Page 8

JACK

Great job, assface. Your first day back in civilization, and you forgot all social cues and how to behave properly in a public place. Grunting and one word answers worked with Banjo every Sunday, but they’re not going to work here unless I want people calling the cops on me.

I’m pacing the parking lot of Hey Honey’s, my feet taking me back and forth from the front of my truck to the back, over and over. My body is tight with anxiety and this overwhelming sense of doom, and my neck is on fire with embarrassment.

Marching in there like a complete ass, grunting at the two baristas like a goddamn caveman—what the fuck is wrong with me?

After finally telling the redhead I was looking for Luke, I was told she would tell him I stopped by.

I had every intention of seeing Luke when I walked in—I figured coming here would mark my first stop of seeing everyone I left behind a year and a half ago, starting with Bennett’s brother and ending at my mom’s house tonight to see her and Emerson.

I figured there would be time to stop at the station sometime in between the two to meet with Chief Sanders.

I hadn’t talked to the Chief since that phone call almost a year ago, screening his calls and ignoring his voicemails asking me to call him back.

I thought they’d stop coming after a while, but he was a persistent bastard.

I ended up calling him early this morning when I was on my way back to Milwaukee, leaving him a voicemail that I’d be stopping by the station.

I know there’s a low chance he still has a position available for me—specifically one that doesn't involve going into the field—seeing as the one he had for me last year was because of a temporary paternity leave, but I’ve been gone long enough.

It’s been a year since I tried coming home the first time, and it was safe to say that went like complete shit.

It’s time to suck it up, stop feeling sorry for myself, get my job back, and put my life back together.

This last year helped me bury all those feelings that would come up whenever I would think about what happened to Bennett.

I can’t say I’ve come to terms with anything or accepted it—I know that day will never come—but I’ve learned to live with the loss and the guilt I have.

It’s always there, lingering in the back of my mind, but I’ve learned to ignore it.

It rarely comes up anymore.

Not since that night on the side of the road when I helped her .

The her that always finds a way back into my head. The water in her eyes, the same color of calmness I find on the lake.

And eyes that looked alarmingly similar to the girl working in my dead best friend’s brother’s coffee shop.

With the baby against her chest, the redhead had most of my attention when I walked in—or at least the attention that wasn’t stuck on finding Luke, not thinking about how it’s been since I was last here and who knows what’s changed.

It wasn’t until the other barista was trying to hide her laugh at me when I forgot how to speak in complete sentences that I noticed her.

Her brown waves, twisted into a messy braid, were so dark I almost thought they were black.

If it weren’t for the sunlight coming through the windows, I wouldn’t have noticed the streaks of caramel framing her face.

The slight blush to her cheeks when we made eye contact was enough to bring a man to his knees, the soft smile she was trying to hide on her face was something I didn’t know I needed to see.

Then something shifted between us.

A magnetic pull of some sort, a need for me to be closer to her. And when she leaned forward, her eyes closing as if she was trying to see something hidden behind her lids, my body moved on its own. It was a foreign feeling, considering I haven't even wanted to look at another human in over a year.

And then she opened her eyes.

I didn’t want to let myself believe what my brain already knew to be true.

It’s her.

It’s Rumi.

I’d recognize those eyes anywhere. Aside from being on the boat and marveling at the lake, that shade of blue is the only thing that has brought me any sense of peace the last year.

Telling myself that she made it to the hospital; that she had her baby; that she made it to wherever she was fleeing to in the middle of the night.

It’s what got me through this last year.

I couldn’t save Bennett, but I could save Rumi.

And now, the universe wants to fuck with me right when I sort of have my bearings and place her right in my path—constantly presenting me with the shit I try to keep behind me.

When she took the baby from the redhead, I knew it was hers. I didn’t see the baby’s face, but I just knew she was Rumi’s. It was in the way the baby melted against her as if it was second nature; it was the way that Rumi instantly relaxed when the little girl was in her arms.

I’m not used to babies. Not used to being around them, and they usually make me uncomfortable.

It’s not any fault of the babies—it’s a me thing.

I’m not a small guy; I was six feet tall by the time I was 16, now standing at least five inches taller than that in my 36 years.

The gym has always been a second home to me—aside from the last 15 months I’ve stuck to running and cutting wood—so the words “gentle” or “soft” have never been words to describe me.

But the way she held her daughter to her chest, made my whole body feel warm—not clammy and feverish like I’m used to, but as if my body was wrapped around hers, mixed with the conflicting yet conceivable feeling of protectiveness and safety that faded as quickly as it appeared when her eyes met mine.

That’s when I knew that she didn’t remember anything from that accident—she was barely conscious when the paramedics loaded her in the rig.

Uneasiness, distrust, maybe even fear—that’s what I saw when she looked at me, no evidence of recognition.

At least she’s alive. She’s safe. And hopefully, she’s happy.

And she better not be alone.

A flare of possessiveness wracks through me, hoping that whatever asshole left her alone in the first place didn’t come crawling back—that she found someone better, someone to take care of her and her daughter.

Not that I have any right to feel that way.

My phone vibrating in my pocket halts my pacing and my thoughts about Rumi, the lack of ringing a relief I didn’t know something so small could give me.

I see Luke’s name across the top, not surprised that his employees called him right after a strange man ran into the coffee shop, weirding them out enough to call their boss.

“Hey,” I say into the phone, my neck feeling warm as the second wave of embarrassment passes through me this morning.

“Jack?” Luke says into the phone, as if he wasn’t the one to call me. “I haven’t seen, let alone heard from you, in over a year, and the first thing you do barge into my coffee shop like you’re about to rob my baristas?”

If I didn’t know Luke, I may actually think he’s pissed at me, but I’ve known the Owens brothers since we were kids, Luke being just a few years younger than Bennett and me, and I know that tone in his voice.

He’s not mad; he’s amused.

“I was looking for you,” I answer, ignoring the smirk that I can’t see but am sure is on his face.

Luke is a spitting image of Bennett. With blonder hair and lighter eyes, he’s the human equivalent of a golden retriever.

I didn’t know he had a serious bone in his body until he surprised both Bennett and me, taking charge of his own life—standing up against their asshole of a father—and opening up his own business instead of joining his father’s law firm.

I also didn’t think he was capable of anything aside from his usual happy-go-lucky demeanor until I watched him lose his brother.

Not that I actually stuck around here long enough to see much.

I haven’t laid eyes on Luke since Bennett’s funeral over a year and a half ago—when he punched that asshole of a father in the face for taking a phone call during the service.

I couldn’t even muster up the strength to go to the ribbon cutting ceremony of the coffee shop he opened on Bennett’s birthday—I was already holed up in my grandpa’s cabin with no intent of coming back.

He says something, but I don’t register it at first, my heart skipping a beat at the resemblance his voice has to Bennett’s. A beat of silence passes between us.

“You there?” Luke asks.

Before I let the grief take hold, I push it back into the corner of my mind where it belongs.

“Yeah, I’m here.” I clear my throat, coughing into my fist. My feet start pacing the length of my truck again, needing to do something with this uncomfortable uneasiness coating my skin.

“I’m back in town, and I thought I would stop by. ”

“I was surprised to hear you’re back, from Ava no less,” he replies, giving a name to the redhead who looked like she wanted to bite my head off when I couldn’t take my eyes off her co-worker.

“Yeah,” I start, not really sure what else to say—I didn’t think past getting a hold of Luke, and now that I have my phone to my ear, and I don’t know where to go from here.

“You’re going to tell me why you ran into my coffee shop like a bat out of hell? Or, are we going to pretend that’s normal?”

I can’t help the chuckle that escapes my throat, the noise so foreign in my ears—I can’t remember the last time I found something funny, let alone laughed. “Maybe I was looking for a cup of coffee.”

“We both know you’d pick an energy drink over a cup of coffee any day.”

My lips curl with something resembling a smile—the muscles feeling tight from lack of use. “Maybe I wanted to see if the hard work I put into that place paid off.”

Once the words leave my mouth, it dawns on me I didn’t even take the time to look at the space Luke created. Bennett and I helped him with the renovations in the months before opening. The realization that the last time I was here I was with Bennett hits me like a truck.

Even though he can’t see me, Luke picks up on the thoughts going through my brain—I’m sure he’s no stranger to how grief kicks your knees in when you think you have it under control.

I take in a deep breath and exhale in an attempt to recenter myself. “I decided I was done hiding,” I say. “It was time to come home and deal with everything.”

I don’t have to explain what everything is, not to Luke who had to deal with the loss of Bennett too. While Bennett was my best friend, he was Luke’s brother.

“And when you say deal, you mean what exactly?” he asks, and I can hear the apprehensiveness in his voice.

“I mean, get back to reality,” I answer, and I hope it’s the right one. The one that he’ll accept and not dwell on.

“Sure,” Luke says, stretching out the word, and I can basically hear the way he doesn’t believe me in his voice. “And by get back to reality, you me?—”

“I’m fine,” I cut him off, feeling defensive all of a sudden.

I’ve spent the last year trying to get to a place where I can think of Bennett and what happened to him without plummeting into what I accepted as a panic attack—I have trauma response training as a firefighter, but it is much harder to recognize the signs in yourself than it is with others.

What happened on the side of the road, when I heard the sirens of the ambulance while I was holding an unconscious pregnant woman in the middle of the night, was a panic attack—and I refuse to let that happen ever again.

“If it quacks like a duck, right?” Luke says after a moment.

“What?”

“If it looks like a duck, acts like a duck, quacks like a duck, then it’s probably a duck.” He answers as if I’m the one not making any sense.

“I don’t know how to talk to you when you say stupid shit.”

Luke sighs dramatically on the other end of the call, and I almost move the phone speaker away from my ear.

“What I’m saying is, it sounds like you believe that if you keep saying you’re fine, that you’ll actually be fine.”

“You’re still saying stupid shit.”

Another sigh, and I’m reminded of all the other times in my life when Luke wasn’t just Bennett’s annoying little brother, but mine too.

“It’s not my fault you can’t understand the idiom.”

“Fuck your idioms,” I fire back.

Luke’s laughter echoes in my ear. “I’m glad you're back, man.”