Just Sex (16 page)

Chapter Seventeen

J.J. sat at the bar, pouring Jack and Cokes down his throat like water. Amy Mayfield sat on the stool next to him. “Hi, J.J.”

He swallowed the last of his drink and motioned to Fred for another. “Hey, Amy. His tongue felt heavy in his mouth. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m here with the old gang playing pool. Do you want to join us?”

Fred placed the drink on the bar. “Last one, J.J., then I’m calling you a cab.”

“Whatever.” He gave Fred a salute.

“I’ll drive him home, Fred,” Amy said. “He looks like he needs another.”

“Okay, but if things get out of hand, you’re all out.” Fred turned and ambled off.

J.J. didn’t want to subject his high school girlfriend and friend to his bad mood. He took a fortifying sip. “You don’t have to drive me home. I’ll get a cab.”

She placed her hand on J.J.’s arm “What’s wrong?”

He yanked his arm away. It didn’t feel right to have another woman touching him. “Women.” J.J. gulped his drink. “I finally found a woman I fell head over heels in love with and she thinks she can’t give me what I need.” Pain stabbed at his heart. “Isn’t that for me to decide?” He slammed back his drink and stood on unsteady legs. He had to hold the bar for support.

Amy grabbed J.J.’s arm again and led him out of the bar. “I’ll drive you home.”

* * * * *

Kat maneuvered her SUV into a parking spot. She cut the engine and looked at J.J.’s apartment. A blonde walked away from his door. From her vantage point, Kat could not see the girl’s face. All she saw was short little shorts and a tight tank top. A dagger hit Kat in the chest. “That son of a bitch! He didn’t waste any time getting someone younger and skinnier.” She hit the steering wheel. “I let one man do this to me and I won’t let it happen again.”

She turned over the ignition and jammed the car in drive. She spun out of the parking lot and barely missed a parked car. Fury blurred Kat’s eyes. She almost ran off the road twice. Kat pulled up to Patty’s house. She shook uncontrollably and rested her head on the seat back. “Why do I fall for men who are assholes?” Grief filled her soul and she wept.

Patty knocked on the driver’s side window. “Kat, honey, are you all right?”

Her gaze moved to Patty and Ron. She just stared at them.

Ron wrenched open the door and scooped up Kat. “What happened?”

Pain pulsed in her soul. “J.J. fight. Young…pretty…girl,” she stammered and buried her face in his chest.

Ron carried Kat into the house and laid her on the couch. “Patty, call her house and find out what happened.”

“Should we call J.J.?” Patty asked.

“No,” she said and rolled into a ball and wept.

Patty ran to the phone. When she came back, she said, “J.J. and Kat had a huge fight.” Patty sat next to Kat and rubbed her back. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“No.”

Ron walked to the liquor cabinet and grabbed Kat the tequila. He poured three fingers in a glass and moved back to the couch. “Here. Drink this.”

Kat took the glass and swallowed it in one gulp. She fell back and closed her eyes. “J.J. and I are over. I saw him with another woman.” Kat scoffed, “Actually, she was a little girl. She couldn’t have been more than twenty-one. What was I thinking?” A heart-wrenching sob flowed from her. “Do you think he was seeing her while he was with me?”

“There has to be an explanation,” Patty said.

“I know what I saw.”

“What did you see?” Ron asked.

She pushed herself up. “I drove over to his apartment to apologize. When I got there, I saw a beautiful girl walk out of his apartment.” She wailed. “How stupid could I be? I gave him my heart. I will never do that again.”

Ron kneeled in front of her. “It could have been a pizza delivery girl.”

“It doesn’t matter who she was. I can’t be with him anymore. We don’t have a future. I don’t have anything to offer him. I’m just a dried-up old cow.” Kat folded herself in the fetal position. “I was stupid to think I could make J.J. happy.”

Patty pulled the throw from the back of the couch and wrapped it around Kat. “Get some sleep. We’ll deal with this in the morning.”

Kat didn’t think she would ever sleep again. “It hurts so much,” Kat bawled.

* * * * *

J.J. woke to the sound of pounding. He rolled over and pulled the covers over his head to stop the sharp pain from drilling into his brain.

“Open the fucking door.” Ron’s voice bored into J.J.’s skull.

“Go away,” he said.

The noise became louder. J.J. sat up. His stomach pitched and bile rose in his throat. “Okay, I’m coming.” He stumbled out of his bedroom to the front door and opened it. “What?”

A huge fist landed between J.J.’s eyes. He staggered back. “Fuck.” Blood trickled from his nose.

Ron pushed into his apartment. “What the fuck did you do?”

Confusion muddled J.J.’s brain. “What?” He wiped at his nose. “Ron, what are you doing here?”

“Listen, you asshole. Kat’s at my house all pissed off and hurt because you’re sleeping with someone else after one fight.”

“I’m not sleeping with anyone.” His head spun. He leaned against the wall. “What would make you think something like that?”

Ron shut the door. “Apparently, Kat drove over here last night and saw, and I quote,” he made air quote signs with his fingers, “‘a younger, skinnier little girl’.”

His legs felt like rubber. “Shit.”

“What the fuck, man?”

“I went to the Shady Horse last night to drink away my mad. Kat has been keeping me at arm’s length for weeks now. Fuck.” J.J. scrubbed his hands over his face. “I love Kat, but nothing I do or say seems to convince her that we can be together.” He staggered to the couch and flopped down onto the soft cushions. “Amy’s an old friend from high school. She was at the bar last night and offered to give me a ride home.” His head wanted to split in two.

“That’s not what Kat thinks. She’s at my house, heartbroken.”

He rested his head in his hands. “Fuck. Let me get a shower and you can drive me to my truck. Then I’ll go and explain everything.”

“Try to talk this out instead of fucking like rabbits.” Ron sat in J.J.’s overstuffed chair.

“We don’t just fuck like bunnies.”

“Mmm.” Ron picked up a landscaping magazine. “Make it fast.”

Silence hung in the air like a lead balloon. “Ron, I swear nothing happened.”

“I want to believe you,” Ron turned a page. “But Kat was
so
sure.”

“If Kat can’t trust me, then what were these last three and a half months?” He stood and made his way to the bathroom.

Kat’s eyes felt like sand-filled holes in her head. She curled up on Patty’s sofa and let Ron’s words from last night play in her head. “Yeah right, the pizza delivery girl. My ass.” She hugged herself tighter. “I will never let anyone hurt me like this again.”

The door to the garage opened and Ron strolled in. “Kat, are you awake?”

“Yes.”

“I’m giving you a warning. J.J.’s on his way over.”

She shot off the couch. “What? Why?”

Ron grabbed her hand and led her to the sofa. He pulled her down with him to sit and wrapped his arm over her shoulder. “I went over to his apartment to punch him out. When I got there, the man had the mother of all hangovers. He told me his side of the story and I believe him.”

Relief and pain flooded her. “I don’t care what he said. We are not right for each other.”

Ron’s arm slid off Kat’s shoulder. He took her hand. “I don’t know if you are right for each other or not. All I know is that I have never seen you so happy.”

“Yeah, I’m sure I look happy.” Kat waved a hand over her face and leaned into Ron. “I’m leaving in a few months.”

“Yes, but you don’t have to. You can travel back and forth and there are phones and video calling now.” He smiled. “You can have Skype sex.”

“That doesn’t fix the fundamentals of what’s wrong with us.”

“Like what?”

“Like, J.J. says he doesn’t want kids. I see the way he looks at me when I’m with Sam. I can’t ask him to give up that. What if he decides he wants kids in five or ten years from now? I don’t have the parts to have another child.” Kat stood and folded the throw. “It’s better to cut this off now before it becomes too painful for all involved.” She slid her feet into her sandals. “Tell J.J.…”

A knock sounded at the door. “Tell him yourself.” Ron stood and moved to the door.

Patty hurried into the room and went to Kat’s side. “Whatever you decide, I’m here.”

“Thanks.”

Ron eyed the two women. “I wouldn’t want to be J.J. right now.”

Patty smiled at him. “J.J. should know we are a two-for-one.”

“God help the man.” Ron opened the front door.

J.J. shifted from foot to foot. “Is it safe?”

“Not really. Come in. Patty and I will be in the kitchen if you need us.” He grabbed his wife’s hand. “They need to talk this out.”

She stumbled behind Ron. “But—”

Ron cut her off with a look.

Kat stiffened her resolve and put her coolest expression on. She studied J.J.’s face. His bloodshot eyes had black and blue shadows under them. His forehead furrowed as if it were too bright in the room. It took every ounce of willpower she had not to go to him and wrap him into a hug.

J.J. took a tentative step inside. “Kat, I didn’t sleep with anyone last night.” He watched as Kat hugged herself.

“I know what I saw.”

“You saw an old friend help me out.”
When you all but ripped my heart
out of my chest
, he wanted to say, but instead he said, “Amy Mayfield and I went to high school together.” He took a deep breath. “Before you ask, we did date. She was my prom date and my first…” He let the word trail off.

The look she shot him tore his heart in two. “I can’t do this, you need to be with someone your own age.” Kat pushed past him and ran out the door. Patty raced after her.

He took a step toward them. Ron stopped him. “Let her go.”

“How did this get so complicated? It was supposed to be just sex.”

“It was never just sex with the two of you.” Ron passed him and motioned him to follow. “Women are complicated.”

“They never were before.” He followed Ron past the large feminine living room. It struck him odd that Ron, the man of all men, would live in a space like this. The combination of flowers and lace didn’t look bad, but J.J. always thought Ron would have a Harley in his living room. Ron ushered him into a huge room. J.J. stood inside every man’s fantasy man cave. He couldn’t take his eyes off the old rare Harley leaning against the far wall. “Wow, nice.”

Ron’s mouth spread into a smile. “I told Patty she could do whatever she wanted with the rest of the house if I could have one room.”

J.J. wanted to roam the space and check out all the autographed pictures of sports figures on the wall. He wondered if Kat would let him have a man cave someday. The thought brought him crashing back to his situation. “Why is it so complicated with Kat?”

Ron sat in a movie theater chair. “Welcome to being in a grown-up relationship.” He grabbed the remote and switched on the seventy-inch flat screen. “You need to ask yourself if Kat’s worth the complications.”

“What the fuck does that mean?”

Ron flipped on the NFL channel. “Figure it out.”

Kat sat in Patty’s car, numb. “I think I’m doing the right thing.”

Patty drove down Kat’s tree-lined street. “Do you want my opinion?”

“No, but you’re going to give it to me anyway.”

“J.J. is the best thing to ever happen to you. Even if he left after ten years, they would have been better than the last ten you had. No one can see into the future. There are no guarantees in life.”

“I know, Patty, but I can’t put myself out like that. I don’t know if I could survive it.”

“Then what’s the point of living?” Patty parked next to Kat’s house. “Kat, you’ve been on a hamster wheel for over ten years.”

“What?”

“You know, running, running, running and not really getting anywhere. Is that the way you want to live the rest of your life?”

“It’s called survival.” Kat wrenched open the door and stepped out.

“Maybe it’s time to live and not just survive,” Patty called after her.

The front door to Kat’s house opened before she could get her keys out of her purse.

Bev stood with her hands on her hips. “Katherine Elizabeth.”

“Not now, Mother.”

“Stop right there, Katherine.”

She stumbled to a stop. “What!”

“Are you all right?”

“What do you think?”

“From what I overheard last night, you’re throwing away a good man.”

“Why, because you don’t think I could do any better?”