Finding Joy (The Joy Series) (Volume 2) Read online

  “That’s great,” I said, looking it over. “Has he used it?”

  “Yep,” Adam said proudly. “He did a number two earlier. We just need to film it next time and claim our winnings.”

  I was so tired that I couldn’t even remember at this point what our winnings were. I nodded and smiled weakly.

  “Babe,” he said, “you’re tired.”

  “I need something to eat,” I said, eyeing his apples. I wasn’t sure what, but I definitely needed something. I was tired and grouchy, and couldn’t remember if I’d eaten lunch. And I wasn’t sure how I was going to bring up Brittany and the phone call.

  He pulled me close and wrapped his warm arms around my waist. “Change your clothes,” he said. “I know what you need.”

  I walked into the closet as Adam headed out of the bathroom. After changing into a tank top and a pair of boy shorts, I found him in the living room. I plopped down on the couch next to him and curled my side into the space under his arm.

  “Here,” he said holding a large serving spoon under my nose. The sweet smell of Biscoff and Captain Crunch filled my nose. He really did know what I needed. I smiled gratefully and took it from him. As I nibbled a few of the Captain Crunch nuggets off the blob of Biscoff, I decided that it was time to tell him.

  “Hey,” I said.

  “Hey,” he responded, winking at me. “What’s up?”

  “Uhhh, I need to talk to you about something.”

  “Okay. Hit me with it.”

  “Well …” I couldn’t manage to form the words. How did one go about spilling something like this? I was pretty sure that no one had been faced with this situation before.

  “Is this a boat-rocking conversation?” he asked, kicking his feet up onto the coffee table.

  “Yeah, it really is.”

  With the one hand that wasn’t wrapped around my shoulders, he pulled his shirt away from his body and looked down. “Moral support, remember? I’m good at it.”

  “Okay, here goes. I know we don’t talk about this much. And I don’t want to. It’s painful for the both of us, but it’s about the accident.”

  Adam stilled next to me, but his face remained stoic. “Go on.”

  “Remember when I said that it was the phone that distracted me.”

  “Yes,” he said, removing his arm from around my shoulders and leaving me to feel a chill that I hoped was just from the air and not from him.

  He began running his hands up and down his jean-clad thighs, and I swallowed the lump in my throat. “Well, remember when I told you that it was my friend Brittany who called me?”

  “Yeah,” he said, looking at me expectantly.

  “Well, it was the same Brittany that I introduced you to at Starbucks the other day.”

  Adam hunched forward and rested his elbows on his legs. His head was now in his hands, and he clenched his hair between his fingers. I hadn’t even delivered the final blow, and I could feel his distress. “I remember her,” he said.

  “So she called me today. She wanted to have coffee.”

  “She did?” Adam’s head remained in his hands. I could almost feel his refusal to look at me. “Why? I thought you guys hadn’t talked in years.”

  “She said that after running into us the other day she needed to get some things off her chest.”

  Finally, he sat up. When he leaned back, he seemed to melt back into the couch. “And did she?” For some reason, he sounded whipped. Defeated.

  “Yeah. She filled in a lot of the missing pieces. I know now how my dad was able to keep everything from me for so long.”

  “Well, that’s good,” he said, though he didn’t sound so sure. “Did she tell you anything else?”

  I twisted on the couch so that I was facing him. I put my hands on his leg and willed him to let me keep it there. “She did.” I stammered for a second before continuing, “God, I knew this was going to be hard, but it’s so much harder than I even imagined. How do I say this?”

  He looked down at my hands and then placed his own larger hands over mine. Finally, he met my eyes. “You don’t have to say anything. I already know.”

  “You already know what?” I asked.

  “I recognized her at the coffee shop,” he said. His eyes remained on our joined hands.

  I sucked in a breath. He recognized her? From Saint Patrick’s Day?

  “What do you mean?” I whispered. I held my breath, waiting for his response.

  “I know who she is, Allie. She was the one calling you.”

  “Yeah,” I said on an exhale.

  “With my phone.”

  CHAPTER 10

  Adam

  Allie’s mouth made a perfect ‘O’ as she put the final pieces of the puzzle together. “You already knew,” she said. Her whispered accusation hung in the air between us.

  “I knew.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” she said.

  Her voice ached with hurt, but I was glad that it was finally out there. I’d been hiding this bit of information for too long, and it had been weighing on me.

  My reasons for not telling her had been justified, but I could understand why I was in deep shit with her. Keeping secrets .... hiding the truth ... it was exactly what we had promised not to do.

  “I didn’t think you would handle it very well, and you’re not, are you?”

  “Not really,” she said, shaking her head.

  I hated the sorrow in her eyes. I wanted to take it away, once and for all. I was tired of all the drama that surrounded us. I wasn’t surprised by it. Far from it. But I was still tired of it.

  Allie looked lost in thought. She was on the brink of tears. God, I didn’t want her to cry any more. I’d probably been wrong to push her into giving up her antidepressants. She’d been off of them since we had gotten back together. But on days like today, she probably still needed them. She had dealt with a lot of shit in a very short amount of time.

  Her head snapped up. “When did you figure it out? When you saw her the other day?” she asked.

  I shook my head, knowing she wasn’t going to like my answer. “No. I’ve known since the day we got back together … the day after Lizzie’s trip to the hospital.”

  She stared at me and said nothing.

  “At The Shelter. You talked about the accident ... and the phone call. Of course, I already knew … it was in the papers … the police report. It was no secret that you were on the phone.” I didn’t meet her eyes so that I could go on. “You told me that your friend had called you from Greenville. I was on Greenville. You said that your friend had met some older guys in a bar. I’d been at a bar. You said that she called you because she wanted to introduce you to some guy. It didn’t take me long to figure out that I was the guy.”

  “You should have told me,” she said. A flash of anger passed over her face. “I’ve spent all afternoon trying to figure out how to tell you.”

  “Come on, Allie. I’d just gotten you back. I mean, that very second. You had been running from me for over a month. I couldn’t give you another reason to walk away. I couldn’t take the chance.”

  Alexis

  I nodded at him. “But you’re not upset?” I asked. He didn’t seem to be.

  “I’ve had a while to deal with it, and it doesn’t change anything. It doesn’t matter who called who or whose phone it was. It doesn’t change anything.”

  He didn’t say it, but I thought it. It didn’t matter because the outcome was the same.

  I had spent all afternoon worrying that he would hate me for it all over again … or worse, he’d hate himself. I’d worried that he would start playing the ‘what if’ game and not be able to stop. What if he hadn’t gone to Greenville that day? What if he hadn’t met Brittany? What if he hadn’t lent her his phone? Would his sister still be alive today?

  I’d been asking myself those very questions. Just like I’d been asking myself for months, ‘What if I hadn’t reached for my phone? What if my purse hadn’t been caught on t
he seat? What if I had stopped to put the top up on the car when it had started to rain? Would Joy still be alive today?’

  And it was because I had been asking myself those very questions that I couldn’t be mad at him.

  Because he was right.

  If he had told me that day in the bar that it had been his phone … just after I had finally decided to give us a real chance … I probably wouldn’t have been able to handle it. I probably would have walked away again. The situation was just too awful. Too weird. There were too many coincidences to absorb.

  “Is that why you’re late tonight? You were worried about telling me?” He squeezed my hands and gave me a reassuring smile.

  “Yeah. I really was,” I answered.

  “Awww, Allie.”

  I knew he wanted to say more, but we were both having trouble finding the words.

  And so we didn’t say anything at all. Instead, I crawled over onto his lap and curled up into a ball. He wrapped his arms around me and pulled me in tight.

  We could pretend to be normal. There were times when it almost seemed like we were normal. Just your average couple, getting to know each other and living in the moment. But we weren’t. We were anything but normal. It’s impossible to live in the moment when your head is still stuck in the past.

  I wondered again … for what seemed like the millionth time … if it would always be this hard. He was worth every bit of it. We were worth it. But would it always be this hard?

  _________________________

  “So this is your big debut?” I asked a visibly nervous Carly.

  The bar we were in was nicer than their usual venue. It was also twice as big as The Shelter. The Shelter was Carly’s brother’s bar down in Tribeca. It was dark and dirty. And it was small. But it was home to the boys around me. It was where Carly had met Burke. And if the band ever made it big, they would have to give credit to The Shelter since they had developed quite a following there. Many of the usual crowd were here tonight. As I looked around, I recognized a lot of faces. But there were a lot more that I didn’t recognize. The audience was going to be much larger than the band was used to.

  Carly bounced nervously from one foot to another. She nodded and then took a long drink from the beer in her hand. I’d always thought Carly was a cute girl. No, better than that … she was pretty. But she downplayed her sexuality so it definitely wasn’t the first thing you noticed. She was more tomboy than Tom cat.

  It was why I found her relationship with Burke such a conundrum. He was walking, oozing sex, and unfortunately he attracted the same. Every girl who approached him after a show was a carbon copy of every girl who had tried before. They were always scantily clad and overly made-up … but incredibly easy on the eyes. In fact, it was usually the case that Burke could have practically any girl in the bar. The groupies who flocked to him made that clear. But he never ceased to amaze me because it was always Carly in her jeans and t-shirt and with her restaurant ponytail that he wanted.

  Tonight was different. She’d pulled out all the stops. Gone was the ponytail. Her thick, dark hair had been straightened to within an inch of its life. It brushed her shoulders and framed her face perfectly. The cowl neck of her fitted, metallic gold top dipped low in the front and bared more cleavage than even the Posh Spice costume.

  “You look hot tonight. You ready for this?” I asked.

  “Yeah, she does, and yes, she is,” Burke answered for her. Carly just nodded again and continued to slam her beer.

  “I have an idea,” I said, grabbing her hand and pulling her over to the bar on the far wall.

  “Four shots of Patron Silver,” I told the bartender.

  “Are you sure this is a good idea?” Carly asked.

  I nodded resolutely. “It will help. You’re a nervous wreck.”

  “Not the Patron. The Patron is the best idea anyone’s had all night. I was talking about actually getting up on stage and making an ass of myself.”

  The bartender slid four shots in front of us, and I tossed him my credit card. Might as well start a tab. We were going to be here all night. “You are not going to make an ass of yourself. You’re going to be great up there,” I said, handing her the first shot with the other. She licked the salt off the rim, slammed it back, and sucked on the accompanying lime. I followed suit.

  “I hope so,” she said, already reaching for the second shot. “Because if I fuck this up, I’ll never hear the end of it from Burke. NEVER.”

  We took the last two shots. “Want another?” I asked.

  “Nah. That should get the job done. I had two glasses of wine getting ready, and Barnacle bought me that beer when I got here. Surely, all of that and the tequila will get the job done.”

  I looked at her in shock. Crap. That was a lot of alcohol. And not the types that should be mixed together. “Just remember one thing when you get up there,” I said, as we turned away from the bar to head back to the boys. “We throw down. Not up.”

  Carly laughed and moved back across the room. I followed behind her and couldn’t help but giggle at Carly’s swagger. “What?” she asked, turning back around.

  “What the hell is wrong with you? You’re walking like you just got off a horse. Please tell me Burke didn’t do that to you.”

  She rolled her eyes at me. “Please. Hell no. I worked out for like 12 minutes yesterday morning. I’m so sore I can barely move. That Jillian Michaels is a bitch.”

  I laughed and followed her to where the boys were congregating near the side of the stage. “Well, let’s hope that the tequila kicks in so that you don’t have to walk up on stage like that.”

  “I think it already is working,” she giggled. Maybe two shots had been one shot too many.

  Burke looked up from the cord he was coiling. “What? You ladies talking about the fact that Carl can barely walk. Yeah, I did that.”

  “Riiiiiiigggghhhttt,” Carly muttered under her breath.

  “Seriously, I did. I tried this new move on her …” he said before being cut off by the slap of Carly’s hand across his arm.

  “You’ve got some moves, all right,” she said, grinning at him.

  “I do. You know who else has some moves?” Burke said. “That stupid ass dog of hers. He is a worthless piece of shit. Completely and totally untrainable.”

  Adam started chuckling into his bottle of Shiner. “So are you ready to call the bet then? Because I’ve got video evidence that Rubber Cat has already won.”

  “Are you kidding?” Burke said. “You’ve seriously trained that cat to shit in the toilet?”

  “It’s a done deal,” I said. “Rubber Cat is fully domesticated. Is Mr. Big not cooperating?”

  “Hell, no. That dog is so confused now he doesn’t have the first clue where to go. The other day he made it into the bathroom, but lifted his leg and peed right on an electrical socket. Electrocuted himself and shorted out the breaker.”

  “Oh, my God,” I gasped. “Is he okay?”

  “He walked backwards for a couple of hours afterward and is still running into walls and doorways, but he’s fine … the little useless piece of shit.”

  Adam was laughing hard at this point. “I can’t wait for New Year’s. Do you have a show lined up yet?” he asked.

  “Yeah, I think so, but I’m still working out the details,” Burke said, shaking his head in defeat.

  “You’re playing in chaps,” Adam said with a grin.

  “Whatever, man,” Burke conceded. “I’ll rock those chaps. In fact, I may start wearing chaps to every gig. It will be like my trademark or whatever. Just don’t make me wear that,” he said, pointing to Adam’s shirt. Without turning back, he wandered off to find out when the show was going to start.

  “What’s wrong with my shirt?” Adam asked. Carly and I both stared at the orange t-shirt. A beaver danced across his chest with the phrase ‘Dam It’ printed below.

  “Not a thing,” I said. “I like your beaver.”

  Adam reached over and pulled
me into his side. “Not as much as I like your beaver,” he said, causing Carly to groan.

  “Bad dum chhhh,” she said.

  When the band took the stage a few minutes later, Carly hung back with Adam and me. Burke had said that they would be playing for about 45 minutes. After that, they would take a break, and then Carly would come in for the first song.

  She continued to sip on the beer that Burke had handed her before he had taken to the stage, but she’d stopped drinking as if she was on a mission. The band played one familiar song after another, and we were all soon completely absorbed in the music. Most of the songs were the band’s originals. The regular fans of the Dirty Crows sang along. To pull in the rest of the crowd, they occasionally threw in some of the band’s favorite cover songs.

  It wasn’t long before the first half of the set was over. During the short break, the band pounded a few beers themselves, and then they returned to the stage with Carly in tow. While Dirk and Brian slung their guitars around their bodies and Barnacle got situated behind the drums, Carly stood awkwardly in the middle of the stage.

  Burke set a mic stand in front of her and then spoke into his own. “Again, thanks for having us here tonight. You guys have been great. This is Carly. She’s my girl, and this is her first time on the stage so be kind to her.” The crowd whooped and hollered, and he nodded at her reassuringly.

  The boys strummed and beat out the first few bars of the song I didn’t recognize it. More metal than alternative, it was a sound I wasn’t used to hearing from the Dirty Crows.

  I threw a glance at Adam. His big chocolaty eyes gleamed. “Best love song of all time,” he said under his breath.

  “What is this?” I leaned in and whispered.

  Adam chuckled. “Lita Ford and Ozzy Osbourne?”

  I shook my head. “I got nothing.”

  “Just listen.” He gave me a fierce look and then silently mouthed “Close your eyes. Close your eyes. You gotta close your eyes for meeeeeee.” He did this just as Carly belted out the opening line. “Baby, I get so scared inside and I don’t really understand ...”