The Davis Years (Indigo) (2 page)

Interrupting Jemma’s thoughts, Emily Rose said, “Still, these things are times for friends and family. You should have seen how many people came to see Michael get his MBA in May.”

Family. Ha. Her education had never been important to Lynette. The woman had stopped paying attention to her grades somewhere around the sixth grade. “Tell me more about Michael. He’s coming from New York, right?” Jemma said. “He had to stay up there a few extra days?”

“Yeah, he’s been busy with interviews since a little before graduation.” Emily Rose looked up from the bridal magazine she’d been flipping through. “It must be nice to have a job already, huh?”

Jemma nodded. She’d told Emily Rose about the job she’d been offered with a small PR and consulting firm in Jacksonville, Florida. She was starting as assistant director right out of college. Earlier that year, the director had decided to retire and the assistant director was taking her position. They’d liked her work as an intern so much the previous summer, they’d asked her if she wanted to take the assistant director position. That summer of working as an unpaid intern during the day and working retail at night to pay her rent had been worth it. Her new job started in about a month. Just enough time to see Emily Rose get married, take care of the other thing she needed to do, and say her goodbyes to Derring for good.

“I’m still looking for a teaching job, but I dunno. I’m not that excited to be moving to New York for good, you know?” Emily Rose said with a little frown. “I mean, I love Michael and I’d go anywhere for him, but still . . .”

“Yeah. I know,” Jemma said, but she didn’t. She didn’t see why anybody who had the opportunity to get out of Derring wouldn’t jump at it. Then again, Emily Rose’s Derring experience had been different from her own. “How’s Wendell?” she asked, sipping her sweet tea. “You said you guys keep in touch.”

“He’s doing well. He’s in law school at Howard. He’s staying in D.C. this summer. He has some sort of law internship up there. He and his girlfriend are coming to the wedding.”

“Oh, he’s dating someone?” That was good. Wendell had never dated in high school. She was probably part of the reason why, but she didn’t like to think about that. The way her friendship with Wendell had soured before she left was yet another disaster of her past. She’d been good at making a mess of things.

“Yeah, her name is Stephanie. You’ll meet her at the rehearsal dinner.”

Jemma wanted to ask more about him and how he’d been, but she didn’t feel like she had any right to do that. He’d taken the fact that Jemma had abandoned them much harder than Emily Rose had—on the outside at least. He’d refused to even say goodbye to her.

She cleared her throat. She knew asking her next question would make things more awkward, but she had to ask it.

“And how’s, um, Davis?” she asked. “Do you ever see him? Around? When you’re here?” They just stared at each other for a long moment, both no doubt going back to their painful junior year of high school.

Finally, Emily Rose cleared her throat and said, “Jemma, Davis hasn’t been doing so great since—well, for a long time.”

“What do you mean?”

“After he lost his scholarship—”

“He lost his lacrosse scholarship?”

“Yeah. He messed up his knee really badly. He can still walk and stuff, but no more lacrosse.”

“Oh.”

“He dropped out of school pretty much right after that. He moved back home after staying with his brother in Pennsylvania a few months. He was taking care of his dad until a little while ago. His dad had a lot of health issues.”

“But he hates his dad.”

“He hates everything. He works at that restaurant near the truck stop. You know, the one near the interstate? Well, this week. He seems to get fired a lot. That place is the only one that’s been willing to re-hire him. So he’s been there off and on for a while.”

“Why does he get fired a lot?”

“I dunno. Attitude? Not showing up for work? He seems to have both of those problems.”

“Oh.”

Emily Rose was quiet after that.

Jemma bit her lower lip, thinking of the last time she’d seen Davis. She’d been walking away from him. Something she’d once thought impossible. “Why did you say ‘was’? You kept talking about Davis’s dad in the past tense just now.”

Emily Rose sat back in her chair and slid her plate back and forth between her hands a few times. “He died a few months ago. Single car accident. He wrapped his car around a tree. They say his blood alcohol level was through the roof.”

“Really?” She wondered how Davis had taken that. Even though he and his dad had never really gotten along, it must have been hard. It had been for her. She’d gone through conflicting feelings of anger and loss when Lynette had died six years ago in an apartment fire. A fire Lynette herself had caused.

Davis rolled over and squinted at his alarm clock. He groaned. Three in the afternoon. He was getting too used to sleeping the day away since his father was no longer able to wake him with his hacking cough or by shouting at him about paying some bill, being late with his rent, or drinking his dad’s beer. Like Davis drank beer. Waste of time. When he drank, he got right to the point.

He thought of the months he’d spent taking care of a man who hated him and had all but tried to kill him when he was younger. Irony didn’t begin to cover it.

Neither one of them had liked the other very much.

He sat up and rubbed his fingers over his eyelids. His mouth was so dry that swallowing took real effort. The phone rang and he winced at the sound. Reaching for it, he knocked an empty whiskey bottle from his night stand.

“Hello,” he mumbled, blinking his eyes against the sunlight filtering through his window blinds.

“Hi,” Codie said. She was amazing. It was almost painful to keep in touch with her because she’d done so much with her life and he’d done so little with his. Still, he couldn’t imagine life without her.

“ ‘Sup?” Davis asked with a yawn.

“Davis. Please don’t tell me you just woke up.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s nearly dinner time.”

“Okay. I won’t tell you then.”

“So, how are things?” Codie tried to sound casual, but he knew better. She’d called almost every day since the funeral. And they’d buried his dad four months ago. It was his own fault. Stupid drunk. Davis refused to let himself feel badly about it.

“Same old, same old. How about you? How’s work going?” Codie had taken a year off after graduating from U Penn’s Wharton School to work for Americorps, and now she had a shiny new job on Wall Street complete with all the bells and whistles. Even with the slump in the economy, Codie hadn’t been at a loss for job offers. Davis had always thought of her as a force of nature. Whenever he said something about that, she laughed him off and told him she was nothing extraordinary.

“Just loving it. I can’t believe they’re letting me do so much. I just graduated.”

“I’m sure they’re ecstatic to have your slave labor. I mean, you graduated top of your class from U Penn. Why wouldn’t they drool all over you?”

“Anyway, what’s going on with you? What’s new? You’re not getting off the hook that easily.”

Davis took a deep breath. He didn’t want to talk about it, but he needed to tell Codie because she’d understand. “Jemma’s back in town.”

“What’s she doing there? How long has she been there?”

“Um, I dunno. I’d guess she’s back here for Emily Rose’s wedding.”

“Haven’t you talked to her yet?”

“Nah. She came over yesterday, but I pretended I wasn’t home.”

“What? Why?”

“I guess because I don’t know—what to say to her.”

“After the way you guys left things? The way you talk about her? Like she’s the one that got away or something?”

“We never really dated.”

“I know that, but you know what I mean. I would have thought you’d fling the door open and grab her.”

“I’m not the guy I was then. And I wasn’t a great guy then. But at least I wasn’t a loser.”

“I don’t think you’re one now. And I don’t think Jemma would, either.”

“Codie, I live in my dad’s house and I might be homeless if my brothers decide they want to come down here and start stirring things up. I’m a server, and not a very good one, at a crappy restaurant and I just—I suck.” Davis stared at the ceiling, thinking about how true his words were.

Seth, the attorney he’d hired with the life insurance money, kept trying to call him about the house, but Davis couldn’t bring himself to return the calls. He was afraid Seth would tell him that his brothers’ attorneys had finally gotten in touch with Seth’s office. And that they wanted to sell the house. He didn’t trust his brothers. They wouldn’t care if he had nowhere to go. Sure, he hadn’t seen or heard from them since the funeral, but they could attack without warning. They’d done it before. And with the way they had easily deserted him, leaving him alone to grow up in that house with their father, obviously they didn’t give a crap about what happened to him.

And since he didn’t want to deal with any of that, he hadn’t called Seth back yet.

Codie’s voice interrupted his thoughts and brought him back to their conversation. “You should at least talk to her. As much as you beat yourself up over what happened, don’t you think you should do that at least?”

“Maybe,” Davis said, trying to get Codie to drop it more than anything.

After they said their goodbyes, he rolled over onto his stomach and buried his face in his sheets. He knew Codie was right even though he didn’t want her to be.

As soon as he closed his eyes, the memory hit him hard. He’d hurt Jemma so much. He could see the wounded expression on her face when he’d turned her away for what they’d both thought had been forever. At the time, that was what he’d thought he wanted. Only later, when it was too late, would he realize that telling her he didn’t want a relationship with her had been the stupidest thing he’d ever done. And that was saying a lot considering he had no shortage of stupid actions stored up in his file of memories labeled “dumb stuff I shouldn’t have done.”

Davis walked outside barefoot to get the mail after throwing on a pair of basketball shorts. He limped slightly. There was a dull ache in his right knee that never seemed to go away. He’d been out of physical therapy for months. It was never going to get any better than it already had. He had the painkillers his doctor prescribed, but he didn’t like to mess with those too much.

Of course his crappy job didn’t offer health insurance, but his brother, Cole, paid for it. Davis knew it was probably out of guilt. The health insurance was the only contact they had, if you could call that contact. Whenever payment was due on the plan, Cole would send Davis a check. No note included. Just a check wrapped in a blank piece of white paper. Outside of a few hints both Cole and Davis’s other brother, Ashby, had made at the funeral about selling the house possibly being a good idea, he hadn’t talked to either of them in a long time.

Thinking of his brothers seemed to make his knee hurt more. There was only so much he could do about that. The pills made him completely useless when he took them so he couldn’t rely on them. The alcohol helped everything, but he was afraid of turning into his father.

He stopped himself from rolling his eyes as his neighbor, Ayn, who was home from college for the summer, came up to him in a crop top and cut-off gym shorts. Her belly button ring glinted in the sun. Ayn’s family had moved in next door a few years ago. She had long, black hair and green eyes and was about a foot shorter than him. Her short nose fit well into her round face. Sure, she was pretty, but also annoying. He tried to avoid her most of the time because she asked too many questions.

Ayn greeted him with a question.

“So, Davis, this black woman was knocking on your door yesterday. You were home, but you didn’t answer. Is she a Jehovah’s Witness?”

“Yeah,” Davis said.

She followed him down to the mailbox.

“She wasn’t dressed like one.”

That’s for sure
, Davis thought, smiling at the memory of Jemma’s legs. He’d watched her through the living room window. Her jean miniskirt and tank top had nearly been enough to make him run outside to her. But remembering how much of a loser he was cut that idea short.

“Who is she, Davis?” Ayn put her hands on top of the mailbox and leaned in closer.

“It’s a long story.” Davis backed away a little and started flipping through the envelopes. A couple of bills and the rest junk mail.

“Is there a short version?” Ayn raised her eyebrows and followed him up his driveway.

He paused at the steps leading up to his front door and turned to her. “Sure.” He grinned as he reflected on Codie’s words. “She’s the one that got away.”

“Really?” Ayn seemed to find this a perplexing thought. Her expression told Davis so.

“Oh, yeah.”

“You never said anything about a one that got away before.” Ayn stood next to the door, scrunching her eyebrows up in confusion, yet her eyes were bright with that eager look she always got when she thought she was getting hold of a good piece of gossip.