The Heart (9 page)

“Seriously, could you have made that any more awkward? You’re such an ass!”

She blew me off the way she always did when I called her out on her behavior. “I can’t believe you got on the back of a motorcycle when you bought and tested four different car seats for the kids!”

“I bought a damned sports car too, got my first bikini wax, and spent a fortune on girl crap I didn’t need. Do you think I’m having a mid-life crisis at twenty-eight?”

Dallas’s jaw dropped as she studied me. “You got some sun, too. I was only gone a day. What in the
hell
happened?”

“I broke into my piggy bank and I lived a little,” I said, letting Annabelle down to Godzilla around the office.

“Good for you!” she said with a smile. “And Jack?”

“He’s not boring, but we still really haven’t had much of a conversation.”

Though he did just give me my first orgasm in years, and he’s practically seen me naked.

“I wasn’t really interested in knowing if you’d talked about the weather.”

“I’m well aware of that, dear sister,” I quipped with distaste.

“Jesus, that man is hawwwt. If I didn’t already have a perfectly good steak on my plate—”

“Don’t finish that sentence, Dr. Martin,” Dean said to his wife in warning as his son proceeded to fly into the room with an announcement. “We got echinni!”

“You did?” I said, just as animated.

Grant smiled up at me with a nod. “Mommy says it’s sooooo fatering. But Daddy says he no care what mommy says.”

No amount of restraint could keep the full belly laugh I had to let out as Grant’s parents stared each other down. I knew Dallas would burst if she didn’t get her digs in, and I was just about to start the countdown when I heard her sound off to Dean. “Your daughter just pooped. I fed her broccoli and breast milk for lunch. I’ll plate your food.” I couldn’t stop my laughter as Dean pulled his daughter into his arms. When the smell hit him, he visibly cringed.

Dallas plated Dean’s fettuccine with a heaping helping of broccoli while across the hall we heard unpleasant grunting. I looked at my sister who was cutting Grant’s noodles and gave her a smile.

“You are totally happy with him, aren’t you?”

She sighed with a smile and looked up to me with a gleam in her eye I’ve only seen a few times.

“Dallas, it’s okay to let it show. I want you to be happy.”

She studied me for a moment and concluded I was being honest. “It’s like the most fun I’ve ever had being an adult, and the hardest at the same time. But, yeah, I’m totally happy with him and
them
,” she said as she eyed Grant. “They’re yours too, you know,” she reminded, still cutting the noodles, afraid to make eye contact with me.

“I know,” I said before standing to take my leave, suddenly exhausted from the day’s events.

“Stay with us and eat,” she said, stunned when I didn’t move to grab a plate.

“Not tonight, but soon.”

“Where’re you going?” Dean asked, carrying a freshly changed Annabelle into the office. There was absolutely no doubt who fathered her when they were so close to each other.

“Home,” I said confidently. “Where I live. And why are you guys eating here?”

“Used to it, I guess,” Dallas said with a shrug. “Dean’s got a patient in labor, and it’s a quicker commute. We like it here.”

“Just don’t get burned out,” I said, admiring the family in front of me. “You’ll be here forever.”

Dallas stopped her cutting and looked up at me with a grin. “So will you.”

“Right,” I said, matching her grin. “Night, love you guys.”

“Wove you,” Grant said, not looking up from his plate.

“Oou,” Annabelle added. I closed the door and decided to walk back to my house. It really never seemed like much of a walk on cooler nights. The paved, white walkway was softly lit on both sides by luminescent globes. Some nights, I would just walk up and down the paved street, thinking of how much had changed for me both personally and professionally since this land was nothing but pasture. It was a different world now, a different life.

Goose bumps covered my arms as a cool breeze lifted my hair from my shoulders. Grant wasn’t here. It hadn’t taken me long to figure that out. But on summer nights like this, with his memory still etched in to every part of me, he wasn’t far away.

“Did you feel that?”

His words were an echo now, an echo of the world we’d lived in together where our dreams were at our fingertips and our love was front and center. I paced myself on my walk home, no longer looking forward to a night alone. Stopping mid-step, I stared into the distance at the empty house. Clarity hit me as I stood in front of the past. I’d been waiting for a new life to start while staring in the rearview. If I wanted to change my life, my future required my attention.

As the next cool breeze ran its fingers through my hair, fear crept through me.

My life had started a long time ago and had begun to leave me behind.

Unknown: Good Morning, beautiful. I’m ready for my first lesson.

Thinking on my toes, I sent my first text to Jack then programmed his number.

Rose: Rap & R&B 101 - Changes, Tupac

“You’ve had this place how long and never had us over?” Jules popped off as she jumped out of her SUV and whistled as an assessment of the house.

“I’ve been busy,” I offered in a half-assed apology, a cold glass of sweet tea vodka extended toward her as she made her way up the steps.

She snatched it from my sweaty palm and swallowed it down while narrowing her eyes at me. Jules was a native of New Jersey, and raised by her five brothers. Though she did have the accent and a lot of the attitude, the last guy who had called her Snookie had been dismissed with a broken nose and a Louis Vuitton shoved up his ass. She believed in truth and loyalty and with her you always got the blunt truth. But when you were one of Jules’ people, you got the best of her. I was one of the lucky ones.

She took no time setting her day’s supplies down on the deck, which consisted of a neon green bottle of tanning oil, a misting spray water bottle to cool ourselves down while we sunbathed, an additional bottle of expensive vodka, and her usual fifteen-pound purse, which I was sure was filled with the mysteries of her universe.

Jules was beautiful with olive skin, long, jet-black hair, and large round blue eyes. She was top heavy and damn near every shirt she wore was accompanied by inches of deep cleavage. She pulled off her t-shirt, revealing a banana yellow bikini, then made herself at home in one of my deck chairs.

“Seriously, I can’t believe you’ve been holding out on us like this.” She pulled her black sunglasses over her eyes and stretched her back like a lazy cat in the afternoon sun.

“If it makes you feel any better, aside from my family, you’re my first house guest,” I said as I took residence beside her in a matching chair. She looked at me sideways before giving me a quick nod.

I’d bared all to Jules one night after a long day at work and a few shots of tequila, which she insisted on and I hated. I’d told her everything I wanted her to know, including the details of my relationship with Grant. Unlike Dallas, she hadn’t pushed me for anything since. Though blunt and honest, she was still the type of woman who knew her place, and if I had to guess, she masked her own pains as well.

Who didn’t?

I spent an hour filling her in on my activities of the days before, leaving out mine and Jack’s motorcycle ride. I’d have to have more than one drink to admit what had happened. I knew our chemistry was on dangerous grounds, but I also knew he was fighting some moral issue because of my father and their friendship. I was sure last night, if it weren’t for Dallas, he would have kissed me. Would I have kissed him back? Did I want him to? I thought of his slow smile when he’d figured out I was turned on to the brink. Then I realized he’d probably be packing up in the next few weeks to head back to New Orleans. For a brief moment, I wondered if he had someone to return to.

“So you go out and get dolled up, buy a sports car, and decide to have a party? What’s gotten into you?”

I shrugged in reply.

“Well, good on ya,” she said before draining her spiked tea. “This is pretty good.”

“It is, and I’m not having a party. Jamie is coming in a few hours after her shift. Just us girls today.”

I settled in my deck chair, already feeling the burn on my shoulders. Reaching for my sun block, I gave my body a quick rubdown. For someone so sensitive to the sun, it was a damn shame I loved it so much.

“I called TJ last night,” Jules confessed after an hour of alcohol and sun worshiping.

I looked over at her with wary eyes.

“Don’t look at me like that. I can’t shake him.”

“I know,” I said as she unfastened her top and flipped on her stomach.

“He’s my kryptonite. I mean, how in the hell am I supposed to resist a man like that?”

“No one can, that’s the point. He’s not conservative in the monogamy department and you—”

“I’m no saint, so save your breath…I know,” she cut me off and gave me a pointed look. “I know.”

TJ was everything I thought Jules
wouldn’t
want in a man. Her weakness was cowboys, the kind that rope and ride. She liked them as southern and as rugged as possible. She was crazy about them, which made her personal life seem almost comical. It was like watching a mafia and a western movie collide. For some reason, they couldn’t get enough of her, either. TJ was her ultimate catch, or so she thought until he’d decided he wanted to date around.

“Did you sleep with him?” I asked, knowing the answer.

“Yep,” she said, her lips popping. “Don’t tell Jamie. Don’t give her any ammo. She’s still pissed about the last time.”

“It’s because she cares.” I decided to give her some of her own hard truth. “You’re only hurting yourself.”

“Yeah,” she said with a sigh. “Fuck him.”

“No,” I said with a chuckle. “
Stop
fucking him.” I was rewarded with a spray in the face from her water bottle. I closed my eyes, loving the feel of the lukewarm water.

“Rose?”

“Yes, Jersey?”

“I know you’re scared. I like our talks the way they are, with neither of us really prying too much and all that, but can I just say something?”

I let out a sigh and gave her my full attention.

“I know TJ is going to hurt me, you know it too, and we both know I’m going to keep on doing what I’m doing until he does. I’m not naïve enough to think I can change him or that he wants to change at all. I think it goes with being in your thirties. The optimist in me is slowly dying, anyway. I’m stuck in this pattern because I want to be, because I want
him
.”

I nodded, unsure where she was going with the conversation, but certain it was hard for her to admit what she just had.

“You have no idea what’s going to happen next. I mean…that’s something to be excited about, you know? It’s not over for you, Rose, no matter how much you think of it that way. There is no way you’re living the rest of your life alone.” She gave me a knowing smile. “Not you. I just want you to keep an open mind, okay? Half of the fun is figuring out who it is. I think you forgot that.”

“Kind of an optimistic way of thinking for a girl who’s condemned herself to a lot less.”

Jules looked over at me with a level of seriousness I’d never seen. “Then you get out there and give me a reason to want different.”

“Afternoon, ladies.”

Cajun.

“Fuckello,” Jules said, pulling a t-shirt to her bare chest and giving me wide eyes.

“Jack,” I said with a grin, water dripping from my chin as our eyes met. His gaze unabashedly raked my bikini-clad body. A halo of sunshine surrounded his rugged features as I got lost in them. He looked like the devilishly handsome southern gentlemen he was. I couldn’t help but note how well he filled out his jeans. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Jules size him up and devour him with her wide eyes.

“I was coming by to grab you to test the new equipment, but I can see you’re busy.”

“I totally forgot,” I replied. It wasn’t like me at all to forget something like that, especially when it came to the center. Jules looked between Jack and me, then kept her eyes narrowed at me. I could feel the Spanish Inquisition coming.