Joscelyn stood cloaked in shadow, leaning against the porches towering white posts. The strong timber seemed to be part of her essence as she stood still and unflinching before the fury of the summer storm raging around her. Lightening crackled across the sky and gusts of wind blew bouts of rain onto the porch steadily drenching her but she felt none of it. Her eyes stared unseeing into the distance, these last days lived like a vice gripping her insides. She was content simply to feel the slow ebb and flow of blood within her veins and the breath soughing in and out of her chest, to invite anything else in would break her. Stretch her tattered heart any further and she would certainly break.
Jackson would be here in the morning, the time for debate and waffling was over. He was the nearest her child had to a father and he deserved to be in their life, in her life. Their petty squabbles seemed oceans away, and she'd seen him over and over the apologies falling from his lips like shining coins. His days of drinking and his many affairs were over, he'd assured her, hell she'd even been accompanying him to his shrink. Sitting in that office while Jackson poured out the massive list of apologies hadn't made her feel any better, a fierce hatred still burning like a small flame in her. Tremulous and small as that flame may be it had been all that had kept her moving so long she wasn't sure how she could possibly exist with out it now. A small voice echoed through her mind that he would never change and why should she even care if he did? She crushed the voice within the confines of her own mind, cowing it with sheer will.
It wasn't a sound that alerted her that he was standing behind her. From the moment she'd met him there had been the most base of connections of between them. He was like an answering echo of her heart beat, the dance of electrical current along her skin a second after the storm spent its fury. "You shouldn't be here," she turned and looked at him full in the face. He must have jogged here she observed disjointedly. Brandon stood before her water dripping to pool on the porch boards, his chest taking deep gulps of air as he stood matching her gaze. Hair dripped small rivulets of water down his neck he looked like an expansion of the elements come to life all harsh planes and intensity. "You shouldn't be here," she echoed again quietly and turned on her heel walking back through the door letting it bang loudly in finality behind her and she moved into the kitchen and leaned onto the island both arms braced. She should have known he wouldn't be dismissed that easily.
An echoing, if quieter bang from the screen door told her he had no intension of giving up so easily. She wrapped her arms around her middle protectively. Oh he'd never lay a finger on her she knew but her heart, Ah God...her heart was another matter entirely. She should hate him for it, she knew, but this weakness for him was all her own making she thought bitterly. She had to end it, had to make him understand that she'd made her decision. It wasn't him. Marshaling her will and throwing it about herself like a mantle she turned to face him. He forged ahead before she even had a chance to open her mouth. "I won't stay away. That lame ass set of excuses you fed me means nothing," he said savagely stalking toward her. She backed up slowly losing ground by inches. "If you wanna play Betty Crocker by day for him and the whore for me so be it, I'll take what I can get till I have it all. And I will have it all, damn you. That fucking idiot you married had his chance, and if you're too blind to see that leopards never gonna change his spots I'll wait. But I'm not waiting in the wings. I'll be everywhere. In your bed, at your car when you leave work, in your head...everywhere until you realize you can't live without me,' he finished in a rush, his next words were spoken so quietly they were almost lost in the hiss of wind outside the window, 'just like I can't live without you." He stopped his relentless stalking a mere hairsbreadth from her lips. It was just as well as there was no more ground she could give, she pressed her back against the refrigerator door a random magnet pressing into her back. Her eyes searched his, testing for a chink in his armor, something, anything that would allow her to stand resolute in her decision. His eyes gave away nothing, just matched her in challenge.
She'd met him shortly after she'd finally had enough of Jackson's skirting around behind her back. The very day she'd sent her son to her mothers so she could tell Jackson to pack his bags and get out, she'd seen him at the construction site she'd passed near the office building she worked in. Stopped at a red light it seemed almost surreal when she glanced over to see him staring at her without one ounce of shame. She stared back, even looking over her shoulder sure that he must be staring at some traffic accident or Hooter's girl that had somehow appeared over her shoulder. Instead he had stared at her like he trying to read her story, like how men had looked at the Mona Lisa for hundreds of years searching for the secret behind her smile. A horn blared behind her startling her out of her reverie, she saw traffic had moved on well ahead of her and her cheeks flamed as a short dumpy man behind her gestured rudely out his window. Sick at her mooning over a stranger she surged forward without a backwards glance, never catching the glare the man had given the rude driver behind her or the look of focused determination in his eyes had she been close enough to see.
Even though she scorned herself, she couldn't seem to fight the urge to bury her troubles in a bottle of beer. Like every lousy country song she'd ever heard, she quickly found herself at a local pub around ten thirty that night. She sat morosely at the bar nursing a beer while men hollered loudly around her watching and pointing animatedly at the bar's single television showing the highlights from the Steelers first game since winning the Superbowl. She couldn't help the snort of derision and more than one of them gave her a foul look but she simply looked back and smiled sweetly. Unnerved at her cheek they went back to their highlights without a word.
He found her sitting at the bar as the bartender handed her a second beer, condensation from her previous beer leaving a ringed chain across the countertop. Her attention focused on her beer he sauntered over to her, "You look like you just walked out of a country song." The words weren't said unkindly but the idea still rankled her and she looked up to the speaker ready to fire off a acidic statement sure to put him in his place, which as far as she was concerned was as far from her as possible. Before the words could fall from her tongue she found herself staring into a pair of startling green eyes, and though she hadn't known their color before she definitely recognized their owner. Somehow providence had placed her in the path of the construction worker from earlier today. She had time enough to gape at his good looks before it hit her like a truck how she'd made a complete ass of herself earlier blocking traffic while she ogled him. Embarrassment colored her cheeks and she hastily looked away her heart skipping along merrily somewhere to the vicinity of her navel and took up residence.
Searching for something witty to say she blurted the first thing that came to her mind, "Well I feel like I just walked out of a Hank Williams Jr. song, so I guess I'm doin okay then." Looking up with a sardonic grin she met his gaze and barely kept herself from swooning like some bubble-headed heroine when her shining knight arrived on the scene. What in the hell was wrong with her, she eyed her beer suspiciously as if it had suddenly sprouted a head and began teaching her calculus. It should take a lot more than one beer before calculus should be coming into play, she sat the beer down with a deliberate motion.
