Jesse (Glass City Hearts Book 3) Read online

  I knew from experience that it would not.

  I was going to be late for my job interview. An interview for a job that I desperately needed, but probably wasn’t going to even be considered for because my babysitter backed out at the last minute and I had to bring my son. And by backing out last minute I mean she just didn’t show up. So, that was how my morning was going. And as soon as he started fussing about having to go to the bathroom I knew I had to find somewhere to pull over. Keep driving until we find someplace was not an option, when a little kid has to go—they have to go. Right. Now.

  We would have to walk and knock on doors to see who was open, it was our only shot. All the businesses couldn’t be closed, right? It was late morning, something had to be open. It was just my crappy luck that Jesse took off like a bat out of hell as soon as I got the car parked. I knew what he was up to when he made a beeline for the alley behind the place called “Nasta’s,” he was going to pee up against the building. The neighbor boy ‘Tonio from three trailers down had told him previously that as long as no one sees you, boys can pee wherever because they can do it standing up. I caught him dropping trow against the side of the trailer after that and had to explain to him that just because there was a bush between him and the road didn’t mean that it was okay for him to just let it hang out and pee against the side of the house. I told him only in an emergency could he pee outside.

  Apparently, this was an emergency.

  “Jesse,” I yelled as he tore off down the road and disappeared around the side of the dark brick building. My heart sped up and I ran as fast as I could to catch him. What was it about little kids and their ability to run faster than a cheetah when they had a mind to? I wish he could find some of that speed when it was time to brush his teeth at night or put his shoes on to head out the door. Not now, when we were in an unfamiliar part of the city when any kind of creepy lurker could be hanging out in the shadows, waiting to snatch wandering little boys.

  I careened around the corner just in time to see him face plant on the bricks—right in front of a strawberry blonde man with a full beard, smoking a cigarette. Oh crap, we found a degenerate. He was a pretty clean cut looking degenerate, and I knew a lot of them from the trailer park, but looks could be deceiving. Normal people don’t hang out in alleys. Not at night, and not in the middle of the morning. He watched Jesse fall butt over chin on the road, his mouth falling open in shock. Then the shock turned to concern on his face and he dropped his cigarette, snubbing it out with the toe of his shoe, and he ran to Jesse. I still hadn’t made it to the two of them yet, my legs being on the shorter end and my cardiovascular health being nonexistent, so I didn’t even get a chance to say “stop” before the stranger had picked Jesse up off the ground. By the time I came to a halt in front of the two of them, my chest heaving and my legs quivering from the strain, the man had Jesse cradled to his chest, looking for all the world like he had witnessed a car crash. I made it just in time to hear his cherubic little four-year-old voice say,

  “I couldn’t hold it anymore, Mister.”

  Crap on a crab cracker, Jesse had reached his limit. There was nothing I could do but stand there, huffing and puffing like a crazy person while my only son wet his pants in a stranger’s arms. He could have dropped him. He could have started yelling considering the circumstances, but he shocked the hell out of me when he ignored me, as well as the dark spreading stain on his shirt and said, “Are you okay, Buddy? Did you hurt yourself?”

  I could see Jesse’s face now, and he was looking at the man like he’d grown two heads. He’d been thinking he was going to get yelled at too, so he didn’t really know how to answer the question. “Mister, I peed on your shirt. It was me. I did it.” While I admired his bravery in the face of adversity there was no way anyone would mistakenly think someone else had done the deed.

  “Jesse, you scared me so bad!” I plucked him out of the stranger’s arms, mostly to have my son back with me, and not being held by a stranger, and maybe also for a little damage control. “What were you doing, running away from me like that?”

  “Mama, I had to go potty and we couldn’t find a place with a bathroom. You told me it was okay in an emergency, so I was gonna pee outside. No one would see me back here. I had to go real bad, Mama. It doesn’t hurt anymore—it’s all better now.”

  Yeah, I bet it is, Pal.

  “I got peed on.” The bearded man finally acknowledged me. “I’ve never been peed on in my life.”

  “You must not be around kids much, Mister,” Jesse said, with all the wisdom of a small child who thinks he knows the ways of the world. “My mom gots peed on a lot when I was a baby. Tell him, Mama.”

  Well, I had to tell him something. For all I knew my son had just peed all over a vagrant. Although this man didn’t look homeless, we were in an empty alley. My mouth opened and closed but no words came out. I didn’t people very well, and I didn’t exactly know how to extricate us from the situation delicately. I was finally able to wheeze out an apology, that he tactfully ignored by saying, “I thought you were calling me.”

  “What? Why would I be calling you? I don’t even know you!” Seriously, why would I be tearing down the street calling out for a man I had never met?

  “My name is Jesse,” he said, as he plucked his shirt away from his skin. The air was chilly and I bet by now that wet spot felt like it was icing over. And if he felt like that then my Jesse was probably feeling it too. “I heard you yelling and I thought you were calling me. Scared the hell out of me, actually.”

  “You shouldn’t say the H word, Mister.” Jesse looked up at the man, apparently also named Jesse, with solemn eyes. “It’s not nice to say swears.”

  “I’m sorry, Kid. I’ll try to watch my mouth. Do…you guys want to come in and clean up? We aren’t open but you’re more than welcome to come in and use the restroom.”

  “I don’t have to go anymore,” my son, the comedian, deadpanned.

  “I know, Buddy, I was there remember? I bet your mom wants to try to dry those pants off a bit though, and maybe give your bum a rinse so you don’t chafe.” Jesse giggled at the big, bearded man who used the word bum without batting an eye. Even I had to press my lips together to keep my lips from quirking.

  “I would appreciate that, actually. And my name is Harlow—do you work here?”

  “Yeah, I manage Nasta’s. My dad is the one that owns the bar, but he’s upstairs sleeping away his golden years right now. I might even have something he can change into, weirdly enough, but I can’t guarantee a good fit, or that it will be stylish.”

  “You have kid’s clothes laying around a bar?” I could believe a lot of things, but that was weird.

  “Um, no, and don’t say it all creepy like that. Jeez. On Monday nights we do a “Give back” special, and people bring in new toiletries, canned goods or clean clothes in good condition in exchange for a sweet discount on their tab. I collect it and take it to the shelter a couple of blocks over, and then we rinse and repeat the next Monday. My dad was supposed to take the load over for me this week, and it seems that he didn’t do it, so I still have a few bags of things sitting in my office. You are welcome to look if you want. If you don’t mind a temporary hand me down.”

  Mind hand me downs? That’s how I lived growing up. Getting hand me downs was like Christmas when I was a kid. I wished I could get hand me downs for Jesse. We didn’t have any older boy relatives, so all of Jesse’s clothes were either bought brand new or from the resale shop on the north end of town. No, I would never turn my nose up at hand me downs, but bless him for asking like I might.

  He waved us in through the back door of the bar, through a kitchen and around a corner to a cramped little office. “Gimme a sec,” he said, stepping into the office but not quite closing the door all the way. “I just need to grab a clean shirt for myself. Lucky me I always have a spare change of clothes here. You would not believe the things that’ve been spilled on me working at this place.” And he disapp
eared further into the office.

  Oh, I bet I wouldn’t be surprised at all, I thought to myself. I had my own share of crap slung on me in the process of monitoring someone else’s good time. I didn’t drink, myself, but I’d been around enough people and their vices. I couldn’t deal with it in stereo. Working a bar sounded like the ultimate test of patience. But hey – some people liked it so who was I to judge what others did for a living?

  My son had put his face to the crack in the door, but by the time I noticed and made a move to grab him from his little peeping spot he opened his mouth. “Hey—Mister Jesse, why you got all that hair on your front up top? Is that a grown-up thing? Am I gonna get hair on my front too? My mom doesn’t have any hair on her front part, but maybe that’s cuz she’s got those things there instead.” He pushed the door wide open to show Mister Jesse what he was talking about as he pantomimed boobs with his hands. The man in question was just pulling on a new white t-shirt and looking at the door with his mouth wide open. My cheeks flushed scarlet with embarrassment, but I should have been better prepared. My boy was four. I should be used to the things that came out of his mouth on a regular basis. To be honest, I’d heard worse. For some reason though, in front of this handsome stranger who was helping us out, the mortification was magnified, and I put my hands under my cherubic little boy’s armpits so I could haul him away from the door.

  But the damage was already done. I looked up, expecting to see anger on the face of the man who had just been interrupted while he was dressing by a strange little boy who commented on his body hair. I didn’t see it, maybe it was excessive. Maybe he was sensitive about his body hair and my Jesse had just called attention to it and embarrassed him? There could have been any number of reasons why the breach of privacy would upset him, and I raised my eyes hesitantly, almost afraid to see the look on his face.

  He wasn’t mad.

  He had his hands clutching his stomach and stood slightly hunched over. His face was red but not with anger. He was laughing. Oh, thank God he was laughing. Although probably at my expense—thank God for small favors.

  “Jesse Jones, you tell that man you are sorry right now,” I admonished, albeit gently. He was four after all.

  “But Moooom, he’s even got hair in his armpits.” The last part of his sentence ended in a stage whisper. Like, he thought he was being quiet, but I was pretty sure if there were people standing outside the bar they probably would have heard him. “Mr. Creaton that lives next door doesn’t have hair in his armpits.” That was because Justice Creaton was a drag queen, and likely waxed his pits for ease in performance but I had never asked him. And I certainly wasn’t going to try to explain the complexities of cross-dressing to a four-year-old. Maybe when he was older. Poor Justice, I wonder what odd questions Jesse was going to ask him the next time he ran into him. I would have to remember to give him a heads up. Jesse’s questions could be daunting if you weren’t prepared. I know he took me for a loop more often than not. And even if you answered his question in a satisfactory manner—they just kept coming. He was a never-ending source of inquisitiveness, my boy. Normally I encouraged it. In situations like this, I wish he had zipper lips.

  “Is he always like this?” Mister Jesse said as he pulled a shirt and pants out of a bag and handed it to me. “These look like they might fit. He looks like a five T maybe, these are a six. They might be a little big, but it’ll get him home anyway.”

  Home. That wasn’t where we were supposed to be going. I was supposed to be going to my job interview at noon. A job interview I was certain I would never get because of this fiasco. I looked at the slim plastic watch on my wrist and grimaced. Twelve fifteen. Crap. Double crap. Super crap. I was so distraught, I said the words out loud.

  “Ultra crap!”

  “Mama!” Jesse was aghast. “You need the soap, Mama.”

  I couldn’t even respond to that. He was right. I always threatened him with the soap when he was mouthing off and saying words he shouldn’t be saying. But I couldn’t make any words come out of my mouth. We had so much riding on this interview. I knew I could do the job. I just knew it. The Glass City Guard was a small startup company, but it was owned by the richest guy around, Gabe Anderson. They needed an IT person, and they could have hired anyone, could have interviewed anybody, but they called me back when I submitted my resume. That was the sign that things were going my way.

  And then this.

  I had my arm out, ready to take the clothes from his hands when I felt my chin start to wobble and I froze, trying to swallow down the sobs before they crawled their way out of my throat. The telltale burning behind my eyelids let me know it was coming whether I wanted it to or not. My efforts were futile as I stood there, shoulders shaking and tears running down my face while my son stared at me with his big brown eyes, and the stranger in front of me still holding out a pair of little boys track pants, probably wondering why I was losing my shit.

  3

  Jesse

  I’ve seen women cry a lot in my life. Not a lot of different women, but a lot of kinds of tears. There were the tears my mom used to shed when my dad went on drinking binges, when they almost lost the house or the cars or any amount of jobs he had before he bought the bar. Those were the quiet tears of desperation. Of a woman who just did not know what else to do to fix her situation. There were the loud, noisy tears of ex-girlfriends when they didn’t get their way, or the breakup that came suddenly and they weren’t prepared, even if they didn’t overly care. There were the tears of little kids when they fell down and hurt their knees or their elbows. Scared tears when they were suffering more from shock than an actual injury.

  These tears though, the ones coursing down the cheeks of the woman in front of me, those were like the first kind. The tears my Mom would shed when she thought I wasn’t looking but just couldn’t hold back. The tears of a woman who did not want to cry, but was powerless to stop them anyway. This five-foot nothing female in front of me was weeping her heart out, and it physically hurt me to watch it.

  I tried to go over what I knew so far about these two. One, her name was Harlow and this was her son Jesse. Two, they’d been on their way somewhere specific when Jesse had to go to the bathroom, and they’d been waylaid by the pants-wetting incident. She’d looked at her watch and lost her shit. I was guessing she was late getting wherever it was she was supposed to be, and judging by her business attire—black slacks and a gray cardigan over the same colored gray blouse, it was some sort of meeting. The boy wasn’t dressed up, just in a pair of jeans and a character t-shirt with a red zip-up jacket over the top, so I was guessing he wasn’t part of the appointment. Were they on the way to a babysitter?

  I realized that I’d been internalizing most of this inside my head and had been just standing there, watching her cry silently for a few minutes when Jesse tugged on my pants, and with the saddest eyes I’ve ever seen on a little kid he whispered, “I made Mama miss her work ‘pointment. It was real important but I had a accident and now she can’t get that job. I did it. I’m sorry.”

  I looked up at Harlow, she was scrubbing at her eyes with the sleeves of her cardigan, smearing mascara across her face as she did. She was embarrassed at her outburst, I could tell by the way she was hastily trying to erase the signs that she had been crying. But her chest hitched with each breath, even as she hurried to calm the worries of her son.

  “It’s not your fault, JJ,” she said as she grabbed his hand and pulled him closer to her. She ruffled his mop of curly brown hair with her hand and tried to smile through watery eyes. “I think I was destined to miss this interview from the start. I think maybe I just wanted it to bad. Isn’t that what they say?” She looked at me when she asked the question. “That when you want something too badly you end up sabotaging yourself in the end?”

  “I don’t know,” I answered truthfully, walking out of the office and to the bar, automatically going to the coffeemaker without even asking her if she wanted any. Whenever I had a p
roblem and I needed to talk to my mom about it, she always started out by making coffee. It was pure instinct that had me loading up and pouring water into the tank. Coffee might not fix your problems, but it was certainly easier to talk about them with a warm steaming cup between your hands.

  “What was your interview for? Can you call them and explain, maybe try to reschedule?”

  Harlow sniffed and came over to the bar, Jesse in tow, still wearing his pee stained pants that were probably on their way to being dry by now. “Under normal circumstances, I would at least try, and I will. It’s just that this was a highly sought after position you know? Glass City Guard is a small startup, but it has huge financial backing. There will be people clamoring all over to score a position. I’m sure there were tons of highly qualified applicants that submitted their resumes. That I even got called to an interview is a miracle, I’m sure there were five people trying to fill my place as soon as I didn’t show up.” She tried to run her hands through her hair absentmindedly but apparently didn’t remember that it was pulled back in a bun at the top of her head. Her fingers got stuck and when she pulled her hand out there was a lump where she had pulled hair free from the styling. Frustrated, she tried to smooth it back down but it wasn’t cooperating. I chuckled a little to myself but tried to keep it quiet. She probably didn’t want to be called adorable by someone she had just met when she was steps away from a breakdown.

  “Did you say Glass City Guard?” I hadn’t heard of that company before, but it sounded like some sort of security firm.

  “Yeah,” she replied, excitement lacing her voice like she hadn’t just been crying a minute before. “It’s a brand-new security firm started by Gabe Anderson,” she said, and I raised my eyebrows in surprise at the name. She saw my face and noticed my shock. “Do you know Gabe Anderson? He owns Anderson Investments but is starting the personal security company too. This job was going to be how we got out of the trailer park and into a safer neighborhood. One with a good school system since JJ is going to start kindergarten next year. This job was going to be it for us. Steady income, benefits, a shot at a better life. I don’t know that someone as professional as Gabe Anderson is going to want to hear my sob story about how the babysitter just didn’t show up, and I had to drag my kid to an interview only to have to stop to pee on a bartender and miss the whole thing entirely.”