After the napkin had remained in her hand for a few more seconds, she lowered it to my face, holding it just below my nose. When my hand replaced hers over the napkin, she leaned in and kissed my cheek.
“What was that for?” I’d demanded, so shocked I almost leapt out of my skin. That had been my first kiss, at least the first one I could remember, and not the romantic kind a person means when referring to a “first kiss.” My mom had been gone for too long to remember if she’d ever kissed me, and the only affection my dad showed me was slowing his fist just before it landed on me. It was the first time I’d ever been kissed, and even though I was only six years old and I had a lot of life still ahead of me, I knew no matter who or how I was kissed in the future, nothing would compare to that one on the bus.
None never had.
“It looked like you needed one,” she’d replied before moving back to her seat up front.
Slamming the brakes, I pounded my forehead against the steering wheel. “Fuck me.” I’d turned into the bleeding heart, nostalgic chump I’d had nightmares of becoming. What the hell was wrong with me? I’d managed to repress all of those memories and feelings for so many years I’d almost convinced myself I’d forgotten them. Boy, had I been wrong.
So why now? Why those memories? Why couldn’t I contain and control them? The longer I thought about it, the more questions cropped up. Loads of questions, zero answers. If Jesse wasn’t two states over, I might have raced to his place and forced his ass out of bed to keep me company and get my thoughts off their current track. But no, the p**sy-whipped sucker was probably cuddled up beside his girlfriend—correction: fiancé—having p**sy-whipped sucker dreams about white picket fences and honeymoon destinations. As much as I wanted to tell him he was making the biggest mistake of his life marrying Rowen Sterling, I couldn’t. Marrying the woman he loved at twenty-one wasn’t a mistake for a guy like Jesse Walker. Shit, Jesse could have married the woman he loved at any age and it wouldn’t have been a mistake. Jesse was the marrying, loyal, loving type.
Me? It didn’t matter what age I was or how much I thought I loved the woman. Marriage, rings, and vows were not created with people like me in mind.
Other than Jesse, Rowen wasn’t bad to talk to, but since she was where Jesse was—spooning two states away—she was out too. There was Brandy, but she and I never did much . . . talking. At one time, Josie had been one of my most trusted confidants. Given she was the one I needed to talk about, not to mention the one I had to keep my distance from, I had to scratch her off the list, too. After that, there was no one. I had three people—well, two—I could talk to about things that needed talking out.
My dad had figured it out twenty-one years ago: I was a good-for-nothing bastard.
Pounding the wheel one last time with my forehead, I was about to punch the gas, hoping that Clay left a few swigs in his bottle before he passed out, when something in the distance caught my attention. A bright ball of color lit up the night. Almost like someone had started a huge bonfire in the middle of nowhere. In the middle of nothing but hundreds of acres of barren land and our trailer. Which meant . . .
I punched the gas so hard my truck fishtailed out of control. I eased off the gas just enough to regain control then tore down the bumpy road, watching that ball of light get bigger and brighter. I was still a half mile back when I saw the actual flames rolling off of the trailer. We had a not-quite-dried-up well, but it was clear by the time I slammed the brakes in front of the lawn chairs that there was nothing left to salvage. The entire thing was engulfed in flames, close to the point of being unrecognizable. Everything was burning. Everything was gone.
“DAD!” I yelled, throwing the truck door open and leaping out. Panic settled in my stomach. Dread soon followed. It was after two in the morning, which meant he was passed out drunk. Since he only left the trailer to restock his liquor supply, he couldn’t be somewhere else. His truck had been repo’d years ago, his license revoked years before that, and no one in our county or the next one over would loan him a car. As much as I wanted to cling to the hope that he was somewhere, anywhere else, I knew exactly where he was.
That was when an explosion rocked the trailer and vibrated the ground below my feet. Probably one of the propane tanks. My body and mind flipped to autopilot and, despite the beating I’d taken earlier, I sprinted toward that trailer like I was good as new. I was still a good ten yards back when the heat hit me. The fire was so hot it scalded my face. The bruises and slashes from earlier probably didn’t help any. A few yards closer and even if I wanted to breathe—which I didn’t because the air was so hot it burned my nostrils and lungs—I couldn’t have. The fire had sucked all of the oxygen out of the air.
As I moved closer, I squinted and covered my nose and mouth with my arm to keep the smoke from hitting me full force. The closer I got, the more I realized nothing was left in that trailer to save. The man I’d lived with for twenty-one years wasn’t going to be draped over his chair in the back, snoring and unscathed. I knew that, but the autopilot I was on wouldn’t accept it. I couldn’t have stopped moving forward even if I wanted to.
By the time I made it to the burning door, I was coughing so hard I felt like I was expecting a lung to come up. I didn’t think—I simply reacted. Grabbing the handle, I pulled on it as a scream ripped through my body. White hot pain shot from my hand up my arm, so intense I felt close to passing out. The only time I’d felt pain close to that had been when that behemoth brahma down in Casper had come down on my shin a few years back, fracturing my femur.
The smell hit me next. That acrid, metallic scent was so thick in the air I could almost taste it . . . and I knew what it was. I didn’t have to have smelled it before to know that human flesh was the only thing that could smell as unforgettable as that. I reassured myself it was my flesh, my palm, causing the smell. Nothing or no one else.
Setting my jaw, I cried out and charged for the door again, not consciously recognizing why I had to get in. My hand was inches from wrapping around the scalding doorknob again when a firm set of arms wrapped around my chest and pulled me back.
“Garth! What are you doing, son? You’re going to kill yourself!”
I struggled, but no amount of fight worked. “Let me go, Neil! Clay’s in there! He’s in there!” The fight slowly faded from me the farther Neil wrangled me away from the trailer. “My dad’s in there!”
Another explosion blasted from inside the trailer. Another propane tank. That’s when I realized and accepted that the father I never really knew I’d never know because he was gone. He’d been gone for a long time, but his body had followed the rest of him.
“No, son.” Neil stopped pulling me away but kept his hold on me. “He’s not in there anymore.”
E.R. VISITS HAD been a pastime of mine for as long as I could remember. I was about as comfortable in a hospital bed as I was in my own bed. Since my own bed was nothing but ash and soot, I suppose the hospital bed was even more appealing than it had been before. The fire department had shown up a few minutes before Neil got me into his truck and booked it for the hospital. He was the second person that night to suggest an E.R. visit, and since I was too exhausted and in shock to argue with him, I went with it.
The nurse had fixed up my hand, and the doctor stopped in a few minutes later to pump me full of pain meds. He’d seen me plenty of times growing up. My dad had threatened him when he’d recommended I take the summer off from bull riding after I broke my leg. The doc was a decent guy who seemed that much more decent as the drugs worked their way into my system. I guessed he’d given them to me more for the mental than the physical pain.
The benefit to having perfected repressing stuff was being able to do it again. My dad had just been barbecued inside our “home,” and I still hadn’t cried a single tear. I hadn’t broken down, punched a hole in a wall, or dropped to my knees. I didn’t face it; I couldn’t yet. So I repressed it. I didn’t think about what tomorrow would bring, and I didn’t think about what the day after that would. I focused on my bandaged hand, still pulsing with pain, the hospital bed I was curled on which, for all I knew, might be the last mattress my body felt for a long while, and the antiseptic smell surrounding me. Those were the realities I obscured real reality with. Those were the things I centered my attention on when my father’s funeral needed to be planned.
I was close to passing out in a drug-induced haze when the curtains whooshed open and a figure slipped inside. “Garth? Oh my god . . .” A sniffling, bleary-eyed person approached.
“Hey, Joze. What are you doing here?” Talking hurt, thanks to the fire singing my throat.
“Neil called Jesse, then Jesse called me . . . He and Rowen are on their way. They were leaving when I was talking to him.” She approached the foot of the bed slowly. “I’m so sorry, Garth. And, wow, that sounded as pathetic and petty as I always thought it would.”
“It’s okay. I get it. You’re sorry, I’m sorry, the whole f**king world’s sorry. But it doesn’t fix anything. Sorry doesn’t bring Clay back. Sorry doesn’t stop that fire from starting. Sorry doesn’t get me to that trailer before the fire started. And sorry sure as shit doesn’t make me feel any better.”
I wasn’t mad at Josie. I knew there wasn’t much else to offer than an I’m sorry when tragedy struck. I’d already heard it a few dozen times in less than an hour, and I’d hit critical mass. If I never heard another I’m sorry again, I’d be good.
Instead of saying something back, Josie came around the side of the bed and crawled in next to me. Her body fit around mine as her arm wrapped around me, holding me close. It was an odd embrace, a foreign one for me, but it felt so exactly what I needed right then that I melted right into her. Screw the drugs.
“Neil told me what happened. About how you were trying to get inside.” Her hand wrapped around the wrist of my bandaged hand and gave it a gentle squeeze. “I always knew you’d be one of those people who’d charge into a burning building to save a person. I always knew you were a superhero in hiding.”
Josie liked to see the good in everyone, and she’d never let go of the idea that some was still left in me. At one time, I’d believed her. I didn’t anymore.
Her embrace became more painful than comforting. “I didn’t save anything or anyone, Joze. I don’t qualify as a superhero.”
“But you tried. That’s what matters.”
“No, that’s not what matters. Saving my dad’s what would have mattered. The only thing that matters now is that he’s dead, my hand is burnt to hell, and I’m homeless.” Too bad the doc didn’t hook me up with an I.V. Then I could have just kept pumping the drugs into me. I wasn’t sure if it was Josie or reality, but one or both of them were forcing me back to a place I didn’t want to be.
“You know you can stay with me and my family for as long as you need to.” Her hold around me tightened when I tried to squirm away. Classic Josie.