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Jesse mumbles something inaudible before he’s engulfed in another hug, this time from a middle-aged white man with a red mustache. “Hey, Buck,” he says, muffled, into the man’s shoulder.
It goes like this, Jesse hugged in turn by the group of laddermen until one notices me. I am tall, at the very least average height, but I feel like the last bungalow on a block that sold out to high-rise condos.
“Who’s your friend?” Biceps Man asks.
“I’m Lulu.” I wave and my hand is engulfed in his larger one.
“Marcus.” His smile dimples his cheeks.
“How’d you meet this joker?” Marcus asks. He puts his arm around Jesse’s shoulder and gives him an affectionate shake. Jesse eyes get big like he’s trying to communicate something to me telepathically and I send him a message back with my eyebrows. I got this.
“A mutual friend set us up on a date,” I say. “But we decided we’d be better as friends.”
At the word “date,” the affectionate jostling increases, and as a group their volume gets louder.
“Ooohhhhh.”
“Logan had his first date?”
“Hope you were home by curfew, bud.”
Jesse takes it all in stride, his cheeks pinking up but a small smile on his face. He returns their teasing with some gentle ribbing of his own, slipping into a version of himself I haven’t seen yet. He stands with his shoulders back, his feet planted. He grows taller, bigger, instead of shrinking among the rest of these big men. But he’s still separate; he’s quieter, the low tone and measured cadence of his voice pitched on a frequency that makes him crystal clear despite their laughter and joking. Where they have an almost frenetic energy to them at seeing their old friend, Jesse is calm.
A radio, clipped to the man with a mustache’s belt, squawks and everyone quiets. They listen as a dispatcher says something completely indecipherable, that may be a code or an address or both, but they all seem to understand it. One of them runs back to their carts filled with food to drop off two loaves of bread then sprints out of the store. Marcus squeezes Jesse’s shoulder. “Gotta go.”
“Yeah.” Jesse sounds resigned.
“Hey,” Marcus says, walking backward through an empty checkout line. “Pick up the phone the next time I call you.”
Jesse nods.
“What just happened?” I ask.
Jesse watches them go. The fire truck streaks past, lights and sirens blaring. I cringe at the sound, my shoulders creeping up to my ears as a shudder moves down my spine. The sound of sirens—or worse, the horn—has always felt like a sensory overload.
“They got a call,” he says. He walks over to their carts and pushes them flush along an endcap. “We’re—they,” he corrects himself. “Are on call 24/7 when they’re working. Sometimes they have to leave their groceries. They’ll come back if the call doesn’t take too long. The staff takes care of anything perishable for them.”
“So they were your...battalion?” I ask.
He smiles. “My company. Yeah.”
“But you don’t talk to them anymore?”
He pushes his cart to a checkout line. “Nope. You ready to go?” he asks, once again declining to answer questions. And I want to ask him, why? And for how long? And if he doesn’t speak to all of them or just a few, just Marcus. I want to know if he was out to them and if they weren’t good to him.
I want to know if one day someone new in his life will see the two ofustogether and witness the history written between us, if there will be something there in the way we’ll talk to each other or touch. From somewhere deep inside me, that’s something I want. To be a part of someone’s past, to have deserved more than just a footnote in their history.
A desire that’s silly when I stare too hard at it. It feels like wanting to belong to him or to own a piece of him for myself.
There’s a force field around Jesse and I think it’s to protect him, but I think it isolates him, too. The stubborn part of me, the part that stuck with Brian long after it was clear we weren’t right together, who stays at U of W even though it feels like dragging my career through a swamp; that part of me wants to get past the force field. I don’t want him to be alone over there.
And maybe I want to protect him a little bit, too.
Jesse goes through the cashier line first and bags my food for me after. He pushes his cart to my car and helps me load the trunk. “I can do all this myself, you know,” I say as I watch him heft a bag of potatoes.
“It’s mostly an excuse to make sure there isn’t anyone hiding in your back seat.”
“That’s a very specific fear to have,” I say, peering into the back seat with him.
