Sweet Reunion

by Melanie Shawn

  “Good one,” Karina congratulated, high-fiving him.

  “And, after yesterday morning, I definitely have all the necessary data to do a point by point comparison,” Justin smiled, waggling his eyebrows.

  “Pun intended!” Sam interjected cheerfully, looking proud of herself. The rest of the table looked at her in puzzlement, and so she followed up with, “Right? Am I right?”

  Lauren tilted her head to the side, “I don't get it,” she said flatly.

  Sam looked flustered, “Just because, you know...point by point...and boobs...and it's like...pointy boobs...or...something...I don't know! I'm trying to start being 'quipy' like Karina, but I'm not as good at it yet!”

  Karina patted her hand, “Baby steps. It was a swing and miss. Next time.”

  Lauren smiled, “I think what we all really want to hear about is the story from yesterday morning.”

  “Oh, yes, agreed,” Sam said happily, clapping her hands together in front of her in anticipation.

  “Heck, yeah, you guys jetted out of here so quick that we never got the straight scoop. So spill!” Karina finished.

  Amanda groaned, “Oh, God. There was this spider in the shower...” she began.

  Karina snorted, “Oh, wow, that's so rare in the mountains!”

  Justin shook his head and defended Amanda, “No, you don't understand, you've never seen a spider like this before. I sure hadn't. This guy was a monster!”

  “Thank you, Justin, yes he was,” Amanda continued, sticking her tongue out at Karina

  “The spider wasn't the only monster in there...” Sam started to joke, but then shook her head.

  “That one would've worked if Justin had been the naked one,” Karina said dryly.

  “Yeah, I saw that halfway through.”

  “It was closer, though. Maybe you should practice on a story that we're not all dying to hear, though.”

  Sam nodded, chagrined, “Agreed.”

  “Well, I don't blame you for wanting to hear the play by play, it WAS a pretty heroic rescue...” Justin grinned.

  “Psshh...” Karina dismissed, “Justin, I'm sure you were MacGyver meets Rambo in the spider-killing department, but you are HIGH if you think that what we want to know about is how you managed to finally kill the little bugger...”

  “BIG bugger,” Justin corrected.

  “...when, obviously, what we all want to know is about you peeping Amanda in the shower, and how that subsequently led to me walking in on you, Sam, and a towel-clad Amanda in a heap on the bathroom floor yesterday morning!”

  “Well, OK, then, here's that story. The huge, terrifying spider – who was about to be killed in an unspecified yet obviously heroic manner – was in the shower, where Amanda already was when she noticed it. She informed the world about her spider sighting by letting out, I swear to God, the loudest scream I've ever heard! So I go racing up the stairs, thinking Freddy Kreuger's in the bathroom, and then have to bust in the door.”

  “My hero!” Amanda sing-songed good naturedly.

  “So, I burst into the bathroom, ready to save Amanda from some machete wielding psycho, but all I see when I get in there is Miss Amanda Jacobs, standing in the shower, water running all over that fabulous bod, and not a stitch of clothes on her. Not bad for a morning's work killing spiders, I'd say,” he finished with a flourish, hitting the table with the flat of his palm.

  Amanda laughed and shook her head, “Well, let's just call it even. You got a show, and I got rescued. I swear, I don't think I've been that scared since I almost broke my neck trying to ski down Suicide Peak.”

  Sam groaned, “Oh, no, don't remind me! I thought I killed you!”

  Karina threw her arm around Sam's shoulder. “Yeah, I didn't think it was possible that your skin could actually get paler than it is, but when I ran into the hospital that day and saw you in the waiting room, you were practically see-through!”

  Lauren rubbed her fingertips against her forehead as if fending off a headache, “Oh, man, I don't think I've ever been as scared as I was that day, when Kar and I got that call from your Dad.”

  Karina added, “Yeah, Amanda, you officially have the distinction of being the first and only member of the Fabulous Four to have a search and rescue mission dedicated to them.”

  Amanda drew up short. This was news to her. “What do you mean? I was with Sam when I went crashed and knocked myself out. Ambulance? Rescue crew? Sure. But search team? Why would that be necessary?”

  Sam dropped her face into her hands and shook her head, “We were all just so happy when you woke up I guess we didn't get into the specifics of how we got you off of the mountain. But, here's the deal. As you know, we made the incredibly ill-advised decision to ski down Suicide Peak, as your father had specifically forbidden us to do. But, young and dumb as I was, I thought it would be no problem, because I'm so awesome.

  “Then, when I arrived at the bottom – because, incidentally, I am awesome – I turned around to high-five you, and you were nowhere to be seen. Seriously. No. Where.

  “I scanned the horizon, I screamed your name. I was completely freaking out. I skied to the Snack Shack as quickly as I could, but panic was making my movements clumsy, and I felt like I was trying to run underwater.

  “When I got there, they sent out the search and rescue team, and called your dad. God, I was so scared of what your dad was going to say, how he was going to look at me. I thought he'd yell at me for days, and then never let me see you again. If they even found you!

  “Well, he got there just as they were hauling you down off the mountain and putting you in an ambulance. You'd had your fall stopped by a tree and your leg was broken. Honestly, it's a miracle you landed the way you did against that tree, because you could have broken your neck!”

  Amanda shook her head in wonder, “Wow, I seriously don't remember any of that. It's all so hazy.”

  Sam nodded, “Yeah, by the time you woke up, they had already started pumping you full of pain meds. Believe me, it would have been a much less pleasantly hazy experience if that hadn't happened!

  “So, when your dad ran up, I just burst into tears, and I was trying to apologize and explain all at the same time, but I was just blubbering and stuttering – I was a mess, in short.

  So, right in the middle of my big convoluted confession-slash-apology-slash-explanation, he just stopped me with a hug and said, 'Don't worry Sam, my girl's a lot tougher than you might think.' I was so relieved. He even motioned for me to ride in the ambulance with you guys, which was just unbelievably generous. He was so great.”

  Amanda nodded sadly, “I wasn't even conscious enough in the ambulance to remember he was there.”

  Justin smiled, and spoke with a quiet earnestness, “Well, the pain meds were taking care of you pretty good. Parker was more focused on comforting Sam and I.”

  “You?” Amanda was shocked, “You were there?”

  Justin nodded emphatically, “Oh, yeah, I sure was. The call came in while we were clearing the trails. I heard it come over the radio at the same time Parker did. And keep in mind, they hadn't even found you yet at that point. The only facts we had were that there had been some kind of accident on Suicide Peak, that you were missing, and that they were sending out Search and Rescue.

  “I didn't take it well. In fact, I doubled over and upchucked the entire lunch I'd just eaten. You still owe me a roast beef sandwich and chips, by the way.

  “Well, when I stood back up, of course I expected to see Parker running back down the trail towards the pickup truck. There was no way I expected to see him still standing there, staring at me, but that's what he was doing.

  “He looked at me for this long moment that seemed to stretch on, and then he nodded his head, just once, quickly, like he'd made a decision, and said, 'Yep. Come on. Let's go get our girl.'

  “Man, Amanda, that truck ride over to the bottom of Suicide Peak was the longest of my life. We didn't know if you were OK...we didn't know if you were alive. I wa
s numb with fear. I don't think I even started breathing again until we pulled up and saw you getting loaded into that ambulance.

  “The whole scene was just surreal. You were drugged up, Sam was bawling her eyes out, and I was just staring like a zombie. I just followed Parker and Sam into the ambulance without even thinking, it was like my body just followed you on autopilot. Like I was attached to you with magical, invisible ropes. You moved, I moved.

  “The whole ride over to the hospital, I remember just holding onto your good foot, the one on the leg that wasn't busted. It was like...I couldn't believe you were OK unless I was touching you, and could feel you, solid and real beneath my hand. So I just held your foot. I remember you had on your lucky Garfield socks.”

  Amanda's eyes widened even further. She spoke, and fought to keep her voice natural sounding, although she could feel her throat choking tight with tears.

  “You remember what socks I was wearing?”

  Justin smiled, and this time it wasn't his patented smile #243, the don't-hate-me-because-I'm-irresistible smile. It wasn't #421, the I'm-so-sexy-you-can't-resist-my-charms smile. It wasn't even another one of her personal favorites, #67, the I-know-what-I-just-said-was-naughty-but-what-can-you-do-I'm-such-a-rascal smile.

  No. This smile was her very favorite. It was his best smile. It was #1, the nothing-behind-it-just-radiating-pure-happiness smile.

  He reached up and brushed a lock of her golden curls off of her forehead and, still gracing her with the full force of smile #1, said, “I remember everything.”

  Chapter 16

  Justin wandered aimlessly down Main Street, taking in his surroundings, and doing his best to get his head on straight.

  Justin had begun his ramble without a specific destination in mind, but then realized that without consciously intending to, he had been heading toward the youth athletics fields at the north end of town.

  He supposed that made sense. He was on a journey, it seemed, to rediscover his youth – the good, the bad, and the ugly. He had come here, obviously, to honor Parker, and that was solidly in the good column. He had faced down the bad and the ugly by way of the speech he had given at the memorial service two days ago, and that had been far from easy. But he did feel freed by it. Time to revel in some more of the good, he reasoned.

  When he was a kid, elementary school age and up through middle school, discipline and order had not been things that were highly prized in his home. Rather, chaos had ruled. Every day that Justin had woken up, it was a spin of the roulette wheel as to what his life was going to be like that day. Was his Dad going to be sober, behaving relatively normally? Was there going to be food in the kitchen to eat? Were the lights going to work when he flipped the switch, or water come pouring out of the faucet when he turned the knob? When he walked into the living room, was it going to be empty, or full of unsavory characters that his father had connected with in the bar the night before and who were now sleeping off the effects of the party that they had continued from the bar to Justin's home? Scariest of all, was the day going to bring some other out of control event that he had absolutely no way of even predicting?

  All of these questions and more were things that plagued Justin's young mind when he woke up every single day. They were things he had no way of knowing, and moreover, things he had absolutely no control over. Control and order were things that Justin craved more than anything. More than food, more than water, sometimes even more than air – he craved predictability and structure. His mother was never going to be of any use in that department. She had taken off when Justin was still an infant. And Justin had known from a very early age that looking to his father to provide that was a losing proposition.

  Rick Barnes himself had encouraged that philosophy. From the time that Justin was about three years old, old enough to pour cereal in a bowl, Rick had pretty much left him to his own devices. Not only that, but he took pride in the fact. When one of his frequent female overnight guests would try to cook breakfast for Justin, cooing over him and making a big deal – no doubt as a way to attempt to ingratiate themselves with Rick – his father would always tell them, “Leave the boy alone, he knows how to fend for himself.”

  Justin could swear that he heard a note of pride in those pronouncements, as if in Rick's own estimation, his shining parental accomplishment had been raising a child who did not need him at all. Considering Rick's aptitude for parenting and his preference for alcohol, perhaps that was simply self-awareness.

  But, whatever the case, Justin knew from a young age that whatever structure and predictability was going to be present in his life, he was going to need to be the one to provide it. He learned early on that it was unwise to depend on anyone but himself. He needed to learn to be disciplined and self-sufficient if he wanted to live a life of calm and order.

  The problem arose when it came to implementing that discipline and self-sufficiency. Some eight-year-olds may come hardwired to be completely self-motivated in things like schedule, hygiene, homework, and health, but Justin would be willing to bet that the majority of them were not. Self-discipline was an art that needed to be taught, at least it certainly had been in Justin's case. And he obviously wasn't getting those lessons from his father.

  Where he did find them was in youth athletics. Every sport they offered, he played. He didn't realize until he was older that organized sports for kids were actually expensive, because he had never been asked to pay. The Parks and Recreation department had given him a free pass onto team after team. He realized as an adult that this had been a small gesture on the part of the town, a way to ameliorate the guilt and discomfort they must have felt at leaving him in a home situation that everyone knew was untenable, taking no action to improve his situation. It was Hope Falls' way of keeping an eye on him, so to speak.

  But, guilty gesture or no, it had been the thing which had given Justin the critical tools for survival that he still depended on to this day. The discipline to stick to a workout regimen, the self-respect of keeping your gear clean and in good order, the proper respect for authority in the form of his coaches, and lastly – the camaraderie of being part of a team, and the responsibility inherent in that.

  When you were a contributing member of a team, you had a responsibility to people other than yourself. You had to depend on them in part, just as they depended on you. That's the one lesson, he realized with regret, that may have gotten a bit rusty over the years. He'd been so committed to complete self-sufficiency after leaving Hope Falls that it was feeling like an adjustment to find himself back in midst of a community again.

  In Alaska, of course, he had known people, had friends, had relationships, even been part of numerous teams of people working at various jobs. But all of that was transitory in nature. The culture there, at least with the people he had sought out, was one of souls in transit, people with pasts they'd prefer not to revisit and futures that were uncertain. If you woke up one morning and someone had packed up their possessions in the middle of the night and moved on, you shrugged and went on about your day. It was expected. Inculcating himself into that culture helped him feel that the way he had betrayed Parker and Amanda was less egregious than he knew it actually was.

  And now he found himself right back in the middle of the situation he had spent years running from. People here were depending on him. Amanda was depending on him. He wanted – desperately wanted, needed even – to live up to her expectations, and not to let her down again. But he did not know if he had the strength to do it.

  So, yes, it did make sense that, as he internally struggled to strengthen his character, his subconscious had led him right back to the same athletic fields which had instilled in him all of the character traits of any value which he now possessed. Maybe watching these kids play, remembering what it felt like to be a part of the team out on that field, would strengthen his resolve not to run. As a player, he would never dream of walking off the field in the middle of a game. It simply wouldn't have occurred to him, no mat
ter how formidable the opposition. That's the same resolve he needed to now apply to the new team he found himself a part of, the co-management of Mountain Ridge Outdoor Adventures, and to his newly rediscovered connection with Amanda.

  As he rounded the final corner before the athletic fields came into view, he could already hear the crowd noise and the whistles, the clapping hands and excited voices that he always associated with games. Of course, he had never had a parent in the stands to watch him or be proud of him, but nevertheless, the infectious enthusiasm of the other players' friends and families had translated into his emotional consciousness, and he never failed to get the juicy tingle of anticipation when he heard it. In fact, like a Pavlovian response, he could feel happiness growing in him even now as he listened to the cheers.

  He wandered to the back of the crowd and leaned against the trunk of a tall tree. Unlike the high school football field, there were no permanent bleachers here at the youth athletic park, but rather, the parents congregated at the edges of the field with blankets or portable chairs. For the less prepared in the crowd, which today included Justin, it meant a long game either on your feet, or sitting directly on the grass and dirt. Justin didn't mind standing.

  As he watched the players maneuver their way up and down the field, he was struck by something odd. One of the players, a kid who looked to be about eight years old, bore Justin's own surname on the back of his jersey.

  Sure, it's not as if Barnes was a rare last name, not in the least. But in the small town of 5,000 souls, it was a bit of a coincidence. He realized that the kid probably got mistaken for a relative of Justin and Rick Barnes on a regular basis, and grimaced in sympathy for the young man. After all, he had grown up with the stigma of being related to Rick Barnes, he knew first-hand how it stung. It wasn't something he would wish on some poor unsuspecting child. If Justin were one of the kid's parents, he would probably consider moving, out into the anonymous world, where the name “Barnes” was common and carried with it no stain.