “Oh my. What for?”

             
Her husband motioned for her to leave them alone. “They’re only lads, mother,” he grumbled. But she was undeterred and Jordan didn’t seem bothered; he was, under the snark and flat looks, sweet.

             
“For exercise,” he told her. “I used to be a track star, you know…”

             
Jo was not surprised when Tam turned toward her as he reached for his coffee, and what with this new truce in effect, she told herself she would be polite and dead-faced and not the least bit inappropriate.

             
“You’re not a vet,” he said. It wasn’t a question, but a statement of fact. One of her brothers had told him. His eyes were sizing her up and she thought he almost sounded like a disappointed parent.

             
“Nope.” She popped a section of bacon into her mouth. It was so crispy and perfect her eyes almost rolled back in her head. When Tam kept looking at her, asking without words, she sighed. “I didn’t have the money. UGA vet school? Yeah, wasn’t gonna happen.”

             
A flicker of sadness touched his face and was gone again. “You graduated though.”

             
“Pre-vet. I’m a tech.”

             
“Where’re you living?”

             
This truce business wasn’t much fun. “At home. Jordie and I chip in to the household.” She indicated her brother with a wave of bacon and he nodded, his attention off the little grandma type and back on his plateful of carbs.

             
“Dad’s cut back to half hours at the plant,” he said between bites. “And his boss is starting to push retirement on him hard. They need the help.”

             
Tam’s mouth turned down at the corners. “I didn’t know they were having trouble.”

             
“How could you? Not like Mike ever thinks about anyone but himself,” Jo said, bitterness sharp in her voice.

             
“How bad is it?”

             
Jordan shrugged. “We’ll make it.”

             
She watched Tam’s impossibly long, dark lashes lower as he regarded his plate, spearing chunks of fruit in an aimless sort of way that wasn’t about eating. Sometimes it was hard to reconcile the man who’d wounded her with the boy who’d loved her family. She had never pressed him about his parents, but whatever truth lay buried there, it wasn’t a pretty one. It was one that had brought him to the Walker table for Thanksgiving dessert, a sweet, grateful smile tipped up at Beth as she’d set homemade pumpkin pie in front of him and kissed the top of his dark head like he was one of her own children.

             
“It’s not that bad,” she felt compelled to say. She even found a smile. “I won’t be getting that dream bachelorette pad anytime soon, but you know, they’re not gonna cut the power off.”

             
When Tam’s face lifted, the troubled look had left it. He grinned. “Never took you for a ‘bachelorette pad’ kinda gal.”

             
She blinked and then remembered one of their stolen nights, the glow from Walt’s TV turning her world into a strobe light. Walt had taken Gwen and the boys to Disneyworld and Tam had been living with them off and on. She’d had all the buttons of his flannel shirt open, her fingertips playing across the smooth, hard planes of his chest and venturing every so often down toward the waistband of his jeans, laughter bubbling inside her when she felt his abs jump beneath her hand in response. She’d felt him growing hard against the thigh she’d wedged between his, and the butterfly kisses against the side of her neck had turned into wet, hickey-leaving suction cups, but she’d been determined to answer the question that had kicked things off.

             
“I think living by myself would be awfully lonely.”

             
“Hmmm.”
He’d sounded like his patience was a thread, voice laced with what he wanted to do to her.
“Who’d you live with then?”

             
“I think you’d like him.”
His tongue ring traced her carotid and it pounded with her racing pulse.
“He’s got this tongue ring…”

             
Jo felt her lungs shrivel, her heart tumbling into the hole they left behind. But she shrugged and picked up her fork. “People grow up. Wants and dreams change.” Head down, she lifted only her eyes and caught Jordan’s gaze. He was making a face.
Both of you grow the hell up
, he mouthed, clear as day.

             
Passive-aggressive was not a good look for her, and she knew it. Her mouth was opening to try and temper her statement when the rest of the wedding party arrived en masse.

             
“I’m so hungry!” Logan whined as he and his brother led the charge into the dining room. He leapt into the nearest chair, the one next to Jo, and peered at her plate, nearly tipping over her orange juice. “Can I have some, Aunt Jo? Can I please?”

             
“Logan!” The adults followed at a more leisurely pace and Gwen stepped forward, snagging her son by the wrist. “Come on and we’ll get you your own food.”

             
Jo wished her nephew had in fact spilled her juice, because then she would have had an excuse to get up when Logan followed his mother and Ryan took the boy’s place.

             
“Morning, beautiful,” he said, instantly ruining the phrase for her, and leaned in as if he meant to kiss her on the cheek. He inhaled instead and sat back.

             
Jo bit back a grin; thank God for smelly running clothes. Jordan had pushed them what he’d guesstimated to be five miles and she knew she had to be ripe. “Everything alright?” she asked of his poorly masked grimace.

             
“Of course - ”

             
“You must be used to sweat stink by now, what with all the time you spend at the gym,” she said sweetly, and caught Jordan hiding a grin behind a bite of potatoes. “I mean,” she batted her lashes at him and hoped she was doing it right, “you do go to the gym, right? You must with all those muscles.”

             
She couldn’t tell if Tam was choking on a laugh or a growl beside her.

             
Ryan, oblivious to any double-talk that wasn’t his own, beamed back at her. “Yeah. I’ve been training with a UFC guy.” He pantomimed a series of punches that were underwhelming at best. “I’m getting good, too.”

             
“Really?” Tam spoke up. “So if I were to, oh, I dunno,
come at you
, you could Rockette high kick me or some shit?”

             
“Probably.” Ryan’s laugh was forced. “Why, you gonna ‘come at’ me?”

             
“Maybe.”

             
“Heeeey,” Jordan said brightly. “How ‘bout we tone down the pissing contest, huh?”

             
“Excellent idea,” Mitch said as he and his wife joined them. “No one wants any piss with breakfast.”

             
Jo spent the remainder of her meal fielding Ryan’s small talk, because he was a conversation monopolizer like that. She expected Tam’s jealousy to feel good, fresh cookies from the oven, a swimming pool on an August afternoon. But instead, it left her feeling cold and hollow.

**

              “I understand.” Tam propped one sneakered foot back against the oak paneling of the wall and let it support his weight. The cell phone pressed to his ear felt heavy as a brick.

             
“There’s a good chance she won’t respond to the antibiotics.” Maria Sylva, the head nurse in charge of Melinda’s wing at Golden Oaks was about four feet tall, possibly wider than that, and she was all about the whole truth, even if it wasn’t pleasant. Tam appreciated this. He liked the woman, he thought she did a bang-up job with Mom, but phone calls like these left him wishing he’d never met Nurse Sylva.

             
“I understand,” he repeated, his rote reply to all the medical jargon that had been thrown at him for years. He didn’t expect miracles – his mother was a sick, sick woman – and he wouldn’t sob and rail and grab doctors by the lapels and demand a medical intervention on God’s destiny. He expected every second of every day to be told that Melinda had passed.

             
It would mean an end to the waiting and wondering, to her suffering, and to the accumulation of his debt. Maybe he should have been praying for the end. He’d felt trapped in a nightmare for so long now…

             
But hearing that Mom had bronchitis and wasn’t coping well was another stone added to the pile that kept building on top of his chest.

             
He’d been on his way back to his room to shower and change, and to get away from the Ryan-and-Jo variety hour because it was making him nauseas. Maria’s call had caught him just a few paces down the hall from his door and he might as well have run another five miles for all the good it did his pulse.

             
“Okay,” he said, wiping a hand down his face.

             
Maria grunted on the other end of the line. “Don’t go thinking you need to fly home. You deserve to go on vacation, honey.”

             
He forced a humorless chuckle. “That’s just it. It’s not vacation.”

             
The elevator dinged down at the end of the hall and voices tumbled across the plush carpet toward him. A glance revealed Walt, Gwen and the boys heading toward him.

             
“You’ll let me know if there’s any changes?” he asked Maria, not wanting to look like he was locked in the conversation that he was when Walt the Wonder passed him.

             
“Of course, honey,” Maria said. She really was a gem – a gem he wished had no need to be in his life.

             
Tam flipped his old school, low-tech phone shut with a snap and pushed away from the wall. Chase and Logan were bounding toward him like Labrador puppies, and, like Lab puppies, they ignored him and went squealing and yipping past, their mother like a flustered handler in their wake.

             
“Boys! – Hi.” She spared a quick smile for Tam, and then broke into a jog. “Boys!”

             
Gwen was sweet. In an oblivious, rose-colored glasses sort of way. When she raised her voice it was sing-song. Tam had never seen her so much as frown. Nothing but perfectly peaceful for Walt the Wonder.

             
Walt’s steps slowed as he drew up alongside him, his hands doing the checking-for-change bit in his khaki pockets. He was a smidge shorter than Mike, who had grown into the biggest, but he had their father’s broad shoulders and square head. He’d always cropped his hair close, but had decided to grow a goatee that looked like blonde, teenage peach fuzz.

             
His Walker green eyes gave Tam a once-over. “You doing alright?”

             
It was said friendly enough, the appropriate level of casualness imbued into the words. But Tam knew what Walt really thought of him – he still saw the guy’s accusatory stare across the kitchen table from him in his nightmares – and he could sense the total lack of interest in the question. And maybe even the hope that no, he was not doing alright.

             
“Great,” he deadpanned.

             
A moment hung between them, glittering with sharp, wicked things – knives and needles and subtle, smooth threats. Walt was the oldest, the first to be successful, Mom and Dad’s little man. Mike was understood as the family asshole, but Walt had a leg-up on his younger brother and no one seemed to know it.