Behind Mia's back, Lucy gave Robin an exaggerated roll of her eyes. “Later.”
Robin waved; Mia acted as if she hadn't even seen Lucy. “Any man in particular? Michael, perhaps?”
“Especially Michael.”
Nothing new there. Robin groaned wearily, accustomed to Mia's frequent breakups with Michael. “So what'd he do? I thought he was the love of your life.”
“Men are pigs. Generally speaking,” Mia said with all the authority of a woman who had known many men. Which she had.
“Okay, so what happened?”
Mia flipped her hair back, turned slightly to pass a cool glance over the workmen, then slumped in her chair. “We went to Juanita's last night. You know, the artist?”
Some artist. She painted blobs on canvas. Wait—that wasn't doing justice to Juanita's art. She painted colored blobs on canvas and she was, for reasons that completely escaped Robin, all the rage in Houston .
"Anyway, there was this girl there, little girl, like eighteen. Someone said she's related to the Bushes. Michael
couldn't take his eyes off her. He couldn't stop talking to her. In fact, he practically crawled down her dress to have a look at her fucking fake boobs."
“Ah.” It was all Robin could say, knowing full well Michael's thirst for chasing skirts. Even she had been the object of his attentions on more than one drunken occasion, with Mia only steps away.
“We had a huge fight about it and I think I hate him.”
“So, did you break it off?”
“What, the wedding?” Mia asked, surprised. “Of course not!”
Robin stopped what she was doing. “You're kidding, right? He's already got a wandering eye and you're still going to marry him?”
Mia nodded matter-of-factly, then sighed wearily at Robin's look of surprise, as if Robin was somehow taxing her. “Oh, shut up. All men do it; you know that. But it doesn't mean we have to like it.”
“All men do not do it, Mia. Why would you settle for anything less than perfect love?” she blurted, instantly wondering where that had come from.
Mia screeched her laughter. “Oh my, what planet did you come from? Of course all men do it! Look at your dad! You can be so naive sometimes, Rob! There is no such thing as perfect love. There is sex, and there are joint bank accounts. And once the 'falling in love' business wears off, you better hope you have married the biggest bank account.”
“God, that sounds so mercenary.”
“Oh please,” Mia said, dismissing her with a flick of her giant amethyst ring, “the only reason Evan never showed any outward interest in other women is because he was scared to death of you and what you could do to his job.” She said it as if it were a proven fact.
“Evan was not and is not scared of anything, especially me,” Robin shot back. “And Evan has never been afraid to look at other women.”
“Everyone is scared of you, especially guys. You eat 'em head first, like gingerbread men.”
It was moments like this Robin wondered why she and
Mia had remained friends these twenty years.
“Pretty flowers—where did they come from?”
“The ground,” Robin said defensively. Mia shrugged, picked up a magazine.
Eventually, she got bored. Since she couldn't coax Robin to go shopping, she picked up her cell phone, got in touch with Cecilia, who convinced Mia they should have a massage first. Mia thought that sounded grand. “See you,” she said to Robin, and sailed out of Robin's house, leaving more than one slacking jaw behind.
Robin turned back to Peerless. The more she looked at it, the less it seemed like a good deal. By late afternoon, she was surprised to see how quickly the day had gone, and looked at the list of questions she had made for Evan. She thought about calling him, but it was late in New York . He had probably left the corporate offices by now. Besides, with work on her house starting to wrap up for one day, she had lost interest in anything having to do with bubble wrap and had focused all of her attentions on Jake Manning.
Zaney was the last one out after the crews, waving his cast. “Yo, heeey, lookin' good!”
'T hank s!" she said brightly.
“Yep, that's some pretty flowers, all right. Hey!” he said, a lightbulb coming on in his brain. “Those came from Jakie's! Jakie brought you flowers!” he exclaimed, as if she didn't know that, and continued merrily out the door.
Jake was the last one down. He paused in the entry, shoved his hands in his pockets. “So… you doing all right?”
She nodded, leaned back in her seat, and folded her arms across her middle. “What about you?”
“Better than I have in a long time,” he said with a lopsided smile. “But… I'm sort of wondering why you left.”
Robin felt the old fist in her gut, telling her to steel herself. She glanced uneasily at the flowers. “You didn't really expect me to stay, did you?” she asked, laughing a little.
“Well, yeah,” he said, sounding surprised. “Why wouldn't you?”
Why? Wasn't it obvious why? “Well… because,” she
said weakly and wondered if it was so obvious that she couldn't think of why. Jake looked confused, almost ashamed. Which made Robin feel terribly callous as she struggled to reach the surface of her many thoughts. “Hey, I was wondering… since you did so good with the Thai, would you like to try some Cuban food with me?” she asked, hoping to avoid the discussion.
Jake grimaced. “Ah, well…” he started uncertainly, and Robin wanted to slide right under the table. Oh man, why couldn't she wait for him to make the first move? Why did she always have to direct everything? The heat was creeping into her cheeks so rapidly she didn't hear what he was saying at first and slowly realized he was asking her a question.
“I'm sorry, what did you say?”
“That Cole has a baseball game tonight. I promised him I'd come.”
“Oh. Okay,” she said, a little shocked by her overwhelming disappointment.
But Jake stood there, hands in pockets, looking uncomfortable. “I suppose we could get a bologna sandwich if you want to tag along,” he suggested.
The mere mention of bologna had Robin wrinkling her nose.
“Hey! I tried Thai,” he reminded her.
A kid's baseball game. A bologna sandwich. How very strange, but it actually sounded like fun. “Can I skip the bologna?”
“Robin,” he said, shaking his head, “You sorely underestimate the great taste of meat snacks.”
She wasn't going to touch that with a ten-foot pole.
It turned out that Jake was right about meat snacks— at least bologna.
Sitting under the night sky made charcoal by the ball field lights, and cooled by a warm breeze blowing in from the Gulf, the bologna-and-cheese sandwich on white bread with mayo, lettuce, and tomato tasted divine. The instant Robin sank her teeth into the sandwich she had vowed she would
not eat (but was eating, t hank s to a particularly stupid wager on the last kid up to bat), she was instantly transported back to the little house in Dallas, when Rachel was in a high chair, and she and Rebecca sat in giant chairs at the kitchen table, their legs swinging freely beneath them, eating bologna-and-cheese sandwiches, corn chips, and drinking Dr Peppers. She hadn't thought of that house in a long, long time, and though the memories were a little foggy now, she could remember Mom singing and how Dad would sweep her into his arms and dance her around the kitchen. They had been so happy with their little house and bologna-and-cheese sandwiches.
She paused in the eating of her sandwich; was her memory true, or colored by time? It seemed impossible, knowing Mom and Dad now (especially Dad) that there really could have been a time they were in love like that. But she did remember, and she remembered how she and Bec would giggle until Dad would pick each of them up and twirl them around the kitchen floor, too.
“For someone who swears off anything wrapped in red casing, you sure seem to be devouring that sandwich.”
Jake's deep voice brought her back to the present, and Robin looked at what was left in the wax paper she held. She had, indeed, eaten two-thirds of her sandwich, and she laughed. “I had to eat it. You spent seventy-five cents on it.”
“That's right,” he said, puffing his chest, “I spare no expense when it comes to women.”
She laughed again, felt Jake's smile radiate through her. They finished their sandwiches, watched Cole lose two fly balls in the lights in one inning.
When the game was over, they took Cole for a burger at Paulie's. “You need glasses, kid,” Jake said as Cole devoured his burger.
“No, I don't!” he instantly protested. “Why?”
“Because you missed those two fly balls.”
Cole gulped down a couple of fries. “That's so stupid. The ball was in the lights.”
“What he needs is some of those cool shades the Astros' outfielders wear,” Robin offered.
Cole immediately perked up. “Yeah!” he exclaimed eagerly. “They have those flip-down Oakleys! Can I get some of those?”
“Sure!” Robin answered, as if it was nothing to come up with a couple hundred bills for fancy shades. But Cole was beaming, suddenly talking about some shades he had seen on TV, and Robin was nodding, knew exactly what he was talking about, and even told him where she had seen them on sale. The two hundred smackers aside, Jake quietly watched her, admiring the way she could, without any discernible experience, relate to a kid who was otherwise so unreachable.
Later, when they let Cole off and he took Robin home, Jake asked her the question that had been burning in his gut all day. “Why did you run away last night, Robin?” he asked as she gathered her things.
She blinked, surprised. “Run away? I didn't run away, I just went home! What's the big deal?”
“Nothing, really,” he answered truthfully. “It's just that the nicest part is, you know, after.”
Robin flashed an irrepressible grin at that sentiment. “Coming from a guy, that's pretty remarkable! Okay, look, I'm sorry if I upset you,” she said, and picked up her purse.
But Jake wasn't through; he put his hand on her arm. “Robin, is there something you're not saying?”
She laughed, looked out the front window, avoiding his eyes. “Like?”
“Like it sort of feels we're dancing around the maypole here, doesn't it?”
Robin clutched her purse tightly and laughed, a high-pitched, nervous laugh. “Come on, Jake! We're having a good time, right? What's wrong with that? Why do we need to analyze it?”
He didn't have an answer for that—he couldn't disagree with her, but at the same time, he couldn't seem to put his mind and heart around what he was really feeling. The part of his brain that actually thought about stuff like this was
so rusty as to almost be unusable—but he knew, instinctively, that something was not quite right. Yet without being able to say what, he finally shook his head and laughed. “Nothing's wrong with it,” he said, and meant it. At least, he was pretty sure he meant it. He leaned over, kissed Robin good night, kissed her until he had to let go, and reluctantly watched her walk up the drive. And he wondered, as she stepped inside her house, if he hadn't been caught up in a cosmic storm or something, because at that moment, he was feeling extremely crazy to be dancing around the maypole with her, being pulled in a direction he wasn't sure he wanted to go.
He drifted off to sleep that night thinking of being with Robin, and was having a very pleasant dream along those lines when the phone began to ring, rattling him. He came up on his elbow and blinked, realized it wasn't the phone but the front door, and glanced at the clock. Two a.m. Unbelievable. Zaney was the first person to pop in his mind, but as he shoved the bedcovers aside and got up, he realized even Zaney wasn't stupid enough to come knocking at two in the morning.
Wearing only his boxers, Jake stalked to the door and threw it open. The flashing red and blue of a police cruiser on the street blinded him; he blinked, held up one hand against the glare, and focused on the cop standing there.
“This your kid?” he asked and pushed Cole forward.
Unfortunately, yes, and Jake feared he might literally go right through the screen door in his haste to get his hands on his kid.
The knock on Jake's door in the middle of the night did not bode well for the next day, which began with a major argument with Mom when Jake insisted it was time Cole came to live with him. You don't want that, Jacob. It's your guilt talking, nothing more, and that ain't no way to do Cole. When he had demanded to know what in the hell that was supposed to mean, she had hemmed and hawed, but had finally said what some vague part of him already knew. You feel guilty for having left us behind and not being here for your brothers.
He swore he didn't feel guilty. He accused his mom of wanting to be miserable and of wanting to keep everyone around her miserable. Both fuming, they had ended the conversation. Only Jake's fuming turned to fury when he took Cole to school and discovered he had been suspended two days for cutting class.
So he showed up at work in a very foul mood with one surly teenager (who was in danger of getting popped if he mouthed off to any of the guys the way he mouthed off to Jake). When he talked, that was. Which was never, at least not to Jake.
They spilled out of opposite sides of the truck, slamming their doors in almost perfect unison. “I'm going to put you to work, son,” Jake said as they stalked toward the house.
“I'm not your son,” Cole shot back, slinking along behind Jake. “I don't even want to be around you!”
'Tough shit," Jake said through gritted teeth.
Zaney was in the kitchen as the two burst through the door, and said brightly, “Hey, it's the Colester!” To which Cole snorted his obvious disdain. “Hey, little dude, who pissed in your Post Toasties?” Zaney demanded.
“Don't ask,” Jake said, and motioned Cole forward. They proceeded through the dining room to the entry, where various tools and drop cloths were scattered. Jake pointed to the mess. “You're going to clean this up.”
Cole looked at the mess of tools, sawdust, and drop cloths and moaned, “All of that?”
“All of that. And when you are finished, come upstairs, because I have more.” And then he left the grumbling kid and ascended the curving staircase. When he reached the first landing, he glanced out the portal window and saw Robin in her running clothes, standing, hands on hips, on the greenbelt that ran down the middle of North Boulevard , waiting for traffic to pass. Gazing at her, he felt his anger with Cole growing.