The Will by Kristen Ashley
I swallowed and looked to him. “That sounds doable.”
He grinned.
My phone in my purse rang.
I let it and continued eating.
It kept ringing.
“You gonna get that?”
I looked back to Jake and answered, “No. It’s rude to answer the phone during a meal or in someone’s company.”
He grinned again and said, “Babe, don’t mind and we’re not at a meal. We’re at The Shack.”
I wasn’t certain about the distinction but our conversation turned moot when my phone stopped ringing.
I took another bite of omelet.
My phone started ringing again.
I felt my brows draw together.
“Babe, get it. Like I said, don’t mind and someone obviously wants you,” Jake urged.
I nodded, set aside my cutlery that was so light I was worried the breeze would sweep it away (so I tucked it as best I could under what remained of my omelet) and reached to my purse.
I got my phone and the display informed me the caller was Henry.
I looked to Jake and said, “My apologies, Jake. It’s Henry. Something might be wrong.”
His face changed minutely, going slightly blank but more noncommittal and he jerked up his chin in what I was deducing was his telling me I should take the call.
I took it and put the phone to my ear, greeting, “Henry.”
“What the fuck?”
I blinked at the table because Henry had never said this to me, nor had he ever spoken in that tone. Or at least, with the last, not to me.
“I…pardon?” I asked.
“What the fuck, Josephine?”
What on earth?
“I-I’m sorry,” I stammered. “Is something wrong?”
“Yes, something’s wrong. You haven’t called in two days.”
Oh dear. I actually hadn’t.
“Henry—”
“Worried about you Josephine. Told you to keep in touch, check in, let me know you’re all right.”
“You were traveling to Rome yesterday,” I reminded him.
“Yes, and that flight’s long but it doesn’t take a year. And you know my schedule, Josephine. You know when I left, you know when I landed, and you know when I turn my phone off and on for a flight.”
I did. He waited until the last second to turn it off and he turned it on the instant he could when we’d land.
“I’m sorry, Henry. Things have been somewhat…strange here.”
“Strange how?” he asked immediately.
I sat back and trained my eyes to my lap. “Strange in a variety of ways. None of which I can get into right now because I’m at breakfast with Jake and then I have to go over to the Weavers. But I’ll call you later and explain.”
“Jake?”
“Yes. Jake.”
“Who’s Jake?”
“A friend of Gran’s.”
“Have I met him?”
Henry had been to Magdalene with me frequently and met a number of Gran’s friends and acquaintances.
But I was relatively certain he had not met Jake.
“I don’t think so,” I answered.
“He one of her bridge cronies?”
The thought of Jake playing bridge with Gran’s cronies, none of whom was under seventy years of age, made me smile at my lap.
“No.”
“Then who is he, Josephine?”
I vaguely wondered why he was so determined to know.
I didn’t ask that.
I said, “It’s a long story, Henry, and I’m sorry, but I don’t have time to tell it to you right now. I’m sitting outside on the wharf and my omelet is getting cold. It’s delicious and I’d like to enjoy it while it’s warm. Not to mention, Jake’s sitting right here and it’s rude to chat on the phone when I’m in company.”
This was met with silence and this lasted quite some time.
“Henry? Have I lost you?” I called into the silence.
“No, you haven’t lost me,” he answered. “You’re on the wharf eating an omelet?”
“A rather delicious one,” I shared.
He said nothing.
“Henry?” I called.
“Phone me when you get a chance,” he ordered oddly tersely. “I don’t care how late it is here. Just call. I’m concerned. You’re coping with a great deal and you’re on your own.”
That was proof Jake was wrong. Henry was irate because he was concerned about me. Yes, he was my employer, but he also cared.
However, Henry was wrong too. I wasn’t on my own.
Jake was with me.
This caused that warmth to return even if all around me was cold but I ignored that and assured Henry, “I’ll phone.”
“And I’m telling Daniel to cancel Paris.”
I blinked at my lap then looked up to the boats bobbing along the wharf. “You can’t do that.”
“I can, Josephine, and I’m going to.”
“But, it’s a video shoot that took months to set up,” I reminded him.
“They’ll have to find another director,” he told me.
“Dee-Amond only works with you,” I continued recounting things he knew.
And Dee-Amond did only work with Henry and had only worked with Henry for the last seventeen years.
He was a renowned hip-hop artist who’d started his own fashion line, which was remarkable and thus quite successful. Henry did all his work on Amond’s music videos and his fashion shoots.
Amond was also a very handsome, though somewhat frightening black man, who had, in his early days, beat a number of what he called “raps,” the charges being rather violent.
He’d since settled and he could be very charming. This was why I spent a particularly enjoyable night with him after a party that we attended after the VMAs seven years prior. After that, he’d asked me to join his “posse” but I’d refused, with some hesitation (this was because he was very charming, and as I’d mentioned, also very handsome and our night had been just that enjoyable).
But I could never leave Henry.
Then again, there was also the small fact I was not a woman who would be comfortable as a member of a “posse.”
Henry never knew, of course. I was always, without fail, discreet and fortunately Amond was too.
“Then he’ll have to reschedule when we can both do it,” Henry replied.
“Henry, I hardly need to be—”
He interrupted me. “Are you going to meet me in Paris?”
I hesitated, looked back to my lap and whispered, “Things are such that that’s unlikely.”
“Then I’m canceling.”
I sighed before I asked, “Can we discuss this later?”
“Right. Your omelet and Jake.”
His tone was unusual and vaguely disturbing.
I pressed my lips together.
“I’ll speak with you soon,” he said.
“Of course,” I murmured.
“Until then, Josephine.”
“Until then, Henry. Good-bye.”
He didn’t say good-bye. He simply disconnected.
He’d never done that before either.
I stared at my phone for a moment before putting it back in my bag and regaining my cutlery, saying distractedly to Jake, my eyes on my food, “I apologize. That lasted too long.”
“And it didn’t sound like it went real good.”
At Jake’s comment, I turned my eyes to him. “He’s canceling work to come to Magdalene.”
I watched as his mouth got tight for some strange reason and I watched as, seconds later, it relaxed as if he’d willed it to do so to hide his reaction, which was even stranger.
“It’ll be good, you have your people around you.”
“He shouldn’t cancel. It’s a video shoot. That’s even more involved than a photo shoot. They’re shooting on location, so they need to get permission, permits. There’s a good deal of money tied up in it, not to mention all the personne
“You’re worth fucking all that.”
I stared at him as that warmth swept through me again but I replied, “It’s foolish.”
“You’re worth bein’ that too.”
His words were making me feel such that I decided to return my attention to my probably now chiller-cabinet-cold omelet. So I did.
After I took a bite and found it was, indeed, now chiller-cabinet-cold, Jake asked, “When’s he coming?”
I looked back to him. “The job in Rome lasts just over a week. If he cancels Paris, he’ll be free to fly here next Saturday.”
“Right.”
I took a sip from my coffee cup and returned my attention to my omelet.
“Your offer, I’m gonna take you up on it,” Jake declared and my eyes went back to him.
“My offer?”
“Lookin’ after Ethan,” he said. “He, Con and Amber would go over to your place a lot after school. I got shit on, it falls to Con and Amber to step up, look after their little brother, take him places, shit like that. Lydie wasn’t real young, but the kids loved her. It wasn’t really her lookin’ out for them so much as all of them havin’ each other and my kids havin’ someone to go to when school was done. Like my kids havin’ good in their lives and Lydie was the best.”
He was not wrong about that.
He was also not done speaking.
“And Amber needed a good, decent woman in her life. Lydie was that too.”
She was indeed.
He went on.
“Part of Amber bein’ a pain in the ass is she doesn’t know what to do with the hurt she’s feelin’ with Lydie gone. Ethan lets shit hang out, too young to bury it or really know how to deal with it. Con was tight with Lydie too but he’s not a kid anymore and thinks he’s gotta hide emotion to be a man. With that all around Amber, she doesn’t know which way to go. And Lydie gave her a lot which means she lost a lot.” His voice dipped lower when he finished, “I figure you know all about that.”
I very much did.
I didn’t agree verbally. I nodded.
“It’ll be good they got a bit of Lydie to fill that hole. That being you.”
I was not a mother but I could see a father would think this true.
And this felt oddly nice, filling that hole, and that hole being the one Gran left, not to mention him thinking I could fill it as any hole Gran left, I knew too well, was enormous.
I nodded again.
“That said, Amber’s grounded for a week so her ass is tied to Ethan or the house or Lavender House, you take them on. After that, you’re around a while, it’d be cool you give her a break. She’s sixteen years old. That’s too damn early to be a mom to an eight year old kid but with all the shit I gotta do with the club and the gym, I had to lean on her.”
“I can give her a break,” I said quietly.
“That’d be appreciated.”
“I…should I start today?”
“No. You keep settlin’ in. Tomorrow’s Saturday. Amber’s not goin’ on her date because of the shit that came out of her mouth yesterday. They’re covered. But if you could start next week, I’d be grateful.”
I nodded yet again.
“Since Amber’s on enforced babysitting duties, I’ll take you out to dinner tomorrow night. Fill you in.”
Dinner with Jake.
Alone.
Again, that strange anticipation I’d experienced all the day before hit me and I knew in that moment that it was because I enjoyed being around this man. What I didn’t know was why I’d anticipate seeing him, that feeling coming on strong, when he was sitting right next to me.
“Dress up, I’m takin’ you to a decent place,” he ordered.
That anticipation spiked in a way I felt it in my nipples.
My nipples.
Oh dear.
“I…uh…all right,” I replied.
“Be at your house at seven,” he said.
Finally, a decent hour for dinner.
“I’ll be ready.”
“You done with that?” he asked, tipping his head to my omelet.
I nodded.
“Then let’s get you to the Weavers.”
By this, he meant he would collect all of our refuse, leaving me only to grab my coffee cup. This he did, depositing it in the big barrel with its black plastic liner that served as a rubbish bin for, perhaps, the entirety of the wharf and not just The Shack.
He called, “Later, Tom,” and got back a, “Later, Jake.”
I looked and still, no Tom could be seen in The Shack.
“Your omelets are lovely.” I decided to yell because they were and he probably knew that but it always felt nice getting a compliment.
“Thanks, darlin’!” I heard called back but still could see no Tom.
I completely forgot about Tom when Jake grabbed my hand and started us up the boardwalk.
I also completely forgot to breathe and my heart completely forgot to beat.
We walked, Jake guiding us to my car, and as we did, although I couldn’t breathe and mostly couldn’t think, what I could think was that walking with me holding my hand seemed altogether natural to Jake.
Then again, he’d had three wives, he had a daughter and in our brief acquaintance, he’d shown he could be affectionate and it was doubtful he was only this way with me.
For me, I had never, not once, not since high school, walked holding a man’s hand.
And doing it, that…that knocked me right on my ass.
In a nice way that felt splendid.
“Thank you for breakfast,” I forced myself to say when I’d forced myself to breathe again.
“No worries,” he muttered.
I turned my head and looked up at him. “You were right, it was delicious.”
He dipped his chin and looked down at me. “Told you it’d knock you on your ass.”
Staring in his eyes, now a stormy gray that seemed to reflect the skies above, I knew I was.
I was getting knocked on my ass.
But not by an omelet.
By something altogether different.
And this feeling would continue when he stopped me at the driver’s side door to my car and leaned in. He brushed his lips against my cheek, which gave me another waft of his attractive cologne as well as an altogether too appealing scrape of his stubble (he had again not shaved that morning).
He pulled back and, smiling, murmured, “Later, babe.”
“Yes. See you tomorrow night.”
He winked, squeezed my hand, let it go and I watched him walk to his truck.
I forced myself to get in my car and drive to the Weavers’.
But I did it feeling a peculiar feeling.
That being knocked on my ass.
Thus winded.
And not minding at all.
* * * * *
I didn’t know why I did it; it was as if my eyes were drawn there by unseen forces.
But as I was driving back to Lavender House from the Weavers, my mind consumed with Eliza, her frailty, the pain etched around her mouth, the effort she still was making to pretend everything was all right and chitchat when her eyes were drooping, I turned my head and saw it.
Magdalene was not large and had long since had a town council that was rabidly determined to keep the old Maine coastal town feel about the place. Thus, the commercial areas of town were mostly untouched and had been for well over a century and things like fast food restaurants were firmly placed at the outskirts of town so you couldn’t even see them unless you were on the road driving that way.
That didn’t mean that off Cross Street (the main street in town), there weren’t other business that had sprung up over the decades.
And this included a large store that once was a hardware store but now, as I turned my head to look down Haver Way, it had a sign in the window that did not promote hardware.
I hadn’t taken in that building for years.
But after I drove by it, I found my opening to c
The gold painting edged in black on the window said “Truck’s Gym.”
And inside, through the now misting rain, I saw it was, indeed, a gym. A specific kind of gym. And I spent no time at all in gyms but even so, I knew exactly what kind of gym this was seeing as from what I could take in from my vantage point, there were two boxing rings set up in the vast open space.
They were down one side. Down the other side, there was weight equipment and I could see those bags suspended that were always in boxing gyms in movies, the little ball-like ones and the large tubular ones.
There were men punching things, lifting things and jumping rope inside. Several of them, which I found surprising seeing as it was early afternoon on a workday.
I could also see, standing outside the ring closest to the window, Jake. He was not wearing jeans, boots and a sweater as he had been that morning when he bought me an omelet. He was now wearing a pair of dark track pants with three white stripes down the side and a white, long sleeved t-shirt. There were boxers in the ring and Jake was calling out to them.
He’d mentioned his gym more than once.
This must be it.
And the name was “Truck’s.” That odious man at Breeze Point had referred to “the truck” and I didn’t think this was a coincidence.
More to learn about Jake.
I had a feeling there was much to learn about Jake. Three wives, one he had only three months. He clearly had at least partial custody of all of his children. Even though he mentioned one of his ex-wives was local, he didn’t mention her children staying with her, and Conner and Amber were both hers. He owned a boxing gym and a strip club, which were vastly different enterprises. He was well-known, if that man from Breeze Point was to be believed, not to mention, the bad-mannered Terry Baginski knew him as well.
Yes, I thought, watching him watch the boxers in the ring, there was much to learn about Jake Spear.
And I found myself already fascinated not even knowing what it was.
I reversed out of my spot, pointed the car back to Havers Way, then Cross Street and I drove out of town and to Lavender House.
I waited until I was out of my jacket and had a cup of tea in hand before I got my phone, went to the overstuffed chair by the window in the family room and called Henry. The time difference was such that it would be late in Italy but Henry was like me. A night owl. He’d be awake.