Chapter 11
Jamison
“In your dreams, man.”
I snap the newspaper shut, but Sean is still leaning over my shoulder. The ad for the Maverick was posted this morning, and despite it being way out of my price range, I was curious what the listing said.
“Okay, first of all, get your hot ass breath off of my neck.” I shrug making contact with Sean’s chin. He staggers back dramatically like he caught an uppercut with a closed fist rather than a tap of my shoulder.
“And second, I was just looking.” I fold the newspaper and tuck it under my arm, pulling a new pack of cigarettes from my back pocket. I brush one side to side and settle it on my lips.
“You know you should really quit that,” Sean says, rubbing his jaw.
“So I’ve been told.”
“For real though, why torture yourself like that looking in the paper? An ignorant rich guy’s gonna pay an arm and a leg to store that thing in his six-car garage so he can show it to people at dinner parties and shit.
” He stands straight adjusting an imaginary tie, then raises his eyebrows and purses his lips, holding his hand in a C shape.
I pull my hand away from my mouth. “Are you having a stroke?”
“No, I’m the rich guy! See! I’m drinking my cocktail.” He repeats the painful expression, only somehow more dramatically this time, before dropping the act altogether.
“Never mind. All I am saying is you’re just setting yourself up to be let down.”
I exhale. “Whatever, man.” Brushing him off, I head into the office to check today’s schedule.
He’s right though. I’m investing way too much time in something that’s never going to happen.
Setting myself up just to be let down, which is something I told myself I was going to stop doing over a decade ago.
I spent three years in foster care before I decided I was done hoping to be adopted.
It's my twelfth birthday, and I'm packing my bag to head to my fourth home this year. The one I'm leaving has so many kids that they didn’t even realize I wasn’t going to school. When the principal couldn’t get a hold of my foster mom, she called my case manager Mel, and when Mel found out I was skipping more classes than I was attending, that was the end of that.
Everything I own fits into one worn backpack. I toss it into Mel's car and she hands me a cupcake and a lighter.
“Happy birthday, kid.”
I have to light my own candle, but it's more than I expected. Mel is good people, but even she has more kids on her caseload than she can handle.
Blowing out the candle, my wish is that this next house will stick and I’ll finally have a home.
“This next one will be better,” she say as if reading my mind.
It wasn’t.
And neither were the next three.
I went to seven schools in seventh grade and never bothered making a birthday wish again.
Work was back-to-back today. Four inspections, two oil changes, a tire rotation, and a new set of brakes. I’m wiped by the time I get back to the apartment, but for my sanity, I have to get a quick workout in. I strip off my work clothes and throw on a pair of gym shorts.
The one pocket of available space I have in this cell of a room is designated for my “equipment.” Really, it's just a bench, a set of dumbbells, and a pull-up bar hooked to the back of the bathroom door, but it does the job and it beats paying for a gym membership.
I bang out a quick workout and a few dozen pushups.
By the time I’m done, my whole body’s exhausted and covered in sweat, so I toss my shorts and boxers into the pile of laundry in the corner and start the shower.
As the water falls down my aching back, my mind drifts back to Claire.
I’m embarrassed, and confused, by how often this has happened lately, and even more so since she came by this week.
For as long as I can remember I haven’t fixated on a woman like this.
I am singular almost to a fault. Nobody but me knows this, but I haven’t been with a woman in a very long time.
Not a relationship, not a date, not even a fucking one-night stand.
I’ve always considered any interaction too much of a risk.
Putting yourself — heart, body, or mind — in someone else’s hands means willingly exposing yourself to pain.
But despite all of that, there’s something about our brief interactions that threatens to consume me.
I don’t even know this girl and yet I find my breathing ragged just thinking about her.
Her walnut-colored hair and the way she looks through me with her golden eyes.
Hell, even the way she rambles pulls me in.
I want to interrupt her train of thought, pull her close, and brush my palm down her flushed pink cheeks.
Use my thumb to trace the freckles that tiptoe over her tanned skin and sweep it across her full fucking lips. My God those lips.
Suddenly any cravings that I buried a long time ago threaten to surface as I remember what her mouth looked like sucking that straw or releasing that single breath that drove me wild.
My body pulses at just the thought and I’m overwhelmed with the need to taste her.
I try to shake her off. To push her out of my mind and forget about her.
But as I’m standing here, the water turns cool, and still I can’t get her out of my head.