I coughed. “I, uh, what? I’m not avoiding you.”
“Sloan, please. You don’t have to lie about it. It’s fine. The last time we interacted, I kind of pushed you hard about your story, and I’m not going to do that anymore. That’s not the way forward.”
“It’s…it’s not?”
“No.” She smiled. “I found this website where I can do a little freelance stuff nothing very hardcore or particularly rewarding, but it’s writing. Reviews and blog posts and some copywriting. Stuff like that.”
“That’s…good.”
“It is what it is,” she said, shrugging. “Maybe I should change my card, now. Put ‘writer’ on it.”
“Whatever floats your boat.” She was writing. She was doing what she wanted to be doing. Why did I feel so melancholy about it? “Do you feel like you sold out?”
Amy narrowed her eyes at me. “Pardon?”
“I didn’t mean anything bad by that,” I said, beating a hasty retreat. “I’m glad for you. Is that work helping you with the motel room?”
“It’s why I took it on,” she confirmed, nodding. “It’s not bad. It’s not what I wanted, but it’s not bad. Just a tiny shuffle forward. Not the giant leap I was hoping for.”
She was sweet about it, at least, and didn’t press me about the story or the fact that it was my reluctance to open up to her that was deferring her hopes and dreams.
“So how is your work going?" she asked me innocently as we crept forward in that same damn line at the grocery store. It was the only line open, and at this pace, I was pretty sure all my perishables were going to perish before I could get them home. I’d brought my little trailer hitch to the motorcycle just for this purpose.
“Fine,” I said. “Straightforward, at least. No surprises.”
“That’s good.”
“Yeah.”
The elderly shopper in front of me was moving glacially slow, seeming to pause to consider each item he’d picked out before placing it on the conveyor belt. At this rate, I’d be here all night. With Amy. Awkwardly making terrible conversation.
“Sir, do you need some help?” I asked loudly, taking care to enunciate each syllable. “Can I put some of this up here for you?”
“Don’t touch my shit!” he exploded suddenly as I reached forward. “I’ll kick your ass! See if I don’t!”
I put my hands up. “I was just trying to help you out, sir. I’m sorry to bother you.”
“Leave me alone,” he said hotly. Then, as quickly as he’d lost his mind at me, he resumed his slow progress unloading his very full grocery cart.
I heaved a sigh and turned back around to see that Amy was trying her hardest not to burst out laughing.
“I don’t know why you think it’s funny,” I grumbled at her, chuckling alongside her all the same. “You’re going to be stuck here, too.”
“I’m not the one in a hurry,” she pointed out. “That seems to be you, and probably just to get away from me.”
“I’m not trying to get away from you,” I lied. “I just have places to be.”
“Places that aren’t standing in line with your nemesis,” she joked.
“Believe me. You are not my nemesis.”
I glanced down at her shopping cart and frowned. There were just a few of items in it, and all of them were granola bars. The only motel in town wasn’t nice enough to have any sort of continental breakfast, but the diner was good at any hour of the day. She obviously had a car, too, so she could jet over to the next town to get a fast food fix. The nearest nice sit-down restaurant was roughly forty-fiveminutes away, though we’d been hearing rumors that someone was applying for the permits to revamp one of the historic main street buildings in downtown Rio Seco and make it into a restaurant. The point was, Amy shouldn’t have been going hungry. She had options. I just hated the idea that she might be holed up in her motel room, watching TV, eating granola bars, and waiting for me to give her what she’d come here to get my memories from Iraq.
Then again, it wasn’t like I was going to be giving them up anytime soon. And she probably didn’t even have access to a microwave, let alone an oven. If she didn’t want to keep on doing what she was doing, she was free to give up and go back to Los Angeles, start over again, find some other path to the dream job she was pursuing. I didn’t have to be her one ticket out of mediocrity. That was a lot of pressure to put on me.
“A penny for your thoughts,” Amy said gently, and I realized I was just standing there, waiting for her, as if we’d traveled here together and just spent the last few minutes as companions, shopping for the bare necessities. I could’ve easily walked away after paying, once my groceries were scanned and bagged, and left her to whatever she was looking forward to doing to pass the evening. Instead, I’d just hung around like some desperate idiot not even sure what he was waiting on.
“Do you have any Fourth of July plans?” I blurted out.
“I think I heard that the town had something planned,” she said. “Like a fireworks-in-the-park kind of thing. I was thinking about going to that. Does your motorcycle club have anything to do with it?”
“No, we take a break for that one,” I said, noting the way she sagged forward a little bit in disappointment. Was it disappointment, though, or was I just imagining things I wanted to see? “We organize a lot of our major fundraisers and events around holidays, but Independence Day isn’t one of them.”
“Is there a reason why?” She followed me to my trailer in the parking lot, plastic bags filled with granola bars swinging from her fists.
“Not really,” I said. “Just a lot of us like to party pretty hard on the Fourth, so we try to keep that as in-house as possible. We have our reputations to maintain, and all of that.” I unloaded the groceries from my shopping cart and loaded them back into the trailer, making sure they were all secured by bungees.
“Ooh.” Amy brightened again. “Do you all have a secret headquarters?”
“You mean besides the bar?” I laughed. “No, we just rotate the party from house to house. It’s Brody’s turn this year. Would you like to go?”
“You’re inviting me to your club’s Fourth of July party?” she asked slowly, then broke into a coquettish grin. “Aw, is this a date?”
“Ooh, I hope I’m not going to regret asking you to go,” I said. “There’ll be good food and beer there, and a lot more entertainment than the inside of your hotel room.”
“Are you sure?” she countered. “I do have cable, you know.”
“I’ll text you the address, and you can decide if you want to show up,” I said. “You can see the fireworks display in town pretty nicely from Brody’s backyard. I’m kind of glad he’s hosting this year. Though next year it’ll probably be a pool party over at Chuck and Haley’s new place.”
“Nice, they’re getting a pool?”
“Hell, yeah,” I said, pumped that there was at least someone in this town who was as excited about it as me. “The summers aren’t going to suck as much anymore.”
“Don’t forget spring, fall, and winter.”
“I doubt they’ll keep the thing open all year,” I said. “Desert gets cold in the winter.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. Sometimes we even get a bit of snow, if the conditions are right.”
“Huh. I had no idea.” She peered at the sky as if a stray flurry could tumble down at any minute. “Maybe I’ll be lucky enough to see that.”
“Amy?”
“Yeah?”
“Just how long, exactly, are you going to stay here in Rio Seco?”
Her face was resolute in the darkened parking lot. “As long as it takes.”
Under any other circumstances, from any other person, that would’ve sounded, if not cryptic, then definitely disturbing. But from Amy, it meant something different to me. It meant that she was sticking around, and I kind of liked that idea, spending the seasons with her in Rio Seco.
“Good,” I told her, and started the
motorcycle, accelerating into the night, well aware that she watched me as I went.
Chapter 4
We all took turns to host Independence Day celebrations, but I had to say that Brody’s place was the best place to have it well, until Chuck and Haley’s house and pool were finished. Brody didn’t host us very often, especially since we gathered so often at the bar, but his house just outside of town was actually pretty nice, even if it wasn’t very big. He was more interested in the land and location, not the actual structure of his living space.
The land was really what made the place special. He swore up and down that he had very minimal landscaping done, but the backyard was just full of plants typical to the region, all tastefully arranged around his seating area. He had a fire pit in the middle of the chairs that I hoped to God no one would suggest lighting up tonight. It was positively sweltering.
“That beer in the cooler better be ice cold,” I said, approaching it.
“Well, the crappy beer just got put on ice,” he said. “But I’ve got some really cold shit for you here to try.”
He handed me a beer with an artful, brightly colored label. “Oh, Brody. This isn’t one of your special project beers, is it?”
“It’s a nice beer,” he insisted. “Just try it.”
“For the record, I’m not Jack,” I said, opening the bottle. “I don’t care what you serve in the bar, as long as it’s cold and it’ll get me drunk.” I took a cautious sip, under extreme pressure as Brody scrutinized me. “Can you not do that?”
“Tell me what you think, and I’ll stop staring at you.”
I sighed and closed my eyes before taking another quick chug. “It’s, well, it’s cold.”
“You have to give me more than that, Sloan.”
“It’s cold and delicious,” I said, nodding with finality. “Little bit of citrus in it, tastes like. Nice on a day like today. But still hoppy, somehow.”
“It’s an IPA.”
“It’s whatever you want it to be, Brody.”
“I’m trying to tell you what this beer is about,” he said, crossing his arms over his chest. “Don’t you want to hear it? The brewers are practically local.”
“I believe you,” I said. “I don’t need a dissertation on my beer. All I need is to drink it.”
“Suit yourself,” Brody said, clearly disappointed. “Have you seen Jack yet? Is he here? I wanted to make sure he got a chance to try it.”
Jack was currently ambling over to our position, but I quickly signaled to him to flee. He ducked behind some flora just in time for Brody to turn around to see who I was waving at.
“I haven’t seen him yet,” I said. “Let me know what I can do to help, okay?”
The afternoon was really heating up, so I moved farther into the shade of the covered porch with my cold beer to compensate, loosely supervising Ace and Chuck as they organized the fireworks.
“I think we should start off with something big,” Ace was saying, pointing at one of the biggest he’d brought. “Get everyone’s attention.”
“No, no, no,” Chuck chastised. “You don’t understand the poetry of a fireworks display. You start small, then you work your way up to big.” He rearranged the explosives, making Ace mutter a curse. “You shouldn’t be starting with the biggest one. That should be for the finale.”
“Didn’t you guys say that you could see the show from town perfectly well from here?” Katie asked, watching the proceedings from a wrought iron chair that I was surprised wasn’t burning the skin off the backs of her legs. I supposed it was okay since it wasn’t sitting in the sun, but I still couldn’t fathom sitting in it on a day like today. I wanted to be up and moving around, ready to catch whatever passing breeze I could.
“Yeah, which means they have a really good view of our show, afterward,” Ace said.
“They love trying to show up the show in town,” I told Katie as she rolled her eyes.
“You guys, I thought we agreed no fireworks competition this year.” Jack had circled around, somehow kept out of Brody’s sight, and made the porch without being detected. He pursed his lips as he regarded the row of explosives laid out on the table.
“It’s not a competition,” Chuck protested, defensive. “It’s a tribute.”
“Oh, is that what you’re calling it?” Jack asked, raising a single eyebrow.
“A contribution?” Ace tried. “It’s not going to be as big as last year.”
“What happened last year?” Katie asked.
“Fire department showed up, thinking there had been an explosion at an actual fireworks warehouse,” I explained. “And your boyfriend singed off his eyebrows and part of his beard.”
“Excuse me,” Ace said. “It was only one eyebrow.”
“If you all insist on shooting off fireworks, just be smart about it,” Jack said. “Ah, here comes Brody.”
“It’s a good beer this time,” I said as Brody brandished a bottle in each hand. “It’s an IPA, not that whiskey barrel-aged stuff.”
“If I want whiskey, I’ll drink whiskey,” Jack mumbled, clearly disgruntled. “When I want a beer, I don’t want it to taste like whiskey. I want it to taste like beer.”
“Here.” Haley popped out onto the porch from inside the house, a regular pilsner in hand. “In case you don’t like the IPA. It has citrus.”
“He already got to you?” Jack asked, accepting the beer.
“As soon as I got out of the SUV,” Haley said. “Just take it and try his beer now, or he won’t leave you alone for the rest of the day.”
Something I always found funny about Fourth of July celebrations ever since I came back from my tour in Iraq was that people tended to use the holiday as a prompt to thank veterans for their service. That was in addition to Veterans Day and Memorial Day, even though the latter was meant to remember those who had fallen in service. Of course, if the topic of military service ever came up in conversation and I was forced to reveal that I, too, was a veteran, that meant that a normal, casual day turned into a thank-a-veteran day, too.
I wasn’t trying to seem ungrateful for all that… It was just awkward when I was back over here, trying to get on with my life, and being constantly reminded that, once upon a time, I wielded a big gun and saw some shit that still regularly showed up in my memories unbidden. Couldn’t I just focus on being an electrician and having fun with the rest of the guys in the club? It wasn’t like I was still sporting fatigues or my dress uniform. I was fully ready, and had been for a while, to immerse myself in civilian life. So many other veterans had never had a chance to, caught up in PTSD or serious injuries or other hurdles they were having trouble overcoming. I just wanted to be normal again, to fit in with all the things I’d left before.
At least the party Horizon MC put on was a reminder of that previous life. It was a chance for all of us to unwind and just have fun without our usual fundraising stress or responsibilities. We weren’t grilling burgers and hotdogs for the entire town, or looking to sell raffle tickets or solicit prizes. It was just us guys, Katie and Haley, and…Amy.
Jesus. I’d almost forgotten I’d invited her to this thing, and I almost instantly regretted the fact that I had. All I’d wanted to do was relax today, to drink beer and eat food and pop off some pyrotechnics, but it wasn’t looking like that was going to happen. I was going to be forced to recall my service after all not because she would ask me, but because I’d be thinking about it. I just couldn’t seem to get away from it.
“Hey, is that the writer you’ve been all knotted up over?” Jack asked, shading his eyes against the glint of the sun against her car.
“I invited her,” I said. “Hope that’s all right.”
“She’s gorgeous, of course it’s all right,” he said, elbowing Brody in the ribs. “One more pretty face at the party? Done.”
I felt immediately defensive and aggressive at the same time. Was Jack implying that he was going to flirt with Amy?
“What’s the problem?�
� he asked me with a knowing smirk. “You haven’t called dibs on her. Call dibs, if you want.”
“It’s…a lot more complicated than that,” I said.
“Feelings are complicated,” Brody agreed. “Dibs are not.”
“Will dibs make you all be civil and normal to her?”
“Hey, that’s offensive,” Brody said.
“Yeah, there’s nothing normal about any of us,” Jack said. “Come on, man. Have a little faith in your friends. You’re the one who invited her.”
And that was even more complicated, but I was done talking about it. I walked over to where Amy was getting out of her car and intercepted her before anyone else could get to her.
“Hey,” I said. “You made it.”
“I did,” she confirmed, closing the driver’s side door and walking around to the trunk. “It wasn’t so hard to find uh-oh.”
“What’s wrong?”
She looked at me. “I wasn’t supposed to come, was I?”
“What? What do you mean? I invited you, didn’t I?”
“Ah, dammit.” She stuck the key into the trunk and lifted the hatch open. “Here, please take this for the host. I’ll be going.”
“Amy, please stay. I invited you here, and I meant for you to come.”
“Are you sure?” She peered at me. “Because for a second, it felt like I’d mistaken a pity invite for a real one. There’s precedent for that. I’ve done that before.”
“It was a genuine invite, and I am genuinely glad you came,” I said. “There’s plenty of food and beer you didn’t have to bring that.”
She handed me a case of beer, then lifted a plastic box of store-bought cupcakes from the trunk before closing it. “I wasn’t about to show up to a Fourth of July party empty-handed, waiting to be fed and entertained. That’s not how I was raised.”
“Fair enough,” I said. “And I figure we could always use more beer.”
“And cupcakes.”
“And cupcakes.”
“More beer!” Brody cheered as he saw us approach. “Hey this is the good stuff. Well done, you.”
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