Dreamspinner Press Year Seven Greatest Hits Page 47

  I blinked at her, confused. Jeremy called the Sow’s Ear and got a waitress to personally deliver me food? What the hell and why? “I didn’t think the Sow’s Ear delivered.”

  “Well, we don’t, but I owed Jeremy a favor.” She covered the rest of the distance between us and held out the container.

  I took it, catching a whiff of barbecue sauce from beneath the lid. “Um, thank you.”

  “So you’re selling everything?” she asked with a sweep of her hand.

  “Everything that isn’t trash.”

  “Not staying in Franklin, then?”

  “No. I plan to leave once my business here is done.”

  “Does Jeremy know that?”

  The question threw me, and I stumbled for a response. “Sure. We’ve talked about it.”

  She didn’t seem convinced, and I got the impression she was trying to not say something. She’d eyeballed us the other night at dinner. Had she dated Jeremy? Was this just jealous ex-girlfriend behavior? Not that she had anything to be jealous about if she was his ex-girlfriend.

  “Well, good luck with your work, then,” she said.

  “Thanks. And thank you for lunch.”

  “No problem.”

  She walked back to her truck and paused at the open door before climbing in and starting the engine. The entire encounter unnerved me, and I couldn’t figure out why. I had a dozen new questions floating around in my head, wanting answers, and every single one of them connected back to Jeremy and his presence in Franklin—a town no one moved to without good reason.

  I settled on the hood of my car to eat my barbecued brisket sandwich. The sweet potato fries were almost cold but still delicious, and I washed it all down with bottled tap water. The last two hours of trashing and hauling passed quickly, and then the familiar sound of the van rumbled up the driveway. Jeremy left the engine idling and came over to inspect the dumpster just as I tossed another bag into it.

  “You got a lot done,” he said. “I swear that porch was empty yesterday.”

  “It was, but I’ve made it about six feet inside the living room.”

  “That’s good.” The tension from this morning was still there, but his smile seemed genuine. Like he really was glad to see me.

  I was definitely glad to see him. “Thank you for lunch. You didn’t have to do that.”

  He shrugged. “I wanted to. I felt bad about bailing on you.”

  “You didn’t bail. It’s fine.”

  “The good news is I have money for you.” He pulled an envelope out of his pocket and held it out. “Another two hundred for some bike parts, plus I have a guy who wants to come out and look at some things on Monday. If you’re okay with that.”

  “Come out here? To the house?” The idea of more strangers seeing this disaster made my stomach churn.

  “The house is ideal, but only if that’s okay with you.”

  Dozens, if not hundreds of people would see the place when we finally had the auction. I might as well get over that particular neurosis as soon as possible. “No, the house is fine.”

  “Okay. You ready to go?”

  “Definitely.”

  A few minutes later, I settled into the van’s bucket seat, grateful for the warmth after a long day in the cold. I considered asking Jeremy about his day, but that seemed like prying. Or like I really wasn’t okay with him not being at the house and I was poking for information on his whereabouts. While I was definitely curious, it wasn’t my business.

  We hadn’t talked a lot when we worked at the house, but I still missed his presence, knowing he was close by. I didn’t want our precious few minutes together to end just yet. Mouth dry, heart pounding, I finally screwed up the courage to ask him at the edge of town. “Can I cash in that rain check for dinner, or do you have plans?”

  Jeremy glanced at me, eyebrows arched high, and I instantly regretted the question. He was young, good-looking, and it was Friday night. Obviously, he had plans and just needed to find a polite way to—

  “Sure you can,” he replied. “I have some stuff in the freezer I can throw together, if you aren’t in a huge hurry.”

  I blinked. Him cooking me dinner wasn’t what I meant, but the idea had merit. Even if it was just between friends. I hadn’t had a good friend who wasn’t a sex partner in so long, I wasn’t quite sure what to do with him. “Not in a hurry at all,” I said.

  “Terrific.”

  His house was as immaculate as during my first visit, the only slight difference a small pile of mail on the kitchen island. Jeremy went straight to the refrigerator and began pulling things out onto the counter.

  “Anything you’re allergic to?” he asked over his shoulder. “I’d hate to accidentally poison you.”

  “No allergies.”

  “Good. My eyeballs itch when I eat mangoes, but other than that, I’m pretty open to anything.”

  I watched him move around his kitchen, positive I’d heard him wrong. I couldn’t have heard the additional inflection on the words open to anything. Just my imagination getting too hopeful. I sat at the counter while he worked, more interested in observing him than the food he was cutting and adding to a frying pan. He moved with grace, totally at ease with his work space and his cooking abilities.

  My own cooking skills were nothing to sneeze at. I’d perfected quite a few pasta dishes over the years, because they were Martin’s favorites, and I was pretty good at charring meat on a grill. Sometimes I missed cooking for other people—just not for one person in particular. I missed absolutely nothing about him, and I never would.

  With food in the pan, Jeremy breezed by and sorted through the mail with one hand, his spatula in the other. He pushed a few envelopes aside after checking return addresses. I didn’t look until he returned to the stove to stir what smelled like sizzling beef. Bills, junk mail, a takeout menu, and a magazine. He hadn’t bothered to cover up the title of the magazine, and I stared at it.

  Jeremy read Out. And he’d left it visible on purpose.

  My thoughts fuzzed out, filling my head with white noise. The island top blurred as a sense of imminent disaster consumed me. Then Jeremy was there, hand reaching for mine. I snatched my hand back, startled, and blinked at him. He stared back at me, confused.

  “Are you okay?” he asked. “You spaced out for a bit.”

  “Sorry, yeah, fine. What?”

  He tilted his head. “I asked if you wanted anything to drink.”

  “Oh. Yes, please.” I sounded like an absolute idiot.

  You are an absolute idiot. Martin’s voice was back.

  “I have water, sweet tea, orange juice, and beer.”

  The shadow of a beer bottle swinging down at my head startled me right off my stool, which fell backward with a loud thunk. Crap, Jeremy was going to think I was some kind of mental case if I didn’t get my act together. I set the stool right, then clutched the leather in both hands, grateful it and the island were still between us.

  “Cole?”

  “I’m sorry.” Lame, but all I could manage.

  “Did something happen today?” While I wasn’t there seemed to hang on the end of his question.

  The truth surged forward, and God, it would be nice to finally tell someone who wasn’t being paid to listen to my issues. To tell him why I was jumpy, distant, and occasionally acted like a fool. But we barely knew each other, and Jeremy didn’t need me dumping all my personal garbage on him. “Same as any other day,” I replied.

  “So how come just now you acted like I was going to hit you?”

  “Maybe I should go.”

  He threw his hands up in a gesture of surrender. “I don’t want you to leave. You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to say.”

  “Then I’d rather not talk about it.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “Water’s fine.”

  “Okay.”

  He poured a glass from a filtered pitcher. I gulped down half the water while I tried to get my spinning thoug
hts back on track. My reaction to just the mention of beer was beyond ridiculous, proving once again that trying to have friends was impossible. PTSD was a pain in the ass, flaring up at unexpected times, especially around people who didn’t understand why. People I didn’t want to explain it to. I didn’t want to see the looks on their faces when I told them how long I’d stayed because I was too afraid to leave.

  I hated seeing the pity. I couldn’t handle it from Jeremy too.

  We didn’t talk while he finished cooking. He plated some kind of vegetable stir-fry with strips of minute steak mixed in, all over rice I hadn’t even seen him make. He plunked bottles of soy sauce and rice vinegar on the island between our plates, then sat down with his own dinner and a glass of sweet tea. I spared a moment to be silently grateful he hadn’t gone for a beer, then tasted the concoction.

  The vegetables were still crisp, the meat perfectly cooked, and everything had just enough flavor to stay interesting. Even the rice was salted just right. “This is excellent,” I said. “I’m amazed you pulled it together so fast.”

  “I work such odd hours that I’ve figured out a lot of shortcuts. Stir-fries are remarkably easy. And it’s good cold for breakfast, believe it or not.”

  “I’ve always considered cold pizza to be an underappreciated breakfast food.”

  He chuckled around a mouthful. “Agreed.”

  “I’m still impressed you got Bethann to come all the way out to my house on her lunch break.”

  “She owed me one this time. We’re forever trading favors back and forth.”

  “You’re friends, then?” I paused in eating, half-afraid he’d tell me they were dating.

  “We’ve been friends quite a few years now. She told me you were in the same grade as her sister.”

  “Yeah, Lulu. I didn’t realize who Bethann was until today.”

  “Were you friends?”

  “With Lulu?” At his nod, I continued. “Not really. Growing up wasn’t so bad at first, but the older I got, the weirder my parents got, and the more I stuck out. My friends pulled away, stopped wanting to hang out with me. I was just that crazy Alston kid. It was pretty lonely, actually.”

  Isolation in my teen years had made Martin’s attention and quick acceptance of me a drug that I craved from our very first hookup. He offered me love with no strings—at first.

  “I’m sorry if it’s a sore subject,” Jeremy said.

  “It’s not really, not anymore.” I cleared my throat. “So does Lulu still live around here?”

  Jeremy’s fork scraped across his plate, and the screech made my teeth ache. He gave me an apologetic smile. “No. Lulu died a long time ago.”

  “Shit, that sucks.” I was putting my foot in it all over the place.

  “How could you know? You left town and never looked back.” Despite the words, Jeremy didn’t sound annoyed or accusing. Just stating a fact.

  He was right too. I hadn’t thought about anyone in Franklin, except my parents, for ten years. Jeremy, who’d only been here a few years, probably knew more about the townsfolk than I’d forgotten. I cast about for a change of conversation and decided to poke around in his past a little. “So how did you get into the antiques business?”

  “It’s in my blood, so to speak.” His eyes lit up with the kind of passion shown by people who truly love their work. “I told you I lived in some pretty shitty places growing up. My parents were dirt-poor. Mom had no family, and Dad was estranged from his. They did the best they could. When I was six, my dad’s father kicked the bucket, and Dad inherited three antiques stores from him. He was a fast learner and a good people person. After that, I pretty much grew up in the business, helping him out and learning everything I could about anything. We’d go on weeklong trips down south to follow leads and buy, while Mom and Holly stayed home. In a nice, clean home with no roaches.”

  He spoke with an earnest intensity that had me smiling and following along, curious for the next detail, the next tidbit of information. “I always knew Dad wanted to leave the business to me, so I went to city college to get a business degree.” His smile faltered. “My sophomore year, out of the blue, Dad had a heart attack. He was forty-nine years old, in perfect health, and he just dropped dead one day.”

  I didn’t know what to say. Jeremy was about my age, maybe a few years older, which meant his father had died roughly a decade ago. Was there a statute of limitations on offering condolences for someone’s death? He didn’t seem put out by the sad turn of conversation, though, so I chose to say nothing.

  “Mom hired someone to help out with the stores so I could finish school. Eight months after Dad died, Mom started feeling achy and rundown all the time. She blamed stress. Holly and I finally got her to the doctor’s, and we found out Mom had stage four breast cancer. It was in her lymph nodes, one lung, and her brain. We tried to take care of her at home, but she died in a nursing home six months later.”

  “Jesus,” I said, horrified at what that experience must have been like for someone so young. He’d lost both parents in a year and a half, and I knew from a previous conversation that his sister had died just a few years ago. Breast cancer too. “I’m so sorry.”

  Jeremy shrugged and poked at a piece of carrot. “I didn’t mean to get all macabre on you. Anyway, I ended up quitting school to take care of the shops and Holly. Sold one of them to a family friend so she could go to Boston College. We had a good life.”

  “Until she died?”

  More than his parents, speaking about Holly took that light out of his eyes. He pushed his empty dinner plate away. “Yeah. Same damned thing that took our Mom. After that, I had to get out of Maine. I sold the other two shops, sold the house, packed up a few suitcases, and left.”

  One more thing we both had in common, besides dead parents—we’d both left our old lives behind for a fresh start. Only my fresh start wasn’t here in Franklin. “How did you end up here?” I asked.

  Jeremy slid off his stool, grabbed his plate, and deposited it in the sink. “Do you want any more?”

  I shook my head. He didn’t have to hit me over the head with it; he wanted to change the subject. “No, this is plenty, thanks.” I shoveled the last few bites of stir-fry into my mouth, then chased it down with a long gulp of water. “I can do the dishes, since you cooked and all.”

  “You don’t have to.”

  “I’d like to. You’ve fed me twice. It feels like the least I can do to say thanks.”

  “Okay.”

  He had one of those scrub brushes you filled with dish soap, so I didn’t have to fill the sink. I let the water run hot while he stored the rest of the stir-fry in a plastic container and shoved it into the fridge. Then he came over with a dishtowel in his hand. Stood right next to me, not close enough to touch, but close enough to feel the heat of his skin.

  Not. Good.

  Once the water steamed, I got the brush soapy, then swirled it across the surface of the dinner plate. I tried really hard to ignore Jeremy and the faint scent of his aftershave—warm and spicy, like a hot drink on a cold winter’s night. I rinsed the plate and started to put it into the dish drainer. He grabbed the plate, brushing my hand with the tips of his fingers. Despite the water soaking my skin, I felt that same unexpected tingle of contact. This time, it shot all the way to my guts and left my insides squirming.

  He took the plate and dried it carefully before placing it on the counter. We created an easy, quiet rhythm. I’d wash and rinse. He’d take and dry, making contact each and every time. The last thing was the frying pan, which was a little unwieldy despite the large sink basin. As I went to rinse, I managed to splash us both with soapy water.

  “Crap,” I said. Water dripped off the counter to the floor, and the front of my own shirt was soaked. The puddle on the floor concerned me more, though, and it was spreading. I put the frying pan down in the drainer, then snatched the towel from Jeremy, all warm thoughts fleeing under a new sense of panic. I’d just made a mess in his perfectly order
ed home.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said as I squatted down to mop up the water. The towel was already damp and not doing much to sponge up the puddle.

  Jeremy disappeared, then came back fast with another dish towel. He crouched to wipe the cabinet beneath the sink. “It’s okay, it’s just water,” he said.

  “That I spilled. I should have been more careful.” The worst of the spill was gone, but the floor still seemed damp. Maybe it was my imagination. I rubbed at it with a dry corner of the towel. The floors were hardwood. If they warped—

  “Hey.” Jeremy’s hand closed over mine, stilling my rapid scrubbing motions. I tensed. This was the calm before the storm. The blow always came when I least expected it. “Cole, look at me.”

  I stared at a shiny spot on the floor, ashamed of the way my whole body shook with the force of a phantom strike. Crap. I needed to get out of there before I humiliated myself any more. Before Jeremy realized what a complete mess and waste of time I was and backed out of our business arrangement.

  “I have to go.” I stumbled trying to stand up. Jeremy rose at the same time and grabbed my forearms so I didn’t pitch over onto my ass. This time, though, his touch sent a surge of irrational fear through my guts, chilling me right through. I flinched and looked away, but I’d lost the strength to try and fight him. Lost it to the memory of dozens of battles I’d failed to defend myself in over the years.

  We both stood there, me tense and breathing hard, and him…. I wasn’t sure. I couldn’t look at him, even when he relaxed his grip on my arms, gentling it into a light touch.

  “Cole, I’m not going to hurt you,” he said in a soft, placating tone that calmed some of the fear racing through me. “I promise I won’t.” He let go. His arms dropped down to his sides, fingers uncurled, limp. He had to be staring at me, but I couldn’t raise my head to check.

  “I’m sorry if I scared you,” he added.

  I shook my head, lifting it just enough to look at his chest and the damp spot right in the middle. “I overreacted.”

  “Well, you definitely reacted. Like I said, it’s just water.”

  “Will it hurt your floor?”