“Well, I’m quite the chef,” I tell her, and Jami laughs.
“Is that why Jake is grilling the food?”
“I offered to cook, but he kicked me off the grill after I burnt the first hot dog,” I say, and this brings another perfect vibration of laughter from Jami. God, she’s beautiful. And sweet. So, so sweet. I want to ditch this BBQ, take her by the hand, and fuck her for days. Weeks. Months. I don’t want to ever let her out of my sight. “Tell me about your work. It must be a difficult job, social work.” I grab two abandoned lawn chairs behind us and Jami and I sit down around the makeshift fire pit.
“Yeah, well, someone’s gotta do it, right?” she says, crossing her legs as she takes another sip from her drink. She’s dressed in sweatpants and a hoodie that looks two sizes too big for her, but I swear to all that is holy, she couldn’t look better right now if she tried. “It’s rewarding work when things work out.” She’s quiet for a moment as she reaches up and brushes a strand of flyaway hair from her face, and I can tell she wants to say more.
“Do they often work out?” I ask, and Jami falls quiet for a moment as if considering this heavily.
“No,” she says finally. “Not really.”
“But you do it anyway.”
“I do it because once upon a time, I was the kid needing help,” she says with a shrug. Her expression is impassive, but there’s a tinge of something in her voice that makes me stand to attention. Memories. She’s recalling memories, and not necessarily good ones.
I clear my throat and take another drink, wishing she would go on, open up, and talk to me. For a moment, I don’t think she’s going to, but then she does.
“I was a foster kid.” She says this nonchalantly, but the pain in her voice doesn’t escape me. “My mom died when I was little, and my dad ended up in prison for drugs. I was bounced from house to house until I was seventeen, completely lost in the system. I was nothing more than a number to them. Not even a person.” She pauses for a moment, taking another drink. “Six months before I turned eighteen, I met a social worker at the house I was living at, and she helped me get out. My foster dad, at the time, was a horrible man. Creepy. Inappropriate. And angry. So angry all of the time. But in foster care, sometimes that doesn’t matter. Usually, the people running the system have no idea what’s even going on behind closed doors. But she did. She knew.”
“I’m sorry you had to go through that,” I say quietly, and Jami shrugs like it’s no big deal, but it is. It will always be a big deal for her. That’s how tragedies work.
“Anyway,” she continues. “I met this social worker, and she was amazing. She got me out of that house--all of the kids in their care, actually--and found us more suitable homes. I lived with her until I was eighteen when she helped me enroll in college. She saved my life. I had very few friends growing up, you know? It was just impossible to find them and keep them. But I always remembered that lady, how she was finally the one to save me. Maria was her name, and I always felt …safewhen she was around. I knew that someday I wanted to make a child or a person feel as safe and cared for as she made me feel.”
Jami falls silent, and I reach out to rest a hand on her upper arm, squeezing.
“That’s noble,” I tell her. “And I find it fantastic that you overcame so much shit to get where you are now. Whatever happened to Maria?”
“She died,” Jami says, her voice catching in her throat. “Cancer, actually, two years ago. Funny how stupid crap like that works, doesn’t it?” Jami smiles at me, a smile that doesn’t quite reach her eyes, but it doesn’t matter because all I want to do now is make it better for her. Makeanythingbetter for her, even if it’s the only thing I do for the rest of my life.
“I’m sorry. It’s very hard to lose the people closest to us.” I release her arm and take another sip of my drink to distract myself temporarily from the growing prick in my pants. Jesus Christ, you’d think I was a drunk teenager on prom night, waiting to get lucky with the Queen.
“What about you?” Jami asks. “Do you like being a cop?”
“It’s all I ever wanted to do.” I toss my empty beer bottle into the makeshift garbage can and go to the cooler for another, bringing back another drink for Jami as well.
“Our jobs aren’t that much different, I guess,” muses Jami. “You just see the people before I do.” She finishes off her drink and opens another, leaving me even more impressed by her than I already had been.
“I don’t know if I could be as emotionally involved as you have to be,” I admit. “It’s one thing to deal with a case and then be done with it. It’s a whole other ballgame to be as emotionally involved as you have to get. It must be rough.”
“It can be,” she says. “Sometimes I wonder why I put myself through the same thing that I was put through as a child, but I see their sweet faces, and I know why. I just know.”
I open my mouth to respond, but the back door to Jake’s house opens, and Renee pokes her head out.
“Jami, can I borrow you in the kitchen for a moment?” Renee calls, a sly smile on her lips. Jami glances at me apologetically, and it’s difficult to hide my dismay.
“Duty calls,” she says with a grin. I nod, trying to hide the disappointment in my eyes. Jami tosses her empty bottle in the trash bag and makes her way to the house, where Renee pulls her inside and shuts the screen door behind them.
“Girls,” Jake says from behind the grill with a shrug. “Can’t live with ’em, can’t live without ’em.”
7
JAMI
Renee is giddy, like she’s just won the lottery, and I already know why. I should have known that it wouldn’t be as easy as avoiding a conversation with her all night long. No doubt she’s had her eyes on Ely and me the entire time from her perch in the kitchen.
“Spill it,” she says, handing me a skewer to fill with veggies and meat. “You’ve been canoodling with Ely for over an hour. Tell me everything.”
“I don’t know what you want to know, Ren,” I say with a shrug. “He’s a good guy. An awesome guy, really, and I enjoy talking to him.”
