16. Miller
Miller
The kiss caught me totally off guard.
One minute I was shopping for baby clothes, and the next I was locked in a passionate embrace with Collie. It was startling and amazing, and I was so rattled that I didn’t know what to do next. But then the cat decided to make her escape, and we were plunged right back into reality.
After we finished up at the kids’ store, we made one more stop and picked out a gift basket for Jeannie, full of fancy soaps, body wash, and lotions.
Then we returned to the van. By this point, Collie was exhausted.
He murmured, “I just need to rest for a minute,” as he curled up with the cat in the beanbag. A minute later, he was sound asleep.
I got comfortable in the passenger seat, and while I was pulling up a book on my phone, a message from Daria popped up. She’d been the first person I’d contacted when I’d been looking for someone to watch the cat, but she’d had plans to go out of town.
Her text said: Hi from Napa. I hope you found someone to cat sit. You never told me where you were going, by the way.
I replied: We’re in Idaho. The cat ended up coming along.
She wrote: What’s in Idaho, and how long will you be gone? After I sent her a quick summary of the situation with Jeannie and her husband, another message popped up: Can you call me? Lots to discuss.
I climbed out of the van, shutting the door carefully to avoid waking Collie. When I called Daria, she answered with, “What the hell are you doing, Miller?”
“I couldn’t let Collie go on his own. He hasn’t been cleared to drive yet.”
“No, I get that part. Why didn’t you talk him out of moving away?”
“His best friend needs him.”
“But so do you!”
“I know,” I said, “but what was I going to do, ask him to pick me over his oldest friend, her newborn baby, and her kids?”
“When you put it that way, I guess you couldn’t really try to change his mind. But you can’t just let him leave without telling him you’re in love with him, Miller.”
“What?”
“You heard me.”
“But I…” I couldn’t even pretend to deny it. After a pause, I asked, “How did you know?” I’d never acknowledged how I felt about Collie, not even to myself. It was too big, too overwhelming. But Daria had seen it, somehow.
“It’s so obvious. He’s all you talk about, and the absolute center of your universe.”
“I kissed him,” I said softly. “Just a few minutes ago.”
“That wasn’t the first time, was it?”
“It was. It started out as goofing around under some fake mistletoe, but it turned into so much more.”
“So, what are you going to do, move to Idaho? Because it’s pretty damn obvious you can’t live without him.”
“There’s no way I can move to a tiny hick town, someplace even smaller than where I grew up. I don’t want to live someplace like that, and neither does he. Collie spent his entire adult life dreaming about getting out of there. This would be a huge setback.”
“Well, then he has to come back to San Francisco with you.”
“I know. But first, we need to help Jeannie get through the next couple of weeks. Then I’ll talk to her. She doesn’t want Collie to give up on his dreams any more than I do, so maybe the two of us can think of a way to convince him.”
“Okay, good. Do you need me to cover for you at work while you’re off in the land of potatoes?”
“I don’t get it.”
“It’s what Idaho is known for.”
“That’s news to me. And thanks for offering, but I don’t need you to cover for me. I’m going to be working while I’m here, since I already took time off while Collie was in the hospital. Hopefully no one will mind if I do the next couple of Friday meetings as Zoom calls.”
“That’ll probably be fine, but you shouldn’t stay away too long. The animation department is wrapping up their current game, so the one you’ve been working on is moving closer to production. That means they’ll need all hands on deck pretty soon.”
“I know. I figure two weeks is the longest I can stay here.”
We chatted for a few more minutes, and after the call ended, I climbed back into the van. That ended up waking Collie, who sat up and mumbled, “What time is it?”
“A little after two.”
“We should get going.”
We left Boise and headed northwest. After a while, rolling foothills gave way to open farmland. When we’d traveled about forty miles, Collie told me to turn off the highway onto a two-lane country road.
We passed two tiny towns, one every ten miles or so, before a sign appeared welcoming us to Hickson, population eighteen hundred forty-six.
“I almost vandalized that sign when I left,” Collie muttered.
“I wanted to take a Sharpie to it and change the number to eighteen forty-five. I guess it’s good that I didn’t. ”
Once we were in the main part of town, Collie said, “I’ll give you the grand tour. Turn left here.”
We ended up in what was once the downtown shopping district. The buildings looked like they dated from the late eighteen-hundreds, and they’d probably been beautiful back in the day. Now they were faded and shabby. Almost all of the storefronts were dark, with big “for lease” signs in the windows.
When we were halfway down the block, he said, “Hold up here for a minute.” There wasn’t another car in sight, so I stopped in the middle of the street.
Collie pointed at a boarded up hardware store.
“That was Aunt Sue’s business. She inherited it from her dad and ran it as a one-woman show.
She was barely scraping by after one of those huge chain hardware stores opened in the county seat, but she wouldn’t give up on it—not until her symptoms started to get the better of her.
” He tilted his head to look at the second floor. “We lived in the apartment above it.”
I looked up at the curtained windows and asked, “How long did you live there?”
“From the time I was ten until the day I moved to San Francisco.”
I couldn’t imagine that. It must have been like growing up in a ghost town.
Next, we drove to a shopping center that was about half a mile away. Collie gestured with a flourish. “I present to you the pinnacle of our culinary scene, the Chicken Bucket. And across the street is the thrift shop where I used to work.”
“Do you want to stop at either of them?”
“I really don’t.”
“Where to next?”
“I guess that’s it for the tour, so let’s go to Jeannie’s house. She probably isn’t home yet, but I want to get things ready for her.”
“How’s she getting home from the hospital?”
“Dwight is picking her up in her minivan. I offered, but she said this made more sense since it was in his garage. My theory is that they wanted to see each other again and are using this as an excuse.”
“How are we going to get in?”
“I have a key,” he said, “but it’s usually unlocked.”
He told me to turn left, and we made our way through a quiet, working class neighborhood. Some of the houses looked like they dated from the sixties or seventies, while others were a lot older.
“Jeannie’s house is up ahead on the right,” he told me. “It’s that cute yellow one with white trim.”
The house was two stories, with a porch spanning the front of it. There were toys in the yard, and a tire swing hung from a big oak tree. It looked like it had probably been built in the early nineteen-hundreds, and at some point someone had tacked on a two-car garage.
The garage door was open, and when we got closer, we saw that there was a pickup truck inside it. Collie growled like a rabid dog and launched himself out of the van before it came to a full stop.
A tall, musclebound guy with dark blond hair had just stepped into the garage, carrying a box.
Collie ran up to him and yelled, “What the hell, Brad? How could you cheat on your wife, after the promises you made to her? And what about your kids? Did you even consider them when you were sneaking around being a total sleaze?” While that was happening, I threw the van into park and hurried after him.
Brad put the box in the truck bed and told him, “This is none of your business.”
“Like hell it isn’t! I love Jeannie, and I care about what happens to her. Unlike you, you piece of trash!”
“Go to hell, Collie!”
Collie shoved him and shouted, “You first!”
Brad squared his shoulders and balled up his fists. He looked like he was ready to throw a punch, even though he was twice Collie’s size. But he backed down when I appeared, gesturing at me as he snapped, “Who the hell is this?”
I glared at him and said, “I’m the man who’s going to beat some sense into you if you don’t back off.”
He gestured at Collie and exclaimed, “He came onto my property and pushed me! I wasn’t doing anything.”
“It’s not your property, it’s Jeannie’s,” Collie hissed, “and you need to get the hell out of here.”
“That’s exactly what I was doing when you showed up.” Brad slammed the tailgate and got behind the wheel. I pulled Collie back as the engine roared to life, and the truck shot out of the garage and down the driveway.
Once he was in the street, Brad threw the truck into drive and paused long enough to give us the finger. In response, Collie flipped him off with both hands. He put his whole body into it, pumping his hands up and down as he yelled, “Fuck you, Brad!”
After the truck drove off, Collie dropped his arms and muttered, “I always hated that guy.”
“Understandable, but what were you doing? I thought you two were going to get into a fist fight.”
He turned to me and raised his chin. “I could have taken him. I know he’s huge, but I fight dirty. I would’ve gone straight for his nuts, like a crazed squirrel.”
I tried not to grin at that. “Do I need to remind you that you’re only a month out from major surgery? One punch to the chest and he could have cracked your sternum, which isn’t even fully healed yet.”
“As if he could’ve landed a shot. He might be bigger, but I’m faster.”
“Okay, Rocky Balboa. I’m going to move the van, because it’s in the middle of the street.”
After I parked on the edge of the wide driveway, we brought Kate and her things inside. While we got her set up in the guest room, I asked, “What did you mean when you said the house is Jeannie’s, not his?”