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She’d only been on the job for three days and she’d already arrested Nell Flanders twice. The woman liked to protest, and she didn’t mind chaining herself to property that was not hers. She even announced it wasn’t hers. The problem was she fully believed that tree the county was trying to cut down should belong only to the earth that it would surely scorch if it got hit by lightning again.
Luckily she’d learned the jail had vegan options, and Nell’s husband was quick to bail her out. She had the cutest baby girl who’d looked up at Elisa with wide eyes as though to ask why did you arrest my mommy? She could have told the kiddo that wouldn’t work on her. But it kind of did.
She was totally getting soft.
“But see, now I’m wondering if this is about more than the drive,” her father was saying.
She’d picked up her dad because he had a meeting at the lodge and his truck was currently at someplace called Long-Haired Roger’s. According to him, he’d gotten in a tussle with something called a Plejaren and his windshield had cracked. Her dad, that was. As far as she knew, Long-Haired Roger didn’t regularly take down extraterrestrials.
“I’m okay.” Mountain driving made her anxious, but she would get used to it.
“Is this about those boys?”
Sometimes it was weird how normal it felt to be around this man. Like they fit together in a way that had to do with more than DNA. She’d wondered a lot lately how different her childhood would have been if he’d been in it. The fact that he called them those boys like she was in high school and they were dating made her heart squeeze tight.
They were. Kind of. She was definitely dating Hale. They’d been out to dinner twice, and she’d hung out at his place the other night. They’d watched TV and generally just chilled. It had been lovely.
Van was another problem altogether. He was a broody asshole, and he wasn’t giving up on the whole “I’m bad news” attitude of his. He was willing to join them for sex, and he seemed to enjoy hanging out with them, but he wouldn’t go on planned dates and he wouldn’t sleep with them.
Her dad had been around a lot of threesomes. He might have some wisdom when it came to this. Again, it was weird talking to her dad about her threesome, but something about it felt okay. “Hale and I are doing well, but Van is holding back. I think it’s because he’s worried he’s going to get hurt when he leaves, and now he thinks someone might be coming after him.”
“Oh, that kid’s not leaving. I know a Bliss citizen when I see one. He’s not going anywhere. Even if he does go back to Dallas, I give him six months. Once Bliss is in your blood, you can’t ever live somewhere else. Baby girl, I’ve been across the galaxy and there’s no place like Bliss.”
She rather agreed with him. “He’s sure he’s leaving when he graduates. He thinks he owes his brother. Hale has decided to stay here, but I have to wonder if he can be happy without Van. And where does that leave me if he isn’t? I know the relationship is new, but it feels like the right place to be, the right guys to be with. I can’t help but wonder about the future. I know I shouldn’t.”
“Why? If you don’t plan for the future, you might not like it when it gets here. I know a lot of people will tell you to live in the present, that the past and the future don’t matter, but we’re a product of all three,” her dad said somberly. “Our past is the ground we stand on, whether it’s solid or shaky. Our future is where we put all our hard work. All our dreams and hopes and wishes.”
Sometimes in between all the alien stuff, her dad proved he understood the world. “That’s profound, Dad.”
“It’s true. You can do a lot of thinking on a star ship long-haul freight vehicle. I thought a lot about how we view our lives when I was stuck on that thing. It was right after the last time I saw your mother.”
They’d gone over the logistics of the affair, but not how he’d felt. “Did you think you had a future with her?”
His head shook. “No. She was clear that what we had wasn’t permanent. I’ll be honest. I’m not even sure she liked me all that much, but I was a young man. She was beautiful.”
“Mom didn’t like anyone.” She didn’t want her dad to feel too bad. “She wasn’t a people person. But you’re wrong. She wrote warmly about you in her journals. She said you were friends, and she didn’t call many people that. Growing up I didn’t think she had friends.”
