Chapter 21
TWENTY-ONE
JAKE
The fire pit in Jared’s backyard throws more heat than the yard really needs, even in February, but nobody’s complaining. Not with brisket smoke rolling low across the grass and a cooler within arm’s reach of every camp chair.
Jared’s wife strung lights zigzagging from the pergola to the fence, and past the cornhole boards, a Bluetooth speaker is losing a slow fight against twelve conversations happening at once.
February in Texas means everybody still gets to pretend it’s a real winter for one more month before the heat comes back and ruins it.
Backyard barbeque.
This is what a life is supposed to be.
Men around the grill with a beer in hand. Women by the desserts table, some with babies on their hips. And kids shrieking as they run around in the grass until somebody’s mother tells them to go shriek farther away.
Just the ordinary, respectable noise of people whose lives are not currently being dismantled by a wife who woke up one day and decided vows of forever were just a suggestion.
Jake works the yard the way he’s always worked a room: handshake half a second too long just so the man on the other end remembers to pay attention to him.
He’s always careful to time his laughs right in time to give the other party permission to laugh, along with a hand clap on the back.
That way it reads as affection instead of what it actually is, which is management.
Nobody walks away from five minutes with Jake thinking there’s a crack anywhere in his foundation.
That’s the trick of being a man. You don’t have to be fine. You just have to make everybody else believe you are.
“Man, good to see you out,” Jared says a little too carefully, meeting him at the cooler with a back-clap. Like he rehearsed it on the walk over so it wouldn’t come out sounding like how are you holding up. Jake’s teeth grind, especially when Jared follows up with, “Wasn’t sure you’d make it.”
“Wouldn’t miss it.” Jake gives Jared the easy grin, the one women trust and men relax around. “Y’all always throw the best ones.”
“Brianna does the planning. I stand here and look useful near the meat.”
“Marriage in one sentence,” Jake says, and Jared laughs because that’s what people do when Jake gives them the right cue.
Jared pokes at something on the grill that doesn’t need poking. “You doing all right, man? With everything?”
There it is.
Jake lets the question hit. Just for a second. Then Jake lets his eyes go tired but the barest sheen of wetness.
Wet is useful.
Spilling is pathetic.
“I’m hanging in,” he says, quiet enough that Jared has to lean closer. “Marriage means you don’t quit on someone because they’re having a hard time.”
Jared’s face does exactly what Jake needs it to do.
Softens and aligns.
Good.
“She’s not herself right now,” Jake adds, because it’s important to plant that part early and often. “And I don’t mean that ugly. I mean, I know my wife. I know when she’s spiraling.”
“Yeah,” Jared says, nodding slowly. “Bri’s worried about her.”
Of course Brianna’s worried. Brianna is a decent woman. Soft-hearted and easy to steer.
“She should be.” Jake looks down at the beer in his hand like he is fighting for dignity in front of another man. “Lennon’s always been more fragile than people realize. I protected her from a lot of that. Probably too much.”
He lets out a small laugh, rueful and self-aware. Not bitter. Never bitter in public.
“I guess maybe I made it look easier than it was.”
Jared nods again, and there’s sympathy in it now.
It settles something ugly and hungry in Jake’s chest.
Because this is the part Lennon never understood. Women like Lennon never understand when they start using words like control and manipulation, only because some tattooed piece-of-shit loser has gotten into their heads.
A reputation is not a lie just because it requires maintenance.
Jake knew how to keep everything looking picture-perfect on the outside.
For Christ’s sake, he made Lennon look normal.
And now she’s running around acting like normal was something that just happened to her instead of something he built for her with both hands.
Across the patio, Emily stands near the drink table with a hard seltzer in one hand and goose bumps rising along her bare arms. She’s a pretty enough girl from church.
Twenty-eight and compliant. The kind of girl who assumed she’d be picked by now and is starting to get desperate ’cause she hasn’t been.
His mother has been too obvious about Emily all night, which is annoying. She thinks Jake should let go of Lennon and choose a nice girl like Emily instead. Why can’t Mom stay out of shit that’s not her business? For once.
Jake crosses over, easy as anything.
“Cold?” he asks Emily.
Emily glances down at her arms like she’s only just noticed the chill. “A little, I guess.”
Jake plucks the can lightly from her fingers and replaces it with a bottle of water from the cooler.
She blinks. “Oh.”
“You’ll thank me tomorrow,” he says, smiling as he reaches past her for the throw blanket over the back of Brianna’s chair. He settles it over Emily’s shoulders before she can decide whether she wants it. He’ll help her decide she wants it. “Winter in Texas still counts as winter, sweetheart.”
Emily laughs because women usually do when they don’t yet know whether they’re allowed to be annoyed.
“That’s better,” Jake says.
And it is.
Her shoulders are covered. Her drink is appropriate. Her smile is uncertain but grateful enough.
He turns back toward Marcus and one of Jared’s coworkers like the whole thing hasn’t happened.
“Man, I’m telling you,” Jake says, tipping his beer toward his fence line several houses over like the offending property is standing right there listening. “Even the HOA’s gone soft. Six months I’ve had a complaint in about that short-term rental next door, and they’re still reviewing the bylaws.”
He does the air quotes with his beer hand.
“Like I’m supposed to just be fine with strangers sleeping fifty feet from my wife’s bedroom window. People I didn’t vet or invite into my neighborhood.”
Marcus makes the noise men make when they stopped actually listening three sentences ago. Jared’s coworker nods along and flips a burger that doesn’t need flipping yet.
Jake doesn’t much care if they’re listening.
Saying it out loud is the point.
Reminding himself, and anyone in earshot, that he is still the guy standing in a respectable yard, drinking a respectable beer, complaining about his property like a man with a house still worth defending.
A man ought to have some say in what happens fifty feet from his wife’s body.
Nobody gets to rent out that house to fucking strangers just because they Dan struck it fucking rich and gets to spend his time at their new property in the south of France.
“Lockbox right on the front door,” he says. “Different car in the driveway every weekend. Half of them out-of-state plates. One group had the nerve to sit on the upstairs balcony at midnight like this is some bachelor-party rental off Sixth.”
“HOA won’t do anything?” Jared’s coworker asks, finally catching up enough to contribute.
“They say the language is ambiguous.” Jake smiles through his teeth around the word. “Ambiguous. That’s what people say when they don’t want to enforce standards.”
Emily makes a small sound behind him. Agreement, maybe. Or sympathy. Either works.
Jake glances back and finds her watching him over the top of the blanket, water bottle held in both hands.
Good.
Let her see him like this. Protective and reasonable. A man trying to hold a line while the world goes soft around him.
He’s midway into round two of the rental-neighbor thing when a gust carries his mother’s voice across the yard, pitched two octaves above the party the way it always gets once she has an audience.
“—and he just cried like a baby for a week, bless his heart, couldn’t hardly get himself out of bed for work—”
One of the church women makes a soft, sympathetic sound. Brianna’s hand comes up to cover her mouth.
Jake turns before he means to.
His mother stands by the drink table with Brianna, two women he half-recognizes from church, and Emily tucked close under the blanket he gave her. All of them looking at his mother Kathy.
All of them picturing him in bed. Crying. Heat crawls up Jake’s neck before his brain even catches up to why.
He did not cry for a week.
Two days, maybe. And only at night. Just ’cause the house was too quiet in a way it had never been quiet before.
And here his mother is out telling his personal business to a circle of women holding paper plates of coleslaw?
It barely registers to him that it’s sympathy and not mockery, and frankly, when it does, it’s worse.
Sympathy means they have all quietly agreed he is the kind of man who can be pitied, and once a woman decides you are pitiable, she stops being able to see you as anything else. Husband. Provider. Man anyone would be lucky to land, much less fuck.
Reduced to poor Jake.
Poor Jake whose wife ran off to his brother.
Poor Jake who cried like a baby.
His smile stays up out of pure muscle memory.
He crosses the yard fast but not too fast. Never too fast. Fast is emotional and sloppy, and Jake is never, ever those things.
“Excuse us a second,” he says brightly when he reaches the circle.
His mother’s mouth is still open for the next sentence.
Jake takes her wrist. Not hard enough for anyone to notice. Just his fingers closing over the soft place above the bone, thumb finding the tendon with the accuracy of long practice.
Kathy’s mouth snaps shut and Jake kisses his mother’s cheek.
“A second, Mama,” he says warmly, and gives the women a look that says mothers, what can you do, while his hand tightens just enough to get Kathy moving.
The women relax.
Of course they do.
He guides his mother toward the house with his hand at her back, smiling all the way. The kitchen door swings shut behind them, cutting the party down to a murmur.
“You’re hurting me, Jakey,” his mother whines.
“Then lower your voice.”