His One and Only (20 page)

Josie laughed. “You’re mixing up universes. DC and Marvel wouldn’t be happy.”

Colin shrugged. “Hey I got sucker punched and sucker kneed tonight. Cut this nerd some slack!”

Josie tilted her head to the side. “So all those hit records and this Captain America body and you still consider yourself a nerd?” she teased.

Colin’s smile dimmed. “Josie, I know what this looks like, the big career, the sold out stadiums.”

“The new body,” she added.

“The new body.”

“The big old honkin’ house you bought your mama.”

“The big old honkin’ house I bought my mama,” he repeated with a roll of his eyes.

“The high school girlfriends still pining after you. You know Mindy’s just dying for you to come by and see about her.”

Colin chuckled and nodded good-naturedly. “Okay, okay, I get it. It looks like I have everything now and I’m completely different.” His face grew serious then. “But Colin Fairgood, the skinny nerd you went in with on comic books every Wednesday because we couldn’t afford to buy them on our own, is still in here.”

“You’re still in there.”

Beau’s words from earlier suddenly echoed in her mind and brought tears to her eyes.

“What’s wrong?” Colin asked.

Josie shook her head and pasted a smile on her face. “Nothing,” she answered quickly. Then before he could ask any more questions, she pulled another Kleenex out of the marble tissue box and used it to extract the tissue plugs she’d made for his nose. “Looks like the bleeding’s stopped. That’s a good sign. But like I said, you should have a doctor look at it.”

“I got a diagnostic test I could run right now,” he said. “I mean if it was really broken, it would probably hurt like hell when I did this, right?”

Then he leaned forward and kissed her, not in the tentative way of the kid he’d been in high school, but in the sure way of the man he’d become since then.

BEAU WAS JUST ABOUT TO THROW BACK yet another shot of bourbon when a heavy hand landed on his shoulder. “Hey man, it’s me, Mac.”

He cursed. “Tell me Josie didn’t call you.”

“She didn’t call me, she
texted
me,” Mac answered. “Said I should come get you. I’m guessing she finally up and quit.”

Beau threw back the shot. “Yep. Somebody better came along. Colin-fucking-Fairgood. Can you believe that?”

“You mean that country singer, the one who did that one song with Roxxy Roxx? You serious, man?”

“Yeah, the country singer. He’s been after Josie since high school, and as soon as he found out she was free, he swooped in and took her from me.”

“That’s what she said?” Mac asked. “That she was quitting because she wanted to get with Colin Fairgood?”

“No, she said she didn’t like the way I was treating her. Said I deserve her. But that was bullshit. She split on me as soon as he showed up. Fucking Fairgood.” He tapped his empty shot glass on the bar and called out. “Bartender, I’m gonna need another one over here.”

“How much you had to drink, man?” Mac asked.

“I don’t know,” he answered. “A few shots. Ten. Maybe twenty.”

“Which one was it? Ten or twenty?” Mac sounded alarmed.

“You know he stole another one of my girlfriends back in high school.”

“What?”

“Fairgood. I should’ve punched him back then. Back when I could still see.” An idea suddenly occurred to him and he grabbed on to Mac’s arm. “You know what? Let’s go up to his room and beat the shit out of him.
Together
.”

“Uh, I don’t think so.”

“C’mon, Mac, for old times sake. Football player to football player. We can’t let the nerds win.”

“Sorry, man, my fighting days are over.” Mac tugged on his shoulders. “Let’s see if you can make it out to my car.”

Beau knocked Mac’s hands away. “Didn’t I fire you?”

“Yeah, but I’m doing this as a favor for Josie. A real big favor,” the older man muttered under his breath before trying to help him out of his seat again.

But Beau shook him off. “I don’t need your help anyway, ” he said, standing up by himself. “I’ll find Fairgood. Finish this fight and get a cab to take me home.”

And he would have, too, if the bourbon hadn’t caught up with him two steps into his mission. He staggered, felt his eyelids droop, and that was the last thing he remembered before waking up with a headache—one so powerful, he would have described it as blinding if he weren’t already blind.

“The hell…” he muttered, sitting up on his elbows.

Despite the lack of visual information, he immediately recognized that he was someplace different. The room just didn’t smell like his did. He groped around and his hands made contact with a smooth, satiny material. Also, this bedcover wasn’t the ridged one Josie had gotten for their bed.

Their bed.
When had he started thinking of it as their bed, and where was Josie—

Memories from last night flooded over him, intensifying the headache. He sat up fully then, grabbing his head on both sides.

“Mr. Prescott? You all right?”

It was Mac.

“Mr. Prescott was my father, and I’m nothing like him,” Beau answered, thinking of Josie’s words to him last night. He then pushed through the headache and asked, “Where’s Josie? I’ve got to talk to her.”

“I don’t know, sir. She didn’t answer her phone when I tried calling her after you passed out—”

“I passed out?”

“Yeah, you’re in a hotel room right now. The manager said your family was old friends of the owner.”

Beau nodded. It had been so long since he’d been out and about in Birmingham, he’d almost forgotten how many connections the Prescotts had.

He swung his feet over the side of the bed, ignoring the resulting hammer pounding inside his head, and flung himself out of the bed.

“Mr. Prescott, what are you doing?”

“I told you not to call me ‘Mr. Prescott.’” He had to find Josie. He had to—

He tripped over something bulky and unyielding. Then he cursed a blue streak when he landed, legs and arms akimbo on the floor. “What the fuck?” he yelled. “What the hell was that?”

“I think they’re called ottomans.”

“What’s it doing there in the middle of the room?”

“That’s where most folks keep ottomans, in the middle of the room.”

“Not at my house.”

“No, but that’s because, Josie…” Mac suddenly trailed off, as if saying Josie’s name out loud was verboten.

But Beau sat up and said. “Josie, what?”

“She told me not to tell you.”

“And you’re going to stick to that promise, because Josie was the one paying your salary? Oh, wait a minute. She wasn’t.”

Still, Mac sounded all kinds of hesitant when he said, “She did a few things over the last week to make you more comfortable at the house is all.”

“A few things like what?”

“You know, just a few things: pushed all the furniture up against the walls, replaced some of the bigger pieces with smaller ones so you wouldn’t stub your toes; put down carpet runners so it’d be easier for you get from place to place; put different air fresheners in different rooms, so you’d be able to smell which room was which; had all the hardwood floors carpeted when we were at our appointment in Birmingham; placed a white noise machine in your bathroom, so you’d instinctively know which way to go when you had to—well go; and put decorative gripping down in the tub, so you wouldn’t slip.”

Beau sat there frozen, his mouth hanging open.

Then Mac snapped his fingers. “Oh, and she also put magnet closures on all the drawers and cabinets, so you’d never walk into them. I think that’s all.”

“You still don’t deserve me,”
he heard Josie say again.

And that’s when it hit him. Really hit him. Losing Josie to Colin Fairgood wasn’t bad. It was worse than that. In fact, it was the worst thing that had ever happened to him. Even worse than his blindness. Because Josie was the best thing that had ever happened to him. And all he had ever been was an ass to her, and now she was gone.

“Mac you’re married to somebody blind, right? All this stuff Josie did for me... did you do the same for your wife?”

“Truth be told, Josie gave me a few ideas,” Mac admitted.

“She wouldn’t have done all that if she didn’t care about me, would she?”

“No, sir, I don’t think she would have.”

“And I drove her away.”

Beau fell back on the floor.

“Sir, are you all right?” Mac asked above him.

“No,” Beau answered, his voice terse. A clear and bright image of Josie crying in his arms the day before came back to him. How could he have let himself get out of control like that? How could he have pulled all that shit last night? How could he have been so blind in every sense of the word?

Josie had been right. About him. About everything. He didn’t blame her for going off with Fairgood, because he’d made one thing more than clear last night. He still didn’t come anywhere close to deserving her.

He set his jaw. “Mac,” he said. “I’ll take that help up now.”

Mac must have been standing above him the whole time, because he grabbed his arm and helped him stand up. And by the time he made it to his feet, the pounding headache was gone, almost as if it had been waiting for him to come to his senses before it let up.

“Tell me this,” he said to Mac. “If I wanted to figure out how to get rid of you, how would I go about doing that?”

“Are you asking how to fire me again, sir?” Mac asked.

“No, I’m asking how to make it so I don’t need you to get stuff done anymore.”

Mac still sounded confused when he answered. “Well, a lot of blind people live on their own. Hell, my wife could probably do it without me if she really wanted to, but that would mean you’d actually have to go about learning all that stuff you said you didn’t want to learn.” Something finally seemed to click for Mac and he said, “Wait up, are you saying you want me to teach you how to get around by yourself? Like a
real
blind person?”

Beau rubbed the back of his neck, feeling more than sheepish that he’d refused to put himself in that category when they’d first met. But he manned up and answered, “Yeah. Yeah, that’s exactly what I’m saying.”

CHAPTER 21

Six months later

“YOU SURE ABOUT THIS MAN?”
Mac asked when they pulled up to the Birmingham Grand six months later.

“More sure than I’ve ever been of anything in my life?” Beau answered.

Mac shook his head. Beau knew this because he could hear the sound of the man’s beard rubbing against his shirt. “Just the last time you were in this place, I ended up having to peel you off the bar floor.”

Beau stroked his chin, which he’d shaved this morning all by himself. It wasn’t the first time he’d done so, but it was the first time he’d gotten the job done without nicking himself or Mac having to wipe up any blood afterwards, so he’d been humming the
Rocky
theme rather triumphantly in his head all morning.

“I’ll be all right,” he told Mac.

He put his hand on the door handle and prepared to exit the car, but Mac said, “I could come with you.” He sounded less like the man who had been brutally training him to navigate in the real world and more like a fretful parent.

“I promise, I won’t pass out this time.”

“Yeah, but…”

He carefully turned his face toward Mac’s voice. “Mac, you’ve been training me for this moment for months now. Either you think I can do it or you don’t.”

The sound of Mac’s beard rubbing against his shirt came again, but eventually he said. “Okay, but don’t punch anybody out this time.”

He couldn’t quite promise that, so instead he opened the car door and boldly stepped out into the Alabama sunshine. It was early on in the summer, not to hot, not to cold. A perfect day. Maybe that was a good sign.

“Can I help you?” he heard a doorman say in the distance.

But waved him off. “I’m fine,” he said. Then he made sure his Bluetooth earpiece was secure before pulling out a device about the size of a pocket flashlight and running his thumb over a few braille buttons until he came to the one marked “on.” Pushing the button activated a green laser beam that turned the device into the high-tech version of a traditional white cane. It delivered information about possible barriers and distances back to him through his Bluetooth device. He could also use the camera inside the main body of the device to do practical things, like scan barcodes, count money, and even “read” back words on packaging, books, or just about anything else.

According to the entrepreneur who’d met with him to pitch the “eye saber,” this device was at the cutting-edge of low-vision technology and it would revolutionize the way the blind got around.

But Mac, who’d accompanied him to the meeting, had been more concerned with how cool it looked. “It’s like a light saber!” he said with such awe in his voice that Beau could easily imagine the little
Stars Wars
fan boy lurking inside of the older man.

A memory of all the times he and Josie had watched the original
Star Wars
trilogy together when they were kids came back to him, and that was all it took for him to agree to make a sizeable investment in the entrepreneur’s start-up. It wasn’t his first investment in the low vision market, and it probably wouldn’t be the last, since he was finding the role of a venture capitalist who invested primarily in blindness technology and research to be one that suited him.

But he was especially grateful for this particular investment, because the “eye saber” was now leading him back to Josie. The soft, computer voice spoke gently in his ear: “Check-in desk, approximately ten steps to your right.”

He followed the instructions, “checked in,” and eventually navigated himself inside an elevator with a penthouse key card in hand. His fingers found the braille “P” next to the button that would ferry him up to the floor where the penthouse suites were located. But it had taken a little more groping than usual to work out that he had to insert the key card the hotel had given him and keep it in there while pressing the “P” button, in order for the command to go through.