How Forever Feels (12 page)

“I—”

“God, who the hell do you think you are, anyway?” She didn't know where this anger came from, but it was there and it wasn't done, which meant she had to fight to keep her voice down. “You walked away from me two years ago, remember? You did that, not me. So what gives you the right to waltz back into my life now and have any kind of opinion about me or whoever it is who gets my
parts
going!”

The whole time she'd been going off, Jack's grip on his bottle had tightened until his knuckles were strained white. His jaw clenched and unclenched and his eyes were like granite when he finally spoke.

“Fine, you want to know?” His voice was low, tight, almost hostile. “Yeah, I hate the idea of you and him together and
yeah,
I know really well that your
parts
are none of my business. I learned that lesson a long time ago, sweetheart.”

Lifting his empty bottle, he waved it so hard at the waitress Maya thought he might rear back and throw it if he didn't get some kind of acknowledgment soon. When he finally looked back at her, something shifted in her brain like she'd just dropped an entire row of a slide puzzle into place.

Oh no, surely to God…

The knot in her balloon of self-righteous anger slipped open, sending the rest of its hot air rushing out of her mouth in a long whoosh.

“Jack.”

He wouldn't look at her, and even though part of her brain screamed out warnings like an air-raid siren, she couldn't stop herself.

“What did you mean a minute ago when you said it's
me
and you couldn't do it again?” He didn't even have to answer, because there it was—her own epiphany that didn't just hit, it exploded inside her brain, knocking her back against the booth. “Ohmygod. You mean…”

Did she look half as terrified as he did?

“Since when?”

He seemed to steel himself before answering and when he did, it was with a shrug of complete surrender. “Does the word ‘aloha' mean anything to you?”

“Oh, Jack.” No matter how hard she pressed her hands against her chest, it didn't help ease the feeling that everything was being twisted and wrung out. “Why didn't you say something?”

“I did!” he choked. “I asked if you liked piña coladas and getting caught in the rain.”

That did it; whatever was twisting inside her chest burst open and now she wouldn't have been able to stop smiling for anything. That's exactly what he'd said to her, too, and the damn song had been stuck in her head for two days afterward.

“I mean after that,” she said. “Why did you just walk away?”

“What was I supposed to do?” He didn't even set his new beer down when the waitress brought it, just grabbed it out of her hand, took a long swig then rolled the bottle slowly between his palms. “You were Will's girl.”

He might as well have said “You are,” because she knew that's what he was thinking.

“I had no idea.”

“Good,” he croaked. “You weren't supposed to. Jeezus, Snip, do you have any idea how bad this is? We shouldn't—”

“But you left so fast that night. If I'd known…or if Will hadn't come over…”

His expression hardened for a second before he finally shrugged, his mouth curling up in a small crooked smirk.

“Or if I'd had the balls to tell him to piss off like I wanted to.”

“Or that.”

The waitress returned with their dinners, checked their drinks, then wandered off again, leaving them both staring down at their plates. What were they supposed to do now? How were they supposed to move forward?

It wasn't like they could pretend the last half hour hadn't happened, and at the same time it wasn't like they could do anything about it.

And what about Griffin? Should she tell Jack about it now? Yes, of course she—

No way!

They'd shared enough shocking information for one night. They needed time to sort through all of that first before she added anything else. And besides, she hadn't decided what she was going to do yet, so why even bring it up?

Instead of lifting his fork and digging in, Jack pushed his plate a little to the side and laid his hand palm-up on the table. It took Maya a second to move, because she knew what was coming, but eventually she nudged her plate over and placed her hand in his.

At the first contact, Jack turned his face away and hissed out a breath, then stared down at their hands like he was afraid to move. His skin was warm against her touch, his fingers twitching as though they wanted to close around hers, but they didn't.

Mesmerized by the feel of him, by the strength and vulnerability in that one hand, she traced the tips of her fingers along the lines in his palm and down the length of each finger, before finally pressing her palm flat against his and letting him close his hands around hers.

“Four years,” he breathed out over a strangled laugh. “I had this under control for four years. Kept my mouth shut and everything.”

“Four years,” Maya snorted. “God's sake, I couldn't manage it two weeks!”

“Yeah, well, you didn't have to, did you?” He was kidding, but at the same time not. “I'm sorry, Snip, I shouldn't have said anything.”

“Why?”

His smile faded and a second later, he pulled his hand free. “You know why.”

Yup, okay, she did, and she couldn't pretend otherwise. At the same time, though, she wasn't about to let it ruin this…whatever “this” was. Will had taken enough already; he wasn't going to take Jack again, too, not now that she had him back in her life.

Pulling her plate of pasta back, Maya lifted her fork and shrugged.

“This is crazy,” she said, stabbing a ravioli with a little more force than necessary. “I mean, jeez, Jack, for two years I just assumed I'd seen the last of you, and I'm not going to lie, you broke my heart a little when you never answered my messages.”

“Snip.”

She stuffed the ravioli in her mouth and chewed, the whole while nodding thoughtfully.

“And then suddenly you show up again and none of that mattered anymore, because I was—I
am
—so happy to see you. God, it's like…” She jerked her hands upward, sending a small blob of sauce flying off her fork. “I don't even know. I keep wondering if maybe a part of me always felt this way and I just ignored it until now, because there's no way I should be like
this
about you so soon especially since you've been ignoring me all week. I mean…seriously.”

His big, loopy grin made her grin back, warmed her through, and made her trip over her tongue a little.

“I don't…I mean, why shouldn't we…” She stopped, fork hovering above her plate, and huffed out a sigh. “Don't let him ruin this, Jack.”

And just like that, his grin was gone again, replaced with a hard gaze and a clenched jaw. “He already has.”

“No.” Shaking her head hard, she jabbed her fork into the pasta again, not quite sure why it was so hard to spear those little suckers. “I don't believe that.”

Jack pulled his plate closer, but he didn't eat. Instead, he waved his fork back and forth over the mound of mashed potatoes for a second, then set it back down on the table.

“This is…jeez, Snip, you have to see how bad this is, don't you?”

She wished he'd stop saying that. Obviously it wasn't ideal, but it wasn't that bad, was it? Going by the look on his face, it was worse than just bad.

“What do you want me to say?” she asked. “Do you want me to take it all back and say it was Griffin we were talking about? Would that make it better?”

A low growl crept of out his throat.

“No,” he ground out. “But we both know there's only one way this is going to go, so maybe we should just…”

It was a good thing he didn't finish that sentence, because she was ready to throw her whole plate at him if he did.

“I admit this is crazy, Jack, and
really
unexpected, but that doesn't mean we ignore it. It means we…well…I guess it means…” Maya blew out a loud breath and shrugged. “Okay, I don't know what it means.”

“Me neither.” Resigned, that's how he looked. Resigned to the fact that it was what it was and that's how it always would be because of Will.

“Oh, come on.” Giving up on stabbing the ravioli, she resorted to pushing them around on her plate instead. “I get why you might not want to do anything about this, but please don't make it seem like it's nothing.”

“Nothing?” He barked. “Four years, Maya!
Four years!
”

“Shhh!” She glanced around, thankful he hadn't raised too much attention with his outburst. “That's not what I meant. You're Will's best friend, I get that.”

“And you're his wife.”

“Ex-wife—and before you say it, no, it's not the same thing.” He didn't look even slightly convinced and she didn't expect him to. “Of everything I gave up when I left Will, there are only two things I wish I could've taken with me: you and the front-load washing machine. That thing was awesome; I could throw quilts and blankets and all sorts of stuff in there.”

“Maya.”

“I'm not kidding. The stackables in my apartment are good, but they're way too small. I might have to complain to my landlady.” She tried to smile, but ended up sighing. “Okay, fine. Do I understand why you chose Will over me and why you'll keep doing it? Of course I do. Do I wish you'd told me how you felt four years ago? Uh, yeah, I
really
do.”

“Would it have made a difference?”

“Honestly, I don't know, but since we seem to be putting it all out there tonight, I'll tell you what I do know, and that is…there's always been…I don't know how to explain it other than to say there's always been something there, Jack. Something for you, and for the better part of two weeks now I keep wondering if all this time, it was actually more than I wanted to admit.”

He flinched as though she'd inflicted physical pain on him.

“I'm sorry but it's true.” It felt like she'd finally expelled a breath she'd been holding for too long. “And now that I've told you, I'm stuck somewhere between feeling this huge amount of relief and being scared half to death.”

“Yeah.” His voice was barely more than a murmur. “No shit.”

There
. She finally managed to pierce another ravioli and lifted it, pointing it toward him to emphasize her point.

“You know what's really bizarre about this?” she asked, then rolled her eyes when he snorted. “This should be awkward, shouldn't it? I mean, sitting here admitting these things to you and having you tell me all that…I keep thinking I should be embarrassed, or feel awkward or something.”

“But you don't.”

“I don't.”

His eyes softened. “Me neither.”

“You see? It's a sign. So are you really going to let something like a twenty-year friendship with Dickhead get in the way of something between us that could last at least…how long are you going to be here?”

“Six weeks.”

“Right, six weeks.” She was joking, pathetic as it was, but at least it made him smile a little. “This kinda sucks, doesn't it?”

“Kinda.”

Realizing she was still waving around her fork, she set it down and folded her hands together tight on her lap.

“Does he know?”

“God no.”

She didn't think so. Will would consider it the ultimate betrayal, and if Genie ever caught wind of it, that would be the end of Jack's happy little family, and Maya had been around long enough to know Jack would do whatever it took to protect that.

Didn't mean she was going to give him up, though. Not again.

“Would you do something for me, Jack?”

He'd finally stuffed a forkful of potatoes in his mouth, but that didn't stop him from answering, he just held his hand up in front of his mouth and mumbled around the food. “Almost anything.”

“Don't walk away again.”

That stopped him mid-chew and it took him a second or two to start again.

“We might never get any further than the conversation we're having right here at this table.” She paused long enough to smile teasingly at him. “And it's entirely possible that my girlie parts might wither and die, but that doesn't mean we can't…I don't know…be friends, right? We're adults for crying out loud. We can do this, can't we?”

His laugh was short, harsh, and guttural. “It's not as easy as you think, you know.”

“Oh hell, Jayne and Nick made it work for twenty-five years; I think I can give it a shot for a while. I'm tough, remember?”

“Yeah,” he snorted. “Tough. Right.”

“I'm serious. Don't walk away like you did before, okay?”

Their waitress edged her way toward them, frowning, and pointing down at their barely touched meals. “Is there something wrong?”

“No.” Jack's gaze barely touched the girl before settling back on Maya, the green and brown bits in his eyes melting into a slow smile. “It's all good.”

As if to prove his point, they both filled their forks and didn't set them down again until their plates were clean.

“What's not to like? Custard? Good. Jam? Good. Meat?
Good
.”

Joey Tribbiani,
Friends,
“The One Where Ross Got High”

In the week since his date-not-date with Maya, Jack found himself smiling a lot, which was ridiculous, because it wasn't like they'd solved anything. In fact, they'd probably made the whole situation worse, and yet Jack couldn't seem to think about anything else but this: Snip didn't have a thing for movie-dude Griffin Carr; she had a thing for him.

Every time that thought ran through his head it made it harder to stop smiling, and holy shit, it ran through his head a lot. Why would something like that make him so happy? He was still screwed, and it was still torture, but at least he wasn't carrying it around by himself anymore.

No, moron, that's because you gave some of it to Maya to carry for you.

Maya, who deserved to be with someone who'd never do anything to break her heart, someone she could easily trust, and someone who'd do whatever it took to make her happy. Jack was all those things; he could be a hell of a lot more, too, if it weren't for the fact that she was his best friend's wife.

Ex-wife
.

Wife, ex-wife, it didn't matter; both were a problem. A big problem. And yet all he could think about right then, as he helped Will install a new low-flow toilet in the downstairs bathroom, was that Snip didn't have a thing for movie-dude Griffin Carr; she had a thing for him.

Hell, he was in such a good mood, he didn't even mind Stella hovering in the doorway while they worked, but he did thank the bathroom gods that the room was big enough that they weren't crowded.

“What time do you guys want to leave tomorrow?” She leaned against the door, mug in hand. “I think Genie wants us all there by noonish.”

“Tomorrow?” Jack frowned. “Oh, right. I was thinking I'd drive myself down, so you guys can come and go whenever you like.”

“Oh, that's okay. We don't have any plans, do we, Will? We can come back as late as you want.”

Straddling the old bowl while he rocked it off the seal, Will cast a casual glance Jack's way, did a double take, and snorted.

“Jeezus.”

“What?” By the time Stella switched her gaze from Will to Jack, she figured it out. “Oh. Do you have a date?”

“No.” Jack didn't hesitate with his answer, he didn't flinch, and he didn't flip Will the bird when he cocked his brow at him like that. He just kept pulling parts out of the box and lining them up on the counter. “Regan invited me over to her place for dinner Sunday night; sounds like they're going to have a houseful.”

“Including Maya.” Did Will even realize he'd said it out loud?

“Carter's partners from the clinic will be there,” Jack said, ignoring Will and pretending he hadn't noticed the way Stella flinched. “The guys that work with Nick, and by the sounds of it there'll be a few off-duty cops and any other strays looking for a drumstick and a little cranberry sauce.”

“Sounds like fun.” Stella gave a smile, but it was kind of pathetic-looking, and once it started to fall, she never got hold of it again. “I always liked Regan; she used to cut my hair until…well.”

Jack shrugged, surprised to realize he did it more for Stella's benefit than his own. He thought it was best to avoid any further talk of Snip's friends, so he turned the conversation back to Will's family, and in particular his sister.

“Is Tammy bringing Cliff to dinner tomorrow?”

“I'd be surprised if she gets him anywhere near Genie's house again after what happened the first time.”

“It wasn't that bad.” With a final rock, Will got the old toilet loose, and he and Jack hoisted it off the bolts. “All Mom said was that it was nice to see most of his tattoos were spelled correctly.”

“I got this,” Jack said. “Garage?”

“Yeah, for now, thanks.” Will stepped back, giving Jack room to lift the porcelain himself, and by the time he made it to the door, Stella had all but run into the next room to get away from it.

“Knowing Genie,” he said when he got back, “that's not all she had to say.”

Stella smirked. “Of course not. She also had to go on about how it couldn't have been easy getting a ring that big through his nose.”

“We were all thinking it.” Will ran his finger and thumb along the tip of his nose, then gently pinched his septum. “God, can you imagine how much that must've hurt?”

“I'd still be crying,” Jack muttered. “Did he get that job at the docks?”

Stella shook her head slowly. “No. I had lunch with them a couple days ago, and he said he was just as happy being a student of life, because it meant he could live off the land.”

“Bullshit,” Will choked out as he set the new seal. “It means he can live off my sister. The guy's a bum.”

“Maybe,” Stella said. “But he's your sister's bum and if she likes him, we need to support her.”

“Support, sure. Enable, no, and that's what we're doing. She hooks up with an idiot, he breaks her heart, sucks her bank account dry, and we're left to pick her back up again.”

“That's what families do, Will, and no matter what, she's still your little sister so you need to look out for her.”

“You ready?” He bobbed his head at Jack and together they lifted the new toilet into place. “She's thirty years old, Stella. It's about damn time she stopped mooching off us and learned to look after herself.”

That might have been the end of it if Stella hadn't gone so quiet all of a sudden.

“What?” When neither of them answered, Will leaned back from where he was hunched over working on the bolts. “Jeezus, Jack, what now?”

“Nothing.” He held his hands palms out. “She just needed a little money to get her through the next month or so.”

“What a shock. How much did you give her?”

“I didn't give it, I loaned it.”

Will wasn't stupid, he knew the drill, which was why he shook his head and repeated his question. “How much did you give her?”

“Three grand.”

“Three grand?” Will choked out another snort and went back to work. “Are you out of your fuckin' mind?”

“There's a night-school course she wants to take, but she had to have the payment in last week or they'd give her spot to someone else.”

“What kind of class?” Head up again, Will only looked at Jack for a second or two before turning his question to Stella. “Basket-weaving? Laminating 101? The In-depth Art of Papier-mâché?”

“Will.” Stella tsked at him as she pushed off the doorframe and headed down the hall.

“Tell me I'm wrong!” When she didn't answer back, he raised his brow at Jack, who sighed and shrugged.

“It's some kind of gemstone-cutting class.”

“For three grand?” Will choked. “Who's putting the course on—De Beers?”

“She needed supplies, too.” And she needed to pay her electric bill and buy a few groceries, neither of which Will needed to know about. “Maybe this will be what she needs. Maybe this'll be ‘it' for her.”

“You said the exact same thing when she wanted money for drum lessons, for pet-grooming class, and what was that one she signed up for at the trade school? Right—she was going to be a heavy-duty mechanic. Never picked up a wrench in her life, but that didn't seem to matter. How long did she last there?”

Jack didn't have to say anything, because they both knew the answer. She'd lasted just over three weeks; four days past the withdraw deadline, which meant they were too late to get any kind of refund. To this day none of them had ever figured out how she'd managed to get accepted into the program in the first place.

“Whatever, man, it's your money.” Will set his wrench on the window ledge and stepped back so Jack could set the tank in place. “Just make sure it's going to the jewelry course and not up Cliff's nose.”

Jack didn't think Cliff or Tammy were into drugs, but this wasn't the first time he wondered if she'd been using the money for something other than what she claimed. For all he knew, she could be squirrelling it away in the Caymans.

It should have concerned him more, he knew that, but it didn't. Not right then, anyway. The only thing that mattered to him right then was the fact that Snip didn't have a thing for movie-dude Griffin Carr; she had a thing for him.

Who gave a shit about anything else?

That whole week, Maya found herself walking around in a complete daze. The whole situation was crazy, so why couldn't she stop smiling? They'd essentially friend-zoned each other in the worst possible way, then sat through dinner and a movie as though it was the most normal thing in the world—if that world was made up of people who couldn't stop smiling.

Every time she'd taken another bite of her ravioli that night, she'd smiled. Wiping her mouth afterward, she smiled. At one point, Jack had excused himself to go to the bathroom, and the whole time he was gone, she sat there smiling at his empty seat across from her.

And when she caught him smiling back at her—good God, that did all sorts of crazy things to her insides. They must have agreed about ten times that it actually wasn't funny, and that the whole thing was nothing but screwed up, yet there they sat.

They'd met up a couple times that week to run Pete on the trail around the golf course, and both times it was the most bizarre thing she'd ever done. How could she just be Jack's friend when every time she looked at him she wondered what it would feel like to have him kiss her—and not just on her cheek. Or what it would feel like to have his big warm hands slide over her skin like…no!

He must've been wondering something pretty similar, because a couple times he'd blushed beet-red and cursed for no apparent reason.

Neither Maya nor Jack had said anything about keeping their bizarre situation private, yet she knew they both would. And as notoriously tight-lipped as Jayne was about everything, there was no worry about anything slipping out, not even when they all met at Chalker's on Tuesday night.

Maya loved those three to the moon, but if they found out Jack had any kind of feelings for her, they'd no doubt march en masse over to Dickhead's house and rip him a new one for causing yet more grief in her life. And while Maya might encourage that in any other situation, this wasn't just any other situation, and for Jack's sake, they needed to pretend it was nothing.

So far, all Jayne knew was that Maya had a bit of a crush on Jack, and that's where Maya planned to leave it for now. There was no question that the ex-wife in her wanted Jack to go tell Dickhead the truth, or better yet, let her do it, but the rational, empathetic part of her knew why he couldn't, why he wouldn't. What she didn't know was what she should do about it, because even though she hadn't touched him since he jerked his hand away from her at the table, he'd still kissed her goodbye when he dropped her off after the movie and both times they'd taken Pete out, and those moments, short as they were, wreaked all sorts of chaos inside her.

She had to remind herself that he'd done it every time he said goodbye, but there was no mistaking the differences this time. His lips, always gentle against her cheek, now lingered a heartbeat longer than usual. His sigh, warm against her skin, tickled a small tremble up her spine, and Holy Mother of God, he smelled good.

Cologne? Aftershave? She didn't know, but the light, clean outdoorsy scent made it really,
really
hard for her to keep her hands to herself when all she wanted to do was reach for him like she'd done in her car after leaving Jayne's house. This time, though, her fingers would get a hell of a lot farther than just dancing along the edge of his jaw. God help her, if she'd known how he felt then, she might not have been so quick to peel out of that damn parking lot the way she had.

Yup, the whole thing was definitely screwed up, which was why she was happy to be by herself on Saturday night, making lemon meringue tarts and three different kinds of pie for Thanksgiving dinner at Regan's. It gave her time to think, to reason, to try and sort out what she could do, or if she could actually do anything at all.

Unless things had changed with the Carsons in the last couple of years, right about the time Maya was whipping up the meringue, Jack was no doubt elbow-deep in soapsuds, scrubbing the roasting pan while Tammy and Will argued over who should wrap up the leftovers.

And around the time Maya was done cleaning up and had set the desserts on cooling racks, Jack and Will were probably wrestling each other for the remote control while Genie and Tammy…
and Stella
…drank chamomile tea out in the solarium.

She didn't miss it; okay, she didn't
usually
miss it, but this year her parents had flown to Red Deer to spend Thanksgiving with her brother and his family, so being alone right then made her a little lonelier than usual.

But that was okay. She'd armed herself with enough Denzel movies to last clear through the weekend, so she'd be fine, especially with the family-sized bag of Twizzlers she'd picked up this morning. And no, the irony of that was not lost on her.

In her oversized nightshirt, Maya flopped down on the couch, feet up, and hit the play button, only to hit pause a few minutes later when her phone buzzed in a text.

I'll bet next week's movie admission you've got Training Day or John Q going right now.

“Stop it,” she muttered, trying to stop the fluttering going on in her chest or at least force the new smile off her lips. She failed miserably at both.

Lifting the case for
Philadelphia,
she snapped a quick picture and fired it off to him with her response.

I want my own bag of popcorn this time.

She didn't have to see Jack to know he was probably grinning down at his phone, too.