Along Came Trouble(98)

He loved her. Oh, that was just fantastic. Just hearing him say the words triggered a gigantic avalanche of doomed joy in her stupid, pregnant, irrational body, while the heels she’d dug firmly into the dirt reminded her that Jamie might have mentioned that he loved her before she’d dumped him. When she still loved him back. When she would have given a lot to hear him say those words and tell her he understood what she was going through, and he wanted to be there for her. But not now. What was the point now? It was over.

Over.

“So here’s the thing, Carly. I know you’re sitting in there, probably somewhere pretty far from the window so you can’t see me, and if I know you at all you’ve got your fingers in your ears and you’re saying ‘la-la-la-la’ and hoping I’ll go away.”

She sat up and took the pillow off her head. Three women were smirking at her. “Shut up,” she told them.

“But I’m not going away,” Jamie said. “Not this time. I already did that, and it was the stupidest mistake I’ve ever made. This time, I’m sticking. I’ve never stuck before, but that doesn’t mean I can’t do it.”

“Oh, Jamie,” Ellen said with a sigh.

Oh, Jamie, Carly thought. And then wanted to slap herself, because she was losing this battle, and she couldn’t. She couldn’t.

“So I figure everybody has their talents, and I’ve only ever really had two. I can sing, and I can—” He paused, then chuckled again. “Let’s just say ‘pencil dick’ was a low blow.”

The crowd went crazy.

“I figure if I want you to let me in the house, I should use my talents to try to persuade you. So what I’m going to do is sing—I wrote you a whole bunch of songs, Carly, which means this could take a while—and maybe dance a little, even though I don’t have any choreography for this new stuff yet.”

“I knew he’d sing,” Katie said. “This is going to be sweet. Don’t stop him too soon, okay, Carly? I want to hear the new songs.”

“The other thing I’m going to do,” Jamie continued, “is strip.”

At this point, the assembly on Burgess started screaming and cheering so loudly, Jamie had to wait a full minute for them to settle down.

“And if you don’t stop me and let me into the house so I can talk to you, eventually I’m going to be naked out here.”

More cheering and screaming. In her head, she could imagine Jamie smiling, sheepish but defiant. He had a thousand smiles, and all of them got to her differently. All of them got to her.

“Then I guess I’ll get arrested. But not before I give all these nice folks a chance to see for themselves about the pencil-dick thing.”

Five hundred people lost their minds, including Katie and Nana. Ellen said, “Oh, Jamie” again, not so pleased this time, and Carly sank down onto the couch with her arm over her face.

Then Jamie started to sing, and the ice around her heart began to melt.

“This is so stupid,” she said, trying to harden it back up.

“This is so romantic,” Katie sighed.

Nana cracked the window and yelled, “Take off your shirt!”

Jamie belted out the chorus. “Damn,” Ellen said. “This is a really good song. He didn’t even tell me he was writing.”

“That man’s got moves,” Katie said.

“He really does,” Nana agreed. “I could watch him wiggle that butt all day long.”

He started a new song.

“Oh!” Katie again.

“I think I’m having a hot flash.” Nana.

“What did he do?” Carly asked, hating herself.

“He took off the tie.” Ellen this time.

“That’s all?”

“He has a way of taking off his tie . . .” Katie said, fanning her hand in front of her face.

Oh, shit. She knew that. She’d seen him do it once, after he’d taken her out for dinner in Columbus. He’d loosened his tie in the backseat of the limo, yanked it out of his collar with a practiced flick of his wrist, and she’d gone a little insane with lust. They’d had to do it right there and then. When they were halfway home, she’d flashed back to the tie-yanking thing again and crawled onto his lap for round two.

She was never going to survive this concert.

She was never going to survive Jamie Callahan. If she let him in this time, he would shred her into a million little pieces of confetti, and then someone would sprinkle them over his head while he was singing and dancing and looking hot onstage, and he’d go home to his fancy life and leave her to be swept up and thrown away in a Dumpster somewhere.