Dream of You (28 page)

             
“Tam.” Her voice was alert now. “You’re freaking me out.”

             
“I had a dream about the baby.”

             
Her gasp was a fast little suck of air, and her hand shot out through the dark, slender fingers curling around the wrist he had braced against the mattress. “Was it a bad dream?”

             
“No.” He felt a smile steal across his face. “I saw her.”

             
“Her? But we don’t know - ”

             
“I know. But she was a her, and she was, what, four maybe. And she looked like you, but she had all this black hair…”

             
“Oh, Tammy,” she breathed.

             
Tammy
was her dad’s pet name for him, and Jo had used it only a handful of times in all their history together.

             
On their wedding night, during dinner, Jess had produced a bottle of champagne and informed them that Beth and Randy would be staying in her guest room for the evening; Jordan had a date, and the house had been theirs. Upstairs, in Jo’s room – their room – once the others were gone, they’d found more gifts from Jess: silk sheets, massage oil, a pink striped gift bag of lingerie. The bra and panties had been a bridal number, sheer and lace and peekaboo in all the right places. Halfway between clothed and naked, Jo had started shaking, eyes wet and shiny, and they’d both been hit with the enormity of being together like they were, as husband and wife.

             
Their arms had gone around one another and it hadn’t been anything that involved silk sheets or bridal nighties they’d needed in that one fierce moment of belonging to each other.
“Tammy,”
she’d whispered against his neck, voice choked with tears, and the word had wrapped around both of them, warm and tingling with how much she loved him.

             
Hearing her say it now pulled him down to the bed and onto his side, facing her as she rolled to meet him. He ran his hand down the smooth, cool stretch of her thigh to her knee; he hooked his fingers behind it and pulled her leg up and over his hip, bringing her in close until their stomachs kissed and their noses bumped into one another.

             
Her eyes gleamed. Her hand traced ever so gently along his jaw. “What did she look like? Exactly.”

             
Tam burrowed under the shirt and put his hand on her bare skin, over what they’d made together, and told her.

25

             
T
he first time Jordan called her his girlfriend was October twelfth. Ellie was in his class, sketching an outline for a chapter she wanted to add to her manuscript, not hearing his actual words about heart rate, but finding the up and down rumble of his voice soothing to her ears. She might have been writing
Mrs. Noelle Walker
in the back of her mind in curly-cue script, but she wasn’t going to waste fictional inspiration when it struck. Besides, she could always ask pretty please for any notes she’d missed later, offers of food and favors bribes she wouldn’t really need, but would be happy to give anyway –

             
“What are you doing for Halloween, Coach?” The suckup who sat in the first row had a voice like a foghorn, blasting through the happy clouds of disinterest Ellie had swirling around her brain.

             
Shanae, Ellie remembered her name as she glanced up and her eyes landed on the athletic blonde who had a prime seat right in front of Jordan’s desk. Jordan was standing in front of said desk, leaning back against it with his hands propped on the edge. There were students like this Shanae in every class: those who thought socializing with the prof would put them head and shoulders above the rest of the class. They were too familiar, too confident, and seemed to enjoy monopolizing the professor’s time with personal curiosities. Normally, this didn’t bother Ellie, but when the professor was Jordan, it made her skin itch.

             
“Dunno,” he said with a shrug. “Guess I’ll have to see what the girlfriend wants to do.”

             
Ellie felt like she’d been hit with defibrillator paddles, a great jolt surging through her heart, leaving her humming in its wake.

             
The moment it fell out of his mouth, a fast twitch of anxiety pulled at Jordan’s face; but it was gone so quick she knew no one else had seen it. And if they had, they hadn’t known its significance.

             
A hard
thump
against the underside of her plastic chair signaled Tam’s kick from behind and she could only assume he was just as floored as she was.

             
Paige coughed into her hand.

             
To his credit, Jordan didn’t glance her way one time, just pressed right along with his monotone lecture until the students fell off the hinted-at trail of
girlfriend
and went back to Facebook on their phones. Ellie spent the rest of class penning a note that she let fall in the most casual way across Jordan’s desk on her way out the door. Tam lingered – a dark-haired, flannel-clad image in her periphery – and she left them to it, going out the door listening to Paige talk about adding more nutmeg to the gingerbread cake she had planned for Christmas time. They made their unhurried way down the industrial carpet and cinderblock stretch of the basement hall, headed toward the light beams shining through the outer door down at the end like something out of
Poltergeist
– “Don’t go into the light!” – when they were ambushed.

             
Shanae, who was maybe a foot taller than both of them standing on one another’s shoulders, came out from behind the Coke machine like a rugby player, ready for a tackle. Ellie pulled up so sharp she dropped the notebook she’d been carrying; it landed with a flutter of pages that got smashed and torn at the edges. Paige said, “Holy shit,” on a quick inhale and they bumped into one another like ponies skidding in their traces.

             
Ellie recovered first, eyes going down to the doodles in the margins of her notebook – little hearts and cursive Js and all sorts of damning evidence – and she asked, “Can we help you?” in a less than polite voice as she knelt and snatched up her property.

             
“Your name’s Ellie, right?” Shanae asked in her foghorn voice.

             
“Right,” Ellie said.

             
But Paige bowed up, arms folded over her chest. “Who wants to know?”

             
Shanae ignored her. “You on the track team or something?”

             
In her shirtdress and belt, ankle boots and feather earrings, she thought the answer to that was self-evident, but she played along. This girl was big enough to stuff her up the chute of the Coke machine if she decided she wanted to. “No.”

“Then why do you always sta
y late after class, talking to Coach?”

             
Oh, God, was this, what, some jealous admirer wanting to duke it out for Jordan’s affection?

             
“And what the hell kind of business is that of yours?” Paige demanded, nudging an elbow into Ellie until she was forced to sidestep out of the giant’s direct line of sight. “Hmm?”

             
“I’ve been volunteering as a coaching assistant,” Ellie lied, reaching back through her memory and latching onto something Jordan had told his runners. “I work for several coaches in the building,” she lied some more. “It looks good on my resume.”

             
“That’s bullshit.”

             
Paige puffed up even further, her face turning as pink as the ends of her hair, swelling outward with her arms and taking up more space than anyone her size should have. “You don’t
know
bull from shit,” she hissed, nothing but skinny limbs, big hoop earrings and protectiveness.

             
In some back corner of her brain that wasn’t panicking, Ellie appreciated the support, however futile. But for the moment, she felt like a hare caught in the jaws of a trap she’d never expected: one well hidden beneath the leaf litter and moss. Shanae had never been more than the most glossed-over of blips on her radar, which delivered a realization: her radar sucked. She was conspicuous as hell.

             
“Well,” she said, throat feeling dry and stuck together, voice quavering, but head lifting defiantly anyway. “How do you propose to disprove that?”

             
Shanae grimaced.

             
“Bigger question,” Paige said, “what do you care?” Her pit bull routine wasn’t making any of this less incriminating.

             
“I don’t care,” Shanae said, her gaze still on Ellie; laser-guided, this one. “But somebody might.” Her head tilted to a meaningful angle, dirty blonde ponytail rustling against the back of the jersey she wore. “Somebody, like, maybe, the
head
coach.”

             
She left with a sneer.

             
“What in the holy
hell
was that about?” Paige demanded.

             
“She knows.” Ellie felt her lunch turning to lead in her stomach. “I don’t know how, but she does.”

**

              The note had been folded up in the way girls had done it when Jordan was in high school: a tidy little package with a pull tab tucked into one of the folds that unraveled the whole thing. He flattened it across his desk and then curled up the top edge so Tam couldn’t see it if that was the reason he’d stayed behind.

             
Ellie had the sort of handwriting that would have been enhanced by a quill pen dipped in ink, an elegant slant with little hooks on the Hs and Ns.

             
Here I was making such a diligent attempt to ignore your lecture and work on my manuscript, but you make it hard on a girl.

             
The rest was a poem, her name a dramatic swirling of curls at the bottom. He smiled to himself and made a go at folding it back up, slid it in the pocket of his shorts for later.

             
“Love letters,” Tam said as he skipped his fingers absently along the edge of Jordan’s desk. He smirked as he watched his hand, the spikes of hair he kept long in the front falling across his eyes. “So sweet. Jordie the player…brought down by a love letter.”

             
“Said the married guy.”

             
“Yeah. Spoil my fun how ‘bout it.” He stepped back, still staring at the carpet or his toes or whatever, until he bumped into the student desk behind him and propped back against it. He chewed at his thumbnail a minute, until Jordan started to think this might be something that warranted more than the fifteen minute gap between classes. Finally, he picked up his head and braced both hands back on the desk. “Today’s Joey’s birthday.”

             
Jordan snorted. “I know that. Seeing as how she’s my sister and all.”

             
His eyes rolled like big blue marbles. “She told me not to get her anything.”

             
In high school, Jordan had fielded more questions than he’d cared to about Jo – guys trying to figure out the magic “in” that would land them at the movies with her on a Friday night. He’d never had to lie;
she’ll never go for you
had been the God’s honest truth. Jo had always been focused, if nothing else. Of course that had encouraged some of them all the harder – Nick Schaffer among them – until Tam had put Nick in the hospital. Everyone had known to keep his distance then; it had only ever been Tam afterward. And Tam had, thankfully, never been one of those idiot boyfriends who needed helpful hints on how to bag a guy’s sister. Jordan had never wanted to think too hard about the friend who’d practically lived at his house getting under Jo’s clothes, so he was grateful for the reprieve. Tam still never needed advice – except maybe in Ireland when he’d wanted her back, wrecked and desperate – especially not when it came to the little things.

             
“You know as well as I do, Jo doesn’t play games like that,” Jordan said, hoping this was just a matter of reaffirming what they both knew.

             
“Yeah,” Tam sighed, played with his hair. “Our finances are in the shitter and the baby’s coming and…” Something flickered across his face that made him frown. “She’s trying to pretend it’s not her birthday ‘cause she doesn’t want me to stress over it. She keeps trying to take care of me.”

             
Jordan rubbed a hand along his jaw. He didn’t like this shift in the two of them, the way they kept talking to him instead of each other. As kids they’d been all about the inside jokes and private conversations, whispering over in Dad’s chair like they weren’t obvious as all hell; but for some reason, as married adults, they circled around one another, weighing every passing emotion as some burden they didn’t want to dump on the more fragile party.

             
“Do you two ever
talk
to each other anymore?”

             
Tam was defensive immediately, dark brows tugging down low over his eyes. “We talk.”

             
God, he did not have time for this woe-is-me bullshit. He loved Tam as a brother, and it was probably a miracle the guy wasn’t in weekly therapy, but he and Jo had crossed the finish line. They were married; here came the kids, the jobs, the houses, little dogs and picket fences. They’d toughed through the difficult parts. End of the fairy tale: this was the part where the camera panned back and everything faded to this golden blur, beyond which lay the peaceful sort of future Romeo and Juliet had only ever dreamed about. They were no longer fighting and clawing their way through the dating jungle, they’d found each other, and Jordan just wanted them to shut up and live happily ever after already.

             
Plus, he had to be at the gym with his guys in five minutes.

             
“Look, man,” he sighed. “I know the money’s worrying you and she’s babying you.” That earned him a sharp look. “But she’s practicing for motherhood, or whatever. You don’t have to spend a load, but trust me, celebrate her birthday. However it is you guys wanna do it.” And he hoped to never hear details.“You can’t fret
all
the time.”

             
“I don’t fret.”

             
“Like an old woman, my friend.”

             
Tam studied a spot on the wall while Jordan shut down his computer and dropped the notebook he never used back into his bag. By the time he was on his feet and ducking into his sweatshirt, Tam had recovered. “So what’s the note say?” His usual shark smile took the stress lines off his face. “Did your girlfriend write you a poem?”

             
“Bite me.”

             
They parted ways out on the sidewalk, the sun already the honeycomb color that hinted at nightfall not too far off. As Jordan watched Tam go off toward the business building on his skateboard, he had no idea the rest of his day was about to turn to absolute shit.

             
The fitness center was across the drive from the convocation center: a gym, locker rooms and two floors of weight benches and treadmills that overlooked the campus green. It was no LA Fitness, but it was free (or, rather, part of tuition fees) for students. There was an athletics department strength training facility just off campus in the volleyball and indoor golf building, but Jordan would have had to drive over there and would need to book appointment times in advance…It was a whole thing and he was lazy. So he’d told the guys to meet him after his last class of the day.