CHAPTER FIVE
LIZ
“Based on the coffee she made me and the homemade granola bar I had jammed in my hand on the way out your door, I’m guessing you never got around to telling Casey about the will.” I couldn't care less one way or the other. Nor do I intend to eat the granola, though I will partake of the coffee.
We’ve been in Jovi’s truck for seven minutes and that makes me seven minutes closer to the airport. Seven minutes closer to getting on a plane. Seven minutes closer to going home and packing up my life and facing a new reality, one I’m nowhere near ready to face.
So, I’m rambling. About Jovi’s girlfriend. Because, unfortunately for her, she’s the most trivial thing I can think to talk about. And I’m desperate for trivial right now. Desperate like my life depends on it.
“You said you need a few days to sort out your life and move it here? I’ll take the same amount of time to rearrange my world too, thanks,” he remarks, lip curling into a slight sneer at the end. “And for your information, I’m well on my way to easing her into the news.”
“Oh, yeah?” That girl didn’t seem like she had a clue regarding the twist her life will have taken come this weekend. “Because that’s not how I interpreted Suzie Homemaker’s grand sendoff. It was more ‘no hard feelings but definitely don’t come back,’ from where I was sitting.”
“Well, you’re wrong,” he grumbles, eyes never leaving the road. “That’s pity granola she gave you, not a warning.” He glances at me briefly to smirk. “I told her you had bangs in high school.”
Automatically, I reach for my forehead and scowl. “I loved my bangs. They were great.”
“They sat on your face like an iron curtain separating you from the rest of the world.”
I shrug. “That’s what I liked best about them.”
“In any event, she now knows I find you utterly repulsive, have since the day we met, and thus, has no reason to feel threatened by you.”
I snort. “Because I had bangs.”
He laughs under his breath. “Liz, I think we both know your bangs had little to do with it.”
I don’t respond. It was the heinous bitch thing I had going for me back then that did it.
Not that I’m all that pleasant these days either.
I could point out a flaw or two of his that made the feeling mutual, but we aren’t the ones who need convincing of our common dislike of each other.
Casey is. Or was, I guess, if Jovi’s assessment is to be trusted as accurate. I have my doubts.
“That’s it?” he asks after I’ve been quiet a while. “You’re going to let that one slide without a comeback?”
I rest my head on the seat, tilting it up and closing my eyes. “We hate each other, Jovi. It’s a well-established fact.” I sigh. “Fun though it is to engage in verbal warfare with you, I think it’s probably time we called a truce. For Remmi and Gavin’s sake.”
His exhale sounds like giving in, and I almost open my eyes to look at him. Almost.
“No more insults.”
I fold my hands in my lap in a show of surrender. “No more insults.”
“And the hits keep on coming,” he huffs, but even with my eyes closed, I know he’s making a show of things. “It’s just one devastating loss after the other these days.”
“I know it hurts, Jovi,” I say, “but this sacrifice, at least, is only temporary. The day will come when you shall feel the joy of a well-worded burn piercing your ego yet again.”
“Maybe we can have a banter night the way normal people have a date night.”
It’s enough to snap me out of my attempts to zone out. “You want to have a weekly night out to exchange insults?”
He grins. “Be honest, Liz. You’ll never be able to hold in every cruel thought. The buildup would kill you.”
“It’s disgusting how well you know me.” I pull myself up into a more structured position again.
There’s no escaping this, no matter how much I want to.
“So, yes, let’s make a deal to have one night a week without little ears.
But,” I add, preparing to amend his offer, “the exchanging of insults will be a bonus. Let’s make the time count for something more productive. ”
His mouth quirks. I’ve piqued his interest. “Like?”
“Like, a weekly progress report. If we don’t want to live together forever, we need to be proactive about making the business profitable and finding a way to restore some sense of security and stability for the kids.
” I roll my eyes. Everything coming out of my mouth sounds insane.
“Let’s face it, Jovi. We’re going to make a shit team.
Not least of all because we can’t stand each other, but also because it’s highly unlikely we’ll be on the same page with…
well, anything. And we can’t each be going our own way and hope we somehow make it to the finish line together. ”
I watch while he mulls it over. His fingers tap the top of his steering wheel while he pulls the inside of his bottom lip between his teeth. Sometimes I wonder if he has a permanent hole there.
“So, to be clear,” he starts after several long moments, “in addition to living together, you want to make time once a week to get together, just the two of us, and be…supportive?”
“Sounds terrible, I know.” I let my head fall back against the seat and turn my gaze toward the window and the passing scenery. There's a lot of nothing between here and the airport and I note how ‘empty’ appears to be the theme of my life at the present.
Changing my flight was easy enough. I'll be back in Seattle by tonight, escaping to the illusion of bustling life for one last reprieve. "I think it’s supposed to. I think everything is supposed to sound terrible, feel terrible…be terrible, for a long while to come.” Maybe it’ll stay terrible forever from now on.
My mother’s gone.
My father’s dead.
And Lena…I can’t even think it.
I don’t have to.
It all amounts to the same thing.
I’m alone. I’m alone but for two tiny lives who deserve infinitely more than I can offer. And Jovi.
Everything is terrible.
JOVI
“You don’t need to park. I’ll be out before you’re fully stopped.”
Of course, Liz’s stubborn ass would insist I do little more than slow down enough for her to jump out as I pass by the airport.
I have half a mind to throw her bag after her as she makes her leap to the sidewalk, my truck still rolling, but I decide against physical assault.
Instead, I wait patiently for her to retrieve her things from my backseat, all while keeping the motor running and the gear in drive.
A second later, she’s slamming the door shut.
I don’t hear a thank you or a goodbye, but I see her mouth move and assume the words passed her lips.
She can try being an ass all she likes. Underneath all the shitty attitude, she’s still the same girl who taught Lena her ‘please and thank you’s over imaginary tea and crumpets with their stuffed animals when they were little.
I know that’s how the lesson went down because Lena held onto Mrs. Harriet well into adulthood.
A stuffed cat, so old and so thoroughly loved, she was missing an eye, and her tail was little more than a tuff of white stuck to her ass.
Anytime we harassed Lena for hanging onto that rag of a toy, we heard the tale.
Wasn’t until she got pregnant with Remmi and went on a massive sanitize everything kick, that Mrs. Harriet found her way to the garden.
Where she was lovingly buried under a bed of tulips.
Liz isn’t the only freak of nature in that family.
I lower the passenger side window and call out, “You going to let me know when you’re headed back?”
She slows her steps. For a second, I think maybe she’ll keep going, disappear inside like she didn’t hear me.
Then, right before she reaches the sliding doors, she turns around.
“Does it matter when I’m headed back? One way or another, we’re going to cross paths.
We’ll be sharing an address before the week is over. ”
I mutter a few choice words under my breath. No need for her to realize she’s driving me crazy already. That is her goal, after all. “You’re not interested in being picked up from the airport?”
For a second her face lights up. Then, she twitches her nose, like she’s been reprimanded. If I had to guess, all this silence I’m getting is due to a stern talking to she’s giving herself inside her head.
Finally, she opens her mouth again, “Fun though it would be to ask you to come get me from the airport, I won’t be flying back.”
“You’re driving?”
“I am.” Her gaze moves sideways, like she’s looking for my hang up with this newest announcement. “I have a car. And I can bring more stuff with me this way.”
“That’s a long drive.” I shouldn’t care. I probably don’t care. “Are you going to ask a friend to tag along?” I do care. Fuck.
“Sure.”
“Liar.”
“Whatever. Can I go inside, or what?”
I shake my head. “Like you care if I say yes or no either way.”
“There is that.” She smirks, turns and gives a backward wave as the doors close to swallow her whole.
While I get to come to terms with the newest murky charcoal layer of my grey-black reality.
Liz is making a forty-hour drive across the country by herself.
In a shitty, old-ass sedan she's had since she first got her driver's license.
Less than a month after her sister and my best friend were killed in a car accident.
Seems reasonable. And not at all like I should let it mess with my head.
At least I won’t fucking know when she’s doing it. Given she’s determined to go it alone until it’s absolutely necessary to include me in things, I doubt she’ll be in touch until we’re both staying at Serendipity Ranch.
Lena named it that.
We’ll never be able to change it.
It’s a bittersweet thing, having them tied so intrinsically into every fiber of my life. Our lives. They’ll always be with us. And we’ll never be able to escape their absence.