From Now On (7 page)

             
Jo studied his eyes for a long second, surprised, but happy, that he seemed to read her so well. Then her eyes dropped to his lips and she wondered for a long second if she would ever feel them on hers. Maybe, maybe he wouldn’t walk away this time.

             
But then the phone rang before she had a chance to find out.

             
“Don’t do this to me, Em,” Jo cried into the phone.

             
“Can’t be helped. Ryan’s parents could only make it tonight. You know how important it is for me to make a good impression on them. Cancelling dinner at the last minute would be a mistake.”

             
“But I have to pick up my car tonight.”

             
“Take a taxi. Or the bus.” Emily sighed. “I feel really bad, Jo. But you know how nervous I am about this meeting.”

             
“I know. Good luck.”

             
Jo dropped the phone into its cradle, trying to figure out how she was constantly finding herself in these situations.

             
“Problems?”

             
Jo turned. She had almost forgotten Mark was still in the room. “Oh,” she waved a dismissive hand over the phone. “My sister was supposed to take me to the mechanic to pick up my car, but she had something come up.”

             
“Tonight?”

             
“Yeah.” Jo rubbed a hand over her forehead. “The battery died on Friday and they said it would be ready tonight. And if I leave it overnight after they finish, they’ll charge me storage fees.”

             
“I could drive you.”

             
Jo paused, her hand stopping just below her hairline as though she were shading her eyes from the sun. “I can’t ask you to do that. The mechanic’s all the way on the other side of the city.”

             
“It’s not a problem, really.”

             
Jo thought about the money she had already paid out on taxis and how it had already left her monthly budget stretched thin. Then there were her unexpected purchases over the weekend: makeup, a fancy haircut, along with highlights and a special conditioning treatment. Not to mention her mother’s constant demands. Another taxi ride out to the mechanic would force her to dip into what little savings she had and she was planning to use that for a new dress to wear to Emily’s wedding.

             
“What about your kids?”

             
“They’re with their grandparents tonight.”

             
Jo dropped her hand. “I really don’t want to put you out, but it would be a life saver—”

             
“Say no more,” Mark said, touching her cheek lightly. “I’ll meet you in the parking lot at seven.”

             
Jo wrote out a speech on index cards, making bullet points of all the reasons she would make a better deputy supervisor than Becca. She practiced it in front of the mirror in the women’s bathroom, after first making sure all the stalls were empty, even practicing her facial expressions. She had it down perfectly, could recite the whole thing by heart.

             
It was all planned so perfectly. She would wait until six when most of the other workers would be on their way home and Kathleen would be alone in her office, catching up on emails. Everyone knew Kathleen never left till after seven. Jo watched the time closely, checking her watch, the display on her phone, even the tiny clock in the corner of her computer screen, every few seconds until it became impossible to concentrate on anything else. She was going to do this.

At the appointed time, she straightened her clothes, refastened her hair, and stood at her door in preparation.

             
But that’s as far as she got.

             
Shyness had always been Jo’s worst enemy. In fifth grade, she was supposed to be Little Red Riding Hood in a school production, had even practiced for weeks both at school and with her father at home. But the night of the production, she froze and couldn’t remember a single line. The entire student body had referred to her as Little Red Chicken for months.

In junior high, a teacher talked her into running for class treasurer, but when it came time to give speeches at a school assembly, she threw up on stage. She was barf bag, class vomitus, and Chicken Little, as well as a great many more imaginative monikers, the rest of her school career.

Then in college she took a speech class and for the final she was required to give a speech about her favorite author. Jo had chosen Sylvia Plath and had filled the speech with a great many quotes from Plath’s own poems. On the morning of the speech, she couldn’t get out of bed she was so frozen with fear. She would have almost preferred Plath’s fate to the one that awaited her that day. Lucky for her, the professor liked her and agreed to let her present her speech alone with him in his office, instead of in front of the entire fifty-student class.

Not to mention the fiasco of the toast at Emily’s engagement party.

             
Making speeches was simply something Jo did not feel comfortable doing.

             
Giving up after a half hour of internal debate, Jo wrote her speech out in an email and sent it to Kathleen before rushing off to meet Mark in the parking lot.

             
Mark was leaning against an older model Ford F150 Supercrew pickup truck. With his blue jeans, white button down shirt, and black boots, he looked like a cowboy who had gotten lost in the big city. He straightened when he spotted her walking toward him and a slow smile touched his lips, as though he was pleased to see her. Jo couldn’t help but return the smile despite the emotional roller coaster going on inside of her. It just seemed contagious somehow.

             
“Ready?”

             
“Yeah. And thanks again, I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this.”

             
“Anytime,” Mark said as he led her around the passenger side of the truck and helped her inside. He even pulled out the seatbelt and handed it to her with a boyish grin. “Habit,” he muttered as he closed the door and retraced his steps to the driver’s side.

             
Jo glanced in the back seat of the extended cab and was somewhat amused to see among the car seats a collection of children’s toys that clearly announced Mark’s role as a father.

             
“Sorry about the mess,” Mark said as he started the truck. “I always mean to get out here and clean things up, but there never seems to be enough time in the day.”

             
“No, it’s nice,” Jo said. “It’s says a lot about you as a father.”

             
“What? That I encourage chaos?”

             
“That you’re not bothered by it.”

             
Mark nodded, stealing a glance at her as he pulled into traffic. “That’s a pretty good description of my life, I think.”

             
Then we’re even, Jo thought. He seemed to see her so clearly, it was nice to see she was beginning to do the same with him.

             
“So, where are we going?” he asked after a moment.

             
“Oh, I guess that would help.” Jo dug a card out of her leather satchel. “Manny’s Auto Shop,” she said, holding it up so he could see the address.

             
“I know where that is,” he said, signaling to change lanes. “I drive past there all the time. It’s near this great park where the kids like to go on the weekends.”

             
“Trinity-Sherwood?”

             
“Yeah, I think that’s it.”
             

             
Jo nodded. “We used to play softball games there.”

             
Mark glanced at her as he navigated a busy intersection. “So you grew up here?”

             
“No. I was born in a little town outside of Springfield, Illinois. But we moved here when I was only twelve, so it seems like it.”

             
“Have you ever thought of leaving?”

             
“Every day.” Jo studied the passing scenery for a minute before continuing. “My dad died just after I graduated college. I intended to stay in Houston, but I came home to help take care of my mom and sister. My mom never held a job in her life and dad didn’t leave much behind for her to live on.”

             
“That’s a lot of responsibility for a young woman.”

             
“I suppose,” Jo said. “But they’re my family, all I have.”

             
“I can understand that,” Mark said, wistfully glancing into the back seat.

             
Mark guided the truck onto the highway and navigated the traffic for a few minutes before he settled back in his seat. “Are you close? You and your mother?”

             
A bark of laughter slipped from Jo’s lips before she could stop it. “I wouldn’t say that.”

             
Mark glanced at her. “But you take care of her?”

             
“It’s…complicated.”

             
Mark nodded slowly. “And your sister?”

             
“We’re pretty close.”

             
“Is it true, what people in the office say about her? About her fiancé?”
             

             
Jo rubbed her hands over her skirt, wiping away a sudden burst of moisture. “It’s complicated.”

             
“Family tends to be.”

             
“It’s not like she did it intentionally. It was just something—”

             
Mark reached over and touched her arm lightly. “You don’t have to explain.”

Jo glanced at him and thought she saw understanding in his eyes. But then the setting sun glinted off his window and she couldn’t be sure of what she saw.

             
Their exit came a minute later. Mark guided the truck off the highway and they drove through a short set of side roads before he pulled to a stop on the shoulder of the road in front of the mechanic’s shop.

             
“I’ll wait,” he said, “in case your car isn’t ready yet.”

             
Jo looked at the shop, which was clearly busy despite the late hour. “Thank you.”

             
It turned out they weren’t quite ready with her car, but the mechanic working on it assured her he would have it done in twenty minutes or less. Jo indicated Mark’s truck and told him she would wait there.

             
“You must be psychic,” Jo said as she climbed back into the cab of the truck. “They said it would be a little longer.”

             
“I’ve dealt with places like this before.”

             
Jo looked down at her hands, her mind spinning in a dozen different directions. She wished her car would take all night to get done, so she could sit here with Mark. And she wished it were done already so he wouldn’t feel obligated to keep her company. And she wished for once that she took more care with her fingernails, that they weren’t so short and clearly the victims of her nervous habit of chewing on them. She thought of Emily’s perfect, French manicure, how the length of the nails and the pale polish made Emily’s short fingers look longer, more elegant. If only her hands—

             
Then Mark’s hand was lying on hers.

             
“What are you thinking about?” he asked quietly.

             
“That I’m putting you out, making you wait with me.”

             
“You aren’t putting me out.”

             
Jo looked at him. “Why are you so nice to me?”

             
He moved his shoulder slightly, turning more toward her. “I don’t know.” He slid his other hand under hers and picked them up, cradling them gently between his. “I think maybe it’s what that guy did, hooking up with your sister while dating you. It’s like I’ve found someone who might understand what the last few years of my marriage were like.”

             
“She cheated on you.”

             
“Over and over.” Mark squeezed her hands lightly between his. “But that’s not what I want to talk about now.”

             
“What do you want to talk about?”

             
His eyes moved up to her face and for the first time she noticed that they weren’t just brown, not just a sweet caramel color that seemed to compliment the light dusting of freckles across his cheeks. They had hints of green and blue in them too, with a little black and chocolate brown mixed in for good measure. And the emotion in them spun like a tornado, moving from hope to desire to fear to regret.