“Decide what you’re going for before you get any more involved with the mom,” Alexis had said when he’d called her today. On the jet, because as soon as he’d opened that envelope, standing in the kitchen with his duffel still over his shoulder, he’d been arranging the jet. Even though he’d just stepped off of one.
“Joint custody?” Alexis had gone on. “Visitation? Or just child support, and that’s it? I’m going to tell you one thing for sure going in. If you don’t want to be involved with the baby, being involved with the mom isn’t going to work.”
“I don’t know exactly what I’m going for,” he’d said, which was an understatement. He didn’t know at all what he was going for. Also, he’d wished that Annabelle wasn’t hearing this. That Annabelle wasn’t seeing this, since she’d been across from him on the jet at the time, making shocked faces. He also wished that she hadn’t seen him bumbling around here during Jennifer’s announcement, for that matter, but he couldn’t exactly have left her home alone. Which was also why he’d taken her to L.A. Along with the tutor, because those AP exams were coming right up, and he couldn’t very well tutor his sister in chemistry while he was striding out of the ocean carrying a surfboard about ninety times. If he’d remembered any chemistry, that is.
He thought about that now, and he thought about how he didn’t know what to do, so he’d just do the obvious thing, and hope that the next thing would come to him. He held on to Jennifer, guided her over to the bed, sat down with her, and said, “Of course I was coming. Of course I was. I wouldn’t have left you to face this alone.”
“I thought …” That was all she got out, because she was crying.
“Yeah.” There was a lump in his throat, a constriction in his chest, that were threatening to overwhelm him, but he fought the words out. “But I didn’t, baby. I didn’t. I didn’t know yet, that was all.” He kissed the top of her head and stroked his hand over her soft curls and held her tight, and when the sobs finally died down, he said, “Also, I’ve spent so much money on jets this year, my accountant’s probably going to tell me to just go ahead and buy one.”
She looked up at him. Eye makeup streaked, her hand over her nose and mouth before she rolled over and grabbed a handful of tissues from the bedside table and started mopping up. She said, her voice still wobbling all over the place, “You haven’t … made enough money yet to buy a jet. You need at least five … hundred million for that, if it’s not a corporate jet.” And blew her nose.
He laughed out loud, hugged her hard, and said, “See, now, that’s why you’re so good for me. And I should be offended, you know.”
“W-why?”
She kept on mopping. It was an effort. Her face was blotchy, like a redhead who’d just cried like crazy and had no walls left to hide behind, and he took her head in his hands, kissed her swollen eyelids, one after the other, and said, “What kind of a man would I be, to treat the woman who saw me through the worst three days of my life like that?”
She pulled back and looked up again. Her gaze direct, not caring a bit how she looked. “If that was how you felt,” she said, “why didn’t you even … I don’t know. Text me? After you got home? That was … I felt …” Instead of breaking down again, she took a breath, lifted her chin, and said, wobbles and all, “I felt stupid. Like I’d cared too much. Like you were stomping on my heart.”
This tenderness. This pain. All of this scared him to death, but there was no choice. He ran his hand over her hair again and said, “You couldn’t care too much. You care because it’s who you are. Do you know how lucky I felt to have you with me for that? And I know. I was …” He drew in a hard breath. She was so honest, always. She pulled the emotions up from the place where it hurt. How could he look at himself in the mirror if he didn’t even try? “I was scared,” he admitted. “Overwhelmed, I guess. Trying to set stuff up for Annabelle, getting ready to head to L.A. But that’s not the reason. The reason is that I was scared. Too much happening. Too much emotion I couldn’t … couldn’t leave behind. But I should have known that it wasn’t about me anymore. That I couldn’t …” Oh, boy. How did you say this? “That I couldn’t just think about myself, because that wasn’t who I wanted to be. The man my mom …”
His voice was shaking. He couldn’t help it. Jennifer had her hand over his. Just like that, she’d gone back to caring, and that wasn’t right, not unless he was doing it, too. Not unless he was doing it more. He said, “The man my mom tried to raise.” Getting it out fast.
“The man your mom did raise,” she said. “Harlan. She’d be so proud of you. She’d be proud.”
That was it. He lost it. The sobs ripped right out of him like they hadn’t, all this time. He’d thought he was past it, that the hard emotion was done, that he could move on, but it must have been here all along, because it was bursting out. He kept trying to stop, and he couldn’t. It was horrible. He tried to say, “Sorry. I’m supposed … I’m supposed to …” But she had her arms around him this time, and she was holding on.
He said, when he was finally done, when he was drained and shaken and empty, “You know they’re all going to …” Now, he was blowing his nose. “They’re going to be thinking we’re getting busy in here. And instead, I’m crying. Where did that even come from?”
She laughed, and after a minute, he did, too. “Taking turns weeping,” she said. “You mean I shouldn’t tell the media? This image wouldn’t have worked for your, what was it? Cologne ad?”
“Yeah,” he said, and gave her a sheepish smile. “The surfboard deal. The dirty secret is that I can’t surf.”
“No?”
“Nope. Never even tried. But that wasn’t the worst one.”
“Now you have to tell me.”
She was snuggled up now, all wrapped up in him, or as wrapped up as you could get without lying down. He got behind her, so he could hold her against him and kiss the back of her head and look at her. She was wearing a dress tonight, the first time he’d seen her in one. It was pale green and made out of some sort of crinkly fabric, and it had a whole line of tiny buttons fastened with fabric loops all the way from the V neck to the floaty little hem. She looked soft, and pretty, and so feminine.
He said, “I’m only telling you because I don’t have to look you in the eye,” and felt her silent laughter. “So in this one shot—magazine ad—I’m supposed to be lying back in a chaise by a swimming pool. One of those Hollywood types of pools. Very glamorous. Hot as hell, because they’ve got umbrellas and lights out there, not to mention it’s about ninety degrees in LA. Got me oiled down, too, so I’m sticky and sweaty, and all I want to do is dive into that pool. And I come out of the house in this swimsuit no guy in North Dakota would be caught dead in—”
“Oh, that’s not enough,” Jennifer said. “I need more description than that.”
“I guess it’s kind of a Speedo thing. Except not as small. More like boxer briefs. Tight boxer briefs. Short boxer briefs. Almost no boxer briefs. Black.”