32
JOEL
Instead of getting to Alford by three in the afternoon, we roll in at seven, physically exhausted and starving for real food. Although it only took the Suburban crew fifteen minutes to realize we were no longer following behind them and another twenty minutes for them to find us, we had to wait two hours for roadside service to arrive and change our tire.
Old tire, fixed.
Vic and me? Not fixed.
Not even close. With the crew around us on the side of the road, and then Adrian choosing to ride with us so he could give his back a rest and lay down during the trip into Alford, there wasn’t a private moment to finish our conversation.
While the team sets up camp, I chase down Victoria as she hikes to the camp store. My sister arrives in a half hour, and Victoria and I won’t have the night to clear the air. As she turns down a trail, I call out her name.
She turns with a blank look on her face. I gesture toward the empty playground. She takes a seat on one of the swings, and I plop down in the swing next to hers.
“I was engaged once before,” I say, before losing my nerve.
Victoria sits taller. “Engaged.”
I nod. “It was a decade ago. I was twenty-one, and she was my first . . . everything. I asked her to marry me before I deployed. I thought for sure we’d survive the distance and be together for the rest of our lives. I loved her.” My knuckles turn white, gripping the swing’s chain links to keep my emotions in check. “Then I get a Dear John letter three weeks before I came back from deployment.” I half laugh. “Can you believe that shit? An email to break up with me.” My chest tightens as I come to the part where I’m most ashamed. “I thought that we could get back together when I got home. I returned here—to Alford—with all these high hopes. The first night, I went out with some friends. I hadn’t had a drink in a year and was a total lightweight, and my ex was at the bar, with another guy. Another soldier I knew who stayed back.”
“Shit.” Victoria has turned all the way in her seat.
“It gets worse. I was drunk and pissed. So what do drunk and pissed people do? They beg for trouble.” I glance away for a beat. “I said a couple of things I shouldn’t have. The other guy threw the first punch.” I point to the scar on my cheek. “But I fought back.
“It was forever ago. It doesn’t hurt me now, but I have this scar that reminds me of it every day. You wanted to know what’s going through my head, right? It’s this: sometimes I don’t know what my next step should be. Up to the moment when I got into that fight, I thought I knew what I wanted. But it all changed, and I was helpless to stop it. I decided it would be better to let everybody do what they wanted. It was easier to go with it, and save myself for when it mattered. I made responsible choices, sure, but I learned to stick to people who are true and mine. My family. My work. I seem to be taking the long, scenic route to everything, Vic, and right now, things are going too fast. I can’t keep up.”
“I respect that. But how about other people?”
“I like people. I work with people every day—”
“No. I mean, loving other people, having a significant other. Is that in the cards?” Her voice echoes in the dark. Even the crickets wait for my answer.
But I can’t answer her. At one point I would have undoubtedly said no—no, I didn’t want to have that kind of attachment again. These days, however, I see a glimmer of the joy of it, in the way Vic smiles at me, in the way she reaches out to help everyone around her. But we’re both gunning for the same job. I’ve finally realized what I want in my professional life, and there’s the secret knowledge that Olivia might, in the end, pick me. It’s all ill-timed.
“I get it. What we have is kind of complicating things. Well, ‘ditto.’ ” She puts air-quotes around the word ditto, a sound bite from the movie Ghost, surprising me. I raise my eyes to the outline of her hand, stretched out to me like an olive branch. It has been two days since we’ve touched, and when her warm hand’s in mine, my body relaxes. It folds into itself as if she’d taken the world off my shoulders. She squeezes my hand. “Luke was the worst thing that has ever happened to me, apart from when I lost my mom five years ago. He changed me. I’m more suspicious. More realistic. I thought by seeing him, I’d get the closure I needed. Instead I found out that true closure is acceptance. It’s not about trying to change the past, and it’s definitely not about changing myself, or what I want or deserve.”
Suddenly I feel like every serious conversation we’ve ever had has come down to this one moment. I’ve spent the last ten years avoiding heartbreak in every sense, and it’s protected me. It’s kept my focus on my career, Seth, and my sister.
“What is it you want?” I force the question through my voice box. My body is rigid, expecting her terms and fearing not being able to fulfill them. Because while I want to, I might not be able to.
She lets go of my hand and stands in front of me. Soft fingers on each side of my neck, she brushes a thumb against my cheek. “I jumped into this job, heck to be honest, into your bed in Vegas, because I want to move on. What I want . . . what I want is to feel the way I did before. I want to believe people are good and they mean what they say.
“I want what everyone else in the world wants, Joel: a happily ever after. I want to share my plate, and I won’t be shy about it. But do you?”
The question mutes the entire world around me, and all I notice is Victoria’s hopeful expression. But it’s too hard to answer. There’s too much to consider, and the stakes, the risk . . .
At my silence, her expression changes to sadness. She leans down, gives me a final kiss, and with a swift goodbye, continues toward the camp store.
I bid goodbye to the crew after we set up camp, and head to the front of the campground. My footsteps echo on the asphalt as I follow the poorly lit path, my flashlight’s glow a tiny spotlight on the ground.
I couldn’t get out of there fast enough. While Victoria had reverted back to being polite and cordial when I eventually returned to the campground, there’s no denying that what she gave me was an ultimatum. After she’d systematically drug out the differences between us, she challenged me to step up to the nebulous plate.
And fuck, I can barely think, claustrophobic out in the open air. When I see the headlights of a vehicle driving up to the entrance of the RV campground and the familiar outline of a Jeep Wrangler hard top with its raw engine roar, I release a breath.
“Brother.” Jocelyn greets me with my same grin, the same line that marks the middle of my chin. I lean into the center console and reach around and hug her. She envelops me, and the warmth that seeps into me brings back every memory I have from my childhood up until the age of twenty, when I spent every day with this woman.
“Sister.”
“Ready?”
I snap in my seat belt. “Absolutely.”
She drives me down familiar streets, turns corners that elicit memories from my childhood. I extend my hand out the window and feel the warm air pass through my fingers as we roll by ramblers and ranches, cacti, and open fields. With the mountains in front of us and behind us, the horizon seems pieced together, a view that makes it into the town’s postcards.
We remain silent as we pass by the new housing tracks with long driveways and wide sidewalks, then drive into the older side of town. I sink into the passenger seat, the familiarity relaxing me.
“How are things?” I ask. As if I don’t ask this same question every time we’re on the phone.
“Things are good.” She lifts her shoulder up nonchalantly.
“You sound like you have something up your sleeve.”
“You’ll see.”
“Ooookay.” I gaze out the window as we turn onto our street. Finally, four houses down on the right, I spot our single front porch light. She turns into the carport.
My eyelids narrow at the view in front of the windshield. “What’s all that?” I jump out of the Jeep and approach the blue tarp covering something under the carport. I pull the tarp off. “What’s my desk doing out here?”
“I told you to wait, didn’t I?” She brushes past me and jingles her keys in the lock. “I have a new sitter in here with Seth. If he’s asleep, promise me you won’t wake him. He’s had a long day. We just started soccer season, and he’s always so beat running in this heat.”
Warm lights spill out onto us as the door opens, and the smell of something savory wafts across my senses.
“Is that . . . ?” I’d know that smell anywhere. “Frito pie?”
“The one and only.” A grin sneaks onto her lips.
And when I follow her into the house, I’m shocked into silence.
The living room has brand-new furniture. My black leather couches have been replaced with a brown suede L-shaped sofa. Instead of the glass coffee table, an ottoman sits in front of the couch.
“Joel?”
Finally, I find my voice. “Where’s our stuff?”
“Do you mean, your stuff?”
“Joc.”
She scratches her chin and looks up at the ceiling as if she doesn’t know a damn thing. “Oh, do you mean the stuff you brought over from your bachelor pad when you moved in years ago? Yeah . . . I thought it was time for a little facelift.”
I open my mouth to retort, but a shuffle in the hallway catches my attention. Jocelyn looks behind her. “Hey, Grace, this is my brother, Joel.”
Grace wiggles her fingers. “Hi. Yeah, you look exactly like you do on TV.”
“Well, thank you, I guess?” My eyes slide to where the bookcase I picked up from Ikea a while back used to sit next to the television, and nope, it’s no longer there either.
“You’re welcome.” Grace says, interrupting my thoughts. She turns to my sister. “Seth’s asleep, though he tried to stay up. Have a good night. I’ll be back tomorrow as usual.” She yawns and picks up her backpack from the floor and her keys from the narrow table next to the front door.
The table is new, too.
“Want to eat?” my sister asks when her babysitter closes the door behind her. “I’m starving.”
“No, not until you explain what the hell’s going on. I know you didn’t like my furniture—”
“I hated it. And not only that, it was yours. While I appreciated using it, I think it’s about time I make this place look like I live in it.” She crosses her arms and smiles. “I can explain more, but can we put some of this into our bellies first?”
I resign myself to her request. “Yeah, sure. Why not? Will there be new utensils as well?”
“C’mon, sit.” Jocelyn takes out plates from the cupboard, then slips on a pair of oven mitts.
“I can get it out for you.”
She pulls them out of my reach. “Nope. You’re my guest.”
I slip onto the barstool and lean on my forearms over the small butcher-block kitchen island. “I’m not a guest.”
“Uh-huh.” She grunts, lifting a covered bowl out of the oven and putting it on the stove top. After opening a couple of bags of Fritos into a bowl, she scoops a generous ladle of chili, made with red beans and ground meat, over the chips. It settles in between the Fritos, and I salivate as the smell of the spices reaches the happy places in my brain. She adds the final irresistible toppings: finely cubed onions and pre-shredded cheddar cheese.
She hands me a fork, and yep, it’s new, too.
Jocelyn entwines her fingers together in front of me and, with a knowing look, says, “Go ahead, take a bite.”
I’d eaten granola bars and trail mix all day during our trip down, and it was a boon to have something hot, smooth, and cheesy in my mouth. Victoria comes to mind, her comment about nacho cheese being unhealthy and hard to digest. Would she be down for a Frito pie?
At the thought of her, regret rolls through me. If our relationship now is hard to sort out, what happens if the cross-country gig is given to me? Hell, how will I feel if the tables are turned and it’s awarded to her? Can I be happy for someone else and feel like a complete loser at the same time? Will the attraction remain after one of us is proven to be superior professionally? Will it last after we move back to our sides of the state, to our own professional agendas? The RV is like its own world, the trip a bubble. It’s not real life.
My attention shifts to the food melting in my mouth. The crunch of the chips, the savory heat of the chili, the tang of the onions, and the velvety cheese mix make their way down to my belly in one satisfying swallow. Comfort food is magic. It has a great advantage over stuffy, inaccessible food. Comfort food is meant to be eaten in excess, to feed the soul and the body, to stir up memories one thinks are long gone. So, as I stuff myself, I remember the happy times my sister and I spent at this counter when the house was carpeted in caramel shag and the refrigerator was a yellow-gold. When the ceiling looked like popcorn glued into spiral patterns, and when my parents, though grayhaired and wrinkled, were evergreen and invincible. And when, after they both passed away within a week of each other when Jocelyn was pregnant with Seth, we found their love letters to each other in a rectangular vintage tin hidden in one of these old cupboards.
“Is it good?” Jocelyn asks. Elbows on the counter, she rests her chin in her hands, her plate demolished.
“It’s better than good. It’s exactly what I needed.”
She frowns. “Yeah? What’s up?”
There’s no mincing words with my sister. She can tell when something’s bothering me. There’s also no way I can avoid telling her about Victoria and this job.
After I explain everything, I realize I’ve knocked out two helpings of Frito pie. And my sister’s crying.
“Oh man. Am I that much of a shit?”
She wipes her cheeks. “You’re not a shit. I’m just happy.”
I laugh. “Happy?”
Her face softens. “Yeah. Because finally, finally, you’ve found someone that makes you feel something. So why do you look so worried?”
Unease courses through me. The Frito pie might have filled my belly, but my chest is heavy with the idea of Victoria, of being with Victoria, of losing Victoria. “I don’t know if I can do this.”
“Do what?”
“Get back in the game. At all levels.”
“Dude, you already have,” Jocelyn yells. Her voice echoes through the house, and the force of it hits me in the chest.
“Shhh.” I remind her. Yet, nausea rolls through me and churns everything I’ve eaten and everything I’ve felt the last six days. During this road trip, as short as it’s been, every truth I’ve kept hidden has been drawn out by a woman who seems to want to be a part of it.
Maybe not, after this evening’s conversation.
I’m brought back to the present by the sound of running footsteps. Jocelyn sighs with a grin. “Sorry for waking you, bud.”
I spin and immediately crouch down, and the best eight-year-old on the fucking planet approaches me. Scratch that, he runs toward me, tackling me down to my ass and smothering me with the biggest hug.