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Already a half-hour past sundown, each second later it got caused my knee to bounce a little harder, making my old fold-up chair squeak enough it even started bothering me.
Contemplating just cutting the night short and leaving to track her down, I rocked my head at the beer in my hand.
Finishing the rundown of what I understood about what happened between Mom and Faith for Jason, I flipped my hand from my knee. “Anyway, I told her I was moving out as soon as possible. She’ll have to start paying her own bills from now on.”
Since Jason started working on it last year, I’d had my eye on a house outside town. Something about it kept bringing me back for another tour, but I never could quite pull the trigger on it until then.
I brought the cup to my mouth and jerked my eyebrow at him. “So, I guess that means I’m ready to throw down on that house beside yours. Let’s do this.”
Burping away his last gulp of beer, he nodded back at me. “Yeah, okay.” If I wasn’t home or at work, I was hanging out in his basement most of the time, anyway. “I’d rather you be my neighbor than that asshole from the city I showed it to this morning any day of the week.” His thumb rubbed the side of his mouth as he scanned the people making the rounds between the seat groupings. “Hit me up tomorrow afternoon so I can pull the papers together, and we’ll do a quick walk-through before you sign.”
The red cup flipped over itself as he tossed it behind him. “That’s messed up about your mom, though. Not unbelievable or anything, but, man, I’m really sorry.”
By my side just about every second after I crashed my truck, Jason lived through the worst moments of my life with me and shielded me from her craziness as best he could.
Letting a long breath out in a ‘shh,’ he wrinkled his nose as the gravity of my mother’s betrayal finally sank in with him, too. “Looking back at the whole picture of those couple of months after Faith left, it kind of makes sense, though. Doesn’t it?”
I’d begged my mother to get me into counseling instead of sending me to school. So why she was so opposed to me dissecting Faith’s leaving me with an objective third party was obvious to me suddenly. And I understood now that my father must have figured it out too from how he moved into the guesthouse to get away from her and never spoke to her again after my wreck.
My thumbnail picked at the edge of my cup as I nodded at all the clues and outright blinking neon signs I had missed over the years. “Yes. It does.”
The top of the beer cooler he brought with him unfolded, and he pulled out a can so he didn’t have to walk across the yard again. “So, what are you going to do about all that?”
Chewing on the inside of my lip, I swung my chin back at him. “I don’t even know. It’s not like we ever had a healthy relationship as it is.” Finding out the only family you had was working so hard to destroy you was too big a problem for me to grasp after that many beers. “I need some distance between us for a while so I can kind of recalculate what that looks like from here on out.”
The pop top hissed open as he leaned back into his chair and shrugged. “So, what about Faith?” Stacking his foot on top of the other, he brought his can to his mouth. “You’re going to be working together every day. It’s not like you’ll be able to avoid that conversation for long.”
Bending aside to peek out at the parking lot, I smiled back at him. A lot of things in my life might have been up in the air, but one thing was certain to me. “Let’s just put it this way,” — I shook my head — “I’m not leaving here tonight without kissing her. No fucking way.”
Straight off the worksite, his dusty black boot tipped over into my fresh, out-of-the-box brown hikers. “So, I assume that stupid expression on your face means she still looks good, then?”
Replaying how her hips swayed when she walked down the hallway toward me, my smile grew a little more with every step she took in my memory. “Yeah, she looks amazing.” My hands waved at each other as I traced her curves. “Grew up and out in all the right places, that’s for damn sure.” My fingertips ached to rub Faith’s hair in them again, and they wiggled by my shoulders as I played it out in my head. “Even has that long hair still.”
He laughed under his breath as he nodded at his feet, and I sank into my lawn chair as the weight of what I was dealing with became clearer. “After my mom set me up like that, I imagine I’m going to have to do some ass-kissing to get Faith to trust me again, though.” I sighed and took off my hat before sliding it back into place to fix my hair. “I don’t know. We’ll see how it goes after tonight, I guess.”
Ultrabright headlights flickered against the trees, and I pushed myself up on the chair’s arm, something inside me knowing it was her from how my heart took off like that.
Sliding her sweatshirt down her arms, Faith came through the gate, lit up from the bonfire glow all over her. Slapping the back of my fingers against Jason’s leg, I lifted my chin in her direction. “There she is.”
Watching Carolyn snatch Faith up as soon as she pulled her hair free from her jacket, I finally relaxed enough to stop my foot from shaking. “Thank God. I don’t think I’m in good enough shape anymore to be climbing up the side of her house to bang on her window.”
Sweeping the dirt from his jeans, Jason turned down his lips at them as he tried to pretend he hadn’t already heard the news. “What about Carolyn? Is her divorce final yet, or...” I squinted at him from the corner of my eye as I chugged my drink, and he shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “I mean, I know she’s got a bunch of kids and all, but that doesn’t bother me. I like kids.”
He watched them disappear around the other side of the fire and sighed, his breath hitching. “She’s still fine as hell, too, and you know I always had a thing for her.” His hand jerked from his knee. “Besides, it’s not like there’s a ton of eligible women around here. Is there?”
I was still shaking my head at him when the girls reappeared from the back of the fire, and Faith glanced over her shoulder at me. “No. But it only takes one, Jase.” After setting down my cup, I wrapped my hands around the chair’s arms, arching my brows at him as I stood to go reclaim mine. “And here come our girls now.”
23
The Right Choice
Faith
Despite what his mother thought about Dominic, he was only a step or two above a bona fide hillbilly like the rest of us. Though he was the smartest person I ever met and probably fit in well with his doctor peers, I happened to know for a fact getting dirty and loud on a summer night with me was more his speed.
His unbuttoned arms-rolled up flannel blew back off his blue t-shirt when he rushed to pull a chair up for me. “About damn time you got here.” Soft blond hair curled around the edges of his ball cap as his naughty smile took the side of his stubble-covered face. “I was about to roll past your dad’s house and throw rocks at your window.”
Holding my cup away so I didn’t spill it all over myself, I leaned across the little patch of grass between them when Jason put his arms out to hug me. “Sorry about that. I’m still living out of a suitcase, so it took me a minute to pull something together.”
