Jake sat in the window seat of the light room, legs stretched out up on the seat, ankles crossed, a glass of Lydie’s Scotch in his hand, his eyes to the moonlight on the sea.
Josie was down from him, curled up with her legs under her, body twisted, torso pressed to the seat back, facing the windows.
She’d given him a treat and taken off her shoes, making it the first time she was even slightly casual in front of him. She hadn’t let down her hair and after that night, he was thinking he really needed to see her with her hair down.
But this would come.
She was drinking some purple liquid from a snifter that came from a fancy-ass bottle and smelled like cough syrup when she’d handed him her glass after he asked what it was. He didn’t taste it. A sniff was enough to put him off and his expression must have told her that because she immediately took the glass from him but did it on a cute little giggle.
After asking him in for an after dinner drink, getting his Scotch, getting her drink and taking off her shoes, she’d led him up to his favorite room in the house.
It had been a good night and he knew this because he’d quit counting the times she smiled because she was doing it so often, he couldn’t keep track. She’d even laughed, mostly quiet and sweet, but once her shoulders shook with it.
What made her smile and laugh was his stories about the kids or the guys at the gym or how his dancers and bouncers were always dating, breaking up, acting out and trying and failing to hide that shit seeing as he had a no fraternization policy.
She’d also made him smile, relaxing more and more as the dinner went on and sharing about places she’d gone, things she’d done and the people she knew and worked with. Some of the names of recording artists he definitely knew. He even knew some of designers’ names.
The one thing that made him uneasy about this was the way she talked about it. She clearly enjoyed her work, liked and/or admired the people she worked with and it was obvious she loved what she did and the people she did it around.
In her globetrotting lifestyle with the fashion and music elite, he could see it would be difficult to settle in a small town on coastal Maine no matter how pretty the town was or how phenomenal her house was in that town.
She took him from his thoughts when she said softly, “Before it became too hard for her to negotiate stairs, Gran and I used to sit up here all the time.”
His eyes went to her to see she still had hers to the view and she kept talking.
“When I was young, I used to make up stories and tell them to her. I think she knew they were my daydreams but she never said anything. When I was older, we wouldn’t have to say anything at all. She’d sip her Drambuie, me my Chambord and we’d just sit here, staring at the sea, and we’d just be but in being we did it together.”
Jake said nothing, reading her mood and deciding she didn’t need a grief counselor or a conversationalist.
She needed a listening ear.
So he was going to give it to her.
However, he was wrong.
He knew this when she turned his way and caught his eyes in the dim light.
“Can you just tell me how you met?” she requested quietly.
“I’ll tell you anything you want, baby,” he replied quietly.
She nodded and Jake gave her what she needed.
“My gym was goin’ down,” he shared.
She tipped her head to the side and he kept going.
“To make a real go of that place, I need to offer boot camps, spin classes, aerobics and shit. In a town this size, a boxing gym is not gonna make a man a shitload of money. And it didn’t. Problem was, I had three kids to take care of and a wife at that time and I needed to make money. A friend of mine is a reporter for the county paper and when it looked like the gym was gonna go down, she made a big deal of it, hoping to get me more members. The Truck losin’ his gym. The kids losin’ their league.”
“The kids losing their league?” she asked.
He nodded. “Got a junior boxing league runs outta the gym. They train three afternoons a week after school and have matches on the weekends. There isn’t a shitload of kids in it but we always got around twenty or thirty. Makes no money, dues they pay barely cover equipment and it eats up gym time. Still, it keeps kids from doin’ f*cked up shit and it teaches them discipline, gives them confidence, shows them it’s important to take care of their bodies, and gives them the means to stick up for themselves.”
“You never mentioned that,” she noted.
“Haven’t known you that long, honey,” he replied.
She nodded then said, “I’ve heard this ‘truck’ business and your gym is named that. What does that mean?”
“I’m The Truck.”
“Pardon?”
He grinned at her. “I’m The Truck, Josie. Used to box. That’s what they called me.”
She straightened in her seat. “You’re a pugilist?”
His grin got bigger. “Uh…yeah, I’m a pugilist. Used to be a pretty good one. That’s how I could make the paper, even if it was just the town paper. Started boxing early, just for a workout. Wasn’t into team sports and my dad wasn’t into havin’ a kid layin’ around watchin’ TV. Found it suited me. Liked bein’ in my head, havin’ it be about what my body could do but more, while my body was being challenged, I had to keep my head. You get trained, you learn your opponent, you have people drilling strategy in you, but when you’re in the ring, there are only two of you and the goal is pretty extreme. You gotta beat the shit outta the other guy so he doesn’t do it to you.”
When he stopped talking, she asked, “And you were a pretty good one?”
“Yeah.”
“How good?”
“Had a couple pay-per-view fights in Vegas. That good.”
She sounded adorably confused when she asked, “Is that good?”
He smiled at her again. “Yeah, Josie. That’s good. Boxed in college, had a trainer-manager approach me, ditched school my junior year, went all in. It worked. Got some big fights. Made decent money. Did some traveling and saw some nice places. It was good, exciting, I liked it and I loved to box. But you gotta do it smart and you gotta get out when it’s time to get out. Your body can’t take that forever. I got out, came home to Maine, used my earnings and opened the gym.”
“I still don’t understand why they call you The Truck,” she said.
“I’m called The Truck ‘cause I knocked out a kid in college three minutes into the first round. When the college paper asked him what happened, he said my right hook was like getting hit in the face with a Mack truck. It stuck.”
“I’m taking it that’s complimentary,” she guessed and that got another smile out of him.
“Yeah, babe. Very,” he confirmed.
He saw her teeth flash before she prompted him to get back to the story, “So, you were going to lose you gym…”
“Yeah. And Lydie saw the article,” he told her. “She came to see me. Not sure she wanted The Truck to keep his gym. It was probably more about the kids having their boxing league. But whatever it was, she came to offer me money to help bail me out.”
“Ah…” she murmured.
“Lydie’s Lydie, way she was, she got me to talkin’ and she got the whole story. Dad was dead. Mom was draggin’ and we’d find out not too long later she was dyin’. My gym was in the red and to put food on the table, I was a bouncer working nights at The Circus. We were livin’ in a two-bedroom apartment close to the wharf and that place wasn’t good normally, but it smelled like dead fish depending on which way the wind was blowin’. Donna was beginning to embrace her inner cougar so she was more interested in getting laid than having her kids during her custody times. This meant Sloane was up in my shit, not happy to have two kids most of the time ‘cause Donna was out carousing and a baby in that small pad.”
“Is this why she left you?” Josie asked.
“She didn’t leave me, babe, kicked her ass out.”
Her voice held surprise when she asked, “You ended things with her?”
He leaned her way. “With Sloane, finally learned how to do it. Life sometimes sucks and right then, it was suckin’ huge for me. I knew that apartment was shit. I didn’t like my family to be there either. Tight with my dad, loved my mom, not doin’ good with him gone and her goin’. I was not hangin’ on to the gym. I knew it had to go. It killed me. I love that gym. But my family was more important. I was workin’ two jobs, I’d drag my ass home at three in the mornin’, get up to open the gym at seven, crashin’ whenever I could. I didn’t want that and was tryin’ to find a way out. She wasn’t tryin’ to find anything but ways to ride my ass. When shit gets heavy, you stand by your man. You don’t drag him down when he’s already circling the toilet.”
There was a pause before she whispered, “This is very true.”
“I know it is.”
She kept whispering when she said, “I’m sorry she was that way with you, Jake.”
So f*cking sweet.
“I was too at the time, honey,” he replied. “But the way she turned her back on me, but mostly on Ethan when she got her new man and set up her new life, not upset I’m shot of her.”
She held his eyes a long moment before she asked, “So is this when Gran offered you money to buy The Circus?”
“Yeah.” He nodded. “Place was a shithole. And Dave, the guy who owned it, was a dick. Paid the girls nothin’, sayin’ they made their money on tips. Had two bouncers on each night. Just two. For a club like that, that’s inviting trouble. Had girls behind the bar who couldn’t do shit should somethin’ go down. He still made money. A load of it. And when he was looking to get out, I knew, if I could buy it, I could turn it around, make a shitload more.”
“Therefore you told Gran this and she believed in your vision.”
Jake smiled again. “Yeah. She believed in my vision, Slick. Told me, I leverage the gym, she’d give me the rest of the money and, I could make a go of The Circus, pay her back along the way. Obviously I said no.”
She straightened and leaned toward him, sounding surprised when she asked, “You said no?”
“I said no,” he confirmed. “Taking pity money from an eighty-six year old lady?” He shook his head.
“But you eventually took the money,” she noted.
Jake nodded.
“I took the money. I said no about a hundred times first. The good part about this was, she was interested in me, she liked me, I liked her, and she kept at me. In this time, she met the kids, got involved in our lives, we liked her there, we kept her and she kept us. Eventually, she wore me down. I took the money, got a loan on the gym seein’ as I owned the building outright. I closed The Circus down for two months, me and some buddies fixed it up, reopened, paid Lydie back within a year. Paid off the loan on the gym within three. Got myself a four-bedroom house where my kids all have their own rooms. Life changed. Quit sucking. Got good. And Lydie was the catalyst for all that.”
“And that’s how you met,” she said softly.
“That’s how we met,” he replied just as softly.
She was still talking soft when she said, “I’m glad she was there for you, Jake.”
“I am too, honey.”
He watched her turn her head to the view before she said to it, “I just don’t understand how she could be so involved in your life, your children’s lives, and she never introduced any of you to me.”
This was the sticky part.
And it was a f*cked up move, he knew it, but she was suffering so Jake waded into the mire.
He would deal with the blowback when, but hopefully only if it happened.
“Babe, she was all about you when you’d come to visit,” Jake told her and she looked back to him.
“Pardon?”
“She talked about you all the time. Thought the world of you. And when you’d come for a visit, she’d get real excited. She couldn’t wait. Not hard to see she missed you when you were gone and she missed you bad. So, my guess, when she had you, she didn’t want to share you.”
“We went to parties and I saw her other friends all the time,” she returned.
“Yeah, but I’m not exactly in her age group and my family isn’t exactly in her social set. We’re not invited to play bridge and we don’t go to church socials.”
“This is true,” she murmured.
“And I know from what she told me after you were gone that she did not live her life on the go, socializing rabidly like she always did until she couldn’t do it anymore. When you were here, she took a break. She gave her time to you and sucked all of yours in that she could get.”
This brought on silence until she broke it, saying quietly, “We consumed each other.”
“Come again?” he asked.
She looked again to the window. “When we were together, we consumed each other. I thought it was just me missing Gran. When I was with her, I took every moment I could get with her and in this house. Committing it to memory. I did that even before…” She trailed off then began again. “I did it even when I was a little girl. I loved being with her and I loved being with her in this house.”
“So maybe that’s why we didn’t meet.”
She looked back at him. “You and your children are not bridge cronies, Jake, but you meant the world to her too. I know this to be true. She has your picture on her nightstand.”
Jake had no reply to that.
Strike that.
He had one. He just couldn’t give it to her.
Not now.
“I could see, in the beginning maybe. But seven years?” she asked.
He bent a knee, leaned deep and stretched a hand out, catching hers. “I have no answers for you, baby,” he told her gently, none of these words sitting well because they meant he’d lied to her gently. “And, it sucks but she’s gone. This is clearly f*ckin’ with your head but you gotta let it go because with her gone, you’re never gonna get those answers. Just settle in that it was whatever it was and she made it so we have each other now.”
“We have each other now,” she whispered.
“Yeah.”
Her hand turned in his so she could curl her fingers around and she held tight.
And when she did, she held his eyes and kept whispering. “I’m glad, Jake.”
He held her back just as tight. “Me too, honey.”
She gave him a small smile.
And on that, Jake decided it was time to go. Her in this mood made him want to find creative ways to guide her out of it and he knew which way that creativity would go.
He was not Boston Stone.
In the beginning, the minute he saw her in her big black hat and big black shades at the funeral, he’d felt the urge, definitely. A woman like that, few men wouldn’t.
Then again, he’d felt the urge long before that seeing her pictures, reading her letters, listening to Lydie talk about her.
He didn’t know about the will at the funeral but he knew where Lydie was leaning, what she wanted. She never said it flat out but that didn’t mean she didn’t make the message abundantly clear and she did this repeatedly.
But Jake didn’t figure Josie would want anything to do with a guy like him.
He knew differently in the parking lot at the club when he let her off the hook, telling her his tastes for women leaned elsewhere.
He didn’t lie. He liked big hair. He liked big tits. And he didn’t mind his women showing skin.
That said, he also liked ass and legs and curves in all the right places and high heels and melodic voices and thick blonde hair and big blue eyes and pretty much everything that made up her package.
She’d surprised him by exposing she’d go there.
She said he wasn’t her thing but he knew she lied.
But now was not the time for her to make those decisions. She lost the only person she was close to on this earth—he knew not only a grandmother but a savior. And he sensed she was at a crossroads. He’d be a dick to make a play while the first was fresh and the last was uncertain.
He’d wait.
She’d told him at dinner her shit for brains boss was not likely to show for at least three weeks, maybe longer.
So he had three weeks to get in there and during that time, he’d go gently.
So f*cking her on the window seat in the room where she told stories to her recently deceased grandmother when she was a kid was not the way to go.
“I got furniture to move tomorrow, honey, so I best be hittin’ the road so I can hit the sack.”
Her hand flexed in his like she didn’t want to let him go and he liked that.
But she said, “All right, Jake.”
He downed the rest of his Scotch then got up, pulling her out of the seat.
She made it without taking a tumble. Then again, her feet were bare.
He held her hand down the spiral staircase, thanking f*ck the thing was wide so he could do it, and he held her hand all the way to the front door.
He kept hold of it as he put his glass on a table at the side of the door, took hers and set it beside his. He also kept hold of it even as he slid his other one from the side of her neck to the back and pulled her forward, leaning in.
Then he kissed her forehead and moved back an inch to catch her eyes.
“Another good night, Slick.”
“Yes,” she agreed breathily, her eyes holding his and hers were not hiding the fact she didn’t want him to walk out the door.
Yeah.
He was her thing.
He wouldn’t have guessed it. Wouldn’t even think it was possible. Spent years not thinking it was possible.
But yesterday, she let him in. Calling him when a new wave of grief poured over her and he knew she did that shit the instant it happened with the way her voice sounded on her message and even later, when he called her back.
He just had to glide the rest of the way in, slow and easy. For her. For him. For his kids.
Like Lydie wanted.
Precisely like Lydie wanted.
“Sleep tight, baby,” he murmured.
“You too, Jake.”
He grinned at her and squeezed her with both hands.
Then he let her go, opened the door and walked out, ordering, “Lock this behind me.”
“Of course,” she replied to his back. Then she called, “Goodnight.”
He turned at the door of his truck and gave her a low wave and a smile.
She waved back.
Then she stepped back, closed the door and she was gone.
* * * * *
Jake heard the TV when he came into the kitchen from the garage.
He threw his keys on the counter and was shrugging off his suit jacket when Conner came in.
His eyes went to his boy.
“What’s her curfew?”
“It’s Saturday, Dad. We got until midnight.”
He bunched his jacket in a fist, walking further into the room and asked, “How many sundaes did Ethan eat?”
Conner grinned. “Three.”
“Terrific,” Jake muttered.
Conner leaned against the island and his grin died. “Just sayin’, Amber was a total bitch all night to everybody.”
Time to get her ass back to Josie. She might not have been sunshine and light after the last time she was with Josie, but at least that bought them having her quiet and reflective for a day or two.
“I’ll have a word.”
“Have twelve,” Conner replied. “Ellie got fed up with it. Told me she wanted me to take her home. Took a lot to talk her out of it.”
Jake wished he hadn’t. That would mean they’d make out and whatever the f*ck they were doing in Conner’s car, not on Jake’s couch.
“Said I’ll have a word, Con,” he reminded him.
Conner nodded then grinned again. “How was dinner?”
“Josie’s the shit,” Jake replied, tossing his jacket on the island and moving to the fridge.
“You into her?” Conner asked and Jake came out of the fridge with a bottle of water and gave his eyes to his son.
“We havin’ a heart to heart while your girl is in there watchin’ TV?”
Conner’s grin got bigger. “Just askin’, seein’ as Ethan said she’s mega pretty.”
“You’ll see for yourself Monday night. We’re goin’ over there for dinner. And, heads up, she’s concerned you don’t eat vegetables. She’s a class act but she’s also Lydie’s granddaughter. Lydie’s been riding your ass for years about eating your greens. Josie laid it out for Amber within half an hour of meeting her. She won’t hesitate over vegetables.”
His son’s grin didn’t waver. “I’ll brace.”
Jake shook his head, moved to his boy and grabbed him around the back of the neck for a squeeze.
Then he let him go and muttered, “Get back to your girl.”
Conner lifted his chin.
Jake moved to the door to the hall but stopped, turned back and called his son’s name.
Conner turned to him too. “Yeah?”
“Pick one,” Jake said quietly. “Think about it, think long and hard and pick right. But cut the others loose. You’ve had your fun. Now it’s time to make a choice and cut the strings so you aren’t draggin’ them all with you only to eventually drag them down. You with me?”
Conner had no smile when he started, “But, Dad—”
Jake cut him off. “Trust your old man. A woman’s heart is fragile and it’s precious. Don’t be that a*shole who kicks it around.”
He watched his son swallow.
“Now, you with me?” Jake prompted.
He hesitated, but only a couple seconds before Conner replied, “Yeah, Dad.”
Jake nodded. “Good. ’Night, Con.”
“’Night, Dad.”
On that, Jake went up to his room.