Nine
Drew spent the better part of the morning in his batting cage slamming baseballs.
The sky was cloudless, and mature trees with heavy branches shaded half his house, keeping the interior cool and ready to absorb the mild afternoon warmth of June as the calendar made its way to summer.
A crisp chill hung in the air and he worked up a good sweat, got out some pent-up energy before walking back into the house to shower.
He ate breakfast at home instead of at Opal’s Diner. He made oatmeal and drank half a pot of black coffee until he felt a jittery edge start to give him a headache.
Jacquie had called him just after seven and, in her cigarette-raspy voice, said they needed to talk.
He knew what was coming and, frankly, he didn’t want to hear it. There was nothing he could do about last night and missing her birthday. He’d left the hospital, driven Lucy and her sons to her car, come home and given Jacquie a call. All he got was her voice mail greeting. He’d left a message, then went to bed. He never heard from her all night. When he woke and realized she hadn’t gotten back to him, he’d thought about how he’d make it up to her, but the bite in her tone this morning quickly washed out those thoughts.
This relationship merry-go-round was getting old.
He was done. Enough was enough. They should have been finished long ago, but for his own damn comfort and the familiarity he had with her, he’d let things ride. Way too long.
He’d postponed meeting her at the time she’d suggested, said he was busy until ten. She had an appointment and countered with ten forty-five. He didn’t want to make a public scene, so when she suggested they meet at her house, he agreed.
Driving out of the Knolls, he’d run into Lucy and was glad for the chance to see her. He’d been telling himself that his reasons for wanting to end things with Jacquie had nothing to do with anyone but him and her. But Lucy’s face had crept into his mind, filling his thoughts as he’d fallen into a hard sleep last night.
He remembered how upset she’d been at the hospital. He was pretty sure something was going on with her son, but without her talking about it, he could only speculate. Watching her cry, losing her emotional composure like that, had gotten to him. But he’d held back and refrained from placing comforting hands on her because he hadn’t wanted to add to her misery in case he didn’t do it right. He wasn’t sure he had a consoling gene in his body.
He couldn’t console Jacquie when she was crying. It undid him when she let the tears flow, and he itched to be out of her company. Why Lucy’s state of tears felt different to Drew, he could only speculate. When he thought about it, it bothered him that he could be cool toward one woman’s emotional struggle, yet want to respond with his heart to the tug of another.
What did that say about him?
Drew was used to lots of testosterone, playing baseball with the guys and coaching boys. When you got hurt, you stood up and shook it off. You didn’t let hurts linger, and you sure as hell didn’t cry over something unless it required a minimum of fifty stitches or a broken bone that needed to be set without a shot of anesthetic.
Guys were different.
But they liked their women to be soft, sometimes helpless and weak. They wanted to feel needed. And that’s something he was finally figuring out about Jacquie that just didn’t make their on-and-off relationship work for him anymore.
Jacquie Santini didn’t need anyone.
She was very capable, could handle anything. Hell, she even owned a gun, and if anyone was stupid enough to break into her house when she was home, he had no doubts she’d shoot him in the nuts.
Sometimes he wondered if Jacquie even had a soft side. If she ever felt vulnerable. Yeah, she could cry about a bruised ego, but was it an act? He wasn’t sure anymore. If she did feel despondent, she didn’t show him. Either that, or he just hadn’t clued into that part of her personality.
The interesting thing was, what drew him to Jacquie was the very thing he now questioned.
He’d liked that she was strong, assertive. But it left him with little to do. She had no use for him other than hot sex, and for him to take her around town to her black-tie events and show her off.
A time or two, Jacquie had called him shallow. Now that was the umpire calling a strike a ball. For the most part, Drew brushed her words off. Nobody could get to the Tolman-ater. Or so he thought. Jacquie had begun to rub him wrong with her stubborn streak, her attitude. Forget about using each other for good sex.
For a change, he wanted to feel needed by a woman.
He’d felt good about being able to help Lucy Carpenter last night, however small a role he’d played. She had needed him to be there. That male instinct was alive and well in him, and it was something he wanted to explore.
Wind blew through the open window of the Hummer as Drew listened to loud music. He loved rock and roll, loved how it vibrated through him, made him sing lyrics that brought him back to the days when he was in high school. He couldn’t carry a note out of a choir hall, but that didn’t stop him from singing.
Drew pulled the large SUV into Jacquie’s drive and grabbed his cell phone and keys. She answered the door before he could knock.
Jacquie looked as if she hadn’t slept all night. Her long black hair was twisted and pulled into a claw at the base of her skull. She looked presentable enough to have met
