Chapter Twelve Emily
Chapter Twelve
Emily
“Where are your boobs?” asks Amelia.
“How rude! They’re right here!” Annie states, pointing to her chest, hiding somewhere behind the cotton-candy-pink, A-line dress. It has a delicate fabric belt in the same color as the dress, with a cute little bow on the front and white lace trimming on the bottom hem. It’s one from my grandma’s old wardrobe that we found while going through her closet after she died. It was in a little box in the bottom. A treasure trove of vintage dresses from what looks like the ’50s.
My heart squeezes that I never knew these existed. That she never pulled them out for us to play dress-up in where she could see us laughing and enjoying each other’s company. My grandma was a very private lady. Kind and sweet—but reserved. The only person who likely knew all her secrets was Mabel—her best friend. Maybe she was open with her husband, but he had died before I was born, so I don’t know what sort of relationship they had.
I guess she and I were alike in the fact that we prefer to keep our business to ourselves.
“How did she walk in these things?” Annie asks, stumbling through the living room in the matching pink pumps.
Amelia is losing it laughing. “Annie—I mean this in the best way, you look like a ten-year-old playing dress-up in that outfit.”
It’s true. The chest is like three sizes too big, and the lower hem sits closer to Annie’s ankles than her knees. “Okay, well let’s see how well you pull these off!”
She throws a lime-green version of a similar-style dress to Amelia. “Yes, please! Now I truly can live out my fantasy of being Audrey Hepburn.” Amelia is well and truly obsessed with the iconic actress. Well, we all are now, but Amelia is the one who introduced us to her through the movie Roman Holiday. We watched it together during our very first girls’ night before she and Noah were officially together and she was still just a pop star hiding out in our small town for a breather.
Amelia stands with a sassy smile, slips out of her jeans and tee, and steps into the dress. She turns to me and lifts her dark brown hair out of the way so I can zip it for her.
Annie immediately dies laughing. Amelia frowns. “Good god. How did I manage to lose all my shape?”
“Your skin looks like a cadaver!” Annie howls.
Amelia frowns at her. “You’ve changed. I miss my sweet Anna-banana.”
Annie tries to subdue her smile. “I’m sorry. A very, very beautiful cadaver. Your turn, Em.”
I’m hit in the face with a wad of red fabric. I roll my eyes and follow Amelia’s lead, stripping down in the living room.
Amelia points in the general vicinity of my ass. “That’s not fair. You can’t wear sexy panties on a random Tuesday night.”
Annie laughs. “You still don’t know Emily very well, then. She’s all about luxury lingerie whether it’s Monday or Sunday.”
Amelia frowns. “You’re really not planning on meeting a date later tonight? You just wear stuff like that on the regular?” No one would believe the world-famous pop star Rae Rose was asking me that question. Everyone would expect her to be the glamorous, high-maintenance one. But I’ve found she’s the most down-to-earth normal gal on the planet.
“Okay, first of all, stop gawking at me, the both of you. You’re making me feel like a stripper. And second, I wear pretty lingerie for me. Not men.” I huff a laugh. “It’s wasted on men, in fact. They take two seconds at best to say… Sexy, and then that’s it. It’s on the floor. I swear that cotton Fruit of the Loom would produce the same outcome.” I pull the dress up and slide my arms into the cap sleeves.
“She’s an icon, people,” Amelia states with a smile.
The zipper is on the side of this dress, so I’m able to fasten it myself. Of course my boobs are spilling over the top a little, but I’m surprised to see that it fits me to near perfection. The bodice is tight with a sweetheart neckline, delicate little cap sleeves, and a full flounced skirt that stops just below my knees. Next I slide into the velvet red heels, and they’re a little snugger than I’d prefer but they work.
“Okay, this experiment did not work in my favor,” says Amelia.
“Not fair, Emily. The dress even matches your lipstick and nail polish. I should have given you the lime green.”
“Ladies, jealousy is not becoming in a woman,” I say with a soft smile. “Now who’s in the mood for pot roast?” I say in my best 1950s impression of a housewife. “Jim, darling, will be home soon and I made a coconut cream pie that’s to die for!” I pick up a pen and pretend to take a sophisticated drag off it and blow out imaginary smoke. “Of course, he gets a little handsy so you won’t want to stand too close to him, but who can blame the appetites of men?” We all three titter a slightly hysteric laugh.
“Boys will be boys!” Amelia croons.
“True—but nothing a little poison in his cocktail won’t fix!” Annie says with a bright smile. Amelia and I stare at her with wide eyes and slack jaws. “What? Too much?” Her face flushes. “I was just—”
We erupt in laughter. “Never too much, Anna-banana! I love this side of you. I’m just sad Maddie wasn’t here to witness it too. She would have peed herself laughing,” I say to my normally cherub-hearted sister.
Apparently I shouldn’t have made that comment. Annie’s eyes take on a serious look. “Are you doing okay without her here?” It’s not that Annie doesn’t miss Madison too, but she’s never been as close to her as I am.
Amelia piggybacks off Annie’s question. “I’m sorry she couldn’t come back like y’all planned. I’m sure you were really disappointed.”
Their probing questions have me taking such deep breaths that my cleavage swells over the neckline of my dress. I would rather be waterboarded than have someone ask me if I’m okay. Especially when my answer is no.
Memories of last night slip like a hazy fever dream through my mind. Feeling so sad and lonely that I drank myself into an emotional wreck. Jack holding me in the kitchen. Cleaning the dirt from my elbows and knees. Me sobbing at the table, and him assuring me that my life would go on. My grief and loneliness ebbed a little after those tears. After his touch.
I put my pen-cigarette to my mouth, drag it in, and then tilt my chin up to blow out a long puff. When I look at them again, I am the Emily they know and love. The one who isn’t spiraling internally. The one who would do anything, sacrifice everything for them. The one who has an entire secret schedule planned out for this night, that I never told them about but I’m sure everyone knows I made anyway. I like to make sure things keep moving so there are no lulls, even on girls’ night.
“Of course I’m okay. Without having to host, it just gives me more time to hide Jim’s body before the cops find out.”
We spend the next half hour talking about life (right on schedule). Amelia’s mom has to have minor surgery, and she’s going home to help take care of her for a few days. Annie is providing flowers for another celebrity wedding that’s happening in Nashville next weekend. (Her business has really taken off after word got out that her shop did the flowers for Rae Rose’s wedding.) And when it’s my turn to share, I bypass it by getting them a fresh glass of wine and refilling my water. (Because just the sight of alcohol today is making me feel like vomiting.)
“What’s next on the itinerary, Em?” Annie asks, with a grin.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I say in a coy tone. “But hypothetically, if I did have a spectacular schedule for the night, it would be time for a movie.”
“Which one tonight?”
“ Sweet Home Alabama ?”
“ What? Not an Audrey movie? It’s girls’ night!”
We accidentally stumbled on this tradition of watching an Audrey Hepburn movie for girls’ night when Amelia first came to town. She’s the president of our little club because she’s been obsessed with Audrey since she was a girl and taught us to fall in love with the queen of classic movies as well.
“No—we can’t,” I say firmly. “It would be wrong to watch it without Maddie.”
“She’d understand, though.” Annie sips her wine. “She doesn’t expect us to stop our lives just because she’s—”
“No, Annie. Not without Maddie.” My voice comes out harsher than I intend, and when I see Annie shrink into herself, I immediately feel like the horrible villain in a cartoon that somehow grows double in size and absorbs all the light in the room with her darkness. I soften my tone. “I’m sorry. How about a Doris Day film instead if y’all are craving a classic?”
They murmur their agreement, but I can tell they’re not happy about it.
However, just as we’re starting Pillow Talk, a familiar hammering begins next door.
Amelia pauses the movie and looks at me. “He’s still over there? I thought you were getting rid of him.”
I stand up from the couch and smooth out the skirt of my dress. “I’ll…be right back.”
—
I don’t bother knocking this time as I go to Jack’s front door, knowing he won’t hear me even if I do. Instead, I walk inside and find him with his back to me, hammering a nail into a very off-center two-by-four. He’s wearing faded blue Levi’s, a light gray T-shirt, brown work boots, and a bright-blue-and-white trucker hat—blondish-brownish hair flipping out at his nape in a way that absolutely has me drooling. The best part is, he has a tool belt around his waist. Jack looks like a ’70s dad that some lucky woman would have absolutely railed after a cookout. He’d get her so pregnant.
I know better than to sneak up on a person with a hammer, so instead, I find a discarded rag, ball it up, and throw it at his head. He jolts a little and spins around. I’m not sure if he was more surprised by the rag or the sight of me. I smile, finally seeing that his hat says Country Roads Take Me Home—John Denver. Together we look like an ode to the decades. Seventies dad, meet fifties mom.
His gaze travels from my eyes down to the red heels and back up to my eyes before he says a word. “What…are you wearing?”
“My nightgown,” I say deadpan.
His eyes glitter. “You’re forgetting that I’ve seen what you wear to bed.”
I think embarrassment should be creeping over my skin right about now. Instead, something entirely different is. Because he’s not looking at me like I should be at all embarrassed for how I showed up at his house last night. Or that I asked him if I had good nipples. Or that he said they were the best he’d ever seen.
I clear my throat. “Hi. So. Since we’re friends now, can you refrain from hammering tonight?”
Look how polite I’m being. I even phrased it like a question even though it’s absolutely a statement.
“Are we friends?” Jack asks with an amused lilt.
“Aren’t we?” Last night certainly felt friendly.
Jack looks me up and down one more time, lightly shakes his head like he’s having his own private thought I’ll never be privy to, and then grins. “No. Have a good night, Emily.” He turns and continues hammering.
The clop of my heels competes with his construction as I close the distance between us, coming up beside him to look over his arm. His muscular, veiny arm. “We’re not friends?”
He was doing yard work earlier. I know because I watched him a little too long out the window while sipping my iced tea. And also because his skin is so golden tan now. It looks warm like freshly buttered biscuits.
“We’re friends. The no was to your request for me to stop hammering.”
I cross my arms. “Friends stop doing construction when another friend asks.”
“Not this friend.” He reaches behind him with his free hand and pulls out another nail from his tool belt.
“Nice fanny pack.”
“Thank you. Nice June Cleaver impression.”
“Tell me,” I say, tilting my head closer to the wall, more into his line of sight. “How hard was it not to accidentally say June Cleavage just then?” I know my breasts look amazing in this dress. I clocked the exact moment his gaze snagged on them after he turned around. After last night, the jig is up that we truly only hate each other. There’s more here between us—even if neither of us knows what it is or if we should do anything about it. I tend to lean toward not doing anything about it, since we tried friendship once before and it didn’t end well. In fact, it didn’t last long at all. No telling how long we’ll be able to keep things civil this time.
But the lingering buzz of our encounter last night has me itching to see what it takes to throw this man off his game. To get him to intentionally flirt with me. Without the helmet on.
Call it a scientific experiment.
He centers the nail, his lazy smile tilting. “Go home to your supper club, Elizabeth Taylor.”
“Only if you stop hammering for tonight,” I say, a little annoyed that he wouldn’t take my bait.
“No.”
“Why are you being obstreperous?”
“Because I live to hear what colorful vocabulary you’ll use when I piss you off.”
I turn away with a huff, my skirts dragging against the side of his legs as I do. My eyes wander over his space, taking in the truly terrible construction he’s done so far. There’s so much drywall dust everywhere. I called Darrell earlier this morning about taking on this project after all, but I haven’t heard back yet. I take five high-heeled steps away from Jack, noting the half-empty jar of peanut butter on the counter next to a loaf of bread.
I pivot again and can see straight through the open door of his bedroom. Last I looked in there I saw a corkboard filled with Post-it notes before Jack pulled me away from it. There’s no corkboard today, but there is a book open on the bed. The last book in the series by AJ Ranger that we were discussing last night actually. He has several highlighters and a sheet of little tabs lying on the bed next to the book. Like he’s been studying it. Next to it, there’s an open notebook filled to the brim with handwritten notes. Notes about the book?
I am nothing if not blunt, which is why I look back at Jackson and ask, “Why are you studying The Hallway ?”
He’s in the middle of hammering a nail when I ask the question that apparently startles him so much he accidentally pounds his hammer onto his thumb instead of the nail. “Dammit!” he yells, hammer clanging to the ground as he clutches his hand.
“Oh my god, Jack! Let me see it.”
He’s hissing in through his teeth, squinting his eyes and holding his hand in a vise grip. “No. I’m fine. Go back home.”
“Let me see it, Jack!”
“It’s fine, it’s just—”
There’s red oozing out from his grip.
“—Leaking blood.” I roll my eyes and grab his bicep with my hand. “Come on.”
“I don’t need your help, Bette Davis.”
“Impressive classic actress knowledge. But you’re coming with me because you need a Band-Aid at the very least and you don’t have Band-Aids here.”
“How do you know I don’t have Band-Aids?” he asks as we take the stairs down the porch, my hand still firmly holding his arm.
I pause only long enough to look at him while I ask, “ Do you have Band-Aids?”
“No.”
“Then keep it moving.”
“Your heels are somehow making you faster. And bossier. Have you ever considered the Olympics? Maybe they have a race just for overbearing blondes who—” At this moment we walk into my house, and he spots Amelia and Annie sitting on the couch. “My god, did we enter a time portal, and I didn’t realize it?”
“Yes, welcome to Happy Days. Sit down at the kitchen table and I’ll get the first-aid kit.”
I pass through the living room, avoiding the searching expressions of my sisters, and back to my bathroom where I grab what I need. When I come back through, Amelia and Annie are still gaping at Jack, who is clutching a paper towel around his thumb now.
“Ladies, this is Jack, CEO of hell and also my neighbor and nemesis. Jack, my sister, Annie, and sister-in-law, Amelia.”
“By ‘nemesis’ she means ‘best friend.’?” His eyes catch mine as I sit in front of him. He dips forward and lowers his voice. “I forgot Rae Rose lives in this town. That’s Rae Rose, though, isn’t it?”
“Stop saying ‘Rae Rose’ so much. But yes—that’s her.”
He turns his charming smile to Amelia, and I oddly want to cover it with my palm. “Hi,” he says, looking a bit starstruck.
“Hi,” she says, looking similarly.
Annie doesn’t make a peep. She’s sitting like a little pink statue, eyes wide.
I block out my siblings, who clearly have no idea what to do with the fact that I’ve just paraded my neighbor/nemesis into my house.
“Let me have your hand,” I tell Jack, earning his glare again.
“I’m a grown man, I can handle my own wound care. Give me the Band-Aid and I’ll be on my way.”
“No—you’ll have no peer pressure to clean it with alcohol if you take this back to your place, and then it’ll get infected. But if I do it, you’ll be forced to grin and bear the sting to prove you have a penis. So hand it over.”
“My penis?”
I give him a flat look to which he extends his hand with a sigh. “Fine, but I can’t promise I won’t look at your chest because it’s perfectly framed right there in front of my face, and to answer your question from earlier it was difficult not to say ‘cleavage.’?”
Holding back the full force of my grin is nearly painful. “Do what you must, you have my permission,” I say as I begin working on his finger. He hisses when the alcohol pad touches his skin. And even though he talked a big game, Jack doesn’t stare at my boobs. He’s too respectful for that. I almost wish he would because it’s twice as unnerving knowing he’s watching my face instead. Especially while I hold his hand like this. His big hand. I remember writing a scene about the Highlander’s hand and how big and erotic it was. I rolled my eyes while writing it because I’d never been particularly attracted to hands like this in the past, but I know of other women who like them.
Right now, I look at Jack’s knuckles and I want to sink my teeth into them.
When my sisters start talking between themselves—or pretending to—Jack leans in close and drops his voice. So close I feel his breath. “Do they know about your secret?”
“No.” I place antibiotic cream on his finger.
“Not about the accidental email either?”
“Absolutely not. And we are keeping it that way.” Maybe I am just like my grandmother. One day my grandkids will open my closet after I’ve left this earth and find a box of mediocre manuscripts. They’ll read them all in the living room and laugh.
He sits back in his seat eyeing me. “I think you’re the only person on this earth who keeps more secrets than me.”
“What secrets are you keeping, Jackson?” I ask as I wrap the Band-Aid around his thumb. It has a flower print on it. I selected the one with blue petals to match his hat and somehow I know he’ll appreciate that attention to detail.
“Enough to make some waves.” He pauses and doesn’t move his hand after I’ve finished doctoring his thumb. “Do the secrets ever weigh on you?”
I stare at him across the table. “Do they ever weigh on you?”
He smirks. “I think our answer is the same.”
“In that case, you need a smoke as much as I do.” I hand him my pen and without looking away from my eyes, he takes it, sucks in a long drag, angles his face away from mine, and blows it out. Ever the gentleman.
“Will you let me read it?”
I glance nervously to my sisters but relax when I see they’re busy talking with their heads ducked together. “No. You may not read it.”
He grins. “Come on. Don’t be chicken.”
“I’m not chicken. I just don’t want to corrupt your innocent mind with all my dirty scenes.”
This delights him more. “I love romance books, you know? I’ve read plenty. I could be a good sounding board too since I know a lot about the writing and publishing process.” And again, his eyes do this thing where he looks like he accidentally said too much.
“Because of your dad?”
He stares at me, swallows, and then nods. “Yes. Because of my dad.” A pause where he presses his lips together. “I’ve seen him work through countless stories. I know how to plot, how to find plot holes, and how to edit. I also know that it’s important to have someone read your work before you send it off to an agent, and that you might be lucky your email went to Bart instead of the agent because they hate when you send them a full manuscript without being asked. So…anyway…if you need a beta reader and you want that beta reader to be me—I’m offering myself up as tribute.”
Probably so he can laugh at me. Yeah, no way.
“Well, thank you. But after I sobered up, I decided it’s probably best I don’t do anything with the book anyway…” I check once again to make sure no one is listening besides Jack. “It was just a silly hobby that probably isn’t even very good. And sending it to Bart made me see how much I don’t want anyone to ever read it. It wouldn’t look good for a second-grade teacher also to be an explicit romance author, you know?”
Jack is looking at me like he can see right through my lie. He knows I’m just scared shitless. He doesn’t challenge me this time, though. “Thank you for the Band-Aid and antiseptic.”
“You’re welcome. Stop hammering tonight.”
He stands, hands me back my pen from between his two fingers, and walks toward the door. “Not without the magic word.”
“Over my dead body.”
“Good night, Emily. Good night, ladies. Enjoy your supper club.”
And with that, he leaves my house, closing the door behind him.
I breathe out and don’t realize I have a sappy smile on my face until I look toward my sisters and find them absolutely gawking in my direction.
“What the actual hell was that?” Surprisingly, Annie was the one to ask it, and I have to spend the rest of the night explaining to them without really explaining to them just how Jack Bennett and I became friends.