31. Jameson
JAMESON
I was almost out of time.
The shipping crew was going to be here in the morning. I walked around my piece, eying her for what felt like the millionth time. The forge was hot, my tools laid out, ready for me. My t-shirt was damp with sweat, and my leather apron hung from my neck. I had everything I needed.
I’d tried to convince myself she was done. That no one else would think she wasn’t right. That didn’t satisfy me. I’d smoothed her out. Adjusted the tiniest details. Made sure every last bit of her, from the feathers on her wings to the tiny eyelashes brushing against her cheeks, were perfect.
But she wasn’t finished, and I knew it.
It didn’t help that my mind was full of turmoil.
Our trip to L.A. hadn’t been the good-for-our-relationship experience Scarlett had assured me it would be.
I’d come back feeling unsettled. Frustrated.
I was having a hard time reconciling the Leah Mae I thought I knew with the girl I’d taken to that studio party .
The unanswered questions between us weighed on me. I needed to get the hell out of my own head and focus.
I closed my eyes and took a few deep breaths. Thought about why I’d made this sculpture in the first place. I’d been inspired by Leah Mae—by the vision of her in a cage, being made to perform.
The angel fit my vision perfectly. She was forlorn. Sad. Almost weeping. Looking at her aroused a deep sense of melancholy.
And maybe that was the problem. She was locked inside, her wings faltering. Her spirit diminished, without any hope of escape.
My eyes flew open, the realization hitting me in a rush. Hope. That was what she needed. She needed a way out.
I went over to a shelf and rifled through the contents of my bins. I had it, now. I could see it. It wasn’t going to be easy to finish on time, but now I knew what she needed.
The shipping crew was going to mangle my sculpture and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it.
They’d arrived late, and now that we were finally getting her on the truck, they seemed hell bent on fucking up months of hard work. As if her being made of metal meant she didn’t need to be handled with care.
The engine hoist jerked and my back tightened.
She was wrapped for shipping, but scratches were still a possibility.
I could buff them out when I got to Charlotte, but the less of that, the better.
There were parts of her where the texture was more vulnerable than others.
If these assholes ruined my piece before they even got her on the truck, I was going to lose my damn mind .
“Careful, there,” I said.
None of them answered me, just kept right on adjusting the straps with her dangling in the air. I held my breath as they got it moving again. Let it out when she was on the dolly they’d use to roll her in the truck.
Showing no care whatsoever, as far as I could tell, they worked on getting her up the ramp. One of them stood in the truck and pulled a strap they’d tied around her. The other two pushed from the behind. Between the three of them, they got her on—barely. I’d warned them she was heavy.
I’d been up most of the night finishing her, but I wasn’t yet feeling the lack of sleep. I was still buzzed, on a creative high that I reckoned would keep me up a few more hours before I’d crash.
They started tying her down, and I pushed my way in.
“I’ll get this.” I took the strap from one of the movers.
He just shrugged and they all gave me space to work. I reckoned they thought I was being overly fussy about it all, but I didn’t give a shit. I’d worked too hard on this piece to let them bounce her around down the highway all the way to Charlotte.
My phone rang as I got the last strap tied down to my satisfaction. It was Dee.
“Hey,” I said, wiping my forehead with my sleeve.
“How’s everything going over there?” she asked. “Did the movers get the piece?”
“We just finished loading her.”
“Just now?” she asked. “They should have been on the way to Charlotte hours ago.”
I jumped out of the back of the moving truck. “I’m aware of that, Dee. They were late, and it’s taken some doing to get her in the truck. ”
Dee’s huff sounded highly annoyed. Or maybe she was just as stressed about all this as I was. “Well, okay, are they on their way?”
“Soon enough. And Dee, I swear to god, if there is a single scratch on her—”
“Calm down,” she said. “These guys are good. I use them all the time.”
I wasn’t nearly as confident as she seemed to be, and it bothered me that I wouldn’t be in Charlotte to help unload when they arrived. Wasn’t much I could do about it, though.
“Well, she’s on the truck, so that’s something,” I said.
“Okay, good. I’ll see you in Charlotte.”
“I reckon you will.” I hung up the phone and slid it in my back pocket.
The movers closed the back and piled into the truck. One of them stuck his head out the passenger’s side window. “Looks like you have a flat tire.”
The moving truck roared to life and they started down my long driveway. I cringed at how much it bumped up and down and hoped I’d secured my sculpture well enough.
I glanced at my truck. Front tire was indeed flat. “Well, shit.”
I walked over to inspect it but couldn’t find what had caused the puncture.
I’d have to put on the spare and take it in.
Probably need a new set of front tires. I stood up and kicked the tire.
I didn’t have time for this shit. It was a six-hour drive to Charlotte, and I had to leave first thing in the morning.
The crunch of gravel made me look up. Figured it would be Jonah, but it was Leah Mae.
She was still driving that silver rental car.
Struck me as odd that she hadn’t bothered to buy something.
She must have been spending a fair bit of money on that rental— money that could have bought her something decent enough to drive, even for just a short while.
Hell, I could have helped her find something if she’d have asked.
But she hadn’t. She was still living in that vacation home of Scarlett’s, too—when she wasn’t staying at my place, that is. But it wasn’t like she had a home.
It all bothered me, maybe a fair bit more than it should.
But I couldn’t stop thinking about L.A., and Brock Winston, and how she’d acted at that party.
There were a lot of unanswered questions between me and Leah Mae, and seeing her come up my driveway didn’t make any of that better.
Made it worse, in fact, because I knew I wasn’t in any state to talk to her.
She parked and got out of the car, smiling at me.
She was dressed in strapless top covered in silver sequins with a skirt that looked like a pink tutu.
By itself, the outfit might have looked a bit ridiculous, but she’d paired it with her cowboy boots, and the ensemble looked damn adorable.
Course, she always looked adorable if you asked me.
“Hey,” she said with a big smile. Her makeup was done, and her hair too. Looked real pretty, but I wondered what was up.
“What’s with the outfit?” I asked, pointing to her clothes. “You goin’ somewhere?”
“I thought we could go out. I know we have to leave in the morning, so we won’t stay late. But I figured you could use a distraction. And now that your sculpture is on its way to Charlotte, it’s not like you have to work tonight.”
I rubbed the back of my neck. “I’m not sure I much feel like going out tonight.”
“Really?” she asked. “Gibson’s band is playing the Lookout. It’s always a good time.”
Now I definitely wasn’t going out. “I don’t want to be shoved into a crowded bar with my brother. Sorry you went to the trouble to get all dressed up, but I’m stayin’ in.”
I glanced at the flat tire again and just shook my head. I’d have to deal with it in the morning, which would mean getting a late start.
“What happened to your truck?” she asked.
“Flat tire.”
“I can see that,” she said. “I thought maybe you’d tell me how it happened.”
“I don’t know how it happened. Look, I’m going to have to get an early start tomorrow to fix this before we leave.”
“I know,” she said, like she was trying to mollify me. “But you’ve been hiding out here ever since we got back from L.A. Don’t you think it might be good to get out for a little bit? Take your mind off everything?”
“You’re starting to sound like my sister.”
“Maybe your sister is onto something.”
I sighed. “Not tonight. If you want to come in, that’s fine, but sittin’ in a bar with my angry bastard of a brother is not happening tonight.”
“How long is this feud going to last?” she asked.
“How in the hell am I supposed to know? Until Gibson finds someone else to be mad at?”
“Maybe you could talk to him,” she said. “He seems like he’s in a good mood when he’s playing. Could be a good time to deal with it.”
I shook my head. “Darlin’, Gibson is never in a good mood, playing guitar or not. And don’t worry about me and my brother. This sort of thing happens. Eventually we’ll both forget what made us mad and we’ll go back to the usual way we ignore each other—without the anger.”
“That’s… that’s awful. ”
“It’s not awful,” I said. “It’s just how things are between us.”
I was a lot less confident about that than I sounded.
I’d never fought with Gibson before. I’d seen him fight with Scarlett.
Even Bowie a few times. And that pattern seemed to hold.
Some time would go by and tempers recede.
I didn’t expect there were ever many apologies from anyone—except maybe Bowie.
But he was good with this kind of thing, and the rest of us weren’t.
I didn’t rightly know where Bowie had learned it.
Maybe in college. Certainly hadn’t been from growing up with Mom and Dad.
But I didn’t know how this thing between me and Gibson was going to end, and it wasn’t something I wanted to think about tonight. Not with everything else I had on my mind.
“Okay, no Gibson,” she said. “But what’s going on with you?”
“What do you mean?”