Chapter 5
chapter five
Audrey
Today's vocabulary word: nostalgia
I woke up to a message from my mother reminding me (again) about my lunch date.
Today's sacrifice was a guy who'd graduated from Aldyn Thorpe several years ahead of me and had made some kind of fortune on Wall Street.
Our mothers knew each other from pickleball or mah-jongg or getting all their calories from the lime juice in their vodka sodas, and thought we'd have fun together.
Little-known secret but have fun translated to socially and financially compatible for legally binding ventures such as marriage.
For a minute I debated keeping the date. It would place a clear time limit on this meet-up with Jude and—this was my favorite part—it'd piss him off to know I hadn't carved out the entire day for him. And as a bonus, I wouldn't have to deal with my mother crashing out over me canceling the lunch.
But then I mentally slapped myself, chucked my phone across the bed, and let out a pathetic, whiny groan.
I hated how I knew what I had to do but that my brain always invented a minimum of forty alternatives that would spare me some pinprick pain now in exchange for the pain of a broken blister on a pinkie toe for the rest of my life.
I didn't always choose the blister but I never failed to give it serious consideration.
In today's game of mental hopscotch, the role of the blister was being played by Jude. As time had taught me, he'd own territory in my mind until we found some closure. Even if I walked away worse off than when I went in, it was time to let this wound scab over.
Except last night felt like a weird, winding detour and not the first step on a healing journey.
It felt complicated and messy, and nothing like the scripts I'd written in my mind. There were trap doors labeled my ex-husband and my parents and my inability to do the right thing even when I try very hard and god, I've missed him everywhere.
It scared me how easily that old familiarity rushed back in, the comfort of it. The way my entire existence wanted to melt into him.
I didn't think it would be like that. For as long as I could remember, the only emotions I'd been able to conjure when it came to Jude were regret and shame and grief.
And now…well, the big three still lingered off to the side as they made room for intense curiosity.
Who was he these days? Where did he live, what was his life like? Where had the world taken him?
These felt like dangerous questions to ask. Like I'd never recover from the answers. But I needed to know why he'd come looking for me—and why now?
I fished my phone out of the blankets and canceled the lunch date guy.
Our usual place was Semantic Café, a shadowy, low-ceilinged coffeehouse-meets-community gathering spot carved into the attic above a garage between the state capitol and the Frog Hollow neighborhood of Hartford.
They served Irish coffee frappés (which rhymed with traps in this part of the world) and hibiscus teas and the kind of artisanal peanut butter and jam sandwiches that made me nostalgic for a childhood I'd never experienced.
Their muffins still visited me in my dreams.
The tabletops were game boards—chess, checkers, Monopoly, Scrabble, Pretty Pretty Princess—if they didn't have seventy years of local political stickers and pamphlets preserved under a slab of glass.
Climbing the old stairs behind the garage was like walking back in time. This place was so drenched in our history that it ran through my fingers and down my wrists. This had been our second home, one where the problems and pressures of the world outside could wait a minute.
I stopped on the landing and glanced at the city sprawled out around me. I thought about texting Jamie for some last-minute advice—or requesting an emergency call with my therapist—but in the end, I shook out the anxiety buzzing down my arms and pushed the door open.
It was always dark inside Semantic and it took a beat for my eyes to adjust. When they did, I found Jude seated at the far table under the dormer window.
It was the best table in the house, my all-time favorite, because the window and the ventilation system above combined to create a kind of soundproof alcove.
We could hear the music and everything going on in the café but no one could hear us unless they came right up to the table.
This didn't seem like such a great feature now but we'd lived for it at seventeen.
I dredged up a smile and crossed the space toward Jude, keeping my eyes busy with long glances at the artwork on the walls and the menu board propped up next to the espresso machine he'd fixed more times than I could remember.
If he could take it apart, he could fix it.
I used to believe that included me.
I dropped into the empty seat across from him and all I could think was that he didn't fit in this alcove anymore.
His legs bracketed the table, those tree trunks cocked wide.
His body overwhelmed the space and swallowed the peeks of sunlight coming in through the window.
It seemed like he could bear the weight of the roof on those shoulders alone.
It was jeans today, not surprising, though I wasn't prepared for the pale blue button-down. Washed, not dry-clean starched, with the cuffs rolled to his elbows and the collar open to the base of his throat. They'd been right last night, about the well-fucked hair. Couldn't unsee that.
"Hi," I said, hooking my bag over the back of the chair.
He made a pointed glance at his watch. "Only five minutes late." I watched his throat bob as he swallowed. "Impressive, considering I didn't think you'd show. Given your history."
I leaned in, dropping an elbow on the table and cupping my chin as I peered at him. Would it count as an apology if I delivered it while wrapping my hands around his throat? I wasn't sure.
Silence pulsed between us, a thick, living thing. It nearly filled the café and blew out the windows before I gathered up the words to say, "Tell me what you're doing these days."
He regarded me for a long second, the corner of his mouth kicking up like he didn't expect me to make the first move but he respected it.
A grudging point in my favor. "Mostly performance art and low-key kidnappings.
Nothing too remarkable. Just your basic bathroom abductions.
" When the only response I gave him was my unamused teacher stare, he added, "I work in aeronautics. "
"Oh. Okay." I tipped my head to the side as I thought that one over. I couldn't imagine him—or anyone—walking away from that mechanical engineering scholarship. It seemed I wasn't the only one whose plans had taken some unexpected turns. "How did that come about?"
He gave an unbothered shrug. "I realized jet engines were interesting too."
I tucked my hair over my ears as I tried to process this.
The Jude I used to know was obsessed with cars and motorcycles.
He taught himself how to rebuild a transmission in the garage downstairs.
His motorcycle had been a labor of junkyard love.
"That's what you do? You work on jet engines? Like, airplanes or…space shuttles?"
He folded his forearms on the table. A few wavy strands of hair fell over his forehead though he didn't bother pushing them away. It bothered me that I thought about pushing those strands away myself. "Let me make this easy for you since you're obviously struggling."
"Is that how we're going to do this? I could've sworn you said last night that you wanted to talk—and I thought we were doing that—but it seems like you just want to kick verbal rocks at me every few minutes."
"Don't worry about it, Saunders. I can do both." That patronizing tone soaked all the way through his words. "I work in jet propulsion. Specializing in thrust."
I wasn't positive but it seemed like he said that with his whole penis.
A server appeared beside the table, a loaded tray in hand, before I could unload something savage and blowtorch-y in response.
"All right, all right. I've got an iced coffee, light and sweet, iced hibiscus tea shaken with blackberry puree, one toasted morning glory muffin, one untoasted sweet potato chai muffin, and a bowl of animal crackers.
Is there anything else you fine folks might need this morning? "
"We're good," he said, the low rumble of his voice loosening a lock in the back of my mind. "Thanks."
I pressed my fingers to my lips. I could feel him watching me as I blinked at the mismatched dishes and old mason jars but I couldn't pull together words or even solid syllables, as though I'd traveled back in time.
The spell broke when Jude swirled a metal straw through his coffee, the ice clanking hard against the glass. He nodded at the goods between us, asking, "Do you want something else?"
"No. No, this is fine," I managed, though it sounded like I was in the bottom of a well. "Thank you—for remembering."
"Yeah." His gaze followed my hand as I reached for the tea.
When I lifted it to my lips, he looked away.
Cleared his throat. Then, "I started out working on fighter jets after grad school.
Bounced between all the major aeronautics and defense contracting firms. Spent months, years even, on air force bases and naval air stations.
Took some time off from that a few years back because I realized—among other things—I don't like being part of bombing the shit out of people.
I played around with starting a doctoral program but then I remembered how much I hated all the bullshit hierarchy in grad school.
There was a minute where I thought about going back to basics and looking after a fleet of planes and vehicles for a private security firm but circumstances changed and it turned out that wasn't the opportunity I thought it would be. "