chapter eighteen
Wren
Thursday is Jay’s day off. A Crow will come spend the day with me until Dad and Hawk come for dinner. I’ve insisted Jay borrow my car when he takes the day off rather than getting an Uber. But it’s early now and Jay is still having breakfast. He’s wearing a pair of brand new looking jeans and a vintage wash, tight, blue t-shirt. It’s stretched around his biceps and when he reaches into a cabinet for a coffee mug, the worn material does little to hide his abs. When he is relaxed, his stomach is soft and not defined, but when he is stretching or otherwise engaging his muscles, the definition and strength are undeniable.
“Hey,” I say and clear my throat as I enter the kitchen from the patio.
“Hey,” he says back in his sleepy voice.
“What time is a Crow getting here?”
He looks at his watch. “In an hour. You gonna be alright?”
I give a petulant look and cross my arms over my pajama clad chest. “You think I can’t go a day without you?”
“Isn’t it weird to have a strange man in your house?” he asks, but his eyes are crinkled at the sides like he’s smiling.
I swallow and look down, surprised by his smile. “Yeah, it totally is.”
Jay snorts and goes back to making his scrambled eggs and warming up some sausage he batch made earlier in the week. I refill my coffee and head back out to the patio to watch over the garden. Jay joins me with the matching mug I bought at the craft show and his breakfast a few minutes later.
When I purchased the set at the craft show, I hadn’t precisely pictured the mugs belonging to me and Jay. There had simply been two in the same color and I couldn’t buy only one. But over the past week, Jay and I have each claimed one mug. Mine has a slight thumb indentation right where mine goes on the handle. It’s as if the artist had held the mug the same way I do while it was still in clay form. While to some it would seem like an imperfection, to me it’s like the mug was made specifically for me. The glaze on Jay’s mug had bubbled just the slightest on one side when it was in the kiln and the bursts of blue remind me of the flecks of silver in his eyes. While I didn’t intend for the mugs to be assigned to Jay and me, we have settled into the routine of choosing our mugs and drinking from them daily.
We most often have breakfast together on the patio and today is no exception. We’re both sipping our coffee and looking over the yard when a sparrow flutters down and lands on one of the bird feeders. I gasp. Both of us watch, transfixed, as a little brown sparrow digs his beak into the seeds with such ferocity that some goes spilling down to the grass. He turns and chirps up at the trees and then goes back to devouring the seeds. Two smaller sparrows join him on the rungs of the feeder and I could cry with excitement. The two smaller ones open their mouths and the bigger sparrow feeds them seeds.
Angelica is still up in her room as she was asleep when I’d gotten up. Now that she isn’t in the sunroom window to scare off the birds, they are comfortable to come and eat.
When they fly off, I turn to Jay. “Oh my gosh!” I shout and jump up from my seat. “We have birds!”
“We have birds!” Jay echoes and gets out of his chair.
I run down and look into the pan of the bird feeder and see the little empty space where the birds had eaten. Jumping up and down, I squeal out my excitement. Jay is next to me and he looks into the seed pan before his smiling eyes meet mine. Before I can tell myself not to, I jump and wrap my arms around his neck in a celebratory hug. He spins me around and laughs before setting me down. His laugh is deep and wonderful and I want to hear it again and again.
When he sets me down he’s still smiling but his eyes lose some of their crinkle and he blinks into a sad sort of look. We say nothing, but our hands are still on each other. Mine are resting on his shoulders and he’s stooped slightly to be within my reach with his hands on the dip of my waist. My stomach tightens and I feel a heated blush rise to my cheeks. It feels intimate despite us being far enough apart to be acceptable at a middle school dance. With only a limited window to see his expression, I can only try to decipher the look in his eyes. It’s sadness and… longing? Two feelings I am mirroring deep into my bones with a resounding ache.
“Jay—”
The doorbell startles us both.
“A Crow is here.” His voice is gruff as he pulls away from me. The space he vacated feels cold and spikey, and I have to shake my head to dispel the fog.
“Wait, Jay!” I call after him and run to catch him in the kitchen. “I made something for your mom.”
“My mom?” he asks and watches me pull a bundt cake out of the pantry. I have it on my nicest platter covered with plastic wrap.
“Yeah, you said you were spending the day with her, so I made this. Um, tell her I said hi,” I say and hand him the maraschino cherry bundt cake. “You said last week these cherries were her favorite candy and I saw the recipe online, so….”
His eyes have that same sad expression again.
I swallow nervously as I realize I might have just crossed a boundary by accident. I wince. “If you feel like she wouldn’t—”
“No, she’s going to love it. Thank you,” Jay says as the doorbell rings a second time.
He sets down the cake to answer the door. I hear the two men talk briefly before they both come into the kitchen. Jay picks up the cake, quirks his eyebrows at me as if to say “good luck,” and leaves me with this Crow.
“I’m not going anywhere today. Feel free to use the Xbox or whatever,” I dismiss before heading to see Angelica.
****
Jay comes home well after Dad and Hawk leave. Dinner with Dad and Hawk was nice and uneventful, consumed mostly with talk of upcoming charity events and donations I’ve planned. I’m in the library, reading and listening to music when Jay comes home. The Crow is hanging out in the living room, playing a game, and I hear him turn it off when Jay greets him. I feel kind of like a child whose parent just got home and is dismissing the babysitter. It’s not a great feeling as a twenty-five-year-old woman in her own home.
“Everything go okay?” Jay asks the Crow.
“Yeah, Mr. Taylor and Hawk came for dinner, and she stayed home all day,” the Crow replies.
“She asleep?”
“No, Daddy, I’m still awake. You have to read me a story and bring me a cup of warm milk,” I call out from the library.
I can’t see Jay roll his eyes and heave a gigantic sigh, but I know he does it. I just know.
“Alright, man, I’ll head out,” the Crow says, his voice tight with suppressed laughter.
Jay leans against the doorframe of the library and raises an eyebrow at me. “Where you a good girl for Uncle Crow?”
“Big Bitch!” Angelica croons when she realizes Jay is home.
“Angelica, were you a good girl?” Jay asks her fondly as she lands on his shoulder.
“Good girl,” Angelica says and makes a loud kissing sound.
Jay brings her back to her perch and hands her a treat from the bag I left on a bookshelf.
“How’s your mom?” I ask and put my book down.
“She’s alright,” he says after a few moments of silence. He’s not telling me everything.
“You’re hiding something. Is it identifiable or just difficult to talk about?”
He turns to me with what I can assume is a soft smile. He puts his hands in the front pockets of his jeans. “Both.”
“I’m sorry.”
He shrugs and turns away from me, pausing when he sees the partially empty bookshelf.
“Oh, I made space for you to have a shelf,” I say and pick my book back up.
On the shelf are the three fantasy books he read and left in the living room. He touches the shelf with his fingertips. He slides his hand along the wood like it’s precious. It’s one shelf in a room of bookshelves. It’s barely anything. He bows his head before turning back to me. I quickly avert my eyes and focus down on my book.
“I was sick of finding them everywhere,” I lie.
“Wren—”
“Did your mom like the cake? It was a new recipe,” I say, changing the subject.
“She loved it. She shared it with her nurses.”
“Nurses?” I look up at him.
He nods and puts his hands back into his pockets. His eyes have that intense, unreadable expression he gets sometimes, and I know what he is feeling is so big and clear to him. But I’m not allowed that close. I’m not allowed to know what is making him feel so intensely.
“Well, I’m glad it was enjoyed,” I say and close my book. I stand up to get Angelica so we can go up to bed. I need to leave before I say or do something I’ll regret. Something that would get me into trouble.
As I pass Jay, he reaches out and catches me by my chin. His thumb presses just below my lip as he tips my face up to his. I gasp and look wide eyed up at him. “Hey,” he whispers. “Thank you. For the cake and the shelf. And the notebook.”
“Mhm.” It’s all I can manage to say with his hand on my face like this.
My eyes are fixed on his, and I hear him swallow. His eyes dip down to my lips and my core tightens with a yearning so fierce I didn’t know I was capable of feeling. When his eyes move away from mine, it frees me, and I take in his posture. His shoulders are pulled in and it’s like his body is consuming me. I feel the ghosting touch of his other hand on my elbow. I want him to pull me to him the rest of the way. I want to be entirely consumed by this man.
Angelica makes loud kissing sounds from her perch. Jay jerks his hand away from my face and steps back.
“Oh, Angelica,” I scold awkwardly, and reach for her. “It’s time for bed.”
I don’t look at Jay as I leave, but I hear him swear under his breath. On the stairs, I touch my face where his hand was. I feel hot and needy.
Aching for my bodyguard.
After putting Angelica to bed, I set out fresh water for her. I remember some seeds had been eaten today by the birds outside and I want to refill the feeders for the morning birds. I tiptoe downstairs and out the back door. Quietly, I open the storage container full of wild bird seed. The sound of pounding footsteps gets louder and louder before a breathless and shirtless Jay appears at the back door.
“What are you doing?” he asks, his mask crooked on his face.
“Feeding the birds!” I defend. “I’m allowed in my own backyard!”
His shoulders relax and he waves a hand dismissively before hiking up his red plaid pajama pants from where they were hanging on his hips. He turns and leaves me outside and I hear him rummaging in the pantry.
I fill the birdseed pans before going back in. “Why did you come flying down here? Did you think I was sneaking out or something?”
“I thought you were in your room and then I got the back door open notification and it scared me. I didn’t think you were sneaking out, it just… scared me,” he says, almost defeated.
“Oh, um, sorry, I guess,” I say and close the cabinet he had left open. “Goodnight.”
“Goodnight,” he echoes as I leave.