The Keys to Jericho (24 page)

In spite of the bitterness, I still try to get closer to her every time I’m near her, feeling a different part of her body. Fuck. How am I going to get through this driving, day in and day out for over a month? On one hand, I need to be around her, but on the other, it’s a slow death for me. I want…something more, but I don’t know what it is that I want. I’ve always liked Kat, so this should be a no-brainer, having her back in my life, temporarily. Yet it’s not. It’s only more complicated for me, but the alternative is even harder to swallow. I only have a short time with her before I move to Philadelphia, and I’m starting to feel engulfed.

I don’t know whether to press on or pull away.

Only if my fucking life came with a handbook, as driving a car does.

CHAPTER 14

“I think you’re ready for the road.”

“No way.”

“Way.”

“What if I—”

So tired of her finding reasons to fail or reasons to make me change my mind, I glare at her from across the table. “Don’t finish that fucking thought. You’ll do great.”

Kat cranes her neck to look out the window behind me. “It’s nighttime, though!”

I instantly roll my eyes. “By the time we’re done with dinner, there’ll still be some sunlight. According to the rules, you do have to drive after sunset, but you’re not ready for that.” I pick up my iced tea and tauntingly grin at her. “Yet.”

She anxiously looks around the sparsely occupied, Italian-decorated dining room, cordially smiling at someone passing our table before muttering, “I know I’m acting like such a baby.”

Looking down to my menu, I reply, “I do
not
think you’re being like that.”

“Being like a what?”

Peering up at her, confused that she didn’t remember what she just said, I questioningly answer her. “Baby?”

Her eyes light up and her smile could rival a street lamp with a new bulb. “Jericho, did you just call me
baby
?”

I warily laugh and shake my head. “Oh. I see what you did there. Clever.”
Fuck.

She shrugs and returns to her menu, her smile still bright. “It took some thought.”

“It probably took too much thought when you should’ve been pondering the rules of the road.”

Flipping the menu over, she says, “I can multitask.”

“That’s dangerous to do while driving.”

Her eyes flicker over me. “A lot of things can be dangerous or risky. Didn’t you learn anything from your brother-in-law-to-be?” If Finn goes with what’s in Hadley’s and his best interest, he won’t become my brother-in-law.

“Finn? What do you mean?”

“Sometimes taking a risk can be a good thing. I should know.”

Glancing to the table, I nod at her observation. “Yeah, you should. Still, don’t do it while driving.” Restless, I sit back and cross my arms, incapable of looking at her yet. Trying to sound uninterested, I ask, “So, how was your dinner with Calder?” Not subtle at all.

As I risk casually peering over at Kat, she smiles, but there’s something in her smile that eludes me. I wish I could see into her head without asking her what’s in there. I might not like her answers, but at least I’d finally have the truth. On the other hand, I almost would rather hear lies from her just so she doesn’t rip me open again with her omissions. The way she’s looking at me piques my suspicions, so I impatiently ask, “What?”

Continuing to offhandedly play with her menu, she hurriedly shakes her head, while unable to lose her grin. “Nice. He thought of some road rules to quiz me on, too.”

I scoff, “Too bad driving on the sidewalk with his Big Wheel doesn’t count.”

Kat laughs. “Poor Dash. You pick on him so much.”

“He’s a somewhat big boy. He can take it.”

She sets down her menu and proceeds to idly spin the saltshaker. Looking up at me, she vacillates before saying, “I remember in school, you told me your mom left when you were a kid?”

“You remembered that?” I don’t know whether to be impressed or annoyed she remembered that detail.

“
I
remember a lot, too. Have you heard anything from her over the years or know where she lives?”

I look down at my menu. “No. She’s never contacted my dad. When he signed the divorce papers, he said they listed a Milwaukee address, but we don’t know if that’s where she actually was.”

“Oh. I’m sorry. I can’t believe she’d do that to all of you.”

Staring at the list of salads, vaguely wondering if a cob salad is a corn on the cob thrown on top of a pile of lettuce, I frown. What the fuck is that shit?

Considering that Kat is waiting for some sort of response to the subject I’d rather avoid, I absently shrug at the menu. “I’m over it.” I’d like to think I am.

“I could never do that to my kids or husband.”

My eyes fly up to her face before I can rein in my reaction. “You’d actually try marriage again?”

Kat nods and reaches for her drink. “I’m hoping that I can get it right someday. Don’t you want that someday for yourself?” Here we go again. Question of the century.

I shake my head and return to my menu, hoping I find something else on there to distract me from this unfortunate turn in the conversation. “I’m not getting mixed up in that bullshit.”

“What if you find
the one
and you fall madly in love with her?”

The one
. Christ. I grimly laugh as I drag my attention to the main entrees section. “I’m not getting mixed up in
that
bullshit, either.”

“Really? You don’t think you’ll
ever
fall in love?”

I laugh again, this time, more like she just told me a faintly humorous elementary school knock-knock joke. I fleetingly glance up to her expectant face and then aimlessly skim the alcoholic drinks. “Positive. I’m not going to be a victim to some romanticized ideal that doesn’t even exist.”

“Why do you say that?” More fucking questions.

I sigh, blowing a breath of air across my balled hands. Why can’t we just talk about driving? Or what she talked about with Calder? “Now you sound like my sister. She’s in love with a guy who’ll never marry her. Why does she have to get married anyway? It’s a waste of her time to wish for something that she doesn’t need or isn’t going to happen.”

“So, you think being in love is a waste of time?”

I again shrug, but don’t look up. “From what I’ve seen, pretty much.”

“Maybe you’ll miss out on having something really beautiful with someone.”

Venturing to see her optimistic expression, I scowl at her and sneer, “Did Dash tell you that?”

She flinches and her brown eyes fall to the table. “No. My mom did.” I’m relieved. I thought I might have to kick his ass for sounding more of a pussy than I thought he was.

“She thinks you should get married again, too?”

Kat rests her cheek on her hand and nods, her gaze skeptical now. “Definitely. She thinks my first marriage didn’t count because he wasn’t my soulmate.”

“Shit. Now that
does
sound like Calder. Don’t bring up that word around him. He starts salivating.”

She smiles against her hand and I’m sidetracked by her lips. I bet they taste better than a cob salad. Kat disputes, “He’s a good guy. You should know that he’d do anything for you.”

I roll my eyes and stir my straw around my tea, trying anything to avoid staring at her mouth again before I start imagining what she could do to me with it. “Except shut up. He never does.”

Kat laughs and it forces me to look up, our gazes inevitably latching on to each other’s. “He just wants to make sure you hear what he has to say.”

I scoff, “Right. He’s like one of those yippy dogs. I hear him. Trust me. He’s hard to miss.” She laughs again before taking a drink, and I mindlessly blurt out, “What’s so
beautiful
about sadness and rejection?” What the fuck is my problem? I’m only begging to open up that topic again. Maybe I
am
a robot. Fuck Duquesne, too.

Sighing, Kat pushes away her glass. “That’s not what true love and a marriage are supposed to be.”

I curtly reply, “Tell that to my father.”

Frowning, she quietly says, “What happened to your family is horrible, Jared. My parents are divorced, but neither of my parents left my life, so I don’t know what you’ve been through.”

Pointlessly observing the empty table next to us, I grumble, “Well, rejection is something I wouldn’t wish on anyone.” Not even Kat after she rejected me several times.

Correction:
Especially
not Kat.

I’m such a pussy. Calder doesn’t have anything on me.

“Jared, I’m familiar with rejection.” I look back to her. Kat wrings her fingers together and averts her gaze, appearing suddenly ill at ease; however, she’s unpredictably determined when she asserts, “Still, I believe that my true love is out there somewhere.” Suddenly her voice drops to a whisper, “I just have to…keep looking, I guess.”

I shrug even though she’s staring at the table. “It’s your time if you want to waste it, but right now, you need to use your time getting back on the road.”

As if in a trance, she continues musing to herself as if I didn’t say anything, keeping with the tradition of no one paying attention to a damn thing I say. “Maybe Dash is right, and I once had what I was looking for right in front of me.” What the fuck did Calder tell her? That is like a sucker punch to my gut. I was always trying to be in front of Kat, but I must’ve been more transparent than a fucking window. I have to nearly bite off my goddamned tongue to prevent me from getting up on this table and shouting that to her.

Swallowing my useless argument, I return to perusing the alcohol, even though I know I can’t drink any, since I’m always in the driver seat and responsible for Kat’s driving, as well.

Ultimately, I moodily drone, “Maybe you did. I don’t know. Didn’t you date someone in high school?” Shit. I really don’t want to know anything about him. I saw enough of the asshole.

“My senior year. I broke up with him after graduation.”

What the fucking hell did she just say?

Her
senior
year? That’s not right.

“Wait,” I start, but the waitress interrupts us, which severely irritates me. I’m not even hungry anymore and I order the first sandwich I see, not caring what else it comes with or how I want it cooked. All I can do is stare at Kat, barely able to contain my agitated questioning.

One second into being alone again, I spit, “You dated someone your
junior
year.”

A look of confusion shrouds Kat’s pretty features, and she shakes her head. “No, I didn’t.”

I poke my finger onto the table, insisting, “He was tall with dark hair and pointy ears.”

Her confusion changes to humor. “You just described Dr. Spock.”

I impatiently probe, “You didn’t date him?”

“Dr. Spock?”

I’m irritated even further and I struggle not to growl at her. “No. That guy you were with.”

“When?” She tilts her head at me, searching my face for clues to her own past. Jesus.

Anxious, I lightly rap my fists on the table, annoyed that we’re not in the same neighborhood on Memory Lane. “I saw you with him a number of times. Between classes and at lunch.”

Kat’s eyebrow shoots up. “We didn’t have the same lunch period. How’d you see me with him?”

“I just did. I wasn’t always in class.”

“Oh.” She blinks as she processes that. “I did see you a couple times during my lunch, but I thought maybe that was all. Why weren’t you in class?”

“I had my reasons.”

“To skip?”

“Yeah.”

“What were they?”

“Don’t worry about them. So, who was the guy?”

“Adam—same as your dad. Isn’t that funny?” Kat laughs, but I don’t because I’m waiting for a detailed explanation to what I fucking misunderstood all these years. When she sees that I’m not in a joking kind of mood, she says, “We were just friends. I knew he was gay before he did.” She laughs again, but mostly to herself.

I cease my rhythmic fist thumping and lean forward. “Hold on. You
didn’t
date him?”

She emphatically repeats, “No. Just friends. Why?”

“I thought he was…” Shaking my head, I can’t even finish my sentence. I’m so fucking tied up—my tongue, my mind… What the fuck just happened? My whole routine of believing something entirely different has been ripped out from under me like an old rug, and I just fell on my ass.

My head is still spinning when Kat goes on to say, “I didn’t think you noticed who I hung out with, except for that one time you asked me if my friend Dez was my boyfriend, which he wasn’t.” I remember cornering her during her lunch period, and I almost had kissed her when she said she wasn’t dating him. It seems like I’m always on the verge of kissing Kat Merrick, but can’t bring myself to actually do it.

Still, I can’t forget that she didn’t want me, proving that over and over, up and down. Another rejection is only a breath away. That’s what I have to keep in mind.

Our food is actually brought to us fast, yet we both sit staring at our plates, not wanting to eat or talk. Her dinner with Dash was probably more enjoyable. Another demerit for that fucker.

When the check comes to the table, I snag it. Kat argues with me, but I roll my eyes, trying not to let on that her glower makes me want to smile.

Glancing out the window as she continues to pout, I state, “We’d better get going so you can drive.”

Kat clasps her hands together as if in prayer. “Please, don’t take me on a busy road, Jericho.”