Chapter 13 Jace #2
We join the line, turning back to wait for Margeaux—who has Presley in tow.
Yeah, I knew she was up to something.
“Gus, Jace, y’all know Presley,” Margeaux leads, her smirk turning devilish.
We nod, muttering yeses and hellos, letting my sister-in-law continue.
“She just moved back to town and doesn’t really know anyone, so as a former newbie to Hickory Hills, I figure Drafts and Dig In is the perfect way to introduce her to everyone and pull her into our circle. Certainly worked out for me.”
She wraps her arms around Gus, pulling him close and kissing him sweetly.
Gus chuffs proudly, letting down his hard exterior for a second to let her love on him.
I’m pretty sure these two were already well into their sneaking around when she came to her first Drafts and Dig In, but then again, maybe I have that mixed up.
“Oh, look, there’s Gail Chamberlain,” Margeaux continues. “I need to talk to her about the…errr…tree lighting.”
Yeah, that was smooth…
“Gus, come with me.” She tugs him out of line, my oldest brother rocking back, his brows turning down in confusion.
“We’re going to talk to Mrs. Chamberlain? Voluntarily?”
My thoughts exactly, Gus.
Margeaux tugs on him again, leaving no more room for questions. Throwing me a look that could double as a distress signal, Gus follows her lead. Leaving Presley and me alone. Together.
The teenage boy in me jumps for joy, beyond excited to have the pretty girl all to myself. There’s another part—a bigger part—that can only think one thing. Now what?
“Hi,” Presley says, the weirdness flowing like the Flint River.
“Hi.” I struggle with what to say next. Seriously, I think I was less awkward at thirteen when my voice was still cracking and I hadn’t grown into my limbs yet. “How you feeling?”
“Better. Human again.” She giggles, the sound lighting up my insides like a pinball machine. “Thank you again for your help.”
“Don’t mention it.”
“Ha, that’s kinda my goal.” She shrugs, still embarrassed by the whole thing. “I plan on continuing to pretend like it never happened.”
Shit. No. That’s not what I meant.
Okay, find something else to ask. I can do this. I’m the charming one of the family. The romantic. The one who reads about this shit for fun. I’ve got this.
Except it’s never been this tough.
“How’s Little Man? Is he here and I just missed him?”
There we go.
“No, my parents are babysitting tonight.” Presley relaxes as she answers, her shoulders dropping down as they ease, and I watch as her whole body comes alive.
“And he’s back to his Tasmanian Devil self.
A forty-eight-hour stomach bug isn’t going to keep him down.
He keeps asking when you can come over again to play trains. ”
Fuck, yes.
“That can be arranged.”
More pink tinges her cheeks and she looks away, turning to face the And Cheese truck. While she busies herself studying the menu, I study her, trying desperately to figure out what to say.
“Any recommendations?”
“Depends on what you like,” I offer up. “I’m sure Margeaux has waxed poetic about the pimento grilled cheese, and she’s not wrong; it’s good.
But I always go for the Cajun mac ’n cheese.
It’s got andouille sausage and is spicy, but gooey and just all-around delicious.
Margeaux actually makes the best Cajun food I’ve ever had, but she’s a purist and refuses to make a version of this, and I’ve tried, so that’s what I always go with. ”
“I love spicy food. It was a toss-up between that and the jalapeno popper grilled cheese.”
“Tell you what,”—I smile, hoping that I’m not misreading the situation—“I’ll get the mac ’n cheese, you get the grilled cheese, and we can do a little swap so you can try both.”
Eyes going wide, Presley rocks back. Yeah, I caught her off guard with that one.
“Ummm, sure. That sounds nice.”
I nod, stepping up to the window and placing our order. Before she can object, I throw in an order of fries, grab us each a water, and pay. Behind me she gasps quietly, as if she’s about to argue with me, but I turn and wink, cutting off any idea of doing so.
“Jace?” she asks, as we step to the side to wait. “What gives?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean…do I need to be worried about what’s going to happen next? Like, is this some next-level prank? Is my food going to be poisoned, or is your sister-in-law only being nice to me to get information to be used against me? Because we’re adults now and—”
“Presley, no.” My voice is hard, firm, but not harsh. At least I don’t think it is. I don’t want it to be. “This isn’t Carrie. There’s no pig’s blood.”
She eyes me up and down, trying to get a read on my honesty. I have no idea how I’m going to measure up, because if I were her, I wouldn’t trust me. In her world, I’m the king of the jackasses, a title I have earned over and over again.
“Okay.”
Okay? Okay.
Relief seeps into me, my heart starting to race.
“Sorry, these last few years have left me with some trust issues. And our history doesn’t exactly lend itself to healing those.”
Yup, because I’ve insisted on being petty and childish.
“Did I hear you say something about your ex? Is that Otis’s dad?” I ask, trying to inch the door open. “If I can ask.”
“Sperm donor is more like it,” she comments curtly. “But yes, Cody and I were together for eight years. He was a cop back in Raleigh.”
My name is called and I step away long enough to grab the tray with our food. Nodding back toward the big table where the rest of my family is, we head that way, grabbing the two seats at the end.
“Didn’t end well I take it? Nasty divorce?” I turn the tray so our chosen meals are closer to us, then hand her a fork so she can try mine.
“We weren’t married. Cody was big on the whole I don’t need a piece of paper to prove how I feel thing. Which was fine, since we were committed to each other and had a great life. Then I got pregnant. It wasn’t planned. We’d talked about kids someday, but then someday arrived.”
I nod along, letting her tell the story, not wanting to interrupt. Silently, I gesture for her to take a bite of mac ’n cheese, which she does, her eyes lighting up as she tastes it. Figured she’d like that.
“And you were…excited? Scared?”
“Both.” Presley laughs again and I’m pretty sure I could listen to her do that for the rest of time. “Mostly excited. I’m one of those women who couldn’t wait to be a mom. I mean, you’ve seen the dolls.”
I have. As adorable as I think it is that she still has them, I can’t help but imagine her as a little girl, taking painstaking care of them, playing house with each one.
“But then…” she trails off, taking a big bite of her sandwich.
“Then…”
“One night I got home from work and heard something that sounded…off. So I went to our bedroom and found Cody…errr…playing cops and robbers with a brunette who wasn’t me.”
Oh, shit.
“I was seven and a half months pregnant.”
Fuuuuuuck…
Fury rises in me, and I bite down on the inside of my mouth trying to keep my reaction hidden. What kind of complete asshole cheats on his pregnant partner? Especially after that many years together. This loser, apparently.
“Pres, I’m so sorry. I—”
She holds up a hand. “Jace, no. Don’t apologize for him. You were not the one using your department-issued handcuffs on a woman you met while arresting her boyfriend for drugs, while wearing nothing but your badge and cap.”
Oh, fuck. He really was playing cops and robbers. Here I was thinking that was a euphemism.
“Needless to say, that was the end of that relationship.”
“Understandably.”
“But that’s when he showed his true colors.”
Wait, sticking his dick in someone else while she was pregnant wasn’t showing his true colors?
Guilt starts to gnaw at my chest. She’s already been through all this—and there’s apparently more—and here I am, still acting like this is high school. Like we’re still waging the same stupid teenage rivalry over who’s smarter and sits at the top of the GPA list.
“I’m a little afraid to ask how it goes downhill from there,” I comment, pushing the rest of my meal toward her. There’s not much left and I can tell she wants it.
Taking it from me, Presley digs in, her smile brightening. “He claimed the baby wasn’t his.”
That fucker…
My expression falls and there’s no hiding my anger now. Words fail me, leaving me only with a desire to hunt this guy down and rip his nuts off. That and wrap my arms around both Presley and Otis, never letting go.
“Even though I listed him on the birth certificate, Cody refused to acknowledge Otis or add him to his benefits. I wasn’t worried about insurance or anything like that.
I’ve always been able to support myself, and adding Otis into the mix was a challenge at first, but I made it work.
It was more his survivor benefits. Cody’s a cop, and God forbid if anything happened to him, I wanted to make sure that Otis qualified to receive what he was owed.
So, after a year of fighting about it, I lawyered up and took him to court.
Still took a while to get it all processed and handled, because Cody was a shithead every step of the way, because he could be.
But in the end, I proved paternity and got what I wanted. Only took three years.”
“And now you’re back here. Dealing with my dumb ass.”
She stops, fork midway to her mouth. “I am. And your ass is dumb. But I’m used to it by now. Boys are dumb in general.”
“You’re raising one of those, you know,” I retort.
“He’s going to be the exception.”
I don’t doubt that…
“Enough about me. That’s the past.” She waves off the topic with her hand, like pushing steam out of the way from her plate. “Can I ask about you?”
“What about me?”
“Where the love of personal safety came from. It’s gotta be a girl, right?”
Ha…well…
“Sorta. Marigold.”
Presley knits her brow. “As in the founder of EmpowHER?”
I nod, launching into the whole story. Our senior community service hours, the women I met there, all of it. How each time I looked at them, I saw Miss Belle and Willa. How I wanted to teach these women to be able to fight back. So I did.
Presley listens intently, asking questions as I go.
Those questions leads to more, leading me into asking her questions back.
College, work, being a single mom. I hang on every word, our conversation flowing so easily and freely, nothing like the put-down jabs we usually exchange.
This is light, simple, both of us letting our guard down with each other for the first time.
Errr, second time. I suppose the puke weekend might actually count as the first.
Either way, this is everything. The most magical woman I’ve ever met talking and laughing with me like this is the only place she wants to be. It’s absolutely the only place I want to be.
“Hey, you two,” Milo says, walking over and hitting me with his bar towel. “You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here.”
“Huh?” I look at him, not following where he’s going with this. Quoting a trite, overused phrase isn’t like him.
“I would like to go home to my wife,” he says, a little more clearly. “So…GTFO.”
“OMG, it’s eleven p.m. I told my parents I’d be home hours ago.”
I look around, expecting to see everyone else still hanging out, thinking that Milo must be full of it. There is no way we closed this place down. No way we didn’t realize everyone else had left. Sure enough, we’re the only two still here.
“Whooops,” I comment, not sure what else to say. “Sorry, man.”
“Mm-hmm…” He nods, not sure he believes me.
“Milo, sorry,” Presley gushes. “I should have been paying closer attention.”
“You’re fine, Presley. D’ya need a ride home?”
“No, no. It only took me about ten minutes to walk here, so I’ll be fine walking back.”
Errr…walking? At this time of night? I don’t think so.
“I’ll drive you.” The offer is out of me so fast I barely have time to think about it. “It’s not safe for you to be walking alone this late at night.”
She mutters something to herself, and I can’t quite make it all out, but it sounds like “Hickory Hills is nothing but safe…”
“No, really it’s—”
I cut her off. “I’m the resident safety expert. I know things.”
“Do you now?” she chides, giving me a skeptical yet playful look.
“Sure do. Like the way to your place. And before you object any more, you’re not out of the way either.”
Her place is actually in the complete opposite direction of mine, but that’s a detail we don’t need to get into right now. Nothing is going to get in the way of me taking her home. Nothing.
“Okay.”
I stand, nudging my brother out of the way and holding out my hand to her.
“Your chariot awaits.”