Page 25

It’s the first morning I wake up without him.

And the first damned thing I do is roll over to grab him, only to remember I’m not on the fold-out couch at Trey and Cody’s, but on the couch in Juni’s apartment, and instead of grabbing anyone, I just roll straight off of it, crashing to the floor with a grunt.

And I remember he’s gone.

Left yesterday.

The goodbyes are a blur. I was swallowing down everything I felt, putting on a brave front. He was just leaving for a little while, right? He’d be back. He promised.

I just stay on the floor, close my weary-ass eyes, and try to fall back asleep.

Then my phone dings from the coffee table, opening my eyes right back up. I reach up and grab it, almost whacking it onto the floor in the process, and bring the bright-ass thing to my sleepy, squinting eyes.

It’s a text from Bridger.

He has the audacity to ask if I’ve gone on my morning jog yet.

I frown and type out an angry response, then throw my phone aside, roll over, and shut my eyes to sleep.

My phone dings a minute later.

He says he doesn’t care if I was in the middle of a nice dream.

Minutes later, I’m sitting up, back against the couch, texting him about how I’d be far more motivated to continue my morning jogs if he was here to give me a wake-up blowjob first.

He sends back a selfie with his fist in front of his face and his tongue dug into the inside of his cheek, poking it outward like it’s my dick in his mouth.

I crack a smile.

Then reply with a selfie of me rocking my eyes back.

I can practically feel him sitting right next to me as we text, grinning or laughing in that muted, understated way he does from my responses. Y’know, when he’s trying not to laugh because he’s a totally mature grown-up adult man, but can’t help himself.

Then he asks me if I got the gift.

I look up from my phone at the box sitting on a table next to Juni’s vanity.

I tell him I did.

He asks if I opened it.

After a breath, I set the phone down on the couch, rise off of the floor, and bring myself over to the medium-sized box—which I refused to open when it was left for me.

I felt like opening it would be like accepting that he’s gone.

So I didn’t.

I’m playing mind games with myself. Pretending he’s just on a quick trip to Fairview. Or down to the beaches at Dreamwood Isle with Pete for some reason. Kansas is too far, so he’s definitely not there. Why the hell would he go to Kansas other than his family?

Guess same argument can be made about Spruce.

Except I’m what’s here. It’s me . I’m the thing. Ain’t that enough of a reason for him to stay here?

I didn’t even say goodbye. I told him let’s not do goodbyes, not hug it out, not give a kiss that’ll feel like the last kiss I’ll ever give to anyone, ever. Let’s just part ways like we’ve done a couple times over the last few weeks, like it’s no big deal, like we’ll see each other again soon. Denial, denial, denial.

On his way out of town, he swung by and dropped a box off at the front of Juni’s apartment.

This box.

“Fuck it,” I mumble to myself, then tear open the box. It takes more effort than I care to admit. The tape is tight and I just cut my nails a day or two ago. My arms feel like noodles as I give up on removing the tape properly and start yanking randomly at the box from all angles with all my might.

Then it opens at last.

Inside is a single item: his denim jacket.

Is it funny the first thing I notice is how neatly it’s folded? It’s like a bit of Bridger himself is in this box, just in the meticulous, careful way in which this denim jacket sits in here for me.

For me.

I return to my phone to find him having left a text: Keep it safe for me until I’m back, alright?

I’m gnawing on the inside of my lip. Then I text back to him, asking if this is his way of protecting me while he’s gone.

“It’s a totally shitty morning, right?”

I look up, surprised to find Juni at the hallway, her hair a total mess, in nothing but one of her oversized t-shirts, barely covering her thighs. “What’re you doin’ up?” I ask back.

She yawns, picks something out of her eye, and says, “I have no idea. Divine intervention, probably.”

I smile. At least I’ve got Juni.

She didn’t take Pete’s parting as hard as I took Bridger’s. In fact, she hasn’t changed a bit, as if Pete was never here. She’s the same. Even ordered a dress to try out for this coming weekend when we “totally, definitely will be going back to the Saloon”.

But the idea of going back there.

Without Bridger.

What’s the point?

“Wanna go on a mornin’ jog with me?” I ask her.

She wrinkles up her face like I just fed her a sock. “Uh, no. The heck kinda demented question is that?”

Half an hour later, we’re powerwalking down Main Street.

It’s a decent compromise between full-on jogging and doing fuck-all back at the apartment.

“This isn’t so bad,” she decides.

“Helps clear your head,” I insist, parroting what Bridger said to me the first time I jogged with him without complaining. “Gets the day started on the right foot, know what I mean?”

“My butt is gonna be so tight in a week.”

“We can stop when the smoothie place opens and, like, get us some smoothies to take back,” I suggest. “How’s that sound?”

“Ooh, I want a banana strawberry one.”

“We’ll get you all the smoothies, whatever you want.”

“Do you have any jobs lined up today? I think for lunch, we should have ice cream. T&S is open during the day, too, right? I’m craving one of those sprinkly sundaes with the banana on top.”

I give her a funny look. “Ice cream for lunch?”

“What’s it with me and bananas today? I think I miss having Pete’s banana in my mouth. It curves a little,” she lets me know.

“Didn’t need to hear that.”

“Y’know, like a banana,” she goes on. “It was fun to play with a little bit, off and on. I’d play with it, then leave it alone, over and over. Drove him crazy. Called it my little banana. Gosh, I really … I really want a banana now.”

Her walking has slowed. “Uh, Juni?”

And then, here on Main Street, in the dead-center of Spruce, Juniper explodes into tears.

Inconsolable.

Body-trembling.

Howling tears.

Honestly, my first instinct is to throw a blanket over her and tackle her to the damned ground. She’s so loud, people are poking their heads out of stores or rushing to the windows. Even on an early weekday morning, people are around, and Juni’s big show of tears right now has a full-ass audience.

“Juni, Juni, the fuck?” I get right in her face and take hold of her arms. “What’s going on with you? You’re so dang loud, people are thinkin’ I’m tryin’ to mug you or somethin’!”

She sucks in her sobs, at once going quiet, and whispers, “I … I just really … r-really miss Pete.”

I sigh. I guess she didn’t take their departure as well as I had thought. She’s just better at swallowing it all down.

And waiting for an opportune moment to let it all out.

In the middle of goddamned Main Street in front of the town.

“I really miss spanking him,” she then tells me, right back to using her full voice. “He made the cutest moaning noises through his ball gag …”

I clear my throat. “Uh, Juni.”

“And the way his eyes kept telling me ‘ no more! ’ but his moans kept telling me not to stop, and he never ever used the safe word, which is awfully good, because I could never remember it.”

“Juni, you can tell me the rest of it back at the apartment.”

“Okay.” She takes my hand for some reason, and the two of us walk on down the street, hand-in-hand, while all the onlookers decide the scene’s over with and go back to their business. When we pass the smoothie place, it’s open, and Juni helps herself to the biggest size of whatever banana cocktail they can whip up. It does the trick of getting her out of her funk.

It’s while sitting on a patch of grass in Spruce Park to suck down our smoothies that Juni says, “You might not believe it, but my favorite thing about playing around with Pete is what happens afterwards. When he gets this look in his eyes. And I get this weird kinda fluttering feeling in my stomach, like I could just … die.” She smiles into the sky, squinting against the sunlight. “Is it too soon to say I think I might be in love with him?”

I stare down at the smoothie I’ve barely drank half of. A smile spills over my face as I lick the sweet taste off my lips, thinking of Bridger. “Nah,” I say. “Not too soon at all.”

“Anthony, what can you make out of an X, two I’s, three E’s …”

“Alphabet soup,” I answer my mom from the office as I pore over my dad’s work binders, flipping the pages.

“Oh, you and your funny answers.” I hear her cuss to herself—I guess she’s losing her current game, muttering something about having crummy letters—and then: “Do you want to stay for lunch, sweetheart? We’re havin’ hotdogs.”

“Thanks, but I gotta head out once I get what I’m gettin’.”

Her chair creaks as she shifts in it. “What are you gettin’?”

“Dad’s so dang unorganized,” I mutter to myself, shutting one binder and opening the next. “He needs a secretary.”

“Ooh … well, that’s usually me.”

“A secretary that ain’t playin’ Scrabble all the time,” I amend.

There’s noise in the hallway, and then she appears at the door with a scowl. “If you’re implying that I don’t keep this stuff as neat and organized as you think it ought to be because I’m busy playing Scrabble all day long, you’re only half right, I’ll have you know …”

“I’m sure you do plenty,” I mumble, flipping pages so fast, I’m afraid I’ll tear them.

Suddenly her cool hands cover mine, stopping me.

I look up. “What?”

She rubs my hands. “Sweetheart, you’ve been … touchy lately. Is there a reason? You wanna talk about it, maybe?”

My face wrinkles up, prepared to spit some kind of annoyed remark back at her. The next instant, I drop my eyes to the desk. “I’m just goin’ through something.”

“You haven’t been drinking as much.”

I meet her eyes. “Huh?”

“I noticed. Don’t smell any alcohol on you. And your clothes look like you actually washed and ironed them.” She chuckles to herself as she eyeballs my outfit approvingly. “I like some of the changes I’m seein’, though I can understand if it’s a bit hard.”

“What do you mean?”

“You were gettin’ nice n’ close with that young man from out of town, weren’t you?”

And now I’m choking. “What? I … What’d you hear? Huh?”

“Oh, it ain’t no secret, Anthony. Why are you acting like it’s a secret? You two looked so cute together, you and that young man. I saw you out and about one morning a week or two ago with him, jogging around. Dad and I were at the market and saw you.”

“But how does—?” I feel like I’m literally crawling out of my skin trying to form a damned response. “How does me out joggin’ lead to … to thinkin’ I’m keepin’ some big secret from you?”

“Oh, I’ve guessed about it for a while now, ever since the thing that happened between you and Jimmy and Bobby at the movie theater however many years ago. I just had it in my heart and kept it all to myself. Mother’s intuition,” she says with a gentle pat over her heart. “And after seein’ you out with that guy, I just knew, you had found someone to make you happy at last.”

I’ve fallen back, leaning fully on the desk. I wasn’t counting on this conversation occurring today. Or ever. And certainly not in my dad’s musty office filled with binders that are older than I am.

Her cool, soft hand touches my cheek, drawing my eyes back to hers. “And now all of these changes I’m seein’ in you …? I’m so proud of you, sweetheart.” She smiles. “He must be a really good one, that guy.” Her smile breaks. “But now he’s gone back home? Back to wherever he came from? That must be why you’re so sad.”

“I ain’t sad. I’m just …” I drop my eyes back to the desk again. “I’m just … I’m just tryin’ to stay focused is all.”

“Focused on helping out your daddy with the business?”

I sigh at the binders covering the desk. “He don’t even keep proper protocols in here.”

“Protocols? Oh, that nonsense is over here,” she says, letting go of my cheek to fetch a bright orange binder off a shelf, bringing it to the desk. “Protocols out the wazoo. What’s the pest?”

“Opossum.”

She looks at me. “Ohh, now those aren’t really pests , per se …”

“I know. I told Mrs. Pane that, but then she got all fussy about it, and now I’m lookin’ up to see if we even do anything, or if we just call animal control out from Fairview, if there’s a checklist I gotta go through before—”

“Oh, those Panes . Now is the sweet n’ loving opossum causin’ any damage to her property?”

“No.”

“Goin’ through their trash? Livin’ out of their attic?”

“Nope, and nope.”

She sighs. “You know what? I’ll go and talk to her. This sort of thing just needs some direct conversation, woman to woman, and we’ll figure it out, no problem at all.”

“What’s no problem at all?” comes my dad’s voice.

We turn to find him there at the door, hands on his hips, eyes zeroed in on us like we have no business in this room.

Instead of answering his question, I poke a finger at the stack of binders on his desk. “Dad, I dunno how to say it any other way, so I’m just gonna say it how I want, it ain’t 1995. Why is everything written or typed out in these binders like someone’s studyin’ for an exam? You need this in a computer . All a’ this.” I start putting them away one by one back onto the shelves. “And if I might be so bold as to suggest … we need a damned website .”

“We?” He folds his arms and chuckles. “ Now our business is a ‘we’? Our family business?”

“Rupert, he’s trying,” murmurs my mom quietly.

“I can see that. I’m not mad about it,” he grunts despite his tone of voice. He comes in and stops by the desk, watching me continue to file away his clunky binders. “So you think we need a website, huh? Is that Anthony’s big opinion?”

“It’s called movin’ into the next century, and it ain’t some big innovative idea. It’s just obvious. Everything’s online. If we wanna grow our presence n’ compete with the big companies in Fairview, we’ve gotta do more than just shove flyers at people. We can make a social media presence. Expand. Maybe take some business from Fairview, too. I ain’t afraid of ‘em.”

After a second of silence, I look over at my dad, if for no other reason than to check if he’s still breathing. He is. And he’s looking at me with a curious, pensive expression I wasn’t expecting.

“Huh,” he says, looking me over.

I spread my hands. “Huh? Somethin’ wrong with what I said?”

“Can you do that?” he asks, nodding at the binder in my hand. “Put those into a computer? Make a website? All of that?”

I lower the binder to the desk, surprised by his change. Maybe I expected him to argue or just blow me off.

Instead, I’ve got his attention.

It feels nice, being looked up at instead of down. It’s subtle, but I notice the difference. I feel it like an energy coming from my dad. Tone of respect in his voice. Glint of inspiration in his eyes.

He used to look at me like this, way back when.

I think I missed how it feels to be taken seriously.

“Y-Yeah,” I finally answer him. “I could try. Get some help if I can’t figure it out. Cole’s boyfriend is good with computers.”

“That sounds smart, son. Real smart.”

“G-Great,” I mumble.

Then he clears his throat and adds, “And I agree. I think that handsome military fella did you some good while he was here.”

I shoot my eyes back up at him. “What?”

“You should invite him back out to Spruce sometime,” he goes on. “We’ll have him over for dinner. It’s only fair you let us meet your boyfriend before runnin’ off into the sunset with him.”

He takes the binder straight out of my frozen hands.

“Yep,” he confirms to my silent face as he files it, “I overheard a bit from the hallway before coming in. Eavesdroppin’ dad, that’s me, guilty as charged. What’s his name, by the way? Don’t know if I caught that part.”

I swallow hard. “B-Bridger,” I finally manage to say. “His … His name’s Bridger.”

“And when’s he coming back out to Spruce?”

That question brings my eyes back down to the desk. “I’m not really … sure if … if he’s comin’ back or not.”

My dad huffs at that. “Well, if he knows what’s good for him, he better come back, because whatever he’s been doin’ to you, I want him to keep doin’ it to you.”

Does he mean fuck me against ten different mattresses across town?

“I’ll go call Mrs. Pane,” my mom sweetly decides as we share this unexpected father-son bonding moment, her face beaming at us, overjoyed, happier than I’ve seen her in a long time. Until her phone chimes at her and she looks down at it. “ F-O-E-H-N?? What the heck’s a ‘ foehn ’? That ain’t a real word!”