Chapter 25
Joe
Sex made everything better.
Or maybe it was sex with Anne, Joe thought. Whichever, the vague dissatisfaction that had been riding his shoulders was gone. Better, easier, to think about her, her bright hair and her smart mouth and the changing expressions of her face.
On Thursday, they’d hiked up the bluff under a canopy of trees, the dog snuffling and bounding on the trail beside them.
Anne had clambered over roots and rocks in her orange-laced boots, as cheerful and noisy as the birds, pointing out wildflowers and exclaiming over the glimpses of shoreline, the glint of clear water and endless sky through the trees.
But when they reached the summit, she’d gone still, gazing out over the water with wonder. The lake was shaded from green to blue, the sky from blue to gray. Joe stood back, content to watch the sharp, clean line of Anne’s profile and the wind playing with her hair.
“I watched those TikToks,” she announced abruptly to the lake.
His mind scrambled to catch up with her.
“The ADHD ones? Hailey sent me the links.” Anne angled her chin, glancing at him sideways. “I watched them all.”
“No, yeah.” Those videos. His sister had been obsessed with them for weeks before their mom finally made the appointment with the doctor on the mainland. “Thanks. She needs somebody to talk to besides her therapist. I’m glad it’s you.”
“I’m glad she sent me the links. They explain a lot.”
“That’s what Hailey said.”
“About me.”
Joe was silent. Better than saying the wrong thing.
Anne combed her fingers through her hair, fisting it into a ponytail.
“I always thought I was…different. I’m late all the time.
I have trouble finishing projects. I get stuck in my head, and I forget things, and I never know when to shut up.
Now I’m thinking…I’m wondering if maybe I should get tested or something. ”
He had no idea. Hailey had been struggling for a long time. But Anne…Hell. He cleared his throat. “Would it make any difference?”
“To know?” Anne shook her head, releasing her hair to the wind. “I don’t know. Would it make a difference to you? If I have ADHD?”
“I told you, I don’t care about labels. If you think it would help you to go in for a diagnosis, do it. But putting a name on something doesn’t change it. You’re still…”
“A mess? A pest?”
“You,” he said simply. “There’s nobody like you, Anne.”
She snorted. “Well, that’s something.”
It was everything. Why didn’t she see?
Her eyes focused on his face with painful intensity, as if she were searching for…what? He fisted his hands in his pockets, desperate to give it to her, whatever it was. “I’m just saying, there’s nothing wrong with you.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“I mean it.”
Color came and went in her cheeks. “I know.” She sighed and stood on tiptoe to kiss him, a brush of lips like a butterfly’s wing. “It’s nice of you to say, anyway.”
He watched her turn and start down the hill, aware that he’d screwed up somehow. He’d reassured her, he told himself. That was what he was supposed to do, right? He reviewed their conversation in his head. “There’s nothing wrong with you.” “Nice of you to say.”
Fuck.
This wasn’t about him being nice. It wasn’t about him saying the right thing. Or anything. It wasn’t about him at all. This was about Anne. About her feeling heard.
“Anne.”
She stopped on the path, the thin, straight line of her spine almost quivering in her impatience to be gone.
“Whatever you do…it’s your decision,” he said gruffly to her back. “But I’m here. If you want to talk.” Not his strong point. “Or whatever.”
She whirled around, her face alight, and threw herself into his arms.
Relief washed through him. He could do this. He wanted to do this. He held her tight, absorbing the feel of her, sharp bones and soft curves and trembling energy. “Hey. It’s okay.” Shit, was she crying? He patted her back awkwardly. “Anne?”
She raised her wet, shining eyes to his. “I don’t have to talk. I just need to know you’ll listen.”
“Anytime.”
“And that you trust me to figure it out.”
“Yeah, of course.”
She beamed and kissed him again, and if a tourist family hadn’t come up the trail at that moment, they might have done more.
Coming down from the summit, the town spread out below them as neat and pretty as the ceramic village his mom set up at Christmastime, they’d held hands, some kind of unspoken dialogue filling the space between them. It was nice. Better than nice. Kind of perfect, actually.
He got used to seeing her pop up on his phone, messages about Hailey or chatty text strings about the people who came into the shop or silly memes about carpenters.
(Nailed it! she’d typed, making him laugh out loud, earning a grinning look from Miguel.) He caught himself reaching for his phone at random moments, like a smoker for a cigarette, eager for a fix.
It was a lousy substitute for actually seeing her.
Touching her. But he did his best to respond.
Sent her pictures of the dog or the mantel he was installing to go with that new front door.
There was stuff he couldn’t fit in a text, of course. Things he couldn’t say when he was ordering coffee at the counter with her mother looking on. Things he didn’t tell her even when he was buried as deep inside her as he could get, sharing her breath, feeling her heartbeat.
And maybe that was for the best. He had his life and Anne had hers. She wasn’t talking about staying. And he couldn’t leave. Their lives didn’t match up.
That didn’t stop him from wanting to see her every chance he got.
“Why do I have to go to work? I mean, I’m basically a prisoner,” Hailey grumbled on Tuesday as he walked with her into Maddie’s.
Joe’s jaw set. They’d had pretty much this same conversation every morning for the past week.
“At least you get to leave the house,” Anne said. “Like a work-release program.” She smiled at Joe. “Coffee?”
He looked at her in gratitude. “Thanks.”
“Liv got those Anne DVDs you were talking about,” Hailey said. “The old ones, with Megan Follows? We were going to watch them together. But I can’t because I’m grounded.”
“Poor baby,” Anne said cheerfully. “Maybe I could come over after work? I know it’s not the same, but—”
“Please. It’s so boring being home by myself.”
Joe cleared his throat. “You’ve served your time,” he told his sister. “You’re free to go.”
Hailey turned her shining face to his. “Really?”
“I’ll talk to Mom. Unless you’d rather stay home.”
“No! Yay! Thank you!”
“You could still come over,” he said to Anne. “If you want.”
Because whatever came after, he wanted whatever he could get now. Before she went to Chicago or Colorado or fucking Thailand. And maybe she did, too, because she beamed at him.
—
Joe was feeling good when he and Miguel knocked off work and he went home to clean up.
He set his own hours. But he was always mindful of the weather, of the light, of the client, of Rob’s sometimes too flexible approach to the job.
His days started at eight and ended at five or whenever the job was done.
When he and Britt were married, their schedules had always been off, like a misaligned wood joint.
She liked working evenings and weekends, when the bar was crowded and the tips were good.
Maybe if they’d spent more time together, he would have noticed they were just two people sharing a house.
He checked the time. Changed his sheets. And if a part of him was thinking this was the way it was supposed to be, seeing Anne first thing every morning, welcoming her home at the end of the day, being the one who got to sleep with her at night…Well, a man couldn’t help his thoughts.
He heard the back door open. She was here. Throwing the pillows on his bed, he jogged down the stairs, anticipation rising in his blood, fierce and hot.
“Mom! What are you doing home?”
Nicole stood in front of the open refrigerator. “Hailey texted me. She invited Liv over for dinner tonight.” She turned, holding a package of ground beef. “Don’t you look nice. Hot date?”
He felt the blush at the back of his neck, like he was fifteen years old again and she’d caught him looking at porn on the computer. “I took a shower.”
“And trimmed your beard and put on a shirt with no holes in it.”
His mom could turn a blind eye when she wanted to. Apparently she didn’t want to.
He shrugged. “It was clean.”
She started dicing an onion with quick, competent strokes. Distracted, he thought. Good. “Brittany Wilson’s back in town.”
He waited for the kick to his gut. Nothing. “Her parents are here,” he said. “Makes sense she’d want to see them now and then.”
When they were married, Britt and her mom had fought about everything—her smoking, her housekeeping, her decision to drop out of school. Joe. Maybe their relationship had improved some since the divorce. He hoped so.
Nicole kept chopping, ignoring Honey, waiting around at her feet for something to drop. “She came to the hotel, looking for a job.”
Well, shit. That sounded like she was figuring to stay, at least for a little while.
“None of my business,” he said.
“She wanted me to say hi to you.”
He kept his face neutral. “Is that right.”
Nicole never glanced up from the cutting board. But he could feel her attention on him, the weight of her concern. “You want to be careful there, son.”
He’d spent years making sure she didn’t have to worry about him. Being the good son, acting the man of the house. And she was talking to him like he was the same poor kid whose dad had walked out on them, the same dumb slob whose wife had left.
“It’s okay, Ma. I’m not going to make the same mistake twice.”
She finished the onion and started on a pepper. “Honey, I’m not worried you’re going to repeat your mistakes. I’m worried you’re going to make mine.”
Surprise made him speechless. She might as well have stabbed him with that knife. He didn’t like thinking of his mom with regrets.
But Nicole wasn’t done talking. “I want you to be happy.”