by Piper Lennox
When she finally hops out, panting and dripping with leftover lake water, I nod at the hobo bindle she fashioned from the soaked bed sheet that once graced my mattress. “Find yourself lots of shiny stuff, crow?”
“I did,” she says seriously, and hefts the bag over her shoulder Santa-style, traipsing to her vehicle. Glad to see she’s so upbeat in the wake of this destruction. I watch her walk away like it’s a private show.
Damn, this is going to be a long trip.
I don’t know which is stronger: my dread over enduring her hippie-fairy crap all the way to Uncle Gil’s summer house...or the urge to do things to her that old Guard Dog Van never would’ve dreamed of doing.
All right: he dreamed it a few times. A lot, in fact. But keeping her safe always outweighed that.
Now? Dog Van is as dead as my real van, and I have no such priority.
So stop thinking with your dick. This thought might as well be Dad’s voice on a tape recorder, he’s said it to me so often. I really wish it would stick.
The tow guy asks for my address. I tell him it’s now strapped to the back of his truck, ready to get squashed into a cube.
“Billing address,” he clarifies. “Just need someplace to send an invoice.”
“Oh.” Duh. As with most things in life, it all boils down to money.
I look at Juniper’s vehicle. She might treat it like a house, but I doubt the post office does.
“Here.” I write down Wes’s apartment in Brooklyn, where I used to live. He’ll pass the bill on to me at some point, and I’ll just pass it right into Juniper’s apparently eager hands.
Her whole “balance out the universe” thing is a laugh. They say karma’s a bitch, but they also say life ain’t fair. You can’t have it both ways. And I’ve seen the latter win way too many times to place my bets anywhere else.
Still—if it gets me some equipment to use, consistent internet, and a decent place to sleep? I’ll let her chauffeur me around a while.
“Welcome to your new home.” Juniper throws open the door with a flourish. I climb in. No contest, it’s a thousand times better than the setup I had.
“Damn. Bathroom and everything. Why’s the sink on the back of the toilet tank like that, though?”
Oblivious to basic physics, or the fact I don’t want her up against me (my dick does, but I think we’ve made it pretty clear it’s not allowed to make decisions anymore), she wedges herself between the bathroom door and my hip.
“I’ve got a tank with clean water for the tap so you can wash your hands, brush your teeth, whatever. And once it’s used, that’s called gray water. Most people collect it into its own tank and dump it, but I decided it made more sense for it to go into the toilet.”
“Wow.”
“I know! Cool, right?”
“No, I meant, wow, that’s a lot of words when you could’ve said, ‘The sink fills the toilet.’”
“We weren’t all gifted with your brevity,” she sighs, slipping behind me again.
I take in the rest. Not only is this way bigger than what I had, she’s made better use of the space: cabinetry to match the white siding, custom storage under her bed, swivel seats, and a small kitchen across from the bathroom. There’s even some weird little hammock chair in the corner, behind the driver’s seat.
All her equipment is set up in an inset shelf at the foot of her bed. I hop up and inspect it.
“Like I said,” she chimes, “use whatever you need.”
Even you?
I nod and fuck around with the Canon while she rattles through the mini-fridge. As soon as I aim it at the ceiling, I scoff. How’d I miss all these damn fairy lights when I walked in?
“You do this yourself?” I ask, flicking a bulb and recording its shudder with the camera’s impressive ultra-zoom.
“Yeah,” she says proudly, unaware that I was making fun of her, and only referring to the lights. “I mean, I had a company do the cabinetry and plumbing stuff, but the plans and décor and all this paneling? That was me.”
I turn off the camera and set it back on its shelf. Smart: every ledge has a black bungee cord across it, so stuff won’t fall. Should’ve thought of that when I had twelve-packs of soda rolling around my living quarters. “Must’ve cost a lot.”
“Not too much, considering I’ve lived in it about five years.” Thinking a moment, she shrugs. “Nineteen grand total, I think? Transit included.”
“Where’d you get that kind of money? Rob more well-meaning widowers in the dead of night?” I lie back on her bed.
Nope. Bad idea. The whole thing smells like her.
When I sit up, Juniper gives me two things: a dark stare, and string cheese.
“Eat this before you take your antibiotics.”
“My own driver and a personal nurse? Such luxury.” I eat the string cheese like an animal, biting right in while she peels hers into threads. The air conditioner—thank fuck there’s an air conditioner—kicks on overhead, and I spend a good ten minutes just standing in front of it while Juniper readies everything for travel.
“And...there.”
I look down. She’s spread out the junk she grabbed from my car, in front of a cubby that houses a combo washer-dryer. Thank an even mightier, all-knowing fuck I’ll have access to one of those now. I’ve been hand-washing all my clothes in a bucket like a pioneer woman. Except I truly suck at it.
Juniper double-takes. “Is that okay?”
“What?” I toe the stuff she grabbed: four belt buckles I don’t really care about, two combs, and a Power Rangers action figure that used to dangle from the rearview. “That you picked through my waterlogged crap?”
“That I’m washing your clothes.” Laughing, she raps her knuckles on the washer-dryer door.
“You saved my clothes?”
“I mean, not all of them. A bunch floated off into the lake when we were diving in and grabbing stuff. But between the ones we did get, the ones I found just now, and those”—she nods at my current outfit—“at least you don’t have to run around naked.”
“Lucky for you,” I mutter, because I think my crotch is also in charge of ninety-five percent of my jokes.
While she blushes and busies herself with some other task, I dig through the last bit and laugh.
“You grabbed my money out of the mattress?”
“Tried to. Most of it disintegrated. But if we can get those bills dry, at least you’ll have something. I’ll pay you back for all that, too, by the way.”
The bills are gummy and reek like a dead animal. Whether that’s from my mattress or the lake, I don’t want to know.
I toss the wad of money into the air and watch it hit the bed sheet with a splat. “Yeah, it’s done for.”
“Don’t say that.” She shoos me back and starts dissecting. “Everything’s worth saving.”
“Debatable.”
Through her hair, her gaze meets mine. “Bet you’re glad I saved your clothes. You were just going to let them get hauled off to the junkyard.”
“That was before I knew laundry service was included in this deal.” I slap the top of the washer and stand again. “I am glad, though. I’ve got some decent T-shirts I would’ve missed. This polo isn’t exactly my style.”
“I know,” she sighs, getting to her feet and laying the bills across the countertop. “It was the first thing I found in your size, though, so I just grabbed it and got back to the hospital as fast as I could. Oh, there’s also a duffel bag in that cabinet for you, by the way. If you need it.”
“Wait...you got me these clothes?”
“Who did you think got them?”
My answer sounds stupid, now. It is stupid. Hospitals send you home in sweatpants or scrubs, maybe, if you’ve got nothing else; hell, for all I know they make you sport those assless gowns out of there. But at the time, getting hospital-issued, perfectly-fitting clothes made sense.
Certainly more sense than this.
I’m about to grumble thanks when somethi
ng else she said registers, too. “You dove into the lake with me? When I was trying to save stuff out of the car?”
Juniper hands me a bottled water, then taps the pocket where I stashed my antibiotics. “Hurry up and take those.”
Too baffled to protest, I do as she says.
And while I’m listening so well, the rest of my senses decide to behave: instead of ogling the spot where her shorts disappear, or the cleavage I just can’t believe was under those weird, old-timey clothes she had on when we found her, I stare at her wrist.
She’s got a hospital bracelet, same as mine.
“They admitted you.” I set the water down and jerk her arm closer. Not hard, but fast enough to startle her. She almost spills her water.
Eventually, she swallows the sip she took. “They did.”
I don’t look away from it. “Why?”
“My temperature was low, apparently. And they were worried there was water in my lungs.”
“Was there?”
“No.” Flustered, she explains, “I must have coughed it all up, if there was.”
“When?”
Her arm tenses in my hold, but she doesn’t pull back. Good: I’m not letting go.
“Van.”
“When, Juniper?”
I look up in time to see her in shock that I’m using her actual name, then a reserved eye roll as she says, “Juni. And as for when…it was right after I got you out of the water.”
“You saved my life.”
Her blush returns. “It’s not a big deal. Anyone would’ve done the same thing.”
“It is a big deal.” I let her go, but she leaves her arm hovering between us. “Because that means we’re already even. You don’t owe me a thing.”
Nine
“I do,” I insist, for at least the twentieth time since we left the lake.
According to my GPS, we’ll arrive in the Hamptons after nineteen hours of drive time. The first ten minutes are already mild hell, given that Van looks like he’s about to hop out at every traffic signal.
“Saving my life definitely negates rolling my car into a lake,” he says, “even if I’m still super pissed over it. So you driving me right now? That’s not balancing the universe, or whatever the hell you believe. It’s charity. Look, I’m not owing you for this.”
“You can’t owe me. Driving you places is because I wrecked your car. The clothes I bought you are because half your wardrobe got sucked into the lake. And I’m loaning my equipment to you because I destroyed yours. Eye for an eye.”
“So you take this whole balance idea very literally, then?”
“Not always, no. Sometimes that’s impossible. Like...okay, the money you lost in the lake: I can’t replace it. Not right away. So instead, I’ll buy your food and stuff until I can give you cash.”
I pause and wave an impatient car around me, ignoring Van’s riveting cover of “Life in the Fast Lane.”
“But, yes,” I finish, “I take it literally whenever I can. You saved my life once; now I’ve saved yours. Balance. And now I’ve got to balance out ruining your Sprinter, which means I still owe you. So, please—just make my life a little easier and accept it?”
Hallelujah, he shuts up.
It lasts all of five seconds.
“When the hell did I save your life?”
“Seven years ago. At the ranch.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“You did. I remember.”
Van sucks something from his molars and stares through the windshield. “You weren’t even conscious.”
“I was for some of it, kind of. I don’t remember the details...but I remember you.” The truth tumbles loose in my chest. “You’re the one who helped me first.”
“It’s not like I risked my life to help you. You saving me yesterday was more dangerous. Definitely worth more tickets in your little karma arcade.”
“I’m not just talking about the night I showed up at the ranch, Van. You did actually save my life then, yeah—but you saved it after that, too.”
I’d never seen a computer until I stayed with the Durhams. Tablets, cell phones that weren’t bricks, and iPods were brand-new to me. Mr. Durham bought me one of each, and Van spent my first three days in their house teaching me how to use them.
I liked the iPod best. He filled it with Janis Joplin for me, when I slipped and told him she was my favorite artist—that my mother and I used to listen to her every chance we got.
“Whoa, see? Already remembering stuff.” Van’s grin drowned my fear. So I’d let out one small detail. No problem.
Except that every detail led to more.
“You must remember your mom, if you remember listening to music with her,” he coached at dinner that night. “What was her name? What’s she look like? We can hire a P.I. or something, track her down.”
“I don’t....” My throat closed up.
Truth was, I didn’t know what “P.I.” meant, but I did know finding her was not an option. Not yet.
“Van,” his father scolded, when I feigned a sudden headache and clattered my way out of the dining room. I huddled on the stairs to eavesdrop. “I know you’re just trying to help, but you can’t bombard her like that.”
“She’s remembering more, Dad, I’m telling you. If we just push her a little bit—”
“Her social worker’s setting up psychotherapy. Leave it to the experts, all right? Our job isn’t to prod, it’s to make her feel safe here.”
This, I already knew, was the one thing he could say to make Van back off, even if the effect was temporary. Make her feel safe.
That was all Van ever wanted for me: to keep me happy, and safe. To keep me with him.
I really did cherish his protection, even if his reasons were selfish. One night on their porch, he told me I made him feel real emotions again, when he hadn’t in years.
“Whatever’s been broken in me all this time…I don’t know how, but you’re fixing it.” It was a beautiful, grateful confession.
Another expectation I couldn’t possibly live up to.
It was the main reason I left. I knew I couldn’t be who he needed; I was done striving to fit others’ definitions of who I was, twisting and molding myself to fit into their boxes.
As much as I loved the ranch, and as perfect a new life as it seemed…I knew it was far too close, literally and figuratively, to my old one. I needed to go farther, and I needed to go alone.
But that didn’t mean my heart wasn’t breaking, every last step of the way.
“Your dad told me it was your idea for him to foster me,” I add now, forcing my voice out of its whisper. “And you were the one who taught me about computers, and cell phones—”
“And driving.”
I smile. He doesn’t, but I have a feeling he’s doing it in some way I can’t see.
“Yes,” I say quietly. “And driving.”
We’d only had one lesson, when Van talked Howard into letting us tag along to the farm supply store in his Jeep. Together, they’d nervously led me through the basics until I could cruise across the empty lot without fear.
“Not that I don’t appreciate the dramatic sentiment,” Van says, “but teaching you how to be a normal person wasn’t ‘saving your life.’”
“Yes, it was. I’m not being dramatic. I really mean it. If you hadn’t prepared me for the real world, I never would’ve made it after I left.”
“Which,” he says, voice icing over, “you never had to do. You could have stayed. We wanted you to.”
I’m speechless, but not because this surprises me. It was never a secret the Durhams expected I’d stay until I was eighteen, if not longer. Van used to refer to his private school back in New York as “our school,” and once mentioned us attending college together. His father asked, time and again, if I was excited for “our return” to the city when summer ended.
So hearing Van say this doesn’t shock me into silence.
I just have absolutely no explanation for why I
left. Not one I can give him.
“And I didn’t have to persuade Dad all that much about taking you in,” Van adds suddenly, as I take our first exit. “He’s always had a soft heart.”
So did you, Van Durham-Andresco. You just locked it away and let it freeze.
But I don’t dare say this out loud, because I know the reason why.
She’s staring right back at me in the rearview.
We stop for dinner after three long, breath-held hours.
They weren’t a complete disaster: he argued with me over my music selection, but eventually relented to a crime podcast I had saved on my iPod.
He’d asked if it was the same one his father bought me. After I nodded, he laughed bitterly and folded his arms.
We didn’t speak for hours after that, until I blurted that I was hungry. In response, he pointed to the first exit with food.
Again, not disastrous. Silence was better than a blow-up.
But now that we’re stuck in a booth facing each other, no whirring landscapes and crime stories to distract us, the tension’s unbearable. I’d say it’s like a switch flipped, but maybe I just ignored his side-eyes, sarcasm, and stewing hatred those first few hours.
Or maybe he can bury them, now and then. He’s good at that: going numb. Lots of practice.
“Did you like the podcast?” I ask, after we’ve gotten our drinks. I stuck to water; Van has coffee. The waitress asked how he took it and laughed when he said, “Hot as hell, ma’am.”
He does, in fact, start drinking it as soon as he gets it, without any creamer or time to cool it down. It hurts my throat just to watch, but he stares at me over the rim with unflinching casualness.
“It was okay,” he says, finally.
The mug is half-empty when he sets it down. He pulls his shirt collar over his face and belches.
I smile, playing nice. He mirrors it back, but sarcastically.
As soon as I wet my lips to try some more small talk, he pulls out his phone and stares at it until our food arrives.
You don’t have to make conversation with him, I remind myself. I don’t even have to get along with him.
