Page 57 of To Belong Together
“I’m kidding. You know that.” Gentleness Erin didn’t often use softened her voice.
“I’m not very good at talking.” The problem went deeper than that. “Telling people what they mean to me.”
“Why? Say what you’re thinking. Doesn’t have to be eloquent.” She spoke lightly, as only someone who hadn’t been burned the way he had could.
But the story of that burn, the story of his biological father, was too hot to throw into a brand-new friendship with Erin. He’d never told his last girlfriend, Nicole. He’d only ever uttered the story to a police officer and to Gannon. He twisted his hand around the steering wheel. “Words never work out well for me. When I talked to Kate about the bachelor party, she was offended because I don’t approve.”
“Of her fiancé having a stripper?” She scoffed and shifted in her seat. “Most women would be grateful to have a man on their side of the issue.”
“She thinks I’m judging.”
“Are you?”
In a way, but the implication that he cared more about external actions than about his sister’s well-being couldn’t be further from the truth. If he judged Tanner’s choices and Kate’s acceptance of it as wrong, it was only because he didn’t want Kate’s heart broken. “I didn’t know she had walked away from God until this brought it up.”
“So you don’t know her anymore.”
He hated how much that was the case. When had they drifted apart? How had it happened?
He checked the speedometer. The car in front of them cruised below the limit. He used to pass without hesitation. Now, only his packed schedule made him pull into the other lane. He settled back into their lane, and the lull in conversation allowed him to return to Erin’s question.
What was he going to do about the rift with Kate?
“Tonight’s her rehearsal dinner. I’m doing a reading that might help.”
Or maybe not, because what was a speech except a bunch of words?
Compassion welledin Erin the way it had when she’d found John asleep on the floor with Trigger. She’d seen and heard enough from the men she’d worked with to know respect for women’s bodies wasn’t easy to come by. In high school, she’d been jealous of the girls with hourglass figures, but now she could only imagine the extra trouble she’d have run into if her torso were curvy instead of fairly straight.
But John’s disagreement with Kate encompassed more than the stripper.
The siblings had grown apart and developed differing beliefs. John shouldn’t blame himself for not talking enough. Obviously, if anyone wanted a relationship with him, words wouldn’t make the foundation. He uttered too few of them.
Even now, he seemed to have exhausted his supply again.
She thought of circling back to her family and admitting that Mom and Dad were losing their house, but sharing their financial troubles would put him on guard. He’d suspected her of being after his money once already.
There was also the matter of her name-dropping at work.
It’d been to keep her job, but she suspected he still wouldn’t appreciate that.
She squirmed in her seat and opted for the one safe topic. “Tell me about this reading.”
“It’s an excerpt from a fairytale book she carried everywhere in middle school.”
Erin pictured a girl toting a tattered paperback with a princess on the cover around everywhere. “Cute.”
“I wasn’t thrilled with reading it, but for Kate …” He shrugged.
“Wait.” Her mental picture morphed, and now John was the one with the princess book. None of the men in her life spent much time reading—other than Dad and the newspaper. The thought of John immersed in a fairytale lifted a smile to her face. “So you read the whole book? To find a quote? Why not do an Internet search?”
Was he blushing? “I tried but found nothing, so Mom mailed me a copy when I was on tour.”
“On tour.” This was getting better and better. “What did everyone think of that? You reading a book written for middle school girls?”
“They had some fun with it.”
“I bet.” Erin snorted. “You’re a romantic.”
