Keep You (10 page)

             
Jordan headed to his own room, but not without one last stern glance that looked ridiculous on him. Tam had to give him credit, though, for being the brother who was trying to do right by the baby of the family. He rolled his eyes and went the opposite way down the hall, to Jo’s room. He knocked once and pushed the cracked door open at her invitation.

             
Jessica had moved out two years before, and in her absence, Jo had proceeded to transform the room into a space that was all hers: a juxtaposition of dissimilar interests that, to anyone who really knew Jo, made perfect sense. Her double bed was shoved in a corner, it’s comforter a bold pattern of red and yellow flowers on a white background. A shelf lodged in the corner above the headboard housed science fair plaques and a trophy from that one season she’d played softball when she was eleven; her pint size had kept her on the bench most of the season, but she’d brought home a trophy along with all the rest of the girls.

             
The walls were powder blue and her AC/DC and Led Zeppelin posters were in frames. A white desk with delicate, candlestick legs butted up to the wall beside the closet, its edges lined with sports team mugs full of pens, colored pencils and markers. The calendar hanging above the desk was full of paintings of Labrador retrievers hunting in the field. Her jewelry dripped from a little silver tree set on top of her dresser.

             
Jo was sitting at her desk, staring at the screen of her laptop, wearing orange cheerleading shorts and a slouchy brown tank top, her hair loose around her shoulders. She glanced up and was not in the least shocked to see him. “Hey.” Her smile was tired, eyes a little red from the computer. Tam was glad to see that she bore him no ill will after her uncharacteristic flare of jealous, girlish temper at the wedding.

             
“Hey.” He closed the door behind him and crossed to the bed, sitting down next to her open biology book. “What sort of canine disease has you up this late?”

             
“Equine this time.” She turned sideways in the chair and pulled the laptop into, appropriately, her lap. “I found an article on colic I haven’t read yet. This appaloosa gelding had a section of his small intestine strangled by a lipoma – a fatty tumor – and a successful resection was performed. Can you believe that? A resection on a horse!”

             
Her face was full of geeky excitement when she glanced at him, but quickly fell. “Oh.” She was sheepish. “You probably don’t care.”

             
He grinned at her, his cheeks feeling stiff with exhaustion, but he couldn’t not smile at the girl. “I care.”

             
She blushed, just the slightest, pleased, but didn’t break eye contact. Jordan had been right about the crush – Tam knew about it better than her brother ever would – and it was not something that embarrassed Jo. Her reactions were terribly innocent and terribly sweet, and he was not proof against them.

             
“I wanted to ask you a favor.”

             
“What?” She didn’t hesitate.

             
“Put the computer up and come here.”

             
He fished the ruby out of his pocket as she complied, and he heard her gasp of surprise as she sank to one knee on the mattress beside him. Her hip touched his thigh, her breasts made contact with the side of his arm, and both her small hands cupped beneath his and the sparkling nugget of red he held within it.

             
“Wow,” she breathed, her hair tumbling over his shoulder and teasing his neck. Her forefinger crept over his thumb and hovered above the ruby, timid, as if she were afraid to touch it.

             
He glanced down at the side of her face, his cheek resting against her soft hair, saw the light shining in the translucent, turquoise irises of her eyes, the reverent little smile that touched her lips, and knew he’d made the right call.

             
“This is a family heirloom,” he told her, “and I don’t have a way to keep it safe.”

             
Jo tipped her head back, confusion pulling her brows together.

             
“Could you hold on to it for me?”

             
“Me?” Now her brows scaled her forehead. “Tam, this has to be – it’s – it’s expensive! You don’t wanna trust me with that! What if our house got robbed? What if - ”

             
“I don’t have anywhere to take it. I know you’ll take good care of it.” Suddenly, it was very important that she take a little piece of his responsibility, that she accept this, that she be the one to have it. For Tam, it wasn’t just about the gemstone at this point. “Please, Joey?”

             
She blew out a breath that slumped her shoulders. “Guess I can’t say ‘no,’ can I?”

             
“I’m hoping not.”

             
Jo nodded. “Of course I’ll keep it.” Her eyes fell back to the ruby in his hand – their hands – as if magnetized. “God, it’s beautiful.”

             
He wasn’t looking at the red stone. “Yeah, it is.”

11

Now

             
“Are you sure you like it, Mom?”

             
Beth set her fork down on the edge of her plate and gave Jo a warm, maternal smile. “I love it,” she assured, “and I wouldn’t say so if I didn’t mean it.”

             
But that was the thing: she would say so, even if she thought it was the ugliest thing she’d laid eyes on. Jo forked another bite of chocolate cake into her mouth to cover her frown. She and Jess had put quite a lot of thought into their mother’s birthday present, which was exactly why Jo was rethinking their decision. The wrapping paper lay crumpled on the kitchen floor, dirty cake dishes stacked in the sink. The men had already sought the TV and Jess and Jo sat with Beth at the table, bathed in the buttery light of the overhead lamp. The back door was propped open and the chorusing trill of cicadas filled the room.

             
The buff-colored leather cosmetics case and the second-hand-store Burberry purse done in the trademark plaid sat at the center of the table, the cake pushed to the side in deference to the gifts’ superiority. Jess was a bargain hunter and had known just which thrift store would have high-dollar last season castoffs some Buckhead brat had given away, tags still attached. Beth, who owned nothing name brand, had become teary-eyed, clutching the purse to her chest. She’d been so worried about making the right sort of impression with Delta’s family at the wedding and nothing said sophistication like Burberry.

             
But Jo was starting to wonder if that was wise, if they should pretend to be people they weren’t just to impress the Brooks.

             
“Jo, baby,” Beth raked her fingers through Jo’s hair, “what’s bothering you?”

             
Jo opened her mouth, prepared to smile and say that she was fine, but her sister beat her to the punch.

             
“It’s about Tam,” Jess said from across the table, picking up cake crumbs from her plate with a licked fingertip. Her green eyes flashed up, touched Jo’s frowning face, then moved to Beth. “She’s having residual Tam feelings.”

             
Jo kicked her sister under the table. Jess didn’t react.

             
Beth sighed in a sad, sympathetic way. “Oh.” She pulled her fingers through her daughter’s hair again. “You can’t dwell on it, sweetie. A week isn’t that long. You can get through it.”

             
But a lot of things could happen in a week. A lot of old wounds could pull apart at their ragged seams and start oozing again. Where Tam was concerned, she was one big scab, ready to be picked. They’d never talked, never hashed things out and laid all their cards out on the table. She’d had no closure and because of it, every time she saw him, she went hurtling back through time until she was standing up against the side of her dorm building again, the rain coming down in buckets, rain water sliding down her clammy back inside her t-shirt as she struggled to come to grips with the things coming out of Tam’s mouth. When she blinked, she could still see him like that, his wet, dark hair falling across his forehead, crystal droplets dripping off its spikes.

             
So many times, she’d scrolled to his number in the call log of her phone, thumb poised over the talk button, thinking that if they met up for coffee, if they could just tell each other what they’d been thinking that day, try to put a little salve over the words. But she was a coward, more of one than she’d ever thought, and she’d always put the phone down.

             
Two nights before, at Mike’s house, she’d been unprepared for the rendezvous. At some of the wedding functions she’d attended, she’d braced herself for a possible run in, but when she’d expected her brother and instead found Tam in the doorway, her heart had seized up in her chest, her lungs had filled with concrete.

             
“You look good, Joey,”
he’d told her, and he’d looked good too. Maybe a touch thin, a little tired, but her knees had felt like folding chairs regardless. His hair was shorter now, just long enough in the front that he could draw some spikes out of it with gel. He’d gotten rid of the tongue ring, but his eyes had been the same cotton candy shade of blue that haunted her every waking dream.

             
“I don’t have ‘residual feelings,’” she defended, which was only half a lie. If her emotions hadn’t dimmed, could they be considered residual? “I’d prefer not to spend time with him, but I’m not bothered or anything.”

             
“Uh-huh,” Beth said, “that’s why you wadded the invitation up.”

             
Jo sighed. “Can you guys at least promise me you won’t do anything to make this whole situation more awkward?”

             
“No,” Jess said.

             
“Absolutely not,” Beth said.

             
Jo pushed her plate away and rested her forehead on the table top. “You two are - ”

             
The opening guitar riff of “All Along the Watchtower” crashed through the room, sounding tinny and full of static. “My phone,” Jo explained, pushing up and retrieving it from her purse by the back door. She almost didn’t answer it when she didn’t recognize the number, but her mother and sister were staring at her in earnest.

             
“Hello,” she said with as much disinterest as possible.

             
“Jo?” an unfamiliar male voice asked.

             
“Yeeeeaaaah.” She cringed.

             
“This is Ryan.”

             
She blinked.

             
“Ryan Atkins. Mike’s friend.”

             
Learning his identity didn’t make her want to hang up any less. “Oh, um, hey. How’d you get my number?”

             
“Mike gave it to me,” he said happily, “he thinks we have a lot in common.”

             
She was going to murder her brother. At the table, Jess mouthed
what?
And Diane mimed a strange sequence of gestures that Jo figured meant
put whoever it is on speakerphone
. She frowned at them. “Uh huh,” she told Ryan. “And why exactly did he think that?”

             
He chuckled in a very loud, hollow,
get a load of this bitch
kind of way and ignored her question. “So I wanted to ask you something.”

             
Jo was silent.

             
“I was thinking that seeing as how you’re a bridesmaid and I’m a groomsman, since we’re both so compatible and all, maybe you’d, you know, like to be my date to the wedding.”

             
She clapped a hand over her mouth to keep from laughing into the phone. Then, when that didn’t work, she covered the receiver on her cell, pulled it away from her ear and whispered, “Ryan Atkins asked me to be his date to the wedding.”

             
Jessica rolled her eyes. Beth tried to suppress a giggle.

             
“Jo? You there?” Ryan’s voice called from down by her hip.

             
She was there, but she was quaking with silent laughter. It was ludicrous in more than one way. For starters, pretty-boy, pretend-smile Ryan couldn’t have been any less of a proper match for her. And second, she couldn’t process the irony of it all. The years she’d carried on in secret with Tam, afraid Mike would flip his shit if he ever found out, and here Mike was
giving
her number away to asshole gym buddies. Tam would have needed medical attention he would have laughed so hard.

             
Tam
…her heart pulsed like the closing and opening of a fist just thinking his name. Forget residual, she was heartsick over him. Even if Ryan wasn’t a tool, even if he did, by some miracle, have something in common with her, she could never take him up on his offer because she was…

             
A thought sparked in her mind. Like a stray ember from a campfire, it landed in the dark kindling of her brain and exploded, flames licking around the inside of her skull.

             
It felt good to have some fire, to have a torch to beat back the self-righteous flame-thrower Tam had used on her that afternoon in the rain.

             
Fight fire with fire.

             
If he thought she didn’t need him, then she would prove that no, she did not, in fact, need him.

             
“Hey, Ryan?” She said as she slapped the phone to her ear again. “Yes, I’ll definitely be your date to the wedding.”

             
Jess and Beth half came out of their chairs.

             
“Um…” He sounded like he’d expected to do more convincing. “Okay…cool! That’s great. See you at the airport?”

             
After she’d assured him she was aglow with excitement over their next encounter, she hung up and slipped the cell back in her purse.

             
“You are not going to sleep with Ryan Atkins,” Jess said with complete certainty that what she said would be taken down as law.

             
“I’m going to be his unofficial date to the wedding.”

             
“You are not sleeping with Ryan Atkins.”

             
“Joanna,” Beth said, wetting her lips, trying to regulate her startled blinking. “What in the ever loving hell are you thinking, sweetie?”

             
“I’m thinking.” She held up her hands palms-out in a defenseless gesture. “That I don’t want to look like the poor little dumped girl at the wedding. And that if batting my lashes at that sack of shit for a couple hours makes me look just that much less pathetic, it’s worth it.”
Plus, I want to see if Tam is capable of jealousy.

             
Jess pushed her platinum hair behind her ears and gave Jo a long-suffering look of disgust. “You’re not a game-player, Jo. That’s beneath you.”

             
“I’m not playing games.”

             
“Don’t do this just to hurt Tam,” Beth said. “He - ”

             
“
He
hurt
me
!” Jo burst out before she could contain it. A bright, angry flash of pain flared inside her. “I’ve never done anything to make him feel less welcome in this family. I have never retaliated against him and I don’t want to.” Beth had pulled back in her chair, shocked. “But if I can glean one goddamn ounce of satisfaction by going to this screwed up wedding with this screwed up asshole Ryan, then I’m gonna do it!”

             
The growling of the TV down the hall went silent. “Everything okay in there?” Randy called.

             
“Fine, dear,” Beth called back, face a little pale, hand at the base of her throat, and the sound of the cheering crowd down at Turner Field filled the house once more.

             
“Well,” Jess said after a long moment, “guess I can’t argue with that.”

**

              “I brought you something.”

             
“Oh, I wish you hadn’t. I wish you wouldn’t spend money on me,” Melinda protested, but as Tam pulled a plastic chair up to her bedside and collapsed into it, he saw that her watery, mostly-vacant blue eyes were affixed to the bundle tucked under his left arm.

             
He glanced up at his mother and smiled for her, she said she always liked to see him smile. Wanted to know he was happy. She was now the personification of her timid, fragile interior; her skin, always pale, but at one time porcelain, was the color and texture of paper now, a clinging film of crepe that covered her bones and visible veins. Her hands were skeletal, her neck that of a baby bird. Her hair was gone, eyebrows and lashes too, and she wore a blue paisley scarf wound around her head to hide her baldness.

             
The room was small and clinically white. It smelled of disinfectant and medicine and death; an overpowering cloud of mortality that assaulted him like tear gas each time he entered. Melinda had a TV and a little dressing table with a mirror and a bottle of lavender scented hand lotion he’d bought her but that she refused to use; she was saving it, she said. The vertical blinds clapped together, stirred by the AC duct in the floor beneath the window, and Melinda wore a purple wool cardigan over her pajamas to ward off the chill.

             
Tam had spent weeks searching for the best hospice he could afford, had looked up online reviews and tracked down the children of sick, dying patients who’d stayed there so he could ask them about “accidental” overdoses and cigarette burns. He’d met with the manager on four separate occasions – two scheduled, two not – of Golden Oaks Permanent Care before moving Melinda. The staff was conscientious, patient, the food decent, the reputation legendary. It was the idyllic hospice.