Juniper Limits (The Juniper Series Book 2)

by Lora Richardson

  Hope was like a rising tide, and there was no use resisting it. I pushed back, but still ended up covered in water. Maybe this time would be different. Maybe Paul was different.

  But this conversation with Esta had reinforced to me that I should be more cautious with my hope. I was done blindly believing the things guys said, just because I wanted them to be true. “Eh, he’s fine. I’m sure he’ll be running as fast as he can in the other direction as soon as he figures me out.”

  “Figures you out?”

  I stood up and started folding the laundry I’d shoved to the floor. “Good point. He’ll never figure out the mystery that is me.” I winked at her and tried to brush it off, but the idea of him really figuring me out was terrifying.

  9

  Paul leaned against the order window as Esta arranged plates on a tray. It would only hold five, but she kept trying to find a place for the sixth. “Celia didn’t show up for work, so Heidi called me.”

  “She just didn’t show up?”

  Esta nodded. “She’s never done that. I’d go look for her, but I need to be here, covering for her. Heidi isn’t pleased.”

  “You don’t think she’ll get fired, do you?”

  “I don’t think Heidi’s ever fired anyone, even though she threatens it a lot. Probably because they quit before she gets the chance. But no way would she ever fire Celia. Celia’s her little pet project. Anyway, I made up a lie that she was sick, and I was on my way to take her shift.” She finally set the sixth plate directly on top of one of the others, squashing the burger.

  Paul reached through the window and lifted it off, motioning for her to lead the way to the table. She carried the tray through the swinging door. He followed her and set the plate down in front of a customer. Esta immediately picked it up and put it in front of the right person. “Don’t help or you’ll wreck my tip.” She murmured, without moving her lips.

  Paul went back to the window to wait for her. When she was back behind the counter, he continued their conversation. “Should I go by her house?”

  “She wasn’t at home. I called on my way here, and Abe answered. He told me she was at work.”

  “Where should I check for her?”

  “I already walked all the streets she would take to get here, and she’s not lying injured in a ditch.”

  Paul smiled at her. “You’re a good friend.”

  She smiled back. “That’s true.” Then she narrowed her eyes. “I swear on my moldy apron, if she’s with Ronan, I will kill her.”

  Paul’s stomach lurched. “You don’t think she is, do you?”

  “I don’t know. If she’s not sick, she’s upset about something. When she’s upset, she tends to do self-destructive things. Things she thinks she deserves. It’s like she figures if everything is shit, she’ll show the world how shitty it can get.”

  “I’ll go by his house, then.”

  “If she is there, she’ll be furious at you for showing up.”

  He nodded. Furious didn’t scare him. Celia being self-destructive did. “I’ll check there first. Anywhere else you think I should check?”

  Esta tapped her chin, thinking. “She wouldn’t go to Molly’s. When she’s upset, she doesn’t want to be around anyone who’s good for her. She could be alone somewhere, spiraling downward.”

  Paul patted the counter twice in thanks, and headed out the door into the blazing sunlight. He held his hands over his brow, and looked left, toward Ronan’s neighborhood.

  Crunching rocks along the crumbly sidewalk one street over from Ronan’s house, he rehearsed it in his head, picturing Ronan, with his wormy face, opening the door. Where is she, asshole? He smiled to himself, his hands curling into fists at his side. That would be fun, but he wouldn’t do it. He didn’t want Ronan to think he cared about him at all.

  He passed the small playground nestled in the green space by the woods, where the streets intersected. This was always his favorite playground as a kid, because it was old as dirt and chock-full of sharp edges and towering structures to climb on.

  He smiled as a kid went down the ancient roller slide, bumping along until it spit him out the end. He thought the kid was the only one there, until he scanned the equipment and saw legs sticking out the end of the tube slide. At the end of the legs were bright yellow shoes. He knew those shoes.

  Paul walked over to the boy, who looked about five, and leaned against the bar next to the roller slide, where he was about to go down again. “Hey, kid.”

  The boy stopped, perched at the top. “I know you. You’re Paul and you cut my grass.”

  “I do? Who are your folks?” He spoke softly, because he didn’t want those yellow shoes to slip out the slide and run away again.

  “My dad’s Robbie Blackford. One day you drank the last of our lemonade.” He narrowed his eyes at Paul, holding the glare for a dramatic moment, before pointing at a house. “We live in that blue house over there.”

  “Yeah, I know that yard. That makes you Robbie Junior.”

  He wrinkled up his nose. “I go by Robert.”

  “Robert,” Paul corrected himself. “I’m sorry about the lemonade. Next time I come, I’ll bring you a couple lemons.”

  “We use the powder kind.”

  “Okay, yeah. I’ll bring you some of the powdered kind.” Wanting to get the conversation back on track, Paul pointed to Celia’s shoes sticking out of the slide. “Hey, you see those feet over there?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How long have they been there?”

  Robert put his hands out, palms up. “She was like that when I got here. That’s the best slide here, and she’s blocking it. I went to the top, and was real loud so she’d move. She didn’t. I could hear her breathing, so she’s not dead.”

  The corner of Paul’s mouth twitched, but he didn’t let the smile emerge. “That’s good. Well, listen, I’m going to go see if I can get her out of there for you.”

  “Good. Because this park isn’t for big kids, you know.”

  Paul walked over and sat down on the grass at the bottom of the slide.

  “That wasn’t very nice, drinking the last of Robert’s lemonade.” Her voice echoed through the plastic of the slide.

  He smiled. “I remember that lemonade. Malcolm always brings a water bottle, but I’d rather drink from hoses. The water’s colder that way. But Robert’s mom brought out that lemonade one day—with some cookies, too. I always remember when things like that happen. It’s the best part of my job.”

  “You’re a slave to your stomach.”

  He chuckled. “Yeah.” He looked up at the blue sky. The sky seemed to get bluer as fall approached. In a couple weeks it would be September, and you couldn’t dream up a prettier blue than the Indiana sky in September.

  He glanced over at Robert, who shrugged, and shoved himself down the roller slide. “I’m out of here,” he said. “This is taking too long.” Paul watched him cross a couple yards until he reached his own, where he picked up a full-sized shovel. He held it down by the scoop, and whacked it against the ground repeatedly. Paul had to smile as the handle swayed above him.

  “Is he gone?” Celia asked.

  “Yeah. He’s in his yard. Isn’t it hot in there?”

  “No. It’s nice and shady.”

  “Are you going to stay in there all day?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Esta told me you were a no-show at work. She’s covering for you.”

  A moment passed. “She is?” Celia’s voice sounded fuzzy, thick with emotion.

  “She’s a good friend.”

  “The best.”

  “She told me you might be at Ronan’s. I was heading over there to check.”

  “I take it back. She’s the worst. How could she think that?”

  “She said you had to be in a bad place if you didn’t even call in to work.”

  “Well, dang. Ronan’s is a bad place.”

  He let her joke pass by. “Why didn’t you go to work?”

>   Silence stretched. “I don’t want to talk right now, Paul.”

  “Okay. You don’t have to talk. But what if I talk? Would that be okay?”

  “I guess. You basically have me trapped here.”

  Paul shifted so he leaned against the side of the slide, her feet right beside him. A breeze washed over him, and he rested his arms on his bent knees, letting it cool him, trying to relax. If he wasn’t going to let her be evasive, he couldn’t be, either. His gut clenched up tight and his palms felt prickly. His pulse pounded in his ears. He reached up and tugged on one. It didn’t help. He dove in. Only for her would he do this.

  “Last night sucked,” he said.

  She was quiet for a moment, then, “What happened?”

  “Well, I had dinner at Malcolm’s, which was perfect, of course. Marigold made this amazing pasta with shrimp in it, and these rolls with garlic on the top, and there was salad—”

  “Paul, you’re obsessing about food again.”

  “Right. Anyway, dinner was good. And even though Malcolm’s still moody as hell, he actually lightened up and we walked to my house after we ate. We played some video games.”

  “He’s getting used to Fay being gone. I knew it would happen. Slowly, they’ll just let go of each other, until it’s as if this summer never happened.”

  “I don’t think it’s like that at all. I think it’s the opposite. He’s realizing they can make it work like this. Plus, his parents said he could go visit her this weekend.”

  “But school starts Monday.”

  “Yeah. To have parents like that, right? Anyway, we’d been playing for an hour or so, and then my mom walked in, home early from work.”

  “Was she angry you had Malcolm over?” Her voice echoed out the slide to him.

  “No, my mom doesn’t really get angry.” No response from inside the slide. “I might actually like it if she got angry for once.”

  “No you wouldn’t.”

  He thought about that. “Well, too much of any one thing isn’t good.” He kept talking, quickly, so he wouldn’t lose his nerve. “So she’d been crying on the drive home. Of course, Malcolm rushed over to her, asking what was wrong. As if he could just jump in and do something to fix it.”

  “Fay’s like that.”

  He stretched his legs out and folded his hands across his belly. “I’m sure he thought he’d be able to cheer her up, like it was just a bad day, like it would be any different tomorrow. So of course she just eats that up. Tells him how sweet he is, tells him it was a rough day at work. Malcolm didn’t hear the mushiness of her mouth, or notice the way she swayed on her feet. I did, and I knew she’d taken at least a couple pills on the drive home.”

  Celia didn’t gasp or fire off a bunch of questions or say she was sorry, like he knew some people would. Maybe it was because she wasn’t surprised. She’d probably heard the rumors. She kicked her heels into the dirt and dragged herself forward, out of the safety of the plastic tube. When she was completely out, looking flushed and rumpled and beautiful, she planted herself in the dirt right beside him. “What kind of pills does she take?”

  “Xanax.” It had been various ones over the years. The worst time was some pain pills she got for a sore back. Thankfully the doctor wouldn’t refill it for her after about six months. The last year or so, it was mostly Xanax. Way too much Xanax.

  They were quiet for a minute, both looking toward Robert’s yard, where he was still wrestling with the shovel. “So did you get Malcolm out of there before he realized what was happening?”

  He pressed his palms together, and tried to breathe through the lump lodged in his airway. She understood. His mouth curved up. “Mom gets loose lips when she takes her pills. But thankfully she also gets sleepy and slow to think. She started to tell him how she just couldn’t get through the day, talking to people and answering the phone, and I stepped in and pretended it was because she wasn’t feeling well. I told her I’d heat up a can of soup, and then I told Malcolm he better go before he caught whatever bug she had.”

  “He knows anyway, though. You realize that, right?”

  Paul studied the backs of his hands. He had grease under his fingernails that wouldn’t go away no matter how much he scrubbed at it. “Yeah, I guess he probably does. It doesn’t matter. He won’t tell his parents, as long as I keep everything under control.”

  She scooped up a handful of dry dirt and let it fall down and dust the tops of her yellow shoes. “I used to try to keep things under control. Until I realized the things I did weren’t controlling anything. Sure, maybe the course of one day, but not more than that.”

  Paul shifted positions, not wanting to think too much about that. As if she could sense he was feeling upended, she started to talk.

  “My dad brought home pizza and a movie last night,” she said. “Field of Dreams. He said he went to three stores before he found it.” She cleared her throat and swallowed hard, taking a moment before continuing. “Field of Dreams was the movie my parents watched on their first date, in the theater, when they were sixteen years old. We hardly ever get pizza. Abe ate about half of it, and Dad laughed. He laughed, and shoved Abe’s shoulder and said something about how he was growing up.”

  She rubbed her arms like she was cold, even though it was boiling out. “I couldn’t tell you what happened in the movie, because he didn’t just bring home a pizza and a movie. I spent the whole time staring at the six pack of beer that just sat there on the coffee table, a devil in a bottle. At least for my dad it’s a devil.”

  She glanced at him. “I guess you know about that.”

  Paul thought about lying, because he knew she didn’t want him to know. But he nodded.

  “He hadn’t had a drink in almost a month. Not one. He wouldn’t look anybody in the face until after he told us that pizza without beer is a travesty. And it was just beer, not something harder. It’s the harder stuff that’s usually the problem. No one said anything, but I couldn’t eat. I only had half a slice of pizza.”

  Paul kept quiet, knowing that was the only thing that kept her talking.

  “And then, then, he only drank one bottle. I went to the kitchen to get some water, and he came in. He put the rest of them, five full bottles, in the kitchen trash can. He asked me if I’d take the trash out. ‘Get it out of the house,’ he said. I took it out right then. I even buried it at the bottom of the garbage can outside.”

  “It seems like he realized he couldn’t handle a taste. That’s good, right?”

  “Is it good, though? Or is it the first step off the wagon? Soon to be followed by the rest of them, until we’re all just waving the wagon off as it disappears out of town.” She sighed and tilted her head down, resting it on her hands. “Paul, I’m going to tell you something weird.” She fidgeted a little more before wrapping her arms around her knees and locking herself into a ball. “It’s the good times that scare me.”

  Paul was beginning to understand. “Because you can’t trust the good to stay good.” She swallowed, an audible gulp that made him want to put his arm around her. He held back. “I know what that’s like.”

  “I had started to let down my guard. Now I feel like I need to put it back up, and I have to remember how to do that.”

  He stretched his right arm out behind her, and set it gently on her shoulder, barely touching. “Is this okay?”

  She released a long breath, and nodded. “I don’t know which way is up anymore.” She leaned into him, letting her head rest against his chest—not running away this time. He closed his arm tighter around her, and held her like that, sitting in the dirt at the bottom of a tube slide while Robert Blackford lunged at the ground with that huge shovel, barely making a dent.

  10

  I stretched my arms over my head and looked up at the canopy of tree branches sheltering us. “We should do something.” I didn’t want to do anything other than what we were already doing, but I didn’t want Paul to think I was boring.

  “We are doing s
omething. We’re lying around.”

  I turned my head away so he wouldn’t see the delight on my face. “But it’s the last day of freedom before school starts. Is it responsible to waste it lying under a tree?”

  Paul’s stomach growled so loudly I was surprised I couldn’t feel the ground rumble. “You need food.”

  “I can use the rest of my life for eating. I don’t want to spend any of my time with you on food.”

  I pressed my lips together tightly, until the urge to smile passed. “You’ll start shrinking, and we already know you have a complex about the size of your body.”

  He turned his head toward me and smiled. He’d shown up on my front porch an hour ago, and I’d brought him to the hemlock tree behind my house. The space Fay and I had created when we were children didn’t feel as large as it had back then. Maybe it was because the branches had filled in over the years, growing to take the place of the ones we’d spent hours chewing away at with the handsaw. Or maybe it was because I was here with Paul, and he always seemed to take up a lot of room. He felt practically everywhere.

  Nobody would think to look for us inside this tree, except maybe Fay, and she was gone. “I’m kind of hungry, too. I could run in and grab us some food.”

  “Won’t your mom ask what you’re doing?”

  I shrugged. “Who cares?”

  “So it’s okay if she knows I’m here? With you?”

  I shrugged again. “I don’t care what she thinks of it. Or my dad.” They kept saying things were going to be better, and it was time someone held them to it. I’d argue for Paul if I had to, and if it upset the balance, well, I was learning to stick out my arms and keep my footing.

  “In that case, I’ll come in with you.”

  I looked at him in the dappled light, shadows moving across his face, and sat up. “Let’s do it.”

  Paul swept a branch to the side and held it there so I could crawl out without getting a face full of evergreen. I stood up and brushed off my hands, heart racing in spite of my bravado. “Let’s go make some waves.”

  Paul grinned and motioned me forward. We walked across the yard slowly, Paul matching my pace. He always walked right beside me. I was used to Ronan, who walked faster than me and never seemed to care if he got fifteen feet ahead. Because Paul never left me behind, he saw me pick hemlock needles from my hair, and wipe dirt off the seat of my pants—a strange new brand of intimacy.