His Best Friend's Baby (10 page)

He opened his mouth as if to say something else, but in the end he just walked away, limping back to the house.

T
HIS WAS NOT
going to be pretty.

Amanda sat at the kitchen table while Dad and Mom paced around her in an imitation of the Spanish Inquisition. Dad worked the area in front of the fireplace and Mom was behind her at the french doors.

“Nothing happened,” Amanda said, taking the first shot into the still, tense air.

Dad’s back went straight and Amanda cringed.

Should have kept quiet
.

“You know that’s not what this is about. We asked you to not go over there. We asked you to leave him alone.” Dad put his hands in his pockets and rocked on his toes, which she’d come to learn—the hard way—meant he was trying not to lose his temper.

“I don’t think he wants to be alone.” Amanda shrugged. “I mean, I think he says that but I don’t think he means it.”

“Amanda, there are things going on that Rachel and I don’t understand—”

“Well, did you ask him? He’s not the total freak everyone thinks he is. He’s just grumpy…. I think if we kept asking him…”

Mom turned, tears standing out in her green eyes. “Amanda, this isn’t a game. It’s not some fight between you and Christie. It’s not a chance for you to get an A on your English paper.”

Amanda immediately felt about two inches tall. “I’m sorry,” she said, staring at the flaking pink nail polish on her thumb. “It’s not just about the paper. I mean it sort of was at first but…I wanted to get to know him. And I really think he liked having me there. But today when Julia showed up—”

“Julia?” Mom’s eyes cleared and went sharp. “Who is Julia?”

Amanda looked between her parents and the tension in the air changed. “I—I don’t know.”

“A journalist?” Mom asked.

“No…I mean, I don’t think so. I think they knew each other.”

Mom scowled, and Amanda rushed in to defend the pretty woman who’d seemed so lost with her baby and the broken stroller.

“She’s was totally cool. Not mean or anything. I think she was into him.”

“What do you mean,
into him?
” Mom asked.

Amanda rolled her eyes, but Mom wasn’t looking. She and Dad were sharing a surprised look.

See
, she thought smugly,
a little investigative
journalism is just what the sit—

“Amanda, I need you to go up to your room,” Mom said, her eyes still on Dad’s.

Amanda scoffed. “Up to my room?”
What
am I, nine?

Dad turned his I-mean-business look on her and she jumped up from her chair and headed for the stairs. It’d been four years since Rachel had walked into their lives and made everything a million times better. It’d been that long since Amanda had been sent to her room.

And it’d been just as long since she’d eavesdropped. In fact, the last time she’d tried she heard them making out, which had pretty much scarred her for life and ruined her taste for spying. But something was up right now and a little spying was clearly in order.

As if she’d sit in her room while they talked about Uncle Jesse who, she wished she could
point out, had actually let her hang out for over a week. He even joked around with her.

Amanda stomped up the stairs and made sure she hit all the squeaky floorboards in the hallway before slamming her door hard. Then she pivoted on her toe, flattened herself along the wall and eased back toward the edge of the hallway. She got just close enough that she could hear their hushed voices.

“Do you know who this Julia is?” Rachel asked.

There was a silence and Amanda guessed Dad was shaking his head. “I don’t quite understand what’s upsetting you so much about her.”

“Everything about this situation is upsetting me.” Mom was sounding desperate.

“I can see that, sweetheart. But you’re the one who wanted to give him space.”

“I thought that’s what he needed.” Mom sighed and Amanda could hear that she was crying. “What if I’m wrong? What if he leaves before we can talk?”

“Then let’s not keep our distance. It’s been killing me watching him fix that roof on his own.”

Boris, the dumb dog they’d saved from the highway, caught sight of Amanda from her parents’ open bedroom door.

Crap!

He stood from his spot on their bed, shook himself all over and then seemed to grin at her.

She held her finger up to her mouth but it didn’t do any good. He barked cheerfully at her anyway.

“Why did you think this Julia woman is a journalist?” Dad asked. “And not just an interested single mom?”

“I got a phone call the other day from the hospital. Caleb Gomez is conscious.”

Caleb Gomez was one of the guys in the helicopter crash. The only one besides Uncle Jesse that lived.
Something is up!
Amanda’s inner reporter perked up.
Oh, something is
definitely up
.

“That’s great.” Dad sounded totally relieved. “He’s recovering.”

“He’s asking to talk to Jesse.”

Boris jumped down from the bed and walked into the hallway, his collar jangling. Because he was a dog and dumb to boot, he managed to step on all the squeaky floorboards.

“Well, I’d imagine he would. The guy’s alive because of Jesse,” Dad said.

“The guy is a reporter. What if Julia has something do with that? Or if she’s from the—”

“Relax, Rachel. Just relax. I think it would be a good thing for Caleb to get in touch with Jesse. Let him see that he did some good in Iraq.”

“You think Caleb could do that?” Rachel asked. “I think he just wants to capitalize on the accident for a story—”

Dad sighed long and hard. “You can’t protect him forever. Jesse can take care of himself.”

“I know, but I just want to help. I just…he’s so stubborn and I hurt him so much.”

“Okay, we’ll change tactics. We’ll stop giving him distance and we’ll start treating him like family.”

“That should be interesting,” Mom grumbled and then came the creepy sound of more kissing.

Amanda made a face at Boris who sat panting on her feet and patted his scruffy head.

I wish I could make all of this better. For
Mom, for Jesse, even a little for Julia. But how?

Boris twitched and leaned against her leg.

Maybe it wasn’t how. It was who.

Maybe it was Caleb Gomez.

“H
OW ARE YOU DOING
, sweetheart?” Beth asked and Julia sank onto the steps of the Adams’ back porch with relief. Her mother’s voice,
beamed across the world by satellites and distorted by static, was so welcome over the cell phone she almost laughed with the joy of it.

“I’ve been better, Mom.” She cupped her forehead in her hand and studied the dirty toe of her tennis shoe.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

What isn’t?

“Julia?” Agnes stood at the screen door, backlit by the yellow kitchen light, holding Ben.

“I’m here,” Julia said. “I’m just talking to my mom.”

“I didn’t know where you’d gone to,” Agnes said in her light, friendly way that made Julia’s hackles rise. “Benny was looking for you.” She jostled Ben in her arms. “Weren’t you, Benny?”

“Hi, Mama,” he said and pressed his hand against the screen.

“Hi, sweetie.” She smiled back and bit her lip. Agnes did this sort of thing all the time, used Ben as a way to make Julia feel bad or to check up on her. “I’ll be in when I’m done.”

Agnes left and Julia sighed hard.

“Things aren’t quite what you hoped for, are they?” her mother asked.

“Not at all.” Julia stood and walked into the yard just in case Agnes lingered by the door to hear her conversation. Even though she knew she was being paranoid, it wasn’t a maneuver she’d put past Agnes.

“Tell me,” Beth said, and Julia let it all spill out.

“I came here looking to give Ben some permanence and, at first, everything seemed so good. The Adamses treated us like family and…”
Jesse’s here. He’s actually here but he
pushes me away with both hands
.

She almost brought up Jesse, but she was still too raw and her mother’s advice, she knew, would be to not go rushing into anything. Too late for that.

She was up to her neck in murky feelings. Julia remembered the harrowed expression on Jesse’s face in the garage. The haunted eyes filled with appeal.
Please
, he’d begged, and she’d walked away.

But she also remembered the heat of his eyes. The way he’d groaned when she touched him. The way he’d touched her in Germany, like a thirsty man in front of water.

Which was true? False? He’d rejected her twice, how much was she supposed to push?

“And now?” her mother asked, pulling Julia back into the conversation about the Adamses.

“They’re so stifling.”

“You’ve been on your own a long time,” Beth said and Julia nodded, though she couldn’t be seen. “It’s hard to give up your independence that way.”

“I didn’t think I was!” Julia nearly cried. “I thought I was getting a support system, not a mother hen.”

“Family isn’t all it’s cracked up to be sometimes.”

“That’s not very helpful, Mom.”

She laughed. “No, it isn’t. But I’ll tell you something, sweetheart. Sometimes you have to make your own family. It’s why your father and I were in the military and it’s why we stayed. We found friends who felt more like brothers and sisters than our own ever did. And each of us had mentors that felt like parents.”

“Mom,” she sighed. “I hated the military life.”

“I know, sweetheart, and I’m so sorry for that. But sometimes you have to create what you need out of what you get. It’s not easy. It’s hard work but you have to keep at it.”

“Nothing seems easy right now.”

“It takes courage to get what you want,” Beth said. “Courage and patience. Which you have or you’d never have gone out there in the first place.”

“That wasn’t courage, Mom.” Julia laughed. “That was desperation.”

“You’ve always sold yourself short, Julia. You’re much stronger than you think you are.”

“And you’ve always seen things in me that aren’t there. I’m not strong, Mom.”

“You left home at eighteen. You made that disastrous marriage work. You’ve raised that darling boy all on your own.”

Julia laughed. “You’re right. I’m the strongest woman on earth.”

“Don’t be flip, Julia. It’s long been time for you to decide your worth. You’ve let other people do it for you for too long.”

Julia sucked in a deep breath, tasting the truth on the air. Her worth? It was true. She’d let Mitch convince her she was worthless and now Agnes was doing the same. And Jesse—he’d told her she deserved more but then he walked away from her.

What did she think?

What did she determine her worth to be?

She was certainly worth more than the way Jesse had treated her yesterday, that was for sure.

Maybe it was time to listen to her mother. More importantly it was time to listen to herself.

“Thanks, Mom,” she whispered. “That’s what I needed to hear.”

“I love you,” Beth said.

“I love you, too.” Julia sighed, feeling her mother’s absence like a thorn under her skin.

They hung up and Julia stared at the sky and tried to find her courage. Her worth.

What an idiot I am for listening to Jesse
.

She should have stayed, forced him to be truthful about his feelings for her. Instead she’d run.

Courage
, she told herself and thought of his haunted face. She smiled, thinking of his groan at the mere touch of her hand.

I’ll just have to try again
.

J
ESSE POURED
the other five beers down the drain. He couldn’t look at them anymore, couldn’t pretend they weren’t in the fridge offering him some drunken oblivion. Some solace from his demons.

He tossed the last bottle in the garbage and circled the kitchen again. His knee felt okay, so he couldn’t pretend to need the painkillers. It
was just him and the demons, trapped in the cramped kitchen.

He checked his watch.

8:00 p.m.

It had only been hours since Julia had been here. Hours that seemed like years.

Suddenly the walls were too close. The air too stale.

“Wain!” he cried and heard the dog’s collar jangle as he stood up from his spot on the couch in the other room. He appeared, yawning in the doorway.

“Watch the place,” Jesse ordered. Wain barked once in response—the canine equivalent of a good loud “Sir, yes, sir!”

He picked up the keys from the kitchen table and headed out toward his Jeep and whatever salvation he could find in the night. He wanted noise and people and there was plenty of that to be had at Billy’s.

The place was comfortably full of folks in various stages of drunkenness and desperation. People all concentrating so hard on their own problems or good times that they barely noticed him walking in. He eased onto a stool at the bar.

“Well,” Billy said, approaching him with a
cardboard coaster. “Tell me you’re in here tonight to do it right.”

Jesse looked at all the gleaming bottles. The rack of taps offering him a dozen different beers and one surefire way to forget his troubles.

He could get drunk. Hammered. He could storm home and tear that house down, drink away his dreams of Julia. Of Mitch. Of the rest of the men.

In the end he couldn’t do it. Memories of dear old dad kept him sober and on a short fuse.

“I’ll have a coffee,” he said. “Black.”

Billy shook his head and Jesse ignored him.

“On the house.” Billy slid a white mug with cold coffee in front of Jesse and walked away, finally showing the good sense a bartender ought to have.

The back of Jesse’s neck prickled and he knew he’d finally attracted someone’s attention. He looked through the bottles of cheap liquor on the bar to the mirror behind them.

A girl in a turquoise halter top watched him from the safety of a booth in the corner crowded with her girlfriends.

He braced himself and within moments
she’d left the table and approached him, her muddy brown eyes locked on his in the mirror.

“Hi,” she said, curling her short thick body onto a bar stool. Her hair fell over her bare shoulder in a move so practiced he nearly laughed. “I’ve never seen you in here before.” She smiled at him.