Chapter 37
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
JORDAN
September
I pick up my ringing phone from the kitchen counter, grinning when I see Jo’s name on the display. I’ve been waiting for this call.
“Well, hey there, Hurricane,” I say when I swipe to answer the call, my heart kicking up at her wide smile. Her face is bare, with that just washed look, her hair piled up on her head, and she’s wearing a Boston Red Sox T-shirt she stole from me over the summer. I love seeing her in my clothes. In anything.
I miss her so damn much.
She beams at me from her living room couch.
“You know, you keep this up, and I’ll have to abdicate my best present giver ever title to you. An entire package of Fireball merch? I die, J.”
“Only the best for my girl. And if I’m a good present giver, it’s because I learned from the best.”
“Well played, my guy. Well played. The Fireball cotton candy is elite. I finished it already and will definitely be needing more.”
I drop into one of the bar stools, leaning my elbows on the counter. “There’s a twelve pack on its way to you right now. I bought myself one too and tried it last night. It almost burned my mouth off, so I knew you would love it.”
Jo smiles, and her eyes go soft the way I love. She pulls her legs up to her chest, propping her chin on her knees and tugging the tie out of her hair. The dark strands fall in a wavy curtain over her shoulders, and she’s so beautiful that for a minute, it’s hard to breathe. It’s been three weeks since I last touched her, and my arms literally ache to be around her.
“I think this package has my pancake package beat.”
I smile at her, enjoying our little game. The first week I was home, she sent me a pancake themed package, which I followed up with a box of everything she needed to have a disaster movie night, complete with new pajamas and the ingredients for candy popcorn. Then last week when I started my new job, she sent me a box full of rubber ducks dressed like doctors “for the kids,” and I sent her two dozen pairs of the craziest socks I could find, which she loved so much she stripped her clothes off on the spot, leading to a round of the hottest phone sex of my life.
“It’s not a competition, Hurricane.”
She narrows her eyes at me. “Everything is a competition, J, which is why I upped my game this week. Your doorbell should be ringing any minute.”
“I fucking miss you, Jo Jo.”
I love you .
I have to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from blurting out the words. The wall holding them in gets lower every single day we’re apart, but I don’t want to say it for the first time on the phone. I want the first time I tell her I love her to be when she’s wrapped in my arms, and I can kiss the shit out of her and promise we’ll never be apart ever again.
Honestly, I’d settle for just being in the same room as her.
She sighs, leaning back against her couch. “I miss you too. I wish I could kiss your face. Any luck on the apartment front?”
I’ve been staying with my parents since I moved back to town. At first, I reasoned that with starting a new job and everything, it made the most sense until I figured out where I wanted to land permanently. But three weeks later, I can admit that what I’ve been doing is lying to myself.
I don’t want to make a decision about a permanent place to live because I don’t want a place that’s mine. I want a place that’s ours.
I don’t want Jo to come join my life. I want to make a life with her.
I don’t want any kind of life if she’s not a part of it.
I shrug, trying to seem casual. “Nothing feels quite right yet. I’m not in a rush.”
Jo studies me through the screen. “You don’t want to take that available apartment in your brothers’ building and call it a day? I figured being close to them would be an easy choice.”
I blow out a breath and give her some of the truths I’ve worked out for myself in the few weeks I’ve been home. “I don’t want to make easy choices. I want to make the right choices. Being back in Boston feels right, and going back to pediatrics feels like I found one of my missing pieces. I’ll find a place to live when it feels right, but for now, I’m good here.”
I’ll find a place to live when you’re here to find one with me .
Jo nods, looking thoughtful. “I’m fucking proud of you, you know.”
“For what?”
“For living, Jordan. For deciding what you want your life to look like and making it happen. For being happy. After everything you’ve been through, that’s a radical act, J. It’s really beautiful to watch, and I’m just glad I get a front row seat.”
My chest tightens with emotion at her words. Fuck. I need her like fucking air. “I couldn’t have done any of this without you, you know.”
Her smile is soft. “You could have. But probably not as well. I’m fantastic.”
“You’re more than fantastic. You’re the best thing in my life, Jo. I hate being away from you.”
“I hate it too, but Halloween isn’t that far away.”
Suddenly, the five weeks between now and Halloween feels like longer than forever. There is no way I’m going to last that long apart from her. But to keep myself from doing something ridiculous, like professing my undying love for her over the phone and begging her to come to Boston, I change the subject.
“How’s it going at the museum? You never told me how the fall after-schools are going.”
Jo shifts on the couch, visibly uncomfortable, the same way she has been every time I’ve asked her about the museum for the past two weeks. But before I can figure out why, my mom comes flying down the stairs.
“Is that Jo?” She rounds the island, plucking the phone out of my hand and flopping down at the kitchen table.
“No problem—I didn’t want to talk to my girlfriend anyway,” I mutter.
My mom gives me a grin and an exaggerated wink, turning her attention back to the phone. “Jo Evans, that book your sister chose permanently changed my brain chemistry.”
Jo’s laugh comes through the phone. “I know, right? Hannah never misses.”
Unbeknownst to me, when I was here with Jo over the summer, she and my mom started talking books and formed a book club of sorts with Jo’s sister, Hannah. When I asked Jo about it, she told me it was a no boys allowed kind of thing, and when I asked my mom about it, she told me not to stick my nose into things that don’t concern me.
I love that they have their own relationship. It’s just one more way Jo is folded into my life. I want her in my life in every way imaginable.
I just have to tell her that.
“Want a beer?” My dad’s voice breaks me out of my thoughts. I turn and he’s holding a bottle out to me.
I shrug and take it. “Why not?”
“Let’s sit on the porch. Your mom’s going to keep your girl busy for a while.”
He looks at my mom chatting away with Jo, his face full of the love I see every time his eyes land on her. They’ve been married for thirty-eight years, and they still look at each other like that. I wonder what it’s like to feel so much for someone for so long.
You can have that too .
With that thought in my head, I follow my dad out to the front porch, settling onto the swing he hung there when my brothers and I were kids. It’s full dark outside, and the porch is decorated in an explosion of fall color. My first thought when I settle into the swing is how much Jo would love it. The cool September night air. The way the porch screams of the season. My mom goes all out for every season, and I can see Jo out here with her, laughing over my mom’s collection of quirky decorations.
I can see her everywhere.
I want her everywhere.
“So, what’s stopping you?”
I whip my head around to look at my dad, who takes a pull of his beer, smirking at me over the bottle.
“Are you a mind reader?”
He chuckles. “You were talking out loud.”
“No, I wasn’t,” I say immediately.
Shit was I?
“You were. So, you want to talk about it?”
I shrug and take a sip of my beer. “It’s not that complicated. I miss Jo. I miss her so much it’s hard to breathe sometimes.”
My dad leans back on the swing and gets that look he gets when he’s about to drop some truths. The same look Elliot inherited from him. “Do you regret moving back to Boston?”
I shake my head. “Definitely not. Boston is home. Pittsburgh was the life I had with Allie, and even though I miss living close to my friends, that’s not my place anymore. New York was my in-between. But this? Everything about this feels exactly right except for the fact that Jo isn’t here.”
“Does she not want to be here?”
“I never asked her to come with me,” I mumble, looking into my beer as if it holds all the secrets of the universe. Or at least my current predicament.
I can feel my dad staring at the side of my face, but I keep my gaze averted. “You love her, don’t you?”
“So fucking much. It’s like I can’t do anything but love her.”
“Sorry for asking the obvious question, then, but why are you sitting on my front porch while Jo is in Pittsburgh?”
I set my beer down on the end table by the swing and blow out a breath, scrubbing my hands over my face. “I couldn’t say the words, Dad. They were right there, but I couldn’t make myself tell her. It wasn’t fair to ask her to uproot her entire life to move to my hometown hundreds of miles away from everyone she loves when I couldn’t tell her the whole truth of how I feel about her.”
“Why couldn’t you?”
“I don’t know,” I mumble, propping my elbows on my knees and staring out at the darkened street where I learned how to ride a bike and played basketball with my brothers and kissed a girl for the first time the summer I was fifteen. This is the place that holds all my memories, and I want to make more. I just need the person I want to make them with.
My dad lays a hand on my shoulder. “Want to give that answer another try?”
I sit up, quirking an eyebrow at him. “You and Mom could try and know a little less of everything, you know.”
My dad chuckles. “No can do, Jord. It’s our lot in life that we know all there is to know about all four of you boys. So, why couldn’t you tell Jo you love her?”
I take a slow, deep breath. “Because I was scared. Am scared,” I amend.
My dad nods like this is the exact answer he was expecting. “Scared of what?”
I shrug. “Of feeling this way again and losing it. When Allie died, I thought the romantic part of my life was over. I thought she was my one great love, my soulmate, and her dying didn’t make that any less true. I figured if I ever found someone one day, I would settle for something comfortable. Maybe a deep like or a mild love. For sure, whatever it was would be second best to what I had already experienced. But then I met Jo.”
My dad gives me a wry smile. “I’m assuming from the look on your face when you say her name, you’re not exactly settling for a deep like or a mild love.”
Now it’s my turn to chuckle. “Fuck no. She’s…Jesus, she’s everything. She blew into my life and shined her light everywhere, and it’s like I was living in the dark until her. She makes me smile and laugh, and she makes me think, and she is more fun than anyone I have ever known in my life. She understands me, Dad. It’s like she got what I’ve been through right from the start and sees me exactly as I am now. Not as the person I used to be before, or the broken grieving guy I was for two years, but just…me. I didn’t realize how badly I needed to be seen. The way I love her is enormous and wild and perfect, and it turned my life upside down. She makes me happy, Dad. So, so happy. And I think I make her happy too.”
“So, what’s the problem, Jord?”
I shift uncomfortably and clear my throat. “What if I lose her?” I say quietly. “I know what that’s like, and I can’t go through it again. I wouldn’t survive it. So many people don’t even get one great love in their life, and now I’ve had two. Who gets that lucky? Thinking about something happening to her is terrifying. But thinking about not being with her is terrifying too. I can’t live without her.”
My dad puts an arm around me, squeezing my shoulder in comfort. “So don’t live without her. As much as I hate it, for the rest of your life, you’re always going to remember what loss feels like, in the most devastating way imaginable, and of course, that makes you cautious. But Jordan, Jo is still here. I can’t predict the future. I can’t promise you that nothing will ever happen to her, or to you, or to any of us. But right now, your second great love is alive and well and currently gushing with your mom over their mutual love of romance novels. I saw the way Jo looked at you when you were here together over the summer. That girl loves you in the same big, huge way you love her. She’s yours to lose, Jord. So what are you going to do about it?”
I sit silently, a little stunned, my dad’s words spinning around in my brain.
She’s yours to lose .
Fuck. I would die before I would lose her.
But if I did lose her one day, I would want to know that we loved as hard as we could while we had the chance.
So what the fuck am I waiting for?
“Where’s my beer?”
Noah’s voice breaks me out of my epiphany moment, and I look up to see all three of my brothers making their way down the front walk.
“To what do I owe the honor of all four of my sons in the same place at the same time?” my dad asks, getting up to hug all three of them.
“We were hungry.” Cooper plops himself down on the swing next to me and grabs my abandoned beer, taking a long sip. “We figured if Jordan gets to eat dinner here every night, we should too. And El had that look he gets when he’s been sitting in front of his computer for too long. The one that makes him look like he’s about to become one with the machine. Freaks me the fuck out, so I had to tear him away.”
“Did not,” Elliot mutters as he slaps me on the back and drops a big box into my lap.
“What’s this?” I ask, glancing down, my face immediately breaking into a grin when I see Jo’s familiar loopy handwriting and her return address on the front of the box.
“Intercepted the UPS guy.” Elliot takes the chair across from the swing and glances at the box. “Open it. We delivered it, so that means we get to see what’s inside it.”
“Second that,” Noah says. “Jo is the best present giver ever. I’m dying to see what’s inside.”
I glance at my dad. “Aren’t you going to say something about how I’m entitled to my privacy and get them to back off?”
My dad laughs. “Fuck no. That pancake package was amazing. I’m invested in your little game now. I need to see what’s inside too. Besides, I think you could use the distraction.”
“Distraction from what?” Elliot asks.
What the hell ? I think. These are my brothers. “Distraction from the fact that I’m face first in love with Jo and want her to move to Boston so we can be together, but I haven’t told her yet.”
“Fuck, yes,” Noah crows. “I knew you were in love with her, and she’s cool as hell. It’ll be awesome to have her here.”
“That must be scary for you,” Cooper says, consideringly, with his trademark intuition.
“Fucking terrifying, actually,” I say idly, peeling the tape away from the box. I flip open the lid and pull back the tissue paper, staring inside the box, trying to figure out what I’m looking at.
I pick up the items one by one. A keychain from Coney Island. A tiny park bench like the ones that line Battery Park. A replica of the Central Park gazebo. A magnet shaped like a bagel. A shot glass with Lincoln Center emblazoned on the side. A mug she must have had made that says “Free Mugging” on one side and “The J’s Summer of Fun” on the other in bright pink letters. A box of flu tests. A little photo album full of pictures of us from all our summer adventures. And so much more. Little mementos of everything we did over the summer. Our entire love story, right here in this box.
I pull out the note sitting on top.
J,
The J’s Summer of Fun was the most epic adventure of all time.
I thought we should have something to remember it by.
You are my favorite everything.
Love,
Jo
“Holy shit,” I murmur, my heart in my throat. The rush of love and longing is so strong that I have to grip the edge of the porch swing to keep myself grounded. My brain races, calculating the distance between here and Pittsburgh, how long it will take to get there, and if maybe I should just get on a plane instead. It suddenly feels insane that I’ve spent almost a month away from Jo, not telling her how much I love her and can’t imagine living without her, and it is absolutely urgent that I get my arms around her as soon as possible.
I don’t know how long I’ve been sitting there staring at the box on my lap, but when I glance up, all three of my brothers are looking at me with matching, knowing grins on their faces. It’s Noah who breaks the silence.
“Buckle up, boys; I think we’re about to go to grand gesture city.”
Cooper swings an arm around my shoulder. “So…road trip?”