“Hmm.” Jethro covered his hand with his mouth, studying me. “You make good points.”
“He does,” Cletus agreed. “You see now why we’re best friends?”
“I do. But Jackson—” Jethro frowned at his bottle and picked the label “—what have you done to make room for Rae? How have you changed your life for her?”
I shook my head. “It doesn’t matter now.”
“Humor me,” Jethro said, drawing my stare.
I saw he was serious, so I said, “I’ve been looking into the requirements for transferring or applying to LA County as a deputy sheriff.”
“What?” Cletus’s question was sharp. “You’re leaving Green Valley?”
Jethro ignored his brother’s outburst. “Did you tell her this?”
I shook my head. “What’s the point? Like I said, I’m not going to force her to make room for me. She has to want it.”
He paused, seemed to consider my question, then asked, “Do you love her?”
I didn’t hesitate. “I do.”
“Then you have to tell her all this.” Jethro leaned forward, his stare intent. “You have to spell it out, just like you did with me and Cletus. You have to lay it all out and ask her to make room for you. You’re right, you can’t force it, or demand it, but you can ask. And tell her how you’re making plans to make room for her.”
I considered what the oldest Winston brother suggested, but before I could make up my mind one way or the other, Cletus drummed his fingers on the table to get my attention. “Let me see if I have this straight, being with Rae is easy. You feel like you don’t even need to work for the grade.”
“That’s an odd way of putting it, but yeah. Continuing with the same analogy, being with her is like taking a college course with no papers and no exams, where the entire grade is based on participation. But, like I said, I want—”
“You want the hard stuff, the papers and the exams, yes, yes. We are aware. But let me finish this thought. Time spent with Rae is easy, and therefore it’s not a grade worth earning?” Cletus asked.
“More like, it’s not a grade I feel like I can trust to . . .”
“To?” Jethro prompted.
“To stay on my transcript. If I don’t work for something, how can it be mine? How can I deserve it?”
A glimmer of respect shone in Jethro’s gaze. “I get that,” he said, and I sensed he told the truth.
“Then allow me to pose the following question—” Cletus turned to the side and said to his brother “—and bear with me, Jethro.” Facing me again, he said, “Did you work for Ashley?”
“What do you mean?”
“When y’all were teenagers, was she a struggle?”
“No. Being around her was—” I snapped my mouth shut before I could say the word, gritting my teeth. In typical Cletus fashion, he’d led me down the road before I’d realized we were going anywhere.
It didn’t matter because he finished the thought. “Easy, right? And she didn’t return the depth of your affections.”
“That’s right. She—uh—didn’t think of me the same way I thought of her.” Man, this was not a subject I wished to discuss with Ashley’s brothers, even all these years later.
“Hmm.” Cletus was back to stroking his beard.
“Rae isn’t Ashley,” I snapped.
Cletus pointed to himself. “I know that. But do you? Do you really understand that Ms. Ezra is not Ashley? That you’re not doomed to make the same mistakes over and over?”
I said nothing, my throat full of rocks.
He wasn’t finished talking. “There are similarities, to be sure. Ashley and Ms. Ezra are both regarded as beauties, though they look markedly different. They’re also both blessed with natural talent—A-plus talent, if you will—in their respective fields. Now, this next part isn’t me being mean, though it may sound like it at first.”
Bracing myself, I said, “Fine. Go on.”
“To the casual observer, someone like Ash or Rae being with someone like you might not make much sense.” Cletus stared off into the distance. “You’re a sheriff’s deputy in a big Tennessee county with a bunch of small towns that can’t afford their own police department. You’re not wealthy. You’re not learned. You’re not impressive. You don’t eat meat. You’re not showy or flashy. Your face isn’t perfectly symmetrical—”
“This is you not being mean?”
“Let me finish.”
“Fine. Continue,” I grunted, wishing I’d never made overtures to be Cletus Winston’s friend.
“I postulate that falling in love and making it last is like anything else in life that feels overwhelming when you’re at the beginning of it. Saving for a down payment on a house. Writing a book. Getting one of those PhDs.”
I lifted an eyebrow to show him I didn’t get his point.
“Talk to Ms. Ezra. Do the work. Tell her your plans and your hopes. It might feel impossible now, but it won’t always.” The side of Cletus’s mouth hitched with a rare smile. “My point is one I feel you already know: everything always feels impossible, until it’s inevitable.”
Chapter 27
*Jackson*
“A strong man doesn’t have to be dominant toward a woman. He doesn’t match his strength against a woman weak with love for him. He matches it against the world.”
Marilyn Monroe
I asked Cletus to drop me off at my parents’ house. Maybe it was the three beers when my system was used to zero, but I needed to talk to my father. Right now.
Rather than walk in, which was my usual practice, I knocked. I didn’t know if Jess and her family were still in town. My sister wasn’t great at communicating her plans. When my father opened the door on his own, he held a kitchen towel and appeared pleased to see me.
“Come in,” he said, walking toward the back of the house and expecting me to follow. “I’m almost finished. You can help me dry.”
I followed him through the house. It was quiet, which meant Jess had already left. Or maybe they were visiting Duane’s side of the family. I dismissed that thought right away; if they’d been over at the Winston homestead, I doubted Jethro and Cletus would’ve taken me out for beers if they could've been hanging out with their brother.
Regardless, Jess and her family weren’t here. My mother was probably in her office, preparing supplies and lesson plans for the start of school. Only a month remained before school was back in session, and she approached each year as a teaching assistant with the same gusto and planning as she had prior to her semiretirement.
Unsurprisingly, my dad led me to the kitchen, tossing me the towel. I caught it.
“Come over here and dry these.” He gestured to a pile of bowls. “Your sister made pie for the Winstons, but she left some here too. We can have another slice after we’re done, but don’t tell your mother.”
“Jess is over at Sienna and Jethro’s?”