Keep You (28 page)

23

Now

             
Jo was numb. At some point between falling into a limp, dead sleep, Tam’s uneven, drunk breath whispering past her ear, and stirring in the cold, drizzling gray light of dawn, all of her anxiety, stress and anguish had reached critical mass and then simply vanished. As she sat in a padded, red leather salon chair and watched three women – one at each hand and one at her feet – try to get the mud from beneath her nails, she was blessedly empty inside. She knew it was her body’s self-defense mechanism – to keep her from spiraling further into the sad sack land of self-pity, her mind had wrapped all of her emotional baggage in tin foil and hidden it away to be analyzed later. For the moment, she was left with this false sense of calm. A topical anesthetic over all her hurts.

             
It wasn’t good for her. Her uncomplaining morning spent with the bridesmaids and Delta was proof that she wasn’t coping well. For now, though, she would enjoy the numbness.

             
“When was the last time you had a pedicure?” Number Six, a dainty little brunette with heavy blonde highlights said from the neighboring chair. She had her nose wrinkled up, her beady, dark eyes trained on Jo’s feet.

             
“This is my first.”

             
The salon tech down at her toes shot her an arched-eyebrow look that said
I never would have guessed,
and kept at it with the pumice stone.

             
“Never?” Six’s mouth fell open in shocked disgust. “As in…never ever? Like, at all?”

             
“Never ever, like, at all,” Jo repeated flatly. The girl at her left hand dug too deep beneath her thumb nail with that dirt scraper of hers and she winced. How did women sit through this every two weeks?

             
“Well then…who does your nails?”

             
“I do.”

             
“But…
why
?” Poor little Six; this was more than her brain could handle.

             
“Because a manicure is forty bucks and a bottle of nail polish is two-ninety-nine.”

             
A nasty, high pitched chuckle echoed across the salon and Jo knew it belonged to Regina before she glanced her way. Billingsly’s on-site salon was on the first floor, down the hall from the gym and art studio, done up in white marble with antique maple makeup stations. It had French Renaissance style and modern appointments. The stools were situated in a large circle, which made for a perfect conversation among large parties of guests. Unfortunately, it fostered interaction among people who didn’t necessarily like each other too.

             
“What?” Six asked.

             
“Don’t ask Jo embarrassing questions,” Regina said and wiggled down deeper into her stool with a smug look on her face. The drizzle that continued this morning had wreaked havoc on her hair and she’d slicked it with so much gel she had a Weird Al thing going on.

             
“Why would it be embarrassing?” Jess asked. Her nails were done, the requisite nude color Delta had ordered, and her hands were in her lap while a tech finished up with her navy blue toes. Her green laser stare was trained on Regina, the set of her lips unforgiving.

             
“You don’t ask someone why she doesn’t take care of herself,” she said, rolling her eyes, “you just assume she doesn’t give a shit.”

             
“Oh.” Jess feigned enlightenment and Jo bit her lip to keep from grinning. “So, nails are one of those important things.” Regina shrugged. “Like, say, getting your hair trimmed and showering and
watching your weight
.”

             
Someone let out a startled snort of laughter, but quickly squelched it. Regina went blank-faced, and then blushed. “Nails are about hygiene.”

             
“Right.” Jess nodded. “And weight is about life span.”

             
“Is it true?” Six, bless her stupid little heart, looked to Jo, earnest. “You don’t care?”

             
Jo sighed. “I work with animals, so having fancy nails makes no sense.”

             
Six blinked.

             
“Work with animals how?” Eleven asked with minimal interest. None of the rest of them handled anything living, maybe just some paperwork and the checks they wrote their housekeepers.

             
“I’m a vet tech.”

             
“What’s that mean?” Eight asked.

             
Jo wished she’d kept her mouth shut. She should have pretended to be asleep in the chair, God knew she needed the rest anyway. “I give the animals injections and take samples, prep them for surgery, monitor them post-op, do minor procedures. Help the vet with whatever he needs.”

             
Regina sniggered. “You’re a dog nurse. That’s priceless.”

             
Jo felt a little bit of her numbness ebbing as everything that was wrong tested the seams she’d sewn around it all. She took a deep breath. Jessica was asking her a silent question with her eyes.

             
You want me to wreck this bitch?

             
She shook her head.

             
“So,
anyway
,” Two said in a clear change of subject. “What I wanna know, Jo, is how you bagged Ryan Atkins for the weekend.”

             
Eleven curious pairs of eyes locked onto her like guided missile sights. Jo shrugged. “He just wanted to add a dumpy chick to his list of priors. I really don’t care about him, so any of you girls is welcome to take him off my hands.”

             
Those eleven pairs of eyes blinked stupidly.

             
“Are you insane?”

             
“He’s gorgeous!”

             
“I’ve been dying to go out with him.”

             
“That’s just stupid.”

             
She’d expected as much, all of them chattering at once, words like “lunatic” being bandied about alongside “man candy” and “total catch.”

             
Only Regina didn’t participate, and when the noise had died to a low murmur, she lifted her nose and said, “Ryan Atkins isn’t the
only
groomsmen worth looking at, girls…”

             
Jo swallowed reflexively and recalled Jordan’s comment over beers the other night just before Six asked Regina who she meant.

             
The maid of honor smiled a false, unattractive smile, like the lucky bastard in question was already as good as hers. “Tam Wales.”

             
Jo felt like she was going to be sick as some of the tightly wrapped self-control shook loose and myriad images of the night before went tumbling through her mind. The way each flash of lightning carved across the bunch and grab of the muscles that strained beneath his skin. The way he kept murmuring “sorry” against her neck. She met Jess’s gaze and saw the sympathy shining in her sister’s eyes.

             
Appreciative tongue clicking echoed through the salon. “He turned Ryan’s face into hamburger, though,” One said. Jo hadn’t seen it yet, but she assumed it wasn’t pretty.

             
“’Gina likes hamburger,” a sinister, mean whisper hissed over the marble. Jo didn’t know where it came from, but it made Regina’s cheeks flame.

             
“Tam’s pretty hot,” Five said with a big valley girl smile and hair toss. “He’s got that whole bad boy thing going on.” Something Jo had never paused to consider, but she guessed, if you tallied up his external qualities, that’s what most girls were bound to think. “He could pound on me whenever he wants.”

             
Jo watched the first coat of navy go down on her toenails and felt itchy and raw inside, a scab that needed picking. So much for being numb…

             
She knew, without question, that Tam had not suffered from the same sexual repression that she had over the past four years. While the thought of other men had left her cold and shaking, he’d undoubtedly been drowning himself in women. He was, after all, hot. No one with that hair and eye color combo went unnoticed when he sidled up to a bar and started scanning the crowd. And he had a lethal way of tipping his head just a fraction and smiling in that lazy, relaxed way of his that blew all the sweaty, meathead jocks out of the water when it came to charm.

             
Jessica, reading all the emotions that flickered across Jo’s face, cleared her throat loudly. “You’re all SOL. I’ve got it on good authority that Tam already has himself a girl.”

             
Oh, Jess…not this…

             
“What kind of authority?” Regina wanted to know.

             
“He’s practically family. I know these things.”

             
Regina’s eyes narrowed to suspicious slits and then cut toward Jo.
Oh, please don’t
. Delta saved them – or her, rather – arriving with a little clip-clip of heels, Maureen the wedding planner at her side, pen tucked behind her ear.

             
“Ladies,” Delta greeted, all cool calm and sophistication. But Jo saw the undercurrent of tension that left her expression stiff, her fingers a little too tight in the porkchop pockets of her designer crops. She reached to fiddle with one gold hoop earring, what Jo guessed to be a trademark nervous tic. “How’s it going?”

             
A chorus of “fine” and “great” and “wonderful” left her nodding. “Good.” Her hands came together and she laced and unlaced her fingers. She was really worked up about something. “Maureen’s just informed me that there’s another wedding being held on the property on Saturday.”

             
“They booked before Ms. Brooks did, aye,” Maureen said and reached to straighten the reading glasses that were perched on her nose.

             
“Which means.” Delta sounded like she was talking through her teeth. “That we can’t hold the wedding on the mezzanine like we planned.”

             
“Only because the other couple booked before, ya see,” Maureen said. “I told Ms. Brooks that before, I did.”

             
“No.” Her patience was the false, about to snap kind. “You told my mother. And my mother has no idea what we’d planned.”

             
“But like I just told Ms. Brooks,” Maureen was speaking to the group as a whole, “there’s a lovely spot out by the lough, there is, and we have weddings there all the time. We have the tents and the boardwalk and all that, so it’ll be grand, it will.”

             
Delta closed her eyes and folded her hands together, taking deep breaths in through her mouth. “So long as it doesn’t rain, sure, grand.”

             
Maybe it was the night she’d had before, the way her life seemed determined to go the way she didn’t want it to, but for the first time in, well, ever, she almost felt a little sorry for Delta. With stress lines plucking at the corners of her eyes and parentheses grooves framing her painted lips, she looked like a human being and not a magazine cutout.

             
“It’ll be fine, Delt,” Regina said in a bored tone.

             
“Yeah,” three of the others chimed in, seemingly unconcerned.

             
“The green dresses will look nice against the lake,” Jo said before she could stop herself, thinking that a bit of actual encouragement might take the edge off some of the panic that was building up in the bride the same way clouds were once again banking up over the lake to the west.

             
“Of course they will,” Delta snapped. Her eyes flipped open. “They look good against everything.” She glared at Jo. “I didn’t ask your opinion anyway.”

             
And just like that, any chance for sisterly bonding was gone.

**

              Even behind sunglasses, Tam’s eyes felt full of needles. It had taken a Herculean effort, and a lot of aspirin, and Jordan had lingered outside the bathroom door with a motherly look on his face to ensure he didn’t pass out and bust his head open in the shower, but he was vertical now and dressed if nothing else. The aspirin had dulled his headache to something akin to the distant thump of artillery fire. Jo’s toothbrush (he made a mental note to buy her another) had taken the puke taste out of his mouth, but his tongue was still carpet. And his stomach rolled as he contemplated the fish and chips the Billingsly bartender had brought him without even being asked. “It’ll help, lad,” he’d said, and left a pint of Guinness at his elbow. Tam leaned back in his chair and picked up the beer.