Page 9 of When You're Home for the Holidays
Jake moved easily through the kitchen, fixing coffee for both himself and Fielding and ignoring them all in the process. He used to be such a morning person, but his whole schedule got turned on its head when he stopped working opening shifts at Clinton’s and started working closing shifts as the manager of The Oak Barrel Tavern. Tori knew better than to engage him first before noon nowadays.
Fielding hopped onto the breakfast bar, his six-foot-three frame looking larger than life perched on the counter. He looked bright-eyed and bushy-tailed this morning, per usual. He tilted his head toward Judy in question. “You didn’t tell me we were expecting company this morning.”
“Judy, I know you’ve met Jake before, but this is our friend Fielding Haas. He’s going to be spending Christmas with us, too,” Tori explained as she made the introductions.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Haas.” Judy smiled warmly over her shoulder.
“The pleasure is all mine. But please. It’s Fielding. Or Field, if we’re going to be BFFs like I think we will. All my friends call me Field.” Tori swore she saw Judy blush before she turned her back to them. He continued, “So are you the one responsible for all the glorious smells in this kitchen this morning?”
Tori smirked, but she watched Judy closely to make sure she wasn’t put off or offended by Fielding’s teasing. When Judy turned back around, she had a sly smile on her face.
“You’re a real charmer, aren’t you, Mr. Haas?”
“I thought I asked you to call me Field,” he countered.
Tori held back a laugh. She knew Fielding would rein it in if she told him to, but Judy could obviously hold her own against his slick flirtations. They all were silent for a moment before he jumped off the bar and sprang into action.
“I’m starving. What can I do to help? Put me to work, Miss Judy.”
Jake sauntered over to her, two steaming-hot mugs in hand. He set them on the breakfast bar before bumping her shoulder with his bare, inked arm.
“Hey, baby,” he yawned. “Merry Christmas Eve Eve.”
She smiled at him sadly, frustrated by the reminder. It was just two days until Christmas. And Rhett still wasn’t there.
“Any updates?” Jake asked, taking a long swig of his coffee as he leaned against the breakfast bar.
“Nothing,” she lamented, picking up her phone to double check that she didn’t have any new messages.
“Yeah, last message I got was that he was going back to the apartment to sleep for a while. I’ll call him in a little bit to check in.”
They fell into a companionable silence as they sipped their coffee. Jake continued to lean against the breakfast bar, looking delectable with his tanned, inked arms, cut, tapered waist, and unreasonably revealing gray joggers. His hair was a rumpled mess, and his light hazel eyes were still squinty with sleep, but she could think of at least half a dozen people who would kill to be taking in the sight before her now. She had half a mind to take out her phone and snap a picture to send to Lia. Or Cory. Or both.
She assessed him up and down once more before asking the question that had just sprung to mind. “Who are you hanging out with these days?”
Jake took another drag of coffee, then raised his hand to the back of his head and side-eyed her. “You and Fielding.”
“You know what I mean,” she jeered, giving him a playful shove. “Who’s in your DMs?”
He blew out a long breath that gave her pause. Jake had always been obnoxiously vocal about his dating life. She couldn’t remember a time when she didn’t know who he was sleeping with, and she definitely had never had to ask for him to offer up the information. If anything, she was usually begging him to keep the details of his sordid affairs to himself. The man liked to fuck. A lot. And he liked to talk about fucking. A lot. Why was he being so standoffish?
“Embarrassingly? No one.” He shrugged and met her gaze, letting her see the honesty in his eyes. “Getting The Oak up and running has been all-consuming. For the first half of the year, I was at Clinton’s six days a week, holding down the fort while Mike was busy working next door. More often than not, I’d end up over at The Oak helping him after my shift. Now that we’re up and running, I work almost every night, and even though we close at midnight, I usually don’t get home ’til two a.m.”
She technically knew all that, but she hadn’t thought long enough about it to realize how it might be affecting his personal life. The guy really did need a vacation. “So you’re telling me the great Jake Whitely, master of the one-night stand, hasn’t gotten any in months?”
Jake pushed his tongue into his cheek, shaking his head and running a hand through his hair. She wasn’t usually the one to rib on him—Fielding did enough of that for the two of them—but she couldn’t resist digging in now that he was actually opening up.
“Guess not,” he lamented. “Field sleeps over three or four nights a week. I might as well make the workout room his bedroom at this point. Then after your surgery this summer, with Rhett home and needing to get to and from meetings…”
He trailed off as the hollowness of realization blossomed inside her. Jake wasn’t turning a new leaf or settling down. He’d been so wrapped up in their lives—in her procedure and Rhett’s recovery—that he had neglected his personal life so he could take care of them.
Shit had hit the fan and splattered when Rhett crashed Jake’s car earlier that summer. The boys didn’t speak for almost a month: Rhett ashamed and remorseful, Jake seething and livid. The pain reached much deeper than the loss of Jake’s beloved BMW M3 from high school. It was the drinking. It was the lies. Jake had even tried to stage a mini intervention the weekend before the car accident.
It was her prophylactic hysterectomy that had finally forced them back together. Rhett had come home and stayed in Hampton for a month for her surgery and recovery. She hadn’t been able to cook or drive while she healed. But he had still been recovering from the injuries he sustained in the car crash, so he was limited in what he could do to get her to her follow-up appointments and take care of her.
Jake had been by their side every day, except or the few hours each morning when he drove Rhett to and from his AA meeting and when he had to go to work at night. He’d slept at Rhett’s house, traversing across the broken spot in the fence every morning and every night to make sure they had both taken their meds and eaten three meals each day. That month of being stuck at home and reliant on Jake for so much was healing for all of them.
“Jake,” she croaked softly, her voice ripe with emotion. He was too good to her. Too good to them. His friendship knew no bounds.
