“Sort of. We hung out for a little while when we were freshmen but grew apart over time. His thing was drinking, drugs.”
“What was your thing?” Jonas suddenly asked, his eyes studying me. “Sorry,” he quickly said as if realizing the question was off topic.
“Athletics, mostly,” I answered just as quickly.
“You were a jock,” Jonas said with a smile.
I laughed and the feeling was so foreign that I was caught off guard by it. “I guess,” I said. “But I was focused on my grades too.”
“A jock and a nerd?” Jonas said softly. “You would have been my dream come true in school,” he said with a chuckle and then his eyes widened as color flooded his cheeks. Another apology fell from his mouth but I barely heard it because I was focused on the way his eyes kept shifting back to mine.
“Did you know Carrie went to Chicago for that guy?”
The reminder of Jimmy ripped me back to reality. “We figured she’d runaway to be with him but we didn’t know where to. After graduation, Jimmy left the state to go to college but got kicked out after a couple months. I don’t know how he and Carrie met but my parents were unhappy about their age difference. The guy was pretty bad news but the more my parents tried to stop her from seeing him, the more rebellious she became. Carrie had always been stubborn but I don’t think my parents ever thought she’d just take off like she did. Fucker showed up here last week when he heard her body had been identified – I guess he moved back to the area a couple of years ago, but was too much of a fucking coward to tell any of us Carrie had ended up in Chicago.”
“Was that your dad at the service?”
I nodded but couldn’t find the strength to say anything else. I knew Mace and Jonas had both seen my father’s condition and heard his words so they had probably already figured out what he was, but to have to say it out loud was a different story.
“Your mom?” Jonas asked gently.
“Died a couple years ago,” I managed to get out. “She had a heart condition and the doctors said the stress was just too much for her…”
I felt one of Jonas’s hands close gently around my wrist and I closed my eyes. How did this man know just when I needed his touch most? And why did I all of a sudden crave it more than I craved my next breath?
“How does this feel?” Jonas asked, as he shifted the ice pack to study my knuckles.
In truth, I hadn’t felt much since Jonas had first touched me so it was easy to say, “Feels okay.”
I couldn’t make sense of what I was feeling around the youngerman. Jonas’s touch wasn’t exactly sexual but if a woman had been touching me in the same way, I wouldn’t have hesitated to act on the curiosity that was flooding through me now. Was what I was feeling about attraction or was it about just needing to connect with another person in a way I hadn’t in a really long time? I’d never once in my life even looked at another man in the same way that I had women.
It had to be the stress. There was no other explanation. And my body was reacting to Jonas because we had a connection that was born of terrible circumstances. If I’d met Jonas on the street, I wouldn’t have given him a second thought.
What about Mace?
“I should probably get back to the guests,” I muttered as I pushed back the memory of the sensation that had rushed through me when Mace had had me in his grip.
It’s fucking stress.
Jonas nodded and removed the ice pack.
“Jonas, can I ask what you put on Carrie’s casket?”
The younger man was in the process of reaching for a towel when I asked the question and I didn’t miss the way he stiffened.
“It’s okay, you don’t have to tell me,” I said.
“It was a picture,” he said as he began drying off my hand from where the condensation from the ice pack had dampened it.
“A picture?” I prodded.
“A drawing,” he clarified. “Of you,” he admitted, lifting his eyes to meet mine. “I would have done your entire family if I had known what your parents looked like,” he added. “I’m pretty good at remembering faces,” he said quickly. “I didn’t sneak a picture of you or anything.”
I smiled at that. “Thank you for doing that for her.”
“I, um…I did one for you,” Jonas said softly and then he reached for a sketchbook that I hadn’t noticed sitting on the edge of the sink. I could see his fingers trembling just a little bit as he pulled a loose piece of paper from between the pages of the pad.
It seemed to take Jonas a moment to work up the courage to hand it to me. I’d prepared myself for a simple sketch of Carrie’sfeatures which would have been undoubtedly distorted considering how much time had passed since Jonas had last seen her. But the girl I saw looking back at me was exactly the Carrie I remembered. Jonas hadn’t just gotten her features right; he’d gotten everything right. The way her eyes lit up from the inside, the slight lift in her smile that made you wonder what she was thinking and the coy way she tilted her head as if she knew exactly whatyouwere thinking.
