25. Jules
— ? —
Jules
There have been other dates between then and now.
There was coffee at a place he found that roasts its own beans.
There was a walk through the botanical gardens where he pretended to know the names of the flowers and got every single one wrong.
There was a movie where we made out in the back row like teenagers until an usher shone a flashlight at us, and Harry looked so offended that I laughed for ten minutes straight.
They were small, ordinary things that didn’t feel like much while I was living them, and they’ve added up anyway.
Today is different.
Today is my first big event since the fire. It’s the foundation’s annual fundraiser picnic at Hazel’s children’s home, and I’m running it.
Harry insists on driving.
“I can drive myself,” I tell him for the third time as he opens the passenger door.
“I know you can.”
“My leg is fine.”
“It is.”
“Then why…”
“Because I want to.” He waits until I’m settled, then closes the door and walks around to the driver’s side. “Is that allowed?”
I don’t have a good argument for that, so I let it go.
The drive takes most of an hour. He’s quiet for most of it, with his hands steady on the wheel and his eyes on the road. I watch the city give way to suburbs, and then to the open stretch of green that surrounds the children’s home.
“You’re nervous,” I say.
He glances at me. “What?”
“You’ve checked the rearview mirror six times in the last two minutes. You’re nervous.”
“I’m not nervous.”
“Harry.”
He’s quiet for a moment. “It’s your first day back out there. I want it to go well.”
“It will.”
“I’m sure it will.” He signals and turns onto the long driveway leading to the home. “I just want to be there, in case you need anything.” He glances over at me. “Am I here as your date or your boss, by the way?”
“Neither. You’re on grill duty.”
He blinks. “What?”
“Grill duty. Burgers and hot dogs. You’re a volunteer today, not a guest.” I can’t keep the smile off my face. “You take orders from me.”
He looks caught between indignation and amusement. “I take orders from you?”
“All day.”
“And if I refuse?”
“Then you can explain to twenty-eight children why there’s no food at their picnic.”
He pulls into the parking area, turns off the engine and looks at me.
“Fine,” he says. “But I want it on record that I’m doing this under protest.”
“Noted.”
He’s enjoying this far too much, and he isn’t hiding it well.
***
The picnic is chaos in the best possible way.
There are kids everywhere, running and laughing and getting into everything they shouldn’t.
Volunteers are setting up tables and hanging decorations.
The air smells like charcoal and fresh cut grass, and there’s the particular happy mayhem that only happens when you put that many children in an open field with unlimited access to juice boxes.
Harry mans the grill as if he was born to it.
He’s got an apron on and a spatula in his hand, and a look of intense concentration on his face as he flips burgers and fields requests from kids who want theirs with extra cheese, no cheese, no bun, extra bun, and one memorable request for “just ketchup, no burger.”
I watch him from across the field while I coordinate with the volunteers.
He’s good at this. He’s patient with the kids who pepper him with questions and firm with the ones who try to sneak extra hot dogs.
When a little boy spills his entire plate down his shirt and starts to cry, Harry crouches down and says a few words that make him laugh.
I don’t know what he said, and I don’t need to.
Hazel finds me near the drink table, refilling cups of lemonade.
“He’s different,” she says, nodding toward the grill.
“Different how?”
“Lighter. More present.” She watches him hand a plate to a grinning girl with pigtails. “I haven’t seen him like this in years. Maybe ever.”
I don’t respond. I’m not ready to give him credit out loud, not yet.
But I see it too.
Halfway through the afternoon, Harry appears at my elbow.
“Come with me,” he says.
“I’m working.”
“Five minutes. The volunteers can handle it.”
I look at him. He’s got the expression he gets when he’s planned a surprise and he’s trying not to show it.
“Five minutes,” I say.
He leads me around the back of the main building, away from the noise of the picnic. There’s a set of concrete steps here, cracked and weathered, leading up to a back door that looks as if it hasn’t been used in years.
He sits down on the top step and pats the space beside him.
I sit down next to him.
“This is where I used to come,” he says. “When I was a kid. When everything got too loud or too much, or I just needed to think.”
I look at the steps, and the weeds pushing up through the cracks, and the faded graffiti on the wall that someone tried to paint over years ago. In three years, he has never shown me this spot.
“I used to sit here and make plans,” he continues.
“What I was going to do when I got out. How I was going to make enough money that I’d never be poor again and never have to depend on anyone.
” He’s quiet for a moment. “I thought getting out meant money. I thought if I had enough of it, I’d finally be safe. ”
“And now?”
“I was wrong.”
He doesn’t say any more than that, and I don’t push. He’s shared more with me in the last month than he did in the three years before it, and I can wait for the rest.
We sit there for a few minutes, listening to the distant sounds of the picnic, the kids laughing and the music playing.
“We should get back,” I say finally.
“Yeah.”
Neither of us moves.
His hand finds mine on the step between us, and I let him hold it.
***
Back at the picnic, a small crowd has gathered near the playground.
I push through to see what’s happening, and I find a cluster of older boys surrounding a little girl with red hair. She’s maybe seven or eight, small for her age, and her face is blotchy.
“Carrot top,” one of the boys is chanting. “Carrot top, carrot top.”
The girl’s chin is wobbling, but she’s not crying, not yet.
Harry starts toward them, fast, and I know that walk. It’s the walk of a man about to fix a problem. Then he stops himself. I watch him do it.
I start to move past him, ready to step in myself, and he catches my arm.
“Wait,” he says quietly.
“Harry, they’re…”
“I see them. Just wait.”
He walks over to the group. He doesn’t go fast and he isn’t aggressive. He’s just there.
The boys scatter when they see him coming. The girl stays where she is, with her arms wrapped around herself, staring at the ground.
Harry crouches down in front of her. I can’t hear what he’s saying, but I watch her face go from miserable to confused to almost hopeful.
He doesn’t touch her. He doesn’t pick her up or hug her or do any of the things I might have expected. He just talks to her, low and steady, and then he stands up and steps back to where she can still see him.
The girl takes a breath and squares her shoulders. She walks over to where the boys have regrouped near the swings.
I can’t hear what she says to them either, but I see their faces, the surprise and the uncertainty. One of them actually takes a step back.
She turns and walks away with her head high and her shoulders straight.
Harry returns to my side.
“What did you tell her?” I ask.
“What to say. How to stand when she says it.” He watches the girl rejoin a group of younger kids near the craft table. “She needed to handle it herself. She just needed to know how.”
I stare at him.
Twenty years ago, in this same yard, he made the bigger kids stop for another little redhead, and he kept on doing it for her until it nearly cost him everything. Today he taught a little girl to fight her own battle and then stepped back to let her.
I understand exactly what he’s learned, and I don’t know what to say.
***
The three legged race is the kids’ idea. They demand that the grownups run it.
“Adults versus children,” Hazel announces, handing out the strips of cloth to tie ankles together. “Fair warning, the children have been practicing.”
Harry looks at me. “We’re doing this?”
“We’re doing this.”
He ties his ankle to mine, and he checks twice that it’s my good leg, the one that wasn’t broken. His hands are careful and methodical.
“Ready?” he asks.
“Ready.”
The whistle blows.
We’re terrible at it.
I’m laughing too hard to coordinate, and he can’t stop looking at me long enough to watch where he’s going, and halfway across the field my leg buckles and we both go down in a tangle of limbs and grass.
A pair of nine year olds crosses the finish line while we’re still lying in a heap, trying to untangle ourselves.
“We lost,” Harry says, flat on his back, staring up at the sky.
“We lost badly.”
“To children.”
“Very fast children.”
He rolls his head toward me. His hair is full of grass and there’s dirt on his cheek. He’s grinning, and he looks like a man I barely recognize, because he looks happy.
“Rematch next year,” he says.
“Absolutely not.”
“Coward.”
“I prefer ‘strategically cautious.’”
He laughs, and I laugh. His arm is under my head and my hand is on his chest, and his face is close enough that I can feel his breath. For a second we are one bad decision away from kissing in front of twenty-eight children.
“Gross,” says a small voice above us, and we both start laughing again.
***
The donor table is set up near the entrance, staffed by volunteers who smile and hand out brochures and take checks from people who want to feel good about themselves.
I’m reviewing the sign in sheet when a woman in an expensive dress approaches. I know her face. She’s the wife of one of our biggest donors.
“Mrs. Winslow,” she says, with a smile that’s all teeth. “I heard you were running this year’s event.”
“That’s right.”
“Such a change from last year.” She glances around the field. “We all miss Avery, of course. She volunteered every year, and she was always so helpful with these things.”
My spine goes rigid.
“Sweet girl,” the woman continues. “I suppose some wives just can’t stand a little competition.”
It’s Avery’s old rumor, coming out of a stranger’s mouth.
Before I can open mine, Harry is at my side.
“I heard what you just said to my wife.”
His voice is pleasant and perfectly calm. His hand settles on my back, warm and steady, in front of everyone at the table.
“My wife built this foundation,” he says.
“She’s the reason this picnic exists, and she’s the reason these children have books and tutoring and chances they wouldn’t have had otherwise.
She’s the best thing in my life. Anyone who can’t speak to her with respect is welcome to take their checkbook home. ”
The woman’s face goes red. “I didn’t mean…”
“Yes, you did.” He doesn’t lower his voice, and the whole table has gone quiet.
“And since you brought Avery up in front of all these people, here’s what actually happened.
My wife told me for two years exactly who that woman was.
I’m the one who didn’t listen. I was wrong, and Jules nearly died for it.
So if anybody here wants someone to talk about, talk about me. ”
The woman opens her mouth, and nothing comes out.
“The parking lot is that way.” Harry nods toward it. “Have a lovely afternoon.”
She sputters for a moment, and then she turns and stalks away.
I watch her go. My heart is pounding, but not from anger.
“That was a major donor,” I say.
“I don’t care.”
“Her husband was going to write a check for…”
“I don’t care.”
I turn to look at him.
He’s not looking at the woman’s retreating back. He’s looking at me, and his expression is fierce and certain and completely unrepentant. He didn’t even blink.
No crisis forced his hand. No one asked him to do it. Avery isn’t here, and she isn’t any part of this.
He just defended me, on an ordinary day, without being asked, and he told a field full of people that he was the one who got it wrong.
This is what I told him I needed to see.
He finally chose me, and nobody made him, and I believe it.
Hazel appears at my elbow, squeezes my arm once, and moves on without a word. She doesn’t need to say one.
***
I find him behind the building, near those concrete steps, cleaning the last of the grill equipment.
He looks up when he hears me coming. “Everything okay?”
I don’t answer.
I grab his shirt and pull him toward me until his back hits the brick wall. His eyes widen.
“Jules, what…”
I kiss him.
I kiss him hard and fierce, the way I haven’t let myself in a month.
When I pull back, his eyes are dark and slightly dazed.
“Take me home,” I say.
“What?”
“Take me home. Our room. Not the guest room.”
His breath catches.
“Jules…”
“I’m ready.” I press closer, with my body against his and my hands fisted in his shirt. “I’m ready, Harry. Take me home.”