Chapter Twenty
Jake
I’m exhausted and sweaty and dirty. Filthy, actually. I need to shower, but I also don’t want to move from where I am. I could stay here all day, in fact. The warmth. The quiet. The simple fragility, or the fragile simplicity, or a dozen other pretentious descriptions of a moment I don’t want to leave behind.
And I don’t have to go anywhere yet.
I don’t have to say goodbye. Yet.
Wiping my brow with the back of my arm probably leaves a streak of soil behind, but I don’t grab the rag I gave up on hours ago. Instead, I refocus on the last of the weeds in a garden that only sort of belongs to me. The beds of flowers on the opposite side of the backyard have always been mine, but I inherited the vegetable garden I’m kneeling in front of now, and I ache from the inside out, the pain a fact of life twice over.
I’m getting too old to do this as often as I’d like, and I desperatelymiss my wife.
Ask Darren to come over and help.
The voice inside my head isn’t wrong, but it isn’t right either, and I do what I can to keep it silent for now. Crashing my bike on an L.A. off-ramp had left me obviously bloody and bruised, but I’d also been fractured—almost intimately so—and I’d healed with Darren caught between more cracks than I can count. Doing anything about that now would require new attention to old wounds, and most of them became welcome scars a very long time ago.
I tug one of the gardening gloves from my hand and reach for the dirt because having anything in my way feels unbearable now. A deep breath follows, and then I sit and rest and let the voice return.
You didn’t resist his offer to be your first.
No, I didn’t. I’d spent years imagining what it would be like to be one of many. I still think I would’ve let him take anything my broken body could’ve given him the night I crashed, when he’d held me close and then put me to bed. The sex was never going to be the breaking point, though. Sex wasn’t the most important part of mymarriage, and saying yes to Darren didn’t tread on hallowed ground.
He'd known it, too. Way back then, he’d mentioned movies and lounge chairs because he’d understood that being naked with him wasn’t what made me feel bare.
I kept him out of my kitchen instead.
And by then it was too late to matter.
I’d realized a long time ago that trivia night was the irrevocable shift between us. It was something Michelle and I would’ve loved doing together. Wehadloved it together, here and there, her intelligence arousing enough to make me beg for more. Now she’s gone, and someone else turns me on. He takes me to dinner and plays my music and asks me for silly toys and tells me about things that hurt.
I’ve avoided Trailhead the past few weeks because Darren and I are about to host a pool party in the house I shared with Michelle, and I want his hands in this dirt and his help the next time I cook. We’re friends, but he’s made some of my fractured pieces whole, and it feels important to keep him close enough that I don’t break again.
None of that comes from a voice in my head, and if I weren’t so busy pushing myself off the ground and tossing another glove aside and wiping dirt on the front of my jeans, I’d pause to feel it in the beat of my heart.
Still too busy after that, I give in to temptation and undress completely, my phone left on the discarded pile of clothes before I dive into the pool. After a lap or two, I pull myself back out and retrieve my phone, then drop into a lounge chair to dry while I text Darren.
There’s a heat wave all next week.
He responds quickly. He usually does.Yeah? You ready?
No pool noodles.
Believe it or not I can have fun without them
I believe it just fine.V is still okay with it?
My phone rings with Darren’s call, and I glance down at my naked body as though it matters. He’s seen it before, and will again. Probably. It’s only been a week or so since the last time he stopped by before his shift and we made a mess of each other in my living room, and I want him back again.
“This isn’t bad news, is it?” I ask.
“Nope,” he says. “V’s still good with it, and she told me to take the night before too, in case you need help with anything. So, I’ll just swap both shifts unless—have you talked to Lucy yet?”
“I called her this morning. She said she’ll drive up the day of the party and crash here that night. I’ll need to go into work for a few hours before everyone gets here, but—”
“You don’t have plans the night before,” Darren finishes.
“None. And I don’t think there’s much to prep, really. Not that far in advance.”