Chapter 12
TWELVE
When I show up at Jess’s house on Wednesday, I’m all smiles and excitement, chattering on about plans and crafts, then shooing him out the door before he can ask me any questions.
Emma and I plan an Emma and Dad night of relaxation with homemade pizzas, a movie, and s’mores, so when Jesse comes in the door looking exhausted, I tell him about tonight’s plans, he accepts, and gives me a soft look, and I dip out quickly before he can say another word.
My goal was to give him an easy night since he has to be exhausted after the last two days, but also one he could feel good about when hanging out with his daughter.
It has absolutely nothing to do with the intense embarrassment that I feel knowing that last night, I spilled my guts to him about what happened in Vermont, set clear, friendly boundaries, and then completely demolished them with my final words to him.
If I were to go for a King, it would absolutely be you.
Why would I say that?
Sure, it was true, but it could have very much stayed an inside thought.
I tell myself it’s because he was so damn vulnerable the night before, and I wanted to give him the same.
I tell myself that his opening up about his feelings about dating—or more accurately, not dating—made me feel brave, knowing neither of us would ever actually go for it.
I tell myself it’s because I feel bad that he spent the last year thinking I turned him down for his brother.
Okay, maybe my rushing out the door had something to do with my embarrassment, but at least this time, my plan isn’t to ignore Jesse.
I think I’ve learned that does neither of us any good, and with my living so close and helping with Emma, I know it’s impossible.
It’s simply that I want to put enough space between that night and the next real conversation we have, so there’s no way for him to ask about it, no way for the tension to grow between us.
Because for the smallest moment, when I explained to Jesse that I hadn’t avoided him because I was actually into his brother, I saw it there: hope.
Possibility. The idea that maybe, maybe we could try…
something. I needed to squash it, and I think I did, until that stupid, stupid moment as I was leaving.
I’m an idiot.
Unfortunately, because I admitted that the last time I made a fool of myself and avoided him, Jesse has gotten much wiser to my antics, and he proves that to me on Thursday night, when Emma insists I stay for dinner, and Jesse agrees.
That morning, I had arrived at eight, after Emma was awake and ready for the day, with a giant bag of craft supplies to make decorations for her room, again efficiently avoiding talking to Jesse.
Mentally, I plan to eat and then leave right after, but Jesse thwarts my plan of evasion halfway through dinner.
“You gonna ignore me for ten months again?” he asks after I head to the kitchen to get a drink. I didn’t hear him follow me in, but he’s standing there, leaning on the pantry doors when I close the fridge door, and I nearly jump out of my skin.
“Jesse!” I gasp. “You scared the shit out of me!“ His smile goes wider, thoroughly entertained by me, and he suddenly looks younger, so much more carefree.
“Good. Now, are you going to ignore me again?”
“Why would I ignore you?” I ask, deciding playing dumb is the best plan as I crack open a can of soda.
“I don’t know, but you seem to be doing a pretty good job of it.”
I scrunch my nose up and open my mouth to lie, but decide it’s not what I want to be doing. Not with Jesse, not when he’s always seemed to be able to follow my train of thought, so long as I explain it to him.
“It’s not that I want to ignore you,” I start.
“But?” I roll my eyes.
“But it seems to be my standard reaction when I do something stupid.”
“Stupid?” I glare because we both know what I’m talking about, and that grin spreads wider on his lips.
“Oh, you mean when you told me you would pick me over Madden?” My face goes somehow even more deadpan.
“Hal,” he starts, and I ignore the way the single word sends butterflies to my belly.
“I have spent my entire life with people telling me Madden is the better brother.” I try not to make a face, but I think I fail when his eyes light up before he continues to explain.
“He’s friendlier, flirty, and dresses like he actually cares about how people perceive him. ”
“I’ve always been way more into brooding,” I say with a shrug, trying to play this off as fun and silly, but it’s Jesse I’m talking to, so he takes it up a notch.
“As far back as when you were fourteen, Mrs. Hallie King?” That blush deepened, and I guess now I can assume he realizes why I didn’t want him to see those vision boards. “Thought those were about Madden, too, in case you were wondering.”
I roll my eyes, trying to play it off. “As if.”
“Hmm. Well, I think it’s just fine for friends to be attracted to one another, yeah? Doesn’t have to mean anything, much less be something to avoid me over.”
“It doesn’t?”
He shakes his head, then turns away, headed back toward the dining room, and for a moment, I think I’m home free. But then his feet falter, and he looks over his shoulder.
“But just so you know, I’d pick you, too, Hallie. Every time.”
Then he walks into the dining room, talking to Emma like he didn’t just blow me away.
I don’t really know what to do with that, so instead, I do nothing. I play the same role I’ve played for as long as I can remember, of being into Jesse and never, ever doing anything about it.
BreakTK
The next morning, I don’t drag my feet when I finish all of my morning tasks and realize it’s barely even seven.
It’s the last day I’ll be watching Emma before she goes back to school on Monday, and also the day Wren comes home.
Instead of sitting around and waiting until eight to make my way to their house, I’m out the door by 7:10.
I’m already thinking about the coffee I’m going to have once I get there (I don’t know how he does it, but even though I have a fancy machine and the same creamer, Jesse makes better coffee in his shitty pot Mrs. King got him for Christmas years and years ago), but when I hear a consistent grumbling and a thunk, thunk, thunk sound, my curiosity is piqued, and I decide to follow it.
And then that curiosity turns to something else altogether when I carefully walk the path around the house to the backyard and see Jesse in the corner, a black and red flannel pulled tight across his back, muscles moving with each shift of his body as he lifts an axe over his head and brings it down, chopping wood.
Oh. My. God.
It’s possibly the hottest thing I’ve ever seen, and I don’t feel guilty about thinking that. I can’t have Jesse King, but I sure as fuck can have this memory for long, lonely nights with my vibrator, right? That’s not against the rules, is it?
Plus, I have to just stand here and watch. What would happen if I spoke and scared him, and he chopped a toe off or something? That would weigh on my conscience for an eternity.
Instead of interrupting, like the creep I am, I watch Jesse lift thick hunks of heavy wood onto the stump, then step back, lifting the axe high and swinging it down to split the wood effortlessly.
After the third or fourth time (or fifth, or sixth, who knows—I’m very distracted, and counting isn’t really a priority), though, I start to take note of the words.
Fucking bitch.
Hate her.
Terrible fucking person.
It seems this isn’t just Jesse tackling the chore of chopping wood, but possibly him getting out some long-held aggression. Suddenly, I feel less inclined to drool over him and far more concerned.
When he’s reaching for another log, I speak.
“Uh, something you want to tell me?” I ask. Jesse’s head whips in my direction, and all joking leaves my chest.
He looks terrible.
Angry, hurt, and so beyond frustrated. It’s intense emotions I’ve never seen on his face before, and I almost take a step back.
“Tell you?”
“I just…you keep saying you hate some kind of woman and—”
“Not you,” he says quickly with a shake of his head.
“Phew, I thought we were about to be back at square one,” I say with a laugh, though it’s mostly for show because the truth is, I’m concerned.
“Want to talk about it?” The humor is out of my words now, gentleness and sincerity taking their place, and I watch as he lets out a breath of air that seems like it comes from the depths of his soul before he sets the axe down, leaning on it before looking to me.
“It’s Kim.”
“Kim?”
“She was supposed to come tomorrow and spend some time with Emma. She’d been promising it for two weeks, since Emma didn’t see her for Christmas.”
Discomfort churns in my stomach at the words, even though I don’t know exactly where it’s going. Old, too-familiar wounds ache, and I hesitate with my following words.
“And…?”
“She texted me sometime late last night to tell me she got into a car accident and she can’t come.”
My eyes go wide. That is not where I thought this was going, especially not with the way he was grumbling just moments before.
“Oh, my god, Jesse—”
“She doesn’t know Madden keeps tabs on her on her social media. He saw her stories, and she’s currently in Aspen with some new boyfriend doing ski shots.”
I blink once, twice, before fire burns through me, leaving understanding in its wake: she told Jesse she’d been in an accident as an excuse for why she can’t be with Emma tomorrow.
“Oh my god,” I whisper, frustration and self-righteous anger brewing. “That fucking bitch.”
He shrugs as if to say, “See what I mean?”
“Does she know?” Emma mentioned her mother had gifted her a cellphone for Christmas, which, personally, wouldn’t be my first choice for an eleven-year-old, but what do I know, and that she had been occasionally texting her mom with it.
She asked for my number, but I told her I needed to run it past her dad first, and I haven’t gotten around to it yet.
Another deeply exhausted sound leaves Jesse’s lips before he runs a hand down his face.
He’s wearing a Three Kings beanie this morning instead of his normal baseball hat, a forest green color that brings out the small bits of green in his eyes.
“No. Like always, I get to be the one to break the news to her.” There’s a reluctant acceptance in his words that tears at me.
“Does this happen often?”
He nods. “It used to be worse when she was four or five, before I stopped telling her when Kim was coming. Around then, I realized that more often than not, something would come up, and she’d have to cancel plans to see Emma.
Reasonably, each time a visit was canceled last minute, Emma would lose it.
That’s when I stopped telling her about the visits.
If she comes, then it’s a fun surprise. If she doesn’t, it’s no big deal. ”
It’s more evidence of what I already know: Jesse is a great dad.
A lot of parents would use the constant disappointments to their advantage, letting it turn their kids against the other parent, but not Jesse.
He lets Emma constantly think the best of Kim and makes the few visits she actually manages to have feel like a magical surprise.
“But now she has a phone,” I say in understanding, and Jesse nods, misery written on his face.
“Now she has a phone, and she’s been texting Emma for a week about their day together—all these plans to go out for lunch and to get their hair done and to go shopping.
” She’s mentioned it to me once or twice, but I never really thought twice about it.
“Now I get to be the bearer of bad news and deal with the emotional turmoil that will follow.”
I can see it happening, too—how disappointed she will be, and the closest one, the one bringing her the bad news, will be the one who gets the brunt of it.
Poor Jesse. For a moment, I wonder just how often this happens, Kim bailing, but thinking about that won’t help us, so I decide to move forward.
“Okay, well…” I take a breath and start to pace, my mind moving a mile a minute. “What were your plans for tomorrow?” When I look at Jesse, he’s staring at me skeptically, but shakes his head.
“Nothing. I didn’t make any plans just in case.”
I nod, pulling out my phone and opening up my group chat. “Well, Wren comes home today, and while I’m sure she’ll be shot tomorrow, I’m sure she’d love to see Emma.”
“I don’t want to—” he starts, but I ignore him, beginning to type.
“And I bet if I call Nat, she can fit her in for an appointment.”
“Appointment?”
“Brunch with the girls, then her hair, maybe? Do something fun for back to school.” I turn to him then with a hopeful look on my face. Nat’s a hairstylist, and I’m confident I can convince her to fit us in tomorrow. “How do you feel about tinsel?”
“On a tree?” he asks, and it’s the perfect amount of comic relief to have me laughing and shaking my head, beating back the anger for just a moment.
“No, no. Extensions. In your daughter’s hair.”
He blinks at me before shaking his head. “I’m not following, Hal.” I take a deep breath and try to organize my thoughts before presenting my plan to him.
“The only way to avoid a disaster is to give her something else that’s bigger and better.
Tomorrow, I’ll come bright and early, and we’ll go to Wren’s for brunch.
She’ll probably be awake super early because she’s an early riser, plus jet lag.
After brunch, the three of us will go to see Nat at the salon.
Emma’s been talking to me about getting a tinsel extension but was afraid to ask you. ”
“Is it dye?”
I shake my head. “Basically, Nat will tie little shiny things into her hair. They’ll fall out in a month or so, but it’s fun and cool.”
A beat passes before he nods. “I’m okay with that, so long as it’s not permanent.”
I smile and then continue sharing my plan. “After getting her hair done, I’ll take her shopping, get her a new outfit, and then you’ll take her to dinner.”
“Me?”
“Yes. You guys are going out on a date. You go to the florist, get her flowers, and make a big deal out of it. We’ll make the day really special for her.”
A soft look crosses his face. “You’re making up for her mom not being here,” he says, but somehow, it’s not him stating the obvious. There’s almost awe in the words, confusion mixed with the gratitude I feel.
I nod, pushing back the lump that has suddenly formed in my throat. “We’re all going to make up for it. So what do you think?”
“I think she’s going to love it.”
I give him one last grin, and he returns it before we work together to move the wood he chopped, then walk into his house with an arm over my shoulder to tell Emma about the change in plans.