Chapter Thirty-One
SAWYER
“How’s Quinn?”
I looked up from the flower I was planting in the ground. Pete looked over at me from the porch, taking a drink from a bottle of water after he spoke. The sun had started to press the heat into the back of our necks, and I had one or two more plants to put in the ground, but he was done for now and had gone in for water.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
Pete spat off to the side. “Well, you know. She stayed over at your house a week ago. You’ve been involved. How is she? How is it goin’?”
“It’s going fine.” I patted the dirt around the flowers and frowned when I realized I’d forgotten to plant the cucumbers. “She’s out of town this weekend. Some kind of conference.”
“A conference?”
“Some psychiatry thing.” I wiped the sweat from my brow and leaned back onto my ankles. I couldn’t remember the details of what Quinn had told me about the conference, but it had something to do with psychiatry and pharmaceuticals. I’d told her she could go as long as she didn’t make me take any pharmaceuticals, and then we’d made out in the back of her car, and then I’d forgotten what she told me about the conference.
Pete walked up to stand next to me. I turned to look at him and lifted an eyebrow.
“What?”
“It’s just strange you don’t talk about her more,” Pete said. “I’d expect you’d be chattering up a storm about her. You doing alright?”
“We really are,” I emphasized. “I’ve always been kind of quiet, Pete. You know that.”
“I suppose. Take a load off; we don’t need those cucumbers in the ground until tomorrow.” Pete clapped my shoulder, and I stood up.
“You sure?”
“Yeah, it’s supposed to rain tonight, and the roof’s got a tear.” Pete pointed at the tarp that he used to cover the garden when it rained. He liked to control the water in his vegetable garden, and since he maintained it regularly, he liked to keep the rain out of the equation. Unfortunately, he’d been unable or unwilling to have someone out to build a roof over the garden, or even put up a cheap tin one, and so he’d been using a tarp over some posts. With the rain straight on the ground, any seeds I put in would only get washed up. I didn’t like the thought of having all my work go to waste, so I didn’t protest.
I stood up and pulled my gloves off. “Sun’s just now starting to go down,” I noted. The worst of the heat was over. “I think I might head back if I’m all done here.”
“Well, shoot, Sawyer, I was hoping we could go to George’s.” Pete looked across the yard at his car, like he wanted to go immediately.
I leaned against a shovel and raised my eyebrows. “Yeah, sure, we could go. What’s the occasion?”
“I just want to,” Pete offered.
It was as good a reason as any. I went to his bathroom to clean up a little so I wouldn’t smell, and then we left to go to George’s.
Just like last time, the bar was empty except for a few people mulling around the back. A few people I recognized from my time as regulars still seemed to haunt the place, with longer beards and deeper recesses behind their eyes. I pulled my cap down onto my head and walked up to the bar.
“You know, I don’t think I like the idea of you going off and getting married,” Pete said.
I nearly spat my drink. “Jesus Christ, Pete. No one said anything about getting married.”
“Well, it comes along!” Pete raised his arms in a physical defense at my protest.
I shook my head and put a few quarters in the billiards table and watched the balls fall in a clatter. It bought me time to put them together in the triangle and formulate some kind of response to the escalation Pete was talking about.
“It comes along in years,” I said. “Years and years.”
“Yeah, sure.” Pete waved his hand and picked up a cue. He looked down the barrel of it, like it was a shotgun, and I ignored it; berating him for his odd habits never went well for either of us. He was a sensitive soul at heart, and I knew better than to poke fun at him for the little things.
“Even if it’s years from now, I don’t like it.” Pete lined the cue up with the cue ball and licked his lips, cap covering his eyes from the angle I stood at.
I shook my head. Pete had been eager to see me in a relationship, or so I remembered, and he’d been supportive of the endeavor. In fact, I could specifically recall him telling me to distance myself from Quinn professionally so that I could be closer to her romantically. Not to mention that when he’d met Quinn, it had been smiles all around. He didn’t seem to have an issue.
“You’re not making a whole lot of sense,” I told him. I watched him shoot the cue ball and a few stripes fell into the pockets.
Pete rubbed his nose and looked to me. “Your shoot.”
“It’s yours; you sank two.”
“And a solid.”
“Nope.”
“Oh.” Pete walked around the table and lined the cue up again, nearly knocking over his drink in the process.
“Didn’t answer my question,” I reminded him, lifting my glass to my mouth.
“Right,” Pete said. He fired the cue ball and didn’t land anything. “See, once you’re married, you’ll be out and on your own. And that’s all well and good, I suppose, for you. And I’m happy for you, and I will be then, too. But I’ll have to find another friend to shoot the shit with, and that’s not something I look forward to doing.”
I furrowed my eyebrows. “I don’t follow. In what world am I not going to be your friend anymore?”
“You’ll be busy,” Pete said.
I lined up my shot. I’d played an inordinate amount of billiards overseas, since all we’d really had for entertainment was a pool table and some TV’s lying around the barracks. I played billiards until I saw billiard balls in my sleep. That being said, I wasn’t ever terribly good at it, but better than the average player, I supposed. Better than Pete, though he wouldn’t go down without a fight.
“I’ll be around.” I took the shot and sunk a solid. I walked to line up another shot.
“That’s what you say,” Pete said. “But you’ll get busy.”
I looked up at him from lining up my shot. “I don’t understand why you’re all worried about that now. Even if that was something I’d been thinking about, which I have not, it would be years.”
“Because you obviously care about her,” Pete said. “And a fair amount more than constitutes casual affection.”
I made my second shot, putting two solids in separate baskets. I didn’t have to walk far to line up my next one. “What are you aimin’ at?”
“Well, shit.” Pete leaned against the table and frowned when I sank another shot. “You know, I only have so many quarters if you’re planning on wiping the damn tables with me.”
“Sore loser,” I commented, and missed my next shot.
“Ah.” He waved his hand to brush me off and settled over the table. “Do you think it’s true, then?” he asked. He fired his shot and sank the ball he was aiming for—and a solid ball, which turned the game back over to me.
“What’s true?” I lined up my shot but missed a bit intentionally. I didn’t want Pete to get irritated, and I didn’t care much about winning.
“That you love her. That it’s just a matter of time before things get a little more serious,” Pete said.
I raised my eyebrows and took my shot. The ball sank into the basket at the last second, and I rubbed the chalk on the end of the cue ball.
“I don’t know, Pete.” I pulled my cap back a bit and then pulled the bill down with my thumb and forefinger.
“You don’t know, or you don’t want to think about it?”
“Both.” I watched him line his shot up. “I think things are going well now. I certainly do care quite a bit about her. I’ll see where it goes, but I don’t see myself seeing either one of you out any day soon.”
“I should hope not. It’s not easy to find friends, you know,” Pete said.
I smiled at him and shook my head. It was hard to tell whether Pete wanted to be my friend because I was convenient for him or because he genuinely liked me, and frankly, I didn’t think that it mattered much to me one way or another.
We played a few games of pool before deciding to call it a night. Neither of us was particularly fond of staying out too late, and besides, I had some work to do around the house the next day. The kitchen sink needed fixing, and I could do it without a problem, but it would require a few hours of uninterrupted work. We set our cues back on the rack, and I realized I’d left my wallet in the bathroom earlier.
“I’m gonna head out,” Pete said. “You drove up here, right?”
I nodded and headed to the bathroom. The wallet was where I left it, thankfully, so I stuffed it back in my pants and walked back out. Before I could get very far, a hand came down on my arm and pulled me back.
I fought the instinct to strike out at the person who’d grabbed me, and instead glared behind me.
Stacy had her hand firmly on my arm, and she released it when she saw my stare. She looked even more exhausted than the last time I’d seen her, if that was even possible. I glanced around, looking for a boyfriend or someone she’d brought with her to rough me up. But there was only Stacy.
“Sawyer, listen—”
“I don’t want to hear it.” I started to turn away, and she grabbed my arm again.
“Sawyer, please. Please. It’s not like that.” She hadn’t even explained herself, and yet I felt like I already knew what she was going to say.
“Leave me alone. Okay? Leave me alone.”
“It’s not like that. I’m not trying to get with you.”
“Then what do you want?” I looked around again. Maybe she was here to warn me about someone else. Who that might be, I didn’t know, but this was inherently suspicious.
“I left the rehab center,” she said. “I couldn’t stand it anymore. The doctors just pushed pills and didn’t listen to me, and I had to get out. But Mom and Dad didn’t want me back if I wasn’t getting treatment. I have nowhere to go.”
I raised my eyebrows. “I don’t believe you.” I’d seen her parents bend over backwards for her time and time again and there was little reason to believe that they’d changed their minds all of a sudden. Besides, what did that matter to me?
“I ran them out of money.” Stacy swallowed hard and tucked a piece of brittle hair behind her ear. “I ran them out, and they don’t have anything left. Dad picked up extra hours at work and Mom’s substitute teaching again, and they can get by, but they don’t have anything left. They can’t keep me around.”
I hadn’t considered that. It made some sense that eventually her family would run out of money. Rehab programs were insanely expensive—that was part of the reason I’d joined the military instead of going to one of them. And she’d been in and out of them for some time, not to mention costing them money by stealing and taking what she could get.
“What does this have to do with me?” I crossed my arms.
“I have nowhere to sleep.” Stacy folded her arms, but it only made her look smaller. “I have nowhere to sleep. I’ve been staying around bars, but they’re not letting me do it anymore. I just need to sleep somewhere and then I’ll be fine.”
I set my jaw. I had half a mind to call her parents and ask them if any of this was true. To call Quinn and ask her what I ought to do about this situation. I only wanted some kind of outside opinion, because I didn’t know that I trusted my own empathy.
“One night?” I asked her.
She nodded. Jesus, she looked exhausted. It looked like if a strong wind blew, it might knock her right over.
“Fine.” I started out, and she followed me. I didn’t offer to help her into the car, and she remained completely silent on the way to my house. I couldn’t fight the pounding in my heart. I shouldn’t have been doing this, and a part of me knew this was a bad idea. That Stacy, no matter the context, was a bad idea.
But I couldn’t just let her suffer needlessly. That was shitty, no two ways about it. If she was lying, then she’d gotten a night on my couch out of me. If she wasn’t lying, then she had to live with the fact that I was the one who helped her when no one else would.
When we reached my house, I pointed to the couch. “There’s a blanket on the back,” I said.
“I won’t try anything,” she said.
“Don’t care.” She wasn’t going to sleep in my bed. That was absurd. I grabbed a few of the valuable things laying around, but I didn’t own much she could snatch and run with anyway. I went to my bedroom and decided on leaving it open. If she moved, I wanted to be able to hear it and react.