For Always, page 5
Jason finished his drink, wiping his mouth.
“Surely she’s been with someone before,” he mumbled.
My scalp tingled, and my skin tightened. Pity. It laced Jason’s words, dripping, spilling, and staining my resolve to keep my mouth shut.
“Plenty of someones.”
Jason’s eyes flickered to mine. His lips pinched tight, like he had plenty of thoughts to share with the class. All probably equally mean as his shithead best friend.
Beau snickered. “Yeah, those books and her power suit. They your someones, Kate?”
“Oh, piss off,” I muttered. “Do you just send a picture of your face to all those lovers, Beau? Don’t even need to pull out your penis to show them the dick.”
It was impossibly hot in the room. Beads of sweat spread along the back of my neck, my hands clammy. I hated they could still torment me this way, and worse, I couldn’t properly defend myself. Because what Beau teased me about?
It held some truth.
Rather than acknowledge that, I feigned indifference, batting my lashes and forcing a smile. I didn’t want Jason to witness my humiliation. Again.
Beau bristled. “Calm down, Kate. It’s just a little friendly banter.”
Jason opened his mouth to say something, but I cut him off.
“It’s not friendly banter, Beau. You’re a jerk.”
“Kate—” Jason started, and I held up my hand to interrupt him again.
“You’ve always been an asshole.” I jutted my chin toward Beau, my voice deceptively calm. “He’s always been a dick. Not sure why either of you is single when you deserve one another. You fit together just right.”
Jason set his glass down and laced his fingers behind his head, casually leaning back with an amused smirk.
“Have you ever been in love, Kate? You sure have a lot of thoughts on it. On our romantic potential in general.”
He gestured to Beau, who crossed his arms over his chest with an equally infuriating smirk.
I prayed the shadows were dark enough to hide the fire spreading over my cheeks, roaring and hotter than the one heating the room. I didn’t answer, my eyes sinking to the carpet beneath my feet.
Jason nodded slowly, his eyes still on me. “Interesting. Maybe Beau is right. You read too many of those books. The ones that aren’t real. They give you a pretty picture of a more complicated reality.”
My eyes snapped to his, my mouth faster than my mind.
“Maybe you need to read more of them. Learn how to treat women.”
Jason’s smug smile dropped, my words hitting their mark.
“Maybe then you’d know how to keep one. No wonder Vanessa dumped you.”
I hadn’t touched Jason or gotten within three feet of him, but the wounded look in his eyes told me I’d messed up.
He ran his palms along his thighs before pushing up from the couch. My heart thundered in my chest, my vision tunneling with my mistake.
“Jason, that was—”
“I think I’ll head to bed,” Jason cut me off, picking up the empty glasses from the table to take to the kitchen sink.
It was a thoughtful gesture despite the obvious upset in his tight grip.
“Goodnight.”
Then he was gone, the room immediately cooling.
“Shit,” I whispered, my fingers tugging at my lip. “Shit.”
My eyes flew to Beau’s, but he wouldn’t look at me.
“Real fucking nice, Kate.” He stood and left, too.
Six
Kate
If looks could kill, my mom would have had me dead before I finished my coffee.
“I said I was sorry,” I mumbled, clutching my mug tightly as I sat at the table.
My mom stood at the stove and focused on the pancakes she made for breakfast. For everyone else. She already told me to fend for myself this morning.
Word traveled fast in our tiny house, and as soon as I stumbled downstairs with my aching head and deserved hangover, my mom was ready and waiting.
“He was with that girl for nearly half his life, Kate.” She kept her back to me, her hand gripping the spatula. “He doesn’t have a family. Whatever happened between them hurt him badly. He doesn’t need you to add to that because your feelings got hurt with a passing comment.”
“A passing comment?” I craned my neck toward the living room, checking for eavesdroppers.
Lowering my voice, I said, “He has spent most of my life teasing me alongside Beau. I’m sorry I hurt his feelings, but why does Jason get to make a swipe about why I’m single and not expect anything back?”
My mom sighed, her head dropping. “That girl tore out his heart, Kate. Surely you’re able to understand that.”
I was, and I did. I was ashamed of my low-blow shot. But—
“They were so awful, Mom. Don’t discount how rude Beau was, making it sound like I’m a child because I haven’t been in love, and then Jason...” I closed my eyes, rubbing my temples.
When I thought back… Beau had been the asshole. I’d baited Jason to join because the entire conversation embarrassed me, and I wanted to land a blow to anyone in striking distance.
I’d acted like the child I wanted to prove I wasn’t.
This town. This goddamn transportation back in time.
My mom sighed. “I know how they can be, Kate. You’re right. That’s not okay, either. I can spank you and Beau. I have no control over Jason.”
I squinted at her, but she kept her back to me. I was pretty sure she was kidding, but I wouldn’t put it past her.
“Yeah,” I said, rubbing my temples harder. “What was the report this morning?”
My mom turned off the burner, carrying the plate of fluffy and steaming cakes and setting it right in front of me. She shot me a glare that told me to keep my hands to myself—the cruelty.
“The report,” she said quietly, her hand resting on my shoulder, “was that you cut deeper than intended. An apology is warranted, and you may want to stay out of his way for a bit. Give him some space.” She leaned down and kissed the top of my head. “It feels like you have years of sharp barbs to make up for, but you don’t, Kate. Just let it go.”
I thought of all the teasing. The mocking. The jabs and the taunts and the rumors and the immaturity. My mom was right. Kids being kids. Kids doing stupid shit. Besides, I’d played my part plenty. I whined, tattled, and hit back when possible.
But that night. That night all those years ago when Jason really hurt me... It shamed me to feel a tickle of satisfaction that I hurt him back somehow.
“I’ll apologize,” I promised. “I’ll lay low and give some space.”
My phone buzzed on the table, Taylor’s face splashing on the screen.
“I have some work to do while I’m here, anyway. I can stay out of the way.”
My mom frowned, heading for the fridge and rifling through it. “You’re working on vacation?”
Eye to eye with pancakes, my stomach rumbled. “Just helping with a project. Tony Bologna.”
My mom hummed, dropping the syrup on the table. She’d heard plenty about Tony.
“If there are any extras, you can have one,” she said, nodding to the pancakes. My mom was a big softie.
Hearing the shuffling of feet kicking against the porch and muffled voices outside, I made a hasty escape upstairs. I’d need to apologize to Jason, but I was perfectly okay with putting it off, at least until I showered.
I rounded the top of the stairs as the front door opened, and my brother’s laugh floated into the house. He was always so loud.
I was almost to my bedroom when the bathroom door opened. Out stepped Jason, a casual run of his hand through his wet hair as he shook it out.
Hair that was a tad long on the sides, enough to curl at the ends when it dried. Hair that had always been so dark and looked so soft. Now wet as he stood in only a towel.
Only a towel.
I gasped. Not with the surprise of seeing him come out of the shared bathroom. No, not that.
Only a towel.
“Sorry,” he mumbled. “Didn’t mean to startle you.”
He stepped back, his hand clutching the towel tied around his waist. My bedroom was past the bathroom, and I willed my legs to carry me there.
Only a towel.
It had been years since I’d seen Jason without a shirt. The last time was swimming at the lake in high school before he and Beau graduated. We all went out to the fishing cabin just before the night that shifted my silly crush to a crushed heart instead.
I’d also been hard-pressed to breathe that day, convinced that his bare chest and muscular arms were that of a man. Because at eighteen years old, Jason had been a man to me.
What a foolish girl I’d been.
I swallowed audibly, my hand reaching for my throat to hide the sound of it.
“You’re… It’s fine… I’m...” I pointed behind him toward my room.
Jason moved aside and pressed his back to the wall, giving enough room to pass by without touching him.
My fingers flexed, thinking about what it would feel like to run along the tight skin of his stomach or slide over the dark trail of hair below his belly button.
To let my palms smooth over the muscled skin of his back and my nails scrape the stubble of his neck.
I ducked my head and hurried past him, hoping he hadn’t noticed me staring too long or my flushed cheeks. It didn’t matter, anyway. He hated me now.
We headed in opposite directions, me to my room and he to Beau’s. I stopped with my hand on the doorknob, not looking at him as he approached Beau’s door.
“I’m sorry,” I said softly.
I didn’t look. I wouldn’t look. I couldn’t look.
I heard the shuffle of his feet on the carpet. Heard the puff of air from his lips as he sighed.
Bracing myself, I waited for the attack. It didn’t come.
“I know,” Jason said before disappearing into the bedroom.
I know.
It was worse than any insult he could have thrown back. Worse than ignoring me or yelling at me. Worse than calling me a bitch or reminding me of all the embarrassing things I’d done growing up. Hell, all the embarrassing things I’d done in only two days in Windmere.
Things didn’t get better either.
Jason was polite to me. He was cordial. He was nice. He apologized for hurting my feelings.
“It makes it so much worse,” I told Taylor, my attention half on the manuscript we were reading while on a video call and half on the closed door to my bedroom.
“I wish he’d just get angry with me.”
She hummed, a pen tucked between her lips as she nodded along.
“Be pissed so we can move on. It’s how it’s always been. He teases me until I explode, then I get over it. I try to tease him the same, but it usually leads to me exploding again, and then I get over it.”
Mostly.
“I can’t for the life of me figure out how to convince Tony that chapter twenty-one can go,” Taylor muttered, her eyes scanning something in front of her. “The lunch was pointless. Crappel made threats, but she’ll never make good on them. She loves Bologna too much.” She tapped the pen against her head.
A door slamming down the hall caught my attention. A quiet pause before music reverberated through the walls.
I squeezed my hands over my temples. “Yeah. Um. Well.”
“Okay, what if he moves the scene with the brother earlier, cuts the cat altogether?”
I tried to focus. I did, but…
I spent all morning ruminating on Jason being nice to me, despite how mean I’d been to him. I tried unsuccessfully to avoid him all morning because Jason wasn’t trying to avoid me.
As if he were shoving in my face that he was a bigger person… by being the bigger person.
Beau was a baby, though, throwing me a disapproving headshake at every chance.
“You wanted your childish revenge for getting teased as a kid? Congratulations, Kate. You earned it.”
I’d trudged out to the shed to bring in more firewood, dropping it next to the hearth and trying to avoid Beau’s judgment. He wouldn’t allow it. Of course, he wouldn’t.
“Jason may say it’s fine, but it’s not. His mom is gone. This is his first Christmas without Vanessa. With no one but us. The least you could have done was be an adult.”
“You were being a jerk, and he said mean things about—”
“Stop,” Beau said quietly, his face laced with pity that sunk into my gut. “It’s not the same, Kate. Vanessa broke his heart. She didn’t just dump him. She cheated on him with his friend for months before he found out. That cut about not knowing how to keep a woman?” His eyes softened. “It went deep.”
The music got louder, or maybe my head throbbed with guilt. Beau was right. I had acted harshly because it embarrassed me that I’d never been in love. It embarrassed me that Jason knew that.
He thought I was childish. I had been childish. Instead of walking away or telling them to cut it out for real, I shot off.
“Kate?”
I closed my eyes, rubbing my thumb over my eyebrow.
“I’m here. Hey, listen. I need to clear my head for a bit.” There was no way I’d get any work done at the house. “Can we touch base tomorrow?”
Taylor agreed, and we said goodbye. I promised to pick up the slack on my end to not delay her task work and packed up my stuff.
“Hey,” I greeted my mom as she hung more garland around the fireplace in the living room.
Enough artificial garland littered the house to make landfills weep, but it made her happy. I kept my mouth shut, not wanting to ruin anything else.
“Hi,” she muttered, lifting one leg to balance on the ball of her foot as she stood on the stepladder. “Lift that end.”
I did as she asked. She wiped her hands and smiled. “Looks good.”
“Looks great,” I said. “Hey, is it okay if I take off to the fishing cabin for the night? Part of the day tomorrow, too?”
“The fishing cabin?” My mom crossed her arms, eyeing me. “Why?”
My grandfather’s fishing cabin had been a place of many memories growing up—summers on the lake, ice skating in the winter.
It was our vacation destination growing up, a harrowing forty-minute drive from Windmere and on the shores of Silver Lake. It wasn’t a wondrous getaway. Tiny, cramped, dated, and without central heating—hardly a retreat. But it was all my parents could afford when we were kids, and they made the most of it.
“I need to get some work done and...” I hesitated, taking a steady breath. “I can’t focus here.”
I hadn’t seen Jason since Beau confronted me. I wasn’t brave enough to face him now that I understood why I’d hurt him.
My mom flopped onto the couch, sighing as she rested her hands over her stomach and stared at the fire.
“I don’t like you driving those roads alone this time of year.”
“It’s fine,” I said, standing behind the couch and massaging her shoulders. “I have chains, but the roads are clear. We’re not supposed to get another heavy snow before Christmas Eve. I’ll be back tomorrow afternoon. I can help you finish decorating.”
I just hoped the tension would settle.
“It’s great,” I continued. “Without the internet, I’ll read ten times faster.”
My mom chuckled. “Your balance will improve, too,” she joined in. “Standing on one leg and contorting into just the right position to hold your phone up and get reception—”
“In the far left corner by the bathroom,” I finished, laughing with her. “See? Exactly. Besides, Crappel has been blowing up my phone. It would be nice to be unavailable for a minute.”
My mom patted my hand on her shoulder. “Pack supplies. Miller’s shop after the pass shut down last year. Fill up on your way out of town. Full, Kate. I mean it.”
“Yes, yes,” I said, already halfway out of the living room.
I grew up in the mountains. Beau and I spent New Year’s at the fishing cabin three years ago. I knew what I was getting myself into.
“I’ve got an emergency pack in the rental, but Mom? The roads are good.”
She shook her head against the back of the couch.
“Until they’re not. Park the car in the garage,” she added. “In case you have to make a hasty escape from an ax murderer. I don’t want you to wait to warm up the car. Actually, take your dad’s truck, just in case. Leave your rental keys here.”
“Sounds good to me.” I saluted her, hesitating. “Ax murderer?”
“Generator is in the shed if you need it,” was all she said.
Seven
Jason
Itook a deep breath.
Then another.
The crisp air bit in a way that made my lungs burn with a silvery fire. It was so quiet in the surrounding forest, like nothing existed beyond the shores of the lake or the branches of the trees.
“Be there by four,” Beau had warned. “Otherwise, it gets too dark to set up. You want a fire going before she arrives. There’s no heat in the cabin other than the hearth. If it’s not going by dinner, you’ll be fucked.” He gave a devilish smile. “Which I suppose is what you want.”
I blew into my hands, rubbing them together and closing my truck door to step closer to the ice.
Silver Lake was small enough to freeze over in the winter. Even though it’d been nearly two decades since I skated on it, I remembered the feel of the ice beneath the thin blades of my skates.
And my weak ankles as a kid.
I sprained my left one pretty badly when I was twelve. Mr. Dalton had to carry me into the cabin as Beau watched, laughing.
I spent the rest of that New Year’s trip stuck on the couch with a fat purple ankle and no enjoyment of the outdoor activities Beau and I planned that year. Instead, I watched TV and drooled over Mama Dalton’s cookie baking.
I was so bored by the second day that I didn’t even turn down Kate’s offer to make jewelry with the bead kit her grandma got her for Christmas. Didn’t care that a ten-year-old girl with glittery pink nail polish obnoxiously smacked her gum, only stopping to slap my hand away from her extra special charms.
