Turning Back (Turning #2)

by JA Huss

  It’s an old tradition done a new way.

  Of course, Chella and Smith’s tree is filled with sophisticated ornaments and looks like it belongs in a department store.

  Our tree looks like it came out of my grandma’s attic. But hey, that’s just how we roll here at the Foster house.

  Adley went to the allergist. Turns out she’s allergic to latex and Rochelle would’ve found this out sooner if she had bought cheap bottles with latex nipples. But she’s a genius and knew better. Latex has some cross-reactivity with certain fruits—mango is one of them. It scares me a little. To think that fear of knowing the truth almost made me doubt what I always believed to be true.

  Adley is ours.

  We’re petitioning the court to add me to Adley’s birth certificate. And tonight, when everyone goes home and Adley is fast asleep in her crib, I’ve got a little sparkly something for my future wife. We’ll be changing her name too. Sometime next summer, to be more specific.

  Adley is sliding around the condo in the little walker Bric bought her. We invited him tonight too, but he’s busy, I guess. Whatever. He needs to learn his lessons in his own time or not at all. But I’m done. I did what I could for the guy and I’m done.

  He lives in a world I don’t understand anymore. He lives in denial. Denial of the truth inside him that’s dying to get out and denial of all the good things Smith and I have found now that we’ve stopped playing his game.

  The door beeps and a second later chaos erupts. Three puppies—yes, three now—burst into the room barking and racing around like, well, puppies. Adley squeals with delight and tries to maneuver her walker to chase them.

  Rochelle warned me about Smith’s new addition. But I have to fuck with the guy. I can’t help it. “What the hell is this, Baldwin?” The little husky puppy was Chella’s gift to him for Christmas this year. Turns out she knew he was just going along with those rat dogs to make her happy. So she went back to the shelter and got him the dog he really wanted.

  “Triplets.” Smith beams.

  I can only shake my head.

  “Am I a lucky guy or what? I can’t believe it,” he says, looking down at the completely crazy husky pup as it runs circles around Ads. She’s gonna get dizzy trying to follow him with her eyes. I’m expecting that little shit to eat all the couch pillows, pee on the floor, and probably steal food off the table tonight. But whatever.

  The things we put up with for love.

  Smith and Rochelle talked for hours that night we set things straight. She told him everything. He listened. They forgave each other for… well, whatever it was that kept them from seeing eye to eye. I think Smith was just looking out for me. I can appreciate that. And now I think we’re all on the same page. We’ve moved on. Left the past behind.

  That’s all you can do, right?

  There’s no such thing as turning back.

  All you can do is move forward.

  Once upon a time I had no idea what it meant to be happy.

  I know what it means now.

  It’s love—in twos and threes and fours.

  Does the number of people really matter?

  Yes. The more the better.

  I’m happy with our new foursome. It’s not what it used to be, that’s for sure. We’re just… normal, I guess. And that’s not a bad thing anymore. It would be a lot nicer if Bric was here. But like I said, I did what I could.

  He can turn back all he wants. He can live in the past forever, for all I care. But one day his turn will come.

  And then he’ll know what we know.

  Game over.

  Epilogue - Bric

  Christmas Day at Turning Point was pretty much how it always has been. If you don’t mind the fact that all my friends are absent.

  I take a drink of my brandy and exhale. I’m sitting in Smith’s bar, looking down at the Black Room. There’s only about a dozen people left now. They’ve all got rooms upstairs and will stay the night.

  Me? I’m just gonna sit here for as long as I can. No one is in the basement tonight. They are all with their families and friends.

  Fuck them.

  The revolving doors make that swooshing sound they do when someone is coming in. I can’t usually hear it from up here, but it’s so quiet down there, it makes me look.

  A woman comes in. She’s wearing a black fur cape and a long black dress. She doesn’t stop, but keeps walking. Across the front lobby and right up to the stairs. Her head is perfectly straight, her spine too. Her long dark hair falls down her back, but jiggles a little with each upward step.

  Who the hell?

  But just when I recognize her, my phone buzzes on the table.

  I check the text.

  Jordan: You wanted her trained? She’s trained. Merry Christmas.

  It’s that ballerina chick. She’s been slapping him around for weeks. The wannabe dom, I chuckle to myself.

  When she gets to the second-floor landing she pivots right and walks towards the second, shorter set of stairs that lead up to Smith’s bar.

  She stops at the threshold of the bar and waits.

  “What?” I ask her.

  She doesn’t even look at me. Just stares straight ahead.

  That’s when I notice she’s got a tag attached to her right wrist.

  “What the fuck is Jordan up to?” I mutter, getting up from my chair. I walk over to her and try to make her meet my gaze. She looks straight ahead and then lifts her hand up. The one with the tag.

  I take her hand and read the tag.

  I will not speak, but the answer to all your questions tonight is yes.

  Jesus.

  I text Jordan. What’s going on?

  Jordan: You’re pathetic and sad. So I got you a present. Like I said, Merry Christmas. It’s your turn, Bricman. Have fun.

  I look her body up and down as I circle her.

  Mine?

  I smile. That devious, deviant, I’m-gonna-make-you-sorry-you-ever-started-playing-this-game-with-me smile.

  And then I take her hand.

  I lead her to the elevator.

  We go up to my apartment.

  I tie her wrists together with rope.

  Raise her arms above her head.

  And chain her to the ceiling.

  It is my turn.

  GET THE THIRD BOOK, HIS TURN, HERE.

  END OF BOOK SHIT

  Welcome to the End of Book Shit, bitches. The part in the book where I get to say anything I want. When I came to the end of this book I wasn’t sure I had anything to say. It’s kinda weird. Usually there’s controversial element in the book that might need explaining, but I’m telling you, this is just a love story. People find love in so many different ways. I think there’s something to say for a traditional romance story. Most people are traditional when it comes to love, so they can relate to it and it sells really well in the book world. If I was smart, I’d write that stuff. Over and over and over and over and over. I’d certainly have to think less when I’m plotting a book. And I’d probably make a good living.

  But I’m just kind of a non-traditional person. I’m not sure when I decided this, but I was young. Teens, probably. Because I was a wild teenager and I took a lot of risks. But at the same time, I was annoyingly smart. But I didn’t want to waste what came naturally to me, and luckily my little group of friends at this formative time in my life were also annoyingly smart and non-traditional. None of us felt pressure to be one thing or the other. We could wear flannel shirts and leather jackets and still ace a science test. So my days started out with smoking pot before school, progressed into trying real hard in biology (because biology, right? So fucking cool.) And then at night I took it one step further. Because at night I had this whole secret life going on at a show stable jumping horses. Most of my friends never even knew I was in the horse show world until I dragged them out to the barn to watch me compete. I like the contradiction I was creating as a teenager. I liked that I had a whole group of very close friends who spent
every day with me down in a basement smoking pot and listening to Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin, but they didn’t really know me. They didn’t know any of my secrets. I don’t know why I found that satisfying, but I did.

  I actually have a degree in horses now. It’s called equine science and I was going to be an equine veterinarian, but then I decided to go to grad school and that totally derailed my life in another direction. I was a non-traditional college student, by the way. I was a thirty-year-old single-mom with two kids when I finally went back to finish my undergraduate degree. I always liked that label. Non-traditional student. After I completed my general ed requirements at a community college near Denver, I wanted to transfer up to Colorado State in Fort Collins and major in horses.

  In order to help fund my education I applied for, and won, a free ride scholarship to Colorado State by writing a kick-ass essay on why I felt I deserved this opportunity. And when I went to that scholarship breakfast to celebrate my achievement, I realized I was the only person there who was not eighteen years old. Also, I was the only person who wasn’t born and raised in Colorado. I was born and raised in Ohio, moved to Southern California when I was sixteen, and then out to Colorado when I was twenty-seven. It was a weird feeling to realize how untraditional I was. I have always felt normal. I have always felt that I was taking the road most traveled because that was all I knew. It was just my life. But I realized that morning at the scholarship breakfast that I didn’t take the well-traveled road. I took the dirt path leading up into the unknown. I got lost and didn’t even know it. But holy shit, it was a lot of fun.

  When I was up at CSU I took riding classes as my electives. So I started jumping horses again. And it was very weird to realize that jumping horses now scared the shit out of me. I had done all this crazy stuff so fearlessly as a teenager. You’re so stupid when you’re that young, right? In my senior year at CSU I was in an advanced jumping class and got thrown off because my crazy horse refused a jump. I fell flat on my back and tore my rotator cuff doing that. But there was no way I was gonna let that fucking horse win. No way. I got back on him and made him finish that course. I didn’t know how badly I was injured at the time, but I felt it the next day. And that’s when I realized I’m just too fucking old for this shit. I took a couple weeks off to let my shoulder rest (no surgery for me, I was a broke single-mom-college-student) and then finished the class.

  But there was a moment during the final exam when I thought my bastard horse was gonna throw me again. But I did not want to fall. That last fall really fucked me up in the head—if I thought I was afraid of jumping when I started the class, well, by this time I was terrified. And my shoulder was still pretty fucked up, of course. So I stuck to him like glue and made him do it. Everyone cheered for me. It was pretty amazing. All those twenty-something kids cheering me over that last triple jump. Which we did flawlessly and that was not an easy way to end the course. It felt really good to be a non-traditional person in a class filled with traditional people I would’ve never met if I had taken a different path in life. It was a mixture of relief, and pride, and the glow of achievement.

  When I look back on my life I always tell myself – Thank fuck I didn’t know any better. I said this senior year at CSU many times. I was so broke, a day out for me and my kids was a trip to the dollar store to spend $5 on crap toys and then dinner from the Wendy’s drive-through to order off the 99¢ menu. Plus I was injured and I had to pass a physics class to graduate. I am not good at math. I have taken a lot of it as a science major, but I struggled pretty hard to finish them with a grade I could use for a grad school application. So physics was not my thing. Even though I love physics, I cannot actually do physics. I was so stressed out that year, just thinking about it now makes me want hide those memories away forever. And if I had known when I left Denver for Fort Collins that things were gonna be so hard, I never would’ve done it.

  Three cheers for being clueless, stupid, and fearless.

  I have written about contradictions before in other End of Book Shits but I think it fits perfectly with the theme of this story, which is about a very non-traditional way to find love. I love writing characters that aren’t what they appear to be, and even though I knew Quin’s back story before I started this book, I cannot even tell you how much I enjoyed writing the chapter where Rochelle figures out he’s normal. He’s the opposite of me, right? Quin starts out in a very nuclear family doing all these very nuclear family things growing up. And he ends up in a very serious plural relationship as he tries to figure out if he’s capable of loving someone in a “normal” way. The only guy in the whole series who had a good example of “normal” as a kid, can’t decide if he’s normal. Such a great contradiction. And such a great lesson too. That you can do everything perfect and still fuck it up. I’m sure his father thought he was doing a great job. But there was a cost. To Kitty Foster, for sure. But also to Quin. Because all he saw in the end was his mother’s unhappiness with his father’s perfection. Maybe perfect isn’t all it’s cracked up to be? But the part of Quin I like best is that what he has with Smith and Bric feels normal to him. So it is. It’s not weird. It just how it is.

  The other day I got a card in the mail. It was a thank you card from a woman named Kathy who lives not too far from me and runs a sanctuary dedicated to donkeys. Now, if you hang out with me on Facebook you know I have two donkeys. (Paris and Nicole). People kinda think this is cool and unusual. Is it? I’m not sure. I guess I could’ve just gotten horses when we moved out to this farm ten years ago, but I didn’t. I wanted donkeys. And there was Kathy’s donkey sanctuary on the internet (Longhopes, it’s called), proclaiming her love for all things donkey. And she wasn’t far away, so we decided to go down there and get us some donkeys. Paris and Nicole were only two years old when they were rescued from an auction meant to send them down to Mexico to be in a rodeo show. I don’t know what they do with donkeys in a Mexican rodeo, but Kathy was against it. So she goes to these auctions, buys these donkeys, and brings them back to her farm to get treatment and be cared for until she finds other people like her (and me too, I guess) who want to take them home. When we were there she had about thirty rescue donkeys.

  She was the nicest person ever. You know how when you go to a shelter and try and adopt and the people make you feel bad because you have a job and can’t give that cat or dog one hundred percent of your time? Or they tell you no deal on a pit bull because you have kids. (I grew up with pit bulls, their sweetness potential is through the roof). Or they say your fence isn’t high enough or your yard isn’t big enough. Well, Kathy didn’t do any of this stuff. She said, “OK, It’s a $650 donation for the pair. If you ever want to get rid of them you have to tell me and I’ll come take them back and refund your money.” Refund your money, bitches. She did come out to our farm to look over our barn, our fence, our pastures, and our dogs. She delivered the donkeys at the same time. So just super helpful.

  You’re probably wondering why I’m telling you about my donkeys. I’m getting there.

  I got that thank you card in the mail from the shelter because they had sent out an email a few weeks before, asking for help. One of her donkeys, Bam Bam, had some really infected teeth that were causing him a lot of pain. He couldn’t eat, he was losing weight, and he needed to see a specialist. So she took him up to the vet hospital at Colorado State University (the same university I went to and studied equine science) and they told her it was going to be about $3000 to fix Bam Bam. She doesn’t really have an extra $3000 to spare for one donkey, so she sent that email asking for help. If she couldn’t get him the help he needed, he’d have to be put down.

  I send her money, not regularly, but I’ve done it a few times. And even though there are a lot of other things to spend money on that do a world of good (much more good than one lady with a donkey sanctuary) I decided Bam Bam needed saving and sent her money for this too. It wasn’t the whole amount, but it was a good amount. They met their goal that same day she sent the e
mail. There are more people than me who believe in her and what she does. So I got that card in the mail from Bam Bam (seriously, from Bam Bam – it’s got his picture on it and everything) thanking me for my help. He was scheduled for his surgery on April 4th, and he’s gonna update me when he gets home to let me know how he’s doing. So fucking cute, right?

  But I had a little guilt about this. I’m thinking – I should be sending money to Doctors Without Borders or people who make it their life’s mission to make sure underdeveloped countries have clean water. I want to help those people too, but I think Kathy and her mission in life—a very non-traditional mission—is worth supporting. She had a dream of helping donkeys. And yeah, there’s a lot of bad things in the world that need fixing, but this was her dream. I liked it. I like that she turned her farm into a place for donkeys and then dedicated her whole life to it. It’s a big commitment to dedicate one’s entire life to something. Especially donkeys.

  And so even though I don’t have to justify who I give my money to, I did justify it by acknowledging her non-traditional life. I decided I’m helping her make her dream come true. I’m just a little flicker of light in her dream. Barely anything because she’s doing all the hard work. Donkeys, man. Not he easiest animal to deal with.

  I like the non-traditional path through life. I’ve made a lot of non-traditional decisions and even though some of them were stupid, I learned new things about myself, and the world, from taking those risks.

  Whenever I get stuck writing a book I ask myself – what would be the most unexpected thing for this character to do? And then I do that. I started this plot process in my very first book, Clutch. I got to a point in the story near the end and I had no idea what this Junco character should do. Then I thought up something unexpected and unusual. Crazy, really. And made her do it. It changed everything. I knew how the book ended, but there are a million ways to get to that end. I have done this several times since then. I don’t do it for every scene, only when I get stuck.