Page 92 of Raging Fires

“Thanks, ba—” Jake turned to Kelli, smiling, then caught himself. He couldn’t call her babe anymore. He couldn’t be this friendly. He stiffened. “I mean, thanks. For getting rid of him.” He nodded toward Howard.

“No problem.”

“How, um, how are you?” Kelli asked tentatively.

Oh, God, not this. I ripped your heart out, but how’s that hole in your chest mending?

“I’m fine,” Jake said shortly and turned away.

But at that moment Asa walked up, smiling. “Jake, my man. Kelli—haven’t seen you in a while.” He punched Jake lightly in the arm and leaned over to kiss Kelli on the cheek.

“I, uh, I’ve been busy,” Kelli replied. “Hey, Justin!” She waved at Kowalski as he started toward their group.

Asa introduced his date, and Gramps joined them and began to talk about the show last week. And pretty soon Jake’s Cousin Joe showed up, and he and Asa began to talk about the year of the 4th party when Joe set the lawn chair on fire. Joe protested that it wasn’t nearly as exciting as the year the wasp got after his sister and she took off, screaming and waving her arms around and knocked Aunt Alice into the potato salad.

Then they launched into more reminiscences, Joe, Asa, and Kelli regaling an increasing group of people with various horror stories from family reunions, weddings, funerals, and 4th of July parties. Given the number of things that happened when the Kents and O’Malleys got together, this could go on all day.

Great: breaking even more of the rules that he’d structured for life without Kelli. He stood beside Kelli, stiff and uncomfortably aware of her, while everyone chattered around him. He knew everyone was wondering what was up with him since he was so silent, but he refused to get caught up in the memories and let his barriers fall. Kelli, of course, had no trouble, yakking away and showing no signs of distress.

Finally, he used the old cell phone trick, pulling it out of his pocket and glancing at it, then easing out of the group as if he were going to take a call, leaving Kelli with all her adoring fan base. The rest of the day he kept an eye out for her, careful to avoid any area where she was standing, which was made more difficult by the fact that he was trying to dodge Gran, as well. It seemed like Kelli was everywhere he turned, looking gorgeous and smiling and laughing like she hadn’t just broken up with him. Again.

Okay, now he was getting bitter and resentful, and he’d sworn he wasn’t going to fall back into all those old ways of thinking that just kept Kelli front and center in his mind. He needed to get out of here. With this crowd, nobody would notice if he slipped away.

He went into the kitchen, which he immediately realized was a stupid thing to do since it was Gran’s center of operations. He should have gone out the side gate. Gran called his name and started toward him.

“Hi, Gran.” He walked on, giving her a casual wave, even though he knew there was little hope of Gran accepting that. He plowed forward through the people crowding the hallway, but he wasn’t quick enough. Gran snagged his arm and pulled him to stop.

“Where are you going? I haven’t had a chance to talk to you all day.”

“Yeah, um...” Jake tried to tug his arm from her grasp. “Later. I gotta make an ice run.”

“No, you don’t.” Gran narrowed her eyes at him and tightened her grip. “Neil just came in with three bags.”

Of course he did.

She pointed her index finger at him. “You’ve been avoiding me for over two weeks. Come on.” She dragged him with her into the nearest room and closed the door behind them, leaning back against it to keep anyone else out. “Now talk. Why are you so unhappy?”

How did she always know? “I’m not—”

“Jake.” She held up a warning finger.

“Okay. Yes, I’m not happy. There. You satisfied?”

“No, I’m not satisfied. Why are you unhappy?”

“Seriously? You forced me to marry the last woman I wanted to be with and you wonder why I’m unhappy?”

“Don’t tell me you didn’t want to marry her,” Gran shot back. “You didn’t keep coming back and arguing with me, and I know you. You wouldn’t have given up that easily if you hadn’t wanted deep down to be with her again.”

“Okay. Maybe I did. Hell, I don’t know. You and Kelli always seem to know a hell of a lot more about me than I do. But I didn’t want this.”

“What happened? What’s gone wrong?”

“Everything! The whole thing was wrong from the beginning. You can’t just shove two people back together and expect it to work. You can’t make us get along. You can’t force Kelli to love me.”

“What do you mean? Kelli’s crazy about you. I saw you three weeks ago, and she was all starry-eyed.”

“Yeah, well, that didn’t last very long.”