by K. L Randis
There was enough reason for Jared to be careful about drug dealing previously: Lacey, a free place to live, no consequences to his future. He was starting to realize the endless possibilities of his own self-destructive actions, because if he didn’t care about anything then there was no reason to not jump feet first into the world of drugs again. He didn’t have to use them, but he could pull out all the stops and take risks that no one else would if they had reservations about getting caught. Even if he landed back in prison, maybe he could join the ranks of the dealers on the inside. At least his rent and food would be free.
There was only sliced turkey in the fridge so Jared pulled out the mayonnaise and lettuce to make a sandwich. He spotted a note lying on the counter between Tina’s past due cell phone bill and a half eaten omelet she made that morning:
Jared,
Make sure you’re dressed when I get home, double date with my best friend and her guy tonight, wear that striped button down? Dinner is at 7.
Love you, Tina
“Ohhh, you have to be kidding me,” Jared moaned. He pushed the note to the side and tapped on the front of the flip phone in front of him. “Come on Dex, call me so I have a reason to get out of this.”
He almost bit his tongue when the phone went off two minutes later, blaring a ringtone that was both annoying and catchy. The turkey wouldn’t cooperate so he spit the mouthful into a napkin.
“Yeah? Yeah, I’m here,” Jared said.
“I know,” Dex said, “I’d like to know if you’ve considered the Park Ranger position I’ve offered you?”
Jared smiled. He missed the language, the code names and roundabouts. At times he could have an entire conversation in front of his parents about how many pills, what kind and where to bring them as though he was talking to a friend about meeting up at the mall.
“Yeah, I’ll take it.”
“I knew you would. You’ll start Monday, I’ll take care of the paperwork and such. There are two trails you will be responsible for monitoring in the park, you remember our discussion about your exclusive access?”
“I remember,” Jared said, chewing on a straw, “how will I know where to uh, do my rounds?”
“We will have a face to face meeting to discuss that. In the meantime I’d suggest you gather some clothing to accommodate your working conditions. Hiking sneakers and knee-high rain boots would be ideal, some sweatshirts and long sleeved clothing should also be on your list, the mosquitoes have been known to be bullies. As always, we value our employees, so your expenses will be paid for in full, just check your mailbox in the next day or so.”
“Mmmk boss, anything else I’ll need to know?”
“Not at this time. Best,” Dex said, hanging up the phone.
“Odd way to end a call,” Jared said, slipping the flip phone into his pocket and checking his watch. Tina would be home in about two hours. The remains of the turkey sandwich slid into the garbage as he made his way toward the shower. He took his time shaving and standing under the assault of droplets pouring from the showerhead. The creaky front door told Jared that Tina was home a short time later.
“Hun? I’m home, you ready? I’m running late.” He could hear Tina setting her keys down on the kitchen counter. He rounded the corner to the living room to meet her.
He watched her bend over, her back to him, to remove her flats. Tracing her spine to the bottom of the dress she was wearing he realized that he never really gave Tina a fighting chance to knock down his walls. She was a fun time, a lover, but never a best friend or partner. Part of that was Jared’s inability to let someone get that close to him. There was too much loss in his life already to add any additional layers to that kind of pain. Maybe it was time he learned to love her in a deeper way.
“I’m not going to shower I just want to change. Do you think—”
“What?” Jared said, catching her glance and recognizing it instantly.
“You look great,” she said, “I love that shirt on you. You cut your hair?”
“Yeah,” he said, running his hands through his locks, “figured I didn’t want to scare your friends away.”
“Good idea,” she said, making her way across the room and putting her hands around his waist. “You want to make a detour to the bedroom before we go?”
“Do we have time?”
Tina checked her phone. “Actually no, I don’t want to keep them waiting. We can make it an early night though, make sure we get home before ten.” She kissed him. “Sound okay to you?”
“Sounds perfect. Let’s go, the earlier we show up the earlier we can leave.”
Brodheadsville was limited in terms of dining but it was always a safe bet to go to MaMa Pesto’s, a small Italian eatery, just North of Route 209. Jared took Tina there a few times when they first started dating and he grabbed her hand, caressing her thumb as they backed out of the driveway headed towards town.
“I think you’ll have a good time tonight, I’m excited for you to meet my friends. We hung out a lot while you were away,” Tina said, stopping at a red light.
“What’s her name anyway?” Jared asked.
“Oh! I love this song!” The conversation came to abrupt halt as Tina reached for the volume and pitched her voice to match the singer.
Jared smiled. There were obvious hurdles he would need to face; trying to fall back into a routine with his girlfriend was just the tip of the iceberg. He was content for the first time in a while, watching Tina push her sunglasses back onto the bridge of her nose while she sang to the windshield.
The parking lot was deserted as they cruised into a graveled spot at MaMa Pesto’s. They missed happy hour and were too early for the late night drinkers to frequent the bar that was attached to the main dining area. It would make for a quiet dinner and an early night.
Jared held the door open as Tina clicked past him adjusting the scarf around her neck. The smell of her perfume lingered as he smiled hearing her greet her friend, “Oh you look great! I can’t wait for you to meet my boyfriend, Hailey.”
Tina had disappeared behind a decorative column just inside the doorway when the name Hailey forced Jared to snap his head in her direction. It was a common reaction even though years of looking to match the familiar face with the name was futile. He would always be disappointed, in a way, to see a face that didn’t mirror the striking beauty of the Hailey he had known so many years ago.
Tonight was different.
“Jared?” Hailey’s tone was surprised, but cold. The sudden appearance of someone she was least expecting was obvious in her body language. She stepped backward, ever so slightly, and her eyes widened to a degree that frightened Tina.
Tina pressed Jared with her eyes, and then moved back to Hailey. “Jared, do you and Hailey know each other?” She puckered her lips, confusion washing over her face.
Jared was immobile. He was suddenly sixteen years old, staring into the face of a woman he’d lost so long ago and only dreamed of since then. He searched her face for answers, pausing briefly over the scar above her left eyebrow. It was her.
“No,” Jared said.
“Kind of,” Hailey gushed at the same time, causing them both to flush.
“I mean, before we did, for a little,” Jared lied. How do you tell your girlfriend that you’re looking into the face of a woman who you’d lost your virginity to? That she was the only one he’d ever said out loud that he loved and meant it?
“Before?” Tina laughed uncomfortably, digging for an explanation. “So you remember her from school then?”
The distraction from the tension was welcomed. “Yes. Yeah, I mean.” Jared coughed into his hand, looking away and trying to calm his pulsating heart. “From school is where we know each other.”
“School. Yup,” Hailey said. She transfixed on Jared. She knew moving back from Florida would eventually lead to meeting him again, she just had no idea that the only person she’d managed to become friends with since returning would be dating him.
&nb
sp; Hailey knew of several boyfriends that Tina had introduced her to over the past few months. There was Billy, Michael, Jake, and Robbie. There was never a mention of a ‘Jared’ though, especially the Jared. She caught Tina’s gaze just long enough to watch her put her pointer finger up to her lips, her cat-like eyes telling Hailey to keep their little secret.
Hailey had spent the first few months lingering around all of the old popular hangouts when she first moved back. There were excessive trips to the supermarket in hopes of running into Jared. She even thought about creating a Facebook account just to see if any of their mutual friends were still around or knew where to find him. She didn’t want the drama though.
Then she saw his name in the paper about Lacey’s death and it sent her into a downward spiral. She cut her hair, binged on every carb she could get her hands on and vowed to move back to Florida after she banked two paychecks to buy the plane ticket. After buying the ticket she went to MaMa Pesto’s to drown her decision in alcohol. That’s where she met Matt.
“Matt,” said the tall light-haired man maneuvering around Hailey, “nice to finally meet you, Tina sure does have great things to say about you.”
“Matt. Right.” Jared shook his hand, noticing the white and turquoise jacket gripped in his left hand. They were a couple.
“So should we sit down or have a high school reunion in the doorway?” Tina asked, moving towards a table.
Dinner was numbing and Jared tried to think of ways get Hailey alone. The bar was so barren that their conversation would carry throughout the dining area anyway. There were barely audible Italian love songs playing in the background with Tina and Matt’s chatter to fill the space between Hailey and Jared darting subjective glances at each other. Nine o’clock came and went and Jared knew it would only be a matter of time before Tina tried to coax him home.
Hailey timed it perfectly. Just as the waitress placed the next Long Island in front of Matt she made her move. “I need a cigarette,” she said, pushing her chair away from the table, “I’ll be back in a few.”
“You smoke? Since when?” Jared said, unaware of his condescending tone.
Hailey rolled her eyes and continued toward the back door.
“Jared! What do you care?” Tina asked, laughing in Matt’s direction.
“I don’t. I’ll go with her.”
“You don’t smoke either.”
“I know. Uh, fresh air. I ate too much I think.” He hurried through the back door before Tina could protest.
Hailey had her back against him when he sauntered onto the deck just outside the door. There were so many times he rehearsed what to say if he ever saw her again. Her shoulder blades pierced through the back of her cotton t-shirt and he noticed the goose bumps masking her arm as she brought her hand to her mouth, a plume of smoke rising and then kissing the nape of her neck.
“Hey,” he said.
Hailey didn’t move. She wondered if she kept her back to him long enough if he would just disappear like she had when they were seventeen. Two years had passed since her aspirations of bumping into Jared were ripped from her.
The newspaper mentioned that Lacey’s death was Jared’s fault because of drugs. It didn’t sound like the Jared she remembered. She hated him for such a long time after reading those articles. She had almost forgotten about him, again, when out of nowhere he shows up to dinner with her best friend?
The thought of moving back to Pennsylvania after college to reconnect with Jared was a long shot but she couldn’t live with herself if she didn’t at least try. When she boarded the plane, clutching her one-way ticket, she could only imagine his arms around her while he whispered sweet things to her. She was seventeen again on that flight, daydreaming about how he would somehow catch wind of her moving back and meet her at the airport, swooping her around in a circle when they saw each other for the first time since high school and never letting each other go.
All of that was crushed when she picked up a newspaper weeks after landing.
“I didn’t know you were Tina’s boyfriend, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Hailey said finally, crushing her butt into the ground before turning to meet Jared’s gaze.
Those eyes.
“I wasn’t thinking that,” Jared replied honestly.
“Then what are you thinking?”
“When did you—I mean—How long have you lived around here? All this time I didn’t know where you ran off to.”
“Ran off? You think I ran off?”
“Did you? I don’t know. I didn’t know anything. Your phone was shut off. Your house was empty. It was like…” Jared trailed off.
He remembered showing up to her house in the middle of summer to pick her up. They had planned to go to Virginia Beach for a few days, both of them lying to their parents that they would be traveling with other friends. Hailey didn’t answer her phone for almost four days before the trip and Jared thought it was because she had figured out he was going to propose to her. When he showed up to her house it was empty. Their cars and belongings were gone; it was like they never existed. At least that’s what he tried to tell himself after looking for her for two years. Maybe she never existed at all and it was all just a dream.
She was a dream, standing in front of him. She was far from perfect; the little scar above her eyebrow she got from crashing his four wheeler, blotches of red that masked her cheeks from being too pale and too cold at the same time, they were evidence. Hailey was perfect for him though. He had felt it in his bones the moment he kissed her beneath the bleachers during the junior varsity football game. He held onto that feeling long after she was gone, waiting for it to come back and jolt him into the life he wanted with her. It never came.
“You never came back, why now?” Jared pressed
“I was looking for something,” Hailey said, looking past his shoulder and into the sky. “I thought I’d find it here.”
“Did you?” He hoped she didn’t mean Matt.
“It’s not that simple.”
“Seemed simple enough for you to leave.”
“I didn’t leave, my dad moved me. I didn’t have a choice.”
“Why would he do that to you? His job was more important? You couldn’t call or write?”
“I didn’t have a choice!”
“You did! Why couldn’t you—”
Jared’s ringtone blared through his jeans. Hailey watched him check his front pocket where his cell phone was, then he changed his mind, pushing his fist into his back pocket and pulling another cell phone from out of no where. It was a cheap prepaid phone. She wondered what he did for work that would require him to have two phones.
“Yeah?” Jared said, followed by a few minutes of silence as he half listened.
Hailey watched him study her while he listened, running his eyes over her bangs and eyelashes, undressing her with a stare she had loved when she was seventeen. He paused over the pearl earrings that dangled from her earlobes. Did he know they were they the ones he bought her?
“Now? Does it need to be tonight?” Jared sighed into the phone, silently cursing as he replied, “All right, I’ll be there in twenty.”
Hailey was thankful for the interruption but Jared seemed bothered as he dropped the phone into his back pocket again.
“That was work, I need to leave in a few.”
“You got a job? When?” Tina’s voice cut in. She appeared suddenly, catching them both off guard amidst their heated conversation.
Hailey almost laughed at his expression as he answered her. “Oh uh, today. It’s just a Park Ranger position, security stuff, no big deal. I meant to tell you over dinner but I got distracted.”
That’s an understatement, Hailey thought.
“That’s great honey! Oh I’m so proud of you,” Tina said, throwing her arms around his neck and kissing his cheek from his ear to his lips. “I knew you’d find something.”
Jared was torn. He watched Hailey flinch as Tina threw herself at him.
“Yeah, I need to go though. Boss man needs me.”
“Now?” Tina said, her tone changing. “We just ordered more drinks. Can’t it wait until tomorrow?”
“It can’t. Some things aren’t worth waiting around for,” Jared said, the hurt in his voice exposed. Turning to Hailey he extended his hand, “It was nice to meet you.”
Tina couldn’t help but notice Hailey’s face at the remark. Her tongue caressed the bottom of her front teeth, threatening to say something. It seemed like she had to force a smile and nod as she welcomed Jared’s hand into hers, shaking it hastily and throwing it down.
“Likewise,” she replied.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Dex lived down a pothole-riddled dirt road that was swallowed behind acres of farm in Kresgeville. When the brush cleared enough that a house came into focus Jared was initially unimpressed. The farmhouse had sun-faded shutters and a wrap around porch that flaked as he slid his hand along the banister. The crickets screamed their lullaby and the lone light bulb hanging pathetically above the warped front door was barely enough for Jared to see the face of the woman who appeared when he knocked.
“You Jared?” Nicole asked, pushing a strand of oily hair that had stuck to her forehead.
Her face was long, like a horse, and he regretted staring at her teeth for too long. They were blotched with patches that were much whiter than the rest of the tooth. Her figure was her only saving grace, since she smelled like cigarettes and alcohol, and he pushed the thought that she clearly didn’t care her nipples were poking through her shirt from his mind.
There were a series of hallways and great rooms they passed through, all decorated with dated wallpaper and trinkets. Nicole’s feet shuffled along the hardwood as Jared pulled a seemingly invisible cobweb from his face. She sauntered around a corner, seemingly uncaring about her surroundings. The house was a dump and Jared wondered if Dex knew that all of his electrical devices were unplugged from the walls.
