8. Jackson
JACKSON
A month on the East Coast is good for me. Stone plays shows in Miami, Orlando, Atlanta, Raleigh, DC, and New York, and I do my job.
I make sure screaming fans don’t grab his clothes or steal his phone. I protect him from the wild onslaught of groupies who want to touch his arm or slide a hand through his hair.
Fabian used to say my job was risky too, but guarding celebrities is nothing compared to the daredevil risks he took for clicks on social media.
Hell, my job is safer than a firefighter’s. Much less risky than the Marines. My work involves using my brain more than my body.
It involves eyesight and instinct.
And tonight it involves Portland, Maine, the last leg of this brief East Coast stint.
That’s my favorite stop, since I can escape to see my family.
On my night off, I stay with them and take my mom, dad, and two sisters out to dinner.
The next morning, I drive Bethany to school.
She’s an early bird like me, so she’s not due in class for thirty more minutes, which means we have some time.
“I insist on coffee and gossip,” she tells me, and points to her favorite coffee shop on the way there.
I can’t deny her. I never have been able to—not since she was a baby and I was the fourteen-year-old kid already enchanted with his little sister.
Now, with her pink-tipped hair and pierced nose, she looks every bit the disgruntled teen.
But she’s not.
She’s a sweetheart. Inside the shop, she orders a London Fog, and a coffee for me.
We grab a table in the corner.
I cast my gaze around the shop, a habit I won’t break. “Are you going to tell me about all the boys at school now that Mom and Dad aren’t around? I want the deets.”
Her jaw drops. “Boys? What boys?” she asks, all cheeky and mock-innocent.
I wiggle my fingers. “Serve it up. I know how boys are.”
“Do you now?”
I roll my eyes. “Yes, they want to get laid. And if you want that too, more power to you. But use a condom and be sure to give your consent, K?”
Her face flushes as pink as her hair. “Yes, Mr. Sex-Positive Daddy.”
“Please. Dad never talked about sex.”
“But Mom did,” she points out.
“Thank God for that,” I say. My firefighter dad was and is cool about all things when it comes to sexuality, but discussing condoms made him tongue-tied.
Mom, being a guidance counselor, had no such issues.
Once she knew I preferred guys, she not only broke out the banana to show me how to put on a condom, she also whipped out her whiteboard and proceeded to list the positions that were supposedly best for gay sex first-timers.
That wasn’t weird at all.
“Anyway, there’s no one,” Bethany says. “The guys at my school don’t interest me. I want someone creative, someone artistic.”
“Someone in the theater?” I ask as I take a drink of my morning joe.
“Yes. Like me,” she says. “Someone who can appreciate Rent .”
“You better get me tickets when you hit the stage as Maureen. I’m going to come back to see it next month.”
“You better show up.”
I scoff. “I always do.”
She smiles softly. “You do.” She lifts her cup, takes a sip, then clears her throat.
Uh-oh. I know what’s coming.
The barrage of questions.
“And what about you, Jackson? Have you met anyone?”
“Is this where we deep-dive into my relationships?”
Her hazel eyes are as intense as her tone. “Yes. It is. You know I like the relationship convos as much as you do.”
I give her a pointed look, then a true answer. “I don’t have time for a partner. I’m busy with work.”
“So you have no interest in anybody?”
“I’m not a player,” I say, deflecting her question. Otherwise, my mind will linger on Stone.
How ridiculous is my situation? The bodyguard who has it bad for the superstar he protects. Pretty sure that’s a Hollywood storyline starring heartbreak.
Or the punchline to a joke.
“I am well aware that you’re not a player. But what I want to know is . . . do you miss him still?”
I wait for the pinching in my heart. For the pain that used to shoot through me. Neither happens. Neither has happened in some time.
Fabian died nearly two years ago, and I’ve moved on. There’s no other way to live. You do what you have to do to survive.
“It’s been a while. And you know what it was like right after,” I say quietly. Like if I say it louder, the volume might snap me back to the hell of losing the person I loved—the person I loved despite his bad decisions.
She reaches for me, setting a hand on my arm. “I know, Jackson. I remember. My heart still hurts for you.”
I give a shrug, a little helpless. But that was the past. “I’m okay. And to answer your question, I don’t miss him. I miss the good parts though. I don’t miss the arguments. And I definitely don’t miss begging him to stop.”
Her eyes are fierce as she pins me with wisdom beyond her years. “You tried to get him to stop. That doesn’t mean it didn’t hurt.”
Hell, did it ever hurt when the cops knocked on my door that afternoon, telling me that Fabian died doing a stunt on his bike that his friends filmed for his YouTube channel.
The moment the officer asked, Are you the emergency contact for Fabian Santos?
I knew that the next words out of his mouth would be I’m sorry to inform you . . .
I shove that thought away. Some memories will always ache even if the missing stops.
“Listen, it’s all good. I’m focused on work. I’m fine with that. It keeps me busy.” I finish with a smile I mostly feel. I do love my work. My job energizes me. It gives me purpose.
Crush on my boss aside.
“I know, but I worry about you. You were happy. I want to see you happy again, Jackson. You like being with someone.”
My heart squeezes at the truth in that, at her awareness of who I am.
But even if I used to lean toward the relationship side of the romance fence, that doesn’t mean I want to hang out there now.
I may no longer hurt, but I don’t want to open myself up to more pain.
When my partner died, something broke inside me that I don’t want to repair—the piece of me that liked commitment, connection, partnership.
“Right now, I like not being with someone,” I say, speaking the full truth.
“Maybe someday you’ll want the opposite.”
“Maybe someday you won’t be a sassy wiseass,” I say.
“Doubtful.” Her grin is playful, and so damn cute that I snap a picture of it.
“How about a shot of both of us?” I ask.
“Because pics don’t exist if you’re not in them?”
“Pretty much.”
She joins me on my side of the table, smushes her face next to mine, and does some kind of hang-ten gesture that probably isn’t a hang-ten thing at all, but what the hell do I know?
The pic makes me happy, and I save it to my photos. If I’ve learned anything since Fabian’s death, it’s that you need to grab your happy while you can.
After I put the image in a folder, my phone pings with an email, and I check it quickly. Tension radiates through me as I read the email from the credit card company, a reminder of the money I owe for the choices Fabian made.
The ones he made without me.
“Everything okay?” Bethany asks.
Clutching my phone, I give her a shrug. “Stupid credit card company wanting to collect on a stupid bill for a stupid motorcycle.”
“Sorry, Jackson,” she says. “Debt sucks.”
I’m sorry too, but for entirely different reasons.
Because finding out a few weeks after he died that he’d used our card to finance his bike, the mangled one that died with him, rubbed salt into my fresh wound.
I’d not only lost the man I loved, but I’d lost him to the thing I’d begged him to stop doing, and he’d gone behind my back to do it.
Stunts for prize money. Crazy, reckless, dangerous stunts.
The cold, cruel irony is that I’m paying for what killed him.
After we finish our drinks, I take Bethany to school. We chat about Mom and Dad the whole way until her phone pings.
“Oooh. It’s a new post from Shipping News,” she says.
“You’re following the shipping business?”
“No. It’s this Instagram feed. The name’s ironic. It’s about celebrity ships.”
“English, please.”
“Right. Mr. No Social Media. It’s a feed that pairs celebs with other celebs, or fictional characters with other fictional characters. Like Kirk and Spock, or Harry and Draco, or Groot and Rocket Raccoon.”
We turn onto the street to her school, and I glance at her, sure she’s pulling my leg. “People want the tree and a raccoon to get together?”
“The internet loves all sorts of pairings. I’ve seen you on there,” she says, tucking her phone away.
I pull up to the curb, my eyebrows climbing into my hairline. “I’m on there? For what?”
She gives me a classic duh look. “You and Stone.”
I flinch. “What the . . . why . . . how?”
There was no one around that night in the hallway. There are no cameras on that floor. How could anyone have pics of us?
Laughing, she sets a hand on my arm. “Don’t worry. It’s just an internet thing. It’s not bad. It’s like when a picture surfaces of the two of you. Like in the airport when you’re walking next to him through security. Or when you’re holding the door of a limo open for him and the paps take a shot.”
I breathe a huge sigh of relief. Normal pics. Not salacious shots. That makes sense. Everyday images go along with my job. Stone’s publicist circulates those in the regular briefings. “Right. Sure. But aren’t there pics of Cruz or Terrence with him too?”
“Sure, but not as many. I mean, the other bodyguards are fine-looking. Cruz has the whole Michael Pena vibe going for him, plus he speaks Spanish. But, for better or worse, Twitter thinks you’re hot. Instagram thinks you’re hot. And the world thinks Stone is hot.”
I tug at my collar because it’s weird hearing that from my sister. Then I gesture for her to go on. “Continue.”
“So, there are usually some comments about how you guys look together. How Stone should do you because you’re hot. Or vice versa.”
I exhale sharply, since we’re getting a little too close for comfort. “People have time for this?”