AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“When he first suggested it I said you’d probably rather beat yourself with your own arm than work with me.” I laugh, but they look at me like I’m slightly deranged. “I mean, I was joking. It was a joke. I’m sorry.” My laugh dies on my lips. “That was too much.”
After a moment, Audrey slowly smiles. She shrugs. “You weren’t totally wrong,” she says, and this time I cackle.
It’s muggy when we get outside. The sky is pink and purple bleeding into dark blue. We gather underneath it in the parking lot, a scalene triangle of colleagues, maybe friends, being pulled toward our cars. We say all the usual things, that we had a good time and we should do this again soon. I get the feeling that Audrey is still on the fence about me. There’s an urge, giving the same energy as a chittering squirrel insisting you stay away from his nuts, that I do something about that. That I fix it. That Imakeher like me. But the thing is, that’s so damn exhausting. Especially when there are people out there who do like me without having to try at all.
People like Jesse. Even if he said no to us, I don’t think he was saying no to me, to liking me, to loving me. Instead of turning left on Main Street, I turn right. If anyone asks I’ll blame it on distraction, that thinking of him made me do it. I make two more turns before I reach his street. As I approach his house, I slump lower in my seat, easing my foot off the gas for a slow roll. The lights are bright on the front porch and a soft glow comes from the side window in his kitchen, but his truck isn’t in the driveway. Which is probably for the best. The last thing I need is for him to see me staking out his house like the world’s worst spy.
As I pull out of his small neighborhood, IthinkI see the Bronco, but it’s fully dark now and the headlights leave me momentarily blinded before the large truck is gone.
By the time I get home, my happy buzz is gone. My tiny flat is dark and a bit humid, and even with the window open the air is too still. I want to tell Jesse about tonight. About how I might have made some friends, work friends, but that even if I didn’t, that was OK. Mostly, I want to tell him that I’m sorry. That I was too quick to react, too ready to believe that just because I’d been hurt in the past, I was going to be hurt now. Jesse has lost control over a lot of things in his life: his career, his body, his identity to his grandfather. He’s allowed some time to think, but I was too scared to give him that.
I get ready for bed in the dark, like I did the night after our date, climb into bed in my underwear. But before I put on a reality TV show that provides ample evidence in favor of eating the rich, I open my email.
After the last one, I created a filter that sends all of Nora’s emails to their own folder. When they were appearing unannounced in my inbox it seemed like there were a lot of them, but there’s only twelve. I click reply on the last one.
Nor,
Thank you for your letters. I am well and I hope you are well, too.
I tell her a bit about my parents, whom she met once when they came to visit me three years ago, and what it’s like teaching at a different school.
I’m sorry to hear about you and Brian. That’s not sarcasm. I am. It’s sad when something ends, and I have to assume that he meant a lot to you. The truth is, I do miss you. I miss you more than Lancaster, or Brian. I miss us and what it meant to be your friend.
But you should know that I’m happy here. I wasn’t for a while. I was sad and I didn’t feel like I fit in at all. Things were hard. But I’m happy. I’m making new friends and I feel like I belong here.
And yes, I do forgive you. I’ve never been able to hold on to a grudge for long. But as much as I miss us, I’m ready to leave us in the past. And I hope you are, too.
All my best,
Lu x
I know I should wait to send this. The light of morning or a good night’s sleep might reveal a typo, or give me more time to revise, or it might reveal that I don’t need to send this at all. I don’t owe her anything. But it feels good to hit Send, like ending a complete sentence with a full stop. Plus, I’ve never been good with impulse control. I press Send and put my laptop away and when I fall asleep, I sleep the best I have all week.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Jesse
The firehouse gym smells exactly as I remember: musty, sweaty, metallic. I love it. The music, a combination of classic rock and country, is barely audible over the familiar noise: the hum of the row of treadmills and accompanying pounding feet, the constant, continuous clank of barbells on weight racks, the thump of dumbbells on the rubber floors.
I started working out in my last year of high school. I signed up for a weight-lifting class run by my rugby coach. I thought it would be an easy A, but I was never that interested in the mechanics of lifting. To this day, I despise the cutting and bulking diets that lifters deem necessary to maximize growth. I’ll never have a flat stomach or the abs some of my younger colleagues sported. I just love the challenge. I love loading the bar with weight, and then more weight, and then more. The act of it is so simple: pick it up, put it down. But in those seconds between when I wrap my hands around the bar and lift, the only thoughts running through my head arebreathe, breathe, breathe.
My home gym was a necessity, to recover my leg muscle and strength after the accident, but especially to rehab my head. I wish I’d known that the best rehab was here all along, working out with my friends again.
“Let’s go, Jess,” Marcus says, his voice low. I settle the bar on my shoulders for my last set. I think, technically, I’m not allowed to be here, working out in the station’s gym. But when Marcus mentioned he was going to work out today I took a chance and asked if I could join him. I forgot what it’s like to work out with this bunch of meatheads. I haven’t hit numbers like this since my accident. The weight on the bar now isn’t my pre-accident PR or anything, but it’s fucking heavy.
“You got this, Jesse,” Buck says. April pauses her lat pull-downs to watch me. I take a deep breath and drop into a squat and as I push out of the bottom, the gym erupts in my old colleagues’ shouts and cheers.
My heart is bursting but only partly because I just back-squatted the weight of a whole other man. I don’t think I could have done that without them.
Marcus is bouncing on the balls of his feet as I rerack the bar, and he launches his arms around me when I get out from under it. “Dude, that was so sick.”
“Thanks,” I say, quietly. But my smile is really fucking loud. “For letting me come.”
He squeezes my shoulders in his big hands. “Anytime, OK? I mean it. We miss you around here.”
Buck makes me a protein shake before I leave and we toast to the good luck of not getting a single call while we exercised.
The fire station still smells the same, like coffee. The side door slams behind me and the second I’m not smelling it anymore, I miss it. It rained at some point while I was inside. The asphalt is dark and the air smells sweet and sticky and warm. My sneakers soak into puddles on the way to the Bronco.
