Chapter 13
Jeremy
Gemiah
Ione hundred percent jerk off in the shower.
It helps clear my head—or maybe the first dose I took is starting to wear off. Either way, I’m barely wobbling when I gather my polluted clothes and head back toward my couch purgatory with a fluffy pink towel wrapped around my hips.
Josha is standing in the dark at the end of the hallway, and my heart does a startled leap in my chest.
I should have saved that hard-on.
“Who the fuck are you?”
That’s not Josha. The delusional hope shatters.
“Hi, Jeremy.”
He flicks on the overhead light, and I squint in the sudden brightness.
“Gem?”
“In the flesh.” Maybe too much of it, given the dubious way Josha’s little brother eyes my bare chest.
“What are you doing in my mom’s house?” he asks. “I thought you were dead or something.”
“Sorry to disappoint. You cool if I put some clothes on?” I gesture to the room behind him, where my clean laundry beckons. He lets me pass and follows me into the living room.
“You’re here with Josha? I saw his truck out front.”
“My knight in shining armor.”
“Jesus.” He shakes his head. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised he came running at the first sign of your resurrection. He’s such a sucker when it comes to you.”
I wish. Jeremy has always been a little twitchy about his brother’s sexual orientation, though, so I squash the impulse to make some comment about using suck and come in the same sentence.
“Pretty sure he hates me now,” I say instead, tugging on a pair of gray sweatpants before dropping the towel. “But I’m working on it.”
He glances at the folded blankets piled on the couch. “Looks like you’re killing it. He’s in my bed, I assume?”
“You’re welcome to the couch if you’d rather not share.”
“Nice try. I’m guessing there’s a reason he left you out here.”
I can’t argue with that.
“Cute that you’re all protective now.” Since I’m obviously not sneaking my way into Josha’s bed tonight, I start spreading the blankets. “Unless you’re worried we’ll get up to some ‘gay stuff’ in your room?”
He shifts uncomfortably, scrubbing a hand through his strawberry curls.
“Look, I know I was a little shit when he first came out. I was a confused kid, and Josha was one of the few reliable things in my life. But I got over it. I grew up. Looks to me like you’re the one still fucking with him.”
“I’m not.” My “bed” is as made as it’s gonna get, so I turn to offer my sincerity. “I promise that’s not what this is.”
“Yeah? Well, don’t blame him if he doesn’t believe you either.” He crowds into my space, and though he’s not as tall and bulky as his brother, he radiates warning with all the testosterone-fueled menace of an eighteen-year-old guy with a grudge.
It’s kind of cute.
“I don’t know where you’ve been or what you’ve been doing, but I know it hasn’t changed the fact that you don’t deserve him,” he continues.
And isn’t that the bitter truth.
“I know.” When he starts to turn away, I grab his arm. “I know, Jeremy. I’m trying to change.”
He shakes me off.
“If that were true, you’d leave him the fuck alone.
You didn’t see what he was like after you left the last time, so maybe—maybe—you get a pass.
And he might kill me for telling you this, but you destroyed him.
So if you really want to be a better person?
Stop dragging him into your shit and let him go to Colorado and have an actual life. ”
Colorado? What the actual fuck?
“Go to sleep, Gem. Or better yet, pack up your crap and be gone by the time he wakes up. We all know you’re gonna do it eventually. Might as well get it over with so we can all go back to blissfully ignoring your existence.”
“You seriously think it would be better to disappear on him again?”
He gives me a look so full of disgust it rocks me back a step, and I sink onto the couch.
Would it? Not for me, obviously, but for Josha?
I didn’t imagine the heat in his eyes tonight, and the sound he made when he grabbed me is gonna live in my spank bank for a long fucking time. But…attraction isn’t always want. Or trust. Or forgiveness.
It’s not the same as love.
Just because I still have the one, doesn’t mean I’ll ever earn back the other.
“What’s in Colorado?” Maybe not the best opener, given the varying degrees of shock on the three Garrity faces around the breakfast table, but I’ve never handled awkward silences all that gracefully.
And Josha hasn’t said more than two words to me since he entered the kitchen fresh and dewy from his shower.
If I need to stir the pot to get his attention…
well, I’ve always been very good at that.
Now he favors Jeremy with an exasperated look before calmly helping himself to another pancake. “A job.”
“A good job,” Jeremy adds, the warning clear when he locks eyes with me across the table. The Doberman puppy act doesn’t seem to be going anywhere.
“When does it start?” How long do I have to make him change his mind about me?
“As soon as I’m done with tour.”
“And it’s…permanent?”
When I was five years old, we stayed at the farm of some friends in Tuscany for a few months between gigs.
They had an old slackline set up by the goat barn that I used to play on every day.
I was too small to use it properly, but I had just figured out how to invert and loved to hook my bare knees on the webbing and try to swing like I’d seen my parents do on the trapeze.
One day I must have built up too much momentum, because it broke right at the height of my swing.
Later, my dad showed me the knot that had weakened the strap and explained why it was dangerous to use knots for rigging, but at the time, all I felt was the shock of betrayal.
That something I loved, something I trusted, could disappear in an instant, knocking the wind out of me.
I wasn’t hurt. The ground was soft with spring grass. But lying on my back, staring at the frayed end of the strap hanging from its tree, tears sprang into my eyes. I couldn’t name the emotion, but looking back later, it was easy to recognize.
I was lonely.
Maybe I’m the pathetic puppy.
Maybe my abandonment issues didn’t start with my mom.
“You’re really giving up on Big Top?” I ask. On me.
“I told you.” He meets my eyes with an iced-coffee stare. “There is no Big Top after this year. What did you think that meant?”
“I thought…” That I’d have more time to fix things. That I wasn’t too late. That maybe you still loved me after everything I’ve done, because no one has ever understood me the way you do.
But what’s two days back in his life after two years of absence? Of course he’s moved on.
“Why am I only hearing about this now?” Diana’s voice floats into the weighted silence, soft with subtle reproach. Josha’s gaze darts guiltily to hers.
“I haven’t signed the final papers yet. I was waiting to tell you until everything was nailed down.”
My sick flood of relief is short-lived when he continues:
“It is a good job, though. Shilo helped me set it up. I’ll be teaching rigging at the College of Performing Arts in Fort Collins.” He sounds excited. Eager.
Not at all like my dramatic reappearance in his life is causing him to have second thoughts.
Jeremy’s smug satisfaction oozes from his icy smile. “Didn’t you say one of the guys who interviewed you was super hot? The one who took you out to dinner? What was his name?”
Nope.
Nope, nope, nope.
Resisting the urge to stomp my foot like a petulant toddler—or burst into tears—I carefully scoop my plate from the table and begin piling dirty dishes in the sink. I turn on the water in an attempt to block out the rest of their conversation.
Is this my life now? Two years running, of drowning in my mistakes, only to drag myself back to a shattered wasteland of everything I’m finally ready to admit I want?
I risk a glance over my shoulder and catch Josha watching me, only half an ear on his mom and his brother arguing around him.
He’s chewing on his lower lip, something ephemerally vulnerable in the line of his jaw and the tilt of his head.
It’s the softest I’ve seen him—awake—since he showed up on my doorstep like a wrathful avenger.
As soon as he notices my attention, he locks it down, but I turn back to the sink with a smile tugging at my lips.
A half-dozen images flicker through my mind—him kneeling by the motel bed, hands gentle as he applied the KT tape to my ribs. Dozing in the cab of his truck outside Tippy’s, waiting to ferry me safely home. Chicken soup and folded blankets and his arm under my shoulders when I could barely walk.
Hell, even his bringing me here at all after the disaster with my bike is a huge concession. Maybe the last is only for the sake of returning me to my parents, but the rest of it?
He still cares.
Maybe I’m not a lost cause after all.