Page 126 of Catcher's Lock

“Then tell me what’s got you so quiet.”

“I’m wishing I’d done a better job appreciating the good things. I took so much for granted, growing up the way I did. I know I need to do this, but I can’t help thinking about how when I get out, it will all be over, and I never got to experience everything it could have been.”

“You’re talking about Big Top.”

“Yeah. I just wonder…I think I could have been good at it, if I’d gotten out of my own way and let myself try.”

“I think you can be good at whatever you put your passion to,” I tell him, reaching out to catch his restless fingers and thread them with mine. “And I think we’re young, and it’s never too late to dream.”

42

Contracts

Josha

Age 25 (Three months later)

When I was thirteen years old, I met the love of my life.

Today is my twenty-fifth birthday, and I’m finally taking him home.

Gem walks out the front doors of Cliffside into a September morning wearing a pair of sweatpants that match the misty sky, and the pullover hoodie swathing his torso is one of mine, worn ragged and soft enough to comfort the dead. His hair has grown long enough to start curling at the tips, brushing the tops of his ears and falling over his brow, reminiscent of younger days.

It’s been so long since I’ve seen him in public without his bad-boy armor, and my heart soars at the welcome sight. If he’s letting his softer side show, he must be feeling safer in his skin.

With two feet of distance between us, he stops and shoves his hands in his pockets, lips twitching and eyes alight.

“You came.”

“I came.” An ecstatic grin threatens to break free, but I hold myself still and drink him in, parched after three months of nothing but Tuesday night phone calls. Cliffside allowed visitors only on Saturdays, which were three-show days at Big Top, and we’d never performed close enough to make the drive there and back before first call.

“Keep this up, and I might start to think you love me,” he says, ducking his head to peer at me through his lashes in the way that’s disarmed me ever since we met.

“With my whole heart.”

And then he launches himself into my arms, and it’s all hungry hands and greedy kisses and his legs wrapped around my waist, and everything isjoyandhereandalways.

“Happy birthday,” he says a lifetime later when I finally let him down.

“Best birthday ever,” I tell him, meaning it. “Now let’s go home.”

He scoops his bag from where he dropped it on the concrete and tosses it in the back seat while I circle the cab to climb in behind the wheel. When he settles into the passenger seat, smiling at the orange Tic Tacs waiting in the cup holder, satisfaction blossoms in my limbs.

Whole again.

Neither of us speak as I navigate down the winding drive and back to the highway. We purposely kept our conversations light during our once-a-week calls—the time limit and lack of privacy on his end prohibiting deep conversation. He’d regale me with amusing anecdotes about the other “inmates,” as he called them, and I’d talk about the show.

He told me about his second roommate, who was so obsessed with Taylor Swift that he made the whole floor watch the Eras Tour three nights in a row, and how afterward, whenever one ofthe group would start spinning out, everyone would bust our singing “You Need to Calm Down” until even the counselors got in on the joke.

In turn, I told him how the contortionist burned out the clutch on the 350 after lying about their ability to drive a stick, stranding themselves in Santa Rosa with all the stage curtains and half the set, and he and I laughingly agreed that it didn’t beat our stunt with the box truck.

But now that he’s sitting beside me—back where he belongs—and even though I’d rather keep kissing him, I know it’s time to tackle the harder stuff.

I have everything I’ve ever wanted, so why am I afraid to start?

Catching my mood, he beats me to it.

“They talk a lot about the pitfalls of early recovery during the last couple of weeks before they release you,” he says. “I’m basically an expert on all the ways it can go wrong, but the program did try to arm me with some techniques to give me a better chance of success.”