Page 64 of The Last Second Chance
I waited until I heard the front door open before getting up.
Through the open, breezeless window I spied my sons, congratulating themselves on a stealthy exit. They moved as a haphazard pack, jogging and stopping, hurrying and meandering.
I knew where they were going. The only place that three boys with six years between them would agree upon on a steamy July night.
I could have hollered, sent them back to bed. Probably should have. It’s what my father would have done. But I didn’t. I wanted the break as much as they did. A break from the heat and responsibility. A break from adulthood.
I wandered down after them, fighting the battle between parent and human being. I wanted to stop them, teach them how to sneak out of the house effectively. Jax especially who considers a stomp near silence. What would I feel in a few years when he’s sneaking out to meet his Joey, I wondered.
Considering this, and Phoebe’s reaction to a father teaching his impressionable sons how to sneak out, I decided it was a lesson that could wait a few years.
I found the three of them in the pond, splashing and laughing like the loons. They didn’t even know I was there until I raced down the dock and jumped over their heads. Beckett told me later that the water level in the pond lost a foot from that cannonball.
We won that night. Defeating the stifling night swelter with brisk, black pond water under a full moon. It didn’t matter that we’d track mud all the way back and through the house or that Phoebe would murder all of us when she found out that we’d helped ourselves to two boxes of cereal on the porch afterwards.
What did matter is we took a moment, a slice of a day, and did with it exactly as we wished. A lesson I could never iterate in a father’s lecture, but one so essential to the way a man lives. Find your slice and live it.
I’ll carry that memory with me, take it out to examine it in the years to come, and remember that one perfect night when the crickets sang and the boys laughed. And the rains finally came as we sat together on the midnight porch.
Jax felthis throat tighten at the memories that leapt off the page. It was as if his father had just pulled up a chair next to him to recount that night. The tone and flow of the words, Jax could hear his father’s voice rolling over each syllable. His easy, unhurried speech so familiar to Jax’s ear even after all these years. A little on the soft-spoken side, always with half a smile.
John Pierce the writer.
Jax had never known that they shared a similar passion for storytelling. His dad was clearly a natural and Jax felt a rush of pride. A connection he hadn’t realized was suddenly there, bonding them together through time. He held in his hands an actual, tangible piece of his father.
Jax reverently tucked the stories back into the envelope. He held the envelope in his hands and for just a moment imagined his hands as his father’s, strong and callused with a purpose. A destiny.
He glanced up, around the barn that his father had begun to restore before his death, spotted his brothers kicked back at a table with their wives and the kids taking their slice of time together. They all deserved to know this piece of the man they’d loved. He’d share this with them, soon. But for now, he’d keep it to himself. And he’d take his slice, too.
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Jax bidedhis time through the rest of the late dinner crowd, keeping an eye on the front of the house. And when he saw Joey duck into the supply closet, he made his move.
She had a bottle of Chardonnay in one hand and a fistful of towels in the other. And she brandished them like weapons when she realized he had her trapped.
“Out of the way, boss. I’ve got some thirsty ladies out there.”
“Cards on the table, Jojo,” Jax said, crossing his arms to keep from grabbing her.
Joey Greer didn’t scare easily, but if she knew the dark fantasies that were running through his mind, she’d probably break his nose with that left hook of hers.
She watched him like a doe scenting danger. Only danger never made Joey more cautious. “You’ve lost every hand of poker that we’ve played. Pick a better metaphor.”
“I want my hands on you, Joey. I haven’t thought about anything but how good it would feel to touch you, to taste you, in eight years.” He moved a step closer and Joey brandished the wine bottle.
“Every dream I’ve ever had has been you. And that counts the years I was gone. But I’m back and I’m tired of being patient. It’s going to be now or never.”
“We’re sure as hell not having sex in a supply closet, Jax.”
“Tonight. Your house, your bed.”
She was quiet for a minute, studying him. “Phoebe Pierce didn’t raise her boys to pressure girls into bed,” she reminded him.
Jax shook his head. “I am asking you to do us a favor and get out of your own damn way. I came back for you and I don’t want to spend another night staring up at the ceiling wishing you were next to me like I have every night since I was fourteen.
“I love you, Joey, and if you don’t want to make room for me, tell me tonight and I’ll leave you alone.”
“You mean you’ll leave,” she corrected.
