I’ll Meet You There

  Josh put the truck in park, and I opened the door—I could hear my mother’s laughter coming out the open window and Billy’s voice smacking the night air. I didn’t know what was pissing me off more—the fact that Billy Freaking Easton had gotten my mom to come out of her cave when I couldn’t, or that he was probably wasted and I’d have to give him a ride home.

  “I gotta go,” I said, sliding out of the truck. “Thanks for…” The skin on my wrist, singing. “Tonight. I’ll see you.”

  “Skylar, let me walk you—”

  “I’m fine. Thanks, though.”

  I slammed the door behind me and hurried up the steps. Josh’s truck was still there when I looked back, and I could see him peering out the window, worried. I waved and opened the door, gagging as a wall of cigarette smoke hit me.

  “Baby!” shrieked Mom. She was standing in the middle of the living room, wearing a pair of my jeans, which were way too tight on her. One of the sleeves of her tank top had slipped down, and her body glistened with sweat. She was wearing lipstick, and her mouth was stretched in this huge, manic smile. “Billy’s here!”

  A cold, hard knowing settled in my chest and spilled down into my stomach. Of course. Of course everything would go to hell just when I was about to get the fuck out of Creek View.

  “Hey, honey,” he said.

  Honey, he’d called me. Honey.

  He stood behind her, close, like they’d been in the middle of—I couldn’t even think about what they might have been in the middle of.

  “Hi,” I said. The word sounded like a dropped book, thudding into the center of the trailer.

  “You want a wine cooler? Got some in the fridge,” he said.

  I blinked, wanting to think I’d heard wrong, waiting for my brain to process what wine cooler meant for me. For my mom. We hadn’t had alcohol in our house since the day Mom quit cold turkey. I’d promised her I wouldn’t drink either. Not ever. Not one little sip. I looked around, spotted a wineglass on the table with lipstick on the rim.

  I brushed past them and headed toward my room. “I don’t drink.”

  “She’s my good girl,” Mom said.

  The words stuck together, accented with a slight slur. Tears gathered in the corners of my eyes, but I kept walking. I’d talk to her about it tomorrow, when Billy was gone and she had the hangover she deserved. I pictured myself taking whatever he’d brought over and making her watch me dump it down the drain. I’d bring Dad into it if I had to.

  I paused at the door to my room and turned around. “I have to get up early for work tomorrow,” I said. “Would you guys mind keeping it down?”

  Billy smiled, his yellow teeth wolflike in the dim lighting. “Sure, honey.”

  I slammed my bedroom door behind me, trying to ignore my mom’s giggles. I thought about going over to Dylan’s, but I knew she’d still be out with Jesse, probably parked in a field somewhere, since they both still lived with their parents. My eyes roved over the walls covered with my collages and prints of famous paintings. Magritte, Kandinsky, Kahlo. My origami shapes hung from fishing wire, dangling above my bed. They shivered in the slight breeze blowing through my open window. It was my own little escape pod, but none of it was enough tonight. Not after Josh and definitely not after Mom.

  I shoved my earbuds in, but the music wasn’t taking over everything I was feeling, as it had at Leo’s earlier in the night. I heard glass breaking and then more laughter. I sat up and threw open the door.

  “Seriously!” I yelled. “I have to work in, like, five hours.”

  Mom gave me an exasperated look. “Oh, Sky, don’t be such a wet blanket.”

  Anger, black and cold, swept through me. I turned around and grabbed my backpack, shoving clothes, a book, and my MP3 player into it. I hooked my keys around my index finger, then swept past them.

  “You’re blocking me in,” I said to Billy.

  “Where are you—” my mom started, but I held up my hand.

  “I’m going to the motel. I’ll just sleep in one of the rooms, okay?”

  I wanted my mom to say, No, of course not, Billy was just leaving, and give him a meaningful look, but she didn’t. She shrugged and pushed Billy toward the door. I hated how her hand lingered on his arm. I suddenly wondered if she’d been doing more than watching Judge Judy for the past week.

  Billy lumbered past me, going outside in his bare feet. He didn’t say a word, just got in his truck and backed out. I threw my stuff into the front seat of the Prizm and was so angry I stalled twice before I could get the car in reverse. I wouldn’t look at him as I pulled out, but I could feel his watery eyes on me, goading, amused, a little triumphant. I tried not to think of his hands, his lips, all over my mom.

  “Sorry, Daddy,” I whispered. Dad was rolling in his grave—he had to be.

  I sped out of the trailer park, and when I got to the Paradise, I pulled under one of the oak trees at the far end of the dirt parking lot and just stared into the darkness for a long time, my mind numb. Then I leaned my seat back, covered my eyes with the extra tank top in my bag, and cracked the windows. Exhausted, I fell asleep to the sound of crickets and the hum of the highway.

  JOSH

  It’s hard driving away from her. I don’t know, man, I just want to, to take care of the situation. Like, she had this look on her face when we pulled up—it was just for a second, but she was panicked and I could feel myself go into battle mode, that rush of let’s do this and for a second I remembered what it felt like to have a purpose, a mission. To wake up and know this is who I am, this is what I do, this is where I belong. To have tasks and accomplish them. To have some goddamn pride. And she needed backup, I could tell, and I wanted to, I don’t know, be her fuckin’ knight in shining armor, I guess, but I couldn’t get out of the truck fast enough. She was running to the trailer and I threw off my seat belt but before I could even open the door I jammed my fake knee against the steering wheel and it hurt like a bitch and then—snap—I’m ready to kill someone. That combat switch flipped and I was on, ready to go, a registered lethal weapon. This anger just pouring through me and I was shaking and everything turned red then black and so I tried to focus on that Marine Corps mantra my physical therapist is always shoving down my throat: Improvise. Adapt. Overcome. I gripped the steering wheel and tried to breathe. Improvise. Adapt. Overcome. He tells me, You can’t roll like you used to, Josh. Gotta find a new way of doing things. Sky turns around and waves and she has this little smile on her face and suddenly I’m okay, like she broke through the mess of me. I remember I don’t need to be at that razor’s edge anymore, so I drive home. I don’t realize I’m smiling until I see my reflection in the side mirror. Didn’t even recognize myself.

  chapter seven

  After a night of sleeping in the car, I wasn’t in the best of moods. All I could think about was that wineglass with lipstick on it. The problem was so much worse than I’d thought. Getting my mom a job: I could handle that. Getting her back on the wagon … no way. I’d already done it once, just after Dad died. It had taken almost a year—I had less than two months.

  I’d been short with guests all day and had even given Marge some attitude when she’d asked me to run to the bank for her. I’d apologized, of course, and it was fine, but I didn’t want to be one of those girls who brought her personal drama to work. Amy, the other receptionist, was like that. Nearly every second she was going off about her boyfriend or her crappy stepmother or how broke she was. I’d asked Marge to cover the desk so that I wouldn’t have to deal with people, and I’d started cleaning the rooms, even though we had a lady who came in to do that once a day.

  I took my frustration out on the dirty towels and the dust on the nightstands, on picture frames that weren’t perfectly aligned and on flat pillows that my fist could punch and shove into their proper place. Seeing my mom like this was pressing Rewind on my life, taking me right back to those bleak months after Dad died, when the world turned gray. Not that I needed reminding. I thought a
bout him all the time. But now it was like I was suddenly twelve again, holding her hair as she puked over the toilet bowl, trying to keep my tears in so she wouldn’t feel worse than she already did.

  I was starting to see each day before August 29th—the day I was moving to San Francisco—like a hurdle. Run. Jump. Run. Jump. Run.

  There was a soft knock on the open door of the room I was cleaning (unicorn theme), then, “How’s the Sky today?”

  Josh.

  I turned around, shading my eyes against the bright rectangle of light. He leaned in the doorway, watching me.

  “Hey.” I looked down at the industrial sheets in my hands. I could almost smell the chlorine from the pool. The feel of his skin under mine as I traced the Semper Fidelis on his back.

  “A little cloudy?” I finally said.

  It was so much easier to turn the past twelve hours into a metaphor.

  He nodded. “Thought so. Marge said you were begging her to do manual labor instead of sit at the desk.”

  “The desk gets old after a while.”

  “Need some help?”

  He walked into the room, limping slightly. I wondered if he would ever be able to walk with those long, confident strides he’d had before he left.

  “Sure.” I handed him one corner of a bottom sheet and scooted around to the other side of the bed.

  He’d left the door open, and sunlight streamed into the stuffy room. We worked quietly for a few minutes, but it was an easy silence. A couple of kids ran by the door, shooting at each other with water guns. Their shrieks scattered the silence as though it were a flock of startled birds. Josh stopped what he was doing and watched them for a second, a faint smile on his face.

  “Kids are the same wherever you go,” he said, turning back to me. “Afghani, American—they’re all the same.”

  “Do the kids in Afghanistan have toy guns? I mean, they see enough real ones, right?”

  Josh laughed. “Oh, they have them. Scared the shit out of me the first time I saw one. I remember one day we were in this village, passing out school supplies to the kids, and this little guy lifts up what looks like an assault rifle, and I remember thinking, fuck, I can’t kill a kid, you know?” His jaw tightened for a second, but then he shrugged. “It was cool, though. His mom started going off on him—I mean, I don’t know what she said, but she sounded like a mom, right? Hit him upside the head and everything. And then he throws the gun down and kind of waves at me. Swear to God, before his mom said something, I almost pissed my pants.”

  “Wow.” I let that sink in, tried to wrap my head around his reality, but I couldn’t. It was too big, way beyond anything I had experienced. “I’m sort of not able to imagine you there. Like, it’s weird, you know? A totally different world.”

  “Yeah. Totally different.” He cleared his throat as he balled up the dirty sheets from the bed. “I had fun last night. Thanks for taking me out.”

  I leaned down and started putting a clean top sheet on the bed, letting my hair fall across my face so he couldn’t see how it betrayed me, all blushing maiden like.

  “Yeah, well, Leo’s, you know? It’s always a good time.” I pointed to the sheets, which he’d tucked super tight and straight on his side. “You’re, like, a master bed maker.”

  “Military training,” he said. “You should see how organized my closet is.”

  “Were you messy before?”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  We put new pillowcases on the pillows, and Josh would smile whenever I caught his eye. I felt clumsy, like I couldn’t figure out how to use my hands anymore.

  “I got it,” Josh said, as I reached for the comforter. I let him deal with it while I busied myself by restocking the bathroom with hard, thin towels and soap that smelled like plastic.

  “Everything okay at home?” he asked when I came out of the bathroom.

  “Why?” The word came out sharp, bladelike.

  He shrugged. “You seemed upset about Bill Easton being at your place.”

  “Oh.” I wanted to tell him about the wineglass and how my mom had borrowed my jeans. “Um. It’s fine. It’s … whatever.”

  “Well, now I understand the situation perfectly.” The side of his mouth snaked up, and I couldn’t help but laugh a little.

  “Okay, that was the world’s vaguest answer. Can I plead the Fifth?”

  “Free country.”

  He followed me outside, and I shut and locked the door. The sun was pounding on me, and I gave the pool a longing glance.

  “Marge was telling me she wanted to do a lot of renovations this summer,” he said. “You think I should repaint the rooms?”

  Renovations? This was news to me. I wondered if Marge was trying to keep Josh busy.

  “Anything would be a vast improvement on what can only be called Dung Brown,” I said. It was the standard wall paint under the paraphernalia in all the rooms.

  “Thought so.”

  He followed me to the next room (Tom Cruise), helping me with the bed again. I didn’t ask why. It was nice having company—I’d been spending way too many hours alone with my own thoughts.

  “I can’t believe these are still here.” Josh pointed to the model fighter jets hanging from the ceiling. He’d put them together to add to the Top Gun theme. “Thought they’d have fallen apart by now.”

  “I feel the need—” I began.

  And together: “The need for speed. Ow!” We high-fived, just like Goose and Maverick in the movie. We were sort of nerdy like that when it came to Top Gun.

  “Good times,” I said, remembering how we’d decorated the room together. “You played that ‘Danger Zone’ song so much. Marge wanted to kill us.”

  He nodded. “Yeah. I can’t believe you had the sound track. Like, who has that?”

  “Cool people like me, obviously.”

  “Obviously.”

  Josh was the only person I knew who indulged my Top Gun obsession. Chris had tried, but he couldn’t get through watching it without snarky commentary. Now I realized that Josh must have loved it because it was all about the military.

  “You know, I never told you, but Top Gun was my dad’s favorite movie.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Uh-huh. That’s why I started watching it so much. But now I just love it. I guess that’s kinda weird.”

  “No,” he said. “It lets you feel closer to him. Makes sense.”

  There was more quiet bed making and bathroom stocking and nightstand dusting.

  “That’s why I hooked up with your brother,” I blurted out.

  He looked up at me, his head cocked to the side. “Because of Top Gun?”

  “No. It was … God, I don’t know why I’m telling you this.” I looked down at the rag I was using to dust, but I knew he was watching me, waiting. “It was the anniversary of my dad’s death and, I don’t know. Maybe it was because of graduation coming up without him, but I just … I needed a body. That sounds so slutty. But it’s the truth. I just had to forget, for a while.”

  I hadn’t told anyone that before. Not even Dylan. I didn’t know why I needed to tell Josh, but it felt like I did.

  He was quiet for a minute, and I wished I could take the words back, but then he said, “I understand, Sky. That’s not slutty at all. Or, if it is, then I’m the world’s biggest slut.”

  I laughed and finally looked up. He was smiling at me, a funny smile. Kind. “I can see the headlines now,” I said. “‘Wounded Warrior Says He’s World’s Biggest Slut.’”

  “Oh, man. The guys in my old unit would love that.”

  I wondered if he could hear the longing in his voice when he mentioned the guys he used to fight with.

  “You miss them,” I said. Not a question.

  His eyes widened, like no one had ever made the connection before. “They were my family,” he said simply.

  I got that—it was what Chris and Dylan were to me. “You need people like that,” I said. “Sometimes they’re the only ones who have your
back.”

  “True that.”

  “You ever see any of them?”

  “Nah. Everyone’s all spread out, and the unit’s back in Afghanistan for another tour. Mix of old and new guys. A couple girls too, actually. Lady Marines are badass.”

  I’d never thought about that, how women would be over there too. I wondered what it was like for them, being around so many guys, fighting in a country where it was a victory for girls just to go to school.

  “I had a few visitors when I was in the hospital, but it was just too…” He ran a hand over his shaved head. “It wasn’t the same.”

  “Gotcha,” I said. Through with dusting, I leaned against the TV stand while he finished the bed. “So after the renovations, what are you gonna do?” I asked.

  He’d only ever worked at the Paradise part-time, and unless he took my job when I left, I couldn’t imagine that there’d be enough for him to do. We never had more than five rooms booked a night.

  Something passed over his face—a shadow or a memory. He looked out the window for a second, suddenly far away. Maybe back in Afghanistan.

  “It’s none of my business,” I said. Didn’t know why I wanted it to be. Shit, why’d I have to be so nosy?

  He threw pillows on the bed as he spoke. “No, it’s cool. I don’t know what I’m gonna do. Blake’s helping my dad out in the shop, and he doesn’t really need more than one of us. I mean, we thought I’d be in the Marines forever, so—yeah. My mom thinks I should try truck driving, but I don’t even know if they’d take me with … I was also thinking maybe I’d go to school.”

  “Like … college?”

  He smirked. “Yeah, us jarheads can read and write. Pretty crazy, huh?”

  I hugged a pillow to my chest. “Sorry. I didn’t mean … I just thought you weren’t into school. Like, at all.”

  Honestly? I’d been a little surprised he graduated.

  He shrugged. “I read more than Maxim, if that’s what you’re asking.”