“And that’s the last time you saw her?” Eric asked in a tone that Jake was sure many a criminal had been interrogated with.
Jake nodded as he confirmed, “Yeah. That’s the last time I saw her. Until the other night at JT’s. She sent me postcards from Italy and Paris. They just said that she was thinking of me and hoped I was happy and doing well.”
“Have you talked to her?” Eric’s tone softened to sound more like a brother and less like a police investigator.
Jake shrugged. “There’s nothing to say.”
Eric’s arm reached to the counter, and before Jake even saw it coming, an empty beer can tagged him right in the head.
Jake’s hand flew up too late to block it. “Hey! What the fu—”
“I knew you could be an idiot, Jake, but I didn’t think you were really that stupid.”
Jake threw up his arms. “She left. Now she’s back because she has to be and then she’s going to leave again. End. Of. Story.”
His brother slowly shook his head at him. “Jake, I know that I have been giving you some shit. Making you dance with Darla. Getting in your business. But I was only doing that because I wanted to see what this really was. If it was something real or just a memory that you couldn’t let go of.”
Eric leaned forward on the table with an earnest expression on his face. “This is real, Jake. You love her. I’ve never seen you move as fast as you did when you thought Tessa had left last night. Or be less interested in a blond with a huge rack as you were when Darla came to ask you to dance. And I know you didn’t listen to the rest of the message but it went into great detail about everything that you miss and love about Tessa. Great. Detail.”
Jake covered his face with his hands and rubbed them up and down. How could Eric know the whole story and still be giving him shit about her? He should be on his side.
“Look,” Eric said as he stood, “you guys have some serious unfinished business that, if you ever plan on moving on with your life and finding happiness, you need to deal with. Yes, she might leave again. But she’s here now. Talk to her—before it really is too late.” Eric slapped him on the shoulder as he headed out of the kitchen towards the front door. When he got there, he turned back before opening it. “I am sorry that you went through all that. Losing the baby. Losing Tessa. I wish you would have told me sooner. You shouldn’t have had to deal with that alone. You were just a kid. But when you talk to her, try and remember that she was a kid too when she lost a baby she didn’t even know she was carrying.”
With those words, his brother was gone. Jake winced at the loud cracking sound of the door shutting, still feeling the effects of his hangover.
He laid his head on the cool surface of the table until Lucky started crying and scratching at the sliding glass door.
“Sorry, boy.” Jake felt bad that it was so late in the day and he hadn’t been out yet. He decided he would take him on a run to make it up to him. Maybe he could sweat out some of the alcohol he’d ingested the night before and clear his head a little bit, because Eric’s words were playing over and over in it.
“…she was a kid too when she lost a baby she didn’t even know she was carrying.”
Chapter Fifteen
‡
“Thank you so much for going shopping with me,” Tessa told Nikki as they grabbed the last bags out of the trunk.
Nikki shut the trunk of Tessa’s car and they headed into Jake’s house. “Oh please, you never have to thank me for going shopping, even if it’s for cleaning supplies. Also, as much as I enjoy being able to go to school full time, I get a little stir-crazy shut up in my house taking online classes.”
Tessa could understand that. Nikki had always been adventurous, even as a pre-teen. So it made sense that she’d been a flight attendant. Seeing the world. Always on the go. But now that she was working on her Master’s in Psychology, she was studying full time.
“Do you think it’s weird that Jake doesn’t live here?” Nikki asked as they unloaded the bags in the front room.
Tessa normally hated talking behind people’s back, but in this case she just couldn’t help herself. She was just so happy that someone else felt the same way she did. “Yes!” she exclaimed.
Nikki eyes lit up, apparently happy to find someone else to discuss the subject with as well. “Every time I ask him about it, he gives me a different reason-slash-excuse. Amy and I even surprised him by getting him the couch and a new bed. We figured that, since the old ones had been so well used, he could have a new ‘slut-free’ start. We told him he could burn his old stuff. But even cootie-free furniture didn’t get him excited about living here.”