Winter Jacket: Finding Home (32 page)

“If I did, do you think I’d be having this crisis?” she snapped.

I held up my hands like a shield against her words.

“I’m sorry.” She rubbed her fingers into her temples. “I’m nervous. And when I get nervous, everything has to be perfect. I have a hard time letting go of control.”

I could think of a number of exercises that could break her of that habit—that could
break
her, period. I shook my head and pushed the lusty thoughts from my mind. We were too alike, which was probably why we’d clashed so often: two alpha women who refused to give up control.

“What’s wrong with the shirt you’ve got on?” I asked, leaning back against a bedpost.

Jessica looked down at her red shirt and scowled. “This is Dean-wear, not ‘I’m looking-for-a-girlfriend-wear.’”

“Are you really in the market for a girlfriend or are you just looking for some fun?”

She bit her lower lip. “I don’t know. I’d
like
a relationship, but with campus being the way it is, whoever I dated would have to be okay with being a secret.”

“Yuck,” I said without thinking.

Jessica’s body language crumpled even more. “Maybe this was a bad idea. I’m not ready for this.”

This entire situation was foreign and uncomfortable. I was used to the formidable, confident Dean Merlot. I didn’t know how to deal with the vulnerability of Jessica Merlot.

“Well the pants aren’t
horrible
,” I remarked. “At least they don’t have those awful ironed creases.”

The grey slacks were made from a textured heather grey wool. They were expensive looking—too expensive for a hole like Peggy’s, but I doubted Jessica owned anything that hadn’t cost at least a hundred dollars.

I walked past her and stepped into her closet. Everything was color-coded and organized. It was unsurprising. Jessica was a very particular woman. I grabbed a simple black top from its hanger and held it up. It was collarless and dipped demurely in the center in a way that was conservative, but would show enough skin to keep the locals interested.

“What about accessories?” Jessica opened the lid of a wooden jewelry box on top of her dresser drawer.

“Leave the pearls at home, June Cleaver. Peggy’s is a dive,” I noted. “This isn’t dinner with the Board of Trustees.”

I reached past her and fished out a leather thong with a charcoal grey disc attached to one end.  “I will allow stilettos, but only because you clomp around in those things like a frickin’ dominatrix. They’re like your super power.”

“And your kryptonite?” she joked.

“Don’t get cocky on me, Merlot.”

Peggy’s was typically empty midweek, but for a Friday night it was surprisingly quiet. I got a beer for myself and a mixed drink for the Dean, and we sat at an elevated cocktail table along a wall near the dance floor. Peggy only splurged for a proper DJ on Saturday nights, so the jukebox filled the spaces between conversations that night.

Jessica poked at the floating ice cubes in her drink with a cocktail straw. “So are there any creative story games you play here that I should know about?”

“Only the international lesbian bar sport of foosball,” I remarked taking a quick swig of my drink.

“This place is pretty tame,” she observed, eyes scanning the room. “It’s not at all what I expected.”

“What did you think it was going to be like? Unicorns and rainbows and a private concert by the Indigo Girls? Actually,” I laughed, “that sounds a lot like the parties I went to in California.”

Jessica stared shrewdly at me. “Did you really take up writing for TV because I’m such a bitch?”

“You were a factor in my decision,” I admitted, “but not the entire reason. An opportunity to write professionally came my way, so I took it.”

“What went wrong?”

“Sorry?”

“You’re back here. I assume something didn’t work out.”

“I liked the work fine, but it wasn’t home,” I said. “I didn’t belong there.”

“I felt like that my first semester at the university,” Jessica said, taking a sip of her drink. “I didn’t know anyone, and the job itself was overwhelming. I don’t know how many times I thought about quitting,” she revealed. “It’s gotten moderately better though.”

“I can introduce you to some people if you want,” I offered. I knew the entire bar staff, and I recognized a few other patrons that night.

“No, no. That won’t be necessary,” she readily dismissed. She sounded almost agitated by the offer. “I think tonight I’ll sit back and observe.”

“Didn’t peg you for a wallflower,” I poked.

“You don’t exactly look on the prowl yourself, Graft.”

“I have my reasons,” I deflected.

Jessica batted her eyelashes at me. “It wouldn’t happen to be a lovely young blonde who looks dynamite in pink scrubs, would it?”

“They’re not pink; they’re salmon,” I grumbled.

In truth, it was probably good for the both of us to get out. Jessica needed to bust out of her closet and meet some queer ladies that weren’t me, and I needed to stop hiding out in my house—the only place where I couldn’t accidentally bump into Hunter. And even then, my heart leapt into my throat whenever the doorbell rang. It was pathetic.

“By the way, what’s your type?” I asked.

“Smart. Funny. Beautiful,” she listed off. “Age appropriate.”

“Funny,” I said, making a face. I proceeded to fray the cocktail napkin that had come with my beer. It shredded easily in my fidgeting hands.

“You look more nervous than me,” Jessica remarked above the music. “What’s wrong?”

“I don’t want to see Hunter.”

“Why not? You two seemed civil enough the other day at Del Sol,” she observed.

“I don’t want to see her here
with
anyone,” I clarified.

Jessica’s eyes noticeably widened and she nodded her head. “I get it. Well, if she’s here with someone, you could always pretend I’m your date.”

I smirked. “That’s awfully big of you.”

Jessica held up her hands. “It’s not another one of my tricks,” she promised. “I’m only saying that if it’ll make you feel better, or if you think it’ll make her jealous …”

I stopped her before she could continue. “I told Hunter I’d wait.”

The shrewd look on Jessica’s face softened. “I think I underestimated you and this relationship. You really like her.” It wasn’t a question.

I nodded glumly. “I’ve never been one to believe in soulmates or ‘The One.’”

“But,” Jessica pressed.

“
But
, Hunter’s different. There’s never been anyone like her, and I’d venture to guess that there never will be anyone like her again. And it’s not because being together was easy,” I said with a rueful shake of my head. “It was nothing but a challenge from the moment we decided to give a relationship a chance.”

“But the heart wants what the heart wants,” Jessica noted with a wistful sigh.

I nodded and took another slug from my beer. “Ain’t that the truth.”

Hunter never showed up that night. In hindsight it was foolish for me to have ever worried about it in the first place. She had strange, unorthodox hours at the hospital and was probably watching over a preemie in the maternity ward while I had an emotional freak out about her showing up at the gay bar with a date.

Jessica chatted up a few women whom I recognized as regulars, but if numbers were exchanged, I never knew. We made it an early night, and I dropped her back off at her house before midnight. As my car idled in front of her darkened house, she invited me in for a nightcap. I still had the good sense to politely decline. Someday we’d get to the point where late night drinks were innocent gestures, but we weren’t there yet.

She leaned against the driver’s side door. “I’ll see you in the morning for Doug’s garden thing, right?”

“Unfortunately, yes.”

“Be nice,” she chastised. “Doug is a colleague, and it’s collegial to support your co-workers’ projects.”

I crinkled my nose, but kept my non-collegial thoughts to myself. “Do you want me to pick you up and we can go together?” I asked.

“That would be lovely,” Jessica agreed. “I’ll treat you to brunch afterwards.”

“And I’ll let you,” I laughed.

I watched her make the trek back up to her house and waited until she was safely inside before driving home myself.

I had changed into pajamas and was reading a book in bed when my phone buzzed with an incoming text:
Are you awake?

It was from Hunter.

I am,
I replied.
What’s up?

I just got home from the hospital. I’m winding down with a glass of wine.

That sounds nice.
I would have preferred a night in too, if Jessica hadn’t been so insistent that we go to Peggy’s. It wouldn’t have kept me from worrying about what Hunter was up to, but it would have been easier to avoid those unsavory thoughts when I wasn’t jumping to attention every time the front door opened with the arrival of a new bar patron.

My phone chirped again with another text message:
Do you want to come over?

I stared at the words on my phone’s screen. The words were so innocent, so innocuous, yet they were heavy with innuendos and consequences. I’d said I was waiting for her, but that didn’t mean I was waiting around for a booty call.

It’s late,
I replied.
I probably shouldn’t.

Ok.

My fingers flexed and twitched as I looked at her one-word response. There was no way to interpret the tone of her text. Was she angry? Disappointed? Indifferent? I wanted to take my refusal back or at least to apologize, but I kept those sentiments to myself and went to sleep instead.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

The next morning, I let my car idle in front of Jessica’s house. While I waited for her to come out, I looked over my last text conversation with Hunter. I hadn’t received any more texts the rest of the night, and my phone had remained silent in the morning as well. It made me worry that her invitation had been innocent and that I’d hurt her feelings when I’d rebuked her request. But it had been late—well after bar time. If not for sex, what other reason would she have had for asking me to come over?

It had bothered me that she’d texted me at all, not that I didn’t want to talk to her, but because it was so uncharacteristic of her. If she had wanted to talk, why hadn’t she called me? She normally eschewed that kind of impersonal technology; she didn’t even have a Facebook page. She was an old soul in the body of a twenty-two year old.

I looked away from my phone and shook off more somber, confusing thoughts when I heard a house door open and close. Jessica paused at her front door to lock up, affording me an unobstructed view of her denim-clad backside. Along with the fitted skinny jeans, she wore tan leather moccasins and a long-sleeved t-shirt.

I rolled down the car window. “So you
do
own jeans.”

“I told you, Dr. Graft,” she called out as she walked down the front walkway, hips swaying with each light step, “spend enough time with me and you’ll learn all of my secrets.”

I gave her a purposefully lascivious grin as she crossed in front of my car. “Looking good, Dean.”

“Thank you, dear,” she said, sliding into the passenger seat.

I nodded at two cardboard cups snug in their cup holders. “I stopped at Del Sol and got us coffee.”

“That was thoughtful,” she observed. “Or maybe you were hoping to have another run-in with a pretty young nurse,” she grinned.

“Maybe,” I grunted.

“I see right through you, Graft.”

Pulling up to the plot of land that was soon to be the new community garden, I was immediately impressed by the turnout of thirty or so volunteers, especially considering the ground was still frozen and old snow banks hadn’t entirely melted yet. It was the awkward time of year, no longer winter, but not quite spring. The earth was saturated with ground water and crusty, dirty snow banks dotted the landscape. Even the air smelled unpleasant, like wet dog. None of that mattered for today, however, as the gardens we were constructing were above ground boxes.