September Rain Bk 2, Savor The Days Series (14 page)

“What did you talk about in your
session today?” He was always curious about my sessions with Doctor
Williams.

“My mom.” My voice sounded
small.

“So you didn’t talk, then?” I heard
the smile in his voice as he tried to make light of the heavy
subject and was flooded with appreciation for his unending
patience.

Of course, he had no way of knowing
just how dark and difficult it all was. I had never told him much
about my mother, beyond the facts that she died in the accident and
I almost died because she hadn’t buckled me up. I didn’t have to
say how much I loathed bringing it up, he just knew.

“I tried not to.”

“You tell her about me
yet?”

“No.”

He sighed. “I wish you would. What if
I wanted to talk to her?”

I pulled away just enough to look up
into his eyes. “Why would you want to do that?”

He shrugged, setting his half-smoked
cigarette in one corner of his mouth. “To help me understand. I’ve
never been through the stuff you have and—let’s face it—you’re a
walking enigma to me half the time. Is it so bad that I want the
tools to help you?”

“Jake, you already help
me.”

His brow furrowed. “How?”

“By being with me. By caring for me.
That’s all I need, Jake. If I have your love, I don’t need anything
else.”

“You’ve got it. In spades, baby. For
as long as you want.” He reached over and practically pulled me on
top of him.

As his mouth trailed kisses down my
neck, his heat coursed through me. “I’ll always want this.” I
whispered.

He stomped out the butt of his
cigarette and tossed it inside an old coffee can on the corner of
the porch while I reached for the backdoor.

Sitting at the Fosters kitchen table,
Jake locked eyes with me through his lashes. Holding his black
acoustic guitar across his lap, his hair fell forward, not quite
covering his eyes. It gave him a mischievous look that made my
heart sing. As he mindlessly strummed, he talked. He loved to talk,
and he thought better with music.

I often wondered if he thought in song
form. If the notes and melodies that flowed from his fingertips
were just a small part of a massive, never-ending symphony within
his head. It was a very special thing to witness, to be in the
presence of someone who was so inexplicably talented. So anomalous
and unearthly.

“I’ve been tinkering with your song.”
He grinned, but it didn’t touch his eyes. “I think it sounds better
on acoustic. It should be tender, like you.” I don’t know what look
he saw on my face, but he stopped playing.

“You changed my song? But I love my
song.”

“I made it better. Angel, when I first
wrote it, all the feelings were very big and felt like they
happened fast. So, the music was big and fast.” He gestured towards
me, guitar pick in hand. “We still feel very big and intense, but I
want the song to reflect you and me; our soft solidity. That music
is on a different song, now. We’ll play it at the show. My
lyrics—your words—I’m keeping.”

Jake set the pick on the table and
plucked the strings with his fingers. It wasn’t mindless anymore,
but a simple melody. He rocked back and forth with a subtle, joyful
concentration. He straightened one leg out before him, resting his
big boot in front of my opposing chair.

“Just listen. You’ll like
it.”

The tune was soft and sounded happy.
Catchy. I nodded my head with the melody, hoping that he would do
what he did next.

Jake had super powers. When he sang,
time froze. With a single note he could stretch a moment—a simple
pluck of a string or the tightening of a vocal cord—into a
lifetime. As he began to weave his magic my well of emotion
surfaced, blurring his face. The moment was so raw—my love for him
and his gifts so strong and pure, against the words that were so
beautiful. My song was remade. Brand new. I listened closely,
quietly singing along with some of my favorite lines . .
.

The ash in my hand is
remade in golden dust

A smile brings sunlight
along with the lust

The days begin again.
Renewed

I wait for miles and
miles. Nights become skewed

Searching the skies,
cursed with hope

Trying to stand, still on
the ropes

When the music’s loud,
I’ll seek you out

In the crowd, find your
mouth

I’ll call you sweetheart
and you’ll call me king

If I were Adam, you would
be my Eve

My song was light, melodic, and
simple.

“That was beautiful.” I covered my
lips with my fingers.

“Angel?”

I blinked away the choking wet, trying
not to sound so affected. “What’s up?”

“I’m glad you like it, baby.” The
light smile he always carried faded. “Do you remember the promise
we made when we first got together?” He took the instrument from
his lap to set on the dining table.

“Wasn’t there more than
one?”

Jake and I made many promises after
our first night together in his motel room. As I struggled with
landing a new foster family because the last ones kicked me out
when I left to make that show, Jake promised he would help in any
way he could. We promised we’d stay together even if we ended up
far apart.

“We promised to always be honest with
each other.”

“Yeah, I remember.”

It was that major moment in the
drive-thru: Jake had just told me that he loved me and I was
feeling so free, so desperate, I would have built him an altar and
sacrificed myself upon it to have him say it again. When he gave me
those words, a sense of value that rarely impressed itself in me
was birthed and expanded. Oh, I felt like flying. So
high.

And then, I went flying off at the
mouth. I forced a pledge; one that his confidence assured me I
would never have to fulfill. When Jake said my name, “Angel . . .”
it was like a song. He followed with the surprising, stuttering
confession, “I think . . . no, I know. I fucking love
you.”

We weren’t in the throes of any kind
of passion. We were sitting in his dads’ truck, in a line of cars
at the drive-thru burger stand. He had just ordered his
cheeseburger and my milkshake. And he didn’t look like he was
nervous or like he was joking. He looked like he knew exactly what
he was saying, like he’d put a lot of thought into it.

I told him exactly how I felt in that
moment. At first I loved his music, but grew to love him, too,
apart from the miracles he created. And he smiled, thanked me for
my honesty. Then, we promised one another, at my bidding, that
should either one of us ever meet someone else that we wanted more
than who we were involved with, that we would be honest about it.
Because Jake had talked about relationships before—not ours, but in
general—and how they were fundamentally flawed because no one ever
tried to stay honest. He wanted his own relationships to be built
on truth. His parents were divorced. His dad had an affair and he
hated how the lies broke up his family.

So we promised never to lie, no matter
the cost. To always be faithful. Even if that meant one telling the
other they were attracted to someone else, or just plain wanted
something different. Even if it was only for a night. We never
talked about how something like that might be put into practice
because we didn’t know. We just loved day to day and said what we
meant.

Right then, as Jake nervously rubbed a
water stain on Deanna’s kitchen table, reminding me of that
promise, I wondered if I was about to learn a lesson.

“What do you have to be honest about?”
I adjusted myself in the seat across from him.

“I’m worried.”

“About?”

“That girl; the guitar player. Her
name’s Angelica. She’s cool as hell.”

I didn’t like the direction of the
conversation. We’d already talked about her and here he was,
bringing her up again. It made me feel small. “I hear hell is
pretty hot.”

“She’s hot, too.”

He could’ve kicked me in the stomach
and it would have been less jarring. He was looking at the floor
when he said it and I knew why. He didn’t want to see my reaction
to his honest opinion.

“Why are you telling me
this?”

He shook his head and kind of
half-shrugged. “I thought I should say something before you meet
her. You can be insecure sometimes and I don’t want you thinking
I’m keeping secrets.”

My head swirled, trying to separate
the comments from my fear and put them together as I struggled to
stay and talk to him. I wanted to run away, but that wouldn’t solve
anything.

He’d just played my
rewritten song. And now . . .
what?

“So, in the interest of
honesty you’re making sure that I know she’s an excellent
guitarist. And that she’s very cool . . . and good-looking—no you
said ‘
hot.’
She’s
hot
.”
My throat bulged. “Hot enough that Max and Andrew want to bag
her.”

I thought very carefully
before asking my question, but asked anyway. “Do
you
?”

Jakes’ eyebrows drew
together at my serious expression. He took to his feet and walked
around the table. Taking my hand, he bent onto the linoleum and
looked me in the eye. “I’m telling you because she’s the better of
the two guitar players, because if I don’t get my way she
will
end up in my band.
That means I’ll have to spend time with her. That means travelling,
practice and gigs. That affects us.”

It was hard to miss the way he skirted
my question. “Do you, Jake?”

His eyes seemed to shine. “No. I mean
. . . I don’t think so.” He turned quiet and thoughtful. “No. Not
yet, at least.”

I ripped my hands away from him,
shoving back so fast the chair clattered to the floor behind me. My
thoughts raced down the hallway and into the safety of my room. I
wanted to shrink away.

“My turn to be honest: that’s a shitty
reassurance.”

He came at me with both hands,
grasping. I pushed him, tearing myself out and away. “Go home,
Jake.”

I was heading to my room, aiming to
dive into my safe-place. My closet. And curl up into a tiny ball
where I could cry until everything disappeared. But Jake caught me
in the hallway, banding his arms around me, pulling me into his
chest. My back pressed against him. He buried his face in my neck.
The hot feeling of his breath and strength of his arms gave me such
a deep comfort. My resentment crumbled, leaving only the raw
hurt.

“‘
Not
yet’
?” I couldn’t keep my voice from
trembling. “You
expect
to?”

“
That’s not what I
meant.”

“That’s what you said!”

“It just—baby, it came out wrong. I
love you. Please, don’t make me go, baby. I’m sorry.” Jake held me
closer, tightening his hold until I could barely
breathe.

Outwardly, I stilled. Inside, his
confession ripped at my gut. Those two words felt like a tiny
little monster, with huge fangs had crawled into my chest and began
devouring my heart.

I thought about pushing him away, what
that would be like for me: to feel him loosen his grip, to no
longer touch him. And desperation lodged in my throat. I couldn’t
take it, not even the idea of it. I considered how it would make
Jake feel. He’d said he wanted to stay. Who was I kidding, anyway?
When it came to resisting him, I never had a shot. For both our
sakes, I bottled my tears and told him he could stay.

I felt his body relax against mine as
he turned me in his arms. His eyes glistened in the dim light of
the hallway as he lifted and carried me to my room. For the rest of
that night, Jake lavished me with his passionate remorse, trying to
reassure me. But his kisses felt desperate. Mine probably did,
too.

The radio fed the low sounds of
Warrant into the dark surrounding us. Janie Lane was oozing over
heaven and I was sure I’d gotten a peek into hell with those two
words that seemed to cancel out everything else.

“Not yet.”

He held my body, but my mind was
beyond reach, thinking of that girl, wondering what she’d done to
him to make him say that. What did she look like? Where was she
from? But I also knew I would never ask him about her. I really
didn’t want answers. I just wanted to hold onto him as long as I
could, because I had lived without Jake for fifteen years. Now that
I had him, I couldn’t imagine what my life would look like without
him, or that there would ever be a time when I wouldn’t desperately
need him.

“Not yet.”

14

—
Angel

Garfield had it right when he
suggested getting rid of Mondays. That whole weekend stunk. Friday
afternoon with my shrink had gotten the stink-ball going. Then Jake
and his confusing visit.