Jack & Diane (12 page)

“That is a whole lot of money for an eighteen year old.”

“Especially one blinded by the prom queen’s confessions of love. I married her and she ran through the money as fast as she could. Well, when I got the record deal, she was in hog heaven. She had started house and car shopping. Then Dad got sick. I came home but she stayed in Nashville and refused to come home. She thought if she stayed there I’d miss her enough to return and sign the contract. When I told her that I was not coming back but planned on moving home, she was enraged.”

Diane placed her hand on top of Jack’s.

“About a month after that, she sent me an ultrasound and a note that said I would have kept your baby if you came back. When I called she said she was not going to let a baby of a nobody farmer ruin her body or her life. She was going to use her assets to get somebody that had goals and a future. I filed for divorce that day.”

“What brought her back here?”

“She tacked on to this up and coming singer that spent more money on coke than he did her. Eventually she came home but she wasn’t the big fish in this small pond anymore. She started coming back around me when she figured out me and this farm was better than a dead end job in a small town.” He let out a half hearted chuckle. “One time, Momma shot at her.”

“She did?” Diane said surprised that the loving woman would wield a gun at another person.

“Yea she did. She was willing to do jail time if it meant Misti was six feet under. Momma

wanted a house full of children but only had me. She was looking forward to a house full of grandchildren.”

“Jack I’ll have as many of your babies as I can whenever you want. I love you.”

“I love you too. We can wait on the children, but please never cry again.”

“I know, Mother says I’m not a pretty crier.” Diane wiped at her eyes again.

“You’re always beautiful. Even when you cry. I don’t want you to cry because it hurts too much to know I’d caused you to hurt and made you cry.”

“I wasn’t crying because you hurt me, I was crying because I thought I hurt you. What I said was thoughtless.”

“We did it,” Jack said smiling.

Diane looked confused. “What did we do?”

“Survived our first fight.” He leaned towards her. He cupped her face in his hands and kissed her. “I love you Diane.”

“I love you Jack.”

♥♥♥

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Diane turned the corner into the living room and stopped in her tracks. Jack stood before her in a suit, but his shirt was still undone and the tie was on the back of a chair. This was her first time seeing him in something other than jeans. He wore jeans well, but the way the suit draped over his muscles was devastatingly sexy.

“If you don’t put your coat on we’ll be late.”

“We have time.”

“Not if you keep looking at me like that, while you’re standing there in that dress looking like that.”

She twirled. “So you like.”

“Oh darling, I love.” He said picking up his tie.

“No tie.” She traced her finger along his chest exposed by the open collar of his shirt. His skin was smooth, warm and hard. Her mouth watered and her lips tingled as she thought of kissing him there. “I like the way you look without it.”

“Your mother won’t go for no tie look.”

“Is it my mother…” She planted a kiss on his neck giving into temptation. “…or me…” She kissed a little lower as her hand ran up his chest. His breath caught. “…that you want…” She opened her mouth and lightly sucked on his neck. “…to be happy?” She bit him gently by his collarbone.

“You,” he said throwing the tie.  He grabbed her by the waist and pulled her close to him. He kissed her gently on her lips. He returned the kiss to her neck, then moved up and sucked on her ear. Then he whispered in her ear, “You look beautiful tonight.”

“You look so sexy in that suit. I can’t wait until tomorrow night.”

“Me either darlin’, but if we don’t get out of here your mother will kill us and there won’t be a tomorrow for us.”

Catherine got her way about two things, the rehearsal dinner was at an overpriced restaurant in Indianapolis and Diane was to spend the night in an equally overpriced hotel in the city. Jack stood with his arm around Diane’s waist as they enjoyed cocktails with their close friends and family. Diane suddenly went rigid in his arms. He followed her glare and noticed a tall, well dressed black man.

“She did not!” Diane growled out.

Jack had never heard Diane sound so angry. He followed to where her eyes were looking.

“Who is that?” Jack asked, but Diane had already broke their embrace and started across the room.

As Diane went off looking for her mother, Jack reasoned that the man must be Alan. He strolled calmly in his direction.

“You must be Alan.” Jack didn’t bother to reach his hand out.

“You must be Jake.”

Jack ignored the fact that Alan had called him by another name because he knew it was done to get a reaction out of him. “I hope you’re here to wish Diane and me luck.”

Alan smirked. “It’s Diane and I.”

“It’s Diane and me. What it’s not is Diane and you. What are you doing here?”

“I was invited.”

“You weren’t invited by anyone that could invite you, but I’m glad you’re here. I wanted to thank you for being foolish enough to cheat on Diane. If you hadn’t, I wouldn’t be escorting you out of my rehearsal dinner tonight.”

“Are you afraid you’ll be left at the altar once she talks to me? Because I’m not leaving. ”

“You’re leaving. The only thing I’m afraid of is not having bail in time for the wedding.”

“Is that a threat?”

“He’s not threatening you, he’s warning you.” Cooper said standing behind Alan with his arms folded across his broad chest. “I mean it’s pretty brave for you to come here.”

“I wouldn’t expect any less than this kind of greeting from a couple of good ol’ boys.”

“This ain’t a good ol’ boy greeting. Good ol’ boys greet pretentious metro-sexuals from the city with their fists.” Cooper said taking a step closer to Alan.

“I think we’ll let Diane decide if I stay or leave.” Alan said.

“I can speak for my fiancée. She doesn’t want you here.”

“Listen, you were just the first thing to come along to help her get over me. I care about Diane and I don’t want her to turn the rebound guy into her husband.”

“You may care about Diane, but I love her. She hasn’t thought about you since she met me.”

“That’s not exactly true,” Diane said joining the three men. She took Jack’s hand for comfort and to inhibit it from punching anyone. The testosterone level was at a critical point. “I stopped thinking about him before I met you. Meeting you made him not even a memory.”

“Diane can we talk, alone?” Alan asked.

“No.”

“Fine, if you want to talk in front of these yahoos, we can. Don’t do this, don’t throw your life away. You could be so much more with me in Chicago than you could even dream about with him. You don’t even know him.”

“I’ve achieved love and happiness with him. That’s something I never had and could never see with you. I know him better than I ever knew you. I know he’d never have some other woman bent over the kitchen counter. I know that my happiness is important to him. I know that when he says he loves me it means he loves all of me, just as I am.”

“There does seem to be more of you to love. Did you turn to food to deal with losing me?” Sadly the genuine concern in his voice was for her dress size and not for her.

Diane stepped in front of Jack to prevent him from defending her. “I turned to food to deal with my barely controllable sexual desires.”

Words of love and faithfulness hadn’t gotten to him as much as reminding him how sexually inadequate she found him. “I doubt an ice princess like you would melt for some backwoods hick farm boy.”

“I think it’s best that you leave before I go full hick farm boy on you,” Cooper said. If there was going to be a fight it would be him doing the fighting. As best man it was his obligation to not only take a black eye in the groom’s place but also go to jail so that the groom made it down the aisle the next day.

Perhaps it was too much confidence in his workouts, but Alan didn’t move.

“Diane, do you really think you’ll be happy living in the middle of nowhere? Why did you even bother with law school? If you were going to just throw away your degree you should have just come with me to Chicago and it would have been you bent over the counter.”

The thought of Alan touching her made her want to gag. It made Jack and Cooper both take a step towards Alan. Noli had joined them and placed her hands on Cooper’s chest to stop him.

“He’s not worth it.”

“She’s right. He’s not worth it,” Diane said pulling Jack back by the arm. “He’s leaving any way.”

“Don’t come crying to me when you’ve realized the mistake you’ve made,” Alan said gesturing towards Jack.

Cooper had had enough if no one else had and pushed Alan towards the door. “Let me show you out.” He gave another push making Alan stumble.

“I’m so sorry Jack. I’m sorry mother invited him here to ruin tonight. I still need to find her.” Diane’s voice was part sadness, part anger.

“Don’t be too hard on your mother. She loves you.” Jack hugged her to reassure her that everything was okay.

Diane walked around for a few minutes but didn’t find her mother. She saw her brother standing on the deck with a drink in his hand.

“Have you seen your mother?”

“I saw Dad and her talking out front. He seemed more upset with her than you.”

“I can’t believe she invited Dr. Insincere to my rehearsal dinner.”

“I can. She thinks you’re making a mistake and thought you just needed see Alan again to come to your senses and leave Jack.”

“Well that backfired. Seeing him confirmed how wrong he was for me and how right Jack is for me.”

“I don’t think that you should be with Alan. Though I hate to agree with Mother, it does seem kind of fast.”

Diane let out a long breath. “You too Ryan? Jack and I love each other. We’re both certain that our future is together, and don’t feel the need to wait.” She turned to go.

Ryan touched her arm. “If you’re sure, you shouldn’t wait.” Ryan took a sip of his drink and sat on the steps. “Trust me, you’d regret it if you let love slip through your fingers.”

Diane sat next to him, studying his profile for a moment. “Did you let love slip away?”

“Something like that, but we’re not talking about me right now.”

“No, we’re talking about mother. She would never interfere with her favorite like this.”

His eyebrows raised. “You think I’m mom’s favorite? You’re crazy.”

“Crazy? You can do no wrong in her eyes.”

“She doesn’t care enough to notice if I’m doing wrong. I could bring home a meth addict and she’d say it could be worse, she could be a crackhead.”

“Well if I came home on meth she’d tell me it was bad for my teeth and I should use crack to lose some weight.” They both laughed.

“I would argue, but you might be right.” He chuckled as he imagined his mother saying that. “Don’t let mom talk about your weight. You look good. You look happy too.”

“I wish I could say the same about you. You don’t look too happy.” She paused hoping he’d voluntarily tell her what was going on, “Amara doesn’t seem too happy when she sees you. Is something going on with you two? ”

He looked away from her, afraid she’d be able to read his eyes and know the truth. “What makes you say that?”

“I’ve seen you talk to her with less than amicable results and I’ve seen her avoid you like the plague.”

For a moment it looked like he was going to open up, but instead he said, “You need to ask her not me.”

“I did. I asked her why I had to dodge daggers every time she looked at you and she said it was my imagination.”

“Then I guess it’s just your imagination Sis.”

“Imagination smagination. If you don’t want me to know, I’ll drop it, for now. But, I’ll tell you what I told her, you two play nice and smile real pretty in my pictures then feel free to carry on with the imagined tension.”

“How’s this Sis?” he smiled an overly cheesy smile that made her laugh.

Ryan’s goofy smile fell when he noticed Amara walk out with Noli and a couple of Diane’s other friends. He quickly plastered on the fake, but believable smile that he’d perfected. Diane’s smile fell when she saw a cheap veil and a hot pink banner in her friends’ hands.

“Diane, we have to go celebrate your last night as a maiden,” Noli said placing the veil on her head.

“You deserve a drink or two after that party crasher.”

“If I tried to say no, you’d just force me to go?”

“Yes,” the women said in unison.

Diane quickly found Jack. “They’re making me go party.”

“Cooper is making me do the same thing. Have fun. Don’t drink too much.”

“You don’t make any bets with Cooper.”

He bent down and placed a kiss on her neck until she sighed. “The next time I see you, you’ll be walking down the aisle,” he whispered in her ear.

Just as he began to kiss her again, Amara pulled her away.

“You two will have plenty of time for that tomorrow and for the rest of your lives, we only have a couple of hours to get drunk and make fools of ourselves.”

♥♥♥

Jack had just waved Cooper good-bye and had one foot on the step to his house when headlights turned on illuminating the front porch. The light blinded him so that it took a few moments for him to recognize who it was.

“Exes,” he muttered under his breath.

“I need to talk to you Jack.”

“Not tonight Misti.” Jack inserted his key into the door and opened it.

“But Jack…”

Jack shut the door but could still hear what sounded like the words pregnant and father. He was sure this was a last ditch effort to ruin his relationship with Diane, but he thought it would be better to hear it now, then her try to show up during the ceremony. He stepped out and shut the door behind him before she could attempt to come in.

“You have three minutes Misti.”

She smiled and cocked her head to the side. “We’ve never been able to finish anything in three minutes Jacks.” She ran her hand along his chest. “You look quite handsome.”

Jack snatched her hand off of him. “Misti, you now have less than two minutes so get to the point.”

“Fine.” She stepped into the light and stood sideways. For the first time Jack could see the roundness of her midsection. “I’m pregnant. You’re the father. We’re having a baby. Was that to the point enough for you?”

“You may be pregnant, but I’m not the father.”

She placed her hand over her stomach. “This happened Halloween night.”

“I don’t remember parts of that night, but I doubt we did anything that resulted in that,” he said pointing to her round belly.

“You doubt that it happened, but you ain’t sure we didn’t rekindle the flame. We were as hot as ever, I don’t see how you could forget.”

“I can’t forget something that never happened.”

“It happened. And this is our baby. I just wanted you to have all the facts so you can decide if walking down the aisle tomorrow is in the best interest of our child.”

“I’m walking down the aisle tomorrow and marrying Diane. I don’t believe that child is ours because I don’t believe we even kissed, let alone made love that night.”

“You may not believe it, but we made love that night.”

“If anything happened that night, it was just sex, it had nothing to do with love. You killed any love I may have had for you a long time ago. You have to go. Your two minutes are up.”

“Are you still going to marry her when I’m carrying your child?”

“We both know you’re like Wal-Mart, open anytime to anyone with a couple of bucks. I doubt that you know who the father is. I need more proof than just your word that I’m the father.”

There was a flash of hurt in her eyes, but her words were full of anger. “You may still want to marry her knowing I’m carrying your child, but I bet she won’t want to say I do to you knowing your bastard child will be a frequent visitor to her happily ever after.”

Jack stepped closer to her and stared down at her with menacing eyes. “You don’t say anything about this to her or anyone else until you have proof that’s my child. It wouldn’t be good for you. I won’t let you ruin Diane’s day or screw with my life again.”

Misti just stared up at him for a moment before looking away. “Fine, I won’t say anything. It’ll be our little secret, for now. But will your marriage survive the truth coming to light? Oh, and how will she react when she knows you knew but didn’t tell her?”