Blues Beach [Suncoast Society] Read online

  “Fair enough.”

  * * * *

  Their connecting flight in Austin was delayed due to a mechanical difficulty. By the time they landed in Tampa, it was after seven p.m., making it almost nine by the time they pulled into Brandon’s driveway. She’d started for the trunk, to get Jeff’s bags for him, when the front door opened and Brandon and Stuart emerged. They swarmed Jeff, then Stuart broke off when he realized what she was doing. He swooped in and grabbed Jeff’s things from the trunk, all while brushing a kiss along her cheek.

  “Welcome home.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Meatloaf and macaroni and cheese awaits you.”

  “I love you guys. You realize that, right?”

  Stuart smiled. “Hey, you’re family. We take care of family.”

  Emma and Grace sat at the table, studying. Tracey hugged Emma first, then Grace, kissing the tops of their heads. “You two are a sight for sore eyes.”

  “Were they big jerks, or just sort of jerks?” Emma asked.

  Tracey slumped into a chair. “Pretty big jerks.”

  Jeff snorted. “That’s an understatement.”

  From the way Brandon’s gaze snapped to her, sharp and piercing, she knew he’d want to hear that story sooner rather than later.

  Stuart prepared them plates of food and glasses of iced tea and brought them over. “So good to have you two home. Missed you guys.”

  “Missed you, too, buddy,” Jeff said, pulling Stuart in for another kiss.

  It felt good to be home. No stress, no tight, painful stomach.

  No watching what she said, or being afraid to talk at all for fear of judgment.

  No feeling not good enough.

  They talked about the weekend, what the girls had been doing, and before Tracey knew it, it was ten o’clock and she was yawning like crazy.

  Plus she was due to open at work tomorrow.

  “I really need to get home.” She gave everyone hugs and walked out, Brandon following her.

  “You all right?”

  “Tired.”

  “How bad was it?”

  “Jeff knows.” She picked at her fingernails. “He can tell you. They haven’t mellowed with age, that’s for sure.”

  He drew her in for one last hug. “I’m sorry, sweetheart.”

  “At least they make your family seem cuddly and sweet by comparison.”

  He chuckled. “There is that.” He paused. “Feel free to tell me to go to hell, but who’d you spend the nights with if you weren’t in the room with Jeff?”

  “My old high school boyfriend.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. He’s widowed and single. We…reconnected.”

  “Wow.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Is that good?”

  How to answer that? She’d had a lot of time on the plane to think about the weekend. “I don’t know. I want to say yes, because I still love him. But how do I know if what I’m feeling was because I felt it, or because of how stressed I was over the weekend and my family?”

  “I can’t help you there, sweetheart. Trust your heart.”

  “I can’t. That’s the problem. Maybe I never should have broken up with him. But I damn sure shouldn’t have married Pat. I can’t make another mistake.”

  “Are you guys getting together again?”

  Guilt filled her. She’d said she’d call him when they got back, but she hadn’t made any effort to call or text JJ for his number yet. “It’s…to be determined.”

  Brandon arched an eyebrow at her.

  “Seriously. I…I don’t even have his number.”

  “How’d you manage that?”

  “We were busy and distracted, that’s how. And I know he lives in New Jersey, but that’s not exactly an easy jaunt for me. I can’t afford to go flying up there all the time, and I won’t leave Emma.”

  “No one says you have to. Try contacting him and see what he says. Can’t hurt.”

  “Yeah, it can. It could ruin my relationship with Em.”

  “Not if you put her first. She wants you to be happy. She doesn’t expect you to be a monk, just…responsible.”

  “I wasn’t very responsible this weekend.”

  He frowned.

  “There might have been a little alcohol involved both nights.”

  “Ah.” He slipped his hands into the pockets of his shorts. “Are you afraid you made a mistake?”

  “I’m always afraid I’m making a mistake. Kind of one of the gifts bestowed upon me by my stupid family. I just don’t know what the good mistakes are.”

  “Well, give it a day and see how you feel. Try not to stress over it too much. No one’s saying you have to marry him, right?”

  “I guess.”

  “Do you want to see him again?”

  She sighed. “Yeah.”

  “If it means anything, if he doesn’t want to see you, he’s an idiot.” He smiled, kindly and full of friendship. “You’re a catch.”

  “Me and my high school diploma, my Mensa daughter, and my daughter’s psychopathic girlfriend, and her barbecue fork of doom.”

  He laughed. “There are worse credentials.” He hugged her one last time. “Drive safely, sweetie.”

  As she headed home, she debated calling JJ, except it was getting late, even in Texas, where JJ lived when he wasn’t on an oil rig.

  Tomorrow. I’ll text him tomorrow.

  * * * *

  Tomorrow started out with Tracey forgetting to set her alarm and barely making it to work on time.

  Not exactly the image she wanted to set when working toward a promotion.

  Upon returning home, she checked her online classes to find that she had several assignments to work on, and she started those immediately.

  By the time eleven o’clock rolled around, she realized she had, once again, forgotten to text JJ for Eric’s number.

  But then again…he hadn’t asked JJ for her number, either. Had he? Wouldn’t he have texted or called her if he had?

  I did tell him I was going to call him.

  She sat back. Shit.

  A raging storm of self-doubt blew through her soul. It’d been two nights—two wonderful nights, but…

  Could anything really come of them?

  She had to work on herself, on her classes, on her promotion. It sounded like Eric had things going on in his life, too, issues she wasn’t sure she could deal with right now.

  Does that make me a horrible person?

  She couldn’t jump in and fix him when she was busy trying to fix herself, and her relationship with Emma.

  And how the hell am I supposed to afford going to see him?

  It’d be even more painful knowing she couldn’t really be with him.

  She decided to let it sit one more day.

  What would that hurt?

  If he was really a good guy, he wouldn’t hold the delay against her.

  Would he?

  If so…that’d be an answer, wouldn’t it?

  Chapter Sixteen

  “We need maintenance to the ladies’ room up front immediately. One of the toilets is flooding the bathroom.”

  Eric turned down his radio as he talked to Bill, the stock manager, about the pallet of merchandise loaded on the forklift. “I have to go take care of this. Find Dave and have him help you move those. Corporate said we have to change the displays up front. Sorry, it’s not my choice.”

  Bill waved him off. “Yeah, go on and take care of that. We’ll figure it out.”

  Eric turned toward the front of the building and broke into a run. He turned up his radio. “Someone get that bathroom roped off, please. Shut it down until we get it taken care of.”

  “On it.”

  Fucking degree in finance, and now I’m a goddamned plumber. Or cart wrangler, or money counter, or fuck, one day he had to do a turn in the meat department when they were short-handed and there was a big college playoff game everyone was stocking up for.

  All the fun a
nd games involved in being an assistant store manager at a discount bulk warehouse store.

  Except today he was the most senior staff on site, and would be until close tonight. He was running the show.

  Lucky me.

  At least it was a Wednesday. That meant the store wasn’t nearly as packed as it was on a weekend, meaning minimal disruption by having a bathroom out of order. By the time he’d made it to the front, he spotted the head of maintenance hustling over from the other side of the building. One of their head cashiers stood in the doorway, trying to clear the bathroom while she waved off and redirected customers wanting to use it.

  “Good news,” she said as Eric jogged up. “It’s clean water coming out.”

  “Well, that’s lucky.”

  Once she made sure the bathroom was empty, the maintenance manager went in and shut off the water to the toilet.

  “We need to get this dried out first,” he told Eric. “Then I can find out what the heck’s going on. Looks like it was coming out of the flush handle.”

  “Whatever you have to do to fix it.”

  A headache threatened. Eric washed his hands and sought out the bottle of ibuprofen that perpetually lived on the top of his desk. After swallowing three of the tablets with a mouthful of cold coffee from the travel mug also sitting on his desk, he headed back out to finish his conversation about the front displays with Bill.

  Just another day in fucking paradise.

  Only three days since his return from California, and the interlude almost felt like a dream. The joy he’d felt while with Tracey had faded as his grey, dreary life folded around him again.

  It was late in the afternoon when Carter Lawson walked through the front door.

  Shit.

  Just what Eric needed, their district manager showing up when he was behind the CS counter, shoulder-deep inside a workstation that’d decided to take a shit, so he could swap out the tower and get it back up and running.

  “You look busy,” Carter said, smiling down at him from over the counter after he’d asked for Eric and the part-timer nervously pointed at the floor by her feet.

  Eric didn’t take his eyes off his project. “Hey, Carter. What’s up?”

  Carter set his laptop case on the counter. “Need a hand?”

  Eric thought the guy was joking. “Sure.”

  Carter rolled up his sleeves and rounded the counter. “Ouch, that looks way worse from this side.”

  “Whoever installed these stations should be shot, resuscitated, and shot again. You see this bull?” Eric pointed to the rat’s nest spaghetti waterfall of cables. Swapping out the tower wouldn’t be a bad job, normally.

  Except someone hadn’t bothered to properly route everything. Considering their store was over fifteen years old, no telling when the mess had happened, between equipment upgrades and repairs like he was doing now.

  To Carter’s credit, he sat on the floor next to Eric, grabbed some cable ties from the bag Eric had sent one of the cashiers to buy from the auto parts store across the road, and started helping him untangle the mess.

  “You know Carl’s off today, right?” Eric asked.

  “I didn’t come to talk to Carl. I came to talk to you.”

  “Me?”

  “Yeah. I want to know if you’re interested in a promotion.”

  Eric sat up. “What?”

  “You heard me. Store manager.”

  “What about Carl?”

  “Not here. We’re building four new stores. One in Tennessee, one in Kentucky, one in Virginia, and one in Florida. I put your name in for store manager. It’d mean relocating, obviously. Only catch on the Florida one is we’d need you there in two weeks, when they start the interior set-up. There’s more breathing room for the other ones. We’d need you in about three months for the other three. I’ll understand if you’d rather take one of those, but if you can take Florida, that’d really help us out.”

  Eric’s mind spun. “You’re not yanking my chain, are you?”

  “No. I know we haven’t discussed advancement lately, but I know you’ve got the required experience and knowledge to handle it.”

  “Nothing local, huh?”

  “The earliest I might be able to get you a store of your own in this region is probably three to five years. Everything is already promised and scheduled. I’d hate to lose you to another region, but during our district manager conference bridge this morning, that came up. Especially when the situation in Florida developed. You shook out at the top of the list. Corporate let me know I could talk to you about those four stores. Especially Florida. So it’s yours, if you want it. Or you can have one of the others, and I’ll tell corporate to keep looking for someone for Florida.”

  Eric stared at him. “Situation in Florida? What situation?”

  “The guy who was going to take it had to back out yesterday. His wife received a promotion and makes more money than him. They’re relocating to Georgia. He’s transferring to one of our stores there, but not as a store manager.”

  “Nobody else wants it? The Florida one?”

  “There’s nobody else qualified, with as much seniority and experience, who can take it on such short notice, who isn’t…tied down.”

  That was Carter’s way of politely saying single and no kids.

  He continued. “That’s the main problem—the short notice. They can bring someone in temporarily from another store to get the store open, but they’d prefer not to do that. They’d rather start out with a permanent manager in place, someone who knows the crew and knows the facility. Plus, it’s a big store, like this one. Bigger, actually. The other people they’re looking at only have experience in the smaller ones, running smaller crews. You’ve also been through a new-store set-up before. And you know what these buildings are like, they’re practically miniature—”

  “Yes.”

  “To Florida?”

  Eric nodded. “Sign me up.”

  Carter smiled. “You don’t even want to know details like pay, moving expenses, stuff like that?”

  “I’m guessing I get a raise?”

  “Fifteen grand a year over what you’re currently making, to start. And bonuses we can talk about later, once you’re settled.”

  “Then I’m in. What do I need to do?”

  Carter pointed at the wiring mess. “Let’s get this sorted out first, then we can go talk in private. You have lunch yet?”

  Eric snorted. “No.”

  “I’ll buy.”

  * * * *

  “I know this wasn’t your dream career,” Carter said as they ate in the office Eric shared with four other assistant managers and the store manager. Right now, they were the only ones there. “But your work the past six years has been noted. Like today. I get here and I find you elbows-deep in getting stuff done. Carl’s been pushing me to try to find you a store.”

  “He has?”

  “Yeah.” Carter took a bite of his sandwich. “He didn’t tell you that?”

  “To be honest, I hadn’t said anything about it. I just show up and do my job.”

  “You do that damn well, according to Carl.”

  “It’s about the only part of my life that is going well,” he muttered.

  It was stupid to get his hopes up, and Eric knew that. Florida wasn’t exactly a small state, and he could be heading anywhere in the state.

  Plus it didn’t mean he’d be able to reconnect with Tracey. He couldn’t even remember what she said her married name was.

  He blamed his lack of attention and failure to get her contact info on the alcohol and sex and distraction that he was just so damned happy to have her back for a little while.

  Also…she’d said she’d call him, and she hadn’t. She knew he was friends with JJ, so she could get his info from him.

  But…she hadn’t.

  The last thing he wanted to do was intrude on her life if she didn’t really want him there. And pushing the issue might be the fastest way to find out he wasn’t really
wanted.

  He’d prefer to live with the illusion that maybe, one day, he’d be with her again.

  It was less painful.

  And if nothing else, at least he was getting his ass out of New Jersey, finally.

  Even if he never heard from Tracey…maybe this was the Universe trying to kick him in the ass and tell him to start moving forward again, instead of bouncing around locked inside of his own head.

  “Is this a sure thing?” he asked Carter. “You’re not getting my hopes up for nothing, are you?”

  “Corporate’s waiting right now to hear from me. If you don’t want it, there’s a list of others to talk to. Very short list, because of the time frame and other factors I already talked to you about, but hopefully you mean it. You rethinking you want one of the other stores?”

  “No. I want Florida. Not that I care, but where is the store?”

  “West coast. South of Tampa, in Bradenton. Not far north of Sarasota.”

  “No more New Jersey winters, huh?”

  Carter grinned. “Not unless you want to come up here to visit or something.”

  Eric shook his head. “No offense, but I grew up in California. I’ve been miserable here.”

  “How did you end up here?”

  “College. I was working on Wall Street after graduation. Made good money, too. When the bubble burst and the recession hit, I lost my job, and I was lucky enough to get this.”

  “We were lucky to get you. So let me call corporate and tell them that you’re in, then we can discuss specifics.”

  * * * *

  Sometime after midnight, Eric sat in his darkened living room with no other light than the nightlight in the hall and the oven hood over the stove. He sipped a beer and realized he’d been adding way too many bottles to his recycling bin as of late.

  Which might be not so coincidentally contributing to his daytime headaches lately.

  The apartment was quiet, the building’s other three tenants either out or asleep.

  This wasn’t “home.”

  It was never home.

  It was simply a waystation. But after losing Paige and the baby, he couldn’t live in the house they’d bought together without his heart breaking every time he walked through the door. Some people wanted to embrace the memories and cloak themselves in everything that reminded them of the ones they lost.