It took Josh a good few hours to find the cabin. It had been warm out, around twenty-one degrees Celsius, but the evening cooled off rapidly, and it was dark by the time he arrived, the stars twinkling merrily in an indigo sky as if they were blissfully unaware of the tragedy so recently experienced on terra firma below. Josh let Frisco into the small pen with Mack, promising to come back to feed and unsaddle the horse as soon as he knew Jessie was okay. He gave the horse a quick pat to say thanks for the ride, then turned and, with a heart pounding so hard he felt it might leap right out of his chest, he made his way nervously up the steps to the cabin.
It took a moment for his eyes to adjust. But there she was, in a lump by the little window, asleep, or so he hoped. Josh was afraid to move forward. He wanted to savor the moment as it was, feeling she was okay there, all huddled up in a fetal position. He did not want to know if she wasn’t okay.
With the memories of holding her at the hospital in the forefront of his mind, and the terrible, aching pain she had released in his arms echoing through his ears, Josh forced himself to move forward but he didn’t go to Jessie right away. Instead, he made his way to the fireplace and stoked up the small fire. He breathed a slight sigh of relief when he noticed that she’d lit the fire. Although it had gone out, and was likely from the night before, it meant she cared enough - was alert enough - to want to be warm. Nobody who was going to – well, he didn’t want to entertain that thought. Sure, Jessie was a mystery in a lot of ways, who wasn’t, really? But was she suicidal? This episode with Terri was an echo of more than just Terri. It had unleashed a deeper pain, horrid memories under which dark power Jessie had succumbed, only briefly, Josh hoped. Memories from which she could pull herself out from under, from which she could once again push asunder, from which he prayed she could recover.
A slight stirring on the cot jarred his wary thoughts. It released the last gasp of fear from Josh’s heart, his throat. She was alive. She was therefore okay. For if one is at least alive on this earth, then one has hopes of a full and complete recovery. After all, he’d been dead, in his mind and heart. And he was now okay - at least on some level. Jessie would get through this.
Josh stood and turned. A swath of white light was crossing Jessie’s body, the moon’s caress and care for one of its hurting souls, a blanket of hope. With an ache in his own spirit, Josh slowly covered the six paces across the sparse small single room to her side. He bent down and peered at the girl whose wedding the whole world would be watching in less than two weeks - the girl who was now lying in a fetal position, her back to him, toes curled up inside each other, with hands under her head to form a makeshift pillow.
“Jessie,” he whispered. She stirred again. Opened her eyes.
He took off his denim jacket and laid it around her shoulders. She turned, then, and peered up at him. Paused.
“I knew it would be you,” she murmured, with a scratchy voice that made him think of beach sand on a vanilla ice cream cone.
With a hint of a smile, he said, “Figures you would come to the Holy Oh. I should have thought of it myself, but I didn’t. Freddie called me. He wanted to know if he could take the Beamer out for a test drive in exchange for the loan of the horse.”
Jessie smiled, maybe not with her eyes, but enough for him to know then that she would be okay.
“Do you think Dee would mind?” he asked.
At the mention of Dee, Jessie groaned and rolled back over away from him, covering her eyes with her hands.
“Hey,” he said, reaching out to pull her hands away from her face. “Dee gets all of this. She knows you need some space. Freddie was going to call her for us. She and Charles will meet us at the ranch around nine in the morning, okay?”
Josh could see tears forming around Jessie’s eyes. He stood up.
“I’m off to feed Mack and Frisco. Back in ten, okay?”
He gave her some privacy by going off to take care of the horses, which seemed content to be in each other’s company. Once they were fed, and with Frisco’s saddle removed, Josh opened up the saddlebag and retrieved the snacks he’d placed there earlier, and then he headed back inside. A small voice greeted him in the dim moonlit room.
“I did feed Mack. I made sure he wasn’t hungry.”
Josh dropped down onto the cot and leaned up against the wall at the foot of the bed. He took a bite of an apple.
“What about yourself?” he asked. “Did you eat?”
She pulled herself up and sat opposite him, wrapping the jean jacket around her shoulders. She eyed his apple. Shook her head. “Wasn’t hungry.”
He eyed her mischievously and took another big bite. Grinned. “Past tense?” he queried playfully.
Chagrined, she took the apple he tossed her. They sat there staring at each other for a few moments, eating apples and contemplating the strange direction in which their week had so suddenly turned.
“How is Jonathon dealing with all of this?”
Josh shrugged. “He’s fine. He’ll have a few days on the call sheet for us next week, that’s all. Word is he’s shooting some B-roll for the rest of this week instead of next, just to keep things rolling.”
“So what about the funeral?” she asked quietly.
Josh filled her in on the basics. Terri’s mother knew they were coming. She, along with Jessie’s publicist, had asked for privacy from the press. Dee would have Jessie’s clothes packed tomorrow when she met them at the ranch, and they would go directly to the airport from there.
After a while, as she finished off the apple, Jessie got up the courage to ask about Terri, but her voice came out hoarse and quaking. “Heather said something about a man in a blue trench coat dropping her off at that house. Does anyone know who he was?” She hoped Josh couldn’t read anything more into the question than just that. She simply wanted to know if anyone had taken note of the man.
Josh shook his head, and reached over the cot to let his apple core fall to the dusty wooden floor. It landed with a plop. He would feed it to Frisco later. “No,” he said. “Nobody knows who he was. The cops talked to the staff at Revolver and they haven’t got a clue. They said she left alone when her shift was up.”
He looked closely at Jessie, who was suddenly staring out of the window. “Why?” he asked. “Do you think you know who it was?”
She glanced back at him, and he detected something at play beneath the surface of her pretty face, beneath her messy curls – fear, maybe. He also felt rather certain she knew more than she was saying, but he waited, giving her a chance to reveal what she wanted to in her own good time. She pulled back. Shook her head. As much as she had grown to trust and care for Josh over the last several months, Jessie didn’t feel ready to burden any of her friends with what had happened in Charleston and her fears that the terrifying, sadistic Deuce McCall had, for some reason, chosen to re-enter her life. She chased the thought away. It was too horrific to even contemplate, that he’d had anything at all to do with young Terri’s disappearance and death.
Josh pulled out the rest of the snacks he brought and they sat there and chatted quietly for a while about Terri. Both agreed she’d shown a lot of potential and that it was a surprise that she’d backslid. They had their own experiences with the menacing world of drugs, however, and so both knew that once you entered that domain, there was absolutely no certainty of how you would exit. Both Josh and Jessie took a few moments to remind themselves that they had crawled upwards and out of that deep, dark abyss, and though they were grateful for the direction their own lives had taken, they also knew, on some volcanic level, that luck had as much to do with their success in overcoming that tenuous world as they themselves did. Luck in whom they met, and when, in particular.
Their eyes met as both remembered their own auspicious meeting in Charlie’s smelly garbage pile. Then Josh took Jessie’s hand and kissed it. Words were too big just then, as they each recognized their good fortune in having overcome the destiny that had befallen Terri, and in the silence
they recalled the friends and acquaintances over the years that had also not survived the black death, the curse.
Later, they made their way outside to say goodnight to Mack and Frisco, who were content to sleep in their little lean-to under the starlight. Josh produced a flashlight to help Jessie sort out the outhouse, then she waited for him while he did the same, the flashlight in his teeth while she laughed and threatened to hold it for him.
“Exactly what ‘it’ do you plan on holding?” he asked, chuckling, as she flushed beet red.
They went inside the cabin and snuggled up, Josh spooning Jessie from the outside and, in the midst of such great overwhelming pain, neither could escape the feeling of bliss and certainty that accompanied them there, together, on the little cot. The blanket of white moonlight gently enveloped them, holding them in its arms, telling Josh and Jessie that no matter what insidious circumstances brought them there, this was where they were meant to be. They closed their eyes, and slept.
As the sun peeped over the horizon and began to warm their little sanctuary, Jessie stirred and looked over her shoulder to find Josh already awake, watching her. She lay on her back and reached out and touched his face with her fingertips, in complete awe and wonder, as if she were checking to see if he were real. Their friendship had taken an interesting turn with Terri’s passing. After the initial few weeks of falling head over heels in love, and then being in a very public situation where they had to work closely together in intimate situations, they’d had no choice but to put their heads down and push through, for the sake of the people who trusted them as professional actors – for the cast and crew of Drifters, as well as the intended audience for the show. It was difficult, but over time they managed well. Charlie flew home on occasion; Josh occasionally took other girls out on dates. But always, there was this indefinable pull towards each other, a magnetic, energized force that seemed to cry out for release.
Initially, Jessie had accepted that Josh might have been filling a hole in her life. He was good looking, dangerous, a loner, hurting – she was compelled to seek him out, for no other reason than that he intrigued her. He was a game, a test, whereas Charlie was a companion - a safe place, a playboy who didn’t seem to expect more than a trophy by his side. But that place deep inside that had been so squarely and firmly shut when Sandy died started to erode when Josh became a fixture in Jessie’s life. Even when she forced herself to end the affair with him, writing him off as a diversion in a lonely life, he was still there, digging, melding himself into her chastened soul. They built themselves up from a place of deep hurt and bitterness after their surreal three weeks together, pushed the tender sting aside and, one moment at a time, built a sincere and lasting friendship based on an abiding respect and need. Yet they had resisted the urge to stray into each other’s arms, apart from those secret beautiful moments on set when the writers blissfully brought Kate and Billy back into each other’s embrace.
But what this effectively led to, this careful friendship, was something for which Jessie wasn’t really prepared. The months of nurturing, of getting to know each other, of working together so intimately, had led to a softening in Jessie’s heart, an erosion of that concrete filled hole she so long ago closed over. It led to a deep and abiding love for Josh she hadn’t expected. It led to the realization that he was not a fly-by-night attraction, a diversion in a lonely life. It led to the realization that Charlie had been her safe place all along, but that somewhere deep inside a sad soul that had experienced great loss, was a seed that ached to be planted, that still somehow had the capacity to be planted, and that needed to be planted. It led to the firm and true realization that Jessie Wheeler had fallen deeply and irrevocably in love with the man who now lay beside her in the early morning light.
It led to the realization once and for all that Jessie Wheeler was marrying the wrong man.
They lay together as the sun’s lovely warm rays nudged them more fully awake. Josh put his fingers over hers as she touched his cheek, remembering with great pleasure and pain the blissful few short weeks they had shared. There was no need for words as they touched each other, there in the sparse cabin, where they had everything they would ever need – each other. Yet there was a limit to their touching this time – despite the fact that they were alone and deeply in love, there remained beyond the borders of the cabin and its downward hillside trail, another world, the real one, where a heartbreaking funeral awaited, along with a man who expected to marry Jessie within the month. They knew this, although the ache was so great in their hearts each wanted to cry out for the love of God, just let us be, but neither Jessie nor Josh could verbalize what this all meant just yet, what the past number of hours had taught them about life and love and the devastating quickness and finality of it all.
After a while the sun spoke more harshly to the lovers on the hillside cabin, its warm rays increasing in intensity, reminding them they had people to meet, and hungry horses, and lives to be lived with expectation. And so it was that Jessie finally let her gaze leave Josh’s intense chocolate brown eyes. She placed her guitar string callused fingers on either side of his beautiful face, and she leaned forward and kissed him, so delicately and softly and passionately there could be no question ever in his lifetime as to how she felt about him and all he had done for her, and what he meant to her. They stayed that way just a little longer as Josh placed his right hand behind Jessie’s head and pulled her closer, then let his lips linger on her forehead so she couldn’t see the wetness in his eyes, and then he turned and sat, his back to her, on the edge of the cot, before getting up to go feed the horses.
Jessie waited a few minutes before following Josh outside. She couldn’t help but smile. Typical, she thought. Leave it to Terri to find a way to bring Josh and me together. The younger girl never really understood what Jessie saw in Charlie. She had thought of him as crass and narcissistic, which of course he kinda was.
After braving the squeaky old grey barn board outhouse, Jessie sat on the broken wooden steps of the cabin and munched on some crackers while Josh saddled Frisco and Mack.
“Josh,” she asked, “am I hearing you’re thinking about doing motocross again?”
He stopped, suddenly. Motocross had ended badly for him, but yes, it was a sport he loved and was considering trying again.
“What brings that up all of a sudden?”
Jessie scooped out some more crackers. “I heard Stephen talking the other day on set. He said you guys are planning some races over the summer. Or freestyle or something.”
Josh pulled the girth tight on Frisco’s saddle. “Thinking about it,” he said.
She watched him, the muscles in his once-broken wrist tensing with satisfaction as he pulled on the girth.
“Why’d you stop? Motocross.”
He exhaled slowly, his back to her. Motocross ended for him about the time the serious drug use started. “I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Seemed like a good time to give it a break.”
“There was an accident,” she pushed, quietly.
He wheeled around to face her, his right arm leaning on the horse’s rump. Josh studied Jessie, wondering where she was going with this. It was fairly common knowledge that he had an accident on the course.
“Why are you asking about this now?” He was sensitive to the fact that they were heading to a wake later that day, so he forced the edge out of his voice, but the underlying tone was still defensive.
“I just wanted you to know I think you should go back to motocross,” she said. “It’s something you enjoyed, that you were good at. You should go back,” she finished definitively. “You can’t stop doing something you love based on what other people think. Especially if it was an accident.”
He watched her, sitting there eating crackers in the sunshine against the backdrop of a dilapidated old cabin surrounded by fragrant wildflowers in yellows and purples and blues, where he felt he could live happily forever with her, and wondered again why she felt the need to t
alk about this now.
“Josh,” she said. “There are things…” Oh, this was tough. But this was as good a time as ever. They rarely had the chance to talk, really talk, alone. She sighed, put the last cracker she’d picked up back in the box. Set down the box on a good part of a rotten step. She looked up, wiping the salt and crumbs off her hands. “There are things in my life, too, that went the wrong way. That had really bad endings.”
Jessie tilted her head sideways and stared at a crack in the board by her toes. She wanted to share this with him, this thing she’d never shared with anyone, not Charlie, and not even Charles and Dee. She felt so close to Josh now. She knew beyond the shadow of a doubt what he meant to her. She trusted him. And she wanted him to know she knew that, now. Plus – she was worried about the man in the blue coat that had taken Terri to the crack house. She needed to know who he was. She needed someone on her side to help her figure out who he was, to help prove he was not the man she thought he may be. That Deuce McCall was just a terrible memory from a horrific time.
“Josh,” she said more firmly. “When I was in Charleston, I was like, seventeen or eighteen…bad things happened, and two people I loved, died.” She looked up at him. “I felt…I feel…like it was my fault, like I could have prevented it from happening.”
He felt like a bullet went through his heart. Josh tugged on Frisco’s reins to be sure they were secure, then went and sat beside Jessie. He put his arm around her and gave her a little squeeze.
A Song For Josh, Drifters Book One Page 26