Page 37 of Fight for Me
She wandered over to where he knelt and lowered herself down beside him. Sitting against the wall, she peered up to the ceiling of the belfry, which was strangely empty.
“Where are the bells?” she asked, cocking her head.
Jake settled himself at her side, leaving a purposeful gap between them, and looked up.
“Not sure. I know one of them broke a while ago, so they started using pre-recorded music instead.”
“What a shame. I had this whole Quasimodo thing going on in my head.”
Jake snorted. “You thought there was a hunchbacked guy jumping up and down up here every hour?”
A grin stretched across Lexie’s face. It felt good.
“Not hunchbacked, necessarily. Could just be a crazy guy who likes bells.”
“And what would he do up here all day?” Jake asked incredulously.
“I don’t know. Maybe he takes pictures of people as they walk by,” she said, glancing at him from the corner of her eye. “Because that’s not creepy at all.”
Jake laughed—just a quick exhale of breath—and shook his head sheepishly. “Alright, point taken,” he said.
Lexie caught his eye, and they both chuckled. She leaned her head against the warm stone behind her and closed her eyes, soaking in the quiet sounds of life above the treetops. It felt like the most natural thing in the world to simply sit in silence with Jake as the afternoon rolled forward. Birds twittered in nests just outside the windows, and more than one flew into the empty space and perched high above, looking down on them with interest.
It was the first time in forty-eight hours that Lexie’s brain was still.
“I heard a song on the radio this morning that made me think of you,” she said finally, her eyes still closed.
“Yeah?”
She couldn’t see Jake, but she could feel his full attention on the side of her face.
“Yeah. It was one of those country songs about childhood sweethearts. Something about a little boy chasing a girl around the playground, and then they grew up and got married and lived happily ever after.” She sighed, hearing her own wistfulness. “You strike me as a third-grade-sweetheart kind of guy.”
Jake gave a self-deprecating sort of laugh. “Not exactly,” he said. “I still thought girls were icky in the third grade. Present company excluded, of course. I’m sure you were never icky.”
“Oh, of course not,” she said, turning to look at him. “I was delightful.”
“I actually broke up with my first girlfriend on her parents’ answering machine,” he admitted, rubbing the back of his neckwith a grimace. “I got myself all psyched up to call and tell her I didn’t want to be her boyfriend anymore, and then when I got the machine, I panicked. I word-vomited my whole spiel after the beep and hung up. A few days later, her mom mentioned it to my mom, who mentioned it to my dad, who dragged me across town, walked me up to her front porch and rang the bell.”
“He did not!” Lexie gasped, her eyes wide.
Jake smiled ruefully. “Yes, he did. He stood there until she came to the door, and then he went and sat in his truck while I prayed with all my might for the earth to swallow me whole. Later that night, he gave me a long lecture about how being a man means owning the things I’ve done, both good and bad, and taking responsibility for how my actions affect other people. It’s not one I’ve forgotten.”
“How old were you?”
“Fourteen.”
Lexie felt her heart tighten, wishing every young man had learned the same lesson. Jake must have seen a change in her expression because his humor transformed into something else.
“What is it?” he asked, his voice soft.
Something about the tenderness in it made Lexie want to reach for his hand, which now rested on his knee, only inches away. Her fingers tingled with the desire to move, but she folded them into her lap, unwilling to give in. She stared silently out one of the huge windows, watching a hawk circle in an updraft. Jake didn’t push her, but she could feel him waiting patiently at her side.
“Nobody taught my father that,” she said at last. “I’m not sure he’s ever made a mistake that he believes was actually his fault, including the night my mother died.”
Jake drew in a sharp breath but said nothing, so she went on.
“He cheated on her for years, parading his mistresses in front of her like show ponies, one after the other. That night, I heardthem arguing. She asked what she could do better, what he needed that she wasn’t giving him. She begged him not to go back to his girls, but he left anyway. He brushed her aside like lint off his jacket, and he grabbed his keys and shut the door without even saying goodbye. She drank most of a bottle of tequila and then got in her car to go after him. I stood in front of the door and begged her not to leave. But she said, ‘Lexie, a woman’s got to fight for her man. One day you’ll understand.’ And then she left.
