44. Present Day
Present Day
The first of many unexpected arrivals on day nine of what Jase affectionately called their prison sentence was a box of envelopes from Jason.
Great, what now? had been the collective response to Whitlock’s special delivery. The note on top of the box read simply: Truth. Without any further instructions, Graham had opened one of the small white envelopes inside the box and found a question about life they were all supposed to answer.
“What’s your dream job?”
Lindsey’s ex looked up from the paper square and across the fire pit separating her and Jase from where Graham and Helen shared an Adirondack chair. This was their first fire on the patio together, and the longest they’d spent as a group aside from sharing the occasional meal.
“Let’s hear it, Graham,” Lindsey said. “You going to start your own insurance agency?”
“What? No, I hate insurance.”
“Then what?” she asked.
“I don’t know. I don’t have one. Come back to me.”
“You really don’t have a dream job?” Helen asked.
“Why is it so hard to believe? Lindsey doesn’t have a favorite color, Jase doesn’t have a favorite food,” Graham said, waving at the flames that burned up the previous envelopes. “I don’t have a dream job. My dream would be—”
“To sit around and count your money, one crisp bill at a time?” Jase asked.
“No. Well, yeah, but I don’t want to take orders from some pretentious little prick just out of college anymore. I want to work for myself. Make my own hours and come and go as I please. Something like that. I’ve got the money and the time now to figure it out.”
“Well, you don’t have the money yet,” Helen graciously pointed out, after which both she and Graham stared Lindsey down.
“Great,” she muttered. “Jase? Dream job?”
He was staring at her too, but lower, heat from his gaze singing the fringe of her jean shorts. Or maybe she was just sitting too close to the fire pit. She crossed her legs, breaking whatever spell they’d had on him.
“I don’t know.” Jase cleared his throat. “I guess if I could do anything, I’d sing.”
“Sing,” Graham said.
“Yeah, asshole. Sing. The question said dream job, not practical career. I liked singing with Dad and I like singing by myself. So, that’s what I’d do.”
“You’d be really good at it,” Lindsey said. “You were good onstage.”
“What would you be?” Helen asked her.
“A writer.”
“Weren’t you going to be a writer?” Graham asked. “Before you quit?”
“I didn’t quit writing,” she said, except she couldn’t remember the last time she wrote anything besides her own thoughts in the red leather journal from Jason. “No one took it seriously anyway. People in my family don’t…”
“Don’t what?” Jase asked.
“Don’t pursue careers without a PhD and steady paycheck,” she explained.
“Graham, you’ve met them. I have three brothers, and they all have doctorates, and their favorite game is who can impress Daddy the most. My brother Luke always wins since he actually is a doctor, just like my dad.
Unlike my dad, Luke is about to lose everything. ”
“What’s going on with Luke?” Graham asked.
“He’s getting divorced. His wife is pregnant with someone else’s kid.”
“Damn.” Graham dropped his head and rubbed his beard.
“He hasn’t even told our parents because he doesn’t want to disappoint them.
My whole family is a decorated bunch of highly successful people…
and then there’s me. When I told my dad I wanted to be a writer, he smiled and said, ‘What an excellent idea. You’ll have plenty of time to write after you get home from your real job. ’”
“Ouch.” Helen winced.
“I went to school for English and journalism to prove to my dad that I could make money doing what I loved, only I didn’t love writing the way they wanted me to in school, and I dropped out of the program.”
“How did your dad react?” Helen asked.
“He was pissed at first. Then he said maybe I’ll get lucky and find a rich husband.”
Jase coughed and took a drink.
Having slept with both men present who were soon to be very wealthy, she added, “I’m not—that’s not what I’m doing here though.”
“Well, now that we cleared that up,” Graham muttered, looking anywhere but at Lindsey.
“Come on, Helen,” Lindsey said. “Take the heat off me. What’s your dream job?”
“The one I have,” she said.
“What do you actually do for a living?” Jase asked.
“I’m a biologist at the University of Austin,” Helen said.
“Hm,” Lindsey said into her beer. “My dad would be very proud of you.”
“I need to get back there soon,” she said with a sideways glance at Graham. “I really love my job.”
“I’m aware. You left me for it,” Graham said. “Do you think this is the best time to discuss it?”
“The game is called Truth, isn’t it?” Helen asked. “The truth is, I could lose my job if I stay here much longer.”
“What are you saying? Would you leave before the two weeks are up?” Graham demanded. “We’d lose the money.”
“I didn’t say I was leaving.”
“Three million is a fortune!”
“Six,” Jase corrected.
“Yes, I’m aware.” From the armrest of the Adirondack chair, Helen put her arm around Graham’s neck. “I’m not leaving. But we do need to talk.”
“You said you could take a sabbatical.”
“You also said you’d stay with me in Texas for a while, if I wanted you to. Did that change?”
“No, it hasn’t.”
Lindsey nudged Jase’s arm and motioned to the box of envelopes beside Graham’s chair. Jase stood and grabbed it, opening another question.
“Is it a bad one?” Lindsey asked.
“What are you most afraid of?” Jase read.
Graham kneaded the center of his chest and said to Helen, “Losing you. That’s the only thing I’m afraid of.”
“And I’m afraid of doing it wrong again,” Helen said.
“Again. What did we do wrong last time?”
Helen slumped as if the answer was obvious. “Look at how we ended up.”
“Right. I couldn’t compete with a dream job.”
“I didn’t know we were here for couples’ counseling,” Jase said quietly to Lindsey, tossing the envelope into the fire. “Want to get out of here?”
His chin pointed toward the bedroom they’d spent most of the last seven days locked inside. After they hooked up the TV from her apartment on the wall across from the bed, they hardly left it, except to shower and eat or meet with the odd buyer picking up her furniture.
He reached over and squeezed her thigh, igniting the nerves in her bare skin and a quick throb between her legs. It was wholly unfair how a simple touch was enough for her to want to chuck her drink behind her and throw herself over his shoulder so he could carry her back upstairs.
Truth: The thing I’m most afraid of is losing Jase.
“That is not what happened,” Helen said, standing. “Please tell me we don’t have to go through this again.”
“I just don’t understand. We had a good life.”
Helen counted all the ways Graham was wrong on her fingers. “We were stagnant. We didn’t have a future. We lived in a crappy apartment. You never wanted to talk about buying a house.”
“Why would we?” Graham asked, sounding one lung short. “It’s not like we were married.”
“Exactly. Three years and not even the hint of a ring.”
“I proposed to you in Texas. You said yes.”
“Let’s be honest about what happened in Texas,” Helen replied. “You only asked me to marry you so I’d agree to take the trip with you while you were still in a relationship with someone else.”
“That’s a fair point, Graham,” Lindsey said, looking away from Jase.
“Really? You too?” He shot to his feet and faced Helen, still kneading a hole over his heart and steadily losing his breath.
“My proposal might’ve been a spur-of-the-moment decision, so what?
I wanted to keep you. Forever. That’s it.
I’ll do whatever you want. I’ll be whoever you want.
We’ll buy a house, we’ll make new friends, we’ll travel the world…
whatever will make you happy, as long as you’ll never call us stagnant again. ”
He took Helen’s hands in his. “For the record, I don’t think stagnant is bad. I didn’t want to change anything because I was happy with you. I didn’t need anything else.”
Graham had never said anything like that to Lindsey.
No one had ever said anything like that to her.
She suddenly wanted to choke and her skin under Jase’s palm flared with heat—not the good kind. A burning awareness that she’d never been enough for anyone her whole life.
Not her parents. Not Graham.
Truth: I’m afraid I’m not enough for Jase to want to stay.