12. Jay
Chapter twelve
Jay
I t’s another surprisingly warm day for the end of February, and the sun is shining. Spring has definitely sprung early if the last week of warmth is anything to go by. My trip to the New Forest reinvigorated me more than I could’ve hoped, and I’ve been feeling good. Even my leg has been feeling a little better—whether due to the unseasonable warmth, or the healing properties of time, I neither know nor care. I just care that it is.
As we exit the train station, Katy shrugs out of her leather jacket and drapes it over her arm, letting the sun beat down on her bare arms. She looks beautiful, dressed in a white sundress with a flowy skirt that falls halfway down her thighs, bright white canvas high tops, and that same pink lipstick I keep imagining staining my dick. Her hair flies out behind her as she tips her head and laughs. I bump her shoulder with mine.
“This way, Princess.” I guide her to the left with a hand on her lower back. I don’t even think about the contact; it just happens. It’s something the old Jay would’ve done. Katy turns to look at me, lips in a small o and an expression of surprise before she relaxes into my touch. I can feel the warmth of her skin through her dress, and my blood hums with a similar warmth. It’s been a long time since a woman has affected me this way—since I’ve felt anything more than friendship for someone. But with Katy, it’s a kinship. It feels like she’s someone I want in my life for a long time. And that thought leads to some impure ones, some desperate ones, and some thoughts and concerns about whether or not that part of my anatomy still functions after all of the trauma.
But if the dream I had last night about Katy is anything to go by, and if the way my blood simmers in my veins every time Katy Keller is nearby, then I think it’s functioning just fine, waking just a little more each day from a ten-year slumber.
Fuck . Ten years without getting my dick wet. A whole decade of just me and my hand. A whole decade of my life spent in war-torn sand-ville, middle of butt-fuck nowhere. My last serious relationship ended even earlier than that, shortly after my first Afghan deployment began nearly fifteen years ago. Since then, I’ve been either deployed or injured, too busy or too angry to form any kind of lasting emotional connection with anyone. Until my little sister introduced me to her best friend.
“Through here?” Katy slows to a stop as the path narrows, lined with overgrown hedges. I hum an agreement, urging her forward with my hand still resting against the base of her spine. The beer festival is held in an old church that, at some point, was converted into a performance space. It hosts farmers’ markets and craft fairs, as well as live comedy and music events—and of course, the annual beer festival.
I pull my wallet from my jeans as we follow the small queue through the tall doorway, and hand over a crisp note to pay our entry fee and collect our stamp cards and glasses. Katy looks up at me with an indulgent grin and I smile back. My cheeks ache from the way she has me smiling. The way she has me feeling lighter and freer than I have for a long time. The way she has me dismantling the walls around my heart brick by brick, tidying the space and inviting her in.
The space inside is dimly lit for ambience, with a high ceiling and plenty of people milling around, holding event-branded pint glasses like the ones Katy clutches to her chest. There are rows of tables, each with kegs and bottles and signs, and up on the stage at one end, a three-piece band plays something jazzy.
“Which one first?” I lean down as I speak, directing my words straight to her ear so she can hear me over the din. It’s loud, full of people, and the air is thick with the mingling aromas of people, perfume, and beer. Her dark eyes scan the room, settling on one particular table.
“Here,” she says with a grin. She juggles our glasses, holding them against her body with one arm, and grabs my hand with the other to lead me to her chosen table. Her hand is warm and soft as her fingers lace through mine, and it sends an electrifying kind of jolt through my body at the contact. It’s not the first time she’s taken my hand, but the way she does it, the way she offers affection and intimacy so freely, has me wondering if I could ever be so comfortable. If, someday in the future, I’ll be able to let go of my past and move far enough forward that the fear of loss is outweighed by the joy of the present.
But for now, I find myself turning inward, instead. It’s not that I’m afraid to talk to people. It’s that these parts of me—the parts that have been irreversibly changed, irreparably broken by the things that I’ve seen and done—feel too big to share. Too changed, too broken. They feel like burdens, like something I’d be better off keeping to myself.
Katy’s smile pops in front of my face to shake me from my personal pity party.
“Isn’t this the brewery we tried last week?”
“Think so,” I hum noncommittally. “Yeah, I think it is.”
“I liked that one. I think? Was it this one?”
“I don’t know, Princess. Was it?” I can’t help but laugh. Her brow furrows in confusion as she tries to recall the beer tasters we’ve tried. The truth is, I can’t remember which ones we’ve tried and which ones we haven’t. All I know is that I’ve begun to measure time in terms of when I get to see Katy, and when I don’t. Days when I see her, when we have our regular lunches, those are good days. My favourite days. The days when we don’t even talk are the worst days. And the ones in between—well, they’re a crapshoot.
“It was this one,” she finally decides with a nod. “I’m gonna get some of this one. And we’ll have to start keeping lists.”
I hang back as she strikes up a conversation with the server behind the table as he fills her glass with a generous half-pint and stamps her tasting card once. The festival rule is one stamp for each half-pint you sample, and each entry card has ten stamp spaces apiece. There are dozens of breweries represented in the room, and I want to take my time and explore before choosing which ones to taste. I don’t want to make a quick decision and waste a stamp.
Katy rejoins me a moment later, bringing the glass to her lips and taking a long drink with a happy sigh. I lead her out through another door, into the courtyard bustling with street food vendors and people, and follow as she finds a bench to sit and watch the world go by.
And it strikes me, as she points out shapes in the clouds: I think I could watch her enjoy a glass of water and be thrilled just to exist in her orbit.
What the fuck am I doing? It’s been a week since the beer festival. Katy and I have continued our blossoming friendship, texting regularly, meeting again for brunch. It’s steady and consistent, our weekly meetings, something I can count on—a lot like Katy. And I find myself enjoying that more each week.
I find myself thinking of her, my thoughts more and more impure each time, but she’s off-limits. She has to be. She’s Ruth’s best friend, and Ruth is my sister. She’s my best friend. Talk about a betrayal.
I drop my head into my hands and groan. I’m annoyed at myself. No matter what I do—no matter how many stern words I have with myself or how many times I wank off in the shower to get her out of my system—the only thing I see when I close my eyes is Katy. Katy fucking Keller, with her golden hair and coffee eyes and her fucking sunshine smile with those pouty pink lips. Spending the day with her at the beer festival over the weekend was both a joy and an absolute nightmare. Because now I’ve seen so much more of what I want, and of what I can’t have.
It’s bad enough that she’s fucking stunning on the outside with her curvy, grabbable hips and gorgeous perky tits, but now that I’ve come to know her? She’s the most beautiful woman I’ve ever met, with the kindest heart I’ve ever known. Our weekly lunches aren’t enough anymore. Sitting across from her isn’t enough. The occasional text to plan next week’s lunch or share a stupid joke isn’t fucking enough.
I want to eat every meal with her. I want hers to be the first face I see when I wake up—and not just the vision behind my eyelids. I want to know the way she breathes as she falls asleep, the sound of her voice when she first wakes up. I want to know her favourite food, her favourite colour, her favourite animal. The name of her childhood pet. How loud she sings in the shower when she thinks no one can hear, the way she dances in the kitchen when she thinks no one can see. The way she tastes and the sounds she makes when I bury my face between her legs. I want to know the way she squeezes me when I bury my dick in her cunt. I want to know how she screams when I make her come.
Fuck .
I slide my laptop across the breakfast bar towards me and take out my frustration on the keyboard, slapping angrily at the letters until they form annoyingly polite words I don’t mean. And then I tuck them neatly into an email and hit send.
Another six job applications. I square my shoulders and wait for six more rejections to come in.
When there are no more vacancies left to apply for after an hour, I stop waiting for email responses and slam the laptop lid closed. Outside the living room window, the world is overcast but bright. I swap basketball shorts for jeans, shove my feet into a pair of worn Converse low-tops, and grab a box from the end of the sofa. I swipe my keys from the hook by the door and slip out, first to my car, and then to my nearby lockup to my other car. My pride and joy. My project. The one Mum and Ruth are convinced is a mid-life crisis. Truth be told, it’s hopefully not mid-life, but it probably is a crisis.
I bought my Dodge Challenger and had her imported back when every day was filled with the agony of fusing bone and repairing nerve endings, and when I needed to think about anything but the new civilian life ahead of me. Back when I’d just come home from Afghanistan, when everything was bleak, when the rod in my leg was new and the skin over it freshly grafted.
The car sat for a month or two before I could even come out here to look at her. She needed more work than I would’ve liked, and learning to undertake that work has been a bigger challenge than I ever anticipated. But with a little help from how-to articles and even more help from YouTube, my Dodge is on her way to a full restoration, and I’m spending less time thinking about being trapped upside down in a burning jeep. It’s been a win-win situation for us all.
Unrolling the tarp, I take the time to walk slowly around the car, inspecting the bodywork and mentally cataloguing the dings and scratches that will need to be fixed. A gouge in the paintwork here. A tiny dent there. A little rust on that wheel arch. Most of the issues lie inside the engine bay, where a good majority of the components need to be replaced entirely.
Ruth put me in touch with Amie, who has been helping me get hold of parts from the US, either hooking me up with discounted cargo shipping through her airline or just picking up the items herself on her many transatlantic flights. After the last few weeks of regular work, and a good chunk of my savings depleted, I’d say the car is nearly halfway there.
It feels good to work with my hands. I stick a magnetic torch to the underside of the bonnet and root around in the engine block, cleaning and replacing and tightening as I go. It’s cathartic, repetitive work, and I find myself hyper-focusing. Which is good, because it means I’m not thinking about other things.
Like Katy Keller, and the way she bites her lower lip when she’s anxious. Or the way her eyes twinkle when she cracks a joke. Or the way she smiles at me, and the way her brown eyes burn through my chest and into my soul, recognising every emotion before I have a chance to process them myself. Sometimes, I wonder if Katy has planted something in my head, because she always seems to be one step ahead of me when it comes to how I feel.
And now I’m thinking about Katy Keller again. Fucking great.