He fought the need to kiss the top of her head. A Duke would, and it would be natural and right. Jay felt awkward in the realm of closeness. Yes, the Dukes were close and had forced it on him, too, but it didn’t come easily.
One, two, three, he counted slowly in his mind and then kissed the top of her head.
“Want me to fill that up?” The words came out choked.
“Please.”
“Saltines?” he added as she lifted her head off his shoulder.
“No. I’m good, thanks.”
He took the empty mug she handed him and headed inside. Only when he was out of earshot and in the kitchen did he exhale slowly.
“You’ve got this, Jay,” he muttered. “Small steps.”
After filling up the mugs again, he added cream and sugar to Blue’s before heading back outside. Retaking his space beside her, he then handed her the mug.
“It’s nice here,” she said. “Normal.”
He looked at the street with its neat houses and knew what she meant. They’d both been raised in homes that were nothing that could come close to being termed normal.
“You like normal?” he asked. Their shoulders brushed as he raised his mug.
“You know how I was raised, right? Normal was a cuss word in my household,” she said.
He looked at Blue then. “What was your childhood like?”
Other people’s childhoods had always intrigued Jay—particularly when he was younger because his own had been so shitty. He would imagine how different things might have been. Alone in his room, he’d close his eyes and build the life he wanted, piece by piece.
“You have a nice family—okay, so your brothers can be a bit hotheaded, but still good people.”
She nodded in answer to that. “We had to do chores, and they included taking scraps to the chickens and putting the compost on the gardens. Repurposing and repairing items rather than replacing things. Normal stuff for us, but not so much anyone else back then.”
“Was it hard being a McAllister?”
She leaned her head on his shoulder again with a yawn, and he was ready for it this time. Relished it, even.
Which says what about you, weirdo? That a simple gesture like this undoes you.The sad truth was, it did. Until that moment, he hadn’t realized how much distance physically he’d put between himself and women.
His friends and the Dukes hugged Jay, and the women kissed him. They were touchers, and he’d gotten used to that, but not with anyone else.
Jay had made himself an emotional island, but he hadn’t realized he was in need of a life raft until Blue threw him one.
“Not hard, exactly,” she said, “because there was always love and plenty of fun, plus I had my siblings, but it was different.” She cradled her mug between her hands. “I remember desperately wanting a pair of labeled sneakers like Cill or Nina had. Or a pink party dress that had a skirt that twirled when I did.”
Jay laughed at that.
“Hey, you try going to an eight-year-old’s birthday party in a kaftan that was made from a used bedsheet. Mom had stitched flowers around the hem and cuffs. Most people were good about it, but that shithead Barry Brown made fun of me because my brothers weren’t there to give him a hiding.”
“What a rat,” Jay said.
“Dad and me had taken one of Mom’s old necklaces and restrung a bracelet for the party girl’s birthday gift.”
“That’s pretty cool.”
“It was, actually. The real issues started for me when I wanted to do things like shave my legs and pluck my eyebrows.” She sighed loudly. “You would have thought I was going to start eating meat.”
“You do eat meat,” Jay pointed out.
