The Usual Family Mayhem

Chapter Eleven

Jackson picked a brasserie in a downtown hotel for dinner. The building wasn’t far from his office, which explained his choice. Knowing Jackson, he intended to return to his desk after we finished.

The clubby restaurant with its paneled walls harkened back to an old-fashioned private men’s club. The only thing missing was the thick layer of cigarette smoke I assumed lingered in places with this vibe. Winston-Salem, the home of tobacco, would have been ground zero for that sort of thing. Not anymore, thanks to the modern-day inside smoking ban. Very grateful for that.

We’d been sitting at the table for six minutes when I whipped out my notebook with all the information from my recent research. Time to impress lawyer boy. “I have proof.”

Jackson finished drinking his water. The look on his face didn’t give anything away. Unreadable. Annoyingly blank.

When he didn’t say anything, I tried again. “About the poison.”

“Yes, I know what you’re referring to.”

He set his glass down with precision, as if it might shatter if he hit it too hard against the table.

He wore his usual dark suit, this time with a green tie that made his eyes sparkle . . . or would have if I noticed that sort of thing, which I no longer did.

He didn’t smile or frown, but his voice sounded tight. We were coming at this dinner from two different directions. While I was enjoying a work break, he’d sat at a desk and argued all day. It was only fair I gave him an opportunity to vent if he needed one.

“Bad day?”

“Not particularly.”

Huh. I sat back in my chair, resigned to a fight. “I give up. What’s wrong with you?”

“Maybe we could order before you start lobbying me with your theories.”

My menu sat in front of me. I hadn’t opened it. Hadn’t really thought about food, which was not how I normally prioritized things. I’d been so excited to hit him with my findings that I’d missed something. Not sure what. “Are you angry?”

“Should I be?”

Not a fan of answering a question with a question. It reminded me of the office and Micah and ugh. Also, if I knew what was happening with Jackson I wouldn’t be squirming in my chair, searching for a comfortable position. “You seem . . . distant.”

He shrugged. “I’m hungry.”

That sounded simple. Too simple?

I leaned in again, thinking to keep our conversation as private as possible. “Did something happen? It feels like something happened.”

“Look around you.”

Fine. I’d play along. For the first time I heard the faint background music. Saw the crowd. Tables filled with couples and groups. A few people milling about, waiting to be seated. Lots of laughter and chatting. Servers talking about specials. The clink of silverware and water glasses. Basically, a pleasant crush of after-work activity.

Okay. Done. “What am I supposed to see?”

He rested his elbows on the table. “We’re having dinner.”

Yeah, obviously. “I’m aware.”

“Well, we aren’t yet because you’re diving right into your poison theory.”

He glanced at my notebook. “You’re skipping over the food part.”

Did he sound frustrated . . . disappointed . . . something? I took another look at the couple at the table next to ours. They were holding hands and debating which entrées to get. The woman giggled. A grown woman giggling. No wedding ring, so maybe a date?

Wait . . . Every thought in my head blinked out. For a few seconds, I couldn’t remember how to put words together.

After a false start and a bit of sputtering, I leaned in even closer. “Is this a date? Us. Right now. It’s not, right? Because . . .”

Oh my God. “Right?”

Somehow my floundering questions, meant to be asked in a whisper, came out as a semi-shout. People at more than one neighboring table stared at me. The server who was headed to our table performed an impressive spin and roamed off in another direction.

Absolutely fantastic. I hadn’t been embarrassed in this town in years. Mostly because I only came home for short visits. If I stayed longer this would be more of a regular occurrence.

“I’d like to think if this were a date you’d know.”

Jackson kept his voice at a normal, non-screaming, non-embarrassing level.

“Cryptic but okay.”

He nodded. “Okay.”

No, he didn’t get to drop a curt reply without an explanation. He wasn’t allowed to be ticked off and distant. He’s the one who started the sometimes sarcastic, always noncommittal back-and-forth relationship dance we’d been stuck in for years.

“Because you made your position clear . . . on that. Back then. You scurried away at a flat-out run.”

Now I had too many words bouncing around in my head. I tried to force my mouth to stop but lost the battle. “You did, actually. Run. That time.”

So much nonsense rambling. The dinner shifted from weird to awkward, heading straight for wildly uncomfortable.

He frowned. “Excuse me?”

That’s all he had? “Did you not hear what I said?”

“I heard you.”

Then the anger bubbling up from my stomach was justified. As if he didn’t know what he’d done. Wrong. He knew. He remembered. If he didn’t remember that would be worse than what actually happened because it would show my stunning downfall meant nothing to him. He should at least have some remorse for the way he handled the situation.

He fell back on his usual frowning. “Kasey?”

Argh . . . fine. “The kiss, Jackson. What else would I be talking about?”

That time I hit the whisper sweet spot. My voice stayed low. I didn’t sound pathetic, needy, or angry. I aimed for nonchalant, but his frown said I’d missed.

“Are you kidding?”

he asked when he finally spoke again.

Not the response I expected. “I know it meant nothing to you but—”

“That was years ago.”

Yet I remembered it like it was yesterday. Searing shame did that to a person.

I’d kissed him. In the same gazebo I’d sat in most of the day. I reached up and put my arms around his neck, balanced on my tiptoes, and kissed him. He acted like I tried to set him on fire. His no way response made me want to dig a hole and climb into it.

He bolted. Ran away yelling. I didn’t see him for almost a month after that. When we met up again at some shindig at Gram and Celia’s house we both pretended the kiss never happened. For him, it apparently didn’t, and it sure didn’t mean anything.

Men really sucked sometimes.

He continued to stare at me. His mouth wasn’t hanging open, but it wasn’t closed. He looked two seconds away from shouting.

“Sixteen.”

That’s all he said.

I whined about my flailing kiss. He threw out a number. “Are we just saying random things now? I guess I pick four.”

His sigh telegraphed his frustration. “You were sixteen. In tenth grade.”

“And?”

He clenched his jaw to the point of snapping. “The distance between sixteen and twenty-three is huge, not to mention obviously inappropriate and illegal.”

Our ages? Okay, but we weren’t doing anything gross. “Jackson, we—”

“I was in law school. You were in high school.”

He shook his head. “I thought the problem with the kiss was obvious.”

Now that he said it, sure, the issue should have been obvious. Still, the way he’d reacted sucked. A little tact would have spared my teen heart and wouldn’t have killed him. “It was just a kiss.”

“Just a . . .”

He blew out a long breath. Looked ten seconds away from delivering a scorching lecture. “Okay, let’s try this for comparison. When I was sixteen you were nine.”

More math. Great. “We can run these calculations all day.”

“I was kissing girls by the time I was sixteen. Not you. You were totally off-limits and I had zero romantic interest in a child.”

To be fair, I couldn’t argue with that.

He put his hand on the table right near mine but didn’t go the extra few inches so that our fingers touched. “You kissed me, and I panicked. We were in the big brother, annoying little sister phase of our relationship. No thoughts of anything else. No kissing allowed.”

He’d said a few important things, but one line stuck out. “You think of me as a sister?”

“Not anymore.”

Tension snapped around us. “Oh . . .”

“Not for years.”