Chapter 33 Jaxon
Chapter thirty-three
Jaxon
After dropping Izzy off at her office following our early flight back to Wild Bluffs on Tuesday morning, I decide to drop into the café for a late breakfast rather than forcing myself to face my father’s room. The idea of walking past his closed door makes my chest ache. I need noise. Movement.
Eggs.
Jameson and JT Johnson are just leaving as I enter, and we stop in the aisle to chat briefly. They’re both in town trying to spend as much time with their significant others before they leave for a tournament on the East Coast tomorrow.
When another couple walks in, trying to squeeze around us, we say a hasty goodbye, and I head for a table toward the back.
“I wouldn’t sit there,” Jameson says from behind me, but when I turn to ask why, he’s already gone.
The table is tucked away toward the back of the restaurant, and despite Jameson’s cryptic warning, I still think it’s my best bet for not being recognized, especially since one seat has its back entirely to the door.
I order coffee and a couple of eggs to eat and pull out my phone to return a couple of emails while I wait.
The chair next to mine is pulled out, and an older guy with salt-and-pepper hair and a vaguely familiar face sits next to me.
I think he used to work with my dad during harvest season when I was a kid. Or maybe he just looks like every guy who drinks too much coffee and knows everyone’s business. Is he Becca’s dad? Billy? Bob? Robert? Ralph.
I think it might be Ralph.
Not my usual fan, but I’ll take anyone in this town who’s willing to acknowledge my presence at this point. Andre laughed for five minutes straight when I told him people are only starting to talk to me now that they think Izzy and I are together.
Getting the cold shoulder is a new experience for me.
“How’s it going?” I ask when almost thirty seconds have passed.
“Can’t complain, how about yourself?” he asks, waving his fingers at the waitress to order a cup of coffee.
I guess we’re having breakfast together, then.
“I’m alright.”
I’m about to ask him if he has something he’d like me to sign or if he wants to take a picture when the bells on the door ring, and I look over my shoulder to see a couple other men his age walk into the diner and make their way toward us.
As the two men sit, my stomach tightens. That’s Ken Harper—Izzy’s dad.
“Joining us for coffee, then, Jaxon?” the man who came in with Ken asks. He’s wearing a green hat with the name of a farm implement company on it.
Shit. I start to stand.
“Oh, don’t,” Ken says. “Stay. Join us. Let’s see if you can stick around even when things get a little uncomfortable.”
“I…I mean…” I start, floundering, but am saved by the waitress bringing over six empty brown coffee mugs and a full carafe of coffee.
“So, what brings you to town, Jaxon?” Green Hat asks.
“Not your father’s funeral,” adds Ralph from his seat next to me. “You missed that by a few weeks. I’m sure you couldn’t get away with your busy rock star schedule, though.”
Defending my actions to these men who knew my dad for years, if not his whole life, is a lost cause if I’ve ever seen one, so I just hum noncommittally. When the silence stretches, I add, “The farm will go up for sale at the end of this month.”
“Two days after you’re Izzy’s date to the big wedding, if the rumors are to be believed,” Green Hat says.
Ken sips his coffee, his easy body posture in direct contrast to the ice burning in his eyes.
“Will you be sticking around long after the sale?” Ralph asks.
The way they ask questions—half daring me to mess up, half hoping I will—reminds me of dinners with my dad, when he’d deign to acknowledge my presence for long enough to ask about my plans for my future despite knowing I wanted to go into music.
“I’m not sure,” I say. I don’t want to promise anything I can’t follow through on, but I also don’t want to mess up Izzy’s fake-dating-breakup plan. “I’ll have to go back to Nashville to record my next album, but it’s a lot easier for me to pop back and forth than it once was.”
If Andre is to be believed, that might need to happen sooner rather than later. My label was overjoyed to have any music out of me, but apparently, this new song is making them see dollar signs, so they’re pushing to get me in a full recording studio as soon as possible.
“So that jet was yours this weekend, huh?” Green Hat asks.
“Tim likes to hang out at the airport,” Ralph explains.
Green Hat is Tim. Got it.
“Yeah. Just a quick trip to Nashville,” I reply, trying to play it cool.
“With Izzy,” Ken adds, and I feel like I’m twelve again, getting in trouble with Izzy for not doing our homework before playing GuitarStar.
Maybe-Becca’s-dad lets out a “Oh-ho!” like it’s the most shocking information he’s heard all year.
The next forty-five minutes continue similarly, the men asking questions about gossip they’ve heard about me or others in town: sometimes including me in the discussion, sometimes grilling me, but mostly just ignoring me.
They aren’t openly mean, but they somehow manage to make me feel like I haven’t made a good decision…
well, ever. I haven’t felt this bad about myself since the night before my eighteenth birthday, when my dad finally broke and let me know just how much he truly resented not only the man I turned out to be but my entire existence.
When the waitress sets down the bill, I offer to pay, and they all take me up on it, though the waitress still stamps each of their coffee club cards that proudly state, “Fill your card, get fifty cents off your next cup!” Considering the coffee only costs a dollar, and there are twelve punches per card, I’m not sure it’s worth the space it takes up in their wallets, but I suppose it’s not up to me.
I get in my car and immediately turn on the engine, pulling out of the parking lot before I even have a chance to put my seat belt on.
I knew people in town didn’t like me. There’s likely a long list of people here who dislike me, and it makes sense that Ken Harper would be at the top of the list. But knowing and looking down the barrel of Ken’s dislike for fifty minutes are two entirely different things.
Growing up, I was close to him. I respected the hell out of him. And this? It hurts.
And there’s only one person I want to talk to.
So I drive back to Main Street and park. Izzy’s the only one in the office when I walk in, and her face lights up in surprise before falling again.
“What’s up?” she asks. “You look sad.”
I shake my head. I can’t do this. I should not do this.
But I have to. I can’t be resented for being who I am any longer.
“I don’t think we should fake date anymore,” I say in a rush.
It’s the only way I can get it out, when it’s the exact opposite of what I want.
“It’s…it’s not a good idea. For either one of us. ”
Izzy’s eyes widen, shock covering her face. “What? Where is this coming from?”
“I just accidentally had coffee with the men’s coffee group.”
She chuckles before her face drops again.
“Was my dad there?”
“Yeah.”
“Did he tell you not to date me? Because he was probably kidding. Threatening our dates isn’t really his style. He’s always let us make our own mistakes.”
She clearly does not know Ken Harper like I do. That man would slay a dragon for his daughter.
“And would dating me be a mistake?” I ask, not sure why everything is coming out confrontational.
She shakes her head. “That’s not what I meant.”
I don’t know why she’s being so easygoing about this. They didn’t say it, but those men thought I was the worst possible option to be in Izzy’s life.
“It’s what they all thought at coffee.”
“Well, they’re a bunch of busybodies. They mean well, but they don’t know you. Just don’t listen to them.”
“That’s easy for you to say. They think you walk on water,” I say, pacing the aisle in front of Izzy’s desk. “I, on the other hand, have never been good enough for you. I wasn’t good enough to be your friend. I’m certainly not good enough to date you.”
Izzy swivels in her chair, giving me her complete attention.
“What do you mean?”
“You know what I mean, Iz. Look at our lives.”
“Yeah, Jax, look at our lives,” she says, spreading her arms wide as if she’s laying a sheet out in front of her.
“I guarantee ten out of ten people would say I’m not good enough for you.
Even the coffee men. Your life is exciting—full of awards and world tours.
My life is small. A small company in a small town with a small group of friends. ”
“You know what I’m talking about, Iz. This town will always think you’re too good for me,” I say. “Your dad hates me.”
“My dad watched as my heart disintegrated and then got blown away on a ninety-mile-an-hour gust of wind when my best friend left one afternoon without a word to anyone. When I sent texts and called and mailed letters with no response,” she says.
“He doesn’t hate you; he wants to protect me from becoming a shell of myself again. ”
My chest pangs at the visual Izzy’s painting. I heard her when she told me how bad it was, but somehow hearing her describing herself as a husk of who she once was cuts me to the core.
Izzy continues, wiping the bridge of her nose angrily as a tear runs down it, “So yeah, Jaxon, there are people around this town who don’t like you. But not because of who you were before you left, but because of who you became when you left without a backward glance.”
“Well, they’re going to think less of you for dating me. Even if it’s fake. They’re going to resent me for bringing you down. Just like my dad resented me for bringing my mom down.”
“Well,” she parrots back, “I think they’re wrong. And I don’t care what they think. And they don’t think that. They were intimidating you on purpose, Jax. It was a test, and they almost got to you. And your dad didn’t think that.”
“Yes, he did—”
Izzy walks over to me, her fingers gently trailing up the inside of my forearm. It centers me. Calms my raging heart.
“You’re my fake boyfriend whether you like it or not, so don’t let the coffee group intimidate you. It’s bad for my reputation to date someone who gives in to Tim and Ralph.”
She stands on her tippy-toes and presses a soft kiss to my cheek. One I know is not allowed.
“The past is the past, Jax. Let’s just both try to move on.”
She touches the small tattoo on the inside of my arm. The one I lied and said was a Chinese symbol.
“I did some image searching to figure out what this actually says,” Izzy teases. “According to the interwebs, it’s the symbol for courage in battles against old men.”
A chuckle rumbles out of me. This is the magic of Izzy. She can turn anything around, make any day better.
“A very handy, versatile symbol,” I say. “The artist I went to must’ve been a bit psychic. She saw me in my time of great need and gave me the tools to succeed.”
She traces the symbol with her thumb. Her pulse on my ink feels like absolution. Like she sees the part of me I’ve been trying to rewrite and decides it’s still worth something.
“Makes sense,” she says with a smile.
And all I can think is so do we.