From Now On (20 page)

             
“Seriously,” Emily said as she stood, her wedding dress rustling as she moved to sit beside Jo on the bed. “Do you think I’m perfect?”

             
“I think you are a lot closer to perfect than I will ever be.”

             
Emily bit her lip, her eyes falling to her hands as they began to knead the material of her skirt. Jo grabbed her hands to make her stop.

             
“I always thought the same thing about you.”

             
Jo stared at Emily and she stared back. After a minute they both burst into gales of laughter. It felt good, to sit with her sister and laugh like they did when they were younger, before makeup and boys and popularity became a part of their vocabulary. Jo wrapped her arms around Emily and buried her face in the hair they had just spent an hour curling and combing into a delicate French knot. She held her tight, wishing it could always be like this, but aware that everything was about to change. Nothing would ever be the same.

             
“I love you, Jo,” Emily whispered against her neck.

             
“I love you, too, Em.”

             
Jo pulled away and stood, gathering the clothes they had abandoned before donning their wedding attire.

             
“I wish you weren’t moving,” Emily said. “Who will I talk to now?”

             
“You can still talk to me. You’ll just have a much longer drive when there’s something that needs to be said face to face.”

             
Emily giggled. “I can see that. Me getting into the car in the middle of the night and driving to Houston because I had a fight with Ryan.”

             
“So can I,” Jo agreed, realizing she really could.

             
Jo kicked a box out of her way as she made her way to the little suitcase sitting open on the floor of the closet. The apartment was nearly empty now, most of her things were already on a truck to Houston. The rest would be traveling with her in her old car. Tomorrow morning, right or wrong, Jo would embark on a new life.

             
“Can I ask you something?” Emily said, still perched on the end of the bed.

             
“Anything.”

             
“Why don’t you hate me?”

             
Jo spun around, nearly tripping on the unfamiliar heels. “Why would I?”

             
“Oh, I don’t know. Because Mom always treated me differently than you. Because I was more popular in school. Because I always had more boyfriends.” Emily reached up and scratched her temple as though she was struggling to remember something else. “Oh,” she said with a flick of her eyebrow, “and because I’m about to marry a guy you dated first.”

             
Jo shook her head. “How could I hate you?” Jo walked to Emily, took her hands and pulled her to her feet. “Mom and the boys…none of that was your fault. You have always been more outgoing than me, friendlier and easier in a crowd. I would be petty if I held that against you.”

             
“And Ryan?”

             
Jo looked down at Emily’s hands, touched her engagement ring with her thumb. “I would be lying if I said it didn’t hurt in the beginning. I felt so betrayed.” Jo bit her lip as her eyes lifted to Emily’s and she saw the pain there. “But then I found out what it felt like to be really and truly loved. And now I know that it would be selfish to wish you and Ryan anything but all the happiness in the world.”

             
“Really?”

             
“Yes.” Jo kissed Emily’s cheek and wiped away her tears with a brush of her thumb. “Now, you are getting married in twenty minutes. We better fix your makeup.”

             
Emily resisted Jo’s attempt to move her. Instead, she took Jo’s hands as Jo had done to her and leaned close, whispering in her ear, “I know he’ll come back, Jo. I know he will.”

             
Tears flooded Jo’s eyes. She had tried to push Mark to the back of her mind, but it was so much easier said than done. Every waking hour in the past two weeks he had been the first thing she thought of in the morning and the last at night. She physically ached with the pain of cutting him out of her life. No matter how many times she told herself it was for the best, she somehow couldn’t make her heart believe it. Leaving Mark was the hardest thing she had ever done.

But, to appease her sister, she blinked the tears away and smiled. 

             
A limo was waiting outside when they finally made their way out of the apartment fifteen minutes later. They climbed inside and Emily, spotting the bottle immediately, directed Jo to pour them both a glass of champagne. They made the short, ten minute trip toasting each other with increasingly funny, and crude, wishes for Emily’s wedding night.

             
“To the gods of bedsprings, in the hope that the hotel does not give you a bed that squeaks with every movement,” Jo finished off as the car came to a stop.

             
Emily gulped a swallow of champagne, despite the giggles that threatened to choke her. The door opened and the chauffeur reached a hand in to help Jo out of the car. He dropped a wink as she grasped his arm to steady herself. She was almost too busy trying to acclimate herself to her new height on the heels to notice, but she did. And it made her glad she had worn the stupid heels.

             
“Let’s go,” Emily said, after downing the last of her champagne and handing the plastic flute to the chauffeur. “Let’s go get me married.”

             
“Good luck, ladies,” the chauffeur called as they walked across the lawn.

             
“I think he likes you,” Emily said in a loud whisper.

             
“Maybe,” Jo agreed. “But tonight is about you, kiddo.”

             
“It is, isn’t it?”

Emily stopped as they stood at the side gate to the new house she and Ryan had just closed on three days before. The house itself still stood empty, but the backyard had been transformed into a lover’s retreat, thanks in part to the former owner’s penchant for roses and the hard work of all of Ryan and Emily’s friends and family. Behind the gate waited several dozen wedding guests, including Ryan’s parents, Jack, Kyra, and Michelle, and Emily and Jo’s mother. And, of course, Ryan.

             
Jo’s mother hadn’t been happy with the change in venue, the date change, or the lack of fanfare, but she was quickly adjusting. It helped that Emily had given her an ultimatum, not unlike the one Jo had given her. She simply had to accept that this was the way it was going to be.

It was what Emily wanted.

Emily took Jo’s hand and slipped it under her arm. “Walk me down the aisle?” she asked.

“It’ll be my pleasure.”

Jo walked out of the copy room with a stack of files in her arms. She could have sent her secretary to do this, she knew, but sometimes she liked to do these mundane things herself. It reminded her of how far she had come in the last six months.

Jo started out in the same position she’d held in Dallas, but the deputy supervisor was married to a Navy officer who gotten a promotion and a transfer a month after Jo’s arrival. As the most experienced in this fledgling subsidiary, Jo was promoted.  And, when three months after that the head of the department decided her retirement had been delayed long enough, the powers-that-be upstairs decided, based on the successful implementation of the in-house daycare based on the proposal Kathleen had created in Dallas, to promote Jo again.

This move had been the best thing Jo could do for her career.

“Isn’t he gorgeous,” Jo heard one of the clerks say as she walked up behind her.

“Sometimes I wish I wasn’t married to such a wonderful man. Boy, a little innocent flirtation with a guy like that would sure be fun,” another said.

“Ladies, you know I always get first dibs,” Jo said.

The ladies turned. “Oh, Jo,” the first, Cindy, said. “I don’t know if you can handle this one.” She gestured toward the mystery guest. “I’m not sure I can.”

Jo laughed as she turned to follow the gesture. She saw a tall man standing at the reception desk, but he was too far away and there were too many cubicles between them for her to see much more than the soft curl of his hair touching the tip of his blue collar.

“I’m sure you’ll give it a good try, though,” Jo said, patting Cindy’s arm as she continued on to her office.

Jo dropped the stack of files on her desk and dropped into her seat, kicking off her shoes as she tried to get into a comfortable position in her tight pencil skirt. Her computer chimed, alerting her to a new email. Jo clicked on the dialogue box and smiled as a new message from Emily popped up. No doubt the sonogram pictures she had been promising for weeks. Most women suffered nausea and dizzy spells in the first trimester of pregnancy. Emily suffered memory loss.

As Jo settled back to read the message, there was a knock on her door.

“It’s open,” she called, not even bothering to look up. She had an open door policy. It could be anyone from her secretary to the guy who changes the water cooler bottle. But she couldn’t imagine whatever it was could be more important than the first pictures of her new niece or nephew.

But she could be wrong.

“Could you tell me where Chuck Franklin’s office is?”

“Chuck Franklin?” Jo frowned, her eyes still locked to her computer screen. “We don’t have a Chuck Franklin here.”

The name was familiar, though, and Jo’s hand paused over her mouse, stopped just as she was about to open the pictures Emily had finally sent. She knew the name, but more importantly, she knew the voice. It was like walking back in time. A new employee, lost on his way to rescue someone else’s antiquated computer system.

It was the day she first met Mark.

“How have you been, Jo?” he asked quietly, his voice filled with amusement and something not quite definable.

She hesitated before looking up, not sure what she expected to find. It had been six months. Six months of nothing. No phone calls. No emails. Not even a letter via snail mail. Nothing. And suddenly he was here.

Jo had moved on with her life. She made the best out of this move. It was a fresh start, a new beginning. She had a good job, got along well with her coworkers. It was as if the past five years had been erased, as though someone had pressed the restart button and given her a second chance. She even had a flirtation going with a guy at the new gym she had joined.

She was different. Life was different.

“Jo?”

She looked up, unprepared for the emotional wallop that awaited her. He looked so much the same, still dressed in those button downs he liked so much, the pressed jeans with the razor sharp crease from too many ironings. His hair was longer, surprisingly curly on the ends. She had somehow imagined it would be darker, straighter, if he ever grew it out of the military buzz he preferred. His eyes were the same. The same caramel, melt-your-soul gaze that seemed to see right through her.

“Hello, Mark,” she said, her voice surprisingly strong and clear.

He smiled, revealing that dimple she often saw in her dreams. “You look good,” he said.

“You, too.” She touched her own soft curls. “I like,” she said, indicating his.

Mark brushed his hand through his hair. “Yeah. My daughter thought it was time to get rid of the cut.”

“How is she? Missy, I mean.”

“Good.” Mark slid the door closed behind him and moved further into the room, acting as though he might take a seat in one of the chairs in front of her desk, but changing his mind at the last second. “I was awarded full custody. Again.”

“Really? That’s great, Mark.”

“Yeah.” He paced the length of the room, pausing in front of a bookshelf where Jo displayed a few family pictures. He picked up one from the night of Emily and Ryan’s wedding and held it up where she could see it. “I heard they got married.”

“Six months ago. It was a nice, quiet ceremony.”

“What happened to the big to-do they were planning?”

“They decided it was more for our mother than them.”

Mark nodded, as if he sympathized. “How was it? For you, I mean.”

Jo shrugged. “I’m happy for them.”

Mark looked over at her, his expression a storm of emotion. It was as if he didn’t quite believe her. But then he turned back to the shelf, looking through some of the other pictures, as though unwilling to challenge her claims.

Jo stood and walked across the room. As she approached him, she was overwhelmed with memories. The sight of him there, standing in her office so out of place, and yet as if he had always belonged. His ghost had been here so many times before. She wanted him to turn and say something crazy, to put her at ease as he had done so many times before. She wanted him to laugh. She wanted him to pull her into his arms and assure her that there was nothing broken that could not be fixed. She wanted it to be like it was before.