by Ava Moreau
You could just tell him about the call. If anyone in the world would understand, it’d be Jack.
Jack’s voice echoed from the next stall, over the hiss of the water, loudly singing.
“I’m so prettyyy, I’m so goddamned prettyyy…”
Trent couldn’t help smiling at that, even as bad as he felt.
He himself wasn’t vain, unlike a lot of guys at the gym (including Jack). Trent didn’t work out because it made him look good. He certainly didn’t do it to attract anybody. There were plenty of men here trying to make themselves hard and ripped to get girlfriends, or to combat the onward march of time.
Trent did it because it made him feel good. He’d never say this to anybody, not even Jack, but the gym was the one place in his life that he felt powerful. Where he felt like he had control. Not the sort of thing you want to share with other people, unless you want to get a reputation for being oversensitive. Shit, he got enough of that back in high school. He certainly didn't mind the respect people gave him when they saw his size, the flirty speculative looks women would give him whenever he wore a tight shirt, but all of that missed the point.
The point was to feel good. But today he didn’t feel good. Today he felt troubled and torn.
The call should have been good news. Hell, to any normal person, it would’ve been great news. I should be celebrating right now, instead of acting like I’ve got some goddamn tragic secret.
"What the fuck are you doing in there?" asked Jack.
"Taking a shower, what you think I'm doing in here?"
"You’re either daydreaming or jacking off, because I asked you a question five minutes ago and you never answered."
Trent scratched his brow. How long had it been since Jack had stopped his little song? He couldn't remember. He had to hope he hadn’t given away how bad he felt, how anxious not to tell his friend about this call. He had to keep up appearances; he couldn’t let Jack know what was going on. Not yet.
"Maybe the water is too loud,” he said. “I didn't hear you."
"I said, whatever happened with that Daisy girl? Did you call her back?”
Trent sighed with relief, glad Jack couldn’t see his face. Girls were an easy topic, one that could keep Jack occupied a long time. “No way,” he said. “Not interested in the least.”
He heard Jack turn off the water, and the jingle of the metal shower curtain rings as his friend stepped out into the locker room.
“Are you kidding?” said Jack. “Shit, I’m living vicariously through you, dude. You gotta go out with somebody so I can ask you all the details.
Trent made sure all the soap was off him and then shut his own water off. He stepped naked onto the cold tile of the locker room floor. "Nah," he said. "You know how it is in this town, you get seen with the wrong person, you get a reputation for life.”
Jack laughed. "Myers Lake, gossip capital of the eastern US."
Jack was toweling himself off. His tan skin contrasted with the white of the towel, and his thickly muscled back tensed and loosened as he dried it. For reasons he didn’t understand, Trent was glad Jack’s back was to him. He quickly snatched down his own towel and wrapped it around himself.
It didn’t make much sense to be modest around Jack, who was so stuck on himself that he would probably walk around naked around town expecting people to throw him a big parade. But ever since they’d played for the Hornets back in high school, Trent had found himself nervous when it came time to hit the locker room. It was a nervousness that it stayed even now that he was nearly the same size and stature as his friend. One more thing he wasn’t sure how to talk about to Jack.
Just add it to the list. Eventually you won’t be able to talk to him at all, you’ll have so many secrets from him. Some best friend you are.
And Jack was his best friend. If Trent told him about the call, he would be excited. He’d drag Trent out to celebrate. Try to convince him that the job offer had been good news.
“We gotta find you a girl somewhere,” said Jack. “You’ve got a dry spell bigger than Death Valley.”
Trent opened his locker and pulled out his pants. "Why the sudden interest in my love life?"
"Or lack thereof."
"Or lack thereof."
Jack reached into his own locker and pulled out his black briefs. Trent averted his eyes out of politeness, but not before seeing his friend pull up the briefs over his muscular thighs and thick glutes.
"I just feel sorry for you, dude," said Jack. "How long has it been?"
“You know I’ve been too busy for all that,” Trent said. “With the… With the job search and everything.”
All Trent had to do was keep his voice flat, his face still. Just keep all the emotion out.
(”We’ll be so happy to have you join our team,” the recruiter had said. “We think you’re going to love it here. Wait till you see our relocation benefits.”
Relocation. Packing his bags and moving up to Corinth. Before that, it hadn’t been real, the idea of leaving everything behind…including his best friend.
Suddenly it was very real.)
Jack shook his head. “I’ll never understand your damn priorities, man.”
Quickly, before Jack could ask him about the job hunt, Trent said, “I don’t get how you expect me to be a player, when there’s only 2-1/2 girls in the whole town.”
Jack barked a laugh and popped Trent on the shoulder. “Maybe we need to find you an out-of-town girl.”
It was their normal joking around, the same kind of conversation they’d been having since they were teenagers. But Trent found he couldn’t keep it up. At the mention of out-of-town, he looked down at the floor.
Jack must have realized something was up. Trent realized Jack was staring at him.
“Okay,” Jack said. “Spill it.”
“Spill what?”
“You know how this is supposed to go. I give you a hard time for not finding a girl, you jab me back. Something’s on your mind. You were acting weird earlier, but I figured it was nothing. Now you look guilty as a hound-dog that just pissed on the sofa.”
“Nah, it’s nothing,” said Trent.
“Even better,” said Jack. “If it’s nothing, you’ll have no problem telling me about it.”
“Oh, did you want to have a big sensitive discussion about my feelings?” said Trent…but the joke was weak, and his voice sounded bitter.
I can’t tell him. This is ridiculous. I have to.
Jack, Trent would say, I’ve been offered a job up in Corinth. It’ll mean moving away from Myers Lake. Away from all my friends, including my best friend.
How do you say that to someone, though? How do you just announce, out of the blue, that you’re leaving forever?
I mean we can still keep up with each other, right?
Right. No, wrong. That’s the whole problem. What were they going to do, send each other greeting cards? Talk on the phone?
That’s not how their friendship had ever worked. Since the day Jack had shown up at Trent’s house with a baseball bat and a glove back when they were eight and nine, they’d been inseparable. You couldn’t replace that with fucking Skype or something.
Even so, it wasn’t something he could talk about. Oh I’m gonna miss you so much Jack… What kind of slobbering mess would say that? That’s not how men express themselves.
Finally he shook his head. “It’s this job search. It’s driving me nuts.”
“Dude, you’re going to find a job eventually. Guys like you never have a problem for long.”
“Guys like me?” Trent laughed.
Jack zipped up his bag and put it on his shoulder. “You know, teacher’s pet. The good little boy. Always coloring inside the lines. Bosses love that shit. That’s why I’ll be working at my dad’s place until the day I die, instead of getting a real job.”
“You’re saying I’m marketable because I’ve got a stick up my ass.”
“I mean, I’m not not saying that.”
&
nbsp; Trent punched him in the arm. “That’s for giving me a positive character reference!”
“Why don’t we go down to Snuffy’s after this? A couple of beers will make it all better.”
“I don’t know, I thought I might work on my resume some more tonight.” By which I mean, stare at their offer letter and worry about whether to take the job.
Jack rolled his eyes. “Give yourself a damn break. Better yet, think about how your mopey ass is dragging down my mood. See? Don’t you want your best bud to be happy? Yeah? Then let’s go drink.”
3
What this town needs,” said Jack, “is some new blood.”
“Maybe if you hadn’t already slept with every single woman in Myers Lake--” began Trent.
“Who, me?” asked Jack. “I’ve sworn off women. They’re bad for you, man. Worse than booze. Worse than carbs. That’s why I’m trying to live vicariously through you.”
That made Trent laugh, but they both knew Jack was telling the truth. At least, sort of.
Jack had always loved being king of the town. From the time he’d been a towheaded little boy in short pants, everybody in Myers Lake had loved him. As he grew, he found out they loved them even more, cheering for him on the field and on the track. Their hearts would burst whenever he’d walk past, their eyes full of adoration (and in some cases lust). It had been a magical life, one blessed by naturally rugged good looks, a body that always knew exactly what it was doing, and an appetite for life that could never be sated.
He still had the body, the looks and the appetite. Yet at some point the joy of the constant pursuit, the conquests and the victories, had started to fade. Maybe his life had been too easy. Too many things just falling into his lap. Or maybe, as much as he hated to think about it, he was growing up.
Even though they had this running joke where he had burned through all the women in town, the truth was, his dry spell had been longer than Trent’s.
He’d never admit this to anyone, but he was waiting for someone special. Someone who could fulfill his appetite for life, and not leave him wanting more.
Whoever she was, she wasn’t showing up fast enough.
Meanwhile, something was going on with Trent, something he wasn't willing to talk about with Jack.
They'd been friends long enough now that Jack could always tell when something was on Trent's mind. The problem was getting Trent to admit it. Jack knew it had something to do with the job search. Trent had been really serious about starting a new career, and not getting stuck in the little hourly jobs that were all Myers Lake had to offer. A hundred times now, Jack had told him to apply at Jack’s dad’s business, picturing how much fun it would be to kick back with Trent instead of working, but he knew that their little warehouse downtown was much too small for the size of Trent's ambitions.
The thing was, they both knew what would happen if Trent got a job, a real one, the start of a career. It would have to be somewhere else. Maybe somewhere like Corinth, or even worse, out of state. And then what? They'd seen each other almost every day for most of their lives, what would happen to their friendship if Trent moved out of town?
In a way, Jack was glad Trent wasn't talking about it. Not tonight, anyway. Sitting around Snuffy's, downing a few beers, shooting the shit, was pretty much Jack's favorite thing these days. Especially since his self-imposed celibacy began. Celibacy. What an awful sounding word. It made him sound like a priest or a monk, rather than a regular guy. It made it sound like it was something he wanted, rather than something he needed right now.
Now there was a topic of conversation! Trent might not have wanted to talk about his job search, but Jack really didn’t want to talk about his loneliness. A couple of times, Trent had asked him why he’d suddenly stopped dating, but Jack hadn’t known what to say. He’d made a few jokes to shut the conversation down, and that was it. He didn't think he could explain it, even to his best friend.
Out of nowhere, Trent laughed, and Jack looked over at him. "What's so funny?"
Trent said, "Just thinking that we came out here to blow off some steam, and instead we're sitting here dead quiet. Usually you would've cracked at least six inappropriate jokes by this point."
"Yeah, and you would've been sitting there trying not to laugh, playing the part of my conscience," said Jack.
But before either of them could broach the topic of why they were so quiet, and why neither seemed to want to talk, they were saved when Snuffy's door opened. In walked Sarah, a girl they had known since school, on the arm of her husband Harold. When they spotted Trent and Jack, they came up to the bar to greet them; Harold shaking hands, and Sarah planting a chaste kiss on each of their cheeks. The nice thing about Sarah was that she'd been dating Harold since high school, so there was never any tension between her and the guys.
"What are you two fancy people doing a dive like this?" asked Jack.
"Guess we’re slumming it," said Sarah.
"Escaping is more like it," said Harold, grinning when Sarah jabbed her elbow into his side.
Jack said, "What are you escaping from?"
"Sarah's family," said Harold.
Sarah shrugged and ordered herself a glass of rosé at the bar. "I'm just trying to get things nice for my sister, because God knows I don't need her looking down her nose at us the whole time she's here."
"Holy shit," said Jack, "big-city Becca is coming back to town?"
Trent raised his eyebrows. "I haven't seen Becca since freshman year at Myers Lake Community College."
"Yeah, it took an act of Congress to get her to come back down, but she'll be here this weekend," said Sarah. "We've got some arrangements to finish up for my folks before we can sell their house, and I need her here in person for it."
Man. Talk about a blast from the past. It didn't matter how many trophies Jack brought home, or how many times he’d scored the most points on the field, and it sure as hell didn't matter how many other girls were interested in him: Becca, he understood, had always been out of his league. Sarah had always been part of the gang, coming to all the parties, all the dances, but her sister? Hell no, Becca had always been too good for all that. It wasn't even that she was stuck up, really. No, she had something else going on, the kind of big dreams that let you know that Myers Lake was too tiny for her.
Jack glanced over at Trent. He'd been getting the same vibes off Trent lately too.
"Will she be in town long?" Trent asked. "It be fun to see her, and catch up on old times."
"What old times?" asked Jack. "She did her best to stay away from us plebeians."
"You just have a grudge because she was the one girl who ever said no to you," laughed Trent.
Instead of laughing, Sarah had a serious look on her face. "Actually…"
Jack wasn't sure he liked the sound of that. He took another sip of beer to steel himself for what was coming.
"Oh, you can't ask them," said Harold. "They're not family."
"Ask us what?" said Trent. Jack tried to be subtle, giving a little shake of his head while looking at Trent's direction: Don't get us involved, don't you know what she's about to ask us?
"It's the fact that they're not family that I think would help," said Sarah. "Look, Becca's gonna be packing up a bunch of her stuff from our parents’ house. I know she's going to need help, but I also know if I offered to help her, things would get really weird really fast. Don't give me those goofy looks, just trust me, this is a sister thing."
"Oh God, I knew it," said Jack. "You're asking us to move her stuff for her."
"We can do that," said Trent.
It was all Jack could do to restrain himself from punching Trent in the shoulder. The cardinal rule of friendship, the one rule you followed above all others, is that you don't help people move. It always goes wrong, the person you're helping always gets mad. Everybody ends up resenting everybody else, because you put the china in the wrong box or something like that. But all the raised eyebrows and significant looks Jack was shooting
at Trent were wasted, because once Trent was given a task that made him feel good and useful, there was no stopping him.
That was the problem when your best friend was also a good person. Mental note: Only make friends with bad people from now on.
"You don't know how much I appreciate it," said Sarah. "I love Becca, but she's a nut when it comes to the topic of Myers Lake. She acts like there’s a curse over the town, and if she ever steps foot back here, she’ll never be able to get back out.”
"Oh, she's not that bad," said Harold. "Besides, you can't blame her. What did Myers Lake ever do for her?"
"It's home," said Sarah with a note of finality that made it sound like this was a conversation that had many times before, one of those couple conversations that you knew better than to interrupt.
She turned back to Trent and Jack. “If you want to come by the house tomorrow morning, we should be there by nine. And Jack, bring your truck."
Jack nodded, and knew better than to show any resistance where Sarah was involved. They all treated her like a big sister, and he had the feeling that he didn't want to get on her bad side.
Still, packing other people's belongings, hefting their boxes around, none of it was the way he'd wanted to spend this weekend. Between whatever was going on with Trent, Jack's own weird feelings about his self-imposed dry spell, and now the thought of having to play mover for a girl who thought she was better than everybody in town, Jack felt like maybe he should just go to bed and not get up until Monday.
4
Get in, pack it up, get out. It was a short plan, it was a good plan, and Becca had been over it in her mind a thousand times since she'd gotten on the plane. She brought some work with her for the flight, but the folder on her lap might as well have been full of blank pages for all the attention she had given them. As the plane grew closer to Myers Lake, she could feel the weight of the past getting heavier and heavier on her shoulders.
She'd grabbed the earliest flight she could get, leaving her apartment at the crack of dawn, grabbing a coffee at the Corinth airport, and by the time she touched down in Myers Lake, early dawn had turned into full morning sun. The flight had been nearly empty; not a lot of people eager to weekend here, she supposed. But at least it meant getting off the plane was quick. She didn't have any luggage to wait for, just her laptop bag that had been in the overhead compartment, all part of the plan to speed in and speed out.