“You’ve gotta go,” I remind him.
“Mmmm.”
“Will you be at the bar on Thursday?”
“I’m a little out of practice,” Jake says with a small smile. “Think I’ll do okay?”
I bump his nose with mine before I back away and scoot to the opposite side of the couch. “Being out of practice hasn’t been a big problem for you so far.”
Jake shakes his head with a chuckle, then stands to go in search of the rest of his clothes. He returns from the bathroom a minute or two later, mostly put back together by the time he makes hisway toward the front door, bracing himself on the wall while he tugs his boots on. I haven’t moved any further, and he doesn’t seem to expect me to, another smile thrown toward me instead.
“So, I’ll see you soon?”
“See you soon.”
We don’t see each other soon, though. We text throughout the week, but Jake is exhausted after the weekend in Palm Springs and his visit to me and an avalanche of work he hadn’t expected to hit so hard upon his return. I bug him with some trivia questions he missed (Who wrote the Manfred Mann hit song “Blinded by the Light”? What popular soda was originally made to be a mixer for whiskey?) and he answers far too quickly (Bruce Springsteen. Mountain Dew). Other than those very intentional moments, our exchanges are briefly flirty things I might’ve shared with anyone.
I can’t be all that upset that Jake doesn’t make it into Trailhead, because neither does my father—I don’t hear from him at all, actually—and I think maybe the universe is trying to balance something for me.
When I don’t see either of them the following week, I wonder whether the universe is paying attention to me at all.
And I hope I haven’t fucked anything up, one way or another.
It’s unfair of me to expect answers or place blame. Jake gotcalled to replace a colleague at some big conference in the Bay Area, and I’m certainly not mad that he has important things to do. I rarely see him more than once a week anyway, so going this long without seeing him is fine. I spend a few late nights with Sage. I fuck around on my go-to apps and exchange pics with some strangers. I don’t make it out to any of the bars or clubs that would let me get to know a stranger any better.
If I get off thinking about Jake while he’s gone, so be it. It’s better than losing sleep checking for messages from my father. And maybesoonmeans something different to Drew Barrett, or maybe he was just testing me to see if I’d jump to respond. There’s only one person who would have a chance of being able to answer questions like that, but I have no plans to tell my mom anything about the message, especially when I don’t know what he wants from me.
She’s family. He’s not.