Plain Jayne (6 page)

She lifted the gear and headed around the building as Carter came toward her, banged-up red metal toolbox in hand. He stopped, whistled softly, and laughed.

“That’s attractive.”

“Shut up. I thought you were going to see Nick’s folks this morning.”

“I did and now I’m here.” Before she could start arguing, Carter rolled his eyes and kept talking. “It’s just dirt, Jay.”

“No it’s not. It’s—”

“Jay.” He huffed her name out on a breath. “Just open the door.”

“Fine, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.” She tossed a dust mask at him, pulled open the
front door, and flicked the light on. “How did it really go last night between Nick and Linda?”

“Her name’s Lisa, and after you bailed—” Carter came to a screeching halt just inside the door. “Holy shit.”

“Told you.” She tugged him in a little farther so the door didn’t catch his butt when it swung closed. “And I didn’t bail, I just didn’t think
Lisa
needed me hanging around while Nick tried to talk his way around me living there.”

She waited almost half a minute for him to respond.

“So did he?”

“Did he what?” Carter blinked through his shock and finally looked back at her.
“What is that smell?”

“Did he convince her there’s nothing to worry about? And you don’t want to know.”

“How the hell should I know? I bailed right after you did.”

Great help he was.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Jayne grimaced as she slid the goggles in place.

“Hell, no, I don’t want to do this.” His eyes huge over his dust mask, Carter shook his head slowly. “Do you?”

“No, but I don’t really have a choice.”

“Then neither do I.” He finally blinked again, reached over, and gave her a soft shove. “Hell, Jay, after everything you’ve done for me … besides, you’re like my sister. I’d do it for her, so I’ll do it for you.”

A little tug pulled at Jayne’s heart.
Like his sister?
Sweet.

“Okay.” She pulled on the work gloves and grinned up at him, knowing she looked like a complete idiot. “First thing we need to do is get the padlocks off the back door so we can get to the dumpster.”

The door opened behind them and Nick stepped in, followed by a tall guy with a blond crew cut.

“Thought you were going to wait for me,” Nick said. “This is Brett Hale. Brett, Jayne.”

A good six or seven inches taller than Jayne, with the shoulders of a linebacker, Brett crowded out what little space they had left, until they all shifted a little more to the right, leaving Jayne pushed up against a stack of boxes.

The man’s dark eyes barely blinked. “Nice to meet you.”

Even if they could have seen her frown behind her mask, Nick would have ignored it. “Uh, yeah, you too. Nick—tell me you didn’t drag some poor unsuspecting bystander into my mess.”

“Brett doesn’t care, do you?” He didn’t give the guy a chance to respond. “He’s a cop, he’s seen worse.”

“Yeah,” Carter snorted. “But I bet he hasn’t smelled worse.”

With the four of them crowded into the cramped entrance, it was beyond claustrophobic, so Carter charged off, squeezing his way down the narrow gap and calling back over his shoulder.

“Light some incense or spray some Febreze. Guh!”

Jayne hurried after him, followed closely by Nick and Brett, who both immediately went to work on the padlocks.

“Brett,” Jayne said, flashing a hard glare at Nick. “I don’t know what Nick did to get you to come in here, but whatever it was—”

“He said you could use the help, so here I am. No big deal.”

No big deal? Maybe Nick hadn’t given him the whole picture.

“Okay, well, um, thank you.” She flashed Carter a look, but he just smiled behind his mask and reached for a box. “But anytime you want to leave, feel free.”

Brett nodded slightly, never taking his focus from the job of dismantling the padlocks. After a second, Jayne sliced open the box Carter had pulled down and dug through it, piece by piece. No books, just mismatched dishes, plates, and bowls crammed in as tight as they could be. Jayne set the box aside and reached for the next one.

“What are you doing?” Carter asked.

“Looking for books.”

“But—” Nick and Carter stared from her, to the box, then out to the hundreds, possibly thousands, of boxes and bags waiting to be opened. By this time she was into the second box, which was full of pots. Enough pots, actually, to service three families, so why the hell would Gran have them?

“Maybe we can set the useable stuff aside,” she said, “and have the Salvation Army pick it up.”

Both guys spoke at the same time.

“Set it aside where?”

“No good.” Nick pulled his mask down, folded his arms over his chest, and shook his head. “If the inspector’s coming on Tuesday, you need to get as much of this stuff out of here as you can, but you’ll never get anyone to do a pickup on a long weekend.”

“So what do we do? We can’t just throw out perfectly good things, Nick. It’s a waste.”

His mouth twisted a little, then he pulled his phone out of his pocket. “Give me a minute.”

He pushed out through the back door, talking quietly into his phone, so Jayne went back to work. A tangled mess of blankets and pillows went straight into the dumpster; there wasn’t enough bleach in the world to get the smell out of them and besides, with all those holes gnawed in them, the rats had obviously put them to good use.

By the time Nick returned, he’d lined up a U-Haul and called a church thrift shop and the women’s center to see if they wanted any of the useable stuff. With that done, he set his mask in place and started up the stairs, with Brett on his heels.

“Nick.” She couldn’t ask them to clean out the apartment; it was too much, too gross. At the same time, the thought of doing it herself made her want to throw up. The store itself seemed to be just crap; boxes and bags full of crap. But upstairs …

His look said everything he didn’t. She could argue all she wanted, but there was no way in hell he was going to let her go back up those stairs anytime soon.

“We’ll leave everything that isn’t garbage so you can look through it,” he said, never slowing down.

“But I …” She stopped, cringed. Oh, she was going to owe him big for this. “Thank you. And Brett, I’m really sorry.”

They spent the rest of the morning picking through boxes and hauling everything out to the back of the U-Haul where workers from the church thrift shop and the women’s center pulled out what they wanted. More than once or twice, Jayne took a few extra seconds outside, mask off, gulping in as much fresh air as she could, and letting her body shudder out all the creepiness brought on by the spiders, bugs, and rat nests.

It was nasty work, but by the time they stopped for lunch, they’d cleared out the back room and had made their way through several stacks in the store.

“Do you have to open every box?” Carter asked over a giant slice of double-cheese meat-lovers
pizza.

“There might be something in them I want to keep.” She handed him a napkin and pointed to his chin where a long piece of mozzarella dangled.

“Like what?”

It was stupid to hope Gran might have found a sentimental side after Jayne left, but that was the thing about hope; it didn’t always make sense.

“Have you seen the kind of shit we’re pulling out of that place?” Carter choked. “Why would anyone want to keep it?”

Jayne didn’t have to look up to know Carter had been on the receiving end of one of Nick’s looks. The sudden silence gave it away. Brett hadn’t uttered a single word since they’d ordered.

She forced a pathetic excuse for a smile when she looked up at them. “It’s probably stupid, but if I give it all away and it turns out there’s something in there … I don’t know …”

“Forget about it.” Carter slid another piece of pizza onto his plate and grinned. “We’ll get ’er done, Jay.”

“Ugh,” she grunted. “I don’t know how you guys can eat.”

She pushed her untouched plate away and waved the waitress over for the bill, but Nick reached over and took it out of the girl’s hand.

“I’ll get it.”

“No you won’t.” Jayne and Carter both grabbed for the plastic case, but Nick had already slipped his credit card inside and handed it back to the waitress. “Nick!”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“I’m not worried,” she said. “You guys are doing me a huge favor, the least I can do is feed you.”

“You can get it next time.”

Jayne’s snort was drowned out by Brett’s; his eyes softened a little, too. Not a smile, but close.

Back at the store, she plugged in her iPod dock now that they’d uncovered an outlet and turned the music on. Having Billy Idol in the background made the time go faster, so by late afternoon, she’d cleared a good-sized area at the back of the store. No books and no personal items, but among the piles, they’d uncovered a huge plastic bin of
National Geographic
s, which
had preoccupied Carter for the last hour, and four large shoe boxes full of red pens. Weird.

Brett had already left—all hands on deck the night of the Stomp—but when she caught Nick checking his watch for the third time, Jayne pulled down her mask and grinned.

“How ’bout we call it a day?”

“Okay.” Carter didn’t even look up as he threw the last of the
National Geographic
s back in the bin. “I told Katie I’d swing by, so I’ll meet you guys at Nick’s later and we can all go to the Stomp together. Sound good?”

“Yeah, but watch out,” Nick warned. “My sister’s a full-on crank these days.”

Jayne grunted. “You would be, too, if you were nine months pregnant in the middle of summer.”

“See you in a bit.” Carter flashed a quick grin, a quicker wink, and then he was gone. Nick carried the bin of magazines over to the recycle pile, then came back for more.

“Just leave it,” she said. “Don’t you need to get going, too?”

“Trying to get rid of me?” He set the pen boxes on top of a big box of pots and grinned crookedly. “I’ve got time.”

She followed him as far as the door, then blocked the opening when he tried to get back in.

“Thank you. Now go home.”

“But—”

“But nothing. After dropping the whole ‘Guess who’s living with me?’ bombshell last night, you better be taking Linda out to dinner or something before the Stomp.”

“It’s Lisa.” Nick’s face pinked a little. “And yeah.”

“Lisa. Right. Sorry, I’ve got some kind of mental block about that.” She laughed quietly and shifted to the right when he tried to sneak by again. “You’ve done enough.”

He glanced at his watch again. “You sure?”

“Go.”

He hesitated another second. “This is the first full day we’ve spent together in a long time. It was kinda fun.”

“Fun?” she snorted. “Man, are you twisted.”

Fun might not have been the word she’d choose, but it was good spending the day with him, no matter what they were doing. Maybe she’d done the right thing after all by coming back.
She opened her mouth to say as much, but before she could utter a sound, Nick had her in another vise grip. She waited a couple seconds, but when he didn’t release her, she tapped him on the back until he grunted an acknowledgment.

“Uh, Nick. It’s one thing to say your girlfriend’s okay with me staying at your house, but I doubt she’ll be as understanding about you hugging me all the time.”

In the hundreds, maybe thousands, of times Nick had hugged her over the years, she’d never gotten used to it, had always struggled with knowing that as close as they were, literally and figuratively, they would never be as close as she wanted.

They were best friends; had been forever, and even though she’d long ago decided it was better to accept that than nothing at all, it was still hard.

“Enough.” She untangled herself from his arms and stumbled back, forcing the unfinished thought from her mind. “I’m all hugged out.”

“Fine. Just make sure Pop and Carter don’t hog you all night.”

“Yeah, right.” Jayne stuffed her hands in her pockets and smirked. “I’m sure Carter’ll be plenty busy all on his own without worrying about ol’ Plain Jayne.”

Her old nickname slid from her tongue with ease, but one look at Nick’s face and she regretted the slip. Gone was his crooked little smile, and long gone was the warmth and softness in his eyes.

“Whatever,” she sighed. “Don’t get all ‘Nick’ about it.”

His jaw muscle tightened and his fingers clenched around the door, but he didn’t respond, which was a first.

“Go,” she said, tipping her chin toward his pickup. “I’ll catch up with you later.”

It took him a few seconds, but he finally released his death grip on the door. “We’ll pick you up at the house. Say nine?”

“Nine it is.”

When he was finally gone, Jayne stared into the space they’d managed to clear. It had been a huge help having the three of them work with her today, but so many times she’d wanted to tell them to wait, to let her look through the boxes again, just in case there was something—a photo, a trinket, anything—but there’d been nothing, not even the bookshelves, and those suckers had been bolted to the floor.

The amount of stuff they’d gone through was amazing, but even more mind-boggling was
how much they still had left to go through. She checked the time, stared around the store for a few seconds, then snapped her mask back in place.

Despite what Carter said, being “like” his sister wasn’t the same as being his sister, and Jayne didn’t want him or Nick to feel like they had to do this, so the more she got done now, the better. Besides, she still had time before she had to meet Nick and Lin … 
Lisa
.

Bit by bit she plugged away at it. Carter was right, it was mostly crap, but that didn’t stop her from going through every single thing. How could there be so much stuff without any of it meaning anything? There had to be something.

The box at the top of the next stack was heavy, long, and awkward as hell, but up on her tiptoes, she managed to wiggle it forward until it teetered over the edge and rested on her fingertips. Before she could get it down, her phone rang, so she balanced the box with one hand and pulled the phone out with the other.