He’d finally read her column about threesomes, and her promise that she never dated more than one guy at a time had flown out the window. Hard not to date two guys at once when you were sleeping with both of them. Together.
Maybe that was why she couldn’t trust anyone, because she knew she wasn’t trustworthy herself.
Eric leaned his forehead against the cold tile of the bathroom wall and willed himself not to think about it. Beth had been a temporary pleasure in his life. Nothing more. And if he’d let his feelings get a little too deep… “F
uck,” he whispered.
She wasn’t the type to settle down, obviously. He’d get over it.
As he got out of the shower and dried his hair, he told himself he definitely wouldn’t check her column next week. When he pulled on jeans and a T-shirt, he tried not to remember her in his bed. “It was just sex,” he told himself. “Get over it.”
At least to her it had been. And if he wanted to play in the big leagues, he’d have to toughen up.
Eric grabbed his wallet and keys and headed out the door. It was only two miles to the cemetery, and he still felt mildly buzzed, so he decided to walk.
There was a flower shop on the way to the cemetery, so he headed that way. Had Tessa really done this every year? How had he not realized that? He visited their graves sometimes, but not often. He couldn’t feel them there, not as he did when he was at Tessa’s house. There, he could actually see them, in memories like scratchy videos. His mom bringing Jamie home from the hospital. His dad painting a room pink for Tessa before she was born. And that constant feeling of wanting to get things right. To make sure that Michael Donovan never regretted adopting him, not even for a second.
When Eric got to the flower shop, he couldn’t bring himself to buy a tiny five-dollar bouquet of flowers, so he bought a huge spray to lay on top of her headstone. She’d been an amazing mom, on her own and with Michael Donovan. Eric should’ve done this before. He should’ve brought flowers every month.
Lost in thought, and his vision slightly obscured by baby’s breath, Eric didn’t realize there was someone else at the grave until he was halfway up the hill.
He lowered the arrangement. Jamie.
“Damn it, Tessa,” Eric cursed under his breath. Jamie was there, a bouquet already tucked into the metal vase at the foot of her grave.
Eric was frozen. He wanted to simply turn and leave, but that seemed like an awfully petty thought as he stood in front of his mother’s grave. He could already see exactly how Tessa’s brain had spit this plot out. They can’t fight on top of Mom’s grave. They’ll have to talk.
Eric started forward with a resigned frown.
When Jamie looked up, he didn’t even seem surprised. His eyes slid to the big spray of flowers in Eric’s hand and his mouth flattened.
“What?” Eric asked.
“Nothing.”
Eric laid the flowers on her gravestone, and then they both just stood looking at it, their hands in their pockets, silence between them.
Eric cleared his throat. “I never seem to know the right thing to say to you,” he murmured.
Jamie shot him a look before he went back to staring at the headstone. Silence fell again and dragged out for a full minute. Eric was about to turn and leave when Jamie finally spoke. “You know what I always hated? That you had to be perfect. You had to do everything the right way every single time. It made me feel like shit.”
Eric shook his head, trying to clear the shock. “What?”
“You were my big brother, and I wanted to be like you. But I’m not perfect. I’m not even close. It was bad enough before the accident, but then…” He shrugged and looked away.
“I didn’t want you to be perfect, Jamie. I just wanted to do the best job I could. For you.”
“Maybe after, but you’ve always been that way. You always set the curve so damn high, I had no chance of meeting it. Straight As. Jobs after school. You did all your chores and then some. You never broke any rules. Never complained.”
“I couldn’t,” Eric said. “Don’t you get that? I wasn’t competing with you, Jamie. There was no competition. You were his son.”
“Oh, come on. Stop with that shit. You—”
“I’m serious. It’s not Dad’s fault. I know he loved me. But he only adopted me a couple of months before you were born. It was still brand-new, and then there you were, cute and adorable and his. The perfect baby. You even looked just like him. I loved you as much as they did, but it seemed impossible that I could compete with that. I had to be the perfect son, because he took me on. He loved me even though I wasn’t his. What was I supposed to do with that?”
“He never treated you any different!”
“But I felt different. Jesus, I didn’t even look like I belonged in the family! So I made damn sure I did everything right. I wasn’t born knowing I belonged. Not like you. So yeah, maybe I did need him to ask me to stay at the brewery, so I could know he really wanted me there.”