“How long have you been back here?” He gestured to the house.
“Just a few days.”
“And before that, you were...?” His questions were cautious, like he was trying to figure something out.
“The apartment at the shop. Your dad let me stay there when he found out I had been sleeping in the truck.” The words slipped out, and I instantly regretted them.
Jake bent over and put his face to his knees, his hands cupping the back of his head. “Why the fuck were you in the truck again?” he asked. When he lifted up his face, he looked enraged.
“I had nowhere else to go,” I said firmly. But, Jake seemed tortured in a way I didn’t remember him being all those years ago.
“When I...” He halted, as if he were thinking these things for the first time as he said them now. His tone softened. “When I took off, I didn’t mean you had to leave the apartment. You could’ve stayed there forever, for all the fuck I cared.”
“Yeah, well, it was only a few days. And nobody blew anyone else on the hood this time.” That broke the tension a little, and we both laughed. “Then, your dad left me a note, in the truck. He called me a hobo, and left me a huge set of janitor’s keys for the apartment and for your truck.”
Jake looked comforted by that. He relaxed and let his head fall back against the chair. “I saw your postcards.”
For the past couple years, I’d been selling my landscape pictures as postcards in the gift shops around town. They were selling well, and recently one of my better-selling cards had been chosen for a state calendar. It wasn’t going to make me rich. But with that in addition to my job at the shop, I could take care of my baby and myself. That was all that mattered.
“Where did you see them?”
“Reggie.” He turned to face me. “He sent me a socket I needed to fix my bike. When I opened the box, there were your cards. He stuck ten or twelve of them in there. I didn’t even need to see the signature in the corner to know they were yours.”
“Oh.”
“They’re fucking beautiful, Bee.”
I didn’t know what to think of that. “Thanks.” I could almost feel my heart beating back to life with each word he spoke. Soon, I would be back to where I was four years ago, melting in his hands. I couldn’t listen to him be nice to me. I wanted him to yell at me, be cruel to me— scream at me if he had to. It would have been so much easier to let him go all over again if I’d hated him, if he hated me. Instead, his kind words caused so much conflict within.
I was so distracted with Jake I didn’t hear the sliding glass door open. When Jake’s gaze widened and focused past my chair, I knew someone was behind me. I turned to see Georgia, standing on the patio, rubbing her eyes with her fists. Her night shirt was tucked into her underwear, and her favorite Raggedy Ann doll was being strangled in the crook of her arm.
“Georgia, baby, what are you doing up?”
She came over and crawled onto my lap, almost knocking me over as she did. I was glad I’d already put the pipe back in its hiding place. I may not have been June Cleaver, but I did my best to keep up appearances.
“I couldn’t sleep.” She shifted around in my lap until she was facing away from me. She didn’t even notice our guest until she’d stopped squirming. “Mama?” She tugged at my shirt and pointed to Jake.
“Georgia, this is an old friend of Mama’s. This is Jake.” To my surprise, Jake held out his hand, and she immediately took it.
“Pleased to meet you, Georgia.” He looked her over cautiously. Neither of them took their hands away from the other. They were both smiling, like they were sharing a secret I wasn’t in on.
Knowing about the pretending we’d done with his picture, I was nervous about what would happen next. She left my lap and crawled right into Jake’s, as if she had done it a hundred times before. He didn’t seem to mind. He studied her like she was a puzzle he was trying to figure out while she climbed all over him.
Georgia was comfortably snuggled onto Jake’s chest with her head nestled in the crook of his arm before I could stop her. “Baby girl, why don’t you let our guest relax on his chair by himself, and I’ll tuck you back into bed,” I said carefully. “You need to go back to sleep.”
“But, Mama,” she said as her eyes lit up. “I can’t go to sleep now. Daddy’s here!”
Fuck my life.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
I TUCKED GEORGIA BACK INTO HER BED and sang her to sleep. Lullabies? Not for my kid. The song of the evening, per her request, had been “Bennie and the Jets” by Elton John. That was definitely Frank’s fault. He had given her an iPod for Christmas last year, pre-loaded with her favorite songs from his record collection.
I did my best, but I was no Elton.
Wherever Frank was now, I knew he was laughing at me.
Fuck you, Frank.
Jake was leaning against the counter when I returned to him. He had his legs crossed at the ankles, his arms folded in front of him and a huge, shit-eating grin on his face.
“What?” I asked.
“Nice song,” he teased.
I felt redness creep up my cheeks. “That’s Frank’s fault. Him and his goddamned record collection.” I laughed. “I’ve tried to just play her music at night, but she insists I sing to her.”
“Smart girl.”
“Spoiled girl.” I looked around at my bare living room, suddenly embarrassed by my lack of furniture. “I’d offer you a seat, but there aren’t any.”
“Yeah, I noticed,” he said, glancing around the empty space.
“The patio chairs are pretty much it for now, as far as furniture goes,” I said. Jake nodded. I noticed that as he interacted with me, his gaze never shifted from the door of Georgia’s room.
“How old is she?”
“Three,” I answered. I walked past him through the sliding glass doors. He followed me back out to the patio, and we returned to our chairs.
“Three, huh?” Jake eyed me skeptically and took a sip of his beer. His elbows rested on his knees. “And you’re bringing her up without her father?”
I didn’t even hesitate. “She doesn’t have one.” It was the truth. As much as I hated saying it, there would never be a father in my little girl’s life.
“I may not have done well in school,” Jake said, “but I remember sex-ed quite well, and I do recall that both a man and a woman are required to make one of those.” He gestured to the house with his beer.
“Making a child doesn’t make someone a father,” I told him. I wished my beer was scotch. This wasn’t a conversation beer could handle.
He shifted to reach into his pocket to retrieve his lighter, lit a cigarette and nodded. “Ain’t that the fucking truth?” He blew out the smoke and scratched the bridge of his nose. “You know, I didn’t even know you had a kid until I saw her run up to you during your eulogy today.” He shook his head. “It was the shock of my fucking life.” He ran a hand over his goatee again. The gesture was so familiar. It brought me a little comfort being in his presence after all these years. It reminded me of the Jake I’d fallen in love with. “I wish I would have known, Bee. I mean, she looks a little like my mom when she was her age. Aside from the red hair. That part is all you. Fucking amazing really.”
Jake kept talking, but I’d stopped listening. Between what Georgia had said about Daddy being home and my comments about fathers being more than a person who makes children, Jake somehow thought that Georgia was his.
“Oh wow. No, Jake.” I tried not to be shitty about it.
“No, Jake what?”
“No, Jake, she’s not yours.”
He sat still for a moment, letting it sink in a little. Then he stood, like he was preparing for war. Everything about his squared-off shoulders said he was ready for a fight. He roared a stream of profanity into the air and launched his beer into the river. Then, he turned around, and with one swipe of his arm flipped over the little metal table between us, sending it rolling onto the grass.
“Explain to me how she’s not mine, Abby.”
“She’s just not, okay?” I stood up and started to walk away, but in a few large strides he had closed the distance between us. The house stopped me from going any further. I turned and found him towering over me. He raised his arms and pressed his hands against the wall on each side of my head, his massive form caging me in. He pressed his chest into mine. I was surprised when he leaned into me and buried his face in my hair as he inhaled deeply.
He stood, breathing me in, until he remembered his anger. “Fuck, Bee!” His gaze met mine. His intoxicating smell filled my nostrils. I was turned on by it. There was no denying that. I’d never been attracted to anyone but Jake. Years, decades, even centuries could pass, and he would still be it for me. I would take him angry or sad, and there was definitely something madly hot in angry Jake at the moment. “Explain to me how your kid, who looks just like my mama, who is three fucking years old, isn’t my mine.”
“Why do you even care?” I snapped at him. I tried to move out from the cage of him, but he pressed his hips into me to keep me captive. I kept my expression hard, but the contact sent heat racing down my spine.