15. The Hard Truth
The Hard Truth
Bo
Iclose my eyes and grip the handle to Ethel’s diner, my regular Monday morning stop.
Austin, Mason, and Levi have been coming since they returned home, and now it’s more of a Monday hangout than a military one, but I love it all the same.
It’s been a few months since I started, and with Rowdy’s help, I have been sleeping better, not to say the nightmares are gone; they're not. But it is easier.
I’ve learned that Ethel's Diner has a certain rhythm. Coffee mugs clunk against the counters. The scrape of utensils on plates. Pots and pans clinking in the kitchen. Everyone is taking their time, getting their bearings before the day and week start. It was the same every Monday morning. By the time I push through the door, Sam is already in the back booth, newspaper folded in quarters. He looks up at me over his paper before shaking his head. Rowdy, knowing the routine, makes his way to the far table and plops down under the table next to Molly and lays his head against the cool tile before I’ve even sat down.
"You're late," Sam says, without looking up.
"Two minutes."
"Three." He flips the paper, then hms and shakes his head. “It’s good to know the world has gone crazy. I swear if more people minded their own business and got their faces out of those stupid phones, they’d all be a lot happier.” He looks up when he hears Mason agree with him.
"Lila already came and went," he says, pointing his finger at the full cup of coffee waiting in front of me. “I figured you’d be here.”
I take a good long whiff and wrap both hands around it. Not a bad way to start the week, or any day, really.
Jake is at the end of the table, talking low with Terrance about something to do with a fence line and a property dispute that's apparently been going on since 1987. It’s the same conversation every time they bring it up.
I’m sure my logistics training could fix the issue, but who am I to solve a decade or two's worth of property line issues?
Austin's beside them, half-listening. Mason is next to me with his jacket still on. My guess is he was out feeding. Falon did the same thing. She’d already finished half her day before the sun came up.
“So, how’s it going, Bo?” Levi asks as he plops down between Mason and Austin.
“I’m good, Tyler just flew out this morning from base. Makes my heart race every time,” I say, closing my eyes and trying not to think of bombs going off and Tyler not making it home. He’s as much of a brother to me as he is to Falon, though she’d deny it, saying she was his favorite.
No one says anything for a minute, the silence telling me that they are all thinking the same thing I am. That’s why I love this group. They aren’t pretending that they know; there are no pretenses. It is real, raw, and hard for us all to swallow.
Sam sets his paper down after the table begins to move again.
He looks at me with a question in his eyes.
He wants to know the truth. Am I really okay, or am I putting on a front?
I smile in return, knowing it wasn’t an answer.
Terrance starts a conversation about his upcoming fishing trip, asking if anyone wants to go.
I shake my head. I’m not much of a fishing man, and they all know that, but I appreciate the offer.
"You going to tell me, or are we doing the quiet version?" Sam asks from the corner, raising his mug to Lila, a silent request for a refill. She nods, grabs a pot from the counter, and heads over.
“Can I get ya anything, Bo?” she asks. I shake my head, and she starts asking the rest of the table, getting the attention off me for a while. I look back at Sam, knowing exactly what he just did.
"Something in between," I say low enough for just us two. A kid screams from the front and throws his eggs, and I freeze for a moment. Rowdy has his head on my lap, and I rub his head absently as I breathe again. Sometimes I feel like an idiot for jumping at every sound, but Sam assured me it was normal, and so did Austin, who still jumps every now and again. He’d once told me about his detail before he met Milly and how, still to this day, he sometimes got nightmares, but they are far and few between now.
Sam nods. Then lifts an eyebrow. He knows there’s more.
I take a long sip of coffee. Set the mug down. "I told her. About the promise. About Tyler asking me when I came back. All of it."
Nobody moves. Jake and Terrance stop talking. Austin sets his spoon flat on the table.
"How'd she take it?" Mason asks. His voice is level. The entire table was now a part of my conversation. In a town like Everwood, I’d be surprised if they weren’t. I know Mason's asking because he's been there. We’ve all had this kind of conversation before, more or less.
"Better than I deserved, most likely." I look at the coffee ring on the table, the same one I've been staring at since the first Monday I came in here. "I think it might have been easier if she had gotten mad or pounded my chest. At least I’d know what she was feeling or thinking. But she didn't. I think she’d planned on confronting me the day I brought home Rowdy. I think she knew then, but instead, she waited until I pulled her out of the floor first.”
At the table’s confused faces, I told them about the subfloor and how she’d tripped over the extension cord. “She didn't walk out, though. She cried and said her peace, I told her mine, and—" I pause. "We fixed the floor."
Terrance laughs, then stifles it when Sam glares at him. The old man still commanded respect like he did in his old general days.
"There's one more thing that’s been bothering me. I didn’t ask her, because it wasn’t the time. Would have made it sound like I’d planned on keeping a secret." I keep my eyes on the table. "She didn't find out from me.”
Jake grimaces, and Mason glares at him.
“You told her?” Mason seems almost offended and angered. I am glad I have him on my side.
“No, no, no.” Jake puts his hands up in surrender.
“I didn’t tell her,” he says, leaning away from Mason, whose sheer size is imposing by his own right, and to have an upset Mason was never good.
“Kevin did. He ran into her outside Ethel's after the bar night. I heard him telling his yahoos at the ravine when I was dumping my branches for the bonfire next month. Said that she’d be crawling back when she finds he wasn’t lying. ”
I wanted to think that Kevin wouldn’t be that dumb, but I knew he was. If he couldn’t get his way, then he’d stoop and try to manipulate it until he did.
I’d forgotten that Kevin was just as underhanded back then as he was now. I didn’t know if he’d overheard Tyler and me, or if he’d somehow found out, but to use it as a weapon was its own kind of low.
“He’d tried to kiss her first.” Jake goes on, then hesitates when my knuckles turn white around my mug. Rowdy nudges me to get my attention. “When she pushed him away, that's when he dropped it." Jake finishes, looking like he’d rather be anywhere else but here.
“I heard the same thing,” Levi says, nodding in Jake’s defense. “Heard it from Cassie that heard it from a student.”
The table goes deadly quiet.
The shift is felt even at the closest tables. It wasn’t common for men like these to look and give off an air of joint anger. It never is with men like these. The stillness that rolled off these men told you a change was happening, and none of it was good.
Mason's jaw tightens. Then he picks up his coffee a little forcefully.
"He tried to kiss her," Austin says. Not a question.
"She pushed him back.” Jake nods. “According to Mrs. Winslow, she’d been ready to knee him if he tried to push."
The corner of my mouth turns up a little. I could see it now. Falon, with her hands on his chest, pushing him away, and he not being smart enough to listen. I would have paid to see her do it, too, now that I know the truth.
"I'm not going to pretend I don't have something to say to Kevin Bennett the next time I see him. But he’s only part of the issue."
"Yes," Sam says. "He is."
I turn the mug in my hands. "When I came home, back to Everwood, I had an idea.”
"Say it, then," Sam says.
I look at him. "I came here with the thought that I’d only stay for a few months, until just after the Fourth of July. Then I’d leave and try to live without her.”
“That was a dumb idea,” Mason says, and Levi nods. Sam laughs and agrees with them.
“You were never going to leave, son,” Sam says in agreement. You’ve been pining after her for years.
“You’re right, I'm not leaving. I came here for three months to stay close and do right by Tyler. The Kevin watch was after I’d already arrived and got off the bus.” I set the mug down. "If I choose her and to stay, I’d be betraying Tyler and going back on my word.”
Nobody says anything. They don't have to. Jake gives a single slow nod. Terrance looks at his coffee. Austin puts the spoon back in his saucer. Mason doesn't move, but he drops his shoulders.
Sam leans back in his chair and looks at me for a long moment. I feel like I’m back in the principal’s office after throwing a water balloon at the gym teacher.
Sam sets his mug down. "What's stopping you now?"
I take in a long breath.
Honestly, nothing. The promise is out in the open. Tyler's deployment doesn't change what I feel. Kevin doesn't change what I feel. The only thing that ever stood between me and choosing her was me.
"Nothing," I say. "Not anymore. But I’ll still have to deal with Tyler." I wasn’t looking forward to that.