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JIMMY CLIFTON
EMORY
“I slapped Jordan Love on Wednesday,” I tell Dinah as I sit on her living room couch, entertaining Lola while Dinah prepares those carbs I’ve been so desperate for.
Lola smiles, her toddler dimples popping so deep I want to eat her cheeks up—in a totally normal, favorite auntie sort of way.
When she claps her chubby, little hands together with expert precision, I just know she’s a baby genius.
And she’s obviously applauding my life choices.
“Wait, what?” Dinah pauses as she plates our pretzels. “Back up.”
“Well, I saw Jordan Love on Wednesday. When he showed up. At my house. On my lawn.” I tap Lola’s adorable little nose and hand her the toy she continues to drop on the floor so that I’ll retrieve it.
Which I do happily over and over again like a schmuck.
My voice turns into something bright and cheery that I know will make Lola smile.
“Then I slapped him… Yes, I did, Lola bear.”
Hard. But that detail isn’t pertinent right now.
“Whoa,” Dinah says in a stupor, obviously mystified by her big sister’s surprising strength and upstanding dignity. “Good for you.”
I’m suddenly so thankful I decided to confess to her. She—and her tiny little clone—are giving me the exact correct response to this news. Gasps and applause included.
“That’s…” Dinah continues, popping a pretzel in her mouth, and staring into space. “That’s… insane.”
“Meh.” I shrug like the news that Jordan showed up on my doorstep after ten years—and that I said hello with the palm of my hand—is nothing more to me than a bit of late, Friday afternoon gossip.
“When was the last time you saw him?”
“Are you going to hold those pretzels hostage over there, or do I get one?” I simply refuse to dive into this without warm, freshly-baked, soft, buttery dough as compensation.
Dinah throws a bite across the living room, and though I valiantly attempt to catch it in my mouth like a champion, it smacks me in the forehead before falling into the sliver of space between my chest and the collar of my shirt.
So now there’s a dribble of butter in the sweet spot between my boobs, but no way am I letting this pretzel go to waste.
Not today. I dig it out of my bra and inhale it in one savory bite.
“You’re an animal,” Dinah says with a pretty interesting amount of judgement for someone I’ve watched clean off a pacifier with her mouth before giving it to her baby on more than one occasion.
I lick the butter from every single one of my fingers. “You have terrible aim.”
“And you’re avoiding my question.” She throws another pretzel, hitting the wall behind me then snorting when it slops the floor and Lola-toddler waddles to retrieve it. “Come on, Em. When was the last time you saw Jordan?”
“I haven’t seen him in ten years.”
Since my husband’s funeral, to be exact.
“Woof. What a dog.” Dinah takes pity on me and carries the plate to the living room, placing it directly on my lap before picking up Lola just as Jack comes through the door.
“Hey, ladies.” He kisses my sister like he wasn’t just up here an hour ago when I walked in on them making out against the kitchen counter.
He’s far less embarrassed now, though, greeting his clingy cat, Chipper, and blowing a raspberry against Lola’s neck, earning her squeals of delight.
My heart tightens, an outsider looking in on their domestic, familial bliss.
“I’m sorry, Em. That’s so hard,” Dinah says after greeting Jack, pasting an almost comical frown on her face, which her daughter adores.
“What’s hard?” Jack jumps to my defense. “What happened? What do you need?”
“James’ and Em’s best friend showed up yesterday out of nowhere,” Dinah explains. “He hasn’t been around for years and… it’s just a stinky situation.”
If by stinky she means a giant, steaming pile of alpaca beans, then yes, it is stinky.
It’s impossible—unfathomable, actually—to dive into how I feel about Jordan’s sudden reappearance in my yard.
So I stuff my mouth with pretzel bites and wait for what I’m sure will be sage wisdom from my younger, but oh-so eloquent, sister.
“So, Jordan…” she says, curling up on the couch beside me. “Is he still hot?”
Jack rolls his eyes, snapping a spare pretzel from the counter and snarling through the single bite. “Polly, I’m right here!”
“And you’re very pretty, too, J. Jones.” She smiles, with all the adorable condescension that makes her my second favorite person in the world, then hand feeds a bite to Lola. Thank goodness our daughters will learn their sweet, sardonic delivery from the very best.
“So,” she repeats.“Is he?”
I want to lie and say I didn’t get a good look at him. That I barely recognized the man who played almost as much a role in my young adulthood as my iPod Shuffle, UGG boots, The Office reruns and… James did.
But the truth is, as soon as I heard the sound of that motorcycle rumbling down the driveway, my stomach was in knots.
I had the eeriest feeling I’d know who’d greet me before I ever opened that door.
I’d only just barely managed to gather myself after firing Tommy when another flood of emotions hit me with zero warning.
Anger. Sadness. Homesickness. And the overwhelming need to smack something.
Rather than confess all of that to Dinah and show her how very off kilter I am, and have been, for the last twenty-four hours, I tap my fingers together and simply state, “He has a neck tattoo.”
She sighs wistfully. “So, that’s a yes.”
“Dinah Belle!” Jack groans in the background. “Are you serious?”
“I’m sorry, honey, but when you see this guy, you’ll understand what I’m talking about. He’s just… pretty.”
“If our daughter ever brings home a guy with a neck tattoo, it won’t matter what his face looks like, Polly.”
Dinah ignores her husband and excitedly claps her hands. Lola follows suit. So Jack and I also clap, because that’s what sensible adults do when a toddler does anything deemed adorable that you want her to continue. It’s one big, weird celebration over here.
“Oh my gosh…” Dinah says. “Does that mean Jordan's Dr. Love now? Wasn’t he starting med school when James…”
The room goes silent as Dinah realizes her mistake.
We don’t talk about James. About the ten years that have passed since an unknown heart condition stole his life, Molly’s father, and our future.
A few years ago, Dinah all but begged me to talk about our parents more.
Something I’ve tried to do regularly, wanting desperately to help her grieve their deaths and heal in whatever way she needs.
But with James it feels different. For me, talking about James only emphasizes his loss.
The things I can’t change, that could have been, and more poignantly, all that is not.
Unfortunately, because of our friendship, where there are memories of James, Jordan is almost always present.
I’m not sure where Jordan has been for the last ten years, and though I’ve been more deeply hurt by his absence than I’d like to admit, I have wondered about him from time to time.
Wondering whether he finished his degree.
If he’s a cardiologist like he always planned to be.
If he’s had pets and multiple homes. Did he upgrade the old motorcycle he’d meticulously worked on in his spare time or traded it in for something new?
Does he have debts, relationships… regrets?
Questions with no answers for ten years.
Though I can now confirm the motorcycle is a newer model, Jordan is, and has been, as lost to me as James.
“He was starting med school then, but now… I don’t know and don’t care.
” I pop my last pretzel nub into my mouth then lick the last of the salt from my fingertips.
There’s little that can’t be solved with these buttered bites.
Eating my feelings seems like the best decision I’ve made in a few days.
I probably should have come here sooner.
“Wait, Jordan Love?” Jack snags the final bite from Dinah’s plate. She immediately whines until he rests his hand on the back of her neck, and my sister curls into his touch like their giant Maine coon curls into Jack every chance he gets. “That’s who you’re talkin’ about?”
“Yeah.” Dinah nods. “You know him?”
“Yup. He was a couple years ahead of me in school. That guy was so cool, he had a motorcycle and a—”
Dinah’s eyebrows raise.
“Sorry,” Jack backpedals and scoffs theatrically. “I mean, that guy? Yuck. What a loser. Hate him.”
When he glances back at my sister, she gives him an approving nod. “That’s right. We hate him.”
“We don’t hate him,” I correct.
Lola waddles over to Dinah, crawling into her lap, and smiles wide, babbling between actual words and her own language, when my sister says in her most animated baby voice, “We just want him to have explosive diarrhea in a public setting. Right, Lola?”
I’d settle for back acne or male pattern baldness, but it’s nice to know where their loyalty lies.
Jack shakes his head and looks to the sky, as he often does when it comes to Dinah and my antics. “I will never understand you two.”
“We know,” Dinah pats his free hand. “So, Jordan’s back, and you smacked him real good, and now what?”
Isn’t that the question? I think I’d like to avoid him until he leaves town again, and then I plan to do my best to forget he exists for the rest of forever.
“Now,” I say, completely unbothered, “I go pick up Molly from school, and then I find out why Dr. Rafferty never showed up for her house call the other day and maybe give her a bit of sass for not giving me a warning about he who shall not be named.” I pat my hands on my knees and stand, quickly hugging all three.
“Pam still isn’t doing well?” Dinah bites the inside of her cheek, swaying as she carries a sleepy Lola to the door, seeing me out.
“No. But I’m sure she’ll be on the mend soon,” I lie.