CHAPTER EIGHT
LIZ
It takes me two days, but I finally get everything boxed up, donated, sold or loaded into my car.
Come late Friday afternoon, a few hours to sunset, I’m making my last walkthrough of the walls I’ve called home the last seven years.
“You were good to me,” I whisper to the bare space.
Even Harriet has been packed up. Shoved into her pet carrier with force may be more accurate.
In any event, blood was spilled, cat yowls were heard across town, and we both wound up traumatized.
Small price to pay to have her safe and sound in her travel crate.
Hissing at me intermittently. Probably threatening to kill me in my sleep first chance she gets.
The closer I move to the front door, the slower my steps come.
Leaving is harder than I thought it would be.
Somehow, moving out of my father’s house, away from my family and across the country was easier.
Of course, back then, I was on the verge of brand-new adventures.
Exciting new horizons beckoned, and the past didn’t hold me near as captive when the future was seeking to set me free.
Today lacks the feeling of a promising new dawn.
Today the comfort of what was holds me dearly and the chill of a cold tomorrow keeps me lingering inside.
But, as time moves on relentlessly, I too find a way to put one foot in front of the other. To the door, out to the curb and to my waiting car.
“Alright, let’s do this thing,” a familiar voice chirps loudly, drawing my eyes to the right along the sidewalk. Holly is strolling toward me, backpack slung over her shoulder and two paper cups in her hands. “I brought coffee, so you have to drive first.”
“What are you doing here?” I’m not one to turn down coffee, but if she forgot that I’m moving and thinks we’re heading out to the local Friday night book swap market like usual, she’s going to be disappointed. And frankly, I’m going to be a little concerned for her. “You remember I’m moving, yes?”
“Of course.” She laughs. “That’s why I’m here. To escort you home.” She arrives at the car and comes to a stop, holding one of the coffees toward me. “I figured your coffee maker was packed before you could make ‘the start the drive’ coffee.”
It was. Way before.
Last night, it felt like a success having the entire kitchen cleared out after another run to Goodwill. This morning, I nearly cried.
But that’s not the point I’m trying to focus on. “What do you mean you’re escorting me?”
“I mean, I’m going with you. Taking the road trip. Helping you move. How many different ways do you need to hear it?” She sips her coffee, giggling quietly.
“You know you don’t have to do that.”
She nods, eyes bugging out at me. “I do.” Then they narrow as fast as they widened. “I think the real question is, do you know you don’t have to do this alone?”
Do I know that? No. The thought hadn't even occurred to me. All of my adult life, I’ve just gone about my business, done my own thing. I like it that way. No one to answer to, no one to worry about.
But if I tell Holly any of this, she’ll want to dive deep into my hyper-independence, and I’ve been to therapy. I'm well aware where it’s rooted.
“I like solo road trips,” I say as casually as I can. “They give me time to think.”
“You live alone. And you run your one-woman business from the comforts of your home. You have plenty of time to think.” She shakes her head at me, falling back a step. “Do you seriously not want me to come?”
“I mean, you brought coffee.” I muster a grin. I guess this is happening. “I’m not going to turn you away.”
Satisfied with my surrender, she lets out another laugh and moves for the passenger side. It takes a bit of rearranging to clear the seat, but another fifteen minutes later, we’re finally on the road.
Headed home.
No.
Not home.
The unknown. A strange twist in irony, returning to the place I spent most of my life only to fear it will be unrecognizable.
And I do.
Without my father and sister there, nothing will look like it once did.
“Tell me more about this Jovi,” Holly says when we’ve survived the downtown traffic and made our way past the city limits. “Is he hot?”
My brow crinkles. I don’t think anyone’s ever asked me that before. I mean, I knew he’d come up sooner or later on the drive. After our initial phone call about my move ended, an infinite thread of text messages ensued.
Holly had a shit ton of questions. Jovi came up. I knew the moment I mentioned him, Holly would obsess over him. Well, at least how he pertains to me.
You’re going to live with a man? You’ve never lived with a man!
That was her big takeaway there.
Despite the fact that I assured her emphatically we would not be living together, that we’d simply be neighbors, with the same address, she obviously hasn’t let it go yet. Hence, the interest in his looks.
“I can’t tell you if he’s hot or not.” My lip curls with disgust. Then it slacks again a second later. “I personally have never seen him that way, but I guess most women do seem to be under the impression that he’s attractive.”
“Wow. That was a longwinded way of saying ‘yes, he’s hot’.” Brow cocked curiously, Holly turns in her seat to get a better look at me. “What’s your aversion to his good looks?”
“No aversion,” I insist, careful not to protest too intensely.
“I met him when he was a sophomore and I was a junior. And though I’ve been unable to escape him since, we’ve only ever spent time together by default.
And it wasn’t like we had fun despite being thrust together.
Quite the opposite. He was annoying as all hell. ”
I squeeze my steering wheel a little harder than necessary. Thinking about his asshole teenage self still pisses me off.
“Here I had successfully gotten Lena to high school without incident. She was a freshman on the honor roll, member of the student government, volunteered at a rescue farm, and spent the rest of her free time involved with the local theater. Everything was great.”
Then she met Trent and Jovi at that farm. And shit went ahead and hit the fan.
“Her and Trent were puppy love for life from the start. It was gross, but even I had a hard time denying they were likely headed for forever.” I shake my head. It still sounds impossible, and it's what actually happened.
I know. I watched the entire unfolding of their relationship. I was the maid of honor at their wedding.
“Trent was a good enough kid, Jovi not so much.”
“High school bad boy, huh?” Holly wiggles her eyebrows at me, looking amused. She might be missing the point of my tale.
“Worse,” I scoff. “It was like every time he came around, he went into overdrive trying to blow off steam by doing the most reckless shit he could think of. Any harebrained idea you might see come to pass on that show Jackass, and he was giving it the good ol’ Jovi whirl.”
Holly doesn’t look like she’s understanding the level of destruction I was dealing with. “Come on, you’re exaggerating.”
“I’m not.” It would have annoyed me plenty if he’d just caused Lena to miss a few assignments here and there. If she forgot to study or dropped an after-school commitment. I would have been irritated, but I would have gotten over it. I never expected her to be perfect.
But this was different. This…was scary.
“After spending all week playing Russian roulette rodeo with the wild horses on the farm they all volunteered at, Jovi’s idea of a fun Friday night involved trying to get arrested for hosting rave-like parties in the neighboring cornfields.
With booze. That he stole from his parents’ bar. And served to minors. For money.”
Holly’s face is slowly starting to morph into one I find more appropriate when discussing Jovi. A mixture of disbelief and horror laced with a distinct level of aggravation because no one should be that stupid. Or that irresponsible.
“When he only got probation for those, he took things to the next level and set up a fight cage. Usually, he was the one to beat.” I pause for a moment while Holly lets it sink in.
Then I add. “And did I mention the gambling? Because there’s no point in having an illegal back field fight club if people aren’t placing bets on the whole violent extravaganza. ”
“And your sister and her boyfriend…they were cool with all of this?” Holly’s face keeps twitching now like she’s uncomfortably aware of how misplaced her interest in his level of hotness was.
“No.” They definitely weren’t cool with it. “But I think they felt responsible for him. All three of them were wildly protective of each other. So, they always went along. Always did the best they could to stop him from pushing it too far. Sometimes it worked.”
But plenty of times it didn’t.
“Wasn’t until Lena was thrown from a boat and came close to drowning on a midnight race across the lake in the pitch black, both boats pulling idiots on wakeboards, that Jovi finally calmed down a bit.” Lena was sixteen then. I’d been set to leave for college that summer. I almost didn’t go.
“Wow.”
“Yep.” I stretch out my fingers to keep from twisting my fists back and forth over the steering wheel.
My palms are already red. “For a while, his asinine ideas were limited to the horses he rode and the crazy fucking girls he dated. And I do mean crazy. There were a few in the bunch that made me wish he’d bring back the fighting cages.
” Half of them went batshit psycho fighting over him anyway.
Holly lets out a snort. “Oh, lord.” She buries her face in her palms, shaking her head while she lets out a sort of groan-like squeal.
Lingering memories have me torn between a smirk and a scowl. Then, the worst of them all surfaces and my mouth grows tight. My chest along with it.
“Then, two years later, while I was home for the summer, he decided to take his skateboard across our roof one night. And we had a three-story house. The old rectangular sort. With no dips in the roof and a sharp drop-off at the edge.”