Jake Undone(49)
“I can’t imagine you being afraid of anything. What do you fear?”
“What are my fears?” He looked up at the sky, and his lip twitched as he pondered my question, then looked back at me. “Hurting people…like letting people I care about down. Stuff like that.”
That was all I was going to get because he looked away from me, and I knew an imaginary wall had just gone up. Jake was like a puzzle. He’d offer me small pieces of his life, but none of them fit together to tell a complete story. The more silence that ensued, the more sure I became that he wasn’t going to elaborate on why he was afraid of hurting people and who he was afraid to hurt. I decided not to press my luck in prying further.
A plane flew overhead, and we both looked up at it in unison. More time passed in silence as we sat holding hands while we continued to trespass on the back lawn of this house.
A sudden blast of wind blew my hair right into his face, and I said, “They’re not kidding when they call it a windy city. Sorry about that.”
“Don’t apologize,” he said, still looking up at the sky, before whispering, “I love your hair.” He said it so softly I wasn’t sure he intended for me to hear it.
But I did.
He let go of my hand abruptly, and his eyes popped out of his head. “Do you like milkshakes?”
Holy random transition.
“Sure.”
He stood up, and I followed suit. “Let’s get out of here.”
CHAPTER 15
“This place is awesome,” I said as I followed him into Bernie’s diner, a retro-style joint about six blocks from his old house.
The smell of French fries and burgers was absolute heaven because I was starving.
“Wait ‘til you taste the food.” He was grinning from ear to ear as we sat ourselves in a booth by the window. The table had one of those mini jukeboxes, and for a dollar, we could play our choice of about twenty-five different oldies from the 50’s and 60’s.
“These music boxes have been here since I was a kid. The songs are exactly the same. It’s wild.”
“What are you gonna play?”
He put some change into the machine. “My father used to always play this one.”
I recognized it immediately, and my mouth dropped because I couldn’t believe my ears. “Crimson and Clover,” I said.
“You know it?”
“This was one of Jimmy’s favorite songs. It was from way before our time, but he loved it. Except, it was the Joan Jett version he would play. Who sings this one?”
Jake closed his eyes and moved his head slowly to the rhythm of the haunting song before answering me. “That’s wild about your brother. This was my Dad’s absolute favorite song. This one’s the original by Tommy James and the Shondells. It’s one of the few songs that remind me of my childhood, because he’d play it every Sunday when we’d come here.”
“I didn’t realize the other one was a remake.”
“I like the Joan Jett version better, but this is the one my Dad always listened to.”
When the song finished, a waitress came by to take our order. We hadn’t even looked at the menus, so she said she’d come back.
He handed me one. “I know what I’m getting, but you should decide. The milkshakes are legendary, and the burgers…don’t even get me started.”
“I’ll have whatever you get.”
“Anchovy pie, then?” He winked, then flagged the waitress down and said, “We’ll take two Bernie burgers and two strawberry milkshakes.”
While we were waiting for our food, he played with the straw to his water then looked up at me and asked, “What made you decide to become a nurse?”
“Honestly? My brother. There was this one nurse who was with him the most. Her name was Kerri. She was younger, just out of school. I think he actually had a crush on her.” I laughed thinking about how cute my brother was. “I just remember being so grateful for the times that she was with him when we couldn’t be because of work or school. He was so sick but would just light up whenever she was around. And I remember thinking back then, God, if my brother makes it, I swear I am going to give back and do the same thing for someone else’s brother or son.”
“So, after he died, you still decided to do it.”
“Yeah, I did.” I focused on his dragon tattoo, trying not to lose my composure.
He could tell I was about to cry.
“It’s okay, Nina.
My voice was now shaky, but I managed to get it together. “It just made me so thankful that he had her…someone that brought a little light into his life, during such a dark time.”