Keep You (5 page)

7

Now

             
T-minus one week until the departure for Ireland and Jo was ridiculously happy that her big sister was in town. Jessica was a study in practicality. She was a peacemaker, she gave everyone a fair shake, she always rooted for the good guy, but her exterior was so smoothly composed, so cool and austere, that she was oftentimes mistaken for a bitch. A beautiful bitch. She didn’t seem to mind. And had confided once that she enjoyed the fact that no one could ever point out a single bitchy thing she’d said. “People don’t take bluntness well,” she always said, and it was true.

             
Jo was sitting upside down in their dad’s recliner; her ass in the seat, legs propped up against the back, head dangling off the front, her dirty blonde hair pooling on the carpet beneath like a shiny puddle of corn oil. Jess was in a black and white velour tracksuit, cross-legged in the middle of the floor, sorting through a three-ring binder in which she was stowing all their passports and emergency medical information. Her two-year-old son Tyler played with a set of jumbo, un-swallow-able plastic cars beside her, making cute little engine noises.

             
Jess flipped a laminated page and made a clicking sound against her teeth. “Now we just need the tickets,” she said, glancing up from her task, tucking a strand of pale blonde hair behind her ear. Jess had one of those well-defined faces: the high cheekbones and elegant nose, the gracefully arched brows. And even without makeup, she was enviable. “Michael has them?” she asked.

             
Jo nodded and heard her hair rustle. “Or so he says. He was trying to pick seats in a block so we’re all together on the plane.”

             
“Good, good. When’s he bringing them over?”

             
“Ha!”

             
One of Tyler’s cars went zooming across the carpet and Jess caught it and turned it back to her kid without even looking. “What?” She frowned. “He is bringing them, yes? They need to go in the notebook. I’m putting everything in the notebook.”

             
“Well, I can guarantee he won’t bring them by tonight.”

             
Jess glanced out through the window between the bookcase and the mantle and frowned at the gray-going-indigo sky that heralded nightfall. “We have our final dress fittings tomorrow and then we still have to find shoes for you, pick up the cake for Tuesday.” Tuesday was their mother’s birthday. “And then we…” she sighed. “I really want those tickets.”

             
There was time between now and the day of departure for the tickets to make it from Mike’s townhouse to Jess’s notebook, but Jess tended to be obsessive about this sort of thing. “You want me to go get them?”

             
“No, that’s okay.” But Jess didn’t sound convincing.

             
In truth, Jo wouldn’t mind the trip down to Buckhead and back – the house had become that chaotic. Jess and Dylan lived in Buckhead, close to Dylan’s office, and seeing as how that was an hour’s drive at maximum, there was no need for them to stay overnight. But Jess, stay at home mom that she was, didn’t want to waste her time traveling. She and Tyler had taken up residence in Walt’s old room and Dylan had commuted up to spend the night with them.  Jo had arrived home from work to a cacophony of sound: Tyler crying, Dylan laughing with her dad, the TV roaring, Beth insisting she didn’t need help in the kitchen.

             
The Braves scored another run and Randy, Dylan and Jordan nearly came to their feet, cheering. Tyler’s eyes went big as saucers in fright, little hand frozen on one of his cars, lip starting to quiver.

             
“Baby,” Jess admonished, and all three men said “sorry” in unison.

             
The caged dogs at the clinic had been quieter than all this. And Jo had grown up in a large family; she should have been dead to the noise by now. She attributed the unusual amount of stress to her unusual amount of worry over this building eruption that was Mt. St. Wedding.

             
Jo sat up and righted herself in the chair. Her dad’s eyes caught her movement and she thought he looked hopeful that she was on her way out and he could reclaim his chair. “Do you want the tickets tonight?” she asked her sister.

             
Jess chewed at her lip a moment, but nodded. “You shouldn’t go alone. I could get Dylan to go with you - ”

             
“The alone time will be good,” Jo assured. “I’ll be fine.”

**

              “Can you get that?”

             
“Please God, yes,” Tam sighed. He chucked the fluffy yellow bath towel he was holding onto Mike’s bed with disgust and left the room before this situation could become somehow more awkward. Delta had sent over the bedroom and bathroom stuff for the townhouse’s makeover and because she wanted it move-in ready – because apparently décor was a major problem that prevented living – Mike was setting everything up himself. Which meant watching the game had turned into watching Mike, and then helping Mike, with bath towels and fancy soaps. The chime of the doorbell could not have been more welcome.

             
“Hey, bring up the sheets when you come back,” Mike called down the stairs.

             
Tam shook his head as he crossed the narrow, hardwood floored foyer. “What the hell do I look like?” he yelled over his shoulder as he twisted the knob and started to open the door. It swung inward with a rush of summer night air, bringing with it the smells of car exhaust and Japanese beetle trap baits. “Your maid…”

             
His throat closed up and his voice quit working. Jo stood on the brick stoop, turquoise eyes goggle wide, looking just as shocked to see him as he was to see her.

             
In the moment that his lungs refused to work and he stood stupidly staring at her in the open doorway, his eyes did a quick inventory. She was in holey jeans that had gone soft after years of washings, a loose, clinging pale green t-shirt, her purse slung over her shoulder. Her hair was up in a messy ponytail, one golden brown lock, curling in the humidity, lightly brushing the side of her face.

             
She looked absolutely beautiful and it caused him physical pain.

             
“Hi.” He spoke first.

             
Her mouth twitched to the side in an unhappy little frown. “Is Mike here?”

             
“Yeah.”

             
“Can I come in?”

             
“Oh.” He felt like a dumbass and stepped aside so she could walk past him. She smelled slightly of shampoo…dog shampoo, which didn’t deter him from checking out her ass. “Yeah. He’s upstairs. I’ll get him.”

             
Jo nodded and moved past him toward the living room. She didn’t so much as glance at him.

             
Feeling a bit like a deflated balloon, Tam trudged back up the narrow staircase and returned to the bedroom that was rapidly becoming a shrine to the color yellow. Mike stepped out of the bathroom, one of those godforsaken towels slung over his shoulder. “You bring the sheets?”

             
“No.”

             
“I asked you - ”

             
“Your sister’s here.”

             
Tam thought he’d done quite a good job of not giving anything away with his voice – he’d been the man who walked away from the poker table the other night carrying more money than he’d brought – and was glad of it because as much as he valued Mike’s friendship, the poor bastard was so self-focused he’d never so much as wondered if there was anything going on between Tam and Jo.

             
“Which one?” he asked, frowning.

             
The amazing one
. “Jo.”

             
“What’s she want?”

             
“No idea.”

             
“Go ask her, will you? I’m having a…shower organizer situation.”

             
And since that wasn’t anything Tam wanted in the middle of, he went back downstairs.

             
The staircase emptied into the foyer across from the formal sitting room that was now being used to house Delta’s shit. From there, a narrow hall led to the galley kitchen that adjoined the sizable living room/poker area via a half wall that dripped wine glasses and allowed a view into the neighboring room and through the wide bank of windows out into the night. Tam paused a moment in the kitchen, stealing a glance through the open half of the half-wall as he pulled two beers from the fridge.

             
She was sitting on the larger of the two white sofas Delta had brought, her legs crossed at the knees, one bright orange sneaker bobbing in the air. Her back was ramrod straight and she still had her purse strap over her shoulder as she picked at the hole in the knee of her jeans; she was not comfortable here. But ambient city light beyond the windows created a dazzling backdrop that highlighted the natural gold streaks in her hair, and offered sharp contrast to her creamy little face.

             
So many people thought – and hell, he’d thought it when they were all much younger – that Jessica was the pretty sister. She was very classical. But Jo had a pixie face; a little slip of a nose and a gentle softness about her features. Those big, luminous eyes he’d always liked because they were so different. He knew her – she was his Joey – and she was always going to be gorgeous in his eyes, even if she hated him.

             
His mission was simple: ask her what she needed from Mike and then scamper back upstairs like a good boy, but that wasn’t what he wanted to do. He twisted the tops off the Bud Lights and prepared himself for the aloof glance she’d shoot his way as he stepped into the living room.

             
“Beer?” he asked, and she shook her head in the negative, turning her head so she faced the poker table and not him as he sank down onto the love seat opposite her.

             
Tam ignored the snub and set the second beer across from her on Delta’s blonde wood coffee table, sans coaster despite the neat stack of heart-shaped coasters right in front of him. “Did you drive all the way from home?”

             
She nodded.

             
He took a healthy swig of beer. “What for?”

             
Her head turned toward him slowly and her withering look would have been enough to freeze out any sane man. Lucky for Tam, he had never been sane, and he knew there was nothing frigid about this girl. He’d been the one to end things. He’d broken her heart, and she had no idea his own heart was a shattered ruin in his chest because of what he’d done.

             
“I need the plane tickets for next weekend,” she said in a flat voice. “Is he coming down?”

             
“I can go get the tickets.”

             
“You don’t have to do that.”

             
Tam swirled his beer around in its bottle and held her gaze, waiting, silently pleading her façade would crack and she’d flash him even just a hint of one of those smiles he missed so much.             

             
“I’ll go get them,” he said at last.

             
Mike couldn’t remember where he’d left the tickets and it took a good five minutes rummaging through his briefcase to find them. By the time he fished them out, he was issuing a steady stream of profanity and nearly ripped up the boarding passes he’d printed off at work on flimsy copy paper. “One of those sons of bitches is yours,” he said as he handed them over.

             
Tam folded up what he needed and stuck it in his back pocket before making the descent again.

             
Jo was holding her beer in one hand, a heart-shaped coaster in the other. “Is this table Delta’s?” she asked without looking up.

             
Tam grinned. “Yeah.”

             
Deliberately, Jo set the coaster back in its stack and set her beer down on the bare wood, in a new place, sure to leave two water rings on its pale surface. He chuckled and it drew her eyes up, just a quick flutter of her lashes and she was staring at him. For the barest of seconds, he registered pain in their depths, but then it was gone, walled off from him, stowed in a place where he couldn’t touch it.

             
She was gone. No longer the object of his obsession, no longer in his bed. And worst of all, no longer his friend. He hadn’t thrown away her adult love on that horrible afternoon when he’d told her they couldn’t work; he’d thrown away their childhood, their football games, their swims and lazy afternoons. He hadn’t just lost the kisses and caresses and sighs, but the smiles, the laughs, the bets and challenges too. They were polite strangers. Like nothing had ever existed between them save a passing nod that was only appropriate between a man’s friend and sister.