Текст книги "Near and Far"

Автор книги: Nicole Williams

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Текущая страница: 12 (всего у книги 20 страниц)

“You’ve just seemed a little . . . in your head, you know?”

Mom had nailed it. I’d been so in my head I was close to driving myself crazy. I knew exactly what she was asking—is your past back to haunt you?—and I know exactly how I wanted to answer—yes, please help me beat this—but the words wouldn’t form. I simply couldn’t admit all that I was struggling with: the ghosts of my past, my fears of one day not being enough for Rowen—would she outgrow me?—my growing fears of Jax and his motives for being in her life . . . insecurity after insecurity, fear after fear. The obstacles were so thick around me, I hadn’t been able to move—to breathe—in weeks. Nothing came easy anymore. Everything was a struggle.

“I’ll be okay, Mom.” I sounded more convincing than I felt.

“I know you will, Jesse. You’re one of the strongest people I know. I’m just worried about everything you might lose before you get back to being okay.”

I stood up. I couldn’t talk about any of it anymore. It was too much, too fast. “I’ve got this, Mom. It’s going to be all right.”

“Don’t let the things you think you need to do keep you from doing the things you actually need to. Okay? Fight for the things that matter—don’t waste your energy on the rest.”

I nodded and headed for the front door. “Thanks for the pie. I’ll have to have a piece for breakfast.”

“Jesse?” Mom said. I paused with my hand on the door. “You know I’m here whenever you need to talk, right?”

I was suddenly so exhausted, I could have collapsed right there. The day, the week, and the whole month had suddenly caught up to me, and the weight of it all was almost too much to bear. I needed to crawl into bed and sleep for five days straight . . . and then I remembered all that was waiting for me when I did fall asleep. I wanted to chug coffee to keep away from those dark places. “And you know that when I’m ready to talk, I will.”

SOME PEOPLE JUST seemed to come into my life exactly when I needed them. It’s like the universe’s way of handing me a solution to a problem in the form of a person. Like a homeless, slightly deranged woman who talks a little too much like one of those fire and brimstone TV evangelists.

So maybe my “solution” from the universe wasn’t exactly firing on all cylinders, but Mar said a lot of things I needed to hear, just when I needed to hear them. She was like a homeless, American Buddha. We’d had so many late-night alley conversations that I’d started inviting her inside Mojo during business hours so we could share my lunch and chat. As far as atmosphere went, Mojo left a lot to be desired, but it was a hell of a lot better than a sitting in a dirty alley next to a putrid dumpster.

“And you’ve been with this boy for almost a year now?” Mar asked, waving half of my peanut butter sandwich at me.

“Yep. Pretty close.” I thanked Alex for filling our coffee cups by giving her a chunk of my Kit-Kat. Sid was not a big fan of me inviting a vagrant into his doughnut shop to “shoot the shit,” but after a little convincing from Alex, he’d turned a blind eye. Besides, half of his customers, including Sid, dressed like they’d dived their fair share of dumpsters. He couldn’t really turn his nose up at the real deal or else I was calling bullshit.

“You’re serious about this boy?” Mar asked.

I nodded and crunched into a carrot stick. I generally tried to keep my relationship with Jesse off the table with Mar. Not because I was ashamed or uncomfortable talking about Jesse and our relationship, but because I was afraid of what she’d say. She had a kernel of wisdom for every bloody topic in the universe, significant others especially. If the conversation even started veering toward love, marriage, and everything in between, oh, brother. I knew to sit back and strap in because Mar could have filled an encyclopedia by the time she’d stopped talking.

“How serious serious?” Mar shoved the rest of the sandwich in her mouth and moved on to the bag of chips.

“Serious enough I can’t imagine being with anybody else. Serious enough I can’t imagine spending my life without him.” I set my carrot stick aside and slumped into the booth. Talking about Jesse, even thinking about him, had been putting me into a sad, depressed mood for a while. I knew what the gloominess stemmed from—not getting to see him and missing him like mad—but sad and depressed weren’t exactly feelings I wanted to have when I thought of my boyfriend.

“You mean to tell me you’re actually considering marrying this country boy one day?” Mar froze in the middle of opening the chips.

“Well . . . yeah.”

“Oh, Girlie. You are not nearly as smart as I thought you were,” Mar said, whipping her head from side to side. “Nope. Not even close.”

At first, her unexpected insults had almost hurt my feelings. Now, they pretty much ran off my back since I’d heard a dozen different ones each time we talked. “And why does wanting to marry some amazing guy make me the dumbest person on the planet?”

“I don’t care how amazing this boy is. I don’t care how many gold stars he’s earned. You can’t expect someone like you to be happy settling down with one man.” Mar was wagging her finger at me. Her head started bobbing too, almost like a nervous tic. It only got that way when she was getting worked up about something.

“Who is someone like me exactly?” I felt like I had a general understanding, and what I knew of myself didn’t clash with the concept of spending my life with Jesse. Apparently Mar saw me in a different light. I was curious to know what she saw.

“An artist. A woman who needs to stay inspired. A creative person who needs to create to stay fulfilled.”

“And why does being with Jesse make none of these things possible?” I asked, taking a sip of coffee.

“You need someone to keep you inspired. You need a muse. No muse, no art.” Mar crunched into a chip, her head bobbing.

“Jesse is my muse. He keeps me inspired.”

“Oh, yeah, I’m sure he was. At first. The beginning of every relationship is the best we can ever expect out of one. It never gets any better than that first year. After that, it’s a slow, downward spiral.”

“Thanks for the uplifting words,” I mumbled.

“Prove me wrong,” she said, shaking her finger at me. “I bet some of the best art you’ve created was when you and your boyfriend were first together. Some true masterpieces came out of that early stage of your relationship.” Mar paused, letting that set in. “Am I right?”

I thought about it and, as much as I didn’t want to agree with her and her crazy theory, I nodded.

“And what about now? Compare what you were creating six months ago to what you’re creating today. How does it compare?”

Okay, I really wanted off her crazy train before it went any farther down the loony tracks. I might have thought Mar made a lot of sense at one time, but right then . . . I really wanted to believe she was full of shit. I wanted to believe she was the insane person I’d originally thought because then I could brush off what she’d just said. The questions she’d just asked.

I had not, in two weeks, been able to put a single brushstroke on canvas, nor had I been able to put charcoal to paper. It was like my creativity tank had suddenly run dry, and I didn’t know why or how to fill it back up again. I was an artist who could no longer create.

I’d been avoiding the reasons behind my dry spell, much preferring to believe I’d hit a wall or was burnt out after a busy year, but really . . . I knew the reason for my creativity hiatus. Jesse. I knew, in some way, he was connected to it.

I wasn’t blaming him, but whatever we were going through was what set the whole thing in motion. We hadn’t seen each other in weeks, we’d been missing each other’s phone calls, and when we did manage to connect, he was distant. I could feel his distance. Five hundred miles separated us, and I’d never felt far from him when we talked on the phone. Up until the past month.

Some things were still the same. I still loved him past the point of logic, and I knew he felt the same about me. Things just didn’t feel the same. The worries I tried to keep locked in the back of my mind were becoming more and more in-my-face with every passing day. I could almost feel Jesse slipping away from me, and since I had no idea why he was, I couldn’t stop it. I didn’t know how I was losing him, just that I was. Bit by tiny bit.

If I lost Jesse Walker, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to keep myself from the same fate.

“Take it from me. You don’t want to settle down with one man. You need a new man, a new adventure every year to keep the muse alive. You marry this boy, and mark my words, you’ll kiss your art career good-bye.”

When my phone buzzed, I came close to sighing from relief. I didn’t want to think anymore about what Mar said or how much sense she made. I checked the phone, hoping it was Jesse. That time, I did sigh when I saw it wasn’t.

“Hey, Jax,” I greeted, shoving the rest of my uneaten lunch at Mar. My appetite was gone. It had been gone so much lately, my clothes were getting a little loose.

“Where are you?” Jax sounded breathless, almost like he was . . . excited.

“At work. Why?”

“Good. Stay there. I’ll be there in five minutes.”

“What? No, tell me whatever you’re coming here to tell me on the phone. I hate suspense.” Plus, I didn’t need another stomach ulcer.

“Not even. I want to see your face when I tell you this.”

“Jax—”

“See you soon.” The line went dead.

I groaned. The night had started out strong. I’d packed my favorite candy bar, I’d gotten a hold of Jesse for a few minutes before starting my shift, and Sid had announced I’d be getting a fifty cent an hour raise starting next week. Yet there it was, not even ten o’clock, and I had Mar preaching to me about not marrying the man I loved or else, Jax pulling a hurry up and wait on the phone, and I wouldn’t even enjoy a stick of my Kit-Kat because Mar had just downed the rest of it in two bites.

Night fail.

“Was that a former muse or a future muse?” Mar asked, the melted chocolate of my coveted candy bar coating her teeth.

“Neither,” I grumbled.

“You want to talk about it—”

“No,” I almost snapped. I was in a pissy mood, and I couldn’t even blame part of it on PMS.

Mar stayed quiet for a couple of minutes, devouring what was left of my lunch. The whole time, I sat there stewing and getting angrier and angrier. Angry because of what she’d said? Maybe. Angry because of what she’d implied? Probably. Angry because, deep down, I was worried she was right? That, that question was the one that made me angrier just thinking about it. I tried to not think about it, I didn’t allow myself to answer it, but it wouldn’t go away. It had leeched to my brain and wouldn’t stop sucking the life out of it.

Before I knew it, the anger was spilling from my mouth. “Where do you get off giving me relationship advice anyways? What makes you think you’ve got all the answers and I’ve got none? What makes you so sure the man I’m with is so wrong for me?”

Mar popped the last chip in her mouth and watched me with an unfazed expression as she swallowed. “Experience.”

“Experience? Please. We’ve all got experience.” That was the laziest excuse for making one a know-it-all on life.

“Maybe. But not all experiences are created equal, Girlie.” She waved her finger at me again.

“And what makes your experiences superior to mine?”

Mar extended her arms to the sides and ran her eyes down herself purposefully. “My experiences left me penniless, homeless, broken-hearted, and alone. Does that answer your question?”

I bit my lip, feeling the slightest bit of regret for going off on her. Her rhetorical question got me thinking. I didn’t know much of Mar’s past, just like she knew little of mine. We really just talked about everyday things, along with her peppering in her random gems of wisdom and the occasional pointing and staring wide-eyed at the ground like she half-expected little demons to come crawling from it. I’d guessed she had a tumultuous past, but I didn’t know the details surrounding my assumptions. Or if they were even true. “What happened to you?”

Mar’s head bobbing picked up. God, the neck pain that woman must get. “A man.”

“A . . . man?” I suppose that explained why she spoke so bitterly about them.

“I was an artist like you when I was young. I wanted to create something the world had never seen before. Something it would never see again. I wanted to paint billboards around the country, a new one every month. I wanted to share what was inside of me. I wanted to share the gift I’d been born with.”

“You wanted to share your art?” I asked to make sure I was tracking. Mar was getting that crazed look in her eyes she got when she was about to start talking about the land of fire and judgment just below our feet. I always boogied out when the conversation went that direction. That special brand of crazy was only meant for a psychiatrist's ears.

Mar nodded. “But then I met a man, and he ruined my life. Right before running away once it was good and ruined.”

Shit. A chill just ran down my back. I couldn’t tell if it was from her words, her tone, or that look on her face. It was probably the combination of all three. Mar was opening her mouth to continue, and I was on the edge of my seat, when Jax burst through Mojo’s front door.

“Rowen!” he shouted, jogging my way.

From the corner of my eye, I noticed Sid give him an annoyed look before turning it my way. I guess Sid wasn’t down with me having more visitors than he had customers.

“What’s the big surprise, for crying out loud?” I asked, glancing over at Mar. She was talking to herself and her eyes were bouncing like pinballs.

“Are you sitting down?” Jax skidded to a stop in front of the table.

I lifted an eyebrow at him and waved my hand elaborately at the booth I was seated at.

“Fine. Why don’t you stand up just so I can watch you pass out when I tell you?”

Jax rarely did excited, probably because he thought he was above such a passé and overused emotion. Also because Jax Jones was an arrogant, elitist ass. For him to be as close to excited as I’d ever seen him meant one thing. “What Playmate did you lure into your bed now?”

Two months ago, it had been a runway model. Last month, a fashion model. Sticking with what I knew of Jax’s preferences, and that each girl had larger breasts than the last, a Playmate was the logical guess. And yes, that I was thinking that hot on the heels of being so upset about my relationship just proved how much I was trying to repress those gloomy feelings.

“Rowen . . .”

“Fine. Which two did you lure into your bed?”

“My god, you are a royal pain in my ass.”

“My sentiments exactly,” I grumbled.

“Rowen Sterling, would you shut it for five seconds so I can get out what I need to tell you?” I was just about to answer him when he clamped his hand over my mouth. “No response is required. A simple nod will do.” I gave him a “simple” nod. Jax’s hands gripped both of my shoulders as he kneeled in front of me. “Guess who just landed the hottest internship in the Seattle art community?”

My breath caught in my chest. “Since those are pretty much the same words you said to me when I found out about the art show at the Underground—”

“And you guessed wrong that time.”

“I’m going to go with”—I stabbed my index finger into my chest—“me?”

Jax’s smile stretched into position. “Yes.” He gave my shoulders a shake since I was frozen. “You.”

I knew my first reaction should have been exhilaration because, really, every single one of those interns had gone on to become highly celebrated artists. I’d just landed myself the golden ticket, for all intents and purposes. So why did I only feel dread? With a big side of despair?

I knew the answer. He was the answer to all of the questions I’d been wrestling with all month. Jesse. I still hadn’t told him about applying for the internship. If I decided to take it, and I’d be a stupid, stupid fool not to, how could I break the news to him? How could I tell him I’d let some summer job get in the way of spending a summer—a whole three months—with him? How could I admit that an internship took priority over quality time with him?

That’s not the way I felt about it—Jesse came number one on all of my priority lists—but I knew how it would seem. I was choosing the job over him. I was re-prioritizing, and he wasn’t in the number one spot anymore. Just thinking about all the explaining and heartache was enough to make me light-headed, and I had yet to even accept or decline the internship.

“Rowen? It’s okay to say something now. Let your snark run wild.” Jax was waiting for me to jump up on the table and do a celebratory dance. That’s what people did when they found out they’d been chosen for that position. Why was I partly hoping the floor would open up and swallow me?

“Um . . . wow?” That was all the excitement I could muster.

“You did hear what I just said, right? The gravity of what is about to happen to your career is computing? Nod once for yes. Twice for no.” To Jax’s credit, he did actually sound concerned. He wasn’t just being a wiseass. He flashed three fingers in front of my face. “How many fingers am I holding up?”

I promptly slapped them away. “I heard you. It’s just taking a minute to set in.” The longer it settled in, the more unsure I felt.

“I’m just going to tell myself you’re in shock and unable to show your unbridled excitement.”

“Jax—”

“Just let me live in this alternate reality for a while.”

“Jax—” My uncertainty started to switch to irritation.

“I’m taking you out to celebrate. Right now.” Jax grabbed my hand and gave it a tug.

I tugged back harder. “I’m at work. I couldn’t just up and leave to go ‘celebrate’ with you even if I wanted to.” Which I didn’t. I wasn’t in the mood to celebrate with anyone.

“You really don’t think your boss would let you leave early? You just landed probably one of the top hundred internships in the whole damn country.” Jax still hadn’t let go of my hand; he still hadn’t given up hope.

“Have you met my boss? No, he definitely wouldn’t be cool with me leaving in the middle of a shift.” Actually, Sid might have been okay with it.

“Fine. What time do you get off? I’ll pick you up, and then we’ll celebrate.”

I couldn’t tell if it was persistence or good old-fashioned pushiness, but he was really starting to tick me off. “Jax. I’m not in the mood to celebrate.”

His eyebrows came together. “Why not?”

The disco music in the background, the unyielding stares of Mar and Jax, the internship I’d been offered . . . all of it started messing with my head. The room started spinning, one movie poster and cardboard cutout at a time. “Because . . .”

“Because? That’s all you’ve got for me? Really?” Jax ran his hand through his hair.

“Be. Cause.”

“Rowen? What’s the deal? I give you a piece of news that should have you dancing a goddamned leprechaun jig right now, and instead, you look like you’re about to go to your best friend’s funeral. I’m not following.”

I took two full breaths. “Jax, thank you for the news, and I’m sorry I’m not living up to your expectations in the reaction department. I need some time to myself right now. Some time to think.”

Jax’s eyes turned to Mar, who’d been watching the whole exchange with rapt interest.

“She was visiting me during my break. But I’ve got to get back to work now.” I still had a few hours left of my shift, but I was going to ask Sid if he’d let me leave early. I needed to sort out some stuff, and something about doughnuts, disco, and Sid and Alex’s evening “exchanges” told me sorting stuff out at Mojo would be impossible.

“I don’t think I’ve had the pleasure of meeting . . .” Jax glanced at Mar and waited for me to make the introductions. Jax would not take a hint.

“Jax, meet Mar. Mar, meet Jax.” I waved my hand between the two and slid out of the booth.

“Pleasure,” Jax said, his expression the opposite of his greeting.

Mar nodded at Jax then stood. “Thanks for the dinner, Girlie.”

“You’re welcome.” I stood and crossed my arms.

Taking one long look at Jax, she gave me a purposeful look. “Now that’s a muse.”

As Mar shoved through the front door, Jax shouldered up beside me and watched her. “Wow. I gotta give it you to, Rowen. You do know how to pick them. A hick for a boyfriend and a homeless woman as your lunch buddy.”

I found Jax’s snide comments hard to swallow on a normal day, but right then? I couldn’t deal. “There’s the door, Jax.” I thrust my finger toward it.

“I know where it is. I came through it.” He looked at me, and from his lack of concern, I guessed the way I felt hadn’t made its way to my outside yet. “Why are you in such a hurry for me to leave? I just got here.”

“Because I’m not in the mood for adding a misdemeanor to my record tonight.” I quirked an eyebrow, and a moment later, Jax got it.

“That’s the last time I’m bringing you good news,” he said, stuffing his hands in his jacket pocket and marching for the door.

“Promise?”

As he shoved out the door, Jax paused. “Shit, Rowen. What the hell is wrong with you?”

That was the million dollar question.