Promise of a Lifetime ~ A Sequel to Lifetime of Promises ~ A Jason/Maxie story (Jaxie)
If you have not read Lifetime of Promises, you will probably still be able to read this but will have a hard time with things referenced. It is its own story but things mentioned from the first story will not be explained in full as I would normally do. I cannot say at this point in the game whether it will be too confusing. I highly suggest to anyone wanting to read this, to have already read Lifetime of Promises. If I'm posting this story, the prequel is at this site as well. Please note: The first part of this chapter was taken from Army Wives so I give their writers the credit they deserve. Aside from that, I own the story but not the four main characters or any other ABC/GH characters included.
Chapter 1
"Jason and Maxie...Some children are born to us others come into our lives by chance still others by choice..."
Maxie looked down at the beautiful little girl flailing her arms in the white knitted christening gown with the matching bonnet and booties. The contrast of the white satin to the white baby fine yarn almost sparkling against the magnificent colors beaming through the stained glass windows behind the altar at the church. She smiled and blew a kiss at the precious two month old in her arms. The priests words drew her attention to look up and out at the congregation. Sitting primly, between Mac and Monica, Jacob Martin and Cameron Alexander Johnson were both tugging at their ties and collars. Peripherally she could see their father doing the same thing.
The deep timbre in the priests voice drew her back to the baby blue eyes, eyes that matched the precious baby's grandmothers' and she smiled at the little life in her arms. The constricting vice around her heart was growing tighter by the minute until she could barely stem the flow of tears. That internal need was engulfing her and threatening to explode from within her.
"You are asked to act as her moral guides and protectors; through your example to the best of your ability she will learn the values of empathy and charity, kindness and beauty, honesty and freedom. Will you accept that charge?"
"We will" She and Jason both spoke at the same time. Jason's voice held the same crackled emotion as hers and Maxie couldn't help but look up into the steel blue eyes that bore into her soul.
"Will the congregation please stand and witness? As Alison Ann's extended family and community we ask that you all pledge your own commitment to this blessed child. Will you agree to be her loving examples to teach her through your kindness towards and your forgiveness to one another?"
"We will" Came the small group's reply.
Maxie felt Jason's calloused fingertips brush against her lower back where her dress opened in criss crossed patterns. The dress, a beautiful shell pink colored sundress, perfectly matched the tie Jason wore and the ribbon that ran through the baby's bonnet and booties. She took a half step forward toward the shell shaped bowl that held the Holy Water that the priest was currently using with his fingertips while he recited the Holy Rites of Baptism. His touch singed her and she couldn't fight the shiver that ran up her spine. She heard Jason let out a defeated sigh and her own eyes closed shut at the sound.
Her eyes opened when the priest, Father McMullins, pulled Alison Ann from her arms and Maxie suddenly felt the loss of the child's warmth. Jason shifted uncomfortably behind her but never attempted again to touch her. Maxie was grateful and terrified, relieved and destroyed all at once at the realization that he was giving up. If only for now.
Lifting her chin in a combination of courage and defiance she inhaled deeply and watched as Father McMullins picked up the pink rose with the red tips that Jason hand cut from their own garden that morning. She smiled thinking of Jake and his father arguing over which one was the best bloom for the ceremony.
"Alison Ann with this flower I touch your feet that you might stand against injustice...I touch your hands that you might reach for and grasp great wisdom...I touch your ears that you might hear music in the sacred silences...I touch your eyes that you might see beauty in every living thing...I touch your lips that you might speak the truth...finally I touch your heart that you might know love and give love graciously. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Alison Ann Shaffer."
~%~%~%~%~
"She really is a beautiful child Hannah." Bobbie commented as she placed the sleeping little girl in the bassinet.
As Godparents, Jason and Maxie both wanted her to have her own things at the Johnson house. The bassinet was one of four that Billy and Jason had made in Billy's new workshop in the new garage that was behind the house Billy and Hannah bought a block away. It was a new hobby for the boys since Maxie and Hannah had made them promise no more racing motorcycles and muscle cars.
The two had started going to the tracks after they found another motorcycle. They would race each other, motorcycle against muscle car, on the straight track. However, once Jason came home again banged up and then weeks later Hannah told Billy she was pregnant, their racing days ended.
It was either that or suffer at the hands of the women they loved.
Maxie had actually known Hannah was pregnant before Billy. Hannah wasn't sure and she and Billy had been planning to wait at least a year or two before starting a family. So in early September, when Hannah was so sick on a school clothes shopping trip for the boys, Maxie suggested that maybe it was more than a stomach flu.
They rushed home to Hannah and Billy's old house and ten minutes later were crying and jumping and laughing in the master bathroom. Immediately they both prayed for a girl because Junior, Cameron and Jake, not to mention Billy and Jason had taken over both houses with pool tables and matchbox cars, sling shots and sporting equipment. They wanted a girl to buy dolls for and frilly dresses and teach to paint toe nails and braid hair. Ballet shoes and pom poms to sit at the door next to cleats and baseball bats.
Maxie kept silent for two weeks until finally Hannah told Billy. Immediately, in a panic, Billy rushed over to Jason's and Jason gave Maxie a knowing look when he walked back in from the garage to grab a few more beers. Maxie had known and it explained so much of their own personal conversations within the few weeks time.
Immediately, Billy and Hannah looked for and bought the house around the corner. Hannah had always wanted to live in the neighborhood where her family was but their plans, just like starting a family, moved up a few years. The house was a two story, four bedroom, three bath house with a detached garage and work area. Jason and Billy spent all of their free time painting and refinishing and restoring it so they could move in.
Jake, the resident gardener, put Dale and Hannah's brothers to work on his landscaping design. It had a rock garden and small pond with a waterfall. The back yard was cleared of everything except some bushes along the fence lines and a large oak tree where the boys built a tree house, complete with a rope ladder and shutters for the windows. The front looked like a tropical resort with palms and banana trees, lots of flowering bushes and plants that complimented the coral paint and tan stucco of the house. On the east side of the house there were citrus trees planted that Jake knew would take a few years to produce quality fruit and rose bushes, just like he tended in his own yard.
Jason just knew that one day, he and Maxie would be watching the Home and Garden channel on cable and the Jake Johnson Show would be its most popular series.
Once they got Hannah, Billy and Junior settled into their new house by Christmas, renovations to their own house that Maxie wanted were well under way. Jason should have known something was up. All the signs were there, but he refused to see past his own happiness with their relationship and the status of their family to recognize all of the warning signs.
Maxie wanted to add another story to their house and put three bedrooms up there. Two equal sized rooms for the boys and a slightly larger play room. The play room downstairs was turned back into a traditional family room and Maxie relented and allowed the boys to make it a Tampa Bay Buccaneer and Rays sports themed room. Jakes old room was turned into a guest bedroom and Cameron's was opened up to enlarge the master suite by twenty square feet and include a small sitting room which Jason could have sworn he heard Maxie call a nursery at one point while chatting on the phone with Hannah. The master bathroom was also expanded to allow for a large garden jet tub with a huge one way glass window looking out on their new in-ground pool and one room pool house.
The house was finished by spring and by late April they were all enjoying the new pool.
That's when Jason and Billy started making the bassinets with the left over wood from the renovations to the house. One for Billy and Hannah's house, one for Vonnie's house, one for the Watson's house and one for their house. Jason kept saying there was no need for one at their house but early on, Billy and Hannah had asked them to be Godparents and Maxie insisted that Godparents would be babysitting just as often as Grandparents so they needed all of the accoutrements required so that the Shaffer's didn't have to lug all of their stuff from house to house.
Now, it was late July. Cameron was getting ready to skip another grade and start school as a nine year old fifth grader. Jake would be going into kindergarten and Maxie was opening another boutique, Georgie's Couture II, in Treasure Island just thirty minutes south of her original store. Brittany was starting her sophomore year at University of South Florida and Maxie had made her the manager of the Indian Rocks store with a healthy salary and another high school girl to be her new assistant.
Maxie's store was really doing well and to try to fill an emptiness and need for some sort of project, Jason suggested she open a new store in a fast growing vacation spot just south of St Petersburg. Close enough to home but far enough away from the old store to attract new clientele. They found a store in a shopping center where a new bistro had opened up and a day spa. It was on the tourist route the trolley took and was the perfect setting and location to house her high end fashion boutique.
It was just what Maxie needed and from March to the end of May, Maxie lived ate and slept the new store.
Until Hannah had the baby.
Jason tipped his beer up and drained it of its cool amber liquid and then moved to reach into the ice bucket to open another one. He heard Jake giggling and turned his attention away from the blonde who was causing him the most grief to another blond who was currently regaling his great grandfather with ideas of one day becoming the first astronaut to land on Mars, where he would plant vegetables and fruit and make them grow.
That was another situation he was dealing with in his life. As if he didn't have enough on his plate. He arranged for his mother, Monica, and his grandfather, Edward, to come stay with them for the summer. Edward was getting up there in years and even though he didn't see eye to eye with the old man, he knew how important it was that he be able to get to know Jake. And how important it was that Jake get to know him. Of course he wanted Monica and Jake to build on a relationship too but he knew that she had quite a few more years left in her, as she was in perfect health. But Edward probably only had another five years at best and he was determined to make sure that as long as Edward could travel, he would make room for him in his and Jake's life.
Jason smiled thinking about Edward's immediate grumblings when he was introduced to the Watsons as Edward Johnson, Jason's grandfather. Monica thought it would be fun living some of her life with a new identity and really liked being able to spend time with Jason and the boys. Now that Michael was awake, she and Edward had been spending plenty of time with him. Jax and Edward were grooming Michael to run ELQ one day and according to Monica, he was really enjoying the challenge of the corporate life. It helped with his aggressive behavior as well according to his doctors. But Jason's boys were their grandchildren too and Monica relished in the wake of Jason's growing desires to have them be a part of his boy's life. Even if they had to pretend just a little around all of them and keep some secrets.
Edward and Monica had all of Port Charles believing they were on a ninety day cruise around the world. The first five days they were actually on one and then from the Grand Bahama Island, they left the ship where two other passengers took their place. They would fly to New Foundland in a week to meet the ship and travel the final leg back into New York Harbor where Tracy and Alice would be none the wiser.
Only Bobbie and Mac would know.
Bobbie and Mac came for a week for Cameron's ninth birthday and the Baptism of Alison Shaffer. They had visited quite a few times over the past year and a half. They were flying out tonight and Jason knew that it was only going to add to his frustrations with Maxie once they left. She had been distracted because quickly once Mac and Bobbie arrived, she noticed the matching wedding rings on their fingers and all week if she wasn't focused on the Baptism, she was focused on the new romance and marriage of her father to Bobbie Spencer, a woman ten years older than him but someone that seemed to really make her father happy.
"Jason, my boy. See if you can find Monica. I think I'd like to go and take a nap." Edward said as he used his electric scooter to move across the patio toward his favorite grandson.
"Grandfather, I can take you in. Mom showed me how to set up your oxygen machine and all." Jason said setting the beer bottle down and turning toward his grandfather. Even at eighty nine years old, the man still looked formidable. Always dressed to the nines, his ever present pageboy cap on top of his head since the cancerous cells were removed a few years ago. "Let me just go tell Maxie that I'll be in the house for a while."
Edward nodded and maneuvered his scooter toward the back patio door which Jason and Billy had modified to accommodate the scooter. Edward could still walk and stand but it would tire him out easily since his last major heart attack. He had been on oxygen ever since and because his oxygen levels were consistently so low, he did very little walking because it taxed his heart so much that he would have trouble breathing.
For the summer, Edward was in a rented hospital bed in the family room so that he could have his privacy at night but also rest while the boys spent their afternoons with him playing cards and games and watching TV. Monica was in the guest room just across the living room and dining room from Edward so that if he needed immediate attention in the middle of the night, she was there.
Yet for the past two weeks, unbeknownst to anyone in the house, Jason was the closest to Edward most of the night. All because he had been banished from the master bedroom. He had hoped this would have all blown over by now. Maxie was the one being unreasonable. However, after two weeks of lonely nights on the couch, Jason had lain awake and realized all the places he went wrong. All of the warning signs glaring in his face like flashing train crossing lights. All of the telltale nuances and moments that should have told him that he and Maxie were at a fork in the road and he was either taking too long to decide which road he wanted to take or Maxie had already decided and was getting impatient waiting for him to bring up the rear.
And yet he kept trying. Trying to break through an impenetrable wall that had been built in the past two weeks. A wall Maxie had built because Jason had rightfully come down hard on her when he caught her in one of her schemes. One that rivaled some of her ones from early days like harboring Zander Smith when he was wanted by the police, going on the run with Jesse and keeping Coops secret about being one of James Craig's men. It was neck and neck with her stealing drugs to feed to Lucky to which she was having an affair and then faking a pregnancy and then a miscarriage.
But in Maxie's eyes, Jason was the one being so unreasonable. She would not have had to resort to plans and schemes and doing things behind his back if Jason would be just compromise this once and be reasonable. Jason shook his head as it went over in his mind once again, her convoluted theory on why HE was the unreasonable one in the relationship.
If he would have just taken off his rose colored glasses and seen that the protective coating on his perfect life was eroding from within this could have all been avoided.
Maybe.
~%~%~%~%~
"Jason?" Immediately Jason shot up off the couch and tried to stuff the pillow and blanket in the space between the wall and the end table so his mother wouldn't see it.
"Uh…yeah Mom." Jason said, quickly crossing the room.
"You don't have to pretend with me son. I know you've been sleeping out here for quite a few nights now. I had hoped that one night when I got up to get my glass of water, I wouldn't see you still out here."
"Oh…I didn't realize…" Jason sat down in the overstuffed chair and scrubbed at his face with the palm of his hand. His honing skills had deteriorated to nothing.
"Well, I didn't want to intrude. I know how private you are and I so enjoy the relationship we have now. I didn't want to pry or push you away." Monica pulled her silk floor length robe closed and sat down in front of him on the matching ottoman.
"It's…we'll work through it." His head dropped and Monica placed an aging hand on his strong knee. He looked up and saw the concern in her eyes from the moonlit room. "I just don't know what to do."
"Well you two sure do try to put on a happy face for the boys and your friends and neighbors. That has to be a good sign." Monica tried to find hope because her son looked like he had lost his. "Is it your Grandfather and I? I know we have to be taxing both of your patience between Edwards's orneriness and my spoiling the boys way beyond rotten. Plus we've been here for over two months now. If it would help, we can leave early and just say Edward was ready to come home so we flew home early from our voyage."
"It's not you Monica. And surprisingly enough, it's not Edward. It's…" Jason looked up into his mother's eyes and saw so much devotion and love and hope. The desire to be helpful to one of her children. She always felt like she had failed Emily and AJ and now didn't have a chance at redemption from either one of them. With Jason, although it had been a long hard road, they were finally in a good place and she was able to be a loving mother again to him. But she always tread so carefully that sometimes he wondered if he was truly being unfair.
The same way he felt about Maxie right now. He wondered if he really WAS the one being unreasonable. Regardless of the harebrained, devastatingly vicious and selfish trick she tried to pull on him.
"Son, if you want to talk, I promise, I won't judge. Maybe I can give you a little perspective. You know…" She smiled a brilliant smile and Jason couldn't help but smile with her as he saw her eyes travel to a place in her past. A memory of days gone by. "I was a lot like Maxie when I was her age. Oh sure, the situations were completely different. And you…you remind me of Alan in your gentleness and your way with the boys but aside from that, you and your father are complete opposites. You have the patience Lila had. Unfortunately, your father had the patience of a Quartermaine. Just like Edward, he was explosive."
"Grandfather told me the other day that I remind him so much of Grandmother and that Jake is just like Alan."
"Well, you know what…he's right. Jake marches to the beat of his own drum. Your father was like that. I mean…imagine telling your father, Edward Quartermaine, that you didn't want to run the ELQ Empire but instead wanted to follow your own dreams and become a doctor."
"I kind of did that when I DIDN'T want to become a doctor." Jason laughed a little but stopped when his mothers face took on a stern frown.
"I think telling your father and mother you are going to work for the local mob kingpin after just having lost all of your memory and was in a coma for a month is quite a different situation than being perfectly healthy and simply choosing an honest and legal profession that your father didn't approve of."
Jason gave a curt nod of his head. He knew she was right now but that didn't change the fact that had they not pushed him so much, he probably would not have run so far so fast after waking up from his coma. He didn't look back with regret, per se, but he did see all the places in his life where he could have made a different choice and his whole life would have been different because of it.
Just like now and the choices he made with Maxie.
"Well…I can see that you have a lot to think through and really don't want to talk to your old mom about it. I just have to wonder who you really DO have to talk to. I know you don't have Spinelli anymore because Maxie said that he took an assignment overseas to be with his new wife and was working as a translator in Egypt. Although I doubt that's all he does for our government over there. And Billy Shaffer seems like a great friend but only knows the life you have made up prior to moving here. All you have left is Maxie and I haven't seen either of you on that lounge chair on the patio in weeks."
"You know about the lounge chair?" Jason asked, his head lifting up at the mention of it. Absentmindedly he turned and looked out the sliding glass doors to see the chair with the brand new cushions sitting there waiting and wondering where it's nearly nightly occupants had been.
"Well, Bobbie actually told me about it. She said that Maxie's told her that it was where you two always go to reconnect or unwind from the stresses of the day. That you would just sit and hold each other and talk about anything or nothing but that mostly it was where you two would work out any problems you were having."
"Maxie told Bobbie all of that?"
"Yep and I haven't seen you two out there since the night after Billy and Hannah gave birth to Alison."
"Yeah…" Jason looked out the glass doors again. It really had been a long time. Hannah was born May thirtieth and it was the last week of July now. "Mom, would you excuse me?"
"Sure honey." Monica moved her legs out of the way as Jason stood, tugging up his sleep shorts and moved across the room to the sliding glass doors.
She watched as he picked up the blanket that always lay on the hope chest next to the door and left the house to lie on the lounge chair. She hoped he would find his answers out there underneath the stars. She knew what was going on. She and Denny Watson had had a long in-depth talk on the subject today as the Baptism reception died down and they watched all of their grandchildren play in the new pool. But both readily agreed that no one could fix the problem but Maxie and Jason. No amount of intervention on their parts could help the situation.
Monica sat a few minutes longer watching as her son stared up into the sky, breathing deeply. Finally she lifted herself from the spot she had been in for twenty minutes and went to the kitchen for the water she had originally emerged from her room to get. When she finally headed back to the room and closed the door, she smiled when she heard the door to the master bedroom open and close and then the unmistakable sound of the sliding doors heavy on their tracks opening to hopefully give way to some sort of communication between two stubborn individuals who were so right for each other and so deeply in love with each other but also two individuals who could not either climb high enough to get over their giant egos and pride.
"Alan, if you're watching…could you maybe make Maxie trip on something so that he has to catch her. Cause I don't know what to do to make them fall into each other's arms again."
~%~%~%~
"Hi"
"Hey"
"I saw you from the sitting room. I haven't seen you out here in a while."
"That's because you haven't been out here."
"Yeah"
Silence engulfed them to where they felt like it had fingers that were closing around their throats.
"Mac called, he and Bobbie made it home okay."
"That's good."
The moonlight danced across the water and they both watched as the ripples from a slight breeze rolled across the water of their new pool. Poetically slow and safe like the small steps they were both taking at this moment.
"Monica knows I've been sleeping on the couch."
"Oh"
"Yeah."
Again the silence was only interrupted by Prince's little bell as he ran from the area behind the pool house where Jason had trained the dogs to do their business. It was an area that he and Jake would put all the yard waste and left over food to make compost for the flower and tree beds. Jason and Maxie barely turned their head at the sound. They were so used to that little bell being anywhere that Maxie was. Popeye and Precious were in Cameron and Jake's beds respectively, always protecting their favorite family member.
Jason looked over at Maxie.
She was beautiful. Her hair was short again for the summer. Her skin tanned naturally this year. She still pampered herself at the spa on a weekly basis with massages, manicures, pedicures and mud masks but she'd stopped going to the tanning salon when she noticed that her exposure to the natural sun was giving her body the golden hue that she desired and the tanning booth was only making it look unhealthy.
She changed her hair back to the platinum color it used to be and her body had kept the one hundred and fifteen pounds that made all of her curves softer. Her sparkling blue eyes were looking up at the stars. He could see that color as clear as day and missed the warmth of them shining with love for him. At twenty seven she looked more in tune with herself. More confident with her body and it was sexy as hell the way she wore her clothes nowadays. Always in something designer but with even more sex appeal if that was possible. Conservative on the exterior but with a hint of seduction. School teacher meets Playboy centerfold. And it was all for him.
She listened when he told her he liked the way her ass looked in low rider jeans and she paid attention when he said he liked her hair styled curly and wild. She went and bought all new bras when he found one in a Victoria's Secret magazine and said he'd like to see her in it and she never failed to walk out of the closet in the five inch stilettos and then leave them on when he was in a particularly lustful mood.
She had completed a second course in cooking and now was actually pretty good at making most things. She still could not get the baked goods to turn out right but it didn't matter to him, there was a fabulous bakery four blocks away and he loved walking hand in hand with her down to sit on the patio of the bakery on Sunday mornings where the boys would eat waffles or Danish, he could have coffee cake and a rich Columbian roasted coffee brew and she would savor the sticky buns with the almonds and a latte.
She hired a maid to handle the weekly dusting, vacuuming, cleaning the bathrooms and mopping but she still insisted on doing the kitchen herself. She said it was relaxing and soothing to wash dishes after a long tiring day at work while Jason would do something with the kids or work on the boutiques books. The boys had their chores to feed the dogs, take out the trash and put clean dishes away every day and then once a week they folded their own laundry and put their clean clothes away. Maxie took care of the rest and actually enjoyed the domesticity of it all.
They continued Sunday night date night and lazy Monday mornings in bed after the boys went to school. Maxie always made sure that their sex life was fresh and alive and new. Whether it was the introduction of new toys, outfits, role-play games or new places and positions, Jason was completely satisfied by Maxie's healthy attitude in their bedroom. She liked everything from slow and sensual to rough angry sex and never tired of making sure Jason was fully satisfied and then some.
Some days he wondered if he'd be able to keep up with her. At forty one, he was already showing signs of age. She didn't know it but he'd found a few gray hair in his head and had talked to his barber about it. He had to work out more to keep his physical shape. Food didn't burn as easily even though he had more sex in the past year in a half than he had probably had in his whole life. Maxie was such a good cook and was learning the art of rich sauces and sautés. The kids were naturally full of energy with a high metabolism and Maxie still barely ate ten bites of anything but Jason was starting to see the middle aged spread settling in so he worked extra hard to keep Maxie from ever finding someone else she'd rather trace toned muscles on with her hot pink fingernails.
He was working so hard to make her happy and she was doing the same for him but the one thing she wanted, he didn't. The thing that would make her the most happy was the thing he feared the most. The huge elephant between them, he had no idea how to compromise on. Because there was no compromise.
If he gave in, his life changed forever and if she gave in, her life would never be fulfilled. He couldn't stomach not fulfilling her dreams but at forty one he also couldn't see himself starting over. He was happy. Everything seemed to be smooth sailing. No need to change course when it was nothing but blue skies and smooth sailing ahead.
Except that the perfect storm was brewing in between them. He just hoped that the family and the life they created and worked so hard for over the last four and a half years could weather the storm and come out intact on the other side.
"Princess…please sit with me. We really need to talk."