WE GATHER TOGETHER by Edward L. Woodyard

We Gather Together Chapter Twelve

Jack Drexler parked behind Annie's Suburban and got out of his car. His long legs made him almost too big for a Corvette, but he wasn't going to trade it in or give it up. It would always keep him seventeen which was a part of Jack that he wouldn't easily surrender. For Jack, it wasn't an attitude but a feeling. For others, it was something physical. No matter how old he was or how old he felt, Jack Drexler was movie-star handsome, with a face that could get him into trouble even when he was completely innocent. Maybe it was the glint in his eye. Whatever it was, Jack had a quality that made people like him as soon as they met him, even though they knew nothing about him. It was what made him such an excellent salesman: instant likeability.

Annie noticed that Jack was wearing a blue wool suit and a button-down tattersall shirt with a yellow print necktie loose at the collar; she could see around his neck the gold chain of his grandfather's mezuzah he wore to honor his memory. She figured that Jack must be either coming from or going to a meeting.

As Jack walked toward the front door, he checked his cell phone messages while kicking the fallen leaves in front of him, letting his leather shoes get wet from the rain two days ago. He stared at his cell phone; it was either dead or broken. It was another something that he didn't need just then.

Annie was not happy to see him. She deposited the laundry basket on the couch in the living room and locked the front door. She stood in a small foyer by the front door, outside of Jack's line of sight; she didn't want him to see her through a small leaded glass window in the center of the door. She then bolted the front door shut so his key wouldn't let him open it.

As Jack stepped on the front stoop, he heard the dead bolt snap into place. He took his key from his suit pants and tried the lock above the door handle. The key worked, but the door wouldn't open. He rang the doorbell.

"Don't do this, Annie."

Jack was being remarkably calm. He had expected this behavior. He was surprised that she hadn't had all the locks changed. He rang the doorbell again.

"Annie, I know you're there. Let me in, please. We need to talk."

Annie had to think about whether or not she was going to allow him in the house. She did want to love him again, but she wanted to be in the way she had when she first saw him. For her it had been love at first sight when she was in seventh grade and he was in high school. Jack Drexler had been a friend of her eldest brother. During Scott's senior year of high school, Jack would occasionally come by the house, usually with Doug Lundgren. All three of them drove classic Corvettes and had formed the Castlebury Corvette Club. Scott eventually gave his 'Vette to his littlest brother, Ben. While Doug was really Scott's best friend, Jack thought of himself as their wingman since he was in a grade below them. Scott and Doug had played together on the varsity hockey team since eighth grade, while Jack had been a freshman wrestler who switched to hockey his sophomore year. All three of them were over six feet tall by the time they were sixteen. Scott later suspected that Jack just liked to hang with them so that he could be around his little sister – who had developed early and who, by the age of fourteen, was striking, with her strawberry blonde hair and the McCulloch green eyes. But Annie was jailbait and Jack knew it, so he looked but didn't touch. Besides, he had a cheerleader at the high school and a family maid from Sweden at home, both of whom took care of his physical needs.

Jack had transferred to Castlebury High School for his freshman year of high school, when most friendships among his classmates had been solidified since kindergarten. His father had taken a new job with an international technology company that had its headquarters in Pleasanton. Jack wasn't worried about standing out at school since he towered above most students when he passed them in the hallway between classes. He was also blond-haired, blue-eyed and from Southern California. Subsequently, he experienced a culture shock after being pulled away from a laid-back beach community and pushed into one that pursued academic excellence and athletic achievement for the specific purpose of getting into a Top Tier college. Regardless, Jack would make his own rules and set his own agenda, which was something that Annie noticed about him when Scott first brought him to the house while she was still in middle school. Although it may have been love at first sight for Annie, it was all love from afar for both of them. By the time Annie was in high school, Jack was in college.