chapter twenty-six
Wren
Thursday afternoon’s time in the sunroom is being spent organizing some charity events. I bounce between a few phone calls and web conferences with different organizations and the woman who serves as one of Dad’s accountants. As the charity and community outreach coordinator, I do a lot to manage Taylor Industries’ charitable donations and functions.
Angelica sits on a window perch shouting, “Fuck off bird!” and barking every time one lands on the feeder closest to her. Until she sees something of interest and she whistles. “Big bitch!”
The window is open, but no answer comes. Big Bitch is her name for Jay. Is he outside? My phone is on Do Not Disturb, so I didn’t see the notification come in that the back door was open. I swipe away the notification now and look up to see her move to a closer window perch. She whistles again. “Big Bitch!”
“What Angelica?” Jay’s voice sounds from the yard.
I grin at his annoyance.
“Naked!” she croons back.
I almost knock my laptop to the ground in my haste to get to the window. He’s not naked, he’s shirtless and wearing his little, slutty work out shorts. He’s pulling the lawn mower out of the shed, clearly about to do yardwork. “Call him a slut,” I murmur to Angelica.
“Shlut,” she says to me.
“No, ssslut,” I coach to emphasize the s .
“SSSLUT!” she screeches out to Jay.
I collapse into a fit of laughter, sitting down hard on the floor next to the big window.
“Where’s your mother, bird?” Jay growls angrily just on the other side of the screen.
Angelica points with her talon at me on the floor.
“Hey, if you’re going to get your bird to demean me, then you can do your own damn yardwork,” he barks down at me on the floor but breaks off into a laugh.
He leaves me to my giggles as he goes back to the lawn mower. I hear him start it up and I go get myself a glass of lemonade to watch the show. The last time he mowed the lawn, he had his shirt on. This is a new treat, and it deserves a respectful audience. I pull up a chair next to Angelica and sit back to watch the show.
Jay is wearing his black balaclava, his little running shorts, and a pair of grass-stained sneakers. He gets three lines in before the summer sun causes beads of sweat to form on his skin. Beautiful. Standing ovulation, or whatever. I send a quick video of Jay to Gemma and she immediately sends back the hot face emoji and then a video of Lance half under her sink as he fixes one of the pipes. His shirt is hiked up to the middle of his stomach from the movement and I’m shocked to see he’s absolutely ripped despite his age. “Love this for us,” she replies, and I laugh before putting my phone away.
Angelica eventually leaves the window perch, and I don’t pay attention to where she goes. I’m too transfixed by my scantily clad bodyguard. Sweat drips down his back and I work very hard to remind myself that I cannot lick my bodyguard. It would be an HR violation, or something. Instead, I watch his muscles shift and move as he works. At one point, he bends down and reties his shoelace and I am gifted with the sight of his ass in his little shorts. Licking my bodyguard is likely an HR violation, but biting? Biting has to be accepted. With an ass like that? Come on.
I can’t see his ears, but I wonder if he has earbuds in. Is he listening to a podcast? Music? An audiobook? I know he listens to rock music while he works out in the basement. That I can hear throughout the entire house. I bet he listens to historical nonfiction. Maybe some mass market, male led, fiction. The paperbacks he reads are fantasy. We had just picked up the next one in the series when we were at the store. I’ll have to ask him what he listens to.
I have to ask a lot of things about him. There’s so much I don’t know. Which makes me feel like a girl with a school crush because being so intensely attracted to someone I know so little about is… silly. It’s juvenile. And I feel deluded enough to think I know his soul. Not his past, not his world, not his name . But him . It’s the height of delusional and I know it.
He stops mowing mid way through a line and looks at his phone that was squeezed into a pocket in his tiny shorts. Turning off the mower, he answers the phone. I can’t hear his conversation, but I see him run a hand over his mask and look toward the house. He hangs up and jogs to the house. I meet him in the kitchen.
“Hey, uh, my old neighbor needs my help. Do you think we could head to the city a bit earlier today and swing by her house?” He asks, hesitance clear in his voice.
“Yeah, of course. Is everything alright?” I ask.
He pours himself a glass of lemonade and chugs in down in one gulp. “She’s an old lady, and she fell and broke her porch railing. She doesn’t have anyone else to help her.”
“Oh, of course! Is she hurt?”
“She sprained her wrist, and her knees are bruised up. She was seen by a doctor already, but she needs that railing,” Jay says and puts the glass in the sink.
“I’m ready to go now, so let me know,” I say and start closing windows.
He showers and dresses and is ready in ten minutes. He takes my bag of taekwondo equipment from me and puts it in the trunk. I let him drive since he’s the one who knows where we’re going.
“Tell me about your neighbor,” I say while he drives. I breathe deeply, relaxing in his presence.
“Her name is Mrs. Stewart,” he says fondly. “She helped raise me. She’s like a grandmother to me in every way but blood.”
“I’m glad you had that.” From the bits and pieces I’ve heard about his life, it sounds like it was tough. To have someone who looked after him and his mom was really special.
“She watched me when my mom was working late. I don’t remember her husband, but he died a few years after me and Mom moved in next door. She never remarried or dated, but she became so important to me and Mom. I don’t think I would have made it as far as I have in life without her.”
“She sounds like a great person.”
“That she is. So, when she calls and says she needs her porch railing fixed, I’m there.”
We pull up to a little bungalow house with a broken patio railing and Jay parks us in the street. He hums like he’s thinking and looks around before moving the car over a house length. “I have to take my mask off. I don’t want to scare her.”
“Oh, um, I won’t look,” I say. A complete lie.
“Yeah, fucking right. Stay here, I won’t be long. Honk if someone approaches the car. Maybe recline a little or something,” he says before getting out of the car.
He jogs away from the car, and I see him stuff the mask into his back pocket. My eyes are laser focused on his head. I only see the back of his skull from here as he runs a hand over it to smooth down his hair. Blond.
Like blond blond.
I smile. I knew it. His eyebrows and eyelashes are darker than the hair on his head, but I knew he was a blondie. As he turns to walk up the sidewalk to Mrs. Stewart’s home, I catch sight of his ear and jaw. An ear is an ear, but from here it looks cute enough. Strong jaw line. But I knew that already. I’d felt it with my fingers.
He knocks on the door and an old lady answers it. She has one arm in a sling but otherwise looks well. They embrace and she looks down the street to the car I’m currently sitting in. Should I wave? Jay looks over briefly and I totally miss the opportunity to see his stupid face. I was too busy looking at the old lady.
They chat for a moment before she gestures to a toolbox that was already on the porch and he gets to work. She sits in an old wicker chair and talks to him while he works. They both are smiling and laughing while they talk. It’s nice to see him so happy. And see him, I certainly do. Though it’s just the curl of the corner of his mouth as he laughs and speaks. Even from here, I can tell he is handsome. I’m too far away and at an angle so I can’t see the exact way his lips fit on his mouth, if they’re always full and pouty or if that is reserved for kissing and sucking. He has a long nose with a good bump in the middle, but I can’t see how it fits with his face. I can see everything and nothing at the same time.
After craning my neck for far too long, I sigh and sit back in my seat. We’re parked in front of a little house with a fresh coat of paint and a new-looking fence. A school bus pulls up and two little girls skip down the stairs and up the driveway. A woman greets them at the door with a smile and smooths their hair down affectionately as they come in. My heart squeezes with the reminder of what was stolen from me. But I wave it away and wonder if that is Jay’s old home. The house on the other side of Mrs. Stewarts is another bungalow with a tidy lawn. It must be that one.
I scroll on my phone and respond to a few follow up emails from my calls earlier today while I wait. It isn’t long at all before the door opens and Jay slides back in as he tugs his mask on. The car shakes as he plops down into his seat.
“That was fast,” I say.
“Yeah, it was an easy fix. I just put the existing railing back up and into new holes.”
I say nothing, I just look at the house we’re parked in front of.
Jay doesn’t move out of park. He clears his throat. “It’s that one.”
He’s pointing to the house with the fresh paint and fence the little girls went into. “Oh? Your mom….”
“Doesn’t live there anymore. She has an apartment nearby,” he says. There’s tension in his voice and I look up at him. “She moved while I was deployed. So, uh, I came home… homeless.”
“Oh.”
“It’s part of why I took the job with you.”
“You don’t have to explain it like you’re coming clean to me.”
“It just feels like I… owe you information.”
“You don’t, but I’m happy to hear anything about you,” I say, just above a whisper.
His eyes are intense on me, and he takes a deep breath that he puffs through his lips. The force of it bows the mask slightly as he turns back to the road and pulls us out of our spot. “You know my mom got into the medical and gambling debt.”
“Yeah.”
“Well, she lost the house.”
“That’s so sad, Jay. I’m sorry.”
“And when I came home, I didn’t know she had moved. I didn’t know she was even sick. She had hidden it from me so well on leave and on phone calls I didn’t know until I showed up at that family’s door looking for her.”
“Holy shit!”
“Yeah, it sucked, but Mrs. Stewart helped me out.” He tries to shrug it off, but I can’t get past it.
“I can’t watch those military homecoming videos because they’re so beautiful and make me so emotional,” I say, getting choked up. “And you didn’t get that and now I’m crying for a whole other reason. Jay!”
Jay can only shoot an amused glance at me as he merges onto the highway. “I’m so sorry my traumatic event is upsetting you.”
“No, I’m upset on your behalf! You should have had banners and balloons! A cake!” I’m verging on hysterical.
“Thank you,” he says quietly and reaches over to squeeze my hand. I trap it tight between mine and he looks at me again. This time, his eyes are soft and a little sad.