by Tabatha Kiss
I shake my head but try to maintain my polite smile. “I’m sure I would, Mrs. Clark, but I’m not really looking to date anyone right now...”
“Well, you let me know the second that changes. I’ll set you up!”
“Okay.” I chuckle awkwardly. “Have a nice day!”
She pushes the door open and slowly walks out, taking her time while my smile tests my face muscles.
Once she’s gone, I let it fall. “Okay, what is going on here?”
Tucker glances up from his paperwork at the other end of the counter. “What do you mean?”
“That is the third woman today to say something like that to me.”
“You’re complaining?”
“I’m concerned.”
“Why?” he asks. “You’re a handsome, eligible bachelor with pretty eyes and a tight tushie. Take the compliment.”
I stare at him until he finally looks up. “Make that four women.”
“Ha, ha, ha,” he mutters. “You’re probably just imagining it.”
“Maybe.”
The entry bell rings and I smile at the one woman in town who will never hit on me. “Hey, Sara.”
My sister walks over and lays her keys on the counter. “It’s doing that thing again.”
“You’re going to have to be more specific.”
“I don’t know...” She sighs. “It’s making that rattling sound between the back tires and I just don’t have time to deal with this kind of crap right now.”
I sense her frustration. “All right, we’ll check it out. Everything else okay?”
Her eyes flick toward Tucker and she lowers her voice. “Yeah, just stressed out a little.”
“Charlie’s coming home soon, though, right?”
“No, they extended his deployment. Again.”
“Really?”
She pushes her short, brown hair back from her face. “Yeah.”
“Wow. I’m sorry, Sara.”
“It’s okay...” She flicks her car keys. “It’s just he usually dealt with this stuff and I feel completely over my head right now.”
“It’s okay.” I lay my hand over hers. “I’ll handle this. We’re a bit backed up today, so it might take a while.”
“That’s fine. I have some shopping to do for Andy’s birthday this weekend and an eye appointment that I’ve rescheduled twice already, so just call when you figure it out, okay?”
“I will.”
“Oh— you’re still available to take him Saturday morning before the party, right?”
I nod. “Of course. Drop him off whenever and let me know if there’s anything else I can do to help out.”
She throws on a smile. “Actually, Will, now that you mention it, what are you doing after the party?”
“No plans. Why?”
“You remember my friend, Cindy Sumner, right?”
I pause. “No.”
“Oh, come on. Yes, you do. We went to high school with her. She was a year behind me — a year ahead of you. Blonde hair. Gorgeous eyes.”
I squint. “I remember a Bryan Sumner.”
“Yes!” She points. “Cindy is his sister.”
Tucker laughs. “Didn’t you beat the shit out of him junior year?”
Sara rolls her eyes. “No, he didn’t.”
“Oh, yes, I did,” I confirm.
Her mouth sags. “You did?”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
“Because he was a dick.”
“Anyway…” She clears her throat. “Cindy’s been asking about you and I thought that maybe you could get together for coffee or something after the party…”
“No, thanks,” I say, grabbing her keys off the counter.
“Why not?” she pouts.
“I’m not interested.”
“But—”
I jingle her keys. “I’ll call you when we figure out the rattling noise, okay, Sara?”
She exhales, giving up. “Okay, fine. I’ll ask you again later.”
“I won’t be interested later, either…”
“You might be!”
“Nope. Bye, Sara.”
“Bye!”
I wait until she steps outside. “Okay, you saw that, right?” I twist toward Tucker. “Tell me you saw that.”
“I saw that,” he says, nodding slowly. “Since when does she try and set you up with her friends?”
“Exactly...”
He snaps his fingers. “You know what it is?”
“What?” I ask. “Please, dear God, tell me what the hell this is.”
“It’s almost February.”
“So?”
“So… Valentine’s Day.” He points outside. “The party committee just started putting up pink hearts and red ribbons all over the place out there.”
I glance out the windows and notice the ribbons attached to the parking meters on the street surrounding the town square.
“You think that’s it?” I ask, frowning.
“Yeah.” He nods. “Looks to me like the single ladies are trying to lock you down for the annual dance.”
I think it over. “Maybe...” I turn toward the garage and Tucker blocks my way.
“Whoa, where you going?” he asks.
I hold up Sara’s keys. “I’m bringing her car around.”
He snatches them from me. “I’ll do that. You’re on desk duty. Just sit down and bask in this glorious attention you’re receiving.”
I stare into his twitching eyes. “Tucker, what’s really going on?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
He spins around and bolts through the door into the garage.
The entrance chimes and Coach Rogers walks up to the counter. “Hello, William!” he says.
I reluctantly head back to the counter. “Hey, Coach.”
“The wife says the van’s ready.”
“It is.” I nod, turning to snatch his keys off the rack on the wall.
His eyes narrow as I set them down. “You’re looking a bit on the downside lately. Something troubling you?”
I pause. The last thing I’m in the mood for right now is Coach Rogers’ weird person questions. “I’m fine.” I find his invoice in a stack nearby. “Looks like it’s seventy-five even today.”
He scratches his bearded face instead of whipping out his wallet. “William, if I may offer a little unsolicited advice…”
“Actually, Coach, we’re a little backed up here…”
“I’ll make it quick. I look at you and I’m reminded of a quote by the great Albert Einstein.”
Ah, jeez.
“Life is like riding a bicycle,” he says. “To keep your balance, you must keep moving!”
I nod. “That’s nice.”
He reaches over the counter and pats my shoulder. “Keep moving forward, son. Don’t let the past hold you back. I foresee great things in your future.”
“We can only hope. So, about your bill—”
“A wife,” he adds. “A few kids. Who knows? Valentine’s Day is just around the corner and there are plenty of young women around Clover…”
My eye twitches. “Would you excuse me for a minute?”
I shove the garage door open, stepping down into the smell of rubber and the sound of shrieking power tools. Three cars sit in a line at various stages of repair but my eyes instantly fall on one in particular. It’s old and blue and…
No. It can’t be.
I walk across the garage, my mind flashing with memories with every step I take toward.
Tucker juts out in front of me. “Whoa, hey! Will… what, uh… whatcha doing back here?”
“Move,” I say, stepping around him.
The closer I get, the more I’m sure.
Tucker stays on me. “I know what you’re thinking but it’s not,” he says.
“Oh, yeah? Then, whose car is it?”
He stutters. “It’s Julie’s car.”
I raise a brow. “Julie’s?”
> “Yeah. Julie’s.”
“Julie who?”
“Julie, uh...” he twitches, “Moss.”
“Julie Moss?” I repeat.
“Yeah. Julie—”
I grab Tucker by the collar. “You mean Jovie Ross?”
“No, uh-uh. I didn’t say Jovie Ross.”
“Tucker...” I pull him closer. “Is Jovie back?”
“No— Jovie?” He snorts. “Hell, no. She hightailed it out of here years ago. She ain’t ever coming—”
“Tucker.”
He recoils. “Yeah. She’s back. Jovie’s back.”
My guts twist. “How long has she been back?”
“I dunno. A day or two...” I squint at him. “Okay, four. Four days. She’s staying with her dad.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.” He holds up his hands in surrender. “Really, truly. I don’t know. All I know is that she’s back, she’s at Uncle Hank’s, she got her old job back at the toy store, and that really is her car right there. We had to special order a part for it because it’s old as shit. But that’s it. That’s all I know.”
I relax my grip. He slips free and takes a wide step back out of my reach.
Holy shit.
Jovie Ross actually came home.
I walk over to the car as another wave of cold memories threatens to knock me over. Jovie’s little, blue car. One of the back windows is cracked and held together with duct tape and the antenna is nearly bent off but this is it. I’d recognize that backseat anywhere.
Tucker straightens his shirt and hovers over my shoulder. “But even if she is back… who cares, right?” he asks. “You’re over her... right?”
I blink. “Yeah.”
“See? No worries…” He pats my shoulder with caution. “Right?”
“Yeah, no worries.” I shift a step backward. “I’m going to lunch.”
“It’s ten-thirty in the morning. Will— ah, crap…”
I leave the garage, ignoring his voice. Every instinct in me tells me to drop this but I can’t. My feet lead me through the town square, past the post office and the diner and coffee shop.
All the way to Trin’s Toys.
I halt in my tracks with my hand on the door. I stare through the glass, feeling my heart plummet from my chest to six feet under the damn earth.
She really did come home.
Jovie Ross stands behind the old cash register with her back toward me but there’s no way it can’t be her.
Her dark brown hair hangs several inches beneath her shoulders, jutting off in thick, wavy strands. She never wore it so long before. Jovie was a pixie-cut kind of girl; the type who would cut it herself on a whim in her bathroom at 3 AM.
A red smock is wrapped around her slim waist. Long, strong legs poke out the bottom to hold her up. Her neck twists to the side as Mr. Trin calls out to her from the storeroom and those cheekbones stick out a little more.
I let go of the door and move to the side to watch her discretely through the windows.
“Damn, you walk fast…”
I see Tucker’s annoyed and out of breath reflection over my shoulder.
“It’s Jovie,” I say, unable to take my eyes off her.
“Yes, it is,” he says, wiping the sweat from his brow.
It sinks in deeper. “Jovie’s back.”
He nods. “I’m sorry, man. She asked me not to tell anyone. Pretty sure the emphasis was on you.”
Jovie turns in our direction and I spin away from the window to avoid her eyes.
“You’ve talked to her?” I ask him.
“Yeah.”
“When?”
“Got a call for a tow off the highway a few nights ago and there she was.”
“Did she seem… okay? I mean, how was she?”
“She’s…” He shrugs. “She was Jovie. Same old, sad Jovie. I gave her a lift to her dad’s and that was it. We didn’t talk much.”
“She was sad?”
“I assume so if she was coming back here,” he says, scratching the back of his head. “And she always was a little, ya know?”
I peek back through the window. “Yeah, I know.”
Jovie emerges from the stockroom with a stack of new action figures in her arms, nearly running into a rambunctious young boy as she rounds the corner. She hops back without dropping them and lets him pass with an instant smile on her apologetic face.
My knees always turned to jelly over that smile before. Now is no different.
The kid continues on and Jovie pauses to watch him go. Her smile slowly fades and she returns to her task of restocking the line of figures along the bottom shelf in the corner.
A hand waves in front of my face and Tucker snaps his fingers.
“Earth to Will!”
I blink out of it and glare at him. “What?”
“Don’t do that.”
“Don’t do what?”
“Stare at my cousin like that.”
I scoff. “Since when do you care what I do to your cousin?”
He stands a little taller. “You make a fair point… but really, if she finds out I told you, I’m a dead man. You know what happens to men who cross Jovie Ross.”
My gaze falls on her again and I get an eye-full of her tight rear as she bends over to adjust a row of dolls. “Yeah, I know…”
Tucker slaps my shoulder. “Dude…”
I glare at him again and he takes a step back. “It’s fine, Tuck. I won’t tell her you told me.” Nausea wrecks my stomach. “Not sure I can even bring myself to talk to her at all, to be honest…”
“Well, good.” He nods. “It’s been like five years anyway. You can’t have much to say to her in the first place.”
“Four years,” I correct him. “Four years next month.”
And there are a lot of things I’d like to say to Jovie Ross if I could, actually.
Tucker tugs at my arm. “Come on. We should get back to work.”
I dig my heels in for another moment as Jovie wanders back behind the counter. She smiles again at the woman with her son and rings up a little toy dinosaur, her fingers soaring across the register. It’s almost like she never left at all but the black hole in the pit of my stomach reminds me otherwise.
She’s been home four days and she didn’t bother to even tell me. She went out of her way to hide it, too.
Fine. That’s fine. If she doesn’t want to explain herself to me, then that’s fine. I don’t need to know why she’s back or what she’s doing now or why she took off in the first place.
Nope. Don’t need to know.
I’m fine with it.
This is totally fine.
Four
Jovie
“Josie?!”
I close my eyes and exhale. “It’s Jovie.”
The woman rushes over to the counter and screws up her face. “Are you sure?”
I recognize her from high school but I honestly can’t tell you what her name is. “Pretty sure.”
“I could have sworn your name was Josie…”
“Nope.” I point to my red name tag. “It’s Jovie.”
She chews on the corner of her pink mouth. “Huh…”
“It’s okay. I don’t remember your name, either.”
She throws her head back and laughs while her mane of wild, blonde hair tumbles about her face. “It’s Natalie! Natalie Jones. Well…” She flashes the ring on her finger. “That’s Wright nowadays. Dickie and I have been married five years, but you know that, you were there.”
I raise a brow. “I was?”
“The ceremony was in the town square, silly! Everyone was there!”
“Oh, right. Of course,” I say, still not remembering a damn thing about this lady. “It was a beautiful day.”
“I know, right?” She stares at the giant rock on her finger and sighs lovingly to herself. “Anyway, so what are you up to?”
I glance around the store. “Pretty much this.”
“Are you married
?”
“No.”
“Engaged?”
“No.”
“Any kids? I have two.”
“Nope. No kids.”
“Then…” Her brow furrows. “What do you do?”
“I actually have some restocking to do,” I say, tapping a stack of figures beside me on the counter. “Can I help you find something or are you good?”
“Oh, I’m good!” She holds up a stack of fliers. “I just came in to see if it would be okay to hang one or two of these in your window here?”
“What is it?” I ask.
Natalie lays them down. “The party planning committee is looking for a little fresh blood just in time to start putting together the Valentine’s Day dance next month. All the info is at the bottom.”
I nod on the outside but on the inside, I’m screaming. “I’ll have to check with Mr. Trin but it should be okay.”
“Perfect.” She grins. “Anyway, I think I’ll browse a little before heading to the next door down. You go do… what you do, Jos—vie. Jovie.”
“Bye, Natalie.”
She walks off, taking her bright and happy aura with her. She’s not the first person to wander into the toy store since I got here and ask questions. She probably won’t be the last, either. In Clover, your business is everyone’s business. Always has been.
I glance at the fliers once before shoving them onto a pile beneath the register.
I stick to the back shelves, taking my time getting the spacing just right between the action figures. One doesn’t merely toss the toys onto the shelf. You must face everything the right way, too. No wonder Mr. Tran hired me back so fast. Whoever the old smock girl was, she did a horrible job.
I hear the entry bell toward the front and let out an immediate “Hello!” like a Pavlovian dog. Two tiny feet patter down the front aisles, bolting straight for the soldier toys and fighter jet models. I cringe. I just straightened those…
I stand up and turn around to head back to the counter but nearly crash into someone as I round the corner.
“Sorry! Excuse me—”
“Careful, Jove.”
I hop backward, feeling all the color drain from my face. My eyes stay locked on the floor between us. It’s impossible for that voice to belong to anyone else but I’m not sure if that makes me more excited or terrified.
I’ve imagined what this moment would be like so many times. I knew that if I came home, it’d happen eventually. I’d be lying if I said a part of me wasn’t looking forward to it but I still wanted to delay it for as long as possible. The news of my arrival would get back to him sooner or later. This town isn’t that big.
