Ella was on her way back to the Claudia's house when her car started to slow down. She had had a rather busy day and she had asked Claudia to pick Josh up from his school.
She had just checked the car on Wednesday and it was Monday. What could be wrong with it? The car was going even slower and then she felt it wobble. She wondered what was going on. She saw the person in the car beside hers waving at her, trying to get her attention. When she looked the person pointed in the direction of her tyres and mouthed "Flat tyre". Crap.
She picked up her phone and got out of the car. She examined the exterior of her car and realised that she indeed had a flat tyre. Great. Leaning against the car, she dialled the number to the Body Shop. She listened to it ring about four times before somebody finally picked up.
"Martin's Body Shop." The person who had picked up said. He didn't sound familiar.
"Hello. Is Jon there?" She asked.
"No, he isn't. Do you have a message for him?"
"Is there a way I can reach him. It's really urgent." She replied.
"I could try to reach him on his cell." The guy offered. "Find out where he is and if he's available."
"Alright. Please get back to me as quickly as possible. I'm kinda stranded. It's a car problem."
"Will do, ma'am."
She hung up and got back into her car and sat until her phone rang again.
*****
Jon was just on his way out of the house to go pick Leah up for their date when his phone rang. He saw that it was the Body Shop. He knew Moses was handling calls for the afternoon and he had specifically told him that he was unavailable for the rest of the day.
"Moses." Jon said when he picked up the phone.
"Hey, boss." He started hesitantly. "I know you said you were unavailable, but she called."
Jon frowned. "She?"
"Yeah. Brown hair, beautiful smile." He said dreamily. Jon started. Emma had called? "She sounded real urgent. She said she was stranded."
Emma was stranded? And she was calling him? What the hell was going on? "I'm coming to the Shop right now."
When he got to the Shop, he picked up the receiver of the phone and dialled the last number in the call log. She picked on the first ring and he realised that she had just been sitting there, waiting for his call.
"Hello." She said, in a harried voice.
"Emma? What's going on?" He asked, trying to sound calm. He wondered absently why he wasn't feeling as calm as he ought to. After all, it was just a work associated call. They had gotten so many of these.
"Hey, Jon. I'm sorry to be disturbing you." She said. "But I have a flat tyre and I'm on the road." She said this just as he heard the loud honk of a huge vehicle.
"Where are you?"
She told him where she was and he told her to wait for him. He ran back to the house to change out of his blue button down and jeans that he was wearing and threw on a black polo and some faded jeans. Then he called Leah to ask if they could reschedule as something important had come up. She was surprisingly cool about it.
He and Moses set out in the company truck. He spotted the navy blue car parked by the side of the road from afar, but he saw no sign of her. He thought that she was probably inside the car. When he pulled up in front of her car and got out, he saw that to be true.
When she looked up and saw him, he saw a mixture of worry and relief on her face. But she smiled, although it was a worried smile. She looked so adorable that he had to tamp down the most random urge to hug her and tell her that everything was fine now. She came out of the car to talk to him.
"Oh, thank God you were able to make it." She said. "I'm sorry though. I hope I didn't interrupt anything important."
"No, it's fine. Nothing that can't be rescheduled." He shrugged. "Now, what seems to be the problem here?" He said, examining the car. He saw the flat tyre and motioned to Moses to bring the extra tyre.
"Can't you just pump air into the tyre or something?" She asked when she saw Moses coming with the tyre.
For no reason at all, he felt himself smiling. "I could, but seeing as I did that on Wednesday and it's flat again, I'm guessing there's a leak or something." He explained. She was so clueless about cars. Even when she came by the Shop, she never asked any questions, she just sat in the reception area and entrusted her car into his hands. "You want to sit in the truck while we change the tyre?" He asked, offering her the keys to the truck, which Moses had handed to him.
"Yes please." She said very eagerly, like she had been waiting for him to ask that exact question. He chuckled when she grabbed the keys from his hands and started walking towards the truck giving him a rather unexpected but very welcome view of her backside. She was wearing a pair of jeans with a very high waistband, and her t-shirt was tucked into the jeans, so he was getting an uninterrupted view. He caught himself staring at the sway of her hips and turned to Moses, ready to get to work. Alas, when he turned, he saw Moses doing the exact same thing he had just been doing.
"Yo." He snapped his fingers in his direction. "No checking out the damsel in distress."
The boy turned back to the car, and he muttered something that sounded like, "You were doing it." Jon laughed. Yes he had. Who wouldn't? Then he remembered what he and Moses had discussed the other day.
"Why didn't you at least say Hi to her?" He asked Moses as they got to work.
Moses gave him a look. "When? Y'all were talking and laughing the whole time." He said accusingly. This was going to be difficult. Especially as Jon himself had selfish reasons to not want to introduce the two of them. But he would do it anyway, especially because he knew that Emma would never go for Moses. Not that anything was wrong with Moses. Well, nothing except the fact that he was too young.
Ella's head came up sharply from the game she had been playing on her phone when the door to the truck opened. She smiled at Jon. "Are you guys done?"
"Yeah, you can now drive off into the sunset." He said. Then he made a face at himself. What the hell was that? But if Ella thought what he had said was lame, her face gave no indication, she just smiled again and came down from the truck. He handed her keys back to her and walked her to her car.
"Thank you so much." She said. He nodded. He remembered what his mom had asked him to do the next time he saw her.
"Emma-" He started.
"Everyone calls me Ella though. I'm more used to it." She interrupted.
"I prefer Emma." He stated simply. "My mom wanted me to invite you for the funeral."
"Oh." She said, and her face became all sad again. Jon himself wasn't feeling so cheery anymore. "Of course. When is it?"
"Friday." He said. "Just come by the house at say... Nine o'clock. Then you can come to the Cemetery with us."
She nodded. "God." She whispered. "This is so weird."
He chuckled humorlessly. "I know." Then he snapped out of it before it got exceedingly awkward. "Anyway, I figured I should give you my number, just in case you have a car emergency anytime. So that you don't have to call the Shop all the time and have them call me. Is that okay?"
She nodded. "That's fine." She said, but her mood had obviously changed. She unlocked her phone and typed in the numbers that he called out to her. "Got it. Thank you so much again." She tried to smile, but it just looked like a grimace.
"You're welcome. Say hello to Josh for me. I hope he's forgiven me about the last time." Jon remembered the little boy and his shenanigans. He couldn't help smiling.
Emma smiled. And it was genuine this time. "I will. And I'm sure he has forgotten all about it. If anything, you should be the one doing the forgiving."
"Nah, it's cool. He's a little boy."
"Don't let him hear you say that." She said, still smiling. "Bye." She said, getting into her car and starting up the engine.
He waved but didn't say anything back, because she wouldn't hear him anyways. She waved back and drove off.
****
It was Nine o'clock on Friday morning and Ella was not close to leaving the house. And she was supposed to meet Martin's family at home. It obviously would not work out. There had been an unexpected order for a hundred cupcakes that morning, to be delivered before two in their afternoon. Ella would have turned it down, but the lady had seemed so desperate that she offered to pay double of the usual price. She had had bags under her eyes and she looked like she was about to burst into tears any moment.
She picked out her phone to call Jon. He picked on the third ring. "Hello"
"Hey. It's Ella. So I won't be able to make it to the house. There was an emergency at the bakery. If you could just text me the address, I'll be there in about an hour." She said quickly.
"Alright, I can do that. I hope the emergency was nothing serious." He said.
"Nah, it's been taken care of."
"Alright. I have to go now. See you."
She put down her phone on the bed and was about to rush into the shower when she remembered that Josh would have to be picked up from school. She picked up her phone again and called Jazz.
"Hey girl." Jasmine answered.
"Hey. I need a favour." She said.
"Hmm. You'll have to pay me, but shoot." Jasmine said with a chuckle.
"I'm going to Martin's funeral and I might need you to pick Josh for me." Ella said hurriedly.
"Uh oh." Jasmine said disappointedly. "I'm afraid I can't. I have a meeting that starts at 1."
"Shit." Ella swore.
"Okay?" Jasmine said with another chuckle. "You swore. That's bad."
"I'm sorry." Ella sighed. "I guess I'll have to leave early."
"I'm sorry." Jasmine said.
"It's alright. I have to go now, Jazz." She said.
"Yeah." Her friend said before Ella hung up.
***
When Ella got to the cemetery, she parked her car where all the other cars were parked. And she got out and started walking the small distance to where the people were. Though the distance wasn't long, she was grateful that she had skipped her heels and worn her comfortable wedges instead.
When she got up to the crowd gathered around a particular grave where a minister was delivering a sermon, she spotted Jon, his three brothers and their mother. They were all dressed in black and wearing sunglasses. At that moment, Jon looked her way and subtly waved her over. Luckily, he was standing at the edge so she just stood beside him.
"Hey." He whispered to her. She looked over at him and saw that he was wearing a black shirt, a black tie and a black two-piece suit. And he had on shiny black Oxfords. It was the first time she was seeing him out of his overalls. He cleaned up real nice. She realized that she was ogling a man while at his father's funeral.
"Hi." Ella whispered back. She looked over at his brothers, they were all as tall as Jon, but she couldn't see much of them mostly because Jon was obstructing her view of them.
Just then, the minister said, "May the soul of Martin James Reeves rest in peace." The crowd responded. "Amen." Then the minister said, "I will now call on Julia Reeves to give the eulogy."
Julia walked up to the minister and he handed the microphone to her. She saw a tear roll down Julia's cheek and her heart constricted. She started talking and her voice came out weak. "Good morning, friends and family. " Then she cleared her throat and started talking again. "I still remember very vividly the first time I met Martin." She sniffed. "I was working in a little coffee shop close to his college. He walked up to me and said, "You look a little tired there, Blondie. Can I buy you a cup of coffee?" My first reaction was to be offended, because he had basically just insulted me." A little smile appeared on her face. "But then I looked up and he had the goofiest grin on his face. It's the same grin that I still see everyday on my son Jonathan's face, who is as much of a jokester as his father is. When he saw the scowl on my face, he looked bashful and said, "I'm sorry. I was just joking. It was my stupid way of trying to ask you out." This surprised me, because it was the first time I was seeing him, but then he explained to me that it wasn't the first time he was seeing me. The whole time though, I couldn't utter a word, because he was so breathtakingly handsome." She chuckled tearfully. "If you don't believe me, just take a look at any one of my sons."
When Ella looked over at Jonathan, his face was hard as granite and his fists were clenched so tightly that they had lost colour. His mother continued talking. Ella missed part of her speech because she herself was thinking of the first time she had met Martin. "Another thing about Martin was that he talked way too much. He was always ready to give business advice, solicited or otherwise." She said, which made a few people smile. Her words may have seemed critical if she wasn't smiling fondly. At this point, Ella zoned out Julia's speech, the next thing she felt was a large hand grabbing hers fiercely. She came back to reality and realized that at this point, Julia was talking about when she had found Martin unconscious. Julia was full on crying now and she was finding it difficult to even get the rest of her words out.
One of the boys walked up to his mother and pulled her into his arms. The man, however, was not Jon, because Jon was still holding on to her hand so strongly, it was almost painful. She allowed him because she couldn't even begin to imagine how much pain he was feeling at the moment. Julia wiped her eyes and insisted in finishing her speech. Ella, however, did not hear the rest of the speech because she felt herself being pulled away. She looked up and saw Jon was leading her away from the crowd. His steps were urgent and his grip was strong. He only stopped when he got to a wall. He turned around and leaned against it, taking in a deep, shaky breath. He took of his glasses and looked directly at her. His eyes were bloodshot.
Emma's heart broke for the big man standing in front of her. He started talking before she could say anything. His voice was deeper than usual. "I have no idea why I just did that. But, I couldn't be there one more second, Emma." He said. "I'm supposed to be the strong one, I'm supposed to keep them happy. And here I am, fucking crying. I couldn't let them see me like this, Emma, I couldn't." He said his speech became more frantic.
Emma didn't know what to say. She felt tears on her face. She didn't know how he felt, but she knew that it was probably the same sadness she felt, but multiplied by like a hundred. She offered him the only thing she could. A hug. She stepped closer to him and put her arms around his neck. His reaction was very instant. He put his arms around her and hugged her back fiercely. They stayed that way for about three minutes before he finally let her go.
"Thank you." He said to her. He seemed less intense. He even smiled at her. "Shall we?" He said. When she nodded, he offered her his hand. She took it and they walked back to the crowd.
A/N: This chapter was a bit more serious. I got all sad writing it. I didn't write a complete eulogy because that would just be sooooo long.
Did y'all expect Jon to cry though?
Please drop me a vote or a comment. Let me know what you think so far.
See ya.