Cole looked so hopeful, that Jake believed for a split second he was looking at his own reflection. He nodded, took one last bite of the banana split. “I think that’s an excellent idea. Let’s go over to Wal-Mart and see what they’ve got.”
They spent an hour at Wal-Mart going through long aisles of girl stuff. Cole finally took Jake’s advice and got a little bottle of perfume. When Jake dropped Cole off at his mom’s, he went out back, found his mother on the porch drinking coffee and smoking a cigarette.
“Cole has a gift for Tara. Will you help him wrap it up nice?”
“Oh Lord,” Mom said with a roll of her eyes. “He’s just gonna get his feelings hurt, that’s all.”
His mother’s bitterness was endless, and Jake was suddenly struck with the thought that he did not want to end up like her, bitter and angry and old. “Mom,” he said evenly, “Just this once, could you not criticize?”
That startled her; she looked up at him with her watery eyes. “Well, I’m not criticizing—”
“Yes, you are. You always do. You’re so unhappy that sometimes I think you try to make the world around you just as unhappy so you won’t be alone.”
Stunned, Mom blinked. She swallowed, looked as if she tried to find something to say, but when she couldn’t, she looked down and methodically stubbed out her cigarette. “Well, I never meant to criticize.”
Jake instantly felt contrite, and put a hand on her bony shoulder, squeezed it lightly. And she managed to startle him by reaching up and covering his hand with hers, patting woodenly. It was a rusty show of affection, but affection all the same, and it touched a rusty part of him.
“I best go find the paper,” she said on a sigh as her hand slipped from his, and stood up, wrapped the ratty old sweater tightly around her and walked past Jake without looking at him.
“I’ll talk to you tomorrow, Mom,” he called after her and thought he heard her say good-bye in return.
The clouds were thickening as he went outside, rows and rows of big black clouds hanging low over the city. Jake drove slowly, hardly noticing the lights or pawnshops rolling by, not even noticing when yellowed lawns turned to the lush green of the Heights. His mind was too wrapped around a hodgepodge of thoughts, all of them too vague to really latch on to, the cacophony of them exhausting him.
It had begun to sprinkle lightly when he turned onto his street, and at first he didn’t notice her car, parked politely at the curb in front of his house. As he turned into his drive, he saw her sitting on the top step of his porch just beneath the overhang, her arms crossed over her knees, hugging them to her.
For the first time in his life, Jake really didn’t know what to do. He had never been in a situation he didn’t know how to get out of, especially when it came to women, but this woman had him turned all around. Hadn’t he given up on her just hours ago? Hadn’t he convinced himself that he could no longer afford the personal toll of their affair, not after giving over the very best and last pieces of himself? Yet here he was, his heart leaping at the sight of her, fighting the urge to jump out of his truck and grab her in his arms. Instead, he turned off the truck and gripped the wheel in white-knuckled confusion, afraid to let go, afraid of what he might do if let go his anchor.
From the corner of his eye he saw her rise slowly and gracefully like a mist on the lake, and he suddenly let go of the steering wheel and felt himself fall. Hard.
He got out of the truck, testing his weight on each leg, oblivious to the sprinkling rain. Likewise oblivious, Robin walked around the front of the truck, her hands shoved deep in the pocket of her jeans. “I know the answer now,” she said, and Jake felt his heart shift precariously in his chest. He leaned against the open door, moving with it until it closed behind him, bracing himself.
“Do you want to hear it?”
Hell no. But he had to. He nodded.
Robin blinked, bit her lip. “Okay. Well, I did a lot of thinking last night and today, and I realized something about myself,” she said, taking a tentative step closer to him. “I realized that I am really nothing without you.”
The disbelief knotted in his throat. “That’s crazy—”
“No,” she said, shaking her head so fiercely that her corkscrew curls bounced about. “It’s not crazy at all. I realized today as I was walking through my empty house, that without you, there are definitely things missing from my life.”
“Like what?”
“Like a life,” she said softly. “Do you know how I would melt into nothing if I ever had to watch you walk out my door and know you weren’t coming back? For a long time now, I’ve known I was looking for something, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. Until now . . . and now I realize that this desperation inside me is not the fear of getting tangled up, but the fear of being untangled. And that’s when I knew.”
Jake risked a glance at her now saw the shock of light in her pretty blue eyes, that preternatural glimmer from somewhere deep inside her. “Knew what?” he managed.