In “No Rush,” set between Chapters 1 and 2 of Healing the Wounds, after the trio’s disastrous night out and Alice’s decision to move in, Jay is distracted by the troubling thoughts he can’t shake.
Jay studied the checkerboard floor at Oscar’s. Clean-ish enough, but if he slid to his knees and huddled beside Alice’s chair, laid his head on her thigh and sobbed out his fears and apologies and gratitude—well, people would notice. And he’d be blocking the aisle. That wouldn’t be fair to their hardworking waitress in her sensible sneakers and support hose, the blue of varicose veins visible through the stretched beige stockings as she came to a stop beside their table.
“For this fine fellow, one ham and—”
“Actually”—Alice half swallowed her word with an embarrassed laugh—“Bonnie, I am so sorry to do this, but could we get all this boxed to go?”
What? Fuck, he’d been inattentive and now Alice was leaving him. He couldn’t even do lunch right.
Alice grabbed his hand and squeezed. “It’s such a gorgeous day out, and we both have hours of office work ahead of us. The whole afternoon wasted.”
“Can’t waste a day like this one!” Bonnie slipped the plate with Jay’s sandwich and chips back on her tray. “It’s made for young love. My George used to take me walking along the river. You wait here, hon, and I’ll get this packed up in a jiff.”
Alice gave her copious thanks as she headed off, then turned to Jay, still squeezing his hand like a heartbeat. Connected. “There’s a park. It’s just a block off the main drag. I thought, maybe?”
“Yeah.” He heaved every ounce of relief into a huge gusting sigh. Not leaving him. They’d have lunch together despite his massive fuckup Friday at the club. She wouldn’t ask him to move her stuff back across the hall, into her own apartment. She wouldn’t, right? He held on tight. “Yeah.”
The actual reaching-the-park part took high-level coordination, with their bag of food and cardboard carton of drinks plus his bike. Maybe only because he insisted on keeping hold of Alice’s hand.
The afternoon would be so much better if he could follow her to her office instead of riding off to his own. He’d stay completely out of the way. Sit under her desk, his back protected, his knees pressed between hers, his head bent in apology across her thigh. Not the pleasing-Alice-with-his-tongue kind of apology, just the I’m-sorry-please-don’t-hate-me kind.
He’d curl up and nap while she worked. Then he might get decent sleep, not the weird dream shit he’d been having since Friday. Last night he’d woken up way before normal people should be up—like, bakery-worker early—and he’d had to slip out of bed to clean up the mess his dick had made. Without even asking, like it could just take control of him and force him to do things.
Breathe.
Henry’s voice. The soothing answer to every nightmare he’d had in almost five years. Fuck, those nights before they’d lived together, when it seemed like he’d been calling Henry at 3 a.m. every fucking day. I’m sorry. I had another nightmare.
I’ve told you not to apologize, my darling Jay. I am here for you when you need me. The clock does not constrain us. Breathe with me, and then we’ll read a bit.
Some nights over the phone worked. Some nights Henry ordered him to dress and bike over and spend the rest of the night sheltered in his arms. On the worst nights, when Jay’d been shaking too hard and could hardly speak, Henry had come to him and sat in Jay’s bed with his back to the wall, no headboard on the old, sagging mattress, and held him and read and hummed until the sun and the demands of Jay’s office job forced him into the shower.
“Here’s good, I think.” Alice stopped at a flat, grassy meadow not far off the paved path. “No bench, but…” She gazed around the park, shading her eyes from the sun. Little kids laughed and shouted and stumble-ran at the opposite end, with watchful nanny-moms ringing the playground. A dog-walker and a lunch jogger did the You first? No? Okay, I’ll go—oh, you? dance where the paths intersected. “I think here.”
“Wait.” Toeing out the kickstand, he got the bike balanced on the soft ground and let go of the handlebars. His heart pounded as he dropped Alice’s hand. Just for a minute, I’ll be just a minute, she’s right here, it’s okay. He unstrapped the food bag from the back of the bike and gently wrested the tray of drinks from Alice’s other hand, setting their lunch on the grass. Missing something. He dug in his pannier. Perfect.
The thin blanket wasn’t meant for picnics; it had stains on one side from using it when he knelt bare-kneed on dirty pavement to fix a slipped chain or a flat tube. But he spread that side against the grass and offered her the cleaner one. “How’s that?”
She leaned into him, her body warm and slender, the breeze still cool enough in early May to make business casual not too hot in the sun. Her lips grazed his cheek. “My hero.”
Not him. He didn’t do hero. He did coward, hiding behind her, forcing her to take care of him and getting her in trouble. He flopped down at the edge of the blanket and dug through the food bag. “This one’s yours. Oh, and the pickle spears are together in a separate doohickey.”
“So the bread didn’t get soggy.” Alice sat beside him, their hips not quite touching. Good. He didn’t deserve the comfort anyway. “That was sweet of Bonnie. I left her our usual tip with a little extra, since I was such a doofus and didn’t think of this before she’d already plated everything.”
So they’d paid for lunch. That was excellent. He’d been in total fog. Screwed up a delivery yesterday, and he’d forgotten something on Mrs. Eickhoff’s grocery list this morning. He’d be stopping at the store again this afternoon and getting her the nice jam she liked on her breakfast toast before heading into his office for paperwork. She’d made kind-grandma excuses for him, but she shouldn’t have to. And Alice shouldn’t, either.
He had to shake off this bullshit distraction riding round and round in his head like one of those stupid velodrome racers. Who cared how fast they went when they only ever had one view? Cyclists belonged out in the world, breathing it in. Maybe being stuck on this track was his punishment for failing Henry and Alice. He’d promised Henry he could handle being at the club. Hell, he’d promised he could keep Alice safe. What was he now? A fucking liar. A failure. Not worthy of kindness from his lovers or his clients. He’d become the I-told-you-so example his sister Peggy would point to whenever she wanted to scare his nieces and nephews out of moving to the city like their uncle Jay.
He reached for more sandwich, but his hand came up empty. His box was picked clean—sandwich, side of chips, side of slaw in its little plastic cup.
Alice pressed a turkey triangle into his hand. “Eat.”
“That’s yours.” He peeked at her container. One more sandwich quarter, speared with a red-tipped toothpick. A couple of potato chips. “You should eat it.”
She patted his knee, three quick flashes of skin-on-skin below the edge of his shorts. “What’s mine is yours, right, roomie?” Her smile came and went. “You need the calories more than I do.”
The turkey club disappeared into his mouth, barely tasted. He washed it down with a swig of lemonade. Gorgeous day out. Puffy white clouds drifting by, no rush to get anywhere. Soft, pillowy clouds. He yawned wide enough to practically crack his jaw.
Alice curled an arm around his back. “Lie down. C’mon.” She’d pushed the cartons aside and stretched out her legs, her dressy black flats kicked off in the grass and her toes curling as she flexed her feet in a patch of sunlight. “We’ve got time.”
He let her pull him down. Curled on his side, knees tucked up like a little kid, he butted his shoulder against her leg and laid his head across her thigh. The voices in his head dimmed. Not silent, but better, so much better, as she lightly rubbed his back and finger-combed his hair.
“Poodle at two o’clock. One of those silly cuts. Efficient back when they were hunting dogs, I guess, but I always feel bad for them when they have all that naked skin showing. Must be cold.”
Naked skin. The way Alice had been Friday, vulnerable and needing him, only he’d been useless. The guy who froze up, who couldn’t protect the woman he loved. What good was his love to her? To Henry? Less than a mouse’s fart.
“Oh, there’s a proper dog—big bouncy mutt with his tongue wagging.” Alice mussed his hair, shaggy-dog style, not even close to a sexual caress. His muscles eased, eyelids drooping. Between the sun and Alice’s comfort, he could practically drop off to sleep. “He looks so happy to be outside today.”
“Happy.” He buried his echo in her leg, sinking deeper. He’d been happy that first night, at their anniversary dinner. And when she’d actually showed for her first contract night. Not that she wouldn’t’ve—she was fearless Alice, believer in rules and order, ready to take on new challenges. Before she’d known what a challenge he was. She and Henry could maybe—
“We should have a picnic some weekend soon, the three of us.” Alice’s voice came from farther away, but her legs hadn’t moved, and she still stroked his back in long, slow glides. He wriggled around enough for a peek—she’d laid her head back, one arm crooked under—and settled down again. “Play Frisbee, people-watch, eat fancy picnic foods, because you know Henry wouldn’t be able to pack a loaf of bread and a jar of peanut butter and jelly.”
“Artisanal bread. Organic peanut butter.” He curved an arm around Alice’s knee. Yup, better than a teddy bear. Steady and solid enough to hold on to. “Homemade jelly. His mom’s.”
“She cans? My mom used to put up preserves sometimes.”
“Big garden.” He’d done the weeding before. She’d called him a wonderful helper and given him a big hug. Told him he made Henry happy. He didn’t say only sometimes. Not like now, when he must’ve disappointed his master, no matter what Henry said.
Henry’d put together a picnic for Alice on her first contract night. And then Jay’d been allowed to—no. He curled his knees tighter and willed his dick to stop twitching.
Things had been simpler in September. Before eight months of progress, of hoping and anticipating and finally feeling like he could conquer his demons. Fat chance of that. If he couldn’t succeed with Henry and Alice by his side, he never would. If he could just go back and get a do-over. Wipe away Friday like it had never happened.
But if he rewound their lives before this weekend, he’d be erasing Alice moving in with them, too. Like the way his relationship with Henry started after the first awfulness with Cal. His life always unraveled in a tangled mess. The good never came without the bad. Probably ’cause he deserved it.
Peggy would say so. He’d made Mom sad just by being born. If anything good came of him, it was only because Peggy’d worked so hard to teach him better. She was hard on him because he needed prodding. But her constant prodding had taught him laziness was a sin, so when his brother’d handed him the college application and told him he’d make himself useful by getting the business degree, he’d ticked all the boxes and set off for Boston. And then the club, and all the way to Henry and Alice. So he couldn’t take any of it back, not even the awful bits. If he did, he wouldn’t be lying in the sunshine with Alice, his body half asleep, her fingers soft in his hair, her touch holding him to the Earth while his worries floated up to the clouds.
Maybe he deserved this, too.
“Jay. Jay, sweetheart.” Alice’s whisper came from her lips as she bent over his ear, shielding his eyes from the sun as he opened them. “I’m so sorry, but it’s already one. I’ve got to get back to my desk.”
The ground rushed away, and the worries crawled back inside his skin. “No, I know. Me too. Desk and stuff.” He peeled himself away from her and gathered up the lunch remains for the trash can down the path. “Thanks for the nap. I got this. See you at home?”
“See you at home.” She slipped her feet into her shoes, kissed his cheek, and set off toward the office park at a places-to-be pace.
He lingered, refolding the blanket, shouldering his backpack just so, clipping his helmet as he blinked away the easy peace she’d brought. Tonight he’d wear undershorts to bed, just in case his dick got any dumb ideas again. And he’d keep thinking on how he could prove to Henry and Alice that he didn’t mean to be bad. No rush. They seemed to love him anyway.
As he mounted his bike, he kept to the edge of the pavement. A gray-haired couple strolled side by side down the center, their hands linked.
Jay nodded in greeting. “Beautiful day to be out with someone you love.”
However he and Henry and Alice fixed things between them—and they would, they for damn sure would—someday they’d be the retirees enjoying the afternoon sunshine.
“It is that, young man.” Flashing a toothy grin from under a flat cap like Dad and Granddad had worn as far back as Jay could remember, the older man lifted the woman’s hand and kissed her knuckles. “My gal, though, she’s more beautiful still. You find a love that outshines a day like this, well, you don’t let go.”
“Not a chance, sir.” Not now that he and Henry finally had Alice with them one hundred percent. Jay kicked off, peddling toward the rest of his workday and a home-cooked dinner with his two special someones. He squeezed the handgrips. “I’m holding on.”