This Is the Wonder

by Tracey Ward

  I’ve taken Bray up on an offer to come work with him in Boise in a couple months when the summer is over because I really have no friggin’ clue what else to do. Mom is skeptical about it and I know she thinks it’s a way to defer the real question of what do I want to do for the rest of my life, and she’s right. It is. Back off me.

  It’ll be good to get out of town even if it is just a few hours away. It’ll get me out of my parents’ house and feeling like an independent adult again. It’s been nice saving money by living with them, but the downside is pretty much everything else in the world. I need my freedom. I need that feeling I had in Germany again, and I think getting that back will go a long way toward figuring out what I want to do with this next chapter in my life.

  “But you won’t be here when the baby comes,” Robin whines.

  I’m driving her to Mom and Dad’s house because she refuses to drive now that she’s this far along, convinced she’ll go into labor and crash. It’s paranoid, but we’re all learning to live with the crazy. Last weekend she wouldn’t come in the house until I threw out the sushi I was eating. I had to throw it in the outside trash because she’s terrified of raw foods. I heard Chris cooked a steak on the BBQ and she locked him out of the house until he cut it in half and showed her it was cooked all the way through.

  I fight the urge now to glare at her because we’ve had this talk before, all of us have. She’s accused all of us at least twice of trying to get rid of her and it’s so insane and annoying that I’m actually starting to consider it. In this late stage of her pregnancy her mood swings have leveled off to just one mood—angry. She’s eight months along, big as a house, and not sleeping well: the three main ingredients to Bitch Stew.

  “No, I’ll be here,” I remind her carefully. “You’re due at the end of August and I’m not leaving until the second week of September.”

  “You’re leaving me,” she irrationally insists.

  “I’m sticking around for you!”

  “What if the baby is late? You and I both were.”

  “We’ll figure it out. You don’t need me here the second you go into labor.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “You have Chris.”

  “I need him too. And Mom.”

  “We can’t all be there, Robin.”

  She shakes her head violently and turns to look out the window. “No one understands. You’re all trying to ditch me!”

  Mother of shit, I think angrily.

  I take a calming breath. “We’re not trying to ditch you, but we have lives too. You have to remember that. We’re making sure one of us is always with you so you don’t go into labor alone. I know you’re scared about that.”

  “I’m not scared, I’m mad!”

  “Can you be mad quietly?”

  She glares at me for a long time but I don’t flinch. Eventually she turns to the window again and refuses to speak to me.

  It’s kind of nice.

  When we get to the house she tries to storm out of the car but her body fights her. She ends up lurching forward three times before her belly will work with gravity to let her out, and by then I’m standing in front of her holding out my hand to help. She slaps it away.

  “Okay,” I whisper, heading for the house with her stomping behind me.

  When I open the door, Dad steps into the entryway, a greeting and a smile on his lips, but I cast him a look and a sharp shake of my head that tells him to run. He immediately does.

  “Mom!” Robin calls mournfully the second she steps inside. “Are you here?!”

  “She’s the one who told me to go get you, Rob.”

  “Don’t call me, Rob,” she snaps viciously. “Mom!”

  “She’s probably outside in the garden.”

  Robin marches through the house with a slight waddle, her hand on her belly to help her balance, and flings open the sliding glass door.

  Mom’s voice comes trickling in, happy and light. “Hi, honey. How are—”

  “Wren is a bitch!”

  The sliding glass door slams and I shake my head as I jingle my keys in my hand, thinking about leaving. Instead I head for the kitchen and find my dad hiding, an open jar of peanut butter in one hand and a roll of crackers in the other. He stops mid-chew, eyeing me suspiciously.

  “Friend or foe?” he mumbles around a mouth of cracker.

  I smile. “To you? Friend.”

  “What’s she mad about now?”

  “I honestly can’t remember. Everything?”

  He grunts, scooping into the peanut butter with a cracker and leaving crumbs through the interior—crumbs Mom will vent about tomorrow morning when she goes to make her toast.

  I head for the fridge and grab a water for the road. I’m getting out before Robin yells at me more or Mom comes looking for me to apologize for I’m not even sure what.

  “How’s Jax?”

  I smile, closing the fridge and facing Dad. He’s asked about Jax every two or three days now and it still blows my mind a little. He’s genuinely interested in what he’s doing, what his job is like, how he’s handling being on deployment. It’s nice to have my dad invested in this, to have him treating it differently than he’s ever treated one of my relationships before, because it is just that—it’s different. It’s fuller, more bodied, and present with a life of its own.

  “He’s good. In transit.”

  “No clue when he’ll get back?”

  “Last time was five days. So far it’s been three since I last talked to him.”

  He twists on the lid to the peanut butter jar, sealing in his fate for the morning. “Are you worried?”

  I shrug. “Not as much as the first time because I know he made it in. For some reason it seems like it would be safer getting out, but that’s probably crazy.”

  He glances toward the back of the house. “Must be contagious.”

  “I was about to get out of here.”

  “Me too. Where are you going?”

  I smile sadly. “Germany?”

  I don’t make it to Germany. I make it as far as the food court at the mall, where I sit down with a Cinnabon and eat all the feelings I’m trying so hard not to feel—one sweet, gooey bite at a time.

  I’m halfway to diabetes when my phone rings.

  I pick it up absently, stuffing another bite in my mouth and getting ready for my lecture about being nice to my sister. “Hello?”

  “Hey, babe.”

  I drop my plastic fork, nearly gagging on the ball of dough in my mouth. “Jax?”

  “Yeah. Are you okay? You sound weird.”

  And he sounds amazing, his voice deep and happy, easier than I’ve heard it in weeks. I swallow hard, the dough stretching my throat painfully as it pushes down into my chest and my heart seizes.

  “Where are you?” I ask, coughing roughly. “Can you tell me?”

  “Germany. I just got back to my dorm. You’re the first person I called.”

  I laugh for some reason, my body feeling uncontrolled. “That was fast.”

  “Sometimes you get lucky. On the way out I got stuck at a base for a day and a half while our plane was repaired. Stalled us out.”

  “What was wrong with it?”

  “It had a hole in it.”

  I blink. “A bullet hole?”

  “Maybe,” he answers nonchalantly. “I didn’t ask. Smooth sailing this time though. But seriously, are you getting sick? Your voice sounds thrashed.”

  “I choked on a cinnamon roll.”

  “Cinnabon?”

  “Yeah.”

  He groans appreciatively. “So good. Especially the center.”

  “I’m almost there.”

  “You eat around it? Layer by layer?”

  “How else would I eat it?”

  “Some people cut straight through it.”

  “Some people are idiots.”

  He laughs. “You won’t hear me arguing. Where are you right now?”

  “In the mall.”

 
“Do you need to go? Is someone waiting for you?”

  “No, I’m alone. I ran away to escape Robin’s wrath.”

  He hisses through his teeth sympathetically. “I warned you.”

  “You did. It’s bad. She refuses to let any of us leave her side just in case she goes into labor and we miss it.”

  “Well, I’m going to be facing her wrath soon, because when I come to visit I’m not sharing you with anyone.” His voice dips down low and I know he’s smiling. It’s not a sweet smile. “I’m hiding away with you for hours. Maybe days.”

  I grin, feeling a warmth in my limbs that spreads through my body.

  It’s silly that his being back in Germany makes me feel closer to him, like the hard part is over when really not much for us has changed, but it’s still a relief. Him in Germany I can understand. I can see it in my mind and I know him there. I remember him and what it was like to be with him. I had a hard time picturing him in the desert. It felt like he was beyond my reach somehow, a fact that scared my controlling mind like nothing else ever has. I never told him, but I had nightmares about car crashes on the regular while he was gone. Overturned Jeeps engulfed in flames in a barren desert.

  “I’ll go willingly,” I promise him.

  “I’m going to call my mom after I hang up with you and set up flights for going home.”

  I feel a jolt of excitement. “How soon do you think?”

  “Soon. I told my chain of command I wanted to take leave and make the trip home once I was back, and they’ve been greasing the wheels for my in-processing. It usually takes a couple of weeks but they’re trying to help me get it done in one.”

  “So you could be back in the States in a week?”

  “And Boise in two.”

  I take a shaking breath and put my head down in my hand, closing my eyes. “Jax,” I whisper.

  “Are you happy?”

  I laugh like I’m losing my mind. “Yes! Of course I’m happy. Oh my God, yes. I didn’t even expect you back in Germany for another few days. I definitely didn’t think you’d make it here any sooner than a month from now.”

  “No way. I’m not waiting that long. I need to see you, babe.”

  “I need to see you too. I’ll have the keys to my apartment in Boise next week so we’ll have somewhere to stay. You won’t have to camp out with me at my parents’ house.”

  “I don’t care. I’m no gentleman right now. I’ll defile you under your parents’ roof if I have to.”

  I laugh at his lie. “Yes you do, yes you are, and no you wouldn’t.”

  “No,” he agrees quietly, “but I’m damn close.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  My apartment is small—just a studio with a tiny bathroom in the lower end of town, but it feels good to bring the first of my boxes there and claim it as mine. I’ve bought a new mattress and my dad is out picking it up for me with the truck. I don’t have a frame yet so it’ll sit on the floor along with the bags of cheap kitchen utensils I bought at Target, but it’s still an exciting start. I’m able to fill the bathroom with brilliant green towels that my parents would hate, I put my silverware in the drawer I want, and the pots and pans aren’t going in the noisy drawer under the stove. I don’t even put my garbage can under the sink, and I smile as I think of the frown on my mom’s face when she sees it. Everything is the way that I want it and there’s something so insanely relieving about that. As I pull books and framed photos out of boxes and stack them against the wall next to my unassembled bookshelf, I feel better than I have in months.

  The first picture I hang on my wall is of me and Jax in London.

  He’s on his way to New Jersey right now and I’m both excited and jealous. He’s heading to his family to stay with them for a week and then he’s coming here to see me. We’ll only get a few days together before he has to go back to Germany to finish out his time there, but I’m jittery at the thought of seeing him for even an hour.

  My phone beeps with a text. It’s from my dad.

  Warehouse can’t find the mattress. Got them checking again. Could take a while.

  I frown, irritated. They called me saying it came in. How did they lose it?

  Don’t know. We’re sorting it out.

  Sorry! This should have been easy.

  He doesn’t reply and I’m not surprised. I feel bad though. He’s doing me a favor and it’s taking up his entire day. He’s already been gone longer than I expected and now it’s going to take even longer, and I might not have a bed at the end of it. I was planning on spending my first night here tonight. I don’t care that I don’t have anything but empty space—it’s my empty space. I want to enjoy it.

  An hour later and I’ve run out of things to put away and my dad still isn’t back. I text him and call but he doesn’t answer and I hope that means he’s on the road back here to the apartment. Bored, I text Mel but don’t get a reply. She’s seeing a new guy, an intern at the hospital where her dad is a surgeon, and she hasn’t told me anything about him other than he’s hot and he exists. I’m just relieved it’s not Ben. I see them commenting back and forth online now and then but it’s nothing shocking and I hope whatever hold he had on her is slipping. I think the fact that another woman is about to have his baby has cooled her to him.

  Finally I hear heavy footsteps on the stairs and I rush to the door, swinging it open to see if it’s Dad and help him unload the mattress. I’m surprised to find him already at the door, one end of the plastic-wrapped rectangle weighing heavy in his arms.

  “Hey, kiddo,” he grunts. “Hop out of the way. Coming through.”

  I step back inside behind the door to make room for him to come in. “Who has the other end?”

  “Kid in the parking lot offered to help,” he answers breathily, walking backwards into the apartment.

  The mattress follows after him, passing slowly through the door until a pair of hands come into view. Tan arms. Gray shirt straining over thick shoulders. A crooked grin, blue eyes, brown hair.

  “Hey, babe,” Jax says casually.

  I jump on him, knocking the mattress out of his hands and taking its place with my body. My dad shouts as the mattress crashes to the ground and out his grip, but I don’t look. I crush myself against Jax, breathing him in sharply and choking on a laugh or a sob, I’m not sure which. When his arms come around me, I melt. I collapse into him and he holds me up against his strength. His body is harder than it was the last time I saw him. There are more muscled curves on his chest and arms, but it’s still Jax and the press of his skin against mine and his laughter on the top of my head, against my hair, bludgeons me with so many feelings and memories that I see stars against my eyes.

  I don’t know where the tears come from. They appear out of nowhere, springing from nothing and streaming down my face before I can even blink.

  “Hi,” I manage to squeak out shakily. My breaths are coming and going in staccato bursts, threatening to turn into full blown crying.

  “Hey, babe,” he says, his voice low and smooth.

  I reach around his neck and press the back of my hand against my mouth, clench my eyes shut tight, and try to hold my breath. To hold it all in. But I can’t. A sob escapes the back of my throat.

  “Are you okay?” he asks.

  “You’re home,” I whisper brokenly.

  He chuckles lightly. “Yeah. Yeah, Wren, I’m home. Are you crying?”

  “No.”

  “Are you lying?”

  “Yes.”

  “You don’t cry.”

  “No.”

  “Are you crying because I’m home?”

  “Yes. I can’t help it. I’m so happy you’re here.” There’s a silence between us, one that’s full and weighty. “Jax?”

  “I love you,” he says, his voice gruff and his hands gripping me tighter. “I really fuckin’ love you.”

  I chuckle, burying my face in his shoulder. I close my eyes, open the sky, and the roof comes off the house where I’ve held it all ins
ide for so many months. “I really fuckin’ love you too.”

  It’s the first time we’ve said it. It’s the first sunlight the tree has seen and it flourishes in an instant. Green, gold, bursting to vibrant life above us in a canopy that shades us, protects us, and give us this hidden moment together to feel its strength. It feels so good to get the words out. To hear them, to feel them, to understand them and live them in his arms.

  I lean back slightly so I can see him, then I swing my eyes to the side. “Is my dad still standing there?” I breathe.

  Jax shakes his head faintly. “Bathroom. I think he’s giving us a minute.”

  “Then what are you waiting for?”

  His smile widens but then it disappears against my lips as I steal it from him and give him mine.

  I’m a mess as he kisses me. His skin burns against mine, his tongue on my lips gives me chills, and the strength in his arms makes me weak. I’m about to be a puddle on the floor, destroyed and reduced to molten bliss by this man, when we hear the toilet flush pointedly.

  Jax breaks away, his eyes immediately on mine, and they promise something to me—something he won’t say, but I can feel it in my skin where it touched his.

  “Well, Jax,” my dad asks as he comes out of the bathroom with a grin on his lips, “do you think she was surprised?”

  We both laugh as I release Jax, but he keeps an arm on my shoulders and pulls me into his side.

  “I’m stunned,” I tell Dad happily. “How did this happen?”

  “I called your parents last week and asked if they’d help me surprise you,” Jax explains. “It wasn’t easy because I didn’t know when my flight would be until about three days ago, but your dad agreed to pick me up at the airport and bring me home to you.”

  Dad nods. “I was supposed to bring him out to Pocatello, but then you got your keys to this place and everything lined up perfectly. He was flying into Boise, you wanted to be up here all day today and tomorrow. Wasn’t hard to drag out the trip to get the mattress to cover for a trip to airport.”

  My jaw drops. “I almost called them to bitch them out for losing my mattress and wasting your time!”