Chapter 3
CHAPTER
THREE
Jory
“What do you even do with peach jam?” Gus asks, sliding the jar across the kitchen island. It skids precariously close to the edge of the counter before spinning in a circle and coming to a stop.
I shut the door behind us and remove my shoes.
The air is cold enough to freeze out a polar bear—just how I like it.
I told my landlord, one of my best friends, Miles, that I’d pay extra for the electric bill.
He laughed me off. Something tells me that he’ll change his tune when the first invoice arrives.
“You can do a lot of things with peach jam.” I take my wallet out of my pocket and plop it on the counter next to the refrigerator, along with my keys and phone. “Putting it on toast is the first thing that comes to mind.” And the only thing, but Gus doesn’t need to know that.
“Peaches and toast? That sounds gross.”
I shrug because he’s right. It does sound kind of nasty.
Gus snorts.
“What?” I ask, bracing myself. That look has smart-ass written all over it. “What’s that little snort all about?”
“This is purely … What's that word? Hypothetical?” He pauses, mulling over his word choice. “Okay. This is purely hypothetical, but I wonder if Markie would’ve said yes to dinner with you if you would’ve splurged and bought two jars.”
I roll my eyes, placing glasses from the sink into the dishwasher. “Keep it up, and you’ll do the dishes tonight. And there’s nothing hypothetical about that.”
“I mean it. She probably thought you were cheap.” He opens the fridge. “You’re good-looking, rich, and mostly charming despite your cheesy pickup lines—which you really do need to work on,” he says, glancing at me over his shoulder. “And I definitely wasn’t the problem. I’m a gem. She loved me.”
I laugh, peeling off my shirt. The lemonade from earlier has dried into a sticky mess. “Have kids, they said. It’ll be fun, they said.”
“Want to know what else would be fun?” He closes the fridge and turns to me. “Having food in the house. Think we could find a grocery store soon?”
Leaning against the counter, I study my son. He’s me at eleven, right down to the athletic build, crooked grin, and being too smart for his own good. Some days, the resemblance knocks the wind out of me. Other days, I look at him like he’s a puzzle that I’m trying to put together.
Both are probably true.
“Your mom will be happy to hear that you’re sick of pizza,” I say, tossing my shirt into the laundry closet.
“Oh, yeah. Mom called while I was pretending to be thirsty and asked for you to call her when you have time.”
I noticed a missed call from Deidre when we left the farmers’ market. “I’ll call her this afternoon.”
“Great.” He gazes out the window. “Hey, so, do you think it’d be okay if I walked down to the park?”
“Sure. Let me put on a shirt and—”
“Dad.” He holds up a hand. “As a reminder, I’m eleven. I can walk to the park at the end of the street by myself. I do it all the time back at home, and that city is about a million times bigger than here.”
Oh. Right.
I struggle with a lot of decisions when it comes to Gus.
I don’t know if it’s okay for him to walk to the park alone, or what his bedtime should look like, or how firm I need to be about picking his clothes up off the floor.
Sure, I can ask Deidre because she has all the answers—and I do ask for her input from time to time—but that feels like such a bullshit thing to do.
She shouldn’t have to teach me how to be a dad.
God knows that I wasn’t there to help her learn how to be a mom.
When I think about this too long, anxiety begins to blossom in my stomach because these are the easy things.
This isn’t the real, day-to-day parenting stuff.
I’m not dealing with teachers and doctors and coaches.
I’m not making medical decisions or making sure he’s not hanging out with the wrong crowd.
But next year, when I retire, those types of things will be my reality, too.
I hate that I’m just learning how to do this. And every time that I think about it, the gravity of what I’ve lost hits me like a ton of bricks.
I lost a decade of my son’s life, and I can never get that back.
“We have all summer together,” Gus says, oblivious to my thoughts. “And it might be good for you to get out on your own a little and make new friends, too. Find some opportunities to sharpen your game.”
That gets a chuckle out of me.
“So I can go?” he asks.
I pause, trying to weigh the benefits and potential risks. “Do you have your phone?”
“Yes.”
“Okay,” I say, blowing out a breath. I don’t want him walking there alone, but I also know that’s more of a selfish thing than an actual safety thing.
And I can’t let my issues affect my kid.
“Go ahead. But if I call, I need you to answer or call me right back. And if it starts to get dark, come home.”
He heads for the door, sighing in eleven-year-old dramatics. “You’re worse than Mom.”
“She’s had eleven years with you and kept you alive. I’m only in year two. I have a lot to prove.”
His laughter lifts the corners of my lips. “Love you, Dad.”
“Love you, kid.”
I almost get the words out before he slams the door like he’s afraid that I’ll chase him.
The house is quiet, almost too quiet, as soon as Gus is gone.
I mosey around, picking up a pair of his socks off the living room floor and pulling an empty water bottle from behind a couch cushion.
Deidre doesn’t let him get away with this bullshit at her house, and I promised her that I wouldn’t let him turn feral this summer.
Unlike last year when I was completely out of my depth.
My phone rings, breaking through my thoughts, and I swipe it off the counter. “Hey.”
“Hi,” Deidre says, her tone warm but restrained. “How are things going?”
“I was just thinking about you.”
“Oh no. Why?”
I grin. “Because I was just wondering if I promised you that I wouldn’t let our son become a savage while I had him, or if I told you that I’d do my best.”
She groans, making me laugh.
“Just yanked a water bottle from behind a cushion,” I say. “But he might not ever want to see another frozen pizza again, so you’re welcome for that.”
“I don’t know how to respond, so I won’t try.” She chuckles. “He seemed happy when I talked to him this afternoon. You were at a farmers’ market or something.”
A smile stretches across my lips as my mind goes back to Markie and Gus. Leave it to my son to attempt to “butter up” the hottest woman there so his dad could swoop in for a date. At least she was a great sport about it. And at least he has excellent taste.
I nibble my bottom lip, my weight shifting back and forth.
Thinking of her sends a spiral of restless energy through my body.
I talked to the woman for fifteen minutes, and somehow, she’s already taken up residence in my brain.
Our conversation has been lingering in my head since I walked away from her.
I’ve been around beautiful women before. Beauty catches your attention, but there has to be more to someone than good looks to hold it, or it’s forgettable. It’s easily replaced by the next pretty face.
Markie, though, isn’t only beautiful. She has it, that mysterious quality that has you forgetting to check your phone when you’re together, willing to buy peach jam you’ll never eat, and wondering how you can “accidentally” run into her next.
I drop the water bottle into the recycling bin. “Yeah, we swung by there and checked it out. Gus is at the park now. It’s at the end of our street, so don’t panic. I could be there in three minutes.”
Deidre laughs. “If I didn’t trust you with our son, he would be here with me.”
The compliment makes me pause. It carries weight, coming from her. She’s an excellent mom.
“Anyway,” she says, “I’m calling to let you know that Gus’s pediatrician called in a prescription to your local pharmacy for an inhaler. He probably won’t need it, but I forgot to make sure he packed his and found it on his desk this morning.”
“The pharmacy is in the grocery store, and I’m heading there in a little bit because God forbid, we eat another pizza.”
“Perfect. And please, please, please don’t forget to work with him on his math. I know it’s not fun, but he got so far behind when he had pneumonia over the winter. If he doesn’t catch up this summer, I’m afraid he’ll just keep falling further behind.”
I wince. I’m good, even great, at a lot of things, but math isn’t one of them. I cheated my way through high school and barely passed the required classes in college. Numbers and letters should never mix. But sixth-grade math should be easy enough.
“Yeah, no problem,” I say a lot more confidently than I should. “I talked to Gus about it last night. I told him we’ll settle in here and then work on it a little every day.”
“Great. You’re the best. Now, I need to go because I can’t find my red lipstick, and I have a date tonight.”
Grinning, I gaze out the window toward the park. “Who’s the guy?”
“His name is John. One of my friends is dating his brother, and we’re all going out to listen to a live band. We met briefly at a party a couple of weeks ago. He’s super cute, and we had a great conversation, so I have high hopes.”
“I hope it goes well for you.”
“Me, too. You have no idea.”
I laugh at the frustration in her voice because it’s one I know all too well. I make it a point not to date much, if at all, during the season. And as soon as I packed up this year, I was on a plane to pick up Gus instead of heading to Cabo like I used to do.
“Well, have fun on your date,” I say. “I’ll make sure to grab the inhaler.”
“Thanks. Talk soon.”
“Bye, Deidre.”
I end the call and set the phone back on the counter, then turn to head to the shower when I catch my reflection in the window. My hair’s a little longer than I prefer and I’m not quite as cut in the midsection as usual, but I can still count my abs.
All in all? Not too bad.
I haven’t really worked out since the season ended, justifying it by saying that I need to give my body time to heal—which is true.
But it’s been almost a month now of me sitting around and eating like shit.
I can start to see the effects of my choices.
And if I don’t get on top of it soon, I’ll have a hell of a time getting back in shape before next season.
“I could still kill it at pickleball, though,” I say, smirking.
“Since you’re a professional athlete, then you should know that the chemistry between two people in an athletic situation is special. You can’t force it. You either have it, or you don’t.”
I chuckle. “Oh, Markie. Something tells me that a lack of chemistry isn’t the problem.”
My phone rings again. I glance down and spot Miles’s name on the screen.
“Hey,” I say, resting my hip against the kitchen cabinet.
“Hey. What’s happening over there?”
“Just hanging out. Thinking about getting the rest of my shit unpacked and then heading to the grocery store. What about you?”
“Same shit. Different day.” He laughs. “How’s the house? All good?”
I glance around the kitchen. “Yeah. So far, everything’s great. Gus appreciates how close we are to the park. He headed down there a few minutes ago.”
“That’s good. Heard you ran into one of my sisters today.”
I did? My brows pinch together as I try to make sense of that.
I know Miles has two sisters who live in Sugar Creek, but he doesn’t talk about them much.
He mentioned that he only keeps this house because it rents so easily that it’s financially ignorant to sell it.
He couldn’t even tell me when he was last here.
“Who is your sister?” I ask.
“You saw her at the farmers’ market. Her name is Markie.”
Slowly, my thoughts pull to a stop. “That’s your sister?”
“One of them.”
“No offense, but I don’t see the family resemblance.”
“Well, she is my half sister,” he says, missing the joke. “My other half sister is Mira. She lives with her husband, Hartley, out by Gray’s. He’s a good guy.”
What a small world. I scratch the top of my head.
“Markie’s a pistol, which I’m sure you figured out since you talked to her for longer than thirty seconds,” he says.
“She seems …” Like a damn good time. “Fun.”
Miles snorts. “That’s one way to put it.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I ask, trying not to sound too interested.
“She locked me outside once in my boxers, in February, because I ate her leftovers.”
I laugh.
He doesn’t. “She also borrowed my buddy’s truck one time.
Didn’t tell him. Also didn’t answer her phone for like four hours.
The police got involved—the whole bit. But, in typical Markie fashion, once it was all said and done, my buddy was somehow apologizing to her.
I was apologizing to him. She apologized to no one. ”
My laughter grows louder.
“It’s Markie’s world. We all just live in it,” he says with an exasperated sigh.
Lucky you. I clear my throat, wondering just how much more I can prod him along.
Miles isn’t one for shooting the shit just to shoot it, and I have no idea how he’d react if he thought I was trying to get information out of him about his sister.
But he brought her up. I’m just continuing the conversation. That seems fair—kind, even.
“What’s up with her and pickleball?” I ask, testing the waters. “I take it there’s a tournament, and she’s very serious about it.”
“Oh yeah.” I can practically hear his eyes rolling. “Her ex was supposed to be her partner. It’s all she’s talked about for a fucking month.”
Her ex, huh? “That sounds problematic.”
“For him. Markie is a fucking menace.”
I take a long drink and let this new information marinate.
This is why she wants to win. Makes sense—beating an ex is a great motivator. But if she wants to win that badly, she’ll need a great partner. And although I don’t know many people in this town, I’d venture to say I’m the best qualified candidate for the job.
A slow smile stretches from ear to ear.
“When you change your mind later, you’re going to beg.”
I was kidding when I said that to her, but I may have been onto something.
Miles sighs through the line, signaling that he’s done talking about Markie.
“How’s work been going?” I ask, knowing if there’s one thing that Miles will happily talk about, it’s himself.
As predicted, he veers off into the world of marketing, giving me ample time to let my mind wander to Markie and pickleball.