Home Is Where Your Bark Is

Chapter 17

Jenna swept a lock of her hair back from her face and winced almost imperceptibly, reminding Jake of the line of stitches hidden there. Seated as she was on the opposite end of his couch, facing him, legs crossed, and a throw pillow tucked in front of her, she had a vulnerability he’d not seen since he’d been next to her in the rain waiting for the ambulance. But this time, reminiscent of the yin-yang symbol, a strength encircled that vulnerability, keeping her spine straight and her shoulders back.

“You don’t have to tell me anything you’re not ready to.”

They’d cleaned up the kitchen together, and just once had he closed a hand over the small of her back while stepping behind her. His hand still felt alive from the touch.

“It’s not something I talk about—hardly ever, in fact. But I do want to tell you.” She pulled in a breath that lifted her shoulders. “She died, my mom. You probably got that the other day.”

After admitting he had, Jake left her the space to continue. Seven was stretched out on the floor on the opposite side of the room, watching them. He’d been lazily licking his front paws, and his eyelids were growing heavy, but every time either of them moved more than an inch, his head popped up and his ears perked forward in alert.

“It was breast cancer,” she continued. “My grandma had it but wasn’t diagnosed until she was in her late fifties, and she recovered. My mom was just thirty-three. I was nine, and my sister was not yet eight. I told you how we were wanting a dog for Christmas but got those cactuses instead. Well, my mom was diagnosed in January. I guess she felt the swelling under her arm sometime in October, but money was always so tight in our house, and she wanted to wait for the new year because she hadn’t come close to touching her annual deductible, and Christmas was coming.” She shook her head. “The gift of hindsight, right? I didn’t find out about that until I was in my twenties, but I swear, since I heard it, it’s been hard not to wonder if those two months could’ve saved her life.”

Seeing that she was giving him the space to respond, Jake figured the best thing to do was meet vulnerability with vulnerability. “I grew up just outside Racine, and when I was twelve, we had the day off school for Presidents’ Day. A couple of my friends wanted to go to a movie— Shanghai Knights had just come out—but the rest of us wanted to play hockey. One of my buddies fell through the ice that day. It took a long time for the EMS to get him out. He survived, but he was never the same. I think about that day often, about what he’d be doing right now if we’d gone to the movies instead.”

Jenna stared at him as one breath blended into the next. “Then you know. It’s easy to think our pain is one of a kind, but so many of us carry it.”

“That’s true, but I didn’t mean to get you offtrack.”

“You didn’t.” Jenna looked over at Seven, who had just fallen into a light doze. “My mom had this sunroom full of plants and no furniture but a single, cozy chair. She liked to read in there on her days off. Each one of those plants was healthy and beautiful. I don’t know how she knew so much about caring for them, but she did. After she died, I watered them, but either not enough or too much because just about every last one of them was wilted and brown by the time the house was sold.”

The image of a young girl with big blue-green eyes attempting to take over a responsibility like that tugged at him.

After she cleared her throat, Jenna added, “Less than a year later, my sister and I went to live with my grandparents out in Tinley Park. My dad started drinking—or at least using it as a crutch—when my mom got sick. He was never abusive or mean to us like you hear about some people, but he withdrew inside himself. He lost his job and moved into an apartment to be closer to his new job on the other side of town, and my sister and I hardly saw him.”

“That had to be rough, after losing your mom.”

“He’d take us to dinner once a week. All the talk was pretty superficial though, how’s school going and whatnot.” She shrugged. “We had amazing grandparents, at least. I miss them every day. And my sister and I had each other, there’s that. We never got the dog, but our grandparents had three cats.” Jenna made a face. “Cats are great, but theirs were older, and two of them were always throwing up, and the other one hated everyone but my grandma, so much so that when he got the inclination, he’d chase us across the room, trying to bite us. I think my sister and I had both had our fill of cats by the time we left for college.”

“I could see that,” he said with a chuckle. “So, a couple years ago, you decided you wanted a dog but figured you needed to take care of a plant first.” He nodded toward the plant she’d brought him. “Which led to Plants N Pots.”

Jenna shrugged. “If the shoe fits…”

Nodding, he added, “And your dad. How is he now?”

“Better, I think. While we were in undergrad, he got sober and met his second wife in AA. She’s twelve years younger, and they have a couple kids who are a little older than my nephews. They live in Skokie, and I can’t say I see them much, but I’m happy for him. He’s reconnected with my sister the last couple years, seeing how their kids aren’t far apart in age. I think it’s been good for her.”

“And you?”

Jenna shrugged. “My dad and I aren’t super close, but I’m okay with it. I’d like to think I don’t hold any grudges, but I probably do,” she said with a dismissive laugh. “So, how about you?”

Jake narrowed his gaze. “Were we finished talking about you?”

“I’m not sure there’s much else to say.” Looking down, she fidgeted with a frayed string of yarn at the edge of the pillow. He stayed quiet on purpose to see if she’d fill the space, and she did. The glasses of wine on the adjacent coffee table were being ignored, but so far this hadn’t been the conversation for casual drinking. “Losing my mom was hard. The kind of hard that defines you. At her funeral, I promised myself I’d become a doctor and help cure the world of cancer. I held on to the dream for a while, but it didn’t materialize. Obviously. ”

“But you do work as a radiology technologist.”

Jenna cocked her head. “Hardly curing the world of cancer, but I needed to pay the bills, and the hours are good. I did major in biology in undergrad and worked relentlessly and got accepted into med school. Two years in, I realized the whole thing was just about killing me. My heart wasn’t in it anymore. Maybe it never had been. If I’d listened to what I wanted to do rather than what I felt I needed do, I’d have majored in art most likely. Though I don’t regret my undergrad degree. I probably wouldn’t regret those two years in med school, either, if I wasn’t paying so much for them in loans.” She laughed off this last bit before tossing the pillow his way. “That’s pretty much my entire life story. Can we talk about you now for a bit, please?”

“Yeah, we can do that.” She’d taken off her shoes upon arrival and Jake had moved them to the closet to keep them out of too-easy reach for Seven. Now, she tucked her knees into her chest, locking her hands around the backs of the thighs of her skintight jeans. Jake cleared his throat and reminded himself not to think about how much he appreciated the view, even though images of those legs would no doubt be keeping him awake tonight. Resting the pillow on his lap, he leaned over for a swallow of wine. “I can imagine those loans being a pain. I bartended throughout law school so that I didn’t have to take out as many loans as I would’ve otherwise. I hope never to be that sleep-deprived again in my life.”

Jenna smiled sympathetically. “I bet, and how’d you end up in Chicago over Racine? Was it school or work, or something else? And I love Racine, by the way.”

“Racine’s nice, and it was law school that first brought me here. That, and I wanted a stab at living in a bigger city, and I’d always liked Chicago. My undergrad was at UW-Madison. After that, like I told you, I took a year off to figure out how to better manage my ADHD, then, after my third go at the LSAT, I managed to score high enough to get into Chicago-Kent. The school had a big draw for me. While I was growing up, my dad owned a small machining business. He could turn out a great product but, ultimately, he ended up filing for bankruptcy and lost it. He didn’t have the knowledge to run the business side of things and owed a lot in back taxes. I started out in business law because I wanted to be able to help people like him, but I migrated to intellectual property law when I was a year in.”

“Sounds complicated.”

He shrugged. “So does med school.”

Jenna laughed. “It was, and that’s a bummer about your dad losing his business.”

“It was humbling, for certain. It took my parents close to a decade to recover financially, and they live pretty modestly. My mom has worked in the front office at the elementary school my brother and I went to for the last, I don’t know, twenty-five years or so. I’m thirty-three, and she started there when I was in third grade. My brother was in fifth.”

“That’s sweet. What about your dad? What he’d end up doing after that?”

“I guess you could say that losing his business worked out okay in the long run. He got to continue to work around machines, which was his passion. One of the companies who bought some of his equipment hired him, and he stayed there until a couple of years ago. He was turning sixty and wanted something less physical. He got a job at a library not far from the house. He walks to work and sits behind a counter checking out books all day, and he’s happy. They both are. They’re still in the house I grew up in too. People don’t do that anymore, not our generation anyway.”

“No, they don’t, do they? I loved that about living at my grandparents’ house. There were still boxes of my mom’s baby stuff in the basement and her high school yearbooks in her old bedroom closet. It helped me feel connected to her when I really needed it.” Clearing her throat, she shifted back to a cross-legged position again.

The movement was enough for Seven to pop his head off the floor and glance her way. Once he seemed to determine that neither of them was about to move from the couch, he settled his head back onto one paw, his eyelids heavy. Jake didn’t think it was his imagination that the dog was starting to relax a bit more now that he’d spent a few nights here.

“How about your brother? Are you close?”

Jake shrugged. “Yeah, we’re close. Different, but close. He’s in Racine still but downtown. He got my dad’s gift for tinkering with things. When we were kids, he was always taking our stuff apart to see how it worked. Like me, he has ADHD. He went to college initially to major in engineering but didn’t finish. Now he works as a machinist, and in his free time, he brews beer in his garage. His wife’s not crazy about the smell of hops in the house, but the two of them balance one another out well enough. She’s pregnant too. With their first. About seventeen weeks along, I think.”

“Nice. That’ll be fun, and good that they aren’t far from your parents.”

“Yeah, my mom’s excited. That’s for sure.”

“You and your sister,” Jake said, circling back to what had first started this conversation. “I take it you’re close, given what you both went through.”

Jenna blinked a few times. “Yeah, we are, which I guess can be both good and bad. She can be pretty impulsive and darned sure of herself at the same time.” She nodded toward Seven, who popped his head up instantly. Realizing they were both looking his way, he lumbered to his feet with a yawn and walked over to the window. “Like when it came to adopting him. She can’t always pull back enough to see a bigger picture. Maybe we’re all like that some, but I really see it with her.”

Before Jake could respond, she gave a light shake of her head and continued. “I’m only fifteen months older, and I lost my mom, too, but—the way I remember it, at least—so much fell on me after she died. My sister, she’s supersmart, smarter than me, but she just kind of stopped growing up, stayed in the baby role. Having the boys to care for is changing that though. Every parent needs some help with little ones—they’re so all-consuming—but she’s doing it mostly on her own, and I’m proud of her. And I don’t want to be resentful about water that should be under the bridge, but sometimes she’ll say or do something, and that frustration just kind of bubbles up.”

Jake dragged a hand over his mouth, his stubble pressing against his fingers. His stomach tensed at the thought of how she might take what he was going to say, but he knew he needed to say it anyway. “There’s something I’ve been wanting to tell you.”

Jenna shifted in her seat, and Seven turned from the window to face them. “Yeah, sure. Anything.”

“The other night, just before the accident. It was raining and nearly dark, and we were both headed down Ashland. A couple lights before you got hit, I don’t know why, but I looked over and noticed you. And Seven. We were idling there, waiting for the light to turn green, and you were illuminated by a streetlight, and I could tell you were sad. Really sad. The kind of sad people don’t like to let themselves get.”

Tears welled up instantly, bringing out the blue in her eyes. “My sister was upset about surrendering Seven, and she confessed this stupid story from our childhood back before our mom died when there was so much competition between us. I don’t know why, but it just hit me right in the gut.” A few stray tears slid down her cheeks, and she brushed them away. “I wasn’t drunk or focused on a podcast or looking at my phone, but I keep asking myself if the wreck would’ve still happened if I hadn’t been crying. I thought I was paying attention, but I didn’t even see him. Maybe I did at the last second, but I don’t remember the impact. The last thing I remember is the light turning green and starting to go. I don’t think I looked left.”

“Jenna, that guy was over twice the legal limit for alcohol, driving too fast for conditions, and he ran a red light. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“Except for not looking left and right before I went.”

“When you’re at a stoplight, it’s a best practice, not a law.”

Jenna nodded and wiped under her eyes. “I know.” She’d quelled her tears and was back in control. “But thank you. We were clearly still alongside one another when I was hit, then, given how I hit your Jeep.” When Jake nodded, she added, “Did you see him coming?”

The fact that he dropped her gaze likely said enough, but he admitted that he had. “But I didn’t tell you that to make you feel like you should’ve. Had I not been paying attention to you, I doubt I would’ve seen him either.”

She swept her hair back in one hand and gave a little shake of her head.

“Jenna, I’m telling you all this because I think you should know that it was you who had me running out of my Jeep so fast after the impact. Those couple blocks we inched along at those lights…” Jake shook his head. “I can’t explain it, so I’ll just leave it at that. It was you I was running to.” Jake motioned to Seven, who was fully awake again, his head cocked like he was trying to figure out what was playing out between them. “It isn’t why I kept him rather than leaving him at the shelter; that was all him. But this…” he said, waving his hand in a circle between the three of them. “I don’t know. Given that you’ve offered to help me with him, because I’ve asked to use your yard, it didn’t feel right not to tell you that.”

Jenna blinked a few times, then abruptly braced one hand on the back of the couch as she leaned toward him. Jake met her in the middle, their mouths connecting with a heat that threatened to stop all blood flow to his brain. He locked one hand around her neck and the other around her hip as they raised up onto their knees, their bodies pulling together like magnets. Instantly, the world fell away until it was just lips and tongue and the soft grazing of teeth and the perfection of her body against his.

As the kiss deepened, a memory pressed in of a game of “If You Had To” that he’d played with friends in undergrad. “If you had to give up one for the rest of your life, would it be sex or kissing?” he’d been asked on one of his turns. It’d been easy to throw kissing out there without a second’s hesitation. He’d gotten a pillow chucked at him by one of the girls there who he’d gone on a couple dates with.

If someone were to ask him that same question right now, he’d have a hard time answering, even if ultimately the answer was the same. Kissing Jenna felt like coming home and stepping into a hot sauna at the same time, heating his blood and simultaneously making him want to laugh with that strange feeling bubbling up his throat. If it was joy, it had been entirely too long since he’d experienced it.

His hand slid over the rise of her ass, and he pulled her closer. His lips left her mouth to explore her neck and sternum. No sex or anything close to it. Had he promised himself that? Surely, he hadn’t. Not when it was so obvious how good they’d be together.

Over at the window, Seven began to growl, deep and low and incessant. Jenna pulled away first to look his way. The same second that Jake realized the direction Seven was staring—at the door—he heard the footsteps clomping up the stairs. Definitely not the couple next door. “Oh, crap. Hang tight a second, will you?”

Jake hadn’t thought about changing the entry code to the lock on his door, even though Alyssa knew it, because never in a thousand lifetimes would he let himself into her place post-breakup. Apparently, that courtesy didn’t extend the other direction. Jake heard the soft beeping of the keypad just as he lunged toward the door. Seven beat him there, the low growl still in his throat, which came as a surprise until Jake remembered that the last time Alyssa had been here, Seven had witnessed her screaming and throwing shoes.

“I wouldn’t try opening that until I get this dog restrained,” he yelled, pressing against the door with the flat of his hand as Seven backed just out of reach of him. “Buddy, even if we don’t like ’em, we don’t growl at visitors.” Jake was about to ask Jenna to grab the leash out of the coat closet when Alyssa started up on the opposite side of the door.

“Jake Stiles, you bought me this swimsuit in Fiji! Maybe the rest of that stuff is mine, but not this. I don’t want your gifts. Not when you’re throwing our relationship away!” Her voice was muffled by the door, but there was zero doubt Jenna was hearing every word.

She’d stood up from the couch and was headed their way. With Seven so focused on the door, Jenna was able to catch him by surprise. She locked a hand around his collar, and he stopped growling immediately, shifting his back end away from her as he tucked his tail and flattened his ears against his head. After meeting Jake’s gaze, Jenna nodded toward the door. “I’m guessing you probably want to take whatever this is outside.”

“I’m sorry. For this…” He jutted his thumb toward the door. “And for not explaining sooner. I was getting to it, promise. And I will,” he said. “I’ll explain everything. When I get back.”

Jenna nodded, her gaze filled with what seemed like concern but not anger. “Okay. Once you’re outside, I’ll let him go.”

As he stepped outside to confront Alyssa, Jake promised himself that whatever it took, he was going to get this thing right with Jenna. Nothing had meant as much to him in a long time.