Plain Jayne

“Jayne!”

Half-hidden in the growing shadows of the store-lined street, and almost four years since Jayne had last seen him, the walk was still the same; left hand tucked down the front pocket of his jeans and a slight limp on the right.

Nick Scott.

He shuffled to a stop a couple feet away from her, hesitated, then stood there with an awkward half smile, half wince like he wasn’t sure if it would be okay to hug her or if he should duck in case she took a swing at him. It wasn’t that she hadn’t thought about punching him—and hard—over the last four years, but this was Nick.

She couldn’t very well stay mad at her best friend forever.

But best friend or not, that didn’t mean Jayne wanted him hugging her right there in the middle of Main Street, for Pete’s sake. He’d do it anyway, it was just a matter of when, and even though she knew it was coming, Jayne wasn’t ready. She never was. The only thing she could do was resort to her usual defense: crossed arms, a sigh, and a smirk.

“You can never just stick to a plan, can you? I said I’d call when I got here.”

“You also said you’d be here by one and it’s …” Nick tapped his watch, held it up to his ear, then tapped it again, his eyes softening into a mocking grin as he did. “Look at that—two fifteen.”

He held his hands out, palms up, and started toward her. Jayne took a step back but not fast enough. He was already hugging her. Tight. And right in the middle of the sidewalk for all the lookie-loos to see.

“Welcome home, Jayne.” His arms were like a vise; not letting up even after she’d given him her token pat and let her arms fall.

Jittery laughter caught in her throat, trapped by an avalanche of emotion she was wholly
unprepared for. Gillette Foamy, sunshine, and sawdust; it was the combined scent that had always been his, the one she’d tried so hard to put out of her mind, and failed so miserably at.

“I … can’t … breathe.” She squirmed and twisted until his grip began to ease, albeit slowly. Finally free, Jayne retreated a step, scowled at him through her grin, and tried to ignore the stares from the two old guys outside the hardware store across the street. Thackery and Thayer Ostlund never missed a thing that happened downtown. They’d opened that store long before Jayne had been born and the only way they’d leave was in side-by-side pine boxes.

In unison, the twin brothers grinned and waved, which Jayne returned with a chuckle and an added eye roll.

“Great. Back in town two minutes and by this time tomorrow, T-Squared’ll have everyone thinking we were having sex on the sidewalk.”

“Look at you.” Nick’s grin warmed as his gaze moved over her face, completely oblivious to the old guys’ stares. “You look great.”

Jayne snorted and adjusted the brim of her faded blue ball cap. “No one looks great after being on the road for three days.”

“You do.”

If this is what he thought
great
looked like, he obviously needed a good optometrist. Her hair was at least six months past its last cut, her face hadn’t seen makeup since Christmas, and the only good thing she could say about her clothes was that the rip across her knee was from constant wear and washes, and not from the ten pounds she’d gained since the last time she saw him.

Nick, on the other hand, looked just as good now as he had in high school; maybe better. His thick dark hair was still short and untidy, the little gold and green flecks in his eyes seemed to have darkened a bit, and his Garth Brooks T-shirt fit him better now than it did when she bought it for him senior year.

Who kept T-shirts for that long? And, more to the point, who could still fit into them?

His awkward smile returned, bringing with it a shadow that fell over his eyes, a worry that could only mean one thing.

“Oh no.” Jayne shook her head slowly, trying to warn him off with a wide-eyed glare. “Don’t even—”

“I’m really sorry.”

Damn it. Normal people waited until they were somewhere a little more private, but that’s not how Nick worked. He’d never cared what anyone else thought of him. If he wanted to hug someone, he did it, if he wanted to say something, he said it, and he never gave a good hot damn where he was or who was watching.

“Yeah,” Jayne muttered. “The first three hundred apologies made that pretty clear.”

“Phone calls and emails don’t count.”

“Some were texts. And those first few came with flowers.” She pulled her key ring out of her pocket and twirled it around her index finger until Nick grabbed it and held it still.

“Jayne.”

“Nick.” She tipped her face up to his and offered him the same mocking little grin he’d flashed her a minute ago. Didn’t work. The worry lingered in his eyes, his mouth twisted a little to the right. If she gave even the slightest hint at how much he’d hurt her, she’d no doubt find herself back in his vise grip until every one of her ribs popped. Best to dismiss it—and quickly.

“So you kicked me out of your wife’s funeral in front of a church full of people. Big deal. It’s not like it was the first time I was shown the door in this town.”

The green flecks in Nick’s eyes darkened and his jaw tightened, but before he said anything else, she yanked the key ring out of his grip and stared straight back at him.

“Seriously. Enough already.”

After a long exhale, he tipped his chin toward the papered-up storefront behind her. “You been inside?”

“No.” She hesitated, turned her gaze toward the old building. “Not yet.”

Water-stained brown paper covered the windows and door, and a thick layer of grime plastered the glass on the outside. How many times had she washed those windows? How many books had she displayed behind the glass and how many times had she taken the broom to those nasty cobwebs hanging from the shingle overhang?

Twelve years ago she’d stood in this exact spot when Gran shut the door behind her without so much as a goodbye, good luck, or kiss my ass. Over those dozen years, Jayne had come back to town a few times to see Nick, but as much as she’d wanted to, she’d never set foot back inside the store, and after being humiliated at Abby’s funeral four years ago, Jayne had made a point of avoiding the whole town in general.

There was no avoiding it now; it was long past time to accept the fact that Gran had never
loved her, and all those years of wishing for a normal family had been a waste of time.

Nick could hug her until the cows came home, it wouldn’t make a spit of difference now. Gran was dead and Jayne had no other family.

What she did have, though, was the bookstore. Eleven hundred square feet that had been her escape for so many years. If she closed her eyes, she could still tell exactly where and how deep each crack was in the plank floor, how many pocket books fit in any given section, and how many times the baseboard heaters clicked before they warmed up. Six on a normal day, eight in the dead of winter.

“Hey.” Nick’s voice, low and quiet, startled her back to the present. “You okay?”

“Yeah.”

He only hesitated a second. “Liar.”

Jayne chuckled through a snort and shrugged. “Yeah. Just seems weird to be back here now after everything.”

Pinching the key tightly, she slid it into the lock, then stopped. “When I picked up the key at the lawyer’s office,” she said, “he told me one of the building inspectors wants to meet me here on Tuesday morning to ‘go over some things,’ so I’m guessing there are a few problems.”

“Well, sure. The building’s old, and your gran’s had it locked up tighter than Fort Knox for … what … six, seven years at least. It’ll definitely need some work, but we’ll get in there before—”

“Easy there, Extreme Makeover.” Jayne held up her right hand. “Slide the hammer back into your tool belt and relax. All he said was that there’s been some kind of code violation, so there’s no need to get yourself all excited yet.”

“Violation?” Nick frowned. “What kind of violation?”

“He didn’t say, but I don’t want you to start swinging your hammer until I’ve had a chance to talk to him.”

“
We’ll
talk to him together,” Nick muttered. “And then we’ll fix whatever the problem is and the city can go to hell, just like your gran would have wanted.”

“Assuming it’s fixable, you mean.”

“Jayne. Your gran wouldn’t leave you the store if it was beyond repair.”

“Seriously?” Jayne snorted. “Gran’d do it just to spite me.”

Nick could give her all the guilt-inducing looks he liked; Jayne wasn’t about to pretend
the relationship she had with Gran was anything other than what it was.

“You were the one who grew up like Beaver Cleaver, Nick, not me, so let’s not kid ourselves here. She left me the store because her only other option was letting the city claim it after she died and we all know she’d rather hand it over to Satan’s spawn—
me
—than give it to the city.”

With a deep, steadying breath she pulled the door open, but only got a single step inside before she stopped. Something wasn’t right. With the windows papered up, she expected the place to be dark, but this was too dark. Suffocatingly dark.

And the smell!

Nick moved around her into the gloom and bobbed his head toward the wall. “Hit the light.”

Her hand instinctively reached out for the switch, but at the first whisper of cobweb against her hand, she jerked back.

“Guh!” Before she had time to find the flashlight app on her phone, Nick snickered, leaned behind her, and flicked the switch himself.

The lights stuttered on one at a time until the entire store—or what used to be the store—was bathed in twitching, yellowish fluorescent light.

“Oh my …” The rest of Jayne’s words got sucked out with her breath.

A thick blanket of gray dust covered everything—and there was
a lot
of everything. Boxes teetered in stacks almost ceiling high, huge green garbage bags bulged and spilled out through tears, newspapers, magazines, dishes, blankets, silk flowers, a toy shopping cart …

So. Much. Stuff.

There must be some mistake. This couldn’t be Gran’s store. What happened? Where were the bookshelves? Or the sales counter? For the love of God,
where was the floor?

The only empty spaces Jayne could see were the small bare spot they were standing on and a narrow path trampled between the stacks that led toward the back of the store. She didn’t know how long they stood there, but it was long after the door whooshed shut behind them that she finally blinked.