by Ivy Jordan
“You sure?”
“Yeah, it’s supposed to rain tonight, and the roof’s got a tear.” Pete pointed at the tarp that he used to cover the garden when it rained. He liked to control the water in his vegetable garden, and since he maintained it regularly, he liked to keep the rain out of the equation. Unfortunately, he’d been unable or unwilling to have someone out to build a roof over the garden, or even put up a cheap tin one, and so he’d been using a tarp over some posts. With the rain straight on the ground, any seeds I put in would only get washed up. I didn’t like the thought of having all my work go to waste, so I didn’t protest.
I stood up and pulled my gloves off. “Sun’s just now starting to go down,” I noted. The worst of the heat was over. “I think I might head back if I’m all done here.”
“Well, shoot, Sawyer, I was hoping we could go to George’s.” Pete looked across the yard at his car, like he wanted to go immediately.
I leaned against a shovel and raised my eyebrows. “Yeah, sure, we could go. What’s the occasion?”
“I just want to,” Pete offered.
It was as good a reason as any. I went to his bathroom to clean up a little so I wouldn’t smell, and then we left to go to George’s.
Just like last time, the bar was empty except for a few people mulling around the back. A few people I recognized from my time as regulars still seemed to haunt the place, with longer beards and deeper recesses behind their eyes. I pulled my cap down onto my head and walked up to the bar.
“You know, I don’t think I like the idea of you going off and getting married,” Pete said.
I nearly spat my drink. “Jesus Christ, Pete. No one said anything about getting married.”
“Well, it comes along!” Pete raised his arms in a physical defense at my protest.
I shook my head and put a few quarters in the billiards table and watched the balls fall in a clatter. It bought me time to put them together in the triangle and formulate some kind of response to the escalation Pete was talking about.
“It comes along in years,” I said. “Years and years.”
“Yeah, sure.” Pete waved his hand and picked up a cue. He looked down the barrel of it, like it was a shotgun, and I ignored it; berating him for his odd habits never went well for either of us. He was a sensitive soul at heart, and I knew better than to poke fun at him for the little things.
“Even if it’s years from now, I don’t like it.” Pete lined the cue up with the cue ball and licked his lips, cap covering his eyes from the angle I stood at.
I shook my head. Pete had been eager to see me in a relationship, or so I remembered, and he’d been supportive of the endeavor. In fact, I could specifically recall him telling me to distance myself from Quinn professionally so that I could be closer to her romantically. Not to mention that when he’d met Quinn, it had been smiles all around. He didn’t seem to have an issue.
“You’re not making a whole lot of sense,” I told him. I watched him shoot the cue ball and a few stripes fell into the pockets.
Pete rubbed his nose and looked to me. “Your shoot.”
“It’s yours; you sank two.”
“And a solid.”
“Nope.”
“Oh.” Pete walked around the table and lined the cue up again, nearly knocking over his drink in the process.
“Didn’t answer my question,” I reminded him, lifting my glass to my mouth.
“Right,” Pete said. He fired the cue ball and didn’t land anything. “See, once you’re married, you’ll be out and on your own. And that’s all well and good, I suppose, for you. And I’m happy for you, and I will be then, too. But I’ll have to find another friend to shoot the shit with, and that’s not something I look forward to doing.”
I furrowed my eyebrows. “I don’t follow. In what world am I not going to be your friend anymore?”
“You’ll be busy,” Pete said.
I lined up my shot. I’d played an inordinate amount of billiards overseas, since all we’d really had for entertainment was a pool table and some TV’s lying around the barracks. I played billiards until I saw billiard balls in my sleep. That being said, I wasn’t ever terribly good at it, but better than the average player, I supposed. Better than Pete, though he wouldn’t go down without a fight.
“I’ll be around.” I took the shot and sunk a solid. I walked to line up another shot.
“That’s what you say,” Pete said. “But you’ll get busy.”
I looked up at him from lining up my shot. “I don’t understand why you’re all worried about that now. Even if that was something I’d been thinking about, which I have not, it would be years.”
“Because you obviously care about her,” Pete said. “And a fair amount more than constitutes casual affection.”
I made my second shot, putting two solids in separate baskets. I didn’t have to walk far to line up my next one. “What are you aimin’ at?”
“Well, shit.” Pete leaned against the table and frowned when I sank another shot. “You know, I only have so many quarters if you’re planning on wiping the damn tables with me.”
“Sore loser,” I commented, and missed my next shot.
“Ah.” He waved his hand to brush me off and settled over the table. “Do you think it’s true, then?” he asked. He fired his shot and sank the ball he was aiming for—and a solid ball, which turned the game back over to me.
“What’s true?” I lined up my shot but missed a bit intentionally. I didn’t want Pete to get irritated, and I didn’t care much about winning.
“That you love her. That it’s just a matter of time before things get a little more serious,” Pete said.
I raised my eyebrows and took my shot. The ball sank into the basket at the last second, and I rubbed the chalk on the end of the cue ball.
“I don’t know, Pete.” I pulled my cap back a bit and then pulled the bill down with my thumb and forefinger.
“You don’t know, or you don’t want to think about it?”
“Both.” I watched him line his shot up. “I think things are going well now. I certainly do care quite a bit about her. I’ll see where it goes, but I don’t see myself seeing either one of you out any day soon.”
“I should hope not. It’s not easy to find friends, you know,” Pete said.
I smiled at him and shook my head. It was hard to tell whether Pete wanted to be my friend because I was convenient for him or because he genuinely liked me, and frankly, I didn’t think that it mattered much to me one way or another.
We played a few games of pool before deciding to call it a night. Neither of us was particularly fond of staying out too late, and besides, I had some work to do around the house the next day. The kitchen sink needed fixing, and I could do it without a problem, but it would require a few hours of uninterrupted work. We set our cues back on the rack, and I realized I’d left my wallet in the bathroom earlier.
“I’m gonna head out,” Pete said. “You drove up here, right?”
I nodded and headed to the bathroom. The wallet was where I left it, thankfully, so I stuffed it back in my pants and walked back out. Before I could get very far, a hand came down on my arm and pulled me back.
I fought the instinct to strike out at the person who’d grabbed me, and instead glared behind me.
Stacy had her hand firmly on my arm, and she released it when she saw my stare. She looked even more exhausted than the last time I’d seen her, if that was even possible. I glanced around, looking for a boyfriend or someone she’d brought with her to rough me up. But there was only Stacy.
“Sawyer, listen—”
“I don’t want to hear it.” I started to turn away, and she grabbed my arm again.
“Sawyer, please. Please. It’s not like that.” She hadn’t even explained herself, and yet I felt like I already knew what she was going to say.
“Leave me alone. Okay? Leave me alone.”
“It’s not like that. I’m not trying to get with you.
”
“Then what do you want?” I looked around again. Maybe she was here to warn me about someone else. Who that might be, I didn’t know, but this was inherently suspicious.
“I left the rehab center,” she said. “I couldn’t stand it anymore. The doctors just pushed pills and didn’t listen to me, and I had to get out. But Mom and Dad didn’t want me back if I wasn’t getting treatment. I have nowhere to go.”
I raised my eyebrows. “I don’t believe you.” I’d seen her parents bend over backwards for her time and time again and there was little reason to believe that they’d changed their minds all of a sudden. Besides, what did that matter to me?
“I ran them out of money.” Stacy swallowed hard and tucked a piece of brittle hair behind her ear. “I ran them out, and they don’t have anything left. Dad picked up extra hours at work and Mom’s substitute teaching again, and they can get by, but they don’t have anything left. They can’t keep me around.”
I hadn’t considered that. It made some sense that eventually her family would run out of money. Rehab programs were insanely expensive—that was part of the reason I’d joined the military instead of going to one of them. And she’d been in and out of them for some time, not to mention costing them money by stealing and taking what she could get.
“What does this have to do with me?” I crossed my arms.
“I have nowhere to sleep.” Stacy folded her arms, but it only made her look smaller. “I have nowhere to sleep. I’ve been staying around bars, but they’re not letting me do it anymore. I just need to sleep somewhere and then I’ll be fine.”
I set my jaw. I had half a mind to call her parents and ask them if any of this was true. To call Quinn and ask her what I ought to do about this situation. I only wanted some kind of outside opinion, because I didn’t know that I trusted my own empathy.
“One night?” I asked her.
She nodded. Jesus, she looked exhausted. It looked like if a strong wind blew, it might knock her right over.
“Fine.” I started out, and she followed me. I didn’t offer to help her into the car, and she remained completely silent on the way to my house. I couldn’t fight the pounding in my heart. I shouldn’t have been doing this, and a part of me knew this was a bad idea. That Stacy, no matter the context, was a bad idea.
But I couldn’t just let her suffer needlessly. That was shitty, no two ways about it. If she was lying, then she’d gotten a night on my couch out of me. If she wasn’t lying, then she had to live with the fact that I was the one who helped her when no one else would.
When we reached my house, I pointed to the couch. “There’s a blanket on the back,” I said.
“I won’t try anything,” she said.
“Don’t care.” She wasn’t going to sleep in my bed. That was absurd. I grabbed a few of the valuable things laying around, but I didn’t own much she could snatch and run with anyway. I went to my bedroom and decided on leaving it open. If she moved, I wanted to be able to hear it and react.
Chapter Thirty-Two
QUINN
When I drove into Austin on Monday morning, relief washed over me. I’d only been gone for one weekend, but it felt like I’d been gone for centuries. It had been difficult to get a hold of Sawyer, and I couldn’t shake my concern. In the back of my mind, I still worried about that text he’d gotten from Stacy over a week ago. I hadn’t asked him about it, and it didn’t seem that it had amounted to anything, but it bothered me somehow that he didn’t mention it to me. He wasn’t obligated to tell me everything that went on in his life, but a text from Stacy was something out of the norm, and I liked to think of myself as worthy of being told about things that fell out of the norm.
I was excited to see him, though. Especially since I hadn’t heard from him. I wondered if he would be too busy to get lunch or something later in the day. He worked at Pete’s farm, and there was no telling what Pete had planned. He seemed to do everything from quirky farm inventions to casual vegetable farming, and so Sawyer could be anywhere between slightly busy to totally preoccupied.
For a few minutes, I unpacked my bag and put some clothes in the laundry. I’d gotten home a bit earlier than I’d expected, but then, the conference had let out earlier than expected. The Sunday speaker had been canceled, allowing me to come home in the morning rather than later. I sat down at the kitchen table, flipping through some emails on my computer, when my phone went off.
I hoped it was Sawyer. I’d sent him a text to let him know that I was coming home; perhaps he’d only been waiting for an indicator. I hurried to fish my phone out of my purse, and when I saw the caller ID, I frowned. Stacy. I couldn’t even remember where I’d gotten her number—my aunt must have given it to me at some point, I figured.
She was the last person I wanted to talk to. Luckily, thanks to my occupation, I was more than trained in the art of sounding like I wasn’t judging the person I was talking to. I wanted to hit decline, but I didn’t know what the situation was, and especially since I hadn’t heard from Sawyer in some time… curiosity got the better of me, and I accepted the call.
“Hello?”
“Hey, Quinn.” Stacy sounded weirdly calm and relaxed, and I wondered if she was high. I checked my watch—ten in the morning was a little early for any drugs, wasn’t it?
“Hello,” I repeated. “Did you need something, Stacy?”
“Sort of,” Stacy said. “It’s important.” She sounded sincere, but then, she was a liar by nature. “It’s something I can’t really talk to my parents about, and I don’t know if they can hear me.”
I didn’t know whether that was drug-induced paranoia, convincing acting, or genuine panic in her tone. Either way, I knew that the quickest way to diffuse the situation would be to play along with her. “Okay, what is it?”
“Can we meet in person, actually?” Stacy asked. “Can we get lunch?”
It clicked why she’d called me; she wanted free food. I knew sending her a gift card for some restaurant would be condescending, and if she wanted free food, the easiest thing to do would be to buy her a meal and get back home. I really did want to see if Sawyer was available later.
“Yeah, sure,” I said. “Meet you in an hour?”
“Sure,” she said. She hung up with that, and I glanced at my phone for a moment before putting it down.
I fished a pair of jeans and a t-shirt from my clean laundry, or what was left of it. I put a little bit of makeup on and sprayed my hair with a bit of dry shampoo—I’d showered the night before, but it looked a little limp for my liking. After a check to make sure my shirt wasn’t stained, I changed the laundry and then made my way out.
I spotted Stacy sitting inside the restaurant before I even walked in. She sat near a window, and she looked out of place, like a ghost. I walked in and sat down across from her, wondering how she’d even gotten here—it wasn’t likely she had a car, and I couldn’t imagine people were exactly lining up to help her at this point. Her parents probably still chauffeured her around—they never did know when to draw the line with her.
“Hey,” I said, trying to gauge how badly she was doing. She looked gaunt, but she’d always been gaunt.
“Hey,” she returned. She didn’t look terribly malicious. Usually she had a glint in her eye that presupposed anger even when nothing had happened.
“Is there something you wanted to talk to me about?” I asked.
A waiter approached and took our order. She walked off, and Stacy levied her gaze at me.
“Sort of,” she said. “See, things have been kind of stressful since I left rehab.”
“I can imagine,” I said. “Have you been seeing a therapist?”
“Ugh, no.” Stacy pulled her sweatshirt forward and buried her hands in the pockets. “You know what I think about therapists. Besides, I don’t need them. I’m fine. My issues are all financial, not mental.”
That was a problem, and I yearned to explain to her that most financial problems had a mental root. Some p
eople got honestly stuck in medical bills or rental payments, but a good deal of the time, financial troubles stemmed from something emotional in a person’s life. Especially when that person was addicted to drugs, which were, of course, expensive. And Stacy didn’t have any source of income that I was aware of.
Which, again, brought me to wonder how she’d gotten herself here and why she was telling me any of this. Sure, there was the free food, but I had a feeling it went beyond that. Especially since she appeared to have something else she wanted to talk to me about.
“That’s, um, okay.” I tried to turn off the part of me that wanted to psychoanalyze my cousin. After all, she was absolutely fascinating from a therapist’s standpoint. But that wouldn’t help me now. I was just trying to have a painless, easy lunch. “I’m glad you’ve found a system that works for you.”
“Uh, yeah,” Stacy said. “Me too. It’s been working amazing; it’s just been kind of stressful.”
I furrowed my eyebrows at her phrasing. It was like she was trying to get me to pry and ask her for more information.
“Is there something going on?” I asked.
“Sort of,” Stacy said. She took her phone out of her pocket and tapped at it for a few seconds. “I really wanted to talk to you about Sawyer.”
Ah, now we were getting somewhere. I’d been expecting to have this conversation with her. I’d expected to have it in the form of a temper tantrum on her behalf at the restaurant—part of my nervousness came from the fact that she seemed to be calculating what to do rather than lashing out emotionally.
“I think you think he’s reforming or whatever the fuck you people call it,” Stacy said, scrolling on her phone. “But he’s really not buying any of your bullshit.”
“What do you mean?” I couldn’t help but ask. I was worried, after all. He hadn’t been in touch, and I began to worry about the worst. “Is he okay?”
“Um, better than he would ever be with you fuckin’ doctors down his throat,” Stacy said. She pulled a few photos out of her pocket and set them down on the counter. I picked them up, nervous despite my constant reminder to myself that everything would be fine. Sawyer wouldn’t steer me wrong, would he? He had no incentive to hurt me.
