Inseparable: A New Adult Erotic Romance (2 page)

Jack blinked at her comment in surprise. "We could just talk..."

"Talk about what, Jack?" She could feel the anger rising inside her a little. "You don’t know anything about me, but I can tell we have absolutely nothing in common. You live in this mini-mansion in the ’burbs and I live in a shitty one bedroom apartment with my Mom. You drive a nice new truck and I drive that rusty old Honda. You have a nice job that pays for all this and I work three jobs that still can’t keep me out of the fucking payday loan office. So what did you think we’d talk about, Jack?"

When he didn’t respond, Julie rolled her eyes and turned around. "Fuck this, now I do need a drink."

She stomped back to her car and he followed with a stunned look on his face. "Wait a minute! Julie, wait! I’m sorry, that came out wrong." She kept walking. "Fuck!" He shouted, almost sounding like he was in pain. "Damn it, would you at least let me apologize before you leave?"

She stopped on the other side of the car, looking over the rusted top of her Honda. "Well?"

He looked up and down the street to see if anyone was outside before he continued, which pissed her off even more. He moved closer as if to avoid being overheard, limping noticeably. "Look, I’m sorry for how that came out. I admit to hoping you’d come in, but my offer was genuine, no strings attached, just dinner. Let me make this up to you, please."

"Fine," she said, her eyes twinkling with mischief. "Since I’m just an over-priced babysitter, as your wife shamelessly pointed out to me last night, then why not pay me to babysit you. My rate is five hundred an hour. Is that over-priced enough for you?"

He looked stunned by her response, then a little hurt. "OK, Julie."

She watched him pull out his wallet, and count out five bills. He folded them together and held them out to her. She stared at the money. It was more than she got working for two weeks at Bigger Bounce. Her hand trembled as she reached it. She took the crisp, clean bills, feeling a little light-headed, and instantly regretted it. "Jack, no, I can’t take this. I was just angry. I’m really not that kind of girl."

"I know you aren’t Julie, but you also didn’t deserve me hitting on you like some creepy old man. It was wrong and I regretted it as soon as I said it. Keep the money. I’d rather give it to you than Sophie anyway. Go on and have a nice life," he said slowly, sounding weary, then turned to go back inside.

"I can’t afford a nice life," she whispered, looking at him walking with his head down, limping a little. "Jack, I can’t take this, seriously." She followed him, catching up just as he reached the door. When he turned back he had tears in his eyes.

"Keep it or throw it away, I don’t care, but please, just go away and leave me alone," he said.

The dismissal infuriated her. "Do you know what this is?" she asked, nearly crying herself. "This is more than two weeks of my life, right here. You keep two weeks of my life in your pocket then hand it out when you feel bad. Do you know what that does to me? Christ, I feel worthless enough already, but to find out that someone can just throw away two weeks of my life like nothing. What the fuck is wrong with you?"

He backed up into the house with a wary look on his face as she began to cry angry tears.

"I live in a fucking rat-hole apartment with my fat, drunk mother. I can’t find a good job because no one will hire high school graduates anymore and there’s no way I can afford to go to any kind of college or trade school. My car only works every other week, so I end up spending my hard earned money just getting back to work. There is no path to a nice life for someone like me, Jack!"

She stepped over the threshold into the entryway, shaking the money at him, backing him into his own house.

"You take back your fucking money. I wouldn’t give you rich fucks the satisfaction of believing I could be bought." She threw the money at him and it fluttered to the ground. He had such an odd look on his face as he watched it fall. When he finally spoke again it was barely a whisper.

"She left me. Last month she took the kids and moved out, but I’m the one sitting here in the house she made me buy, surrounded by the broken pieces of my life. Maybe I wasn’t just hitting on you. Maybe, just maybe, five hundred would have been worth it for an hour of someone’s company, even yours. So fuck you and your wounded pride. My life is over."

The quiet words hung there between them, fluttering in her heart like the money had in his hallway, neither one willing to be the first to turn away. The tension grew as the seconds ticked by. Finally he sighed, dismissed her with a wave of his hand, and limped back into the kitchen, leaving a smear of blood from his right foot with every step. She was so confused, she just stood there and watched him go, trying to process what had just happened.

Eventually she realized the blood on the floor meant he had hurt himself, and she felt compelled to go check on him at least. She found him sitting on the back porch, a bottle of whisky on the glass topped table, his feet propped up next to it, swirling the amber liquid in a low glass. She got a paper towel and wet it at the sink, then walked out to where he sat. He didn’t seem to notice her as he stared into the sky, so she looked at the cut on his foot, carefully wiping away the blood with the wet paper towel.

"You have a piece of glass in your foot, Jack. Do you have any antiseptic and bandages?"

He took another sip, but didn’t even acknowledge her. When he didn’t respond, she went through the house looking in bathrooms and medicine cabinets. In the on-suite bathroom, she found a first aid kit under the sink. The closet had been emptied, wire hangers strewn on the floor, with only a small section of men’s clothes remaining on one side. Whatever else might be going on, his wife didn’t take all those clothes on a trip to Grandma’s house.

When she got back he was still in the same spot with the same expression on his face. She opened the first aid kit and got out the hydrogen peroxide, tweezers, and bandages. After sterilizing the tweezers, she carefully pulled the nickel sized piece of glass from his foot. He winced, but otherwise didn’t acknowledge her at all. She poured the hydrogen peroxide into the cut and wiped the excess off with the towel before bandaging his foot and taping it up.

"I’m sorry..." Julie said as she finished, closing the first aid kit. "For everything."

"Thank you." Jack said. "Me too... I mean it."

"I know."

Julie stood silently for a moment. Just as she was going to excuse herself to leave, he spoke again. "Can we please start over?" He looked up at her with such a forlorn expression that she felt herself moved to pity him.

"Yes." She extended her hand. "I’m Julie."

"I’m Jack." He shook her hand with a sad smile.

"I should probably go shut the front door before someone thinks you’ve had a break in."

When she returned from the entryway, she put the money on the counter in the kitchen. She thought about his offer of dinner and opened the refrigerator. He had two steaks sitting on a plate, so she grabbed them and took them to the patio along with the salt and pepper shakers.

He was still sipping his whisky while Julie fumbled around with the knobs on the grill. Eventually she figured it out and got the fire going and she noticed he had a sad smile. She dropped the steaks on to sizzle, and then sprinkled a little salt and pepper on top.

Julie took the plate back in and sat it in the sink. As she opened drawers to find tongs of some kind to turn the steaks, Jack limped in and began to pull out the ingredients for a salad, letting her figure out on her own where things were.

Eventually, the layout of the kitchen began to make sense as she pulled out two clean plates, silverware, napkins, and took them out to set the patio table. He brought out the salad bowl and a long roll of French bread wrapped in foil, putting the bread on top of the grill to warm.

By the time they sat down to eat, she had drunk two cold beers and was feeling more relaxed. Their quiet preparation time seemed to let them get comfortable around each other. Jack broke the silence as they started to eat.

"So, you mentioned you had a strained relationship with your mother," he prompted dryly. It took a moment for her to realize he was trying to be funny. When it hit her she gave him a chuckle.

"Cute. Yeah, my mom is something else. She works in a pawn shop all day and then drinks her share of rent at the bar next door every night. She used to be a looker, but too many years of sitting on her ass behind a counter have taken their toll. Now when I get into a Yo Momma joke contest, I always lose because most of it is true." He snorted at her comment and continued chewing on his steak.

"I never knew my dad, but as little as she has said over the years, I’m not sure she did either. It’s weird when I think about it, but I am probably just the union of my mom and some guy who couldn’t do any better at closing time." She tried to say it in a light hearted way, but it still stung. "Mom has a sister, but they haven’t spoken since before I can remember. And that wraps up the whole family tree for me. What about you?"

"Well, my parents are still together out in Louisiana. We are what you call coonasses out that way, on both sides of the family. I grew up on the bayou, fishing with my grandfather and eating things you probably wouldn’t believe. I have four older brothers and three older sisters, all of whom are jealous that Mom likes me best, especially Laurie." Jack made a face when he said his sister’s name.

He took a drink of beer before continuing. "I come from a huge family with lots of cousins, uncles, and aunts; around fifty immediate kin. We still get together on holidays, throw these huge outdoor parties with a zydeco band playing and crawfish on the boil. My wife never cared much for them, a little too low class for her. They could tell she was stuck up about it, which caused me no end of grief from Mom."

"So what happened with your wife?" Julie realized she actually wanted to know. He didn’t seem quite as big an asshole now as she had assumed at first.

"I honestly don’t know. I mean, I admit I screwed up, but this almost feels like I’m getting a death sentence for littering. Sophie won’t even let me spend time with the girls at this point. She has told all our friends things about our marriage that I never would have said about her if the situations were reversed."

"Jack, I have to tell you, for someone who just met Sophie yesterday, she is a real bitch."

"Yeah, it bothered me the way she spoke to you. That was part of the reason I was hoping you’d come in. I really did want to make it up to you."

Julie couldn’t stop herself asking the obvious question. "How the hell did a nice guy like you end up with her?"

Jack sighed. "My Mom asked me the same question from the very beginning. I met Sophie in college. I was studying marketing and business management and she was just taking classes until she could decide on a major. We met at some fraternity mixer and just hit it off. We started dating, and it seemed like the next thing I knew she had picked out a ring. I had to take a job offshore with my uncle over that last summer to get the money for it, but I thought it was worth it when I gave it to her at Christmas." He looked down with a sad smile.

"Wait, you were able to afford that rock she had on while you were still in college? Holy shit, did she ever play you."

"What do you mean?"

"I’ve known girls like her, Jack. Let me guess, she ended up not finishing her degree."

"Yeah, but she didn’t really need to."

"Exactly. She wasn’t going to school for an education, Jack, she was going to school for a husband. I saw that rock on her finger. You spent, what, ten grand on that? While you were still in college?"

He looked a little embarrassed. "Closer to fifteen."

Julie whistled.

"It wasn’t like that! We really loved each other then. After school I got a job working for this big oil field equipment company. I started out doing sales and found out I had a real knack for it. The CEO Mike Phillips said I was a natural and put me over most of the big customers in the south and southeast."

"So what happened?"

"I just couldn’t seem to get ahead. Sophie was pushing me to try and get into management, but honestly I’m a better salesman than a manager. I like building the relationships with the customers and being out of the office, but it seemed like no matter how much I earned there were always more bills. When she finally got pregnant with Jen, I thought it would slow things down a little, but if anything it got worse. By the time Lisa was born, we were actually carrying balances on the credit cards with nothing in the bank."

"I’m not even going to ask what you earned, but that doesn’t sound right to me."

"I went through our accounts and expenses all the time. The numbers added up, but there was just nothing left. I started asking her to cut down on things we didn’t need, to put the girls into a less expensive preschool, but she would argue with me about it until all we did was fight."

"Wow." Julie had the feeling that Sophie was playing a deeper game than Jack realized. She put down her utensils and reached over to pat his arm. "Now I think I understand why you might want to trade with me. I’m so sorry for what you are going through."

"Look, I have to tell you, it’s been really nice having you over for dinner, misunderstandings aside. My plan before I heard your message was to drink most of this bottle of scotch and then sleep where I fell. This has already been a definite step up from that. I really appreciate you talking to me."

Julie found herself wondering why any woman would throw away a perfectly good guy like Jack. He wasn’t as depressing to be around as she’d feared, just a little down and out, which made her want to take care of him. Besides, the slight beer buzz she had going was making her start to imagine what he looked like naked. She decided to roll the dice and see what happened.

Her expression softened into a kind smile and she touched his cheek. He surprised her by shutting his eyes and kissing her open palm. They both stood at the same time as Jack drew her into his arms.

Their first kiss was electric, tingling along from her hair to her toes. She opened her mouth to his tongue teasing along her lips. They kissed for a long time, hands moving slowly to caress, swaying to music only they seemed to hear. She was warming up nicely when he suddenly pulled back to look at her. "I, uh... I’m not sure I can do this."