by Hilary Dartt
The funeral was tomorrow. Summer, of course, helped Josie make the preparations. She put an announcement in the newspaper, chose a dress for Mama to wear and somehow found turquoise flowers for the church. Delaney would drive up from vet school tonight and spend the night with Josie in her childhood bedroom.
All Josie knew how to do to bury the hurt was to work. So she’d holed up in her classroom, scrubbing desks, vacuuming the carpet and color-coding folders for her students. Until today. She’d decided to take a break, and walked down to the square in hopes of finding some solace.
Heat waves radiated off the roads in downtown Juniper. The summer sun hung high above the carpet-like lawn. Josie, wearing khaki cargo shorts and a salmon-colored tank top that perfectly matched her pedicured toenails, treated herself to a huge lemonade from the stand on the corner.
That moment, the moment she sought refuge from the worst hurt she’d ever experienced, was the moment Scott Smith walked into her life.
Maybe that’s why the romance worked wonders.
***
Juniper’s signature fountain bubbled nearby, and a group of kids sat on the low concrete bench surrounding it, their bare feet in the water. Josie smiled as a little boy splashed his older sister, who responded by filling her empty soda cup and dumping it on his head.
Her own little brother would have done that very thing, if they’d ever gotten to sit around the fountain on a summer day. The truth was, neither of them had had any free time on a summer day since they were old enough to work the fields with Mama. Sometimes, when no one was looking, Juan grabbed a handful of fat red strawberries and shoved them into her mouth. She’d do the same to him, and they’d giggle like fiends trying to swallow the sweet fruit and wipe its traces from their cheeks before their mother caught them and punished them for being silly.
“People watching, huh?” Josie jumped at the voice, which was deep and smooth like a vat of melted chocolate. She loved chocolate.
She looked up, and had to shade her eyes to look at this tall, lanky stranger who interrupted her impromptu break from grief disguised as work. When they made eye contact, the man stepped back.
“Wow,” he said. “You’re even more beautiful up close.”
Despite the unexpected fluttery reaction in her stomach, and the involuntary flush that rose to her face, Josie’s internal voice whispered, Poetry. False currency.
She smiled coolly. “I was just leaving, actually.”
“And your voice,” he said, apparently unaffected by what she thought was a clear shutdown. “It’s like honey.”
When she quirked an eyebrow at him, he lifted his hands in surrender and said, “No, seriously. It is.”
“I’ve got to get back to work,” she said. She stood up.
“That’s too bad. I’m the new guy in town. I was hoping I’d come down here and meet a friendly face, get some recommendations, on, you know, restaurants, grocery stores, whatever. I never imagined I’d find such a beautiful friendly face.”
Josie couldn’t help it. She laughed. “You’re good. But I’m afraid you’ve got me pegged incorrectly. I’m not that friendly.”
“Even so,” he said, his eyes twinkling with humor and a genuine interest. “Where’s the best place to grab lunch around here?”
“The Sand Witch is pretty good,” she said, pointing across the street at the deli. “And if you want Chinese, the Golden Lantern is just a couple of blocks from here. They have a decent lunch special. Their cashew chicken is to die for.”
“If you had to choose one, right now, which would it be?” the stranger asked.
Josie sipped her lemonade and considered.
“The Sand Witch,” she decided after a moment. She took a couple of steps away from him, in the direction of her school, but the stranger didn’t take the hint like she expected him to.
Instead, he looked her in the eyes and said, “You know what would really make my day? Lunch with a lovely lady on this lovely afternoon. My treat. Consider it my thanks for your advice.”
“I’ve got to get back to work,” she said again. “I’m setting up my classroom.”
He stooped and picked a lone yellow dandelion out of the lawn. He held it out to her, and she noticed his eyes were the color of bourbon when sunlight shone through the glass. “Please. Help a guy out. Don’t make me eat lunch alone on my first day in a new town.”
First poetry, and now a flower. Hear the warning bells, Garcia? Ding ding ding. It wasn’t even warning bells, actually. It was a buzzer, the kind they put on emergency exits. For some reason, though—probably because she needed something warm and melty and happy to sink into—she couldn’t resist. That’s how they ended up eating lunch together that first day … and spending incalculable time together throughout the remainder of the summer despite the fact they both knew it could never work.
And wasn’t that the story of their relationship? She couldn’t resist him.
She couldn’t resist him then, when they decided ahead of time it wouldn’t last. She couldn’t resist him now, either, when there was even more standing between them; including, and especially, her marriage.
***
Is it bad juju to daydream about your ex-boyfriend while laying in the bed you share with your husband? Does it still count as daydreaming if you’re half-asleep and completely drunk?
Hours had passed since Josie crawled between the sheets in her granny panties, which meant she’d spent hours letting her mind wander to the man with whom things could never work out.
Not her husband of six years, but the stranger from the downtown square, the slightly nerdy guy looking for a restaurant tour.
Maybe that’s why the conversation flowed so easily during that first meal, that impromptu trip to The Sand Witch.
“Now, because you’re a teacher on summer break, I absolutely forbid you from talking about work while we’re at lunch,” Scott said as they approached the deli.
Josie wrinkled her nose.
“Then what on earth will we talk about?”
He opened the door for her, and she felt chills where she imagined he touched her lower back to guide her in.
Maybe it’s the poetry. You’re losing it, Garcia.
In reality, she knew she had fallen into this guy because it gave her the chance to step out of her current situation, to stop picturing the way Mama looked when she died and to stop wishing she’d hop back up and start making tamales again.
After ordering, they sat at a corner table with a window overlooking the square.
“So, let’s pretend we’re total strangers,” he said.
She laughed. “And how shall we pretend we met?”
“Let’s pretend I picked you up downtown. At random. Under the guise of being new in town and needing a tour guide. But in reality, wanting a delicious-looking woman with whom to eat lunch.”
“And to think I don’t even know the name of this man who is lavishing me with compliments.”
Blake, the deli’s owner, called out their order, and the stranger retrieved the sandwiches from the counter. Josie admired his long legs and his broad shoulders. She admired the way his fingers curved around the plastic baskets their sandwiches were served in.
She knew, at that very moment, that she’d sleep with him. And more importantly, she knew she’d like it.
“Josie,” she said, extending her hand when he sat back down at the table.
He chuckled. “Scott.”
They shook hands. Suddenly ravenous, Josie found herself tearing into her turkey and avocado.
“Why don’t you play hooky and show me around for the rest of the day?” he said as they finished up. “It’s summer. Surely you have a few weeks more to finish up whatever classroom stuff you’re working on today.”
She needed to prepare for the funeral. She needed to finish hanging the Star Student display and setting up the reading corner. She needed to make up her old trundle bed for Delaney to sleep in.
She needed to mourn her m
other.
When she didn’t respond right away, he barked out a laugh. “I can practically see the internal debate! You must be a model employee. But come on. Live a little.”
“This goes against my grain,” she said. “I am a very conscientious person. I have a daily to-do list and I have a compulsion for checking off every item on it.”
She never returned to her classroom that day. Instead, she gave Scott a locals’ walking tour of downtown Juniper. They went to the famous western history museum, the library with its exquisite sculpture garden, and the little-known bar where Josie had had her first drink with Summer and Delaney.
Probably because she had a specific mission, Josie found herself feeling chatty and friendly, and even caught herself saying to Scott, “I’m not normally like this. Trust me. You bring out the friendly in me.”
They were sitting on the little brick wall that bordered the rose garden inside the museum, and Josie fanned herself with the brochure she picked up at the entrance.
“I don’t believe it for a minute,” he said. “You’re the nicest person I’ve met so far in Juniper.”
“Didn’t you say I was the only person you’ve met so far in Juniper?”
When they made eye contact, she could practically see little cartoon hearts floating around in the air between them. She still remembered that moment as magical, even now, years later.
The magic lasted about a split second before her inner voice kicked in.
What are you doing, estúpida? He just likes your curves, that’s all. He doesn’t even know you.
But Scott was different. He was different from the boys in junior high who faked liking her just so they could get their hands on her breasts or cup her ass while pushing her up against the lockers.
Scott didn’t know her, but he wanted to. She could tell. And she liked it. At the time, she relished his attention, bathed in it like a springtime blade of grass bathes in the warm sunlight.
And maybe that was the reason she didn’t notice until much later that he had not revealed a single fact about himself over the course of that first afternoon they spent together, or that evening when they made love (actually, scratch that: when they copulated awkwardly was a more accurate description) against the side of her car, just steps from the school where she worked.
She asked him questions, but he deflected them like a magician, training her attention on precisely what he wanted her to see, putting the spotlight back on her. Despite spending several hours with him that day, Josie had no idea what he did for a living, why he moved to Juniper, or even what kind of car he drove.
Scott was the first secret-keeper, and because she fell so hard for him that summer—too hard—she became the second.
Keeping secrets is a hard habit to break.
***
When Scott eventually revealed his secret, Josie realized he was the Romeo to her Juliet. Tragic, lovestruck young people destined to be apart.
He knew from the outset they wouldn’t be together. When she casually mentioned teaching at Juniper Elementary School, he should have walked away. But, he said, because he loved the slow curve of her smile, the quick chime of her laugh, he waited until she had fallen hard for him to tell her, ensuring they’d have at least some time together before school started and their respective career aspirations kept them apart. Suddenly, every moment felt precious, like a diamond hundreds of years in the making, deep underground, only now twinkling in the sunlight.
They saw each other daily. For the first few days, Josie let Scott dictate the direction of their conversations. He steered the vehicle to whichever destinations he chose, never once pulling to a stop in any area of his own life.
Then, curiosity overcame her.
“Scott, you know almost everything about me,” she said to him one night while they sat on her porch swing, licking ice cream cones. “But I don’t know so much about you. I mean, you said you moved here for your job, but you’ve never mentioned what that job is. And you’re never working.”
“Well, I’ve only been here for a few days,” he said, his tone indicating a flicker of offense.
She nodded and laid a hand on his leg. “I know. I was just wondering, that’s all. I’d really like to get to know you better.”
He sighed then, a big sigh that made his chest rise and fall, and moved the swing so it creaked on its chains. “Josie, there’s something I need to tell you.”
Uh oh. He’s married, with kids. He’s a spy and he’s not allowed to date people. He’s an assassin and I’m his next target. Mission: Kill Josie Garcia.
“I’m the new principal at Juniper Elementary School.”
She sat there so long without responding that the ice cream started to melt, running down over her thumb. After a long moment during which the only sound was that of crickets chirping, she cleared her throat. The ice cream dripped onto her leg.
“Wait. So you’re, like, my boss?”
He shrugged, nodding. “Well, yeah.”
Their relationship would never work. She couldn’t date her boss. Imagine what it would do to her reputation. Imagine how it could ruin her career.
Now, she nodded too.
“This can’t work,” they both said at the same time. Then they laughed.
It was a split-second, knee-jerk decision, and she knew it was the right one.
But after that, she always wondered, what if? What if they had met under different circumstances? What if one of them worked at a different school? What if she wasn’t a teacher?
The answers didn’t matter. Josie Garcia and Scott Smith were destined for tragedy.
When she and Paul made their relationship official about a month later, though, she told Scott it was over. Really over.
CHAPTER TWO
Scott and Josie said good-bye the final night of summer break.
He insisted they do something fun, something, he said, “where we won’t even have a chance to notice how sad we are.”
That was Scott, always running away from serious topics, always hiding from feelings any deeper than a dirty puddle in the parking lot.
So they went to Orbit Golf. Josie hated that place. She’d gone there on her first-ever date with Alejo Gomez, whom she’d pined after for months junior year. He was the perfect gentleman until they came across some of his friends. It was Hole Twelve, and she was just getting ready to take her first shot. She tossed her hair over her shoulder, hoping Alejo would find the move sexy. Just as she swung her club, she heard the cat calls and teenage snickers. Alejo, embarrassed, insisted, very loudly, that she meant nothing to him, while her face burned with embarrassment. He told his friends she’d begged him to take her golfing as soon as she found out he got a new car. “Just like a woman,” he sneered. His friends laughed. She missed the shot. They finished the golf course and never spoke again.
The grown-up Josie could never share this story with Scott, though. Whenever she told him a story, his eyes darted around the room, looking for something more interesting. So she pasted on a smile and went to Orbit Golf to lay their relationship to rest among fluorescent lighting and glow-in-the-dark paintings of misshapen aliens.
Of course, they went back to her place, where he insisted on having rushed, rough sex disguised as a passionate final act.
That night and every night thereafter for a few weeks, she cried herself to sleep. Of course, Josie Garcia wouldn’t let any man—not even Scott Smith—know how much he’d hurt her, so she showed up at school each day in a sizzling-hot outfit she hoped would magnify the tragedy.
***
Two weeks later, Paul Comstock walked into Josie’s life.
Paul was exactly the opposite of Scott, and maybe that’s why she fell for him so quickly.
They met the second week of that same school year, when she saw him in the classroom next door. He was talking to the second-grade teacher, Susie Lockhart, and Josie snapped a mental photo. Artists dreamed of profiles like Paul’s: all clean lines and perfect angles.
He stood with his thumbs hooked into his gun belt and his head cocked a tiny bit to one side as he listened to Susie’s questions about the presentation he planned to give that afternoon.
The moment he smiled, Josie knew she was hooked (although she should have known she was hooked the moment she realized she was totally and completely frozen in place, leaning against the doorjamb, her mouth hanging open as she watched him speak).
He had deep, striking crows feet at the corners of his eyes, and rather than making him look old, they made him look fun and kind and downright sexy.
She imagined him directing that smile at her, then wrapping those big, sculpted superhero arms around her waist right here in the doorway of Susie Lockhart’s classroom.
When he did, she would put her arms up around his neck and pull his face to hers. What would he smell like?
Probably leather and cologne, soap and coffee. Don’t all cops drink coffee?
Susie Lockhart cleared her throat, and Josie jumped, snapping her mouth closed.
“Did you hear me, Josie? This is Paul Comstock, with the Juniper Police Department. He’s coming in next week to give a presentation to my kids.”
“Paul,” Josie said. “Paul Comstock. Nice to meet you. I’m Josie Garcia.”
He took her hand to shake it and looked directly at her. So directly, it almost made her uncomfortable. It should have made her uncomfortable.
Only, it didn’t. It made her all fizzy inside, like champagne. Little bubbles kept rising to the surface, bursting gently on her skin and making her shiver.
“Nice to meet you, Josie,” Paul said. “Very nice to meet you.”
No poetry, just straight talk.