Page 44 of His Best Friend's Baby

“Hey, Wain,” he murmured, giving the dumb dog a scratch under the collar. Wain liked that and climbed up on the couch with a sigh.

Jesse let the old boy walk up his legs to curl his old crippled body into Jesse’s lap.

Jesse stroked the velvet of Wain’s ears, the short fine hairs across his nose and down his graying muzzle.

“I’m sorry, boy,” he whispered. “You should be with Artie.”

The dog licked his hand in quick absolution.

The earth spun inordinately fast on its axis tonight, no doubt due to the solid shots to the head he’d taken. Jesse dropped one foot to the floor to steady himself so he wouldn’t get spun off this twirling ball of rock up into the stars.

“Sorry, Mitch,” he whispered. “Sorry about not listening to you and for getting mad. I’m sorry I didn’t save you. I’m sorry about Julia.” He sighed. He’d made this very same speech so often he had it memorized. Every breath, every blink of his eye was an apology. A plea for forgiveness he’d never receive.

Sorry, Artie.

Sorry, Dave.

Sorry, Mitch.

He closed his eyes, feeling sick, and it wasn’t from his ribs and broken nose. He’d carried this sick feeling for months, wore it like a hair shirt. It was guilt laced with something else. Resentment. Resentment that he continued to eat shit for his old friend. That his whole life seemed dictated by Mitch, alive or dead. Married. Cheating. Drinking. Gambling. And he was sorry?

“I’m not sorry about Julia,” he said. His eyes popped open.

Wain scrambled off his legs and curled up between his arm and chest, against the couch. Jesse hissed as the old dog pressed against his ribs, but he didn’t push him off. “You never deserved her, man. Never.”

And you do?

Jesse crossed his arms behind his head and decided tonight he wouldn’t answer his own question. Tonight he was going to let the possibility linger. Morning would come soon enough and reality could strip all possibilities away then.

But tonight he was going to pretend that he did deserve Julia. That he still had it in him to create happiness for her.

He imagined her lithe, strong body crossing the moonlit-splashed room toward him. He imagined her hands, warm and sure and small. So small—delicate, like birds. He imagined their touch, their strokes and heat danced across his skin.

He imagined her skin, white and clean and pure. He imagined her naked, pressed against his body, wrapping her arms around him, close enough that he could absorb her if they both tried hard enough.

He imagined telling her, in breaths, in kisses and in long slow strokes of his body, that he loved her. That he’d loved her since she’d opened the door that day in Germany.

He imagined her lips, pink and lush, opening and he imagined her voice, a sweet whisper, a soft sigh saying I love you, too.

CHAPTER TEN

THE NEXT MORNING Julia got a job waiting tables at the Petro Truck Stop. It wasn’t great, but it was money and it was work she knew she could do. Truckers, chicken-fried steak and bottomless cups of strong coffee—she felt as if she’d been there before. She walked back to the house with her shoulders back and her head held high.

She had a job, her first in years. Even though it was a crappy one, she could feel her self-worth inflate. Grow with every step.

She would start on Saturday, which gave her a few days to get up the courage to tell Agnes. Oh, she wasn’t going to like Mitch’s widow serving truckers out by the highway.

Julia picked up her son and headed out to the bulletin board at the grocery store.

The first thing on her list was to find some other daycare. She couldn’t, and frankly didn’t want to, rely on Agnes for every moment of childcare.

Childcare.

Apartment.

Car.

Hopefully the tips out at Petro came in solid gold.

Julia moved the flyers for lost dogs and found cats on the Vons bulletin board, searching for the flyers with the phone numbers on the bottom she could tear off.

There were no used cars, no apartments for rent and only one babysitting flyer, but all the tear-off strips were missing.

“Well, there you go.” Her hands fell to her side and she tried to be philosophical about the whole thing. “That’s just the way it is.”

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