Allegra Grey
Copyright © 2020
Jax
“Sorry, babe, it’s not happening.” I shouldn’t have to explain myself, but Serena is crying into the phone, and after a few more unresponsive phrases, I mute my speaker so she can wail in peace. Why did I date an actress? Movement drags my attention from the phone on my desk to the arched doorway leading to the hall in time to see my cousin step through. Steve’s rumpled shirt and dust-covered jeans must be courtesy of our grandfather’s attic storage where I’d last seen him a couple hours ago. His face is smudged with more dirt, and his brows arch as he stares at my shrieking phone.
“Didn’t mean to intrude, Jax,” he says quietly. I chuckle.
“No worries. You’re fine.” I kick my feet up on the broad mahogany desk. Grandfather’s study is a nightmare of heavy dark wood and leather books. He’d been a manager at the coal mine, and his concept of classy decor stopped at 1937. “She’s working through her repertoire. It’ll be over pretty quick.”
“That sounds, uh, personal?” He steps through the doorway despite this, and I laugh.
“Nah. Serena’s getting in character as a dumped wannabe.”
“You…”
“Hold on. Be right with you.” Her wailing volume is decreasing, so I switch the mic on. “Serena, I know you don’t want to hear it, but I don’t care. I’m out. Family shit. You know how it is.”
“You promised!” Her voice breaks. Half the men in southern California would’ve cracked, too, and gone running. Guess it’s a good thing I’m in godforsaken Indiana.
“And then my grandfather died.”
“That doesn’t mean you can’t make an awards show three weeks from now!”
“Consider it new priorities.”
Steve shuffles over, eyeing the door. I hold up a finger to forestall his escape. Taking the cue, he heads for Grandpa’s small side bar in the corner and pours us both a couple fingers of bourbon in heavy cut crystal snifters.
“I thought you were coming straight back,” Serena sniffles. She’s damn good at pulling heartstrings with tearful speeches, but I can’t summon any warmth for her. She knows I hate displays, even private ones. “You didn’t even talk to me about staying. I could’ve gone with you. I—”
“I’m not running my schedule by you. We aren’t together.”
The rest of the call ends in a hailstorm of names and tears. I hang up before she gets too far into her feelings and face my cousin’s impassive expression.
“That was cold, bro.”.
I shrug. “She’s just insulted, not hurt. It’ll be forgiven by Monday.”
“Man, you’ve been dating for six months. You ain’t even letting her down easy.”
“She’s dating my bank account, and she’ll have a new account’s shoulder to cry on in ten minutes. Give it a week, all will be forgiven.”
“And you?”
“I’ll find a new model when I get back to the city.”
“No country girls?”
I consider that for a second. I like women, love sex, but out here in the downtrodden hinterlands of the rust belt, the women who’d love my bottomless wallet and limitless credit cards are hungry for more than Chanel suits and Tiffany diamonds. It feels like punching down. I could say I don’t go for crooked teeth or less than perfect body types, but that’s token bullshit. I always date women who frequent the social circles around me, who know the rules. I don’t see anyone for more than a year; I don’t give a damn what their career is, or want to meet their kids or their fur babies. We date to be seen in the media, and create networking opportunities. I don’t hide my wealth, and I don’t put up with pretense on their parts that they want anything else.
“No,” I agree. “I’ll leave them to the cowboys and coal miners.”
Steve salutes me with his glass. “Good. Because there’s a new chick in town. Been chattin’ her up down at the Wheel for weeks. If you scoop her, I’m kicking your ass.”
“The hell are you doing taking that long?”
“Getting to know her? It’s a novel concept for you, but some of us like knowing a woman before we dip in. Saves the shrieking crazy phone calls later on if you find out she’s batshit before you go out with her.”
“Don’t judge my dating life by Serena.”
“Bro, I’m judging your dating life by you. She’s just caught up in your crap.”
“Thought you’re supposed to be on my side.”
“I am. Don’t mean I’m not going to tell you when you act like an asshole. You know you could’ve told her your plans changed a lot nicer than that. You just don’t give a damn.” He sips the bourbon, his dark green eyes judging me across our grandfather’s liquor.
“She never earned it.”
“You never gave it either.” He finishes his drink and gets up to pour another. “You want to hit the Wheel with me? See the old town?”
“Do I have any other options?”
“Netflix. Porn. Both.”
I could stay here, finish boxing up some of our grandfather’s ledgers. But we’ve worked on the house for three days, and I’m tired. I wanted movers to do it, but Steve reminded me that I’d have to hire them out of the city, and we didn’t need strangers opening old family documents. Grandfather hadn’t always been the upstanding, clean-nosed citizen of latter years, and his father was a bootlegger. “Fine. I’ll go.”
****
The breeze wafts around us, full of cigarette smoke, cheap perfume, honeysuckle, and dust. I hear the distant train whistle and rub sweat from the back of my neck.
“How long does an appearance have to be?” I ask Steve, who’s chugging his beer like it owes him money.
“Few minutes. I want to catch JT. You remember him, right?”
I remember them all. I spent every summer here and the last two years of high school— the rose-tinted days before I had my other grandfather’s last name and the full weight of who I am. Jack “Jax” Delaney became Jackson Hargrave II. West Point, five years with the army, then Stanford and the boardrooms of Hargrave International. For the best, my mother said. This is a chance your father’s family can’t give you.
Nine long years stretch between me and Jax Delaney, who had a cousin close as any brother, a gang of friends he ran with every weekend, and a girl he loved more than life itself. I remember sophomore homecoming when Steve asked Harper Keith to dance with me because I was too shy to speak when she was anywhere in a sixty-foot radius, and the way she caught my eyes when she said yes.
My fixation on Harper wasn’t healthy. I’ve had enough counseling to know that—adolescent fixations are rarely good. But goddamn, was it addictive. She was my first kiss, my first sexual partner, my first love. Maybe the only one in the last category. I eye Steve shot-gunning a third beer and wonder if I could ask about her.
I haven’t Googled, checked social media. I won’t. I don’t dare. I’ve spent nine years with the sweet summer memories and the gut-wrenching nightmare of our last contact. It needs to stay buried.
“I can’t make it. But have fun!” her voice urged me, so tinny and hollow through the uncertain phone line. Then she’d been gone. Smoke in the wind. Unanswered texts, disconnected phone number. Vanishing out of our mutual friends’ lives like a ghost.
****
“Hey, babe! When did you get in?” The voice sucker-punches me across nine empty years. I turn. She’s standing at the bar. Fuck my life. She’s gorgeous. Harper’s dark hair cascades to mid-back in heavy waves, her vibrant blue eyes sparkling in the light. She’s put on weight, filling out from the skinny 16-year-old in my memory to a curvy hourglass, but the slashed t-shirt stretched taut across her chest bears the bar’s logo.
She works here?
Here?
Harper Keith, model, hopeful artist, honor student … is a waitress. In a dive. In our old hometown.
I should feel elation. The girl who broke my heart is here, stranded hundreds of miles from civilization. Harper picks up a fifth of no-brand vodka and starts mixing drinks, and my chest hurts. I don’t give a shit about Serena’s tears, my ex-wife’s tantrums. I can’t remember their faces as my eyes lock on a scar half hidden under Harper’s bangle bracelets. Her little cousin had swung a sparkler and it’d landed on Harper’s forearm, right across her wrist. She’d squeezed my hand so hard in the emergency room I worried she’d land us both in a cast.
“Hey!” Steve bellows, plowing toward the bar without looking at me. “Harper! We need another round.”
She turns, smiling. Her crystal eyes flit right past me to fix on Steve, and her full lips part in a warm, familiar laugh that flashes a dozen memories across my mind and flays me down to a gawky teenager. Fuck whoever said time heals anything. She teases Steve, banters with a handful of other patrons, wiggles her shapely hips in time to the music. I stay at the table, locked in this hell loop. The girl I almost gave up a fortune for doesn’t even recognize me.
Of course she doesn’t. Money’s all that buys love, and I didn’t have shit back then. I was just her high school boyfriend.
“You didn’t tell me Harper was here.” My voice is quiet and bitter when Steve drops into the chair across from me.
“She’s always here.” He stares at me, glances over his shoulder at Harper, then back at me. “Oh, fuck me. You two used to date, huh? I forgot all about that.”
“Forgot what?” Steve’s best friend, Carl, saunters over, handing me another beer.
“Jax and Harper back in high school. Don’t worry, bro. She don’t got any ten-year-old kids to fit up a paternity test to.”
“Damn you get all the luck.” Carl let out a low whistle, his eyes lingering on Harper. “She had to be hot as hell back then. She’s cute now, too, but I ain’t never seen her date anybody. Figured she was battin’ for the other team.”
“Isn’t JT supposed to show up?” I ask to change the subject. Steve and Carl turn their attention to complaining about JT and his new car ‘til the object of their jibes shows up. I put up with all three of them for another hour, avoiding the bartender until I’m sober enough to get back to the house. Grandfather’s dead, and Grandma’s in a care home for recovery, so I have the place to myself. The idea of a whole night to myself should get me into the car at lightspeed, but I linger in the parking lot to check my phone and get a few texts returned to my stepfather and assistants.