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“Iknow I haven’t knownher long,” Jay told his brother. “But—”
Zach cut him off. “I get it, bruh. You don’t have to make a case to me. I knew Ly was special within about three minutes of meeting her. So I get it.”
They were behind the bar, sitting on the low boardwalk that served as a kind of porch. The evening had aged to full dark, and the wake had thinned out some, but, true to form, the Bulls were hanging in to the bitter end. One difference between this wake and a wake held at the clubhouse: the patches weren’t trying to turn this into a party. They were all keeping things pretty chill.
“What do you think of her?” Jay asked, taking a hit from the bottle of Jack and handing it over. He wasn’t drunk; he’d been watching himself so he could be ready for whatever Petra needed.
“Do you care what I think?”
“Not really. But yeah, sure. I want people to like her. You asking that—does that mean you don’t like her?”
Zach shook his head. “Doesn’t mean that at all. I’ve only talked to her for about five minutes total, but she seems great. She’s beautiful, and she’s obviously nice—she has a lot of people who care about her, and assholes don’t have that. She’s got her shit together, seems like.”
Jay laughed softly. “Yeah, she really does. She’s so smart and talented. I got no idea why she likes me.”
At that, Zach’s head swung sharply around, and he stared at Jay. “You really don’t know?”
With a shrug, Jay tried to deflect the question. “I don’t guess it matters. She does like me, so ...”
“Yeah, but I don’t like you asking that question. It sounds like you don’t ... I don’t know ... feel secure, I guess. And Jay, fuck. You got a lot for a woman to like.”
Their conversation had taken a decidedly uncomfortable turn, so Jay shaped his face into a shit-eating grin, grabbed his crotch, and said, “That’s what she said.”
Zach didn’t laugh. “Don’t do that. I’m serious. Has she ever told you why she likes you? Have you ever asked?”
Jay remembered when she’d told him exactly what she saw in him. It had made him want to be the man she saw. “She likes that I pay attention to her—like, listen when she talks, notice how she’s feeling, shit like that. And I do—because she’s the most interesting thing in the room. Fuck, she’s the most interesting thing in the world. I pay attention because I feel good when I do. But she thinks it’s because I’m kind and thoughtful.” He couldn’t hold back a self-deprecating chuckle at that. “It makes me want it to be true.”
“It is true,” Zach said quietly. “You say she’s the most interesting thing around for you, and I hear ... devotion, I guess is the right word. I hear that you love her. And itiskind to care for somebody that much and be okay showing it. You don’t usually like people to see how much you care, but it’s there. Always has been.” He grinned. “I mean, you’re a world-class pain in the ass, too, and you need to think more before you act, but where it matters, you are that guy. You’re a good guy, Jake. Seems like you’re letting that show more now that I’m not around.”
Jay thought it would be better to say he had achanceto show it now that Zach wasn’t always blotting him out, but he didn’t put that into words.
Instead, he put his arm over Zach’s shoulders. “Thanks for coming, man. It means a lot.”
Zach hooked his arm across Jay’s back. “I told you I still had your back. I meant it.”
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~oOo~
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Finally, Petra hadhad enough of this day. There were still about a couple dozen people around when she came to Jay and said she wanted to go home. She’d been so obviously tired and over it that he’d led her back to her office, settled her in that quiet, and gone back out to the bar to find his mom and get her help shutting the evening down.
It didn’t take long. Most people—by then it was all Bulls and Gertrude’s regulars—filed out as soon as they were asked. A few—Katie, Maude, and Max, Jay’s parents, Zach, Eight and Marcella, Kelsey and Jenny—stayed to clean up and put the bar back in order. With that handled, Jay talked to Katie, got her easy agreement to close everything up and lock the doors, and then he went back to collect his woman and get her home.
She was quiet on the ride, sitting in the passenger seat of his truck, staring out the side window with her chin in her hand. Not knowing what to say, if any words even existed that would sufficiently sum up everything that this day had held, Jay drove through the dark city and let her be quiet.
When they got to her building, he took her hand and helped her down from the truck, then led her up to her apartment. Her quiet was like an echo of the day she’d found her father’s body, when she’d almost been catatonic. Jay watched her carefully, looking for signs of need, trying to be ready to give her anything.
Once inside, she walked through the living room, to the kitchen, and stopped at the island. Three floral arrangements sat in a cluster there. A few others were scattered around the apartment.
An arrangement of pink and orange lilies was the oldest of them all. From Maude, they’d arrived the day after her father’s death, within hours of her posting a closed notice on the bar website and on the front door. The lilies were starting to drop their petals.
Petra picked up a pink petal and worked it gently through her fingers. She seemed fascinated by the way her fingers began to break the petal down.
“Nothing lasts,” she said, so softly he was pretty sure she wasn’t talking to him—and that was good, because he had no answer for it. No wisdom, no challenge. Only worry for her. Away from all the people who loved her, her strength seemed to be draining away. Maybe on his own he wasn’t enough for her to lean on.
He kicked that thought away before it distracted him from what was important. Petra was important. Her grief, her need, and whatever he could do to ease it.
