Just Jelly Beans and Jealousy (10 page)

Faith

I stumble on the bottom step and he reaches
out to catch me. He’s a little unsteady on his feet and he hops,
but he’s solid and strong. I have a feeling he’d fall before he let
me do so, and that’s an odd feeling to have.

“
So sorry,” I mutter. I
tug my sweater close to my body, wrapping it around myself. I
should have gotten dressed instead of coming down in my jammies,
but I just don’t have enough energy to do more. I’m working
constantly, and when I’m not working, Granddad’s at work and I’m
taking care of Nan. I feel like I haven’t slept in days. I probably
haven’t. I nearly got the life scared out of me when Nan tried to
get out of bed and fell just now. I shouldn’t have fallen asleep. I
should have stayed awake to watch her. I knew Granddad was
downstairs. He needs a break sometimes, too. He still works during
the day as a doorman at an apartment complex. And he fixes clocks
in his spare time. And he loves my Nan.

Theirs is a love like nothing I’ve ever
seen. Not even my own marriage could compare. When Nan was at the
nursing facility, he went there and slept in a chair beside her bed
every night, because he said he couldn’t sleep without her, so what
good was it for him to sleep at home? I came to stay with them when
they brought her home. I don’t know if I’m a help or a hindrance.
But I feel better being here, until I do something stupid like fall
asleep.

The man coughs into his fist. I must have
been wandering. Granddad says I do that a lot. It’s one of the
reasons why I’m good at fixing clocks. It’s slow, methodical work
and it takes my mind off the rest of the world.

“
Didn’t mean to fall into
you,” I say. Heat creeps up my cheeks.

He’s handsome. Startlingly so. He has brown
hair and deep, chocolate brown eyes. His face is shadowed by beard
stubble, and he doesn’t smile. Why doesn’t he smile?

He reaches down to adjust his pant leg and I
see the length of metal that comes out of his shoe. I look up to
his face and he’s watching me carefully. Is that why he doesn’t
smile? I stick out my hand, for lack of anything better to do. “I’m
Faith,” I say. He takes my hand in his and gives it a gentle
squeeze, his eyes meeting mine, and I might even see a little spark
in his dark gaze. But it burns out as quickly as it arrived.

“
Daniel,” he says.
“Everything all right upstairs?” He looks toward the closed
doorway.

“
Nan tried to get up and
fell.” I shake my head. Nan’s head is still solid, but her body
won’t cooperate and she just doesn’t fully grasp her limitations
yet. “Pete’s upstairs charming her back into bed.” I laugh. That
man has a way with people.

“
The Reeds,” he says.
“They seem pretty nice.”

I roll my eyes. “All five of them in one
room can be a little overwhelming.” I had a crush on Pete for a
little while, but then he met Reagan, and they are so freaking
perfect for one another that I quickly discarded that notion.

“
There are five of them?”
he asks. He scratches his head. “I think I only met
two.”

I start to count on my fingers. “Paul, Matt,
Logan, Sam and Pete, in order of age. Sam and Pete are twins,
although Sam swears he’s eight minutes older.”

I walk over to where Granddad started on
Daniel’s watch. “Is this yours?” I ask, as I pick up my glasses and
sit down on the stool. I bend Granddad’s light toward the watch. I
look into it, and, although I’ve never worked on one of these, I
might be able to fix it.

“
It was my
grandfather’s.”

I look up at him. “What happened to it?”

He looks everywhere but at me. “There was an
explosion. In Afghanistan.”

“
Was that where you were
injured?” I ask, but my mind is already on the inner workings of
the clock.

“
Yeah,” he says and he
blows out a breath.

“
So your watch hasn’t
worked since the blast?” I ask. I’m trying to figure out what could
be the matter. Because the gears turn when I manually work
them.

“
Nothing has worked for me
since the blast,” he says. His voice is suddenly heavy and I look
up.

“
What do you
mean?”

“
The clock,” he goes on to
clarify, but I’m pretty sure he just meant life. “It hasn’t worked
since.”

“
Mm hmm,” I hum. I start
to remove the gears and pieces and lay them on the table in front
of me.

“
Are you sure you should
be doing that?” he asks. He walks close to me and pulls up a stool.
He’s fidgety, and he makes me a little nervous now that he’s close
to me. But Granddad and Pete are right upstairs.

I look up at him. “You do want it fixed,
right?” I ask.

He nods. “More than anything.” He heaves a
sigh. “I feel like time stood still that day, and it never started
back up.”

I nod. But I can’t look at him. He’s telling
me more than he wants to, and I’m afraid he’ll stop if he realizes
how closely I’m listening. “Did you lose any friends?” I keep
working on the watch, removing the parts piece by piece.

“
I lost all my men.” His
voice gets thick and he coughs to clear his throat. “Everyone. I
lost everyone and everything.”

“
Where’s your family?” I
ask.

I feel the warm breeze of his heavy exhale.
“All gone.”

I finally look up. “I’m sorry.”

He nods. He gets up and starts to wander
around the shop. An hour later, I’ve put his watch back together
and I wind it up. It should work. But it just doesn’t. And I don’t
know why. I heave a sigh.

“
What’s wrong?” he asks
from directly behind me. I feel the heat of his breath on the back
of my neck, and the hair on my arms stands up.

“
Nothing,” I say and I
start to take it apart again. I look over my shoulder at him. “Are
you in a hurry?”

He shrugs and settles down beside me. He
picks up a pen and starts to spin it on the tabletop. I look over
at him. “Sorry,” he says sheepishly, and he stops the pen from
spinning with a slap of his hand. “So, you live here?” he asks. “In
New York? All the time?”

I nod. And I keep disassembling his watch.
Watches are made on a series of gears, even watches this old. I
make sure each one works as I put it back in place. There are no
snags. No broken gears. No missing parts. Nothing was jarred loose
in the blast. “Yep,” I say quickly.

“
Have you always lived
here?” he asks.

“
No,” I grunt. “I moved
here when my grandmother got sick. Before that, I was in
Florida.”

“
Do you like it here?” he
asks.

I shrug. “One place is as good as
another.”

“
Why aren’t you married?”
he asks.

I look up. “What makes you think I’m
not?”

He grins, but it doesn’t quite meet his
eyes. “Because any man in his right mind wouldn’t let you out of
his sight.”

I jerk my head up. He gets up and starts to
wander around again, like he didn’t just say something profound. “I
don’t know what you’re talking about,” I mumble.

He cups his hand around his ear and leans
toward me. He grins. “What was that?” he asks.

“
Never mind.” My gaze
drops to his lips. He licks his full upper lip, and I have to force
myself to look away.

“
Something wrong?” he
asks. His eyes drop to my mouth and he walks closer to me. Is he
thinking about kissing me?

I look down at the watch. I shrug out of my
sweater, because it’s suddenly hot in here. “No,” I say.

I look at the parts of his watch, which are
scattered all over my table. The door to the upstairs opens and
Pete walks down. Half way, he slows down, and looks from me to
Daniel and back. “What did I miss?” He grins.

“
Shut up,” I
grumble.

“
Oh,” he breathes. He nods
his head and punches my shoulder as he walks by me. I growl at him
and he laughs.

“
How’s Nan?” I ask. “Still
upset?”

“
Only that you were worked
up over it,” he says. He ruffles my hair with his big bear paw.
“Don’t be so hard on yourself,” he says quietly. “Could have
happened to anyone.”

I nod, biting my lower lip to keep from
sobbing. Nan has gone downhill so fast. She keeps having these
mini-strokes that make her weaker and weaker. There’s not much else
we can do for her, except wait and make sure she’s comfortable.

“
She was talking about
some old clock,” Pete says. He picks up a bag of chips I was eating
earlier and helps himself.

I smile. Granddad bought her a funny little
clock made in Germany when they first got married. But they sold it
when times were lean, about thirty years ago. Granddad has been
scouring the internet to find another one. “He’ll never find
another clock like that, not one that he can afford. They make
crappy knock offs, but he doesn’t want crap. He wants the real
thing for her. Or nothing.”

“
What kind of clock?”
Daniel asks.

“
It was a German clock,
made with a Black Forest design, and when the hour chimed, dancers
came out of the clock and slid back and forth along the front.” I
shrug my shoulders. “That’s all I remember about it.”

“
Is it rare?” Pete
asks.

I nod. “And too expensive for Granddad to
buy another.” I would buy one today, if I could find one and had
enough money. “Nan used to make up love stories about what the
people did when they went into the house.” I lift my brows at the
men. “Apparently, there was a lot of kissing that went on inside
that Black Forest house.”

Nan and Granddad have always had this crazy
kind of passion and I sometimes wonder if I’ll ever have that
again. Maybe I’m waiting for a love like theirs. I don’t know. I
don’t need to elaborate, because Pete’s already grinning.

“
Henry was a horn dog,” he
sings playfully.

I shake my head, but I secretly don’t want
to scold him. “She started to mention it again a few weeks ago. I
know he wants to give her one, but it’s just not going to
happen.”

Pete’s phone chirps from his pocket and he
grins and types something really quickly. He looks up. “Reagan’s
going to lock me out if I don’t get home soon.”

I laugh. “You better hurry.”

“
She loves me,” he says.
And he gets this happy look in his eye. Pete’s settled and happy,
and I couldn’t be happier for him. He looks at me. “How much are we
talking about with this clock?” he asks.

“
Like more than a car,” I
say. “Even for a broken one.”

He grimaces.

“
Yeah, I know. I thought
about buying one too.”

Daniel sticks out his hand. “Thanks for the
help finding the shop,” he says to Pete.

“
Hey, do you want to come
over tomorrow night? You could go to the fireworks with
us.”

Daniel shakes his head. “I have somewhere to
be at midnight,” he says. “But thank you.”

Pete claps him on the shoulder, and then he
hugs me way too tightly and leaves. I can hear him whistling as he
goes up the sidewalk.

I snap the back onto Daniel’s watch and look
up at him. “It still doesn’t work.”

His mouth flattens into a straight line. “I
hoped someone could fix it before it’s too late.”

“
Too late for what?” I
ask.

“
For me,” he
says.

“
It’s never too late for
you, silly,” I tell him.

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