Chapter 4 Joey
FOUR
JOEY
My head was reeling.
The summer we were nineteen, I fucked things up with Travis, and he left.
I hadn’t seen him since but that wasn’t for lack of trying.
Embarrassment kept me away the first summer after he left.
The next summer, I showed up hoping we could maybe patch things up, but Pete told me Travis had gone off to join the Army.
I ended up back in the city at my parents’ place, moping around, and kicking myself for screwing things up so badly.
My mom came across a note I wrote to Travis, apologizing for what I’d done.
She told my dad.
All hell broke loose.
My parents were the type to throw a neighborly barbeque and play the part of the All-American, Christian family. But my mom only stayed with my dad because he kept her in shopping money and divorce wasn’t something she thought classy people did.
My dad was proud of the fact he’d worked his way to the top, was his own boss, and people feared him. He didn’t care how much money my mom spent as long as their neighbors and coworkers held them in high regard.
Both had so many affairs I wasn’t sure how they kept track of them. How they were worried about what divorce would look like, but multiple affairs were completely fine was beyond me.
Dad lost his shit on me after Mom found my note to Travis.
By that point, I was deep in my heartache, so it was fairly easy for Dad to manipulate me into whatever he’d decided was best for damage control. I’d pretty much just given in to never being happy again, so I figured I might as well make money while I wallowed in my despair.
That meant I went to college and got a degree in business. I didn’t hate it, and knowing Dad was footing the bill so I left school with no debt made it even better.
I hated the job he slotted me into, but the money was good. In the beginning, it was easy to ignore the soul-sucking parts of the position as long as the paychecks were juicy.
The hardest part was Dad insisting on setting me up with a colleague’s daughter.
“She’s the daughter of a peer—her dad will go far. Good family name. The Morton name will be good for them, and connecting our name to theirs won’t hurt either.” Dad had explained all of this in the five minutes before the Poynter family had shown up for dinner.
Elizabeth Poynter was a beautiful woman.
She was smart.
She was funny.
She was easy to talk to.
And within two hours of meeting her, she was my fiancé.
When the Poynters left our house that night, I stumbled to my room and puked up my dinner.
Luckily, Elizabeth was even less thrilled to be engaged to me.
We quickly became friends and bonded over schemes to put off the wedding.
Our fathers had agreed to a longer engagement and then basically forgot about us while they spent their time schmoozing with others about the eventual combining of our family names.
Liz and I figured out quickly we were much better off as friends, especially since she clocked my gay ass within about ten minutes of meeting me.
We took advantage of our fathers’ willingness to allow for a long engagement—not that we would have actually gotten married even if our dads had insisted—and spent our days finishing school, working, looking for ways to do good, and building our friendship.
Liz was one of my closest friends these days even after she broke off the engagement a couple years ago. We’d finally reached the point where even our dads were getting antsy to get the nuptials underway, and she figured it would be easier if she did the breaking up rather than me.
Of course, my dad blamed me anyway, so the next couple years working for him turned into a nightmare. Or even more of a nightmare.
My ex-fiancé was now engaged to the love of her life—much to my father’s outrage. She promised to come visit Haven Grove sometime soon when I told her I was leaving the city.
“Joseph Morton, you are one of the best people I know,” she’d said on the day I walked out of my father’s office after quitting my job.
“How someone as good as you came from your parents, I’ll never know.
” Liz had hugged me close and kissed my cheek.
“You deserve the love of a lifetime. My wish for you is to find every happiness you’ve ever dreamed of in that tiny little town. ”
And here I was.
Standing next to Travis Dean Cooper in the tiny town we’d both loved so much way back then.
Excitement and promise zinged through me, but I tamped it down.
Travis being here and seeming fairly okay with the situation—aside from the rough start with his breakfast fiasco—wasn’t a guarantee he was over what happened all those years ago.
And just because we were embarking on a business owning journey together in no way meant he saw me the way I saw him.
I needed to keep that in mind and keep my feelings in check.
“Where should we start?” I asked as I took in the vast expanse of land making up the campground, the lake, and the bait shop.
Travis took in a deep breath and let it out slowly.
“Man, I don’t have a fuckin’ clue.” He looked at me and smiled.
In that one split second, I was back in time.
A teenager, in love, and wearing my heart on my sleeve.
Travis Dean had always been able to melt my heart even if he hadn’t meant to. “You got any ideas?”
I pushed down all the feels he’d brought to the surface and pursed my lips.
Mimicking his deep breath, I surveyed the land around us.
“No? But we gotta start somewhere. How about we get moved in first. Then we can figure out a list of what we want to do. Prioritize based on what needs to be done right away, what can wait until warmer weather, and then go from there.”
“That sounds like a good idea,” Travis said. He ran a hand through his dark hair. Gripping the back of his neck, he brought those dark chocolate eyes up to meet mine as his cheeks pinked. “Um, where were you plannin’ on stayin’?”
His question caught me off guard because I hadn’t really given it a lot of thought. I shrugged. “In the RV?”
Grandma and Grandpa had lived in an RV next to the lake the entire time I’d known them.
In the cold and rain, I slept on the pull-out sofa.
When the weather allowed, I slept in a tent—because I was totally that kid who thought it was bad-ass to have a campout every single night.
As a child, the tent was always near to their RV.
When I was older, Travis and I often camped out on the other side of the lake or in the woods.
Travis nodded, his eyes traveling toward the lake. “Guess I’ll take the houseboat.”
Peter and Annie Cooper had moved from their own camper to a houseboat when we were kids.
In the beginning, Travis and I had thought the houseboat was the coolest thing ever but, after a while, it was just another house.
The houseboat wasn’t much to look at from the outside, and inside it was very similar to a camper or RV.
Narrow with a bathroom, a small kitchen, an even smaller living room area, and a bedroom.
Technically, the houseboat could move around the lake, but the Coopers had always kept it in one spot.
It made for good fishing off the tiny little porch area on the back, and Travis and I had spent many a night giggling like loons on the pull-out couch as rain pelted the windows and kept us from our tent.
For a tiny split second, I let myself imagine Travis wishing for our nights of camping out. Our grandparents insisted we know how to pitch a tent, and we got so good at it we’d set a timer and race to beat our record.
What I wouldn’t give for Travis to want those nights in the tent back as much as I did.
The crisp fall nights where we curled close in our sleeping bags to ward off the chill.
The sticky summer nights where we slept on top of our bags, spread out, wishing for a breeze to flow through the stuffy tent.
Instead, he cleared his throat. “I guess we get unpacked and then maybe we can figure out an early dinner and talk about our plans?”
I nodded and followed Travis down the steps. The silence between us was comfortable as we reached our trucks.
“You always wanted a red truck.” I smiled as I gestured toward his truck.
His fond smile made my stomach flip-flop.
“Yeah. Decided coming here was as good a reason as any to finally get it.” He nodded toward my truck.
“Thought you always wanted some bad-ass black truck?” The hint of amusement in his words reminded me of how we used to give each other so much shit over the stupidest stuff.
I slapped a hand on the hood of my truck. “Back then, I thought I needed a tough color like black to prove something—like I was a real man or something. But I’ve learned a lot since then. Life’s too short to worry about what color means what. I like blue. I like this truck. Fuck anyone else.”
Travis’s lips twitched and he raised a brow. “I remember two dumbass kids worried about colors and hair styles and shoes.”
I snorted and shook my head. “We wasted so much time worrying about what others would think.”
Travis nodded. “That we did. Don’t know about you, but I’m really glad to not be that kid anymore.”
When I didn’t immediately agree, Trav cocked a brow.
“Yes and no,” I said. “If I had the chance to know what I know now and go back and tell him everything, I think I would.”
Travis leaned on the edge of his truck bed and squinted off into the distance. “Yeah, maybe.” He shrugged. “But then we lose out on learning shit on our own.”
I lifted a shoulder. “Be a lot less painful.”
“Could be,” he agreed. “Or it could lead us down completely different paths with a lot more pain.” He sighed.
“Sometimes I do wish I could change shit, but I also know we can’t, so I’m just grateful for the lessons I’ve learned.
” His dark brown eyes met mine. “And I’m damn glad I figured out how to live my truth. ”
My heart caught in my throat. I wanted so badly to ask him what his truth was, but he slapped the side of his truck and opened the door to grab his luggage.
Tamping down my disappointment, I gathered up my own bags. “See you in an hour?”
“Yep. I gotta shower before I gross myself out anymore. I don’t remember what day I last had a real shower.”
I wrinkled my nose. “Gross. Yeah, go wash your ass.”
His laughter followed me as I veered toward the right to the RV.
Out of the corner of my eye, I watched Travis step onto the houseboat.
A tiny, giddy part of my heart did a little cheer.
I was home and Travis Dean was back in my life.
Maybe I was letting the romantic part of my heart get too excited, but having my best friend back and living next door to him while we took over the family businesses had potential stamped all over it.
Potential what?
I wasn’t sure.
Potential for greatness?
Potential for heartache?
Yes.
Yes, to all of that.
I climbed up the tiny metal steps of the RV with hearts and squiggles dancing in my head. Yanking open the door, I let my brain turn toward the likely huge clean-up I’d need to do in the RV.
Grandma Wendy was a good housekeeper, but I had to wonder how long it had been since she’d been in the RV since she and Peter had become an item.
With a flip of the light switch, I cursed. Either the bulb was burned out, or they’d cut the power to the RV.
Pulling out my phone, I thumbed on the flashlight.
Something crinkled under my feet like a fallen leaf as I took a step forward.
Panning the light over the kitchenette table and down to my feet, my brain registered what was on the table at the same time I realized what I’d stepped on.
“Oh, fuck no,” I muttered. “TRAVIS!”