That was good to know. Really good. “Interesting.” The drive to his place was quick and I pulled in behind his Mustang with a grin. “Here we are.”
“Yep,” he nodded and looked at me, heat and intensity in his eyes. “Here we are.”
“Jackson?”
His gaze met mine. “Yeah?”
“Invite me in?” I flashed a smile and the heat intensified; I swear I could feel it all the way down to my toes.
Jackson cleared his throat. “Reese, would you like to come in for a nightcap? Maybe a really hot make-out session?” The wicked grin he sent me promised a night of hot fun that I wouldn’t forget anytime soon.
“I think I could be persuaded into a make-out session.”
Playful Jackson was back, and he jumped from the car and ran around to open my door. “My specialty is persuading a very ornery chef to do wild and wicked things.”
“Yeah?”
He nodded and brushed his lips against mine as he helped me from the van. “Hell, yeah.” Grabbing me by the hand, he tugged me inside of his house. Then, inside of his bedroom, where Jackson kept me until early the next morning.
But not too early.Jackson“Hey, Ma, how is everything?” I masked the frustration in my voice, because it wasn’t aimed at her. It was just bad timing.
“Is everything all right? Did I get you at a bad time?” The quiet stammer in her voice, the uncertainty did piss me off, but it shouldn’t have. I should’ve been used to it.
“No, Ma, your timing is perfect, actually. I just finished eating.”
“At the restaurant run by the pretty little chef?” The smile in her voice was hard to ignore, no matter how hard I shook my head at her words.
“Who do you mean?”
“Oh, Jackie, you are still a terrible liar. Reese is her name, according to the Tulip Facebook page.” I grunted and she laughed again, a sound I welcomed even if it was at my expense. “I guess that means you don’t want to talk about it?”
“It means I don’t really know what to say.” Things with Reese were complicated and confusing, two things I generally tried to avoid.
“Just apologize. That always works.”
I sighed and caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. “It’s not something an apology will fix, Ma. It’s just… complicated.”
“I understand complicated,” she said, sounding more exhausted than I’d ever heard her in my entire life. “But things are usually less complicated than we make them in our heads.”
“All of us, or just me?”
“All of us.” It was more of an admission than I’d expected to hear her make, at least while Steve was alive.
“How have you been, Ma? How’s Steve?”
“Better. He’s home now, which seems to have calmed him down. A lot. Some days, I’d even say he was subdued.” The surprise in her voice matched the look on my face.
“Maybe the doctor finally got through to him.” Or it was more likely he was still too tired to rise to his full capacity for being an asshole.
“I hope so. Things have been nice. Peaceful lately.”
I knew what she was getting at, and I couldn’t commit to a visit with Steve, not when one unavoidable fight could send him back to the hospital. Or to the grave.
“I don’t know, Ma. Maybe when Steve is all better, you can come see Tulip for yourself?” I was a terrible son. I knew it and accepted it, because once in a while, I tried to do better.
Her long pause was all the answer I needed. Nothing had changed. She would always choose Steve. Always.
“Never mind.” This was exactly why I didn’t want complicated, I had enough of it in my life.
“It’s not that I don’t want to come, Jackson.”
It was just that she refused to leave Steve’s side for even a few days. He was a grown man, yet he couldn’t be left alone for any length of time. “Listen, Ma, my lunch hour is over and I need to get back to work. I’m glad to hear Steve is doing better.”
“You want to talk to him?”
“No, Ma, I don’t.”
She sighed, disappointed. “He had a heart attack, Jackie.”
“And I’m sorry about that, for you.” It was too late to change things and her attempts only made things worse, but that wasn’t something a good son said to his mom. “Love you, Ma.”
“Fine,” she sighed. “Love you, too. Be safe.”
I hated disappointing my mother as much as any other son, but what she needed more than a visit from me was for Steve to get better. To stop being an added burden on her shoulders. So, I wouldn’t go for a visit. Not now.
Not for a while, probably.
With my lunch hour officially over, not that Tyson was a stickler for things like that, I went inside and got busy on the thing I avoided until I couldn’t avoid it any longer. Paperwork.