Two Weeks (23 page)

I'm kind of relieved to hear that Curtis is taking off.

"I'll
try
to make it to the fight on Saturday. Always excited to see you dish out some whoop-ass, brother. But Jenny's in-laws are gonna be in town, so I can't guarantee anything."

Jackson laughs and they both stand up.

"It was a pleasure meeting you, Ally," Curtis says. "You keep old Jackson here in check for me, all right? Deep down, he's nothing but a big baby."

I feign a smile and nod. "Yeah, of course I will. Nice meeting you too."

They walk out past the garage together, and then Jackson returns alone. I don't move the whole time, transfixed by the slowly setting sun.

"He's a little crazy. I'm sorry," Jackson says. "He's like a business associate, and he's always wanting to 'go out for drinks' when business is done. But I could only have one because of my weigh-in tomorrow."

"Sure," I say quietly. "And you were wrong about the garage—he definitely saw something." The words come out before I think about them.

Jackson's expression turns pallid, like he knows exactly what's up. "Wait, were you listening to our conversation?"

I shrug. I'm kind of in too deep right now, and I figure there isn't much I can do. "I heard some things," I say. "But I didn't mean to."

"Well, Curtis is kind of obnoxious sometimes. He says sleazy things, but he'd never actually cheat on his wife. And I didn't say anything anyway. My lips were sealed." He pauses, looks down at the ground, and then returns his eyes to mine. "I
thought
you looked a little out of it."

"Can I just ask what that's like? I mean, you've been with a lot of women, right?" Curiosity has overtaken me. "You used to tell him about it?"

Jackson gives me an annoyed look. "Not as many as you'd think. And yeah, I've told him some things. But just general stuff. It always makes his day."

"What does
general stuff
mean?" I ask, intending to sound harmless.

"Well, general stuff," he repeats. "Like 'I fucked the hot blonde backstage.' I'm not giving him every detail or anything. And I'd never tell him anything about you, I swear."

"I believe you," I say. "I just don't know anything about this stuff."

"Well, fine." He looks uncomfortable, like I've forced him to reveal a very shameful side of himself. "You're also not a guy."

"I'm sorry," I say. "I didn't mean to be snooping around or anything. I went out to grab something from my car, and then I heard him talking about me and I froze up."

Jackson laughs. "Yeah, just ignore him. He's my sparring partner, that's all. And I'll try to remember better next time."

"I guess I'm just glad he didn't show up ten minutes earlier." I say, realizing that our close call could have been much worse than it was. I laugh nervously at the thought.

We head inside and have a quick shower and dinner—again, he's eating so little and it's driving me crazy; but I know it's not my place to tell him how to train—before retiring to the couch to watch several movies back-to-back. After so much activity today, it's the only thing that makes sense to me.

And then Jackson carries me into his bed and slowly makes love to me until I can't see straight anymore.

Although I haven't been home at all today, I'm not about to go there now.

***

F
riday morning, we wake together and go for a run. I decide to head home after that, just to check in since I don't want my family to panic. Jackson seems fine with this; he's got this unshakeable notion that he's under-trained and overweight, so I allow him to do what he needs to do by himself.

Plus, he has to go do his weigh-in for the fight tomorrow, so he promises to call me as soon as he's done.

I park on the street since my parents' Honda Pilot is in the driveway with the trunk wide open. My dad is going in and out of the house and he barely seems to notice me as I pull up. I remember that my mom told me they might be leaving for the weekend and suddenly put two and two together and wind up with four.

"Hi, dad," I call as I get out of my car. He's inside again before I get a response.

I climb the steps of the porch and carry my backpack inside. I nearly collide with my dad. He's carrying his golf clubs, and dressed in a pair of khakis and a striped blue golf shirt. "Oh, hi, hon," he says. "We're just packing." He's got some fresh stubble on his face, a definite indication that he's on vacation.

"Oh yeah," I say. "You're going up north this weekend then?"

"For a few days at least. Your mom wants to do some shopping, and I want to do some golfing. We're meeting Mark and Ann Benton up there too. House to yourself. Don't party too hard," he says jokingly, disappearing out the front door.

I turn and almost run into my mom, the second parental obstacle that nearly topples me. "Hey, mom," I say. She's got a good sized Vera Bradley leather handbag slung over her arm, and appears to be struggling with it.

"Hi, Ally," she says. "I left the number for the cabin on the counter."

"You guys won't have your cell phones?" I ask. Somewhere in the middle of the interaction, my dad sneaks in and grabs my mom's handbag off her arm. It all happens automatically.

"Reception gets spotty up there. Anyhow, we're running late. We'll be back on Monday. Love you!"

I nod at her tidbits of information and give her a quick hug. "Okay," I say. "Love you too. Try to have some fun. Let dad relax for once."

"I'll do my best," she says and heads out the front door. It automatically closes with a
thud
and a few minutes later I see their vehicle zooming out of the driveway. I sigh and sit down at the kitchen island. It's so weird having my old house to myself after being gone for the last couple of days.

It reminds me of how lonely my place is going to be in Boston when I get back.
Ugh.

I take a shower and then do some easy reading on the back porch, catching up with the characters in the fantasy novel I've been reading in my limited free time. The constant activity of animals makes it hard to pay attention sometimes, but eventually, I manage to finish a couple of chapters in the book.

I take a break to check my email; I haven't looked at it in a couple of days.

I scroll down through Boston pizza offers until I find Max's latest message. I don't bother clicking it after seeing the preview in which he says
I'm sorry
about two-hundred times. I delete it.

I wonder how long he'll keep sending me messages.

When I set my phone back down, I notice a group of rabbits devouring some of my mother's plants in the garden. I have to take preventative action. They're cute, but destructive.

"Hey, get the hell away from there!" I shout. They freeze. I run through the yard in my bare feet until they disperse into the field.

I saunter back to the deck and sit down, keeping one eye on the garden at all times.

My phone buzzes shortly after that and it's Jackson calling. I tell him about my uneventful afternoon and invite him over for dinner.

I continue reading on the deck, watching for rogue rabbits in my peripheral vision. They start creeping up again, and after losing myself in a particularly exciting chapter, they're back eating my mother's precious garden. I set the book down and prepare to fight back.

Back into the grass I creep, stopping to turn on the hose. I grab the nozzle and stealthily head toward the feasting rabbits, ready to spray them. They're mindlessly munching on radish greens and I'm going to stop them.

I'm tensed up, certain that I'm going to hit them with a good shot. I aim the nozzle and prepare to fire when suddenly someone shouts right next to me.

"Boo!"

Shocked, I clench the handle, firing a stream of water toward the unexpected sound. And then I fall right on my ass.

It's Jackson, standing no more than ten feet from me—and now his black t-shirt and shorts are totally soaked. I was so caught up in the rabbit hunt that he got this close without me noticing at all.

"Jackson!" I whine. I remain, defeated, on the ground.

"What the hell are you doing out here?" he asks, laughing and pulling at his wet shirt. "Jesus, you're crazy. That's not actually going to stop an attacker, by the way."

"Rabbits," I say, panting. "They're eating mom's garden." Jackson gives me a hand and I take it, allowing the hose to fall limply into the grass. "Are they gone?"

"Yeah," he says, continuing to laugh at me.

"I can always spray you again, if you'd like, you ass." I start to kneel toward the hose, but he stops me.

"No, that's just about enough. And there's some dirt on your shorts," he says, pointing at the spots.

"Well,
yours
are soaked with water."

I shut off the water and we head inside to clean up. I throw him some towels and work on the dirt spots with a stain bar in the laundry room. After I throw on another pair of shorts, I meet Jackson in the living room.

"I can't believe I'm here," he says. "Never thought I would ever be in this house again."

"Is that a good thing or a bad thing?" I ask. Jackson's looking at Jeff's family photo on the fridge, studying it like it's CliffsNotes and he's underprepared for an exam tomorrow morning.

"So many memories here. Is the TV still in the basement?"

"Yeah," I say. "It's a flat-screen now. My dad decided to upgrade it, even though he rarely watches anything down there."

"This is gonna sound weird," he says, "but the first porn I ever saw was down there with your brother. We used to watch the softcore stuff on Cinemax. We always put something innocent on flashback, like a shopping channel in case somebody came downstairs." Making the vibe even weirder, he takes off his shirt and hangs it over a chair to dry.

"Seriously?" I ask, giggling. "Did anyone ever come downstairs?"

"Yeah, but we were always ready. Two pre-teen boys watching QVC at midnight on a Friday night was probably a dead giveaway, but we didn't think it through any further than that. Should have used MTV or something." Jackson pauses and appears to be contemplating something. "Y'know, that was like my first real introduction to sex."

"That's gross," I say. "You and Jeff watching porn together in this house." I shake my head in disgust.

"That was it," he says chidingly. "We
watched
, nothing else. It's like any other movie, except it's full of non-penetrative sex." Jackson starts laughing again. "I guess it
is
kind of gross, huh?"

I scoff at him. "Yes, yes it is. So do you have any other fond memories of my brother? Memories that don't involve watching porn, maybe?"

"Of course I do," he says. "We masterminded the biggest senior prank the school had ever seen."

"I can't remember it," I say. "Remind me."

"Oh, it was great," he says. "We found these nudie playing cards at a flea market. Like cases and cases of them for like three dollars apiece. So we got them and dumped them all over the floors and all of the staff were scrambling to pick them up, trying to make sure nobody could see what was on them. It was like X-rated carpeting all down the halls and into the gym."

"Actually, I do remember hearing about that," I say. "But I think I was at some National Honor Society thing when it happened."

"It was a good prank. No one got hurt. No animals got hurt either. We spent so many nights trying to plan the damn thing. I can't believe we cared that much." Jackson rubs his forehead as if he's massaging the very memory he just shared.

"I don't know why people do that anyway," I say. "Just creating a huge mess. And I guess a story to tell."

Jackson leans up against our center island in the kitchen. "Yeah, I don't know either. I definitely felt bad for Principal Richards. His face flushed bright red after he saw what was on the cards. I actually thought he was going to have a heart attack and die in a pile of dirty playing cards."

"You're lucky as hell that he didn't," I say sharply. "You might have been charged with complicity to murder."

"That's a good point," he says.

"So are all of your memories about sex?" I ask with subtle hostility. "I'm seeing a theme here."

Jackson smiles and laughs at me. "It was pure chance with the cards, since we randomly found them. And I mean, you're asking me to go back to a time when I was a teenage boy. Sex was a huge deal back then. Wasn't it huge for you when you lost your virginity?"

I'm mid-gulp when he says this, and the water goes down the wrong pipe. I start coughing and make some unintelligible grunt.

"Are you all right?" he asks, casually watching me suffer.

"Yes," I choke out. "One sec." I hold my arms above my head and then slowly breathe. He waits patiently while I recover. "Okay, so what were we talking about?" I hope he got distracted and forgot.

"About losing our respective virginities." He's laser precise.

"I think I need to sit down," I say. I walk out into the living room and sit down on the couch. Jackson takes the chair directly across from me. "I don't really want to talk about that. It was awkward."

"Aww, c'mon." He playfully urges me on, grinning from ear-to-ear. "I'm not going to make fun of you or anything. It's fun to go back and reminisce about these things sometimes."

"If it's so damn fun, why don't you tell me about
your
first time?" I stare back at him, waiting for his response.

"Okay," he says. "I was sixteen. It was with Rachel Connor. Her parents went out of town and we planned this whole big thing—"

"Rachel Connor?" I ask, cutting him off. "She was your first girlfriend?
Really?
"

"Not my first girlfriend, but the first girl I had sex with," he says. "She was really into me for some reason. I mean, I was becoming a football star and all of that. And she basically threw herself at me. Plus, she had a vagina, and that was good enough for me at the time."

I waggle my eyebrow. "What a great guy," I say sarcastically.

"
Anyway
," he says, continuing, "we planned this whole big romantic thing out because her parents were gone until the next day. I struggled to put on the condom for like five minutes and then I finished in less than one. Less than ten total thrusts," he says, feigning pride. "We continued having sex like that until we broke up about two months later. I don't think she got off a single time, yet she always wanted to have sex. I don't get it."