His Best Friend's Baby (4 page)

J
ULIA INSISTED
on doing the dinner dishes that night and spent a long time with her hands in the warm soapy water, washing Agnes’s great-grandmother’s china.

Her fingers traced the faded vine around the edge of a dinner plate and she tried to imagine owning something so old. So precious. There was such a feeling of solidity and permanence in this house that she craved to be a part of.

She put Ben to sleep after finishing the dishes and Agnes retired a few hours later, declaring herself pooped. But Julia was too awake to go to bed. In Germany she’d put Ben in daycare three days a week for two hours because she’d been worried that seeing only her day in, day out would stunt him in some way—make him a social outcast in kindergarten. So while he’d learned to share toys with other kids,
Julia had taken long runs to drive out her worry, to banish her fears. It seemed a good tactic to use now.

“I am going to go for a walk,” she told Ron, who read in his easy chair. He and Agnes had accepted Julia so quickly, had taken care of her and Ben so readily, that she felt a little blank.
What am I supposed to do?
she wondered. She wanted so badly to believe that this comfort and family was real. Was hers. She could settle in, put her feet up and stop treading water. But part of her was still braced—ready for the rejection she still wasn’t entirely convinced wasn’t going to come.

“Ben is out like a light,” she said assuring Ron that she wasn’t going to run out and leave him to entertain her toddler.

“Of course, Julia, it’s a lovely night,” he said with a smile. “Grab my sweater there at the door.”

She took the beige cardigan, then stepped outside. The cool twilight embraced her as she admired the low stucco homes that made up the neighborhood. The sweet scent of night-blooming jasmine filled the air and somewhere nearby a dog barked and another answered. Julia gave herself a moment to imagine a life
here. A family. Ben and a dog and a man who was honorable. Everything that she’d thought was possible when she married Mitch.

Mitch had loved New Springs—or at least his boyhood. That had been part of the attraction for Julia at first, what drew her to him like metal shavings to a magnet. He’d seemed so grounded, so focused. He’d told her all about this beautiful, fairytale-childhood with adoring parents and a best friend with whom he’d gotten into nothing but trouble.

Jesse.

More importantly, Mitch had claimed to want to recreate that experience with his own family—right down to the best friend and the trouble. She almost laughed at the spectacular failure he had made of that.

She remembered everything Jesse and Mitch had talked about that night in Germany. Every word was imprinted on her, including the directions for the shortcut between Mitch’s home and Jesse’s.

In this foreign territory, she longed for a trace of something familiar, even if it were only a tidbit from a story she’d heard months ago.

It had not been her intention to seek out Jesse’s house when she set out for her walk. But
standing on the sidewalk with nowhere to go, her heart became a compass.

She looked around to get her bearings. Mitch’s street ended in a forested dead end and she walked toward it, then cut left across one dark lawn and another before finally jumping over a ditch to arrive at the next street. She turned right and saw a small house on the corner with a broken front window.

Jesse’s childhood home. Interior lamps cast a shallow pool of light on the porch through the damaged glass and a ladder leaned against the side of the house.

Her heart faltered, her breath clogged in her throat. Her skin pricked as blood rushed through her veins and the world seemed to swim.

Someone was home.

The house surely belongs to someone else
now
, she told herself, but her feet suddenly had wings. She crossed the street, hoping that somehow Jesse was there. The sidewalk ended abruptly and she stood on the grass in front of the house.

On the porch, a man sat in a rocking chair with his head in his hands. She couldn’t see his face, but chills ran down her arms, across her chest.

He leaned back in his chair, resting his head so he could look up at the sky. The light from the house that fell through the broken window illuminated part of his face—a long straight nose, and a strong chin, hair that gleamed black.

Jesse
.

He was here.

She could have dissolved with relief while joy and hope nearly lifted her off her feet.

A dog lying beside him lifted his nose and barked once.

“Rachel?” Jesse said, but his voice was a harsh whisper, practically a growl, and Julia realized he stared at where she stood in the shadows.

He laughed, a weary broken chuckle and again something stirred in her memory. “Just come out, Rach. I’m too tired for this.”

“I’m not Rachel,” she said as she crossed the dark lawn. She took a step into the pool of light and smiled. “Hello, Jesse.”

He stood quickly and the chair tipped sideways. He took a lurching step to the left and looked as though he were going to fall, so Julia leaped forward to help him, but he caught himself against the railing.

“Is this a joke?” he barked.

J
ESSE BLINKED
and shook his head, horrified that the pain meds had managed to crack the lock on this particular fantasy.

Julia Adams.

Close enough to touch. Her short blond hair gleamed in the low light and her skin looked like velvet, cream velvet.

No wonder people get addicted to these
drugs
. He wondered what he could do with this vision, if he could spend the rest of his life high enough to keep seeing this woman.

“Jesse?” She put her hand on his arm and the touch of her cool skin against his overheated flesh slammed him back to reality.

He pulled away, limping backward, his fantasy now a nightmare. “What are you doing here?”

Her brow furrowed. “I’m, ah,” she stuttered and wrapped an oversized brown sweater around her lithe body, as though it would provide protection against him. “Ben and I are visiting Mitch’s parents.”

Ben. Right. The kid. Mitch’s kid. Another life he’d ruined.

“What are you doing
here?
” His voice grated through his throat—every effort to talk hurt. The doctor had told him he shouldn’t overwork his damaged larynx. He wondered what the
good doctor would think if he started screaming. “On my porch.”

Rachel. The house. And now this.

“I was just out for a walk—I—Jesse?” She smiled, clearly trying to get this little reunion back on track. “I can’t believe that you’re here. This is amazing.”

She took a step toward him, her hand out. But if she touched him, he would shatter. He took another staggering step backward.

“Are you okay?” she asked, her head tilted in concern.

“Fine,” he lied quickly, not wanting to see her concern turn to pity. “I’m drunk,” he lied.

“Jesse,” she whispered, her smile hesitant and somehow beseeching. He knew what she wanted. She wanted him to
remember
what he was trying so hard to forget.

He made the mistake of looking into her endless blue eyes and he saw exactly what he had seen when he met her for the first time.

A million missed opportunities. A thousand unanswered prayers and unspoken wishes.

He’d been kicked in the gut when Mitch opened that door and introduced the woman of Jesse’s dreams as his own wife.

And now fate had brought her here to finish Jesse off.

Just in time, the drugs kicked in with a vengeance, the world wavered and he felt himself sliding along with it, carried on the sudden wave of painlessness.

“Sit down,” she urged, picking up the rocker he’d knocked over.

Defeated by the pain meds and the appearance of every damn ghost he was trying to outrun, he dropped into the old wooden chair like a stone.

“Last I heard you were still in the hospital,” she said, once he was seated.

“I left two weeks ago,” he whispered.

“Are you okay—I mean, all right? Your knee and—”

“I’m fine.”

She smiled and then laughed nervously. The sound lifted him up, made him weightless.

I’m doing better than Mitch
, he thought just to remind himself who was the bad guy in this scene.

“Do you mind if I sit? Just for a minute.”

He couldn’t say no. She was the way she’d been in Germany—so hungry for company that she’d sit down with the devil just for some conversation.

He simply nodded, worried that if he opened his mouth, words he barely allowed himself to think would fly out.

When she sat on the step and wrapped the sweater around her legs, resting her chin on her knees, Jesse let himself go. He let go of all the mistakes he had made and the ghosts that were catching up with him. He left the broken and battered shell of his body and allowed himself to be a man on a porch enjoying the evening with the woman of his dreams. He let possibility and hope hover close. The what-ifs he refused to think about settled on his shoulders like snow.

What if she were here to give him a second chance? What if life weren’t as cruel as he had always thought? What if it were possible for him to be forgiven?

“I didn’t know you’d left Germany,” he said, engaging in conversation even though he knew it was a bad idea. He remembered everything she’d said in Germany. All the small hints and gifts of herself she’d made during those brief twenty-four hours. He knew she hated mushrooms, couldn’t sing, loved to run.

He knew she was so lonely she cried most nights.

“There was nothing keeping me there,” she sighed. “I didn’t have many friends and my mom was back and forth between Iraq and D.C., so I decided to come here.”

“Looking for a family?” he asked, the drugs making him loose and careless.

She smiled at him. “Constantly. You want to adopt us?” She joked but it fell flat in the thick air.

No, sweetheart
, he thought, reminded of all the things he really wanted to do to her.

Wain stood up from his spot at Jesse’s side with a groan and shuffled over to Julia. He sniffed her, must have decided she was okay and collapsed on the step above her.

She smiled and scratched the old guy’s ears.

“Nice dog,” she said.

“He’s yours if you want him,” Jesse said, though his hand itched with a sudden desire to scratch those old ears.

Wain curled up into a ball and soon started to snore.

“Have you heard anything about Caleb?” Julia asked quietly. “I called the hospital a few times to check on him, but then I got so busy with—”

“Still in the coma.” He was reluctantly
touched that she would keep tabs on the survivors of the accident that had killed her husband. Touched, but not surprised. Julia was a good person. Good in a way most people never were. In a way he never dreamed of being.

He’d stopped checking in on Caleb, mostly because he, Jesse Filmore, was a coward. He’d already killed three men in that accident, he didn’t want to know about the death of another one added to his conscience.

“I got your note,” Julia said. She referred to the stupid, morphine-induced lapse of judgment that had resulted in him asking a nurse to write a note to send to Julia. A sympathy card. He couldn’t even remember what he’d said. “It really helped.” She sighed heavily and smiled at him.

He looked away and said nothing. What could he say?
I’ve thought of you every day for
months. I wish I’d never met you
.

“That night in Germany seems like a million years ago, doesn’t it?” She rested her cheek against her knee and watched him, her blue eyes glowing with things he refused to recognize.

Seems like yesterday
, he thought but didn’t say.

“I couldn’t believe it when Mitch showed up
out of the blue, and with you, no less.” She chuckled and rubbed her nose on her knee as if she were scratching an itch.

The desire to touch her was so strong he could taste it, bitter and hot in the back of his throat. Thanks to meds, everything had a rosy sort of glow, a sparkle, and she was so damn gorgeous—although she would have been so even without the effect of medication.

“We didn’t get a lot of warning about the assignment,” he told her, his tongue seeming to function its own. “It was real quick.”

“I’ll say. It was all real quick.” She sighed.

Their briefing had taken all of two days and then they were gone. And Mitch was dead. Real quick.

“We had fun though, didn’t we?” she asked.

“It was the wine,” he said, though Mitch had been the only one who’d drank it.

“It was the company. And the stories.” She pulled at a thread in the hem of the sweater. “Those stories Mitch told about you guys growing up and all the trouble you got into.”

“Mitch got us in trouble, I was just the cleanup.” The official blame-taker. No one had believed the troubled kid with the drunk for a father and everyone had believed the star football player who could always outrun the cops.

“Come on,” she teased. “Mitch said painting the water tower was your idea.”

He smiled, remembering. “Yeah, you’re right.”

There had been good times with Mitch. His wild streak had called out to Jesse’s own and in high school there was nowhere he’d rather have been than causing trouble with Mitch.

Mitch, however, had adopted that wildness as his life mission. Jesse found that, by default, he’d still been expected to clean up after his old buddy, long after the thrill had worn off for him.

She wrapped her arms around her knees and lifted her feet a little off the step so she balanced on her butt.

“Mitch told me you were a dancer,” Jesse blurted.

Julia shook her head, her eyes suddenly darker. “My husband said a lot of things…most of them not true.”

“He wasn’t known for his honesty.”

Julia’s eyes got sadder and Jesse could feel sympathy churn through his gut. The silence stretched and he watched her profile, the sweet line of her cheek, her nose. The perfect rose of her mouth. He was the only other person in the world who knew what Mitch was really like—
and high on painkillers he couldn’t deny her the small bit of comfort she clearly needed.