Rowan flipped off the light switch.
She gently let the screen door close behind her as she took a moment to ground herself with her eyes closed against it. Her body thrummed like she’d actually gotten thoroughly fucked. Then her heart broke a little at Juniper’s desire for comfort and closeness. And then broke a little more when she realized she had someone else waiting for her in her truck.
She opened the door and slid in.
“Sorry that took so long,” she offered out of politeness alone.
“No worries.” Claire slid a hand around the back of Rowan’s shoulders, and into the hairs on the back of her neck. It all felt so wrong. “Is your friend okay?”
Rowan removed Claire’s hand and reached for her seatbelt in a fluid motion, as if that were a necessary thing to do to fasten it.
“She will be.”
“Your house now?”
Rowan hesitated. “Yes.”
We are but one element of the natural world, equal amongst all other elements.
Chapter 11
Juniper slowly woke up the next morning, but she kept her eyes closed shut. Her head pounded as she rolled over to face the sunlight. She barely opened her eyes to catch a glimpse of a Gatorade, some crackers, and some medicine on the bedside table. Had she had that much foresight to prepare herself a hangover remedy before bed?
Rowan. She remembered.
She closed her stinging eyes and felt her hollow chest thrum painfully, desperate to release the torrent of her emotions.
Juniper needed to clear her head, and there was only one place on the reservation where she could do that – Kinnakeet Beach. First, she needed to get her shit together. She sat up and braced herself through a few minutes of head-splitting pain and residual spins from the night before. She muscled through a few bites of cracker and a few sips of Gatorade.
Next up, shower. She could do this. She stood up.
Nope.
She sat back down. Just a few more minutes like that first.
She finally made it to the bathroom and faced herself in the mirror, mortified. Her eye makeup was smeared across her eyes and cheeks. This was not good; everyone had seen her like this. By most people’s standards Juniper’s behavior last night could be chalked up to a good night’s fun. To her, it felt reckless and triggering, and she intensely regretted the impact it had had on those she loved.
She turned on the shower and sat on the toilet with her head in her hands waiting for it to steam up. This was not who she wanted to be. She had worked so hard in therapy on not letting her emotions control her over the last several years, and more importantly on understanding the root causes of her complex trauma. She made a mental note to call her therapist on Monday to set up an appointment.
She entered the shower and let the hot water course over her tense and beleaguered body. She held her breath and let it run over her hair and down her face. Ever since Rowan had come back home, she felt her presence had stirred something she felt was so deeply flawed inside her. Grief was a weird thing. Yet, she couldn’t shake how right it felt to be cared for by Rowan again, even if the circumstances around it completely embarrassed her.
Rowan had always been thoughtful and tender, much unlike the brash, impulsiveness Juniper felt dominated the way people perceived her. To everyone else, she had this hardened, uncrackable exterior that was an extension of who she was inside, but not Rowan. Rowan saw the thoughtfulness and tenderness in her too. No one else could find that part of her she kept tucked so deeply inside herself out of self-preservation. Her shell was strong, but Rowan had always found a way to seep in around the edges. She worried that’s exactly what was happening again, even if Rowan didn’t mean to be doing it.
She knew the best thing she could give to Rowan was letting her be happy with whomever she chose, and she had chosen Claire. Juniper could give Claire a chance. She was smart and had similar intellectual interests as Rowan. Dr. Bowers, she remembered. That was impressive. She seemed nice enough, pretty. And it seemed like she had lived a life that hadn’t been hounded by adverse circumstances or generational trauma in the way hers had. Uncomplicated made sense. Who wouldn’t want to be uncomplicated? Who wouldn’t want to be with someone uncomplicated?
Juniper wrapped a towel around herself and walked to her closet. On her tiptoes, she started to nudge a soft clothes storage container off the top shelf to search for a sweatshirt. Frustrated that she couldn’t quite tip the edge of the container down, she jumped up and hit the edge of the shelf to knock it loose. Instead, she knocked the entire shelf loose, and all of the overloaded contents fell on top of her.
“Fuck!” She screamed and kicked all of the loose shit away from her.
She leaned over to dig through everything but quickly realized there was a showdown between her hungover stomach and gravity. The odds were not in her stomach’s favor. She stood up and slid down the closet door frame. Then her stomach lurched even further when she noticed the tattered baseball cap she’d taken from Rowan that summer.
She crossed her legs in front of herself and pulled it into her lap. Her thumb traced the brim, but she didn’t dare put it on.
“Fuck,” she repeated as a whisper, this time as she closed her eyes and leaned her head back against the closet door frame.
She remembered the day that baseball cap shifted from the corner of her computer monitor to underneath her dorm room bed. She remembered how she debated whether to throw it in the dumpster with all of the other stuff she’d had to leave behind when she left school. Somehow it had found its way back home with her and shoved in the back corner of a closet the way she’d shoved the memories of Rowan away in her mind.
Juniper parked her car in the lot behind the dunes of Kinnakeet Beach. She took one last look in the rearview mirror, thoughtthat’s as good as it can get right now,shoved her sunglasses back down her face, and proceeded to get out of the car.
