Throwing my purse, phone, and boots onto the conveyor belt, I whisked through the metal detector. I breathed a sigh of relief when it didn’t beep. Last time I’d flown, I’d forgotten to take off my chunky sterling silver necklace and I’d had to endure an intense “pat down” from one very eager, very young male agent. I’d been the high point to his day as he’d been the low point to mine.
Snatching my belongings at the end of the conveyor belt, I heard it.
Well, I heard him.
“Lucy!”
My head snapped up. I couldn’t see him yet, but I could hear him like he was standing in front of me. The agents and others around me stopped what they were doing to look too.
“Lucy!” This time closer as Jude emerged from around the corner, in a full sprint, bare foot and a hospital gown streaming around him. His eyes latched onto me like they were trained to find nothing else.
“Lucy!” he repeated, charging the security gates. TSA agents were popping up in their seats, looking between one another.
He didn’t stop sprinting, taking out one, then two rows of nylon people-herders. He didn’t stop until a couple of large agents tackled into him.
My hands covered my mouth as the guards stopped him, each one grabbing an arm of Jude’s and throwing it behind his back. Jude didn’t fight back, or maybe he couldn’t; he just stared at me with those dark eyes, pleading with me to stay.
“You can’t leave, Luce!” he hollered, resisting the guards as they tried to remove him from the security area.
“I’m just going away for a little while,” I said, sure he couldn’t hear me since I couldn’t manage more than a whisper. “I’ll be back. I promise.” With an answer that would decide the fate of our relationship.
“You can’t leave me,” he said, his voice breaking, his face following as the guards pulled him away. Successfully this time. “You can’t leave me,” he said one last time, defeated.
I don’t know what was worse: watching Jude give up and be drug away or turning away and heading for my gate.
Both ate at me until, by the time my plane landed in Arizona, I wasn’t sure if anything was left of the old Lucy Larson.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Christmas came and went without me so much as noticing. Well, I noticed. You couldn’t help but notice when your entire extended family showed up to Christmas Eve decked out in some variety of red and green plaid, stripe, check, or polka dot Christmas sweater, flashing with lights and tinkling with bells. The ugly Christmas sweater was a new tradition, and one that I hoped died off with the department store sales that sold those monstrosities. Two hours into the Larson family shin-dig, everyone save for me was on an express train to Drunkville. Me, the only teenager there, was as sober as a nun about to take her vows.
Life didn’t make sense any more. I was about to stop trying to make sense of it in the first place.
I curled up in Grandpa’s old recliner, staring out at the cacti twinkling with Christmas lights, trying to imagine what Jude was doing at that exact minute. Experiencing a moment of weakness, I slipped my phone out of my pocket and typed, “Merry Christmas. XXX&O” and pressed send before I could rethink it. I waited up most of the night, checking my screen to make sure he hadn’t replied.
He never did.
Finding myself unable to sleep yet again New Year’s Day morning, I zombie walked into the kitchen, beelining for the coffee pot.
“And I thought I was the insomniac in the family.”
I didn’t even startle, I was that sleep deprived. Mom rose from her chair at the table and walked over to the cupboard where Grandma kept her coffee cups. Pouring one for me, she added the sugar and cream without asking.
“Thanks,” I yawned as she set the cup in front of my chair.
“You’re welcome,” she said, sitting back down and watching me, like she was waiting for something.
Too early to know what exactly, and with my mom, nothing was ever as it seemed. She might be waiting for me to share my every goal and dream with her just as much as she might be about to tell me that swept off the face hair style I’d been favoring lately wasn’t a good look for my heart-shaped face.
I’d burned through half a cup of coffee before she cleared her throat.
“So I’m officially done waiting for you to open up about whatever has got you so down you can’t possibly get any lower,” she said, setting her cup down on the table. “What’s going on with you, Lucille? I know it has something to do with you and Jude, I just can’t figure out what it is.”
I cringed first over her use of my given name and winced when she said Jude’s name. Even his name hurt me to hear.
I sighed, taking a deep chug of coffee before setting it down.
“I’m not sure if we’re supposed to be together,” I said, offering nothing else. This was, at the crux of all my concerns, the cornerstone.
My mom nodded her head, taking a few moments to think before replying. “You’re not sure if you’re supposed to be together, or if you shouldn’t be together?”
My brain wasn’t working well enough to have these kinds of conversations. “Is there a difference?”
“Of course,” she said, cinching the rope of her new bathrobe tighter. “To suppose is to assume. Should is an entirely different beast. Should implies duty and obligation. It’s a period where suppose is a question mark,” she said, watching me across the table. “So yeah, there’s a difference.”