How Forever Feels (6 page)

“True story.” Jack grinned, hoping to derail her before that twinkle in her eye got out of control. “Except for the ones who have things like ‘The Ripper' attached to them. You probably want to avoid those Jacks.”

“You don't look like one of those.”

“He's not.” With a gentle kiss to Mrs. Goodsen's cheek, Maya and Jack said their goodbyes and headed back down to the parking lot.

“D'you do this a lot?” Jack asked, thumbing over his shoulder toward the building. “Bring her flowers for no reason.”

“Usually on Wednesdays, but I got held up last night. Before she moved in here, she lived in a big old log house that her husband built like fifty or sixty years ago. She loved that place, especially her flower gardens, but she can't get up and down like she used to, so even if they had a garden here, she wouldn't be able to work in it.”

“So you bring her flowers.”

Snip just shrugged. “Every once in a while I'll have some flowers that don't sell and are getting past their prime. I used to take them home with me, but then Mrs. G moved in here and it just made sense to give them to her—perks the place up a bit.”

“Yeah, but the ones you just gave her didn't look like they were on their way out. They looked pretty fresh to me.”

“They were.” Her smile widened. “It's a couple flowers, Jack, and you saw how happy they made her, so what the hell.”

It might only be a couple of flowers to Maya, but it was obviously more than that to the old woman on the third floor.

The smell of the river sent Pete into a tizzy before Jack even pulled the Jeep to a stop in the gravel lot, but he knew to wait until Jack gave the okay. Once free, Pete bolted straight for the river, where he splashed and dug around for rocks and sticks until Jack whistled him back up on the trail.

Worn down by feet and bike tires, the leaf-covered path was just wide enough for Maya and Jack to walk side by side.

“It's usually so pretty here in the fall,” Maya said, looking up at the bare treetops. “But we've had so much rain lately that it's like the leaves got washed off the trees before we could even appreciate the colors.”

With the number of maples crowding in on both sides of the trail, Jack imagined it was something to see in the fall, spring too, probably. But he didn't care; he wasn't there to admire the scenery. He was there to be with Snip.

“So what's going on with you?” Maya asked. “Are you still with Christine?”

“Nah, she dumped me a while back.” He'd liked Christine, maybe even loved her a little, but she was too smart for him. She knew he'd never love her the way she deserved, so she'd cut her losses and ended it. No drawn-out drama, no wringing her hands, just called him on it and left. “What about you? Is this thing with Griffin Carr serious?”

“Yes and no.” Maya's snort-laugh made him laugh, too. “It's complicated.”

“Yeah, I sort of figured it would be.”

Maya's eyes seemed to stutter over a blink then quickly looked away from him. When she didn't say anything, he kept on.

“What's that like, anyway, dating a big movie star? Don't you get mobbed everywhere you go?”

“No.” She shook her head slowly. “Truth is, aside from Jayne and them, you're the only one who knows I've been out with him.”

“How'd you manage that?”

“Easy. We didn't actually go out.”

“What do you mean?”

“We've had dinner together twice, and both times we hid up in my apartment. The first time he brought sushi for us and the second time I made him dinner.”

Quiet dinners alone in her apartment with Griffin Carr…nope, Jack refused to let his imagination take that any further. Instead he cleared his throat and struggled to come up with something to say. Considering he made his living with words, it really shouldn't have been this difficult and it really should have been something a little less shallow than what he came out with.

“I guess it beats finding your face plastered all over the tabloids, which is probably what would happen if you tried to go out anywhere together.”

“Yeah.”

“People like him can't even sneeze without it making the front page.”

“Mm-hmm, yeah.” Again with the spacing out, just like she'd done at the pub the other night, and it didn't take a brain surgeon to figure out it had something to do with Griffin.

“What's up, Snip?” Jack stopped walking and waited for her to turn before he asked, “Is there something going on with him? Did he do something to you?”

“
What?
No!” Maya was many things but an actress wasn't one of them, so Jack didn't doubt her sincerity for a second. “No, it's just…I actually haven't even seen him in a while and, well, it's complicated.”

“You said that already.” They started down the path again, neither one saying anything for a while. “If it's stressing you out, maybe you should just walk away, there's lots of other guys out there, you know. Maybe not as rich or as famous, but still…”

That made her smile again. “You sound like you're in cahoots with Jayne.”

“Cahoots?” Jack laughed. “Do people still use that word? What are we cahooting about?”

“The ‘lots of other guys' thing. Jayne considers herself our group's Cupid, and while she's been knocking herself out over finding me someone, she's really bad at it, and I'm…well…”

“Let me guess: It's complicated.”

Maya's blue eyes twinkled. “How did you guess?”

“Just a hunch.” He managed to grin back at her for a second, but then had to look away. Those eyes were just too…
too Maya
…for him to keep looking into them right then. “So what's the problem? What's making everything so complicated?”

She laughed, but it wasn't genuine enough to fool him for a second.

“Well, let's see. For starters, it turned out that what I thought was forever actually wasn't, so I'm a little gun-shy now when it comes to things like who I can trust.”

“Oh. Right.”
Brilliant response, moron
. “Well, if it means anything to you at this point, Will's really sorry for what he did, and I know Stella feels awful about it.”

“It doesn't, but thank you.” If anyone deserved to get a dig in right there, it was Maya, but she didn't. Instead, she stooped over to grab a stick, and instead of throwing it for Pete right away, she stared down at it for a second. “Can I ask you something?”

Second only to the phrase “we need to talk,” that had to be the most feared question ever, not just because it was so vague, but because you couldn't ever really say no to it.

“Yeah.”

She took a deep breath, threw the stick, then turned to face Jack, her eyes filled with a wretched mix of dread, desperation, and misery. “Did you really not know about Stella?”

“About Stella? No—not until Will sent me pictures of what you did to the house when you left.”

And just like that, Snip's expression softened and the dread vanished.

It was true. He hadn't known about Stella, and even though he was plenty pissed off when he found out, he wasn't totally surprised, either, not after what happened at Will's bachelor party. How many times had he wanted to tell Maya the truth about that night, and how many times had he chickened out because it would be like throwing Will under the bus? Not only that: Jack didn't want to be the one to hurt her, to make her look the way she'd looked at him a second ago.

And what good would it do to tell her now? It wasn't like she could hate Will any more than she already did, and it wasn't like she could divorce him all over again, so it would serve no good purpose for anyone.

Best to just leave it in the past with everything else.

Exhaling slowly, she started walking again, but Jack took a second to catch his breath before following. Scooping up the stick Pete dropped, he hurled it as far as he could into the trees.

“So tell me about these setups Jayne arranges,” he said. “They can't be any worse than the chick in the catsuit.”

“No, you win on that one. I've never had a catsuit.” Snorting softly, Maya rolled her eyes and sidestepped a low-hanging branch. “The first time she did it was at one of her New Year's parties. Brad Something-or-Other. He was okay, but I wasn't even divorced yet and he wasn't any more interested in me than I was in him. That didn't stop Jayne, though, and once Ellie hooked up with Brett—”

“I met him the other day.”

Maya's smile slowly crept back. “He's good people, that one—best thing that ever happened to Ellie.”

“That's what he said.”

“He's right. Anyway, when they got together, it left me as the only single one in the group, so Jayne's been after me constantly.”

“She didn't seem the pushy sort to me.”

“She's not usually, but this…
ugh
…She's starting to drive me crazy.”

“Can't be that bad,” he said. “When was the last one?”

“Couple weeks ago.” Snip's cheeks flushed a little when she looked up at him. “Tomorrow's a whole ‘nother adventure.”

“Tomorrow? Who's the lucky guy?”

“The guy who runs the bike shop. And I know it's horrible for me to even say it, but the only thing I'm looking forward to about the whole night is the baked stuffed potato I'm going to order with my steak.”

The trail curved to the left, taking them away from the river and deeper into the naked woods.

“We could work out a signal,” Jack said, only half joking. “You send me a blank text and I'll come rescue you. Or I could call you with some kind of emergency.”

“Thanks, but Tim's an okay guy; I'm sure it'll be fine.” Her laugh, low and quiet, whispered against the air. “I could have used your help with the last guy she set me up with, though; all he wanted to do was talk about was ticks and bedbugs and how they pierce the skin and…yuck!”

Every inch of her shuddered, but before Jack could say anything, he spied movement farther up the trail, near a slight curve. Another quick whistle brought Pete plowing back through the trees and straight to Jack, who immediately clipped on his leash until the joggers had passed.

Maya moved over, opening up space for Jack beside her. “What's the new project you're working on?”

“It's supposed to be the next game in the Apollo series.
Apollo4
.”

“Supposed to be?”

“Yeah,” he muttered. “So far it's nothing but a blank page with a giant ink splotch on it.”

“You're blocked?” Maya stopped and turned her frowning face up to him. “Is it bad?”

“It's not good, that's for sure.”

“Hmm.” Nodding slowly, she started down the trail again. “What are you doing to work through it?”

“Everything I can think of.”

“Have you tried listening to music?”

“Yup.”

“Exercise? Writing something else? Cleaning?”

“Yup, yup, and nope; housekeeping at the hotel doesn't like it when you do their job.” Jack lifted his right shoulder in a dismissive shrug. “It's only been a few days, Snip, I'm sure I'll figure it out.”

Except he wasn't sure at all, and talking about it only made the doubt push deeper.

“Remember that time you took Will and me to that cosplay party?”

Uh, yeah, he remembered. Will had dressed up as Han Solo, Jack went as Chewie and Snip was Princess Leia. Sure, she'd been in the long white robe with the cinnamon-bun hair thing, but in Jack's eyes—which were thankfully hidden behind a big hairy mask—she might as well have been wearing the gold bikini.

“You'd been working on the second Apollo game and couldn't figure out one of the plot points, but ten minutes after arriving at that party, you had an epiphany.”

“And I took off, leaving you and Will to find your own way home.”

He'd never told her she'd been the cause of his epiphany. If it wasn't for Snip standing there in her Leia costume, Jack might never have come up with the character Mercy, a kick-ass heroine who captained her own ship through his fictional galaxy. Of all the characters in the Apollo series, Mercy had become an instant favorite with gamers, to the point where he'd actually seen a few people dressed like her at the last Comic-Con.

And even though he'd purposely set out to make Mercy the exact opposite of Maya, from her physical appearance to her personality, every time he wrote anything with Mercy in it, it was Maya he saw.

Clearing the thought from his mind, Jack shrugged. “So what are you suggesting—I should go to another cosplay party?”

“Normally I'd say yes, but it might be a little tricky finding one here in Newport Ridge.” Her soft laughter drifted for a few seconds before she looked up at him, her smile a little sad, a little pensive. “The three of us had some fun times, didn't we?”

“Damn right we did.” He tried to sound upbeat but it seemed forced. “Sometimes it took a little work to find the fun, but—”

“Like when I dragged you guys to the Tulip Festival? God, Will hated that.”

“Exactly, like the Tulip Festival. Wasn't that…yeah, that was where we had those really good waffle things. What were they called again?”

“Stroopwafels.”

“Yeah, those. And that honey truck…shit, I don't remember anything about the tulips, but those food trucks were freakin' amazing. Was that the spring before or after you decided you were going to learn to ski?”

“After. And then I only went the one time. Trying to get on the lift—do you remember that—I finally got my butt against the seat and then fell flat on my face, and Will couldn't get off to get back to me so he went up the mountain and I had to scramble to get out of the way for the next couple.”

Yup, Jack mused, that's what Will had wanted them to believe, but it would have been easy enough for him to get off before the lift started up the mountain; he just chose not to.