Chapter Twelve
Repeat Offence
Rod
‘That was not a one-off.’
I watch the rise and fall of Jordan’s chest next to me, the gold pendant around her neck bobbing as she catches her breath. Her hair tickles my cheek when she turns to meet my eye.
‘No, ma’am, it was not.’
‘That was a …’ She lets out a laugh. ‘Repeat offence.’
‘An offence?’ I feign acting insulted, looking away with a ridiculous gasp. ‘That bad?’
‘Shut up.’ Jordan gives my shoulder a gentle shove, rolling her eyes. ‘If it were that bad, we wouldn’t be dealing with the repeat offence, would we?’
‘Case in point.’ Head still on the pillow, I roll over to face her, drink in the sharp planes of her face contrasted by softer edges, her full lips, the slight upturn of her nose, the stack of gold hoops and diamond piercings in her ears.
I notice the way that strands of her black hair curl just in front of her ears, beneath the layers in the front, which makes me wonder if she straightens it.
For just a moment, I think maybe she’s doing the same thing – savouring this moment, as much as we know we shouldn’t.
But she’s the one who gets us back on track, with a quick brush of her lips against mine before she swings her legs out of bed and pulls on her clothes, jumping into her jeans the same way she did that Friday.
Part of me’s fine with knowing those things about her – you know, the superficial.
That she wiggles into her jeans. That she has a tattoo of a hummingbird on the back of her neck.
That she doesn’t eat gluten. Normally, that’s enough for me.
But there’s a little bit of something that sneaks into my brain and takes over, calling out for more.
More that I don’t have room for in my life, at least not yet.
She tugs her T-shirt over her head, and I see another tattoo – a queen of hearts card – on the back of her arm, above her elbow.
With a glance back and a smirk, she says, ‘You’d better head on out before Rebecca sees you.
Then the entire town will be on your ass, guaranteed.
If that’s what you’re trying to prevent. ’
Her words echo as I sit up. What the hell am I trying to prevent, anyway? Just the town finding out?
‘And you’re fine sneaking around?’ I say instead. It’s not what I intend on saying. It definitely doesn’t come out right.
Jordan smiles that same smile, but it’s a little emptier. Less playful. ‘Don’t worry ’bout me, Romeo.’ She reaches down and pulls on her shoes before coming back up, raking her hair behind an ear. ‘I’ll be just fine.’
‘Yeah.’ I mean, that’s good. Neither of us expects anything else from the other. Just this absolutely wild fling, no rhyme, no reason. No questions. I don’t have the capacity, and it seems like she doesn’t, either.
‘I’ll be in the garden,’ calls Jordan, slipping out the door just like that, and I envy how easily she does it. My eyes follow her until she disappears.
This is going to be an interesting summer.
‘Alright. It’s Dad and Champ today, how’s that?’
Tali shoots me a stubby little thumbs-up from the backseat, through the rear-view mirror of the car. She shields her eyes from the sun with a tiny hand and a grumbled, ‘Daddy! You forgot my glasses!’
‘Fu–aw, man,’ I groan. This kid. I check the clock on the dashboard.
I’m already cutting it close, with about five minutes till camp starts and three left in this drive.
I pride myself on never being late, but when the sitter cancels, there’s only so much a guy can do.
It’s a miracle I remembered to pack lunches.
I absolutely bin my parking job once we end up in the lot, but I do it with a few minutes to spare.
I heft Tali out of her booster, slamming the car door closed and slinging my backpack over my shoulder, nearly clocking myself with the protruding handles of the lacrosse sticks.
She grips my hand with a stern, ‘Daddy, pull yourself together.’
‘Good stuff, Tal.’ I exhale heavily, and we speed-walk across the pavement to the chain-link fence, already propped open with Benny and Jordan at the table checking kids in.
‘Jordan!’ Tali yelps the second we’re within screeching distance. She promptly breaks into a happy skip, pulling me forward at an even more eager pace so we can meet Jordan at the table.
‘Tali! Hey, dude!’ Jordan grins broadly, to her credit, completely unfazed by my daughter’s Red-Bull energy.
She has on a pair of hot-pink-framed sunglasses that Tali’s already eyeing longingly.
Around a drag of water (or chai, actually) from her massive tumbler, she says, ‘Is it bring-your-dad-to-work day?’
‘That was a dad joke,’ Tali proclaims, pigtails bouncing. ‘Daddy said Kelsey is a slacker.’
‘The babysitter.’ I push a stray strand of hair off my forehead and hike my quickly slipping backpack strap up higher. ‘Flaked on us this morning for some concert in NYC tonight. My sister’s out at the winery with my other sister before she comes to town. It’s—’
‘Everyone has crazy days, Rod,’ Jordan reassures me. ‘It’s fine. One more kid won’t hurt. And Tali,’ she beams at my daughter, ‘is great. Don’t worry. Get your cleats on. She can sit at the table with us for a minute.’
‘Okay. Good. Thank you.’ I manage a quick grimace of a grateful smile before rushing through the fence to chuck my bag in the bleachers and get my shoes on.
By the time I’m lacing up, it looks like Benny and Jordan are already closing up shop.
Our crowd of kids is beginning to flood the field, and the two of them, Tali between them, bring up the rear.
‘LOOK!’ Tali practically sprints over to me, sporting a toothy grin when she grabs my leg with a grip way too iron for a six-year-old. ‘Daddy! You like ’em?’
Her face is literally swimming in Jordan’s big pink sunglasses.
She looks so happy, though, and that’s the thing with kids.
They could do the most ridiculous stuff, and you wouldn’t care, as long as they have the shit-eating grin on their face.
When it’s my own kid, all bets are off. I’m by no means a devil-may-care parent, but I’d do whatever it took to see that light in Tali’s eyes, over and over again.
My gaze flits across the field to Jordan, who’s waving an arm to round up the campers, now down a pair of pink sunglasses to the little gremlin in front of me.
‘They look awesome,’ I tell Tali.
She squeals happily, adjusting the massive fashion fixture before it goes flying off her face, and I can’t help the smile that inadvertently creeps across my face as we head towards our campers to get them started on warm-ups.
‘You know, I wish I’d had something like this as a kid.’
Jordan and I haul equipment into the shed at the end of the day, our usual routine, while Benny checks campers out, his brand-new assistant Tali up at the table with him.
‘Lacrosse camp?’ I ask her through a particularly vicious shove of a row of stubborn hurdles to get our cones on the shelf.
‘Yeah. That and just … someplace. Population five hundred doesn’t really get a summer camp,’ she remarks wryly. We leave the shed, and the still-brutal sun immediately flashes right into our eyes.
I pop my sunglasses down. ‘Five hundred, huh?’
‘That’s a guess. No one’s actually sure,’ snorts Jordan.
‘But it’s like …’ She sighs, stretches her arms over her head.
‘I grew up on the ranch. The movies do a bang-up job of making it look romantic and aesthetic, but it’s a lot of grunt work.
You do that kinda work from childhood onward, you start wishing there was somewhere everything didn’t feel like a chore.
’ A tentative note enters Jordan’s voice as she squints against the sun, tucks a hair behind her ear. ‘This is real nice, what you’ve built.’
‘Thank you.’ I feel something unusually warm in my chest when she returns my words with a gentle smile, one that’s more vulnerable than anything I’ve seen in the last week. ‘I’m glad you like it.’
‘It’s good.’ A hint of that vulnerability leaves her smile and, for some reason, I find myself wanting it back. Missing it. ‘Perfect time to finally cut loose. Right?’
‘Right,’ I echo. We make our way to the bleachers, Jordan still shielding her eyes, and maybe it’s just to fill the silence, but I say, ‘You didn’t have to give Tali your glasses, Jordan.’
‘Rod. Look at her!’ she replies with a laugh.
It’s a fucking beautiful laugh, full of life, fulfilment.
She gestures towards Tali, sitting with Benny on the bottom row of the stands, kicking her feet while Benny cuts the plastic off a juice pop for her.
She’s still wearing those sunglasses, and I don’t think they’ll be coming off anytime soon.
Jordan’s right. Kids, the littlest things light up their world.
The more I work with Jordan, the more I kind of envy how well she’s got that figured out.
‘Have juice pops!’ Tali calls with a brisk tap of Benny’s shoulder. Our boss immediately procures two more, one red and one blue.
‘Yes, please,’ Jordan accepts eagerly, leaning over and plucking her pop from Benny’s hand with a ‘thank you very much’ and a grin.
‘Tal—’
‘Are you gonna say corn syrup again?’ my kid crosses her arms and demands.
I cannot get anything past her. I know she doesn’t get it from me, because I was a pretty awful student in high school and college, at least until I figured out what I wanted to do and stuck to it, but her mom’s whip-smart.
Unfortunately, that means my daughter’s also feisty and knows it.
‘Tali, high-fructose corn syrup is very real and very bad,’ I insist, but it’s not worth an argument.
Jordan roots through her bag and comes out with a baby-blue Reapers cap. She slides it on before raising her juice pop with a smile. ‘One freezer pop won’t kill you, Popeye.’
Maybe it’s the expectant smile on her face.
Maybe it’s Tali’s goofy sunglasses and blue-lipped grin.
Or the fact that I feel for poor Benny, who’s double-fisting freezing ice pops waiting for me to make a decision.
But I think it’s the way that Tali and Jordan exchange a knowing glance before looking back at me with the same sass, a long untouched heartstring somewhere in my chest twanging for the first time in years.
‘Alright, fine,’ I give in. I extend a hand to Benny, who shoves a pop into it with great relief. ‘I guess it won’t kill me.’
I sit down next to Jordan, and as I cut the wrapper off my high-fructose corn syrup, she, Benny, and Tali turn their juice pops into lipstick.
‘How do we look?’
Jordan waves to the other two, and all three of them turn to me with dramatic pouts of red and blue.
‘Laugh, damn it,’ says Jordan, and that, actually, is what sends me over the edge.
It’s a concealed snort at first, and then a full-blown laugh.
It doesn’t take long for the four of us to double over, clutching our stomachs, our juice pops dripping into the grass.
Jordan, eyes squeezed shut, rests a hand on my shoulder, and I stop just long enough to register it.
It’s that same beautiful laugh. She laughs with her whole body, with the kind of emotion that tells you she knows the worth of every drop of happiness.
I don’t know what kills me more. That laugh, or the fact that I can’t afford to fall for it.
Our group eventually breaks up, Benny heading to his car, and me grabbing Tali and a pack of Wet Ones to do juice pop damage control. The lipstick is a little more enduring than I thought it’d be.
Jordan waves goodbye to us from her car and, as I’m situating Tali’s booster seat and sliding the door shut to get into the driver’s seat of the minivan, my phone buzzes with a new text.
Jordan: back of the guesthouse. I have nets. friday 9 pm?
Huh. My brow furrows unconsciously. I think about her casual shake-it-off when she said she’d be okay keeping this thing quiet. I wonder what she’s playing at. Too bad my ass is hooked, and even if I tried to stop myself, I’d still be there.
I tap my way into Genny’s contact profile, shoot her a quick text asking if she can watch Tali Friday night, and reopen the text from Jordan.
Me: Pending sister/babysitter, I’ll be there.