Near & Far (24 page)

Usually I had to guess what she might be up to, and that was all part of the fun, but on the nights she was working, I could almost imagine exactly what she was doing. I’d watched her from the back table for so many hours, I think I knew her job almost as well as she did. But I didn’t know if she was working. I couldn’t remember, and that upset me more than it should have. I knew it had a lot to do with everything that had been going on in my head lately; my mind had felt like a never-ending maze of dominos tumbling over for the past month.

After getting Sunny taken care of for the night, I grabbed my phone from the small barn office and checked for missed calls. Sure enough, I had one and a voice mail.

“Have a nice night of phone sex.” Garth smacked my arm as he passed by. “Say hi to Rowen for me.”

I had the phone to my ear, waiting for the voice mail to start, so I gave Garth a reply in sign language.

“Sorry. I meant,
moan
hi to Rowen for me.” Garth gave me a thumbs-up as he left the barn.

I’d had my fill of Garth Black for one day three hours ago. Finally, I was getting a reprieve.

“Hey, Jesse, it’s me.” Rowen’s voice put an instant smile on my face. “So it looks like I missed you. Again. I know you’ve been really busy.” There was a long pause, long enough it made me freeze. “So, I really didn’t want to tell you this on a voice mail, but since I missed you last night and you missed me tonight, I have to tell you some way . . . I won’t be able to come out next weekend.” My smile was gone. So far gone. “I didn’t realize it when we made plans for me to come visit, but that’s the same weekend as the Spring Art Show. Since I guess I’m on the committee, I can’t really miss it.” Rowen sighed, sounding as bad as I felt. “And even though I know you can’t come see me with everything you’ve got going on, I’m still going to be selfish and ask if you can. Because I want to see you, Jesse. I want to see you so bad I’m half tempted to just drop out of school so I don’t have to be at this Spring Art Show thingie. Okay, so I’m exaggerating. A little.” Another long sigh. “I’m sorry. I suck as a girlfriend and, apparently, I suck at keeping a calendar. All right, I’ll stop taking up your time with my ramblings and let you get to bed. I know you’ve got to be exhausted. I’ll try calling about the same time tomorrow night. Okay?”

I was already trying to remember which button I needed to punch to replay the message because, even though it was just a voice mail, it was Rowen. It was a piece of her I could have and hold on to.

“I’m just getting ready to head out with Jax and the other person on the committee so we can get this sucker planned, but I couldn’t go a night without talking to you. Or at least, talking to your recording.” That time, I sighed with her. “I miss you, Jesse. Right now, it almost feels like I miss you as much as I love you . . . and you know how much that is. Sleep tight and sweet dreams. Sweet dreams of me, okay?” She ended her call with an air kiss, and I hit the replay button immediately.

So many things unsettled me about that message. I also knew there were just as many things that should have reassured me, and the old me would have focused on the good and barely noticed the bad. But the other person, the Jesse that was caught in a tug-of-war between the old and new, was only concerned with the unsettling parts. That, of course, unsettled me even more.

I left the barn listening to Rowen’s message again and wishing I could will her there. For one minute even. Just so I could hold her and she could hold me and I would know everything would be all right. I’d remind myself of the man she saw when she looked at me and remember why it was so important that I overcome my internal battle. I couldn’t seem to win the war for myself, but I believed I could for her. I’d do anything for Rowen, including caging demons I’d unknowingly set free. I just needed to see her. To feel her close. I needed more than a message left on my phone. I wished I didn’t, I wished a few voice mails and a couple of phone calls could be enough, but I knew it wasn’t. I wasn’t as strong as I thought, and realizing that was terrifying.

Heading up the porch steps, I was about to hit replay for the third time when I noticed something moving from the corner of my eye. Mom was on one of the swings, a plastic bin in her lap, smiling gently at me.

“Hey, sweetheart. How are you doing?” Mom’s voice always had an undercurrent of concern—that’s part of what made her such an incredible mother and person—but her greeting held more concern than normal. She knew something was up with me, but she’d given me my space. She’d always known what I needed, even during those first few years.

“Hey, Mom . . . um . . . I’m . . . I’m doing . . .” I’d been putting up a good front, but I guess my
I’m fine
facade was taking a temporary break.

“Yeah, Jess. I know.” Moving a couple of the bins from beside her, she patted the freed space. “Come keep me company. The girls get enough of me during the day, and your dad has been snoring for two hours now.”

I wanted to sit and talk with Mom . . . and I didn’t want to sit and talk with Mom. Experience had proven she could get to the bottom of what was troubling me in a short, innocent-seeming conversation. I wasn’t ready for her to work her magic yet. I wasn’t ready to speak openly about it; I still hadn’t let go of the hope that it would go away on its own.

However, at the end of the day, I could say
no
to my mom about as often as I could to Rowen. “What are you doing out here?” I asked, approaching the swing.

“Sorting through old pictures. I’ve gotten way behind on getting things labeled and into albums. Obviously,” she said, motioning at the bins filled to capacity with photos.

“Yeah, but why are you doing it out here? Inside’s a little warmer.” I was just unzipping my heavy Carhartt jacket when she shook her head.

“You keep that on, sweetie. Thank you, though. Besides, it’s nice being outside in the cool every now and then when you spend your days in a hot kitchen.” I settled into the swing beside her and lifted my brows. “Okay. I might be out here because I was waiting for you.”

“You almost had me convinced with the photo bins, Mom. Really.”

“Not quite, though?”

“Given none of them were open, that kind of gave you away.” I couldn’t tell how many deep conversations Mom and I’d gotten into when I thought she needed nothing more than help drying the dishes, or plucking green beans, or any one of the other everyday tasks she liked to use as a gateway to something big.

“I think I’m losing my touch.” She shook her head.

“So why were you waiting up for me?” I said, not wasting any time.

Mom reached back and grabbed something off of the table beside her. “I made your favorite dessert.” She held out the steaming piece of apple pie, and waited.

“Thanks, Mom.” I took the pie and rested the plate on my lap. On any other day, I would have been inhaling it and going in search of another piece in thirty seconds, but eating was the furthest thing from my mind. “Pie? This was the reason you were camped out on the porch waiting for me?”

She folded her hands in her lap and cleared her throat. “Well, there may have been one other reason I was waiting for you.”

“Go ahead, Mom. I promise I won’t go run off and hide out in my tree house like I did after you explained, in detail, the male and female reproductive organs.” I gave her a wry smile.

“You totally over-reacted.”

“Mom, you used a banana, a couple of limes, and a pomegranate.” Every teenage boy’s worst nightmare? Having his mom teach him the ins and outs of sex education.

“That was what the online home-schooling lesson plan suggested.”

“I was twelve.”

Mom lifted an eyebrow at me. “Are you trying to tell me twelve-year-old boys are impervious to sexual urges?”

I shifted on the swing. Eight years later and I was almost as uncomfortable as I’d first been when the words “penis” and “vagina” came out of my mom’s mouth. “You probably could have waited a few more years for the whole condom-over-the-banana demonstration. You know, just in case you and Dad are planning on raising any more sons.”

Mom scoffed at me. “I may wash dishes by hand and make my own piecrusts, but I’m not fool enough to be old-fashioned about some things. I’ve tried to be . . .
practical
. . . with raising all of my children, and I wasn’t eager to think of my baby raising one. Thus the banana and condom demonstration.”

I smiled into my lap. How many twenty-year-old guys had conversations like that with their mothers? Yeah, probably none but me. “Is that what you’re waiting to talk with me about? Fruit and prophylactics? Because I think I’ve got both areas covered now . . .”

Mom reached for her tea cup and saucer and took a couple of sips. “I couldn’t help hearing your phone call with Rowen a few nights ago.”

That’s where I figured the conversation would be heading. “Yeah?”

“Things sounds a little . . .
strained
, maybe?”

I set the pie down on the table beside me. With what we were talking about, I wouldn’t be up for eating anytime soon. “Yeah.”

“What’s going on?”

So damn much.
“Just lots of things,” I answered with a shrug.

“The distance? Is being apart so much taking a toll?”

“That’s part of it. It’s not the main issue, though.” I clenched my phone. I’d held it twice as much as I’d held Rowen’s hand that year. “But being apart definitely makes it that much harder to work out the other things.”

“What other things?”

Part of what I loved about my mom was her ability to deliver a question so succinctly. She didn’t soften it or wrap it up in a bunch of fluff. Right then, though, I wouldn’t have minded her questions not being so direct.

“Things I’m not ready to talk about yet, Mom,” I admitted, dropping my gaze.

There was a good minute of silence before Mom draped her arm over my shoulders. “You love Rowen, and she loves you. Hold on to that, and work out the rest. Just don’t assume that these issues, whatever they are, will fix themselves or disappear on their own. Work them out. Don’t let them create a wedge between you two.”

“And what if you have no idea how to go about working them out?”

“Then get an idea. The answers don’t come easy, Jesse. God knows the questions sure do, but the answers never come easy. You have to work for them, and in my experience, you have to work
hard
for them.”

Having my mom’s arm around me still managed to soothe me, almost to the point of wanting to admit everything that had been bothering me. “I guess I should have known better than to assume that once I’d found the woman I wanted to spend my life with, everything else would just fall into place.”

Mom laughed softly, patting my shoulder. “Honey, if it was easy, they wouldn’t call it love.”

“Yeah. I’m figuring that out.”

Setting down her tea, she twisted toward me. “What about you, Jess? How have
you
been?”

I swallowed. That topic was even more touchy than the last one. That topic was one that scared the shit out of me. I kept my eyes forward when I answered. “Okay. Why?”

“You’ve just seemed a little . . . in your head, you know?”

Mom had nailed it. I’d been so in my head I was close to driving myself crazy. I knew exactly what she was asking—
is your past back to haunt you?—
and I know exactly how I wanted to answer—
yes, please help me beat this—
but the words wouldn’t form. I simply couldn’t admit all that I was struggling with: the ghosts of my past, my fears of one day not being enough for Rowen—would she outgrow me?—my growing fears of Jax and his motives for being in her life . . . insecurity after insecurity, fear after fear. The obstacles were so thick around me, I hadn’t been able to move—to
breathe
—in weeks. Nothing came easy anymore. Everything was a struggle.

“I’ll be okay, Mom.” I sounded more convincing than I felt.

“I know you will, Jesse. You’re one of the strongest people I know. I’m just worried about everything you might lose before you get back to being okay.”

I stood up. I couldn’t talk about any of it anymore. It was too much, too fast. “I’ve got this, Mom. It’s going to be all right.”

“Don’t let the things you
think
you need to do keep you from doing the things you
actually
need to. Okay? Fight for the things that matter—don’t waste your energy on the rest.”

I nodded and headed for the front door. “Thanks for the pie. I’ll have to have a piece for breakfast.”

“Jesse?” Mom said. I paused with my hand on the door. “You know I’m here whenever you need to talk, right?”

I was suddenly so exhausted, I could have collapsed right there. The day, the week, and the whole month had suddenly caught up to me, and the weight of it all was almost too much to bear. I needed to crawl into bed and sleep for five days straight . . . and then I remembered all that was waiting for me when I did fall asleep. I wanted to chug coffee to keep away from those dark places. “And you know that when I’m ready to talk, I will.”