Letting Go

  Walking away from her, I paid for the drink and lingered at the counter longer than necessary as she stormed past me and went outside.

  “Don’t let her fool ya,” the old man behind the counter grumbled, not looking at me.

  I sent him a lazy smile as I put my wallet in my back pocket. “Wasn’t planning on it.”

  “That piece of property has had more visitors in the last year than there are single men in this town.”

  I barked out a laugh, and nodded my head at him. “From what I remember of her, that sounds about right.”

  “Not that it’s my business. I just see what I see and hear what I hear.”

  I grabbed the drink and started walking backward toward the door. “This is Thatch, it’s everyone’s business. Have a good day.”

  I walked the few blocks back to the warehouse, and once I was inside and had the door locked—since apparently LeAnn knew where I lived—I settled down onto the couch. Pulling my phone out of my pocket, I looked at it for a while before bringing the screen to life and going through the contacts.

  My thumb hovered over Grey’s number for a minute before I backed out of my phone list and tossed my phone onto the other end of the couch. I’d started to call her at least fifteen times a day for the last month, but had never gone through with it, and she hadn’t ever called or texted. A part of me wanted to leave Thatch, to start over the way Ben’s parents had done, but I knew I couldn’t. Because even though she’d been gone for far too long, I knew she would eventually come back, and I needed to be here when she did.

  There was a quick knock before my front door opened, and I shot up off the couch. Only three other people had keys to this place. Charlie was still traveling across the country, Grey was in Seattle as far as I knew, and . . . fuck.

  “Hey, honey,” Mom said in a singsong voice as she walked over to where I was standing and made herself comfortable on one of the couches. “How are you doing?”

  “Fine,” I gritted, my eyes never leaving her. When she just looked around at the space, I slowly sat back down on the couch. “What are you doing here?”

  She widened her eyes at me. “What? Can’t I come visit my son? Besides, this is my place. If I wanted to be a bitch and treat you the way you’re treating me, I could ask what you’re doing here.”

  “No. Grandma left me this shop, but I was too young to do anything with it, so you used it until I left for college and you got out of your pottery phase.”

  She rolled her eyes. “I like what you did with the place, though.”

  I waited. I knew what was coming.

  “These couches look expensive.”

  “They’re not.”

  “Do not lie to me, Jagger,” she sneered.

  “Why don’t we cut through the bullshit, and you can tell me why you’re actually here so you can leave that much faster?”

  She sniffed, like what I’d said had wounded her, but the look faded, and soon she was just my heartless mom again. “I just need a little bit.”

  My eyebrows pinched together, and my lips formed a hard line. “Define ‘a little bit.’ ”

  “Couple thousand.”

  I shot up off the couch, my voice rising and bouncing off the walls of the building. “A couple thousand dollars, Mom? For what!”

  “That’s for me to know!”

  “Well, considering I’ve been buying everything that Keith needs, I know it sure as shit isn’t for him! And do you really think I have that kind of money?”

  “I know how much they left you! You and Charlie weren’t their children, you didn’t deserve everything they left you!”

  “I don’t have it anymore! I used the money to pay for school, same as Charlie is doing. And I swear to God, if you hit her up for money, I will ruin you! It’s not our job to give you money or continue caring for your son. You’re a grown fucking woman, get a job that isn’t finding a new husband, and pay for your own life. And don’t try to keep bullshitting me. I know they left you money. It’s not Charlie’s fault or mine that you blew it on husband number three. Or was it four?”

  “You ungrateful little shit,” she hissed, and stood up to try to be eye level with me. “If you don’t have it, how are you paying for your bills? How are you sending everything for Keith? I know you don’t have a job. Are you dealing?”

  “Are you fucking kidding me?” I roared.

  “No kid of mine is gonna deal, Jagger, I’ll call the cops—”

  “Call them! Fucking call them, Mom! Let them come and check the whole place, they won’t find anything here.”

  “Tell me how you’re paying your bills,” she demanded.

  We stared each other down as I tried to calm myself again, but my entire body was vibrating. I still had money left over from my grandparents, even after college and the renovations. Mom was smart enough to figure I hadn’t used all of it. But it was in savings, and I wasn’t touching it, nor was I about to give some of it to her. No one knew I sold my drawings, and if Mom found out, I knew the amount of times she came to me for money would triple. I watched her scheming expression, and a little bit of the tension left me as I realized there was no way she had any idea about the drawings.

  “That’s none of your business,” I finally replied. “Now, unless you’re about to die because you can’t afford to feed yourself, don’t ask me for money again. And if I see you around here again, the cops will be called, only it will be on you.”

  “How can you be so cold to your own mother?” she cried, and I scoffed at her fake tears.

  “You wanna know how? Because I had to raise Charlie even though she’s barely two years younger than me. I had to make sure she was clothed, fed, taken care of . . . everything you should have been doing. All the while you were bringing guys into the house like it was a fucking whorehouse. Marrying any of them who gave you more than a night, spending money we didn’t have on them when they had these crazy ideas, only for them to split as soon as they had the cash. And now you have a baby and you don’t even know which one of your many guys is the father, and what do you do? Come to me over and over again for money. I paid you long enough until I found out that none of that money was even going to Keith, and now once again I’m doing your job and making sure your child is fed and clothed while Charlie’s watching him for you. That is how I can be so ‘cold,’ as you put it.”

  “Don’t act like you do so much for him, you don’t even see him,” she spat out.

  “I barely see him because I’ve been in a different city, and now that I’m home I don’t want to risk seeing you. But if you really believe that, just ask Charlie. I’m there whenever I’m sure you’re not going to be around, which is a hell of a lot more often than it should be.”

  “Screw you, Jagger.”

  “Nice, Mom. It’s time for you to go.” Not waiting for her to say anything else, I walked over to the door and opened it, doing a double take when I looked outside. “Are you kidding me? Is this yours?” I asked, pointing to the brand-new Escalade.

  She straightened her back, and walked toward me without actually looking at me.

  “You’re gonna come in here and ask for a couple grand, when you have that? You’re going to force me to keep buying clothes, food, and diapers for Keith, and you fucking have that!” Before she could say anything or pass me, I shot my arm straight out in front of her. “Key.”

  Mom looked at me like I was nothing. Nothing to her, nothing to Charlie, nothing to Keith . . . just nothing. With jerky motions, she took the key off her key ring and slapped it into my hand. “It was a gift,” she snarled as she passed me.

  “Yeah, I bet it was. If it’s from soon-to-be husband number seven, don’t bother telling Charlie and me about the wedding. We won’t be there.”

  Without a look back in my direction, she climbed into the SUV and took off.

  I slammed the door and locked it and stalked back to the couches, when my phone started ringing.

  Grabbing it just before voice mail picked up,
I answered without looking at the screen, and growled, “What?”

  There was a pause before: “Wow. You’re doing worse than I thought you were.”

  I glanced at the screen for a second and tried to talk normally as I began pacing. “Have you heard from her, Graham?”

  “No, but Mom talked to her yesterday.”

  “And?” I prompted when he didn’t continue. But from his dejected tone, I wasn’t expecting good news, and my anger quickly faded into the pain I had become so used to over the past month.

  “She’s not coming home yet, but Mom said she sounded good. Actually her words were: ‘Grey sounded great, happy even.’ So there’s that.”

  “Good,” I mumbled, nodding and dropping my head until I was staring at the floor. “That’s good.”

  “You don’t sound like it’s a good thing.”

  “No, it is. I want her happy. That’s all I’ve ever wanted.”

  “I know it is. I think if she’s doing good, and it’s been this long but she doesn’t have plans to come back, it’s time you go to her,” he said.

  I wanted to. I wanted to so damn bad that it took everything in me to force myself over to sit on a couch rather than grab my keys and leave for Seattle. But she was happy. “I can’t, Graham. You heard your mom, she’s happy. A month away from here and me, and she’s happy. I can’t take that away from her. When she’s ready to come back, she will.”

  Graham sighed. “I had a feeling you would say that.”

  “Then why call?”

  “Do you still love my sister?” he asked after a few silent moments.

  “Of course I do.”

  “Tell me something: if she found someone else and you missed your chance because you were waiting for her to come back, how would you feel?”

  I froze. Everything in me just stopped for tortured moments before I forced out, “What are you—did she—are you—Graham, is she with someone?”

  “I don’t know. Honestly, I don’t. All I know is that she’s happy, and she doesn’t have any plans to come back yet. Whether that means she’s found someone already or not, she will eventually find someone. And if you want to be that guy, you need to go get her.”

  “I will, I gotta go.”

  After hanging up, I ran to my studio as I scrolled through the contact list on my phone. I had calls to make, and I needed to get to Seattle.

  Grey

  July 12, 2014

  AT THE SOUND of the front door slamming, I jumped back from where I was standing in the kitchen making breakfast for Janie, her roommate, Heather, and me. I glanced over at Heather, and she shrugged as she leaned away from the bar to look toward the entryway.

  “Grey, Grey, Grey, Grey, Grey!” Janie yelled as she ran through the apartment to the kitchen. She was out of breath as she set down the three coffees.

  “Jesus, did you run to the coffee shop?” I asked, giving her a weird look before going back to the food.

  She shook her head as she tried to catch her breath. “There was—I found—hold on!” Grabbing her purse, she dug through it for a few seconds before slamming what looked like a nice-looking brochure onto the bar.

  “What is it?”

  “It’s for some art gallery place,” Heather mumbled as she looked over it. “Huh. Random.”

  Janie snatched it away from her and pointed it at me. “There was a stack of them at the shop, and I grabbed it because the picture on the front is all pretty, see?” She waved it in my direction for half a second before dropping it.

  All I had seen was that the brochure was black.

  “So I’m looking at it and decide I’m going to go see where this place is to see if it’s close so we could all go, since I love art, you know?”

  “You love art?” Heather and I said at the same time.

  “Since when?” I asked.

  She looked at me for a few seconds before gesturing wildly with her hands. “Since always! That doesn’t matter! So I’m driving, and I find this place, and of course it’s closed since it’s, like, the ass crack of dawn right now. But there are windows, and there was an art piece in the window!”

  “It’s an art gallery, you’d figure there—”

  “It was of you, Grey!” she said excitedly, cutting me off.

  I kept absentmindedly moving around the scrambled eggs, staring at her like she’d gone insane, until it hit me. I inhaled audibly and dropped the spatula. “Jagger,” I breathed.

  “Yes! Jagger!”

  “Oh my God.”

  “I know!” she screeched, and bounced up and down a few times. “He’s having a thing at the gallery place this weekend! We have to go!”

  “Wait,” Heather said, grabbing the brochure and looking at it again. “What? What is a jagger?”

  “Not a what,” I said, my eyes not focused on anything in the apartment.

  “Definitely not a what,” Janie confirmed. “More like a who.”

  “Holy shit! Mick Jagger is in Seattle?” Heather yelled.

  My lips curved up in a smile, but I still wasn’t able to focus on Heather or Janie. “No, his name is Jagger Easton.”

  “Who names their kid Jagger?”

  I glanced at Heather and laughed softly. “His mom is kind of obsessed with the Rolling Stones. He even has a sister named Charlie after the drummer, Charlie Watts, and a little brother named after Keith Richards.”

  “Okay, so who is he?”

  I turned off the stove, and shrugged as my eyes darted over to Janie. “Jagger’s just . . . Jagger.”

  Janie was still smiling like it was Christmas, and Heather was now giving me a weird look. “For some reason I don’t think he’s ‘just Jagger’ to you. You’re all smiley and you’re blushing.”

  My face fell, and I turned to get plates when Heather turned her stare on Janie.

  “And what was this you said? He’s the one with the art show, and there was a picture of Grey in the window? Now that definitely doesn’t seem like a ‘just Jagger’ kind of situation.”

  “He’s my friend,” I explained without looking at them.

  “Who has pictures of you in an art show?” Heather asked in disbelief.

  “Drawings. He does charcoal drawings, he’s really good, actually.” And he has an art show in Seattle this weekend. Does that mean he’s here? A smile slowly tugged at my lips at the same time as the pain in my chest spread.

  I hadn’t talked to him since the morning he’d told me he loved me. That’d been almost a month and a half ago, and I missed him. I missed my friend. I missed everything about him. I just didn’t know how to talk to him after what had happened, after I’d run away from him.

  “Is he cute?” Heather asked, and Janie snorted.

  “Cute is an understatement for him. Hot, rough, rugged, tatted-up-amazing-body-take-me-home is a better description.”

  Something I’d never felt when it came to Jagger moved into my stomach, overriding the pain for the moment as I listened to Janie. We’d never talked about the way Jagger looked, so I’d never heard her describe him to anyone. And the way she had . . . I didn’t know how to feel about someone else saying that.

  “Well then, I am definitely going just so I can meet him,” Heather said loudly. “God, I haven’t gotten laid in months.”

  “What?!” I whirled around, my eyes and mouth wide in horror. Before I could say something stupid—like lay claim to Jagger—I noted both their expressions.

  Janie’s smile had turned into some beyond-happy smile that looked painful, and Heather looked like she’d just won something.

  A knowing smile crossed Heather’s face. “Do you maybe want to reconsider that whole ‘just Jagger’ bit now?”

  Chapter 5

  Grey

  July 12, 2014

  MY STOMACH WAS churning as we walked down the block to where the gallery was. After going back and forth with Heather and Janie for two hours this morning, they’d somehow gotten me into a salon. For the first time in over two years, I’d gotten my n
ails and hair done while they had gone shopping for me.

  That alone should have tipped me off that tonight was going to be too much.

  I don’t think I’d been in anything other than leggings or sweats since graduation, and they wanted to make sure I looked completely opposite how I normally did.

  Mission accomplished. I wanted to put my hair up in a messy bun and get into comfortable clothes already. I had more makeup on than I’d worn to graduation, four-inch-heel boots, and an outfit I’d expect someone like Janie to wear.

  Well, I guess I know who picked it out.

  “Stop messing with your shirt,” Janie chastised for the twentieth time tonight.

  “It feels like I’m not wearing anything!” I hissed. “It’s awkward!”

  I shoved my clutch at her and looked down at myself as I moved the shirt around, making sure I was covered. The tank was already low cut to the point where I was showing more cleavage than was necessary, but the material was too thin, and loose enough that any breeze made even just by walking had it feeling like the shirt had evaporated. The only saving grace of this outfit was that I was wearing jeans—unfortunately for me and my poor legs, they were constricting the life out of me.

  “Who wears this stuff?” I groaned, and turned around to look at myself in the window of a store. I refused to admit I was happy with the way I looked tonight . . . I was that uncomfortable.

  “Better question, who doesn’t?” Janie asked. “You used to too. You just seemed to replace your entire wardrobe with sweatpants.”

  “Much more comfortable than skinny jeans.”

  Heather snorted. “No one ever said you were supposed to be comfortable. Let’s go before you find somewhere you can buy something else.”

  I snatched the clutch back from Janie and made a face at them before walking in the direction of the gallery again. “At least then I would be sure I’d have full use of my legs after tonight. I swear, there is no blood flow down there.”

  “Get over it, you look hot. Jagger’s not going to know what to do with himself when he sees you.”

  “I don’t care what Jagger thinks, Janie,” I mumbled.