Everybody Falls (8 page)

"Five-ish?" I suggested and could tell from her reply she was bouncing.

Holy chocolate with raspberry sauce.

*.*.*.*.*

Jax left Lacey's on a high. A natural high that left him feeling almost giddy.

She'd let him into her business and showed him how to do stuff. Let him do stuff.

Okay, so it wasn't exactly what he'd wanted to be doing with her. Shit, just spending time with her was head-bumping. At least, it was for him.

He walked back to Grams holding that white bag, the bag that Lacey had given him and felt he'd smiled the whole way home.

"Hey, Hot Stuff," she greeted when he'd made his way in the back door. "Where've you been?"

"I left you a note," he said, his body stilling.

They used to have some wicked arguments, he and Grams, when he used to take off and not tell her where he was. Not that he'd really gone anywhere except to be alone. It wasn't until the last blow up, the one when she'd started crying that he finally got it, that he understood why she'd get so mad.

She was scared shitless he'd been out trying to fucking off himself again.

What the courts said was a suicide attempt.

But, in his mind?

He had just tried to escape the pain of losing Denny as he'd walked fully clothed into the ocean. Leather clothes, as he discovered the hard way, don't float.

"I saw your note and I thank you for it," she said, smiling tenderly. "I just thought maybe you'd have been back sooner."

"I was at Lacey's. I helped Lacey in her bakery this morning," he said after a pause, his smiling breaking out again just to be able to say her name. "She gave me some muffins."

He watched the old woman move towards him before she reached behind and rubbed her hand on his back.

"I think that's fine, Jax, just fine," she said gently, looking up at him. "How're you feeling today?"

He kept smiling, as he remembered Lacey asking the same question.

"I'm still bruised. But, I slept almost four hours straight," he offered, knowing that his sleep was going to be questioned as well at some point in this conversation. At first, he hadn't been able to sleep without pills, the kind that would knock him out for ten or twelve hours at a time. He'd weaned himself off those, too, taking a lack of sleep as the trade off.

"Good. Seems to me someone is getting better," she said, taking the bag from his hand and carefully pulling back the sticker to see what was inside. It hadn't escaped her notice that Jax had taken the empty cake box up to his room after they'd shared the sweet treat after dinner yesterday. So she was careful to keep the sticker unharmed and in one piece.

"You know, I think I am, Grams," he said on a low note, his eyes looking out the kitchen window but she could tell he was looking inward.

"I'm glad for you, Jax," she said and moved to grab a couple of small plates. "You want your muffin now or later?"

As they sat eating the still warm lemon muffins with blueberries tucked inside, Edie cast her mind back, counting all the differences in the Jax of now versus that angry, demanding, little smart-mouthed shit she'd picked up at the airport.

In all truth, he'd been a stuck-on-himself, arrogant little bastard.

She'd been warned about him by both the therapists down in Ojai and Dr. Norton here in town. About his attitude, his lifestyle, and the drugs they'd found in his system as well as in his pockets when he had been fished out of the ocean the day Denny had been buried.

Edie had gone to the funeral, held at that fancy cemetery, what was it called? Oh, yeah, Forest Lawn. Cemetery to the Stars. She'd never been to a funeral where the eff word had been used in the different speeches of remembrance given, where the attendees wore more leather than a herd of cows. Where a full bottle of vodka, another of bourbon and another of scotch were ceremoniously emptied over the coffin of the deceased.

The gathering afterwards was a real eye-opener. One she endured for exactly ten minutes before leaving. Then, she had sat in her rental car for a full half hour crying her eyes out for her delightful grand-boys. Both for the one who had died and for the other one who was out of his mind because his brother had died.

It was probably a month later that she'd received the first call regarding Jax. Asking if she could take him in. Detailing his issues, citing that, at the moment, he wasn't able to be by himself. She'd considered saying 'no', until she remembered what Pete was so fond of saying. "We take care of our own, Edie. They need us."

That particular conversation had been when Denny and Jax moved to the farm after her Vanessa and son-in-law Bill had been killed in a car crash. Jax had been four and Denny was six which had been a handful for her and Pete at the time. But, Pete had been adamant about bringing the boys into the house.

"Jax, do you remember when you lived here before?" she asked softly, her mind still caught in the past, remembering the feel of him as he snuggled up next to her on the piano bench or with a book on the couch.

He slowly brought his eyes up to hers, eyes so very much like his mother's, and grinned.

"Sing to me, Grams," he said after a few beats.

Edie couldn't help how her eyes filled with those softly spoken words, and quickly turned her head away so he wouldn't see how much his words, his memory, meant.

The same words he'd used when he was four years old.

It had been heartbreaking to have Bill's sister, Patricia, obtain custody of her special boys two years later. Somehow she'd gotten wind of Pete's diagnosis of prostate cancer and had gone to court, suing for custody. When the dust had finally settled, her two precious boys were moved all the way down to Lawndale, a small suburb of Los Angeles, to live. To spend their youth with their single aunt who Edie knew wanted the money from the estate more than she wanted the boys.

She and Pete had grieved over the loss of them for years.

*.*.*.*.*

Grams gave him a list of 'Things to Do' everyday.

Things that used to piss him right the fuck off, yet those jobs, like the one of cleaning out the garage and the Gramps' workshop, really did help. He'd been able to sort out as much shit in his head as he'd done in both the basement and the attic. Things that he now found comfort in getting it done, completed.

He'd also learned a lot about himself, Denny, his parents as well as his grandparents in the process. The old woman was a packrat, liking her scrapbooks and other memorabilia, carefully packed in trunks with lots of cushioning and wrapping. He had learned to go through the heavy wooden crates and metal trunks first since they held the most items of interest.

It was in the metal footlocker of his uncle who had died in a freak accident in boot camp back in 1976, Jax discovered his Grams dirty little secret. The entire footlocker was filled with Wynter's Vicious stuff: CDs, posters, professional stills, t-shirts and the like. The woman had more WV stuff than their most avid fan. Which included the different magazines and newspapers announcing the death of Denny. As well as death of the band, of Wynter's Vicious, since Denny was gone. Jay-sus. Who'd have thought it of her.

Jax hadn't spent time looking through that crap. He'd lived it and didn't want the reminder of it around him. Not now. Not when he was learning to live again.

It was the other stuff, the crates and trunks holding memories of his parents, of his grandparents in the early years that held him enthralled for hours. He didn't remember his mom or his dad. However, all the old items saved, carefully and lovingly kept, helped bring them to life.

He'd decided that he'd missed a lot not knowing them, not having them around.

Jax wondered if anyone would ever feel that way about him after he was gone.

The thought made him sad.

Chapter 7

I was in my place on the stairs when Jax ran up the next morning.

It was warm this morning, giving an early warning of the summer to come and he was already wringing wet when I watched his legs slow as he crossed the road towards me.

I couldn't help my heartbeat as he came closer, looking better than a man had a right to look on an overly warm Thursday morning, nor the smile I felt creep across my face.

"Hey, Lace," he panted.

"Morning, Jack," I answered. "Coffee?"

Was this becoming a routine? Having this gorgeous man share coffee with me each morning?

Did I want it to become a routine?

"No, thanks," he said, swallowing as he tried to get his breathing under control.

"Water, then?" I asked.

"Yeah, that'd be great," he said, using the sleeve of his t-shirt to wipe his face.

I moved quickly to grab a bottled water from the zero-sub and rushed back out to the porch.

He took the cold bottle and guzzled half of it before I'd even sat back down.

"Listen, Lace…," he started. Just like yesterday, I waited for him to continue speaking, sneaking a glance that caught on his eyes.

Oh, deep, sweet chocolate. Those eyes.

"Would you like to go for a drive tonight?" he finished at last.

I saw the bottle turning in his hands as he twisted the lid on and off, off and on.

Was he nervous?

"A drive?" I heard myself repeat.

"Yeah. I've, uhm, been here a while but I don't know much about the area," he said, no longer looking at me. He was still standing, too, not sitting down next to me like before. "I was hoping you could, you know, show me some sights or something."

I looked up at him, thinking.

A drive sounded pretty innocuous or ominous depending on where your head was at the moment. On one hand, I didn't know him, like, at all. I knew his grandmother, though. Plus, he'd been in the kitchen with me alone yesterday and hadn't done anything that screamed 'serial killer' in spite of the butcher block full of knives sitting in full view next to the sink.

A drive actually sounded kind of nice.

"Okay," I said finally. "I'd like that."

I didn't miss the flare of surprise that flashed across his face at my answer.

"Great! Ah, what time? I mean, what would be a good time for you?" he asked, still twisting the cap of the water bottle.

"I'm usually done here by three so anytime after that'd be good," I explained.

"I'll see you around four, then," he murmured, his eyes big, his smile bigger.

He was absolutely beautiful when he smiled.

"See you at four, Jack," I said softly, breaking the easy quiet that had again grown between us as we did that crap-crazy stare thing into each other's eyes.

"Gotta go, Lace," he advised, leaning down towards me.

This time I made a point of not pulling back, not moving away. I'd seen how my movement yesterday had changed the vibe between us and was determined not to do anything to break it again.

"See ya, Jack," I whispered staring back up at him. I watched as he turned and began to sprint away from me.

Was this a date?

Is a 'drive' considered a date?

I'd never been asked to just to go for a drive. Shoot, I hadn't been asked on that many dates if the truth were known.

What if he had asked me out for like dinner or drinks or something, would I have gone?

I couldn't answer.

My last experience with dating hadn't gone so well.

Let it lie, then. Just take it as it comes and don't, for chocolate's sake, read anything into it
, I told myself. Okay, warned myself.

Ricki came by with sandwiches around noon-ish, practically exploding with the intel she'd uncovered in her mad race to 'get the skinny' on the hidden, elusive rock star that was allegedly hiding out in our neck of the woods.

"I swear it's either Kevin Trimble of Worthy Victors or one of the remaining members of Wynter's Vicious," she exclaimed around a mouthful of Mel's tuna melt. "I can't be sure, you understand. I think those are the closest contenders."

"What makes you think that?" I asked, just for something to say. Actually, my mind was whirling about my non-date that was going to be happening in what? Less than three hours?

Yikes!

What was I going to wear? What does one wear for a not-quite-a-date drive kind of a thing?

When her voice wound down, I casually asked or as casually as I could. I'm not very good at prevaricating if you want the truth, "Uhm, Ricks? I heard one of the customers ask a lady if she wanted to go for a drive. If someone asked you to go for a ride with them, what would you wear?"

"Was he hot?" she immediately shot back. "Oh, God, please tell me he was hot and that she was hot and that he's been secretly lusting after her for, like, months and that…"

"Whoa! Hold on," I warned. Geez, I should've never brought it up because Ricki was like Beth in the hook-up department. "I was just wondering if you got asked out for a drive, what would you wear?"

She put down her sandwich to consider the question as she used a napkin to wipe her hands. Ricki takes wardrobe selection seriously, especially if there is the hope that a member of the opposite sex would see her.