Dad left for Sunday morning church around 7:30, waking me up when he did.
"Do you want to go?" he had asked.
I don't have anything against people who go to church, or anything against Christianity. I mean, that used to be my main religion, but I've been out of regular practice, and I don't feel like going at all.
"No, I think I'm going to pack my things up now so that I'm not scrambling to later," I mumbled groggily, wiping the sleep from my eyes.
"Good plan. Well, I'll be back."
I'm glad that I pack lightly because I've always sucked at packing my crap back up.
I also take the time to go through my old room. When I moved out with Josie, I left it as a typical guy's room with movie posters, trophies, and other things. I found it exactly how I'd left it.
I debated taking reminiscent items back with me, like my sports trophies and childhood pictures, but I decided to leave the majority. I did pack up any pictures I could find of me and my mom and my senior year football championship trophy, or at least the smaller version of it, which is what the football captains got.
I decide to call Brooke. We've been texting, but I want to hear her. Maybe it will help the madness in my head. She picks up on the second ring.
"Hey, babe. What's up?"
She does. She helps so much, and she doesn't even realize it.
"Just finishing packing. I wanted to hear your voice," I tell her honestly, putting her on speaker so that I can talk and pack at the same time.
"Oh yeah?" she flirts.
"Yeah, baby. I miss you. What are you doing now?"
"Working on my dissertation, but I'm thinking about taking a break. My brain hurts," she chuckles lightly.
"I bet, beautiful."
"You can't even see me. For all you know I could look like a troll."
"Well, babe, it's a good thing that looks aren't everything," I laugh.
"I believe your line was, 'Oh baby, you're more radiant than the sun even when you think you're hideous.'"
"Yeah, what you said."
"Cole!" she gasps in disbelief. "Jerk."
I relish in her company, even if I only have it while we're on the phone, and soak it in. She's so full of light. I love her, and all thoughts of uncertainty about us vanish.
"I miss you."
"Ugh, Cole, I miss you, too. When's your flight?"
"Six."
"So I'll see you around nine?" I confirm, and she whines.
We hang up a couple minutes later so that she can get back to her paper, and I sit in a daze of bliss.
How could I ever have thoughts about Josie when I'm so in love with Brooke? Just hearing her voice brightens my day.
Dad came home at nine, when he said he would, and noticed my suitcase looking a little fuller.
"Taking some things with you?" he says, nodding down to the suitcase in my hand.
"Er, yeah. Do you care? Just a couple pictures of me and mom and my senior trophy."
"Take them. I don't use them."
He's never been a sentimental person.
"Thanks, Pop."
"Yep." He walks upstairs, gets halfway up, and turns to face me again. "Josie said to come by any time today. She's home."
I acknowledge him and pop some bread into the toaster.
About an hour later, I'm double-checking my bags in the trunk to make sure I have everything. Dad stands beside me, leaning on the car, as I go through my things.
"Well, I guess that's all. I've got everything." I close the trunk and turn to him. I offer him my hand for him to shake it, which he does with a firm grip. "Thank you for letting me stay, even though it was an unannounced visit."
"You should've known better than to think you were ever unwelcome. Don't be a stranger, we—I missed you, kid." He pulls me into a hug and pats me on the back a couple times, and then he lets go. "Call me when you land."
"Yes sir," I reply, giving a firm nod. I walk to the driver's seat and start the car.
I say goodbye to Bobby and Carrie Ann, and June and Wes.
Two minutes later, I pull into Tommy's and SueEllen's place.
I knock on the door, and Tommy opens it.
"Hey, Cole. Time to go?" he questions, looking at the car that's still on.
"Er, yeah. I have to."
"Don't worry about it, man. We're adults now. You've gotta do whatcha gotta do."
"Yes, sir. Is SueEllen home? I wanted to say goodbye to you both."
"Yeah, come in, I'll get her down."
"Okay."
I wait for all of three seconds while Tommy's gone when I hear the thundering of feet down their stairs. A body crashes into me, and we fall to the floor.
"Don't forget, SueEllen, you're my wife," Tommy points out, shaking his head at us down on the floor. He helps us up, though she just pulls me into an embrace again.
"But you just got here," she pouts sadly. "You were supposed to stay until Monday, you little shit."
"I know," I tell her, pulling away. I don't have an excuse as to why I'm leaving except that I'm a selfish bastard. "Things came up."
But she doesn't have to know that.
"Damn you being a lawyer."
I pull both of them into my arms.
"You guys are welcome on my side of the Mason-Dixon any time, ya got that?"
I feel them nod. I squeeze them tightly before letting them go.
"Don't forget us, Cole Roberts."
"I won't. Tell Alan to be good for me."
They walk me back out to the porch, and I walk to the car.
"Bye y'all," I call from the driveway as I open the car door. I wave at them where they're standing on their porch, holding onto each other.
They'll be just fine.
They're still waving as I drive out of sight, and Josie's house is next on my list.
The truck is in the driveway, and as soon as I step out of the Ford, I can hear country music blasting out of the house. I bound up the steps, and I notice the main door is open, and the screen door lets me see most of the inside of the house.
I rap on the door, hoping she hears me over the music.
"I'm out here, Cole!" I hear her shout from around the house.
My eyebrows furrow as I walk around the wraparound porch, seeing her knee deep in the flower beds. Her arms are covered in mud up to her elbows, and I can see the sweat raining down her neck from her hairline.
She looks ridiculous.
"What are you doing?"
She looks up at me with a deadpan look, wiping the sweat from her eyebrows above her sunglasses.
"Weeding, doofus. Hand me that snap dragon bunch over there, please," she commands. I walk down the steps and over to the bunch of flowers on the ground.
"The pink ones, please. In front of your face."
She didn't even turn around.
I pluck them up from the ground and hand them to her. She takes them without a word and starts to bury them into the ground.
"Why, yes, Your Majesty, I was most pleased to give you your snap dragons. No need to thank me," I say sarcastically, expecting manners. I can see her roll her eyes, and I watch her mock my words by mouthing them with animated facial expressions.
She finally finishes patting the ground to pack the flowers in, and I offer her a hand to get up. She eyes it with suspicion at first, but eventually takes it. I pull her up, and she wipes off her knees.
"I thought you would have seen the mud and ran," she comments bluntly, not looking at me.
Why the hell is she being so hostile? I don't want to make it worse, so I don't acknowledge her attitude.
"Yeah, we'll pretend that we didn't go mudding every Saturday night, Josie," I snort. Like I'm afraid of a little mud.
She finally looks up at me through her aviators and pushes her baseball cap up to wipe the sweat from her brow again.
"Yeah. I wasn't expecting you so early."
And enough is enough.
"You told me to come over any time today, and you told my dad I could stop by, but I can leave until your attitude checks itself," I point out, crossing my arms.
She sighs in exasperation and rubs her jaw, smearing dirt on it.
"I'm sorry. Pastor Anderson was just talking about something that hit real close to home, and I haven't been able to stop thinking about it," she explains quickly like she doesn't want to get into it, so I take the hint and drop it.
"What did you want to give me?" I uncross my arms and let them hang at my sides comfortably.
She moves her head in the direction of the house.
"Just some pictures and other things of yours." She whistles for Jake, who comes bounding up to her, tongue lolling out the side of his mouth, and we cross the doorway into the house. "Let me get showered and changed first. Uh, make yourself at home, I guess; I'll be right down."
Jake follows her up the stairs, leaving me alone.
I take a seat on the couch, not getting too comfortable. Despite her hospitality, I will not be making myself at home. I gave up that right a long time ago.
I fiddle around on my phone, not allowing myself to get sucked into the photographs on the wall like I did the first time, which got me into this mess. I text Brooke while I wait, too.
Is that weird, texting my girlfriend in my ex-wife's house?
I push the thought away quickly, not allowing myself to get wrapped up in it.
Josie comes down five minutes later, drying her hair with a towel in hand. She looks fresh and clean, and has changed into clean clothes.
"You look better."
"Thanks, I feel better."
I try not to compare them, I swear, but I can't help but think about how Brooke would have responded if I told her that.
'Thanks.' But imagine it doused in sarcasm with a deadly eye roll.
Scary.
"Hey, you good, bud?" Josie questions, coming into focus. I look down at her and blink my thoughts away. How could I compare them when they're so different?
"Yeah, totally great," I respond, mentally waving my thoughts away.
She raises an eyebrow, and I know that she's not convinced.
"Alrighty then. Come on."
I follow her upstairs, and she makes a pit stop at a small cubby door in the wall. She opens it up to throw her towel in it. I realize it's a laundry shoot.
"Smart idea," I praise, thinking that she was the one who put it into the wall.
"That was actually already here, covered up by a front wall," she corrects. "Travis discovered it when we were working on the house, so I asked Tommy if he could clean it for me. I found where it let out and stuck a hamper underneath and boom. Laundry shoot."
I look around at the hallway, seeing how clean and orderly it is with some pictures and other decorations. I'm so proud of her for being able to do this on her own, and the fact that she turned the dump into something beautiful is something in and of itself.
"Damn, Josie. You really did it. You turned our house into a home."
I look back at her to see her sporting a slight grimace.
"Yeah, I guess so," she mumbles. She sighs and puts on a smile. "Thanks. That means a lot."
She walks passed me and to a door on the right. She walks in it, and I follow her.
"We're in your room," I point out, gesturing to her space. "Why are we in your room?"
"Uh, yeah," she says in a 'duh' manner. "I'm sorry. If it makes you uncomfortable, we can go back downstairs. I just didn't feel like lugging the box down and up the stairs," she explains.
"No, it's fine. I just didn't expect you to really let me in here."
She cocks her head, not understanding what I mean.
"What do you mean?"
"Like, I didn't know if you'd be okay with me in your personal space, you know, because we divorced?"
Her eyebrows furrow in thought.
"Cole, remember our promise before we even started dating? That if a breakup happened—I guess when it happened—we wouldn't stop being friends, ever? We were friends way before we were ever romantically involved, and it doesn't change the fact that we were special to each other at one point. I know it's different now for us, but you're still important to me," she says softly, slowly, keeping her blue eyes on mine.
Wow. I never thought about that. I mean, I forgot that promise as soon as we made it because I never expected us to split up.
"Yeah," I tell her, trying not to show how stunned I am. "Of course."
"So..."
"Well when you put it like that..." I trail off, letting a genuine smile stretch across my face. She returns it, and turns away from me goes into her closet.
I take the time to let my snoopiness take over.
Her bedroom is beautiful. She painted it a peachy color and redid the hardwood flooring to a deep mahogany wood. The queen bed had a small blue plaid comforter across it with floral pillows, and quite a few throw pillows strewn across it.
The walls are lined with a few shelves of the same mahogany wood nailed into the wall. She has a few books here and there with a couple of flower vases on them. One of the shelves has a sort of frame with some objects in it. I soon come to see it's a shadow box. On the glass part in black calligraphy is 'Johnny Boy.' In the box, there's a picture of Josie and him when he first came into the family. She couldn't have been more than 10, and gosh, Johnny was so little. In the middle, there's a clay imprint of his paw, and on the other side of it, there's more recent picture of him. He has more gray spots around his muzzle and eyes, but the life is still there. Hanging from the tops of the walls is his old collar, a black leather piece with his name tag and other ID's on it.
I start to reach my hand out to touch it, to confirm that Johnny's really gone, but Josie comes back in heaving a heavy box behind her. I take in the sight of her—her small little body pulling that ginormous tote—and chuckle to myself.
"Move over, tiny," I tell her. She gets out of the way, and I pick the thing up. In truth, it is a little bit heavier than I was anticipating, but she doesn't need to know that. "Where do you want it?"
"On the bed, Mr. Strong," she directs, and I comply. I drop it onto the bed, and I pray that nothing in there was fragile enough to break.
"Do you really have that much crap in there?"
"No, silly. That's my memorabilia box. It's got all of the pictures and scrapbooks that I've ever taken or took from my parents' house when I moved out among other things."
"I see, so you didn't go through it ahead of time and pull out what you thought I'd want."
"I'm a procrastinator, Cole. You know this." She snaps her fingers at me as if to tell me to pick up the pace and to get with it.
"Meh."
She doesn't respond as she kneels on the bed and pops the top off of it.
"All right, let's see." She mumbles to herself as she pulls out a box of photos, and then another, and another, and then my Letterman's jacket.
"You had that? All this time you've had my jacket?! I looked all over the place for it," I gape in disbelief. Of course she had it. "Can I see it?"
She looks at me weirdly, but tosses it to me anyway. I try it on, and I'll be damned, but it still fits!
"It fits!" I exclaim. How in the hell, after all those years. . .I run to her en suite bathroom and check myself out. Damn I look good.
"It's not like you gained 50 pounds," she points out as I come back out, giving me a bored expression. She goes back to pulling out pictures. "That was Mary Jo."
"Ha!" I let out a bark of surprised laughter. "Oh God, you're right, but c'mon, Josie May. It's the twenty-first century. We're all about body positivity today."
She rolls her eyes, but I can see the amused smile she's trying to cover.
"Take the jacket off. You're too old to be wearing that."
"Oh, you party pooper," I accuse, but I do what she says anyway. I do look a little ridiculous. I place it nicely back on the bed and look at what Josie's pulled out.
"All right then. That should be everything that you're in. Just show me what you're taking beforehand, that way I know I won't be missing it."
"Sounds like a plan," I confirm.
I grab a box and pull it over to where I'm standing. I go through the pictures, a lot of them Polaroids that Josie took, and boy were we young.
There's junior homecoming pictures, senior year homecoming pictures, and senior prom pictures, and I feel myself grow nostalgic as I recall the good old days. There are some pre-dance pictures with the both of us and Johnny, but I don't want those. I don't need pictures of Josie in my house.
There is one Polaroid that catches my attention, and it's of Johnny and me. We're sitting on Josie's parents' porch, and it's taken from behind. We're both looking at each other, and I can feel the happiness radiating off of this picture. I have a wide smile on, and Johnny's tongue is hanging out of his mouth.
God, I miss him.
I internally sigh, and this is the first addition to my 'keep' pile. I go through the rest of the box, and I notice Josie going through the pictures that I put away slowly with a thoughtful expression. I watch her blink out of her daze and as she sets the pictures down gently, like they'll run away or vanish.
"I'm going to make some tea. You want some?"
"If you don't mind. Thank you."
"No problem."
She gets off the bed and walks out of the door.
I decide to hurry up the process for both of our sakes and hurry through the rest of the boxes, just skimming over the pictures until some catch my eye.
I finish the last box, and she still isn't back yet. I eye the big box, wondering if there's anything else in there.
I pull the box over to me, and I see a lot of plain white envelopes. There's no name or address on them.
I shouldn't do it. I shouldn't.
But I am.
I pad over to the door to hear if Josie is still making the tea, and I hear the banging and clanging around in the kitchen. I'm in the clear.
I pull out an envelope and flip it over to see if there's anything that will give me a clue as to who it's from, but there's nothing. I open it and pull out the letter, which is crumbled up but looks like it was straightened before it was folded.
I unfold it, and the first thing I notice is that it's Josie's handwriting. That's weird. Why would she write a letter and not send it? I guess the only way to know is to read it, I think, trying to rationalize my stupid actions I'm about to take.
"Dear Colt,
I miss you. I miss your smile. Your laugh. Your lame jokes you cracked when you were trying to cheer me up because they made me smile, and you knew that. I miss your hands, the ones that were scarred at the knuckles from getting into fights, the very same ones that held me so gently and kept me warm. I miss your eyes. The beautiful sea blue ones that caught my breath every damn time I looked into them. I miss your touch. It set me on fire with every feather brush. Your words. How you were so confident in everything you did and said, even if they were getting us out of trouble half the time because you're such a smooth-talker. Your hair. Silky brown and so soft. Your hugs. How they kept me safe and out of harm's reach. How you never used your height against me. I could melt into nothing against you and not give a damn. Your passion. You loved your damn cars. You loved your truck. The one Dad gave you. I never understood a damn word you said, but I loved how passionate you were about it. Your thoughts. How you lit up when we talked about the universe or what else could be out there. The ways you showed me exactly who you are, how you were never dishonest. Your smell. How it brought me comfort when I smelled your signature cologne or your shampoo or body wash. I would wear your clothes just to feel you here with me when you were at work, and now that you're gone, I find myself wearing them every night. The smell is long gone on them, but it still gives me comfort. I spent hours in Wal-Mart just smelling your shampoo. Desperate, I know. I miss everything about you. People ask me everyday if I miss you. I can't tell you how much I just want to dive in and tell them everything, but I can't. So I wrote it down here in a letter you'll never read because let's face it, it's been two years, and if you missed me even a fraction of the amount I miss you, you'd be home.
I love you, Colt. I hope you're happy.
Your Josie May"
I don't know how to react after I've read it, what to do about it, except what the fuck is that?
She wrote this? For me?
I never. . .I never thought. . .
I slowly put the letter back into the envelope and pull out another one.
"Dear Colt,
I can't say I'm over you. It's been a year now, and I keep praying that you'll come home, even though at this point, there's not even the slightest possibility that it'll happen. There are points in the day where I can go a few hours without thinking about you, and I then I realize that I hadn't been thinking of you and I start thinking about you again. I miss you so much it's pathetic. And what's even more fucking pathetic is that I don't even know if you fucking miss me back.
I wish I knew what I did wrong for you to leave me like this. I wish I could fix it. I'm sorry I lost our baby. I'm sorry that my body killed our baby. I don't know why it did that. Now that I think about it, I guess it is my fault. I pushed you away. I begged you to leave me, to find someone else who could give you children. It is my fault. But I was so ashamed of myself. I'm so sorry, Colt. Please come home. . .please. I haven't even touched a lick of alcohol. I'm as sober as the day is long. Please come home, I miss you We miss you.
I love you, Colt. I hope that you are happy, really.
Your Josie May"
I drop the letter and back away.
What did I do to her?
I broke her.
I'm going to be sick. The ground sways beneath my feet, and I can feel my throat pushing up the bile. Somehow, I manage to swallow it back down. I lean against the wall, staring at the letter like it committed a vile crime when all it did was tell the ugly truth.
How could I have done this to her?
I am so ashamed of myself.
"Cole? I brought up the... what are you doing?"
↔↔↔
I've had this scene planned out for the longest time. When I have the chance, I'll go back and rewrite the other goodbyes, but I was way too excited for this because it leads for a big build up in the next chapter. So instead of doing college homework, I spent the past two days writing this and going back and editing the other chapters.
Miscarriages are awful. My mother had two, and my best friend is going through the heartbreak of one right now, except her baby was so far along that it was a stillborn. It was heartbreaking, and I would never wish it on anyone.
What do y'all think of Brooke? I think she's a wonderful person, and I'm excited for her to come back into the plot, but for reasons you wouldn't think of.
Don't forget to comment and vote if you liked it!
XX Blondie XX