HORIZON MC

by Clara Kendrick

  “You shouldn’t feel like you have to flatter me, Sloan.”

  “I’m not. You’re a hell of a writer, Amy.”

  “Well, thank you.” The shoulders that had slumped previously now set themselves doggedly. “You should know, though, that this isn’t the story I was going to write.”

  “It isn’t?”

  She shook her head. “The story that I was originally supposed to write, for that rag of a newspaper I’d contacted, and that awful editor, was supposed to look a lot different. It was supposed to paint you and your team as monsters. It was supposed to take your friend’s death as an admission of guilt for what you all did over there what happened.”

  “I see.”

  “You should also know that I wanted to write that story,” Amy continued, like she was pushing herself to speak. “That’s how badly I wanted to be a writer. I bought into what my editor told me without even doubting that it might not be true, that his perception might be skewed.”

  “You said it in your story,” I said with a shrug. “There’s plenty of people who think what we did was wrong. Evidence, too, now, shows there wasn’t any reason for us to be there.”

  “You were following orders,” she said. “Doing what everyone at the time thought was right.”

  “I didn’t always think it was right,” I said. “I can’t say that I’m a good person just because I followed orders. There are things I wish didn’t happen. Things I wish I hadn’t done.”

  “That was what I didn’t understand before what I couldn’t understand, because I hadn’t talked with you yet.” Amy pushed her hair back out of her face, her features intense with focus. “There are so many levels of this, so many notions of right and wrong. It is so complicated and that’s what people don’t understand. What you used to not understand. That sometimes, it isn’t so easy to see what’s good and what’s bad. And even if you do something good, there can still be bad elements to it. That’s what I wanted to show. That’s what I wanted to write.”

  “I think you did it,” I said. “The people who’ve been texting me have had nothing but positive things to say, though I’m sure there are plenty of people who don’t share that opinion.”

  “Don’t you see? This isn’t about me. This is about you.”

  “I mean, it might be my story, but it’s your story, now, too,” I told her. “You’re the one who wrote it. You’re the one who’s going to make people see differently.”

  “I’m not the hero of this story,” she said, tears glimmering in her eyes. “Sloan, I was ready to use you for my own gains. I wanted to be a writer so badly that I almost wrote the wrong story. And I hurt you, still, by writing the right story.”

  “You didn’t hurt me.”

  “You’re shaking.”

  I looked at my hands. She was right. “I’m just not used to thinking about what happened so much,” I said. “I’ve been distracting myself from it for years. And now that everyone knows about what happened, about what I did…”

  “I’m sorry, Sloan. I’m so sorry.”

  “I don’t think there’s anything for you to be sorry about,” I said. “I’m…I’m glad that I’m not carrying that around inside me anymore. It feels better to have it out there. Maybe it can even change some people’s minds about me, about other veterans. It might make people think twice before spewing shit at us for political reasons. Because people on the ground, people like me we’re not thinking about politics when we’re following orders, when we’re serving our country. We’re only thinking about life and death.”

  Amy took my trembling hand in hers, raised it to her lips, and kissed my knuckles softly. We stayed in that position for a long time, tears gently rolling down Amy’s face, and me feeling like well, it was hard to describe what I was feeling. I felt lighter, freer than I had in ages. Sure, there was a little fear of being exposed, of catching flak for what I’d revealed, but it was effective. I had been the humanizing factor of Amy’s story, but it had been about much bigger issues than me. She had used her story to bring more visibility to the plight of some veterans whose wars hadn’t ended when they returned home, like Margo. There were so many more people like Margo just trying to get from one day to the next. That was the most important thing.

  “I’d understand if you didn’t want me around anymore,” Amy said finally, breaking the silence. “But I don’t want you to think that I got what I came for and now I’m moving on to ruin someone else’s life.”

  “You didn’t ruin my life,” I corrected her. “You made me face some uncomfortable things, but you didn’t ruin my life. Where are you going to go?”

  She lifted her shoulders. “I’ve been getting lots of emails. Lots of calls. Lots of job offers.”

  “I think that’s wonderful.”

  “I don’t want them.”

  I let out a startled laugh. It was probably just pent up tension, trapped energy, but she laughed alongside me.

  “And now you’re thinking that I’m the worst bitch in the world the one who doesn’t know what she wants,” Amy said, grinning. “I’m sorry you’ve had to even meet me.”

  “You have to know that’s not what I think about you,” I said, but she only shrugged. “Come on, Amy.”

  “I just…I don’t want the jobs because I don’t want to be pigeonholed into something that’s not me,” she explained. “I’m not looking to write these massive exposés and bring the man down, or whatever. I want to keep telling people’s stories. I want to raise awareness of topics that aren’t dictated to me by some editor with an agenda. I want to make my own decisions, do my own research, pitch my own stories.”

  I tapped the newspaper in between us. “I think that after the one you just wrote, people are going to be more than happy to accept you on whatever terms you name.”

  “Do you really think so?”

  “I absolutely think so.”

  She heaved a sigh. “I just really wanted to apologize, Sloan.”

  “And I’m sitting here trying to tell you that it’s not necessary to apologize.”

  “That’s really sweet of you,” Amy said. “Thank you. Thank you for everything.”

  God, there was so much I could’ve said to her, so much that needed to be said, and instead I just nodded, watched her get up from the table, then walk out the door. We had gone through so much. Was there even anything else that could have been said? It had been hard to sum up the different levels of our relationship with each other with just a few minutes of careful speaking. Was it better to let the majority of things go unsaid? Like how I pined for her even now, even after the pain we had caused each other? How I wished there would be some way she could stay in Rio Seco and still fulfill her dream of working as a writer, even though I knew she had a life in Los Angeles and had put it on hold to do this. Maybe, though, it just wasn’t meant to be. Our paths had only been meant to cross for a brief period of time. It was as beautiful as it was painful. I only wished it didn’t have to be like that. That there might be some other option I just wasn’t seeing.

  Jack was staring at me from his perch at the bar. I frowned at him.

  “Why are you looking at me like that?” I asked, standing.

  “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” he demanded, standing up, as well.

  I squinted at him. “Are you mad because I let her sit in the club booth?”

  “No, idiot,” Jack groused. “I’m mad because you’re just letting her walk away.”

  “What are you talking about?” We’d said our goodbyes. Amy was going to move on. There was nothing for her anymore in Rio Seco, not after she’d finished her article. Her life’s purpose was to tell other people’s stories, and that was what she was going to do.

  “If someone doesn’t hold me back, I’m going to have to beat some sense into you,” Jack warned me, cracking his knuckles. “Can’t you see? The two of you are in love with each other, and you both are about to fuck all of this up.”

  I blinked at him.
“It doesn’t matter how I feel about her. She’s pursuing her dreams. I would only hold her back.”

  “Dumbass!” Jack thumped me on the head. “She doesn’t want to take another job because she doesn’t want to leave you. Even I could understand that.”

  “Were you just eavesdropping on us the entire time?”

  He spread his arms. “What else is there to do in here? It’s a slow day.”

  “You could mind your own business, how’s that for something to do?”

  “If I minded my own business, you would be in the middle of making the biggest mistake of your life,” he all but shouted. “Go after her! Tell her how you feel. She can work from anywhere in the world now, am I right? Her story was that good. People will just have to accept her terms if they want her writing. She’s leaving because you didn’t tell her to stay.”

  I gulped, was pushing past Jack before I realized what I was doing, was squinting against the sudden glare of the sun, was running after Amy’s retreating form, already at the end of the street, toward the park, toward her motel room. Away from me.

  “I love you,” I blurted out as she turned, her cheeks still wet with tears. Or she had just never stopped crying. Was my stupidity the cause of those tears? “I don’t want you to leave Rio Seco.”

  “Sloan?”

  “I’m sorry that I’m so stupid,” I continued, words leaving my mouth faster than I could vet them. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you how I felt about you.”

  “Even after…after the story? You still feel that way for me after reading the story?”

  “I love you even more after the story.” I took her face in my hands, wiped her tears away with my thumbs. “That story showed me that you understand me. You probably understand me even better than I understand myself. And I love you. I don’t want you to leave Rio Seco. I mean, unless you want to leave. Unless you have to.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t want to leave. I want to stay here with you.”

  “Because I figured you could work remotely from anywhere in the world, now, since you’re going to keep writing,” I said, dimly aware that I was babbling at this point, still desperate to prove something. “And I want, if you want it, you to stay here in Rio Seco. With me. Please.”

  Amy threw her head back and laughed, then kissed me. “There’s nothing I want more in the world, Sloan.”

  “I would understand if you didn’t want to,” I said, coming up for air. “Rio Seco is small, and dusty, and hot in the summer. My friends are all idiots. I’m an idiot, too, most of the time. But if you think you could tolerate it, I would love it”

  “Sloan!” She was still laughing, and the only tears that were rolling down her face now were tears of mirth. “I already said yes.”

  “Yes to what?”

  “Yes, that I’m staying with you. Like it or not, Sloan Norris, you’re stuck with me now, because I’m in love with you, in love with this town.” She kissed me long and hard, an exclamation point to that statement. “Think you can handle it?”

  “I’m looking forward to finding out,” I said, and we didn’t need any more words after that.

  Epilogue

  “Are you ever afraid that time will start moving faster and faster the older we get?” I mused, looking down into the bottle of my craft beer.

  “This afternoon’s award for being the most maudlin out of all of us and an all-around party pooper goes to…Brody!” Ace announced like he was hosting some kind of game show, pointing at me like I’d actually won something.

  “I’m just saying,” I said with a shrug. “It’s already going to be fall.”

  “Stop,” Chuck complained, sporting a massive apron that still stretched across his chest. “This is a summer pool party.”

  “Late summer,” I pointed out. “In the rest of summer, you didn’t have a new house and a new pool.”

  “Will you throw him out, Chuck?” Jack asked, rocking back and forth in the swinging bench. “I’ve had about enough of his weirdness.”

  “I’m not being weird,” I said. “I’m just commenting on the passage of time. What if it’s like one of those big plastic funnel things you used to see at the mall you know the ones? You’d drop a coin and it would spin around slowly, but the closer it got to the hole at the bottom, the faster it would whirl around until it’s gone. You think that’s how life is going to be the older we get? It’s already going to be fall.”

  “I used to slap the quarters out before they got to the bottom of the funnel so I could do it again,” Sloan called from the pool. “Where does that fit in with your life philosophy?”

  “You don’t fit in anywhere in my life philosophy,” I informed him.

  “Then don’t talk so loud,” he fired back. “Some of us are here trying to enjoy ourselves.”

  “Don’t be rude,” Amy fussed at him.

  “Better listen to her,” I said. “Or else she won’t be nice to you before she leaves.”

  Sloan spluttered. “Are you insinuating that I’m not going to get any goodbye sex before Amy leaves for her work trip? Jack!”

  Amy gave a belly laugh. “Why are you complaining to Jack about it? I’m the one sharing your bed.”

  “It’s club business,” Sloan said. “We put it up to a vote no discussing any other club member’s sex life. Or lack thereof. Brody.”

  “Hey, if my thing was a violation of the rules, so was Sloan’s,” I complained to Jack, who just shook his head and sipped his beer.

  “What even happens if one of you violate club rules?” Katie asked.

  We all stared at each other until Jack cleared his throat. “That’s, uh, club business,” he clarified.

  “Bullshit,” Katie laughed. “You all don’t do anything to adhere to whatever rules you decide on. You’re more of a social club than anything else.”

  “You’re just jealous you’re not in the club,” Jack said. “You’d understand if you were, but I can’t help that we can’t manage to vote you in.”

  “I am well aware that you are the one holding up that vote,” Katie said, crossing her arms and looking dangerous.

  “So, uh, Amy,” Ace said quickly, looking to head of a fight we’d all heard before. “Where are you going for your work trip?”

  “Oh, I’ll be in Toronto, talking to American ex-pats,” she said, quick on the uptake. “People who’ve left the country after the last election. Then I’ll be headed to Paris, then Tangier. It’s kind of a story about what prompts Americans to want to move away and live abroad.”

  “That sounds really interesting,” Ace said.

  “I would want to live abroad to get away from Jack,” Katie added helpfully.

  “And I would stay here because that would mean Katie wouldn’t be here,” Jack added.

  I cleared my throat and clapped my hands. “This has been funChuck, you and Haley have an incredible place here but I really need to get going,” I said, shaking my head at all of the shenanigans. It was never a dull moment around us, at least.

  “You don’t have anywhere to go, Brody,” Chuck prodded. “We were just teasing you. Stick around.”

  “Um, one of us has to open the bar,” I said. “Is anyone else volunteering to go serve the good people of Rio Seco buckets of cold beer and well-mixed cocktails?”

  “You’re a good man, Brody,” Jack said lazily after a beat. “We thank you for your service.”

  “My God,” Ace said, shaking his head at Jack. “I think you’re going to break your streak of going to the bar if you don’t show up tonight. What has it been?”

  “I don’t keep track of that kind of stuff,” Jack said, flipping his hand dismissively.

  “I think it’s been like two years, consecutively,” I murmured, making a show of counting on my fingers. “Three years? Has it been three years?”

  “You should keep him here, Chuck,” Ace said, grinning. “Keep him out of our hair at the bar.”

  “I don’t get in your hair,” Jack protested. “I don�
��t tell you all shit about how to do your jobs.”

  “Then you’ll give his liver a break if you let him chill out here poolside with you, Chuck,” I put in.

  “Why are you all ganging up on me?” Jack demanded, petulant. “What did I ever do to you? I’ll fire you both, make Haley my heir. Don’t think I won’t.”

  “His liver’s going to be just fine,” I said solicitously, giving him another beer.

  “You just want to keep your job,” Jack said, but he accepted the bottle all the same. “Wait, is this one of yours? I want one of mine.”

  “Just try it,” I coaxed. “I was thinking about introducing it at the bar shit. The bar. I have to get going. I really do.”

  “Aw, come on, Brody,” Sloan complained, spinning around in the pool, making waves. “You’re no fun at all if you leave now. We were just going to get a game of…of something going.” Amy, at least, had the good humor to laugh at him.

  “You weren’t,” I fussed at him. “All you’re interested in is drinking as much alcohol as you can fit inside your belly and pissing it out again in Chuck and Haley’s pool.”

  “Sloan!” Chuck bellowed, waving a pair of tongs at him from the grill. “You better not be pissing in my pool!”

  “I’m not pissing in your pool,” Sloan said, putting his hands in the air in a way I’m sure he thought was disarming. Really, though, he just looked like the guiltiest suspect in the history of all cases of pissing in pools.

  “When’s the last time any of us saw him get out of the pool?” I asked, grinning as I stirred the pot.

  “You better not be peeing in there, Sloan,” Haley warned, not looking up from where she, Katie, and Amy sunned themselves in chairs Jack had gifted her and Chuck for housewarming presents. “We have a special chemical that turns the water purple if you pee in the pool.”

  “What?” Sloan looked around him. “That isn’t a thing. Is it? Amy, is that a thing?”

  “If Haley says it’s a thing, then it’s a thing, Sloan,” she said, rolling over, slipping a bikini strap down her shoulder to check her tan. “Am I getting red?”