Chapter 7 Brooke
brOOKE
The mini-bus pulls out of the school parking lot, and I’m aware of Joel’s thigh bumping up against mine as we turn the corner into the street.
He’s wearing casual jeans and a t-shirt, and I’ve been trying hard all morning not to stare at the biceps bulging out of the top.
The man takes care of himself. There’s no round paunch that a lot of the other dads have by the time their kids reach high school.
Judging by the silver in his hair and the crinkles around his eyes, he’s got to be close to forty, but he’s in better physical shape than a lot of men my age.
“Excuse me, miss.” I turn to find Justin out of his seat and holding out his phone. “Can I pair to the Bluetooth?”
“Not if you’re going to play rap.” Joel turns in his seat and fixes Justin with his steely gaze.
“No, sir.”
I hide my surprise at Justin’s use of the word sir. He’s outspoken in class and isn’t always good at following orders, but Joel seems to have earned his respect.
“Then go ahead,” says Joel.
I pair Justin’s phone to the Bluetooth speakers, and he heads back to his seat. A moment later, a guitar screeches and an indie rock band comes over the speakers.
Joel winces, and I lean forward to turn down the speakers in the front. “This okay with you?”
“It’s better than rap.”
The mini-bus takes the road out of town, and we skirt around the base of Wild Heart Mountain.
“You handle the kids well,” Joel says. “They respect you.”
I like the praise coming from him. “It wasn’t always that way. At my first school camp, I cried in the bathrooms at the roadside lunch stop.”
“Why?”
“Because I realized I was responsible for twenty students and one of them had already lost a shoe.”
Joel chuckles, and I join him. “I can laugh about it now, but the realization that no one was coming to relieve me was definitely a teacher defining moment.”
“How did she lose a shoe? Were they younger kids?”
“No. Grade twelve, same age as this group. And still to this day, I have no idea how she got on the bus with two shoes and one of them was gone by lunch.”
Joel chuckles. “I had a shoe incident with Dana once. I pushed her in her stroller all around the shops, and it was only when we were leaving that I noticed she only had one shoe on. They were these bright red Crocs, not easy to miss. She was old enough to point at it and say ‘shoe’ but couldn’t tell me when it had gone.
I found it in the back seat of the car. I’d taken her out of the car and spent the morning with her, and all that time she only had one shoe on and I never noticed. ”
Joel shakes his head, and we both laugh. He’s devoted to his daughters; that’s obvious.
“What made you come to Hope?” Joel asks.
I look out the window at the scenery going past. The first buds are sprouting on the trees, and tender green growth signals the change of the seasons.
Even after the storm that blew through here a few days ago, the new buds are pushing through.
And up the valley, the majestic mountain range towers above it all.
“I like the mountains.”
“It’s a beautiful spot,” he agrees. “Where were you before?”
There’s condensation clinging to the window, and I trace a line in it with the tip of my finger as I try to remember where I was last. The places, the schools, the students all mesh together after a while.
“I did a spell in Charlotte, and before that Roxboro. Next stop I’d like to try the coast.”
“Next stop?” His eyebrows raise with curiosity.
“I like to move around,” I explain. “I take short contracts and see different parts of the country.”
He gives me an odd look. “That’s an interesting way to live, always on the move.”
“It’s what I grew up with. My father was military, so we were always moving. I got used to it, and I grew to love seeing new places and meeting new people.”
Joel’s gaze scans my face, and I feel as if he’s seeing me for the first time. He’s scrutinizing me, and I wonder how it sounds to him. He’s settled here, permanently. My life must seem incomprehensible to him.
“You don’t seem like someone who drifts.”
“I wouldn’t call it drifting. I like the independence. It’s made me resilient. I’ve learned to get along with all types of people and to make friends easily. I like this life.”
It’s a practiced speech, the answer I give at every new town when people ask me why I live the way that I do. But saying it to Joel sounds weird, hollow somehow, and the way he’s looking at me, like he can see into my soul, makes me question myself. Do I still like it?
“I get it,” he says quietly, surprising me. “I loved the military life. Being deployed to different places, seeing new sights, new cultures, never knowing what was coming next.”
His gaze drifts to the window as he gets lost in his memories.
“You miss it?”
“No.” His gaze shifts back to me. “I loved it until I had my girls. After that, deployment became hard. I missed so much, and I didn’t realize the half of it until I got out permanently. Now I wonder how I ever left at all.”
I want to ask about when he got out, about the wife who passed, and if he’s still holding onto the grief. But it’s too soon. I’m good at meeting new people, and I’ve learned to read them well. I’ve learned not to force connections just because I’m the one who needs them.
There’s a commotion from the back of the bus, and Joel turns in his seat. The laughter dies down immediately.
“Sorry, sir,” Justin calls.
Joel sits back in his seat, and I can’t hide my smile. “They like you.”
“They’re not meant to like me; they’re meant to be scared of me,” he mutters.
I smile to myself and look out the window. From what I’ve seen of Joel so far, he’s far from scary. “Tell me more about your military life.”
Joel settles into his seat, and a wistful smile passes his lips. “I had a great team. I miss that for sure, being part of something.”
“Don’t you have that now with Jake’s Retreat?”
He glances at me. “There’s a real community there, but it’s nothing like being in a hostile environment, hunting bad guys and knowing the man next to you has your back. We were a solid unit.”
He has a faraway look in his eyes, the same as my dad used to get if he was home for too long.
He craved the action as much as Joel did.
No matter how much I pleaded for him not to go, he always left, until he got a posting stateside.
From then on, it was moving from base to base, uprooting everything and moving on.
If he missed the action of deployment, he never said so.
“You miss the action.”
“I miss the team,” he stresses. “Even after I was made commander, they were my team. We were tight.”
“I didn’t know you were commander.” The thought of Joel commanding a SEAL team thrills me more than it should. He’s got a quiet presence about him, and I bet he was great at his job.
“It feels like a lifetime ago.” He smiles wistfully. “These days I struggle to command my own household.”
“Teenagers can be like that.”
He tosses a look over his shoulder, no doubt checking in on Dana. When he faces the front again, there’s a smile on his face. “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
We talk easily for the next two hours until the bus pulls into the lunch stop. I choose a turkey sandwich and eat with the students.
With a full belly and the gentle hum of the bus, I doze off.
I wake up as the bus slows down on a gravel road. My head has slipped onto Joel’s shoulder, and I jerk awake.
“Sorry.” A strand of hair’s caught in my mouth and I swipe it into place, hoping I haven’t dribbled on his shoulder. “I’m so sorry. I fell asleep”
Joel smiles, and in my sleepy haze it seems like the smile is all for me. I notice the small crinkles at the corners of his eyes, the silver flecks in his dark stubble.
“It’s fine. The music drowned out your snoring.”
My mouth drops open in horror, and I scramble to sit up properly. “I was snoring?”
He chuckles. “Just breathing really heavily.”
I cover my face with my hands to hide my embarrassment, which makes Joel laugh harder. “I’m just messing with you.”
The bus stops in front of a wide wooden gate, and the driver jumps down to open it.
A sign reads Pine Creek Camp: Home of Happy Campers.
The driveway is thick with mud, remnants of the storm that’s only just passed.
But the driver gets the bus through okay and takes us up a long, wide drive carved into the woods.
On either side are large sycamore trees with dense undergrowth.
I peer out the window, willing the heat from my cheeks to dissipate.
We pull up in front of a wooden building, and the driver cuts off the engine. I run my hands through my hair and use a hair-tie from my wrist to secure it in a ponytail before grabbing my clipboard. Joel stands up, and I brush past him, trying to ignore the heat that jumps between us.
I stand in the aisle and address the students.
“Grab your gear, let’s go.”
I catch Joel’s eye, and he gives me a small nod before heading down the stairs of the bus. He gets to work unloading the bags while I round up the students.
But my gaze keeps finding him, always aware of where he is, even as I field questions and tick off names. My awareness is on the ex-Navy SEAL commander, wondering what it would feel like to run my hand over his stubble.