Illicit: A Forbidden Romance (19 page)

“
D
amn you have
a lot of books,” Tristan said as he lifted the last box into the back of the U-haul truck. “Please tell me this is the last of it?”

“Let me check.” I went back inside the house, going through every room to make sure I hadn’t left anything behind. Finally, in the living room, I paused and said a silent goodbye to my home. I imagined the new owners moving in—a couple and their two young kids—making this space their own, filling the house with laughter and warmth. The image was a happy one yet I felt nothing but unbearable sadness.

“Good to go?” Tristan called from the front door. “We still got a freaking twenty-four hour drive ahead of us.”

I followed him out, locking the door behind me one last time. Then we dropped by the store, ironing out any last minute issues with Alexis, my branch manager, before finally getting on I-95 heading north.

“So what’s your plan while in Boston?” I asked, needing to fill the silence. Otherwise I’d end up thinking about Joss again, and that was something I’d vowed to stop doing. A week had passed since that night at my house, since I asked her to move to Boston with me and she promptly disappeared from my life once again.

“See the folks, get some beer with the buds, maybe see a honey or two.”

I flashed him a dubious look. “You only have one full day before flying back.”

“One full day is all I need,” he said with a chuckle.

“I guess that’s all you need when you only last five minutes,” I said, punching his shoulder.

“Fucker,” he said with a chuckle. “So hey, I have something to tell you.”

Every suspicious bone in my body was immediately on high alert. “What the hell did you do now?”

“Actually, it’s more like what I
didn’t
do.”

I ground my molars together, waiting for the blow. I’d noticed my brother acting strangely the past week but hadn’t cared enough to ask. I’d assumed he was only being his usual prick self. “Just tell me.”

“Okay, but remember that I only have your best interest at heart.”

“Don’t make me pull over, Tristan.”

“Fine.” He held up his hands in surrender. “Joss came by the store the other day.”

The truck jerked a little on the road. “What? When?”

“Sunday morning.”

“How come I didn’t see her?” I turned to him. “What did you say to her?”

“I didn’t say anything. She saw you with Mig and assumed you two were together.”

“Let me guess: You didn’t exactly clear up the misunderstanding?”

“It wasn’t my place.”

I ground my molars to keep from shouting. Even as mad as I was, a part of me wondered if maybe Tristan had done the right thing. True, I had asked Joss to come with me to Boston, but the fact that she’d hesitated was answer enough for me. She hadn’t wanted me three years ago, and she certainly hadn’t wanted me a week ago. A man’s ego can only take so much. It was officially time to give up the ghost.

“Jake?” Tristan asked after some time. “I’m sorry, man. I really was trying to help you.”

I sighed, though it came out halfway like a growl. “Forget it.”

“You for real?”

“Yeah.” I shook my head, glancing at the rearview mirror. “I’ve officially left Florida—and Joss—behind. I’m done.”

“That… I’m…” In place of words, he gave a slow clap. “Good deal, brother. Proud of you.”

“Fuck off.”

He set a hand on my shoulder and gave it a shake. “No, really. I’m happy to hear that. I thought you were never going to get over your Joss obsession.”

“She wasn’t an obsession,” I bit out.

“Okay then, your
love,
” Tristan said. “Potato, potato.”

I pressed the button to wash the windshield, my eyes following the water droplets before the wipers swept them away. “I’m done talking about her. In fact, I’m completely done with Jocelyn Blake. Period.”

It was his turn to release a sigh. “I respect that. But there’s one last thing.” He bent over and rummaged in the backpack by his feet, coming up with a book. “She asked me to give this to you.” I glanced at the leather-bound notebook, thinking at first it was the one I’d given Joss at her graduation. “It’s your sketchbook. The one you lost a while back.”

I swallowed down the disappointment. A part of me had hoped she had given me her journal. But then again, the last thing I needed was to be haunted by her words and thoughts.

“What’s in there that’s so important?” Tristan asked.

“Nothing. Just sketches,” I said, taking hold of the book and throwing it onto the seat between us.

T
ristan
and I took turns sleeping and driving, and twenty four hours later, we finally pulled into our parents’ driveway.

After we caught up on sleep, we (including our parents) headed over to my new house.

Tristan was first to react to the rundown colonial-style house before us. It had once been an ocean blue color but the paint had since faded and chipped, some of the white shutters falling off its hinges. “You saw this house in person before you bought it, right?” he asked, approaching the overgrown bushes flanking the walkway.

“Yes. On my last visit,” I said.

“And you still bought it?” Dad asked.

Tristan chuckled. “I thought you were loaded now? Is this all you could afford?”

Mom smacked my brother upside the head. “You two leave him alone. I’m sure Jake has a plan.”

I stepped up to the creaky porch, adding it to the mental list of things that needed to be repaired. “This is a nice neighborhood and the house is in good shape. It just needs some updates.” I stuck the key in the lock and opened the door, allowing my mother inside before heading in.

We walked through the empty house, left surprisingly clean by the previous owner. Everyone voiced opinions on things that needed remodeling, adding to my already-long list of renovations. But for now the most important part—the complete overhaul of my life—had officially begun.

M
om stayed behind
, turning her attention to wiping down the cabinets in the kitchen while Dad, Tristan and I worked on unloading furniture. Several hours later, with an empty truck and a clean kitchen, we sat around the island and celebrated with pizza and beer.

“To Jake,” Tristan said, raising his bottle. “To going back to your roots.”

“I have to say, it’s nice to have the whole gang back together,” Mom said, smiling at the three men around the room. But her gaze caught and sharpened on my brother. “And when are you planning on moving back home?”

Tristan drained his beer and stood up. “Sorry, Ma. I just remembered we gotta get the truck back to the rental place before they close for the day.”

Mom shook her head. “We’re not done talking about this.”

Tristan chuckled, bending over to drop a kiss on her head. “I don’t doubt that for a second.”

“Here, take my pickup,” Dad said, throwing his keys my way.

I followed Tristan out, chuckling behind him. “You know she’s not going to let this go. Might as well start planning on opening a T’s Garage here in Boston.”

“Boston is home and all,” Tristan said, standing in the driveway. “But Miami is where my heart belongs right now.”

“I give you a year, two tops.” The thought of my brother helplessly bowing down to love brought a smile to my face. “Then you’ll get married and move back here.”

“Screw that. I’m a bachelor for life.”

My amusement died down as reality sunk in. “Yeah, well, maybe you won’t be the only one.”

He slung an arm over my shoulder. “Won’t be so bad, bro. We can go to clubs together. We’ll be the two old geezers standing at the bar, bobbing our heads to the music like the SNL Roxbury Guys,” he said. “It’ll be epic.”

“Shit, that’s sad,” I said before we got into separate vehicles and returned the U-haul back to the rental facility.

M
onths passed quickly
. Between house renovations and setting up a workshop in a warehouse, I had very little time for anything else.

“It’s like you’re back in Florida,” Mom said during a Sunday dinner I was actually able to attend. “I’ve seen you a total of three times since you moved here.”

“Sorry, Ma. It’s been a hectic five months.”

“You need to slow down a bit, son,” Dad piped in, coming in with the bowl of vegetables and setting it on the table. “Working yourself to an early grave.”

“Speaking of…” I grinned, my chest swelling wide pride. “I have some news.”

Mom’s eyes widened. “You’re getting married?”

I nearly choked on my mashed potatoes. “No. No.”

“Well why the heck not?”

“He hasn’t even brought a girl over, Myra,” Dad said. He squinted at me thoughtfully. “Are you coming out of the closet?”

“No!” I set the napkin down on the table, intending to steer this conversation back to calm waters. “It’s about my business.”

“Oh,” Mom said, the disappointment clear in her voice.

Dad chuckled. “Why didn’t you say so?”

“When I got here I put in a bid to do restoration work at the Boston Public Library, never really thinking it would amount to anything. Well, they called me yesterday and told me I got the job. My crew and I start in a few weeks.”

“Honey, that’s wonderful!” Mom said.

Dad beamed. “‘Atta boy.”

“This means I’ll have to put the furniture side of things on the back burner. The new showroom will just have to wait,” I said. “But for now I get to work in a library, surrounded by books. It’s the perfect job.”

“Now all you need is a special person in your life,” Mom said with a twinkle in her eye. “Just say the word. I already have a list of eligible bachelorettes.”

I shook my head, willingly pushing away the thought that was trying to edge its way back in. “No thanks, Ma. The last thing I need right now is a relationship.”

“Come on Jake, you’re not getting any younger,” Mom said.

I laughed, despite myself. “My ovaries are fine, I assure you.”

Mom glared at me. She probably would have smacked me upside the head had she been hitting distance. “I’m ready for grandkids.”

I shook my head, maintaining the carefree facade. “Might have better luck with Tristan then. He probably already has a bunch of little T’s running around Miami.”

Now
that
comment was enough to bring my mother to her feet to clip her oldest son’s ear.

T
hat night
I went home and stood in the middle of my bedroom, surveying the barely-made bed and the boxes lining the walls. I had been here months, had already renovated my bathroom and the kitchen, and yet I hadn’t managed to finish unpacking my shit. What the hell was I waiting for?

I kicked off my boots and dropped to my knees, slicing open the tape on the box and pulling out its contents. After I had unpacked most of the boxes, I went to the kitchen to grab a beer. It was during my search for the bottle opener that I found my sketchbook in one of the drawers.

I set the leather book on the counter, its leather cords tied together neatly, and stared at it as I drank my beer. A small part of me wanted to open up to that page with Joss’s face, to see if those feelings were still there, but the smarter part of me knew that doing so would open up old wounds. So I threw it back inside the drawer and did what I’d become good at these past several months: I forced it out of my mind.

O
ne Saturday morning
, after working a long night at the library, I awoke to the sound of a high-pitched alarm. I grabbed my phone and cracked open an eye, wondering why the hell my phone was screaming at me so early on a weekend.

The words
Wedding Day
flashed across the screen. It took my drowsy brain a few seconds to catch up, but when it did, I was instantly wide awake.

Today, at five in the afternoon, one Jocelyn Blake was going to walk down the aisle towards her future husband.

I jabbed at my phone, erasing the alarm as fast as humanly possible, cursing my brother for setting it back in Florida, the same day I’d come home to find that invitation in my mailbox. After years without hearing from Joss, finding that invitation had been jarring. Unsettling.

And to see her name alongside another man’s—Emerson
Fucking
Peterson—in that fancy-dancy calligraphic print had been like a knife to the chest.

For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out why the hell she had sent me, of all people, a wedding invitation. Surely she’d known that I was still holding my breath, waiting for her return? Had Joss always been so ruthless and goddamned cruel?

It was Tristan who’d come up with the only logical explanation.

“Don’t you see?” he’d said. “She wants you to come to the wedding and stand up when the priest asks if anyone has any objections or whatever the hell it is they say.”

A part of me—the desperate, hopeless romantic that refused to die—had wanted to do just that. What could be more valiant than to go over there and make a ruckus and ride away from the church with the bride on the back of a motorcycle? But the sane part of me had sneered at that ridiculous notion.

“Fuck that,” I’d said and scratched out an X on the rsvp card. “I’m done chasing after her.”

Tristan had made a grab for my phone, playing around with it before handing it back. “I’m putting the wedding date in your calendar,” he’d said.

“What the hell for?”

He’d flashed me a confident smile. “Because I know that when that day rolls around, you’ll have moved on. And you’ll need a reminder to celebrate your freedom.”

Tristan was right about one thing: I had moved on. To be free of Joss was a victory, to be sure, but I wasn’t so convinced it was something to celebrate.

I lay back in bed, folding an arm over my eyes with the intention of sinking back to sleep, but my stomach had other plans. With a sigh I forced myself to get up and go into the kitchen to make a sandwich. When I grabbed the orange juice bottle, I was suddenly reminded of that afternoon in Florida, when a delirious Joss had fallen in a puddle of juice. I had taken care of her that afternoon, listening to her nonsensical mumblings while I wiped her down, all the while trying to ignore the twinge in my chest. I’d told myself I loved her like a younger sister, but even then I’d known I was only lying to myself. I loved Joss in every way a man could love a woman, a red hot blaze that refused to be extinguished.

And now I loved her enough to let go, to find a way to be happy with her choices even if she hadn’t chosen me.

As I bit into my sandwich, I remembered the sketchbook. With a burst of nostalgia, I pulled it out of the drawer and untied the cords that wrapped around its middle. I flipped through the first pages, going past my sketches, and to the face of the woman whose spirit I was never able to capture on paper. As I stared at the imperfect representation of Joss, I wondered what she was thinking at that moment in Texas, if she was excited or panicking.

It was then, as I looked in her pencil eyes, that I noticed the ink on the back of the paper. I turned the page and found Joss’s handwriting. Page after page were entries from Joss, all beginning with
Dear Jake.

I swallowed, my eyes stinging. Ignoring the knives embedded in my chest, I flipped back to the first entry and began to read.

I spent the next few hours turning page after page, poring over Joss’s thoughts during the time we were apart. She told me about the feeling of helplessness as she tried to make amends with her mom, the desperation when her mom was diagnosed with cancer. She described her time in Houston, her job as a freelance writer, and the day she accepted a date with the doctor who saved her mother’s life. But within those letters she revealed how much she missed me, how every day she thought of me and wished for a different outcome.

It was nearing three in the afternoon by the time I reached the last entry. By then I was physically and emotionally exhausted but there was no stopping now. I needed to see this through to the bitter end.

I
swiped
a palm down my face, my entire body weighted down by regret. I set my elbows on the table and hung my head, reading the last few lines over and over again until my vision blurred.

And then it finally dawned on me what she was trying to say. I jumped up from the stool and grabbed my phone, before realizing I no longer knew Joss’s number.

I hurried to the bedroom and got dressed. I would never make it to Houston in time to stop the wedding but I couldn’t sit here twiddling my thumbs. I needed to do something.

I’ll be hoping it was you.

The words swirled around in my mind while I grabbed my wallet and phone and made a beeline for the door.

And then I bumped into Joss.