Page 61 of More Than Anything

Avery shrugged. “Uh, yeah, sure.” Lydia had wandered up behind him and put a hand on either side of his waist. “Baby, this is my friend and former roommate, JasonDavidson. Jason, my girlfriend, LydiaKinsey.”

“Hi!” Lydia gushed. “Come on in! Have you eaten? We’ve got some leftovers and?”

“No. I haven’t had anything. I’ve been driving. And I’m not picky,” Jason announced, dropping his bag just inside the door and following Lydia into the kitchen.

What the hell’s going on here?Avery was dumbfounded. Driving from Clarksville, Tennessee, to TuckerCity, Texas, was no small thing. Jason hadn’t just decided he’d come to visit or he would’ve called first. Something was up, and he wasn’t in a hurry to share. Avery just watched, speechless, as Jason sat down with leftover pizza and a soft drink and ate like he was starving. He caught Lydia’s eye and she shrugged and smiled.

He let Jason finish eating before he said, “I think we need to talk.”

“Yes. We do,” Jason announced. That took Avery by surprise.

“Okay. Spill. What’re you doing here? You didn’t just decide, ‘Oh, I’ve got a couple of days off and I think I’ll go see my old buddy Avery.’ So what’s going on?”

“I don’t have a job.”

Avery was confused. “Did my dickwad brother let you go?”

“Yes and no.” When Avery gave Jason that look that said,Spill it already!Jason swallowed the last bite of his pizza and said, “Yeah, he let me go, but then he let most everybody else go too.”

“Whaaa? What’re you talking about?”

“The company’s going belly-up, Avery. Kaput. He’s run it into the ground.”

Avery’s stomach clenched. Why hadn’t his mother told him? He talked to her at least once a week, and she’d never said a word. “You’re kidding, right?”

“Wish I were, but no, I’m not.”

“What happened?”

Jason shook his head. “I really don’t know. He just called us in and said, ‘You, you, and you, go home. I can’t pay you anymore.’ No explanation. When we tried to ask, he just holed up in his office and wouldn’t come out.”

Now Avery was really concerned. “Did you lose a lot of business or something?”

“No. Business as usual.” Nothing was making sense. Then Jason dropped the bomb. “So I was hoping I could crash with you for a while.”

Avery’s eyes went straight to Lydia’s, and she shrugged and smiled again. He couldn’t very well say no; when Shannon had kicked him out, he’d floundered until Jason had told him to just move on in. They’d gone to school together from third grade all the way through high school and even college. Their friendship had spanned decades. He couldn’t just throw Jason out, but damn, that wasn’t what he wanted for his and Lydia’s new relationship. Still, there was no question. “Sure. No problem. I can’t pay you, but are you willing to help out here while you look for a job?”

“Of course. You got things that need doing, I’ll do ’em. You just tell me what and I’m your guy.”

“I’ve got some fences that need to be put up and things like that,” Avery warned. “It’s hard work.”

“I’m up for it. Just show me how and turn me loose. I’ll be the best fence-putter-upper you’ve ever had.”

“Good deal.” All Avery wanted to do in that exact moment was pull Lydia aside and talk to her about it all, but he had something else he had to do first. “If you two will excuse me, I think I need to make a phone call.” Lydia nodded; she knew exactly what he was about to do.

Closing the door behind him as he stepped out onto the back porch, Avery pressed his mom’s contact in his phone and it rang twice before Beverly said, “Hello, son!”

“Hi, Mom! How’s it going?”

“Good, good. You doing okay?”

“Great.”

“And that pretty girlfriend of yours?” she asked.

“Great.”

“That’s wonderful. So the two of you are getting along?”

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