Chapter 6 Jack
JACK
Five months later
Mom
Can one of you stop at the grocery store this afternoon?
Essie
Why am I on this group text? I don’t live there anymore.
Jack
No problem. Text me your list.
Mom
Aren’t you in town today, Essie? You could just swing by while you’re doing your other errands. I only need a couple things.
Jack
Mom, I said I’d do it.
Mom
Essie doesn’t mind.
Essie
Essie does mind, actually. Sorry, Mom. Better ring the bell and warn the village folks the monster is coming.
Sheesh. You make a grown man nearly piss himself one single time, and suddenly everyone treats you like a live grenade. So maybe I was—my temper was short-fused these days—but Chuck Gains was the dumbass who pulled the pin.
Maybe I should have felt bad that Chuck had bought me a beer, and I’d repaid his generosity by scaring him so badly he’d spilled his all over himself, but I didn’t.
If you’re not ready to find out what it feels like to kill a man, then don’t ask the fucking question.
Chuck had been an asshole all through high school, and he was still an asshole now.
The only thing I felt bad about was that Janie wasn’t at the Painted Cat that night. A good thing, it turned out, because if choking her in her sleep had her running scared, then witnessing that little display would have been a sign to keep right on running.
That had to be why she hadn’t called. I’d left the ball in her court that night, and if she wasn’t interested, we’d leave it at that.
But when she didn’t call, that stung. We had something.
A spark, chemistry, whatever the fuck it was that made two people home in on each other like magnets. We had it.
For months, I’d avoided the Painted Cat, not wanting to corner her while she was working. I’d figured we were bound to bump into each other at some point anyway. She was Essie’s best friend, and Aspen Springs wasn’t exactly big. But it never happened.
Fine. I had never been young enough to play those kinds of games. Janie Belmont wanted nothing to do with me. I could accept that. I didn’t like it, but I could accept it.
I cruised past two Subarus squaring off over a prime parking spot and claimed a space in the empty row at the back of the lot.
By the time I was parked and walking back to the store, Sarah Gottlieb and Jerry Wilson were out of their cars and still arguing despite the fact that they were both parked close to the door.
I popped the collar of my coat up to my jaw, pulled the brim of my ball cap lower on my face, and quickened my stride, but no such luck.
“Jack!” Sarah called.
I hunched deeper into my coat and kept going like I hadn’t heard her. Undeterred, she jogged to catch up with me, arriving at my side out slightly out of breath.
“You look different,” she observed. “I almost didn’t recognize you.”
Probably because I hadn’t gotten a haircut since I was discharged months ago. It was shaggier than the short military cut I’d been sporting since high school.
I grunted, not slowing my pace. She had to hustle to match her shorter legs to my much longer stride.
“Can you believe that guy?” she huffed. “He stole my spot. My signal was on and everything!”
Irritation made my muscles feel too tight for my skin. “There’s plenty of parking,” I pointed out.
She sniffed. “It’s the principle at stake. I was there first and my signal was on.”
“So?”
“So?” she echoed. “What do you mean, so?”
I scrubbed my hands down my unshaven jaw.
I didn’t have the patience for this. Transitioning to civilian life from the military was a rough adjustment for almost everyone, but especially for those who had served in the special forces.
Life on the outside was different. Less structure, lower stakes. I had expected that.
But damn.
I hadn’t expected it to be so fucking stupid.
“You can’t let people get away with stuff like that, right?” she pressed.
It was the last straw. We were at the glass doors and if Sarah followed me around the grocery store, nagging at me, I would lose my shit. I needed to end this before someone called my mom.
“I don’t fucking care, Sarah,” I said impatiently.
Her eyes widened. “You both found parking spots, and then you kept arguing about something that doesn’t fucking matter.
You wasted each other’s time. You wasted your own time.
And now you’re wasting my time. Look at my face, Sarah.
Do I look happy about you wasting my time? ”
Her gaze darted around my face, and she licked her lips nervously. “N-no.”
“So stop.” I snagged a cart and pushed through the sliding glass doors, ignoring the whispers behind me. It was the same shit everyone had been saying behind my back since I came home for good.
He’s not the same guy anymore. The military changed him.
He’s dangerous.
He has PTSD.
He needs therapy.
I snorted and headed for the dairy aisle.
They were wrong—on all of it. I was the same guy now as I was back then.
The military didn’t change me; it gave me an outlet.
I wasn’t dangerous, although I could see a day in the not-so-distant future when I might become so, if people didn’t stop walking so damn slowly all the time.
I had bad dreams sometimes, but I didn’t have PTSD, and I saw a therapist once a month, thank you very fucking much.
I just couldn’t make myself care. About any of it. It was like a gauze curtain hung down over everything. I could see the mountains and land and people I loved through the haze, but nothing felt real. Home was right there in front of me, but I couldn’t touch it, no matter how hard I tried.
For the first time in my life, I was lost.
Mountains had a way of putting things in perspective.
The Rocky Mountains that lined the horizon to the west of Aspen Springs had witnessed the end of dinosaurs and the rise of humans.
Births and deaths, all the wars and shifting borders—the mountains had seen it all and did not give a fuck about any of it.
Everything was small from the perspective of a mountain.
That was how I felt. Like a goddamn mountain. I had zoomed out so far I couldn’t figure out how to zoom back in again.
I wanted to. God, I wanted to. I would give my entire bank account to fucking give a damn about something. Anything.
After putting away the groceries, I took off for a hike.
It was April and there was still snow in the mountains, so I stayed at lower elevation and followed the river.
Two miles in, where the river crooked, I sprawled out, leaning my back against a large boulder.
It only took a moment for the cold granite to penetrate my coat.
It should have been uncomfortable, but instead it was a relief.
At least I felt something. I tipped my head back against the rock and closed my eyes.
I stayed like that, the babble of the river and the breeze in the aspens luring me closer to sleep, until the soft fall of footsteps jolted me from the brink. I cracked one eye opened and saw a haze of red.
“Are you dead?” a child’s voice demanded.
I opened both eyes. A little girl, maybe six or seven, I wasn’t a good judge of these things, stared back at me with mismatched eyes that made me squint a little to make sure I wasn’t seeing things. Nope, they were definitely two different colors. Her right eye was hazel and her left eye was blue.
“Oh, you’re alive.” She shook her head, her red braid bouncing, looking crestfallen.
“Sorry to disappoint you,” I said.
“It’s all right,” she said. “I’m sure I’ll see a dead body someday.”
That shocked a laugh out of me. “Do you want to see a dead body?”
“Yes. I don’t think I’ll like it, but it would be interesting.”
“You’ll see one eventually,” I said. “Most people do.” Of course, usually it was the body of someone you loved. A parent, grandparent, or spouse. Probably better not to mention that.
Her head tilted and she looked off to the side. “Have you ever seen a dead body?”
“Yes.” Hundreds, probably. I didn’t keep count.
She looked to the other side. “Did you like it?”
“No.”
My fingers dug into my thighs as I waited for her next question. What the hell was I going to say if she asked me whose body, or how, or any of the other questions a little kid had no business getting answers to?
But she didn’t ask. She just nodded like that was enough.
The breeze kicked up and she twirled away from me, her arms stretched out like wings. I stared at her red braid whipping in the wind. Déjà vu.
“Are you a bird?” I asked.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she scoffed. “I’m a girl.”
I laughed, but shit—she was a girl, and too young to be out here alone. “Are you lost?” I asked.
“No,” she said.
I tried again. “Where’s your mom? Or…your dad?”
She lowered her arms and slowly turned around again. She looked sideways, her eyes narrowed suspiciously. “I’m not supposed to tell strangers personal information.”
“Maya! I told you not to go further than the rock. You scared me.”
Red hair. Brown eyes. A mouth I couldn’t stopped thinking about.
“I’m at the rock.” Maya pointed to the rock I leaned against. “I didn’t go past it.”
She looked, then did a doubletake. A flush climbed her cheeks.
A slow smile spread across my face as I looked up at her. “You finally found me, Ace. What took you so long?”