3. Chapter 3
Toothbrush. Dental floss. Razor.
Jase stared into the brown paper sack Denise passed him through the door, then up at the woman’s face he’d never see again. She was pretty in a softer, simpler way than he usually preferred. Her only tattoo was her son’s name on her ankle in pink, twisty ink.
“Looks like you haven’t used the razor in a while,” she said.
True enough. He closed the bag and searched her face for a sign she was going to make this difficult. All he saw was the same exhaustion and defeat he’d seen on other women’s faces when he left for the last time after staying too long.
“I’m really sorry,” Jase said, and he was. Sorry about last week, last night. California. So much more she didn’t even know.
He didn’t usually get this comfortable. After his dad took a turn for the worst a few months ago, it was too easy to drop by, sleep over. It happened too often, and he knew it. She bought him a razor, for Christ’s sake. A razor.
“Me too,” she said. “But I guess we both knew this was coming, right?”
There was a hopeful edge to her voice he wished he didn’t recognize. The bag of sad bathroom condiments in his hand was the only way she could show him she wanted him to stay.
If I were a different man, honey.
It was always going to end this way because, even though Jase often had more than one lover, the only one he couldn’t live without was parked behind him on the curb.
And, at the end of the day, every day, Jase Young rode alone.
“I can call you from the road,” he offered.
She shook her head, hope obliterated. “No, you’d better not. I don’t want to confuse Evan.”
The boy in pajamas watching cartoons in the living room was the other reason he knew he shouldn’t leave any loose ends here. He should’ve been relieved for the clean break. Why was it harder than usual to walk away?
Their trusty routine of putting the kid to bed and sneaking into Denise’s bedroom for quiet sex had become a welcome distraction to the beeping machines that followed Jase out of his father’s bedroom, reminding him his old man needed help staying alive.
Last night he woke up in a panic, sweating under the heat of her hand on his chest and gasping for air that wasn’t sweet with vanilla from the candle on the bedside table.
The beeping was back, thump, thump, thumping in his veins like an unnatural pulse as he flung himself out of bed.
Jase only meant to step outside and clear his head.
Instead, he rode all the way to Gas City, Indiana, and followed the sunrise back to Dayton.
Denise understood grieving. She was less understanding that he didn’t call or leave a note, and went to his own apartment for a shower and a few winks before making it back to her place to apologize for leaving in the middle of the night.
And she wouldn’t understand how the woman who helped ease the pain of his father’s passing had become the thing forcing him to relive it.
He took the side of her face in his hand and kissed her forehead.
“Goodbye,” he said.
“Jase?”
He’d almost made it to his bike.
“I really am sorry about your dad,” she said.
“Me too.”
He waited until she went back inside to drop the paper sack into a garbage can at the end of her driveway, then climbed on his bike and rode away.