Page 95 of Just for Tonight

“Well, that’s just it, Jake Cavendish. I’m starting to think you are.”

“No. You’ve got the wrong end of the stick. I’m the bear, remember?”

She laughs, unconvinced, and really, I don’t mind having her think something good about me. We have a deal, after all. She will stay in her lane and I’ll stay in mine.

“Mind if I open the window?”

“Not at all.” Most women don’t like the window open, in my experience, and even I’ve gotten used to having them closed. Mackenzie opens hers and the evening air flows into the car, replacing the cool from the air conditioning. It’s a nice night, not so humid as it could be this time of year, warm enough to feel tropical. I realize that I’m enjoying the quiet roads around Empire more than expected. A drive like this one is particularly relaxing.

Who would have guessed that I wouldn’t miss the city? Not me.

I open my window, too, and turn on some music. I was listening to jazz on the drive down, and Miles Davis is just about the perfect accompaniment to this moment. There are fields in the darkness on either side and no one else on the road. Mackenzie is quiet and so am I. It’s fine. It’s companionable. It’s good. I admit to myself that I’m inappropriately glad to have participated in the dumping of the Darcy.

Mackenzie and I don’t have a thing.

We can’t have a thing.

It wouldn’t end well.

It would be amazing until it suddenly wasn’t, and the end might finish me.

There’s a bit of honesty I wasn’t expecting.

I don’t want to step away from Mackenzie, even though I know it’s the smart thing to do.

Huh.

I can see the lights of Empire casting a glow into the sky when Mackenzie finally speaks. “Jake, I could use some awesome tonight.”

It’s like she read my mind. “Even with a bear.”

“Especially with a bear,” she replies, her words heartfelt.

I fake a growl and we laugh together as I drive past Rhodes Vineyards. My mood is vastly improved, although I’m not going to think about how much influence this woman already has over me.

I’m just going to enjoy the unexpected.

Savour the moment.

I pull into the parking lot at Cavendish Enterprises, the greenhouses gleaming and all the office windows dark. The house looks abandoned, and it isn’t the most welcoming of destinations. “I hope your expectations are low,” I say and she smiles.

“Of the location, yes. Of events to occur there, no. Those expectations are sky-high.”

“Game on, then,” I say, and get out to open her car door.

We can’t have a future, but we can have another night, tonight, and that suits me just fine.

26

Mackenzie

I wander around the house a little while Jake is dozing. (He definitely earned a rest.) The place makes me curious. It seems both abandoned and resonant. Most of the furniture is gone and all of the photographs are missing from the walls. The kitchen has the most minimal set of dishes and implements. You could eat take-out here or make a coffee, keep your leftovers in the fridge, but that’s about it. The lights from the parking lot shine through the windows, giving me more than enough illumination to look around.

The view out the kitchen windows is almost industrial. Right outside the door is the edge of the parking lot, the one that fills the space between the house, the office building and warehouse of Cavendish Enterprises, and the enormous glass wall of the greenhouse immediately to the north. The parking lot is empty now and the office windows are dark. There are lights on in the greenhouse and I can see plants stretching for the roof, swaying slightly. It’s the closest and smallest of their greenhouses, the oldest one.

At the back of the house, between the old deck which is rotting away and the greenhouse, there used to be a swimming pool. I can see it still, choked with weeds, cracked and desolate. I notice some marks on the wall and smile when I crouch down to look.

They’re height lines, showing the growth of kids. J is noted in blue; M in green and A in red. I touch the highest one – J at six – then realize they stop. Those kids kept growing and they kept growing in this house, at least for a while, but no one was paying attention anymore, not after Dianne died.