Vice

by Elana Johnson

  He wasn’t sure why he felt so…off. He wasn’t quite sad, and he wasn’t quite mad. He was just unsettled. That might be the right word for it. What he knew was he hated feeling like he was putting his friends out, and no matter how many times Jordan said he didn’t care if Lucas lived in his house with him, the fact was it was Jordan’s house.

  Not Lucas’s.

  “That’s it,” he said, surveying the almost-empty house. It had come furnished, because Lucas didn’t have a high-paying job that allowed him the luxury of leather sofas. So the couch, dining table and chairs, and appliances all stayed. He’d left the bed in the bedroom too, and thankfully, Jordan had one in the second bedroom at his place.

  He and Jordan had originally wanted to live together, but at some point, Lucas wanted to prove to himself that he could take care of his business. Live his own life.

  “What time is your job interview?” Jordan asked.

  “Eight,” he said with a groan. “Who’s up and dressed and out of the house by eight a.m.?”

  Jordan burst out laughing. “A lot of people, man.”

  Lucas knew he was right, but he hadn’t been one of those people in a long time. Fine, he’d never been one of those people.

  “Is it at the hospital?”

  “Yep.”

  “Are you going to run into Julie?”

  “I hope not.”

  “She hasn’t called?”

  “Nope.” Lucas cut a look at Jordan out of the corner of his eye. They turned toward the front door and left the house. He paused to turn back and make sure everything was locked up, and then he followed Jordan to the truck. “I didn’t get her number. I didn’t give her mine.”

  “Did you want to give her your number?” Jordan asked.

  Lucas couldn’t deny it outright. Julie Paige was beautiful, and he’d be lying if he said he hadn’t thought about her at all over the past week. There had been definite sparks between them, though sometimes Lucas wondered if he’d been concussed during much of their time together.

  “I don’t know,” he finally said. “I guess I can track her down at the hospital if I feel like it.”

  “Yeah, that works,” Jordan said. He sighed and looked out his window. “My dinner with Felicia’s family was a fiasco. That, and she hasn’t really spoken to me since the thing on Sunday.”

  “That’s why you broke up with her?”

  “She doesn’t want to be with me,” Jordan said, his voice heavy and sad. “That’s why I broke up with her. She was just too nice to do it. So I did.”

  “Sorry, man,” Lucas said, because he was. And there wasn’t anything else to say. It sucked breaking up with a woman he liked, and he suspected Jordan was a little farther down the road than just like.

  “Thanks.”

  They drove back to Jordan’s in silence, unloaded the truck, and Lucas started unpacking the boxes he’d need in his bedroom. Clothes and shoes and toiletries. Jordan didn’t own a car, but his house had a two-car garage, so a lot of Lucas’s stuff stayed in the boxes in the garage. That was fine. They didn’t need their own pots and pans when they could share what Jordan already had in the house.

  “You ready for Bikers and Books tomorrow?” he asked when Lucas finally came back out of the bedroom.

  “Yep.” He practically fell into the recliner and looked at what Jordan had put on the TV. “Nine, right?”

  “Yep. Nine sharp. Done by one-thirty. I’ll be glad when it’s over.” He yawned, and Lucas knew the level of tiredness he felt.

  He leaned back in the recliner and closed his eyes too.

  Sometime later—he had no idea when—his phone rang, startling his eyes open again. Jordan groaned somewhere in the room, and Lucas woke up enough to pull his phone out of his pocket, his adrenaline spiking.

  A number he didn’t recognize sat on the screen, and Lucas’s heartbeat quickened.

  “Answer it already,” Jordan grumbled, and Lucas swiped on the call.

  Lifting it to his ear, he said, “Hello?”

  “Is this Lucas Miner?” a woman asked.

  “Yes,” he said warily, realizing a moment too late that he should’ve hung up on the woman. Probably a telemarketer, and all he wanted to do was go back to sleep.

  “A-ha,” she said with a giggle. So very un-telemarketer-like. “I finally found you. It’s Julie Paige.”

  “It’s Julie Paige,” he repeated, probably a little bit too loud. But that got Jordan’s attention, whose eyes flew open, and he sat up.

  “Julie Paige?” he repeated too.

  “I got your number from a friend,” she said. “Look, I know you had to run off on Sunday, and maybe you’re not interested. But I thought I felt something between us, and I’d love to, I don’t know, get coffee where we can actually sit and stay and talk.”

  Sit and stay and talk. The words echoed in Lucas’s mind.

  He had no idea what to say, and Julie had fallen silent too. Jordan scooted to the edge of the couch and hissed, “What’s she saying?”

  Lucas just shook his head, and Jordan motioned for Lucas to give him the phone. Without thinking, he did. Just like that, like he was fifteen years old and wanted his friend to talk to the girl before he did.

  “Hey,” Jordan said. “No, this is Jordan Waterhouse. Lucas just…he needs a minute for something.”

  Smoky barked, as if calling them out on their lies, and Jordan said, “He has to take care of his dog.”

  Lucas’s eyebrows shot up as feeling started to come back into his hands. His heart raced now, rippling like the flag did on the back of his motorcycle.

  “Oh, sure, he can get coffee. He loves the stuff.” Jordan was grinning like he’d won the lottery, and Lucas made a swipe for the phone.

  Jordan leaned away from him though, out of his reach. “Okay, I’m going to give you back to him so he can work out his schedule.” He handed the phone back, chuckling.

  Lucas wanted to throw the phone as far as he could, as hard as he could. He couldn’t quite breathe properly when he said, “Julie?”

  “I don’t work on Tuesday or Wednesday next week,” she said. “Do either of those work for you?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I mean, I have a job interview at the hospital on Monday, actually. I don’t know when I’d start if I got the job there. And I work at the library on Tuesday morning. Nine to one.”

  “Let’s go on Tuesday,” she said. “Right after you get off at the library. Does that work?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Great.” Julie wore a smile in her voice, and she added, “Okay, well, bye.”

  “Bye,” he said, but he was pretty sure the call had already ended before he’d spoken. He let his hand fall to his lap as he looked at Jordan. “What just happened?”

  “You, my friend, got asked out on a date.” And Jordan looked entirely too happy about it.

  “It’s Julie Paige, though,” he said.

  “Yeah, and eighteen years have passed since Lawrence’s terror.”

  “Still.” He couldn’t imagine dating Julie. Falling in love with her. Possibly becoming part of her family. With his full faculties back now, he said, “I’ll have to break it off. I’ll just make something up on Monday night.”

  “Lucas,” Jordan said.

  “No,” he said, shaking his head. “She just caught me off-guard. But no. I’m not going out with her.” He stood up. “No. No way.” He moved into the kitchen, his mind made up.

  The memories he never boxed up flowed through his mind while he turned on Jordan’s sink and got down a glass so he could get a drink. Lawrence Paige had been ruthless, during a time with Lucas needed all the friends he could get.

  He’d hated Lawrence Paige with a passion, and the feeling had been mutual though Lucas had never done anything to the other boy. Literally, not one thing.

  Lucas had been poor growing up, and after his mother died, his care was entirely up to him. At eleven, he still needed to be told to shower, and he didn’t have his own money to
buy deodorant and cologne. He’d learned, but by then, he’d already been ostracized by a lot of his peers.

  The only person who’d never treated him like a leper had been Jordan, and a rush of gratitude for the man swept through Lucas.

  He filled his glass and drank it all greedily, half-hating Julie for calling him and disturbing his afternoon nap. He glanced over to Jordan, and he was already back on the couch, his eyes closed and his chest rising and falling in an even rhythm.

  Lucas was too keyed up now to go back to sleep, and the recliner wasn’t all that comfortable anyway. “Come on, Smoky,” he said to the dog. “Let’s go for a run.”

  Surely then his mind would clear enough to know what to do about his date with Julie, because he absolutely could not go out with her. He’d been down the Paige road before, and he’d crashed and burned. And bled and cried and allowed hate to enter his heart.

  Not again, he vowed to himself as he clipped on Smoky’s leash and left Jordan sleeping on the couch.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Julie sat at her kitchen table, the leftovers from yesterday cooling in front of her. “He said yes,” she said to Riley, but the euphoria she’d felt over calling Lucas and asking him out had already started to fade.

  She thought of the Thanksgiving meal she’d shared with her family yesterday. It was almost complete. Almost normal. Almost bearable to watch her mother set five place settings and only have four people there.

  Julie didn’t know why she tormented herself so. Lawrence hadn’t called any of them in six months, not even her to check on his dog. They didn’t know where he was, or if he’d gotten a new number, or what.

  Julie had been the last person to see him, as he’d come to her to take Riley before he’d left. His last words had been, “I can’t explain now, but I’ll call you later.”

  And later had come and gone many times over, and her brother still hadn’t called.

  They’d made it through the meal without anyone crying, so that was something. But the conversation was muted, and the general feel around her childhood home was one of sadness and desperation.

  Julie hated it, but she couldn’t abandon her parents in the same way. Maybe Charlie was right. Her younger brother had said she was simply trying to replace Lawrence with a boyfriend, and that was why she clung to every man who even looked her way.

  She’d argued with him, because she couldn’t argue with her parents. She couldn’t tell them Lawrence wasn’t coming back, and that he might not even be alive anymore. Julie worked at the hospital, and she’d been able to do a little digging in the system from other area hospitals. She’d learned that a Lawrence Paige had been admitted almost four months ago to a facility three hours south of Forbidden Lake, in a mid-size city called Juniper.

  She hadn’t been able to see what for, but he’d been there for three days before he was released. There was nothing else in the medical files, and that trail had gone cold again. She’d considered telling Charlie about it, thinking maybe they could see if Lawrence had used his credit cards in Juniper, or anywhere else for that matter.

  Lawrence was older than her, and Charlie younger. They’d both played football and been very popular growing up. Julie was more reserved, though her passion had been drama. And as a drama geek, she definitely wasn’t winning any Homecoming crowns.

  Lawrence had been the apple of both of her parent’s eyes. He went on to college on a full scholarship, graduated summa cum laude, and came home to open his own law firm. He’d worked there for a decade before poof! Disappearing.

  Julie had tried to get answers from his two partners at Paige, Peters, and McLaughlin, now renamed PML. But Owen Peters and Michael McLaughlin hadn’t said a word, citing a document that Lawrence had signed himself telling them not to.

  Familiar frustration built within Julie as she finally picked up her fork and speared a piece of turkey. After swiping it through the mashed potatoes and gravy, she ate it.

  She didn’t think Charlie was right. She wasn’t trying to fill the hole Lawrence had left in her heart with a boyfriend. Number one, a boyfriend wasn’t the same size and shape as a brother. She could have one without the other and be fine.

  Did she feel empty in a way she’d never experienced before?

  “Yes,” she said out loud. Riley lifted her head from the floor, a doleful expression on her face. Julie picked up a shred of turkey and fed it to the dog.

  Did she trust men?

  “No,” she said, shaking her head. She’d dated Josiah for eight months before she’d literally run into him and his fiancée at the mall. He’d just bought her the diamond ring that glittered on her finger, blinding Julie. Or rather, un-blinding her to the truth.

  And Josiah, when forced to choose, had not chosen her.

  Her heart beat irregularly now, and she didn’t know how to fix it.

  The relationship with Josiah had ended three months ago, right in the thick of Lawrence’s absence, and Julie honestly wasn’t sure how she made it through each day anymore.

  “But now you have a date with Lucas,” she said. And she hoped he’d get the job at the hospital too. Then maybe Julie would get to see a lot more of him.

  She pushed away the thoughts of her family and her job, and she focused on her forthcoming date. She finished eating and hurried down the hall to her bedroom, already dialing her best friend.

  “Liza,” she said. “Lucas said yes.” She giggled, glad she could at least pretend to be happy for a little while. Maybe if she pretended long enough, it would come true.

  “You’re kidding. What did he say when you told him how you got his number?”

  Julie started leafing through the clothes in her closet. “He didn’t say anything. I just told him I got it from a friend.”

  “He’s going to find out it was because of his surgery from four years ago.”

  “He didn’t ask.”

  “What if he does?”

  “Then I’ll say the hospital was a friend.” Julie knew she shouldn’t have looked him up in the system, and she certainly shouldn’t have taken his phone number from his records. Not for a personal call. If anyone found out…she’d lose her job.

  But no one was going to find out.

  “I need help with my outfit,” she said.

  Liza sighed, but she’d help. “I just don’t want you to get in trouble.”

  In the back of Julie’s mind, she had the thought that Lucas would be worth the trouble, but she didn’t say that. She tended to fall too fast for men, something Liza was forever warning her against.

  “I know,” she said. “It’s just coffee, about one-thirty in the afternoon. It’s freezing right now, and I’ve already checked the weather for Tuesday. It shouldn’t raining or snowing.”

  “Tight jeans and boots for sure,” Liza said. One of her favorite games was playing dress-up, with real people and real dates. “And…it’s almost Christmas, and don’t you have a flashy red blouse?”

  “That’s a total springtime blouse,” Julie said, flipping to it in her wardrobe. “It’s gauzy and see-through. No, I need a sweater or something.”

  “Sweaters do show off curves….” Liza said.

  “Now we’re talking,” Julie said, moving away from the blouse. “I have a black turtleneck sweater.”

  “The one with the big ribbing? That would work.”

  “Yes.” Julie took the sweater out of her closet. “It has big ribbing. I could wear those big gold infinity earrings and leave my hair down.”

  “Hair down is always the best bet with a first date,” Liza said. “Shiny and straight. No hat.”

  “He’s already seen me in a hat,” Julie said, instantly worried. “So definitely not.”

  “Subtle makeup,” Liza advised. “And while I have you, I need some advice too.”

  Julie set the sweater on top of her dresser and continued to gather the accessories she needed. “All right,” she said. “What’s up?”

  “I’m thinking of getting a dog
,” Liza said. “Now that Rob’s gone, and he took Molly….” Her voice trailed off, and Julie’s heart wailed for her best friend. The divorce had been final for four months now, after they’d fought over who got to keep the little goldendoodle they’d adopted together.

  Rob hadn’t “taken” Molly. The judge had given her to him, because he’d paid for her. He paid for everything in the marriage, and Liza had been struggling to make ends meet even without an extra mouth to feed.

  “What kind of dog?” Julie asked instead of protesting against the idea of Liza taking on another expense. She’d been picking up some freelance writing and editing jobs, as she almost had a degree in English and not much else in the way of skills to make money.

  “Just a little dog,” she said. “Nothing like Riley. Like a dachshund or something.”

  “That could work,” Julie said. “Since you work from home and all that.”

  “That’s what I was thinking,” Liza said. “I’m going to look into it.”

  Julie sat down on the bed, a sigh coming from her mouth as she said, “All right. I could help on days I’m not working. Puppies aren’t easy.”

  “We got Molly as a puppy,” Liza said. “I know how it is.”

  “Are you sure you want a dog?”

  “I’m lonely,” Liza said.

  “Maybe you need a new boyfriend.”

  Liza started laughing, but it wasn’t filled with laughter. “That’s a hard pass, Jules. But thanks.” She didn’t sound grateful, and foolishness filled Julie. She was always saying the wrong thing, at the most inopportune times. Like how she’d just blurted out her question about whether Lucas had a girlfriend or not.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “Text me a picture of the dachshund.”

  “I’ll start looking,” Liza said. “Talk later.”

  The call ended, and Julie let her arm fall to her lap. “Yeah,” she said. “Talk later.” But she had absolutely no faith that anyone would actually call her later.

  She wanted to be wrong. She hated how she felt. But she also couldn’t change it. Lawrence and Josiah had both created a twisted version of reality that Julie now had to live in. She had to figure it out. She had to find a way to be happy again.