previously: the last time she tried to hug him was a little awkward // Colette crushed all his hopes and dreams
There were two weeks left before the revised date of Stephanie’s wedding, which had Jordan occupied outside, much to Maria’s disappointment. She’d missed him while he was away with his boys. For the kitchen staff, it was still too early to start food preparations for the wedding, so their workload was the regular fare—catering orders and supper club prep. She wasn’t too busy to steal five minutes to go find him.
The weather couldn’t be more perfect, and everyone hoped it would hold for the wedding, but it was still too far out to know for certain. The barn was scented with the light fumes of fresh paint. Those would dissipate in the next two weeks. Banners of gauzy ivory chiffon draped the ceiling between hanging pendant lights. The lights weren’t turned on yet, but Maria knew when they were, it would be breathtaking in here.
Jordan stood at the back door, gazing out, absently, somewhere beyond the trees.
She stood next to him. God, I missed you, she wanted to say. Did you miss me, too? Did you remember me at all?
Instead, she booped his pink nose and said, “You’re sunburned.”
Oh, god, Maria, she said to herself, did you actually just boop that man on the nose?
Yes, she did. Thankfully, he didn’t look unamused by it.
“Heh, the sun hates me,” he said.
He was pink on the tops of his ears and the back of his neck. Elsewhere, too, she imagined, vividly. Perhaps his strong pink shoulders were striped by tank top straps of freckled ivory. But that was just a guess. Or a fantasy? He was still staring off at the horizon. She wondered then what he was thinking about—something weightier than sunburn, surely—but it didn’t take long before he filled her in.
“Isn’t it funny you can barely see the lake?”
“What?”
He pointed to a gap between the trees. “Look, it’s like a sliver. On the website, it says the hotel has lake views. Do you think that counts?”
Under a crystal clear sky, you could see the cerulean blue of Lake Michigan. Only just. A tiny sliver of blue between scattered trees under the billowy telltale marine clouds. “I never checked the website before,” she said. “Is that what it says?”
He nodded. “It’s like, this majestic life and you only get a glimpse of it, a little bite. Like all these tourists, sure they’ll drive the one-point-seven miles to the lake. It’s only a couple minutes in the car. But it’s just such fraud. Don’t get too tempted, don’t enjoy it too much. You’re just going back home to live your standard life again. What’s the point? Might as well forget it even exists.”
She stared at him, unsure what to say. Then, as if his own heaviness had become too much to bear, he said, “I’m still kind of hungry. Drake’s tacos are just lettuce.”
He looked like he needed a hug, but she also remembered he didn’t like it when she did that. So she wouldn’t.
“Fancy lettuce and sadness,” she quipped.
He sputtered with laughter, and a smile came to his face, a desperate one. It felt like, thank you. It felt like, save me. Better than his grave ruminations about the lake and life and the futile unfairness of it all. He gave her brain whiplash.
“So obviously you need to tell me all about the trip.”
So they sat, and recounting the adventures brightened him a little. The kink party with real live furries. She would have died to see it. To be honest, she wouldn’t have been above putting on a costume herself. Not a bear one, mind you, but it sounded kind of fun. Especially if Jordan was there. He told her about the incredible views, the grueling hikes, the rain and the sunshine. He’d texted her most of this from the road, but to see his face now, pink with sunshine and happiness, she loved to see him smile. It was the most charming thing.
“…and Milo brought home twelve different species of bugs.”
“You said bugs? Twelve species, so like, more than twelve bugs?” Maria cringed.
“They’re the most fascinating things,” Jordan said. “But Colette lost her mind when we brought them all in the kitchen. Obviously we weren’t gonna leave them there, but it stormed pretty bad that day and they couldn’t stay outside in the cardboard boxes.”
“You know, I actually can’t fault her for that.” Maria shrugged. “But you should build him a little shed, so they can live outside.”
Jordan nodded. “Yeah, that’s just what we were thinking.”
“I bet a shed would be no problem for you, considering the whole barn. I love what you’re doing with this. It’s beautiful. You did a really good job.”
“Hmm,” he shrugged, terrible with compliments. “Well, Sharon found me some videos to follow. It turned out okay, I guess.”
“It’s beautiful, I said.”
He looked stunned. Quiet again, not exactly pleased. This man was a deep well of hidden emotions and complex feelings, or was he just thinking about tacos again?
“Thanks,” he muttered, turning his face to the ground.
Then he looked her in the eyes and said, “I think you’re my only real friend in the world.”
And it was so genuine. He really meant it. Friend. She was both honored and tragically sad if it was only just that.
The friend zone is a real place, Maria, and you live there.
She wanted to think of it as the kind sentiment he meant it to be, but her eyes threatened to well up with tears. She couldn’t look at him any longer. So she closed her stupid eyes full of their problematic tears and laid her head on his shoulder.
He stiffened. She remembered he didn’t like hugs, maybe? Or maybe he just didn’t want hers? Or not now? Or not anymore? Who knew? It wasn’t as if they’d never hugged before, or close to it—a squeeze of the shoulder, a pat on the back, the same generic happy new year embrace everyone got.
Just give me a minute, she hoped.
But then she felt his head rest on hers in return, his fingers on her shoulder, pulling her closer.
Oh. This.
———
Five days before the wedding…
For weeks, the northern summer mornings were temperate and sunny. Now, just days before the wedding, the forecast called for rain. Their new plan called for moving the ceremony under the gazebo instead of the open courtyard with its immovable stone benches. And that meant Jordan needed more chairs for the few dozen guests to crowd into the gazebo. He scoured the storage units, the closets, and the attic, but he found nothing except some cheap metal folding chairs. Not good enough for Stephanie’s wedding. He wondered if Ingrid might have some more chairs at the waterfront cafe.
None of them here worked very often with Ingrid. She was, to be honest, not very useful around here. Sharon had her at the waterfront cafe where she peddled coffees and candles and paintings of sailboats. She was obviously pretty and good at selling things, but beyond that, she couldn’t cook, she didn’t clean, she was too flighty to wait tables, and too much of an artiste to bus them.
Out front, she had boxes stacked in and around her truck, candles and crafts arranged for packing, and her easel laid across the truck bed. It looked more serious than just moving some inventory from the Inn to the cafe.
“Shit, did you get fired?”
“Ha, no, not exactly,” she said. “Sharon had to let the harbor cafe go. Ever hear of the Northern Kitchen Termite?”
“Oh, yeah, that went around here a few years ago. Destroyed a couple of businesses.”
Ingrid shrugged. “Welp, now it got mine.”
“Damn, I’m sorry. That sucks.”
“But, maybe it doesn’t? Wanna know a little secret?”
Ingrid took a step forward and waited for him to say yes, eagerly. His rapt attention was a delicious cookie and she needed a bite.
She was shameless, and it was mildly amusing. So he said, “Sure, okay.”
She grinned. She took another step closer. She smelled of vanilla and candle wax. “I hated my lease. Ugh, it was like being owned. Now I’m free! I’m newborn as a bare-assed baby!” She swung back and slapped her own ass. “The whole wide world is my fucking oyster.”
“Huh. Sounds cool, actually.”
“Doesn’t it? You wanna run away with me?”
Jordan laughed. “Sorry, I have to work.”
Like, he needed to work was more accurate. He needed to save up enough money to find his own apartment and get out of Colette’s hair, and he needed to do it before they drove each other to murder. The hotel rooms were digging into his savings, even at an employee discount. He almost had first month’s rent, last, and deposit for an apartment. Until he did, being homeless was better than spending the nights at that house.
“Anyway, I wondered if you brought back any of the chairs from the cafe?”
“Nope, sorry, termites got them.”
“Termites ate the chairs?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know, probably.”
“Right, well, never mind then. How about the candles? Boss wants to know if you saved any of your candles or if we need to go shopping?”
“Let me see what I’ve got.”
Ingrid bent over from the hips, waggling her ass at him while she rummaged through one of her boxes. Then she popped up with a phallus-looking candle in her palm. She stroked it up and down.
“What kind of candles does she want? Long ones, thick ones, ribbed for her pleasure?”
Astonished, Jordan could only stare at the candle in shock. This girl didn’t stop. Jordan was no choir boy, but he almost blushed.
“Oh, for crying out freaking loud,” Maria grumbled, gawking out the front window as Ingrid manhandled her candles and sashayed back and forth like a street-corner hooker.
Maria had stopped dusting the dining room. She lost track of her dusting rag several minutes ago, and now all she could do was watch with contempt. Ingrid had been nothing but friendly to her, but Maria hated her anyway. Or maybe she hated that Jordan entertained her shameless attempts to seduce him.
Maria didn’t hear Stephanie creep in, quiet as a mouse. “You know, Justin didn’t notice me for years, until one day he did. They’re slow to come around sometimes.”
Maria cringed, although the sentiment was appreciated. “Oh, is it that obvious?”
The two of them sat and gossiped a little longer about Ingrid, Jordan, Jordan’s baby momma, Maria’s crush, and which parts were deeply serious and which were probably not so much.
Finally, Maria remembered that she had work to do and that Stephanie must have wedding preparations to attend to. She’d been hanging around the Inn too much as her wedding date drew closer, not trusting that this place could run without her. But they were doing okay.
“Hey, you need to go! Don’t you have your final dress fitting today? I promise we’ve got it taken care of! Your niece is vegetarian. There’s a tofu saltimbocca coming right up. I’ve got your recipe, I can do it.”
“Okay, I guess,” Stephanie said. And in their short silence, the two of them glanced back outside at Ingrid, who was still showing Jordan her pornographic inventory of candles.
Stephanie said, “Did you hear she’s leaving?”
“Good,” Maria muttered.
Outside, Ingrid had finally shown Jordan every candle she had. He took pictures of a couple and texted Sharon to make the final choice. While they waited for Sharon’s decision, Ingrid went on about everything she might do with herself now that the waterfront cafe was closed.
“Out west, of course,” she declared. “The world is my oyster, but the Midwest doesn’t suit me. I’m a free spirit, you know. I gotta see the world. I gotta find my people. I just gotta get my camper running.”
This, above everything, finally caught Jordan’s attention. It caught his attention hard. “You have a camper?”
“Yeah, I bought it for two hundred bucks. It smells like weed and piss, but it doesn’t run. Yet. But hey, you’re a handy kind of guy. Maybe you could help me fix it?”
Sure, let me fix your camper so you can run off and have an adventure, Jordan thought. Feelings of resentment and jealousy swirled. What a life. “I don’t know. I’m kinda busy.”
“You have to understand,” Ingrid said, “I gotta get this thing working. It’s like, the nexus of my whole plan. I’m gonna drive out west and stream the whole road trip. You know, all that aesthetic. Snow-capped mountains, dusty deserts, misty forests, yoga on the beach in my bikini. Follow my channel, you don’t wanna miss it.”
Why did that sound like the most fun and frivolous life imaginable? Again, Jordan felt the cage tighten around him.
“So, what do I have to do to convince you? Can you look at it? See what’s wrong?” She smiled suggestively. “I’ll pay you whatever you want.”
“You can pay me in cash. Cash is fine,” he said. “Yeah, sure, I’ll have a look at it sometime. No promises, though.”
Ingrid winked. “Promise? I wouldn’t dare.”
She grabbed a Sharpie from one of her boxes. “It’s parked at my sister’s place. Here’s the address.”
She went for his arm, but he pulled away and took out his phone instead. “Text it to me.”
I’m too old for this, he thought. Although, at twenty-eight and twenty-four, their age difference wasn’t so extreme. It was maturity, mostly. Ingrid made him feel old. Or maybe life did that.
She looked confused and disappointed. She had really wanted to write on his arm.
———
That night, Jordan was on bedtime duty—as was usually the case, except for the occasions when he worked a late event at the hotel—and he was glad not to have Ingrid’s address scrawled all over his arm. He didn’t want to have to explain that to his family. Colette already didn’t believe he wasn’t sleeping around.
Tonight, he couldn’t slip out very easily after the boys were asleep. Milo had a sore tummy and he needed more—more water, more medicine, more hugs, more tuck-ins with the blankets tight.
“Can it be your mom’s turn next time?”
“I like it better when you do it,” Milo said. “She doesn’t do it tight enough.”
How would this ever work when he was gone? When he only had them for weekends or summers or school breaks or whenever else Colette deemed suitable.
“You have to let her try, because I can’t always do it.”
Why not? Milo didn’t ask it, but Jordan saw his brows furrow and the question linger on his face. And at some point the bomb would have to be dropped. It wasn’t a divorce, but it might as well have been one to them. We’re splitting up. It would have to happen, but not tonight. Milo wasn’t feeling well. It could happen another night. “Okay, just one more time. Next time is your mom’s turn.”
“Me, too, Dad,” Felix said from the top bunk. “I want a good tuck in, too.”
“Coming right up!”
He climbed halfway up the bunk to tuck in Felix, too, then he went downstairs to the living room, waiting to see if Milo would creep downstairs another time.
They had established something of a routine between them, without ever deciding it. Colette lingered in her bedroom while the boys fell asleep. It gave Jordan the freedom to slip out to wherever it was he went to instead of staying, and it saved her the humiliation of having to watch him do it. They didn’t have to talk about it, it just happened. That wasn’t always why she waited up in her bedroom. There was a time he used to join her in there after the boys went to sleep.
Tonight she came downstairs. She didn’t intend to pick a fight, but that seemed to be all they did anymore. She only meant to talk to him about Milo and how he was feeling. She cared, though she was sure Jordan doubted she did.
She stopped beside the couch. His backpack was slumped there. He lugged that thing around constantly these days, always ready to run. The backpack wasn’t always a thing. It was different, but it had been different for months now. She only just took notice.
Like how he was prickly and mad now. Always. It was a bad idea to let them go on that trip, it ruined everything. Or something before that had ruined everything. She would take it all back if she could, as if the unraveling threads of this family could have been held together just a little longer. If she took it back, how far back would she have to go to undo all the damage done here?
She didn’t know where she went so tragically wrong, and that made her mad, too, because she wasn’t the kind of woman who liked to make mistakes.
“Not sneaking off tonight? Is your girlfriend on her period?”
“I don’t have a girlfriend,” he said.
“Ha, right. I don’t even believe you.”
“Milo doesn’t feel good. He wants me to stay.”
“You know, I tuck his blankets just fine. It’s good enough. You spoil them. You let them get away with everything! Then I’m the bad guy, I know you love when I’m the bad guy. You can’t be soft on them all the time. The world isn’t soft, and it’s gonna eat them alive.” She mulled on that thought, and it wasn’t fair. She carried those boys. Her body still wore the scars, not his. She did her best for those boys, but they still preferred him. “I used to be everything to them, you took that from me.”
“How the hell did I take that from you? By being here? You were pissed when I wasn’t here, now you’re pissed that I am? You only want me here when it’s convenient for you!”
“Nobody cares about what I want,” she whined. “Nobody ever cared.”
“You have to be kidding,” he said. “You’re the first person to never care. You don’t care like it’s your job.”
He wouldn’t be here if she didn’t care. Not for this long. She wasn’t in the habit of dishing out generosity. He was here because she wanted him, because she got something out of the deal. For a time, she did.
She remembered their last time together, so many months ago. He smelled like birthday cake. Now she knew their last time was irrevocably their last, but she hadn’t known it then. She wanted to go back and know it. She wanted to be in that moment and have the last word, and it infuriated her that it was impossible.
Then fine, good, it was probably for the best.
“You hardly contribute much money, and you don’t put out anymore, so what’s the point? You’re just a grown man living in my house like another giant kid. Why are you even here?”
He sputtered a laugh, a bitter one. “I’m not.”
He picked up that stupid backpack and then he was gone. He left the front door ajar. It swayed in a warm summer breeze, wasting her air conditioning.
That was how it ended, she supposed, as if it wasn’t constantly ending since the moment they began. But if it was constantly ending, then how would she ever feel done?
———
So Jordan left. And maybe Milo would come down to the couch in the night where he wouldn’t find his father, and he’d have to seek out his mother instead, who tucked him in a way he didn’t prefer, and he’d be disappointed.
Might as well get used to the disappointment. It wasn’t the first time, and it wouldn’t be the last.
His driving took him just out of the suburbs, down dark country roads that had grown so familiar to him over the years. Only he usually drove in the other direction. Tonight, he drove back to work.
He parked in front of the hotel, where he found only Sharon’s car and one more unfamiliar vehicle that may have belonged to a guest. He knew everyone’s cars by now. Maria’s coupe, and Stephanie’s minivan, and Ian who rode a little moped—they had all gone home for the night already.
It was late enough that the front desk was dark, the fireplace snuffed out, the kitchen was closed, and Sharon had already taken herself to bed. But they used an old-fashioned key system here, not electric key cards, so Jordan could see which rooms were available at a glance. It was an ordinary Monday night. Most of the rooms were vacant, even some of the nicer ones. But Jordan wasn’t greedy.
He took the smallest no frills single and wrote a paper note for Sharon to take the fees from his pay, which often she didn’t because his vagrancy had become so common an occurrence lately that she felt sorry for him.
This room, the last one at the end of the hall, the smallest, the oldest, the one they kept meaning to upgrade and never got around to it. She might as well have put his name on it.
He dropped his backpack on the chair, took off his shoes, and climbed straight into bed, lamenting his life and what to do next. Each idea, as it came, was struck down by Colette’s sharp voice in his head. Tattoos he wanted that she would hate, trucks he wanted that she said weren’t important, adventures to faraway places that seemed from another life. Lives that weren’t his.
But why not? Because he got some chick pregnant at eighteen and she said so. It was just a mistake. How could a whole life be decided on one little mistake?
Fuck that. He was done letting Colette tell him what he could or couldn’t do.
There was a brochure in his pack that came home with him this summer and hadn’t made it to the recycling bin, nestled at the bottom of his few belongings with Maria’s winery tour. Impossibilities… but did they have to be?
He read the pamphlet until its creases broke. He read every page on the linked website again and again. He scoured the internet for reviews. The reviews were stellar.
It was a climbing class in Nevada on the cliffs near Canyonlands National Park. They trained two sessions a year, twelve weeks at a time, eventually building up to a big climbing retreat in January. Each year was different. They climbed in Brazil and Switzerland and Japan.
There were probably closer classes to take. There were gyms with rock walls everywhere. There were canyons in West Virginia and cliffs in Ohio, but this was the one he wanted. Maya’s Climb Club, and it was in Nevada. It wasn’t the closest or the easiest or the cheapest. Jordan just wanted to live his life.
Click, payment approved.
Jordan had four-thousand dollars in his bank account that he had saved for an apartment, but he dropped half of it on the deposit for this fall’s climbing session.
You were always such an idiot with money, Colette’s voice harped in his head.
Then an electric glee zipped through his body, speeding through his heart, squeezing sweat out of his palms. What did he just do?
The fine print said “no refunds.” He read it, and he understood it. He was going to Nevada. Can’t take it back now.
Classes started in less than two months, and he had no plan. Not even an idea, to be honest. Where would he stay? How would he afford it? But none of that mattered yet. In this quaint little hotel room, halfway between one life and the next, with the glow of his phone on his face in the dark, he laughed.
Oh, what a wild, raw, incredible mess this was going to be.
But what if it worked? What if it was amazing?
Now the future was ripped wide open. A future full of possibilities. He’d take the boys in the summers and on school breaks. Maybe he’d have an apartment somewhere, but they’d never be in it. They’d be out in the world, hiking and camping and fishing and adventuring. This! Yes, this is your life! You found it, now go!
But first, so many goodbyes. The kind of goodbyes that made his heart shrivel up.
His boys. Not goodbye forever, of course. Kids can live in two different places. Probably. Doesn’t it happen all the time? Don’t most children of broken homes end up mostly okay?
In high school he had a friend whose parents were divorced. His dad lived in South Carolina and he spent the whole summer there every year. It happens, people adapt, and they usually don’t grow up to be weirdos. Although that guy did get involved with a religious cult and did some jail time for a bit. Check fraud, not murder or anything. He seemed legit now, on his social media feeds at least.
But some of Jordan’s goodbyes wouldn’t come with visitation weekends.
Maria, he thought. If leaving for Nevada meant leaving his job, then it also meant leaving Maria. And sure, he’d miss Ian and Stephanie, too, and he’d never have a more accommodating boss than Sharon. He’d miss their cooking and free coffee and sitting around the kitchen, shooting the shit and being paid for it. And Maria, delightful Maria, made of laughter and birthday cake, honey and roses. He felt an instant pang of regret, of inevitability, of unfairness.
Friends can visit, he reassured himself, wondering if he was filling his hopes with hot air. They weren’t childhood buddies. They weren’t family friends. They were work friends, a lesser tier of friendship. Work friends with an unconsummated crush involved, which made the situation even more precarious. That kind of friendship stood little chance to distance, once their lives took over, going their separate ways, until all they were to each other was a tiny *heart* on a picture of their kids or dogs or vacations, until she forgot about him completely because Jordan was terrible at updating his social media feeds.
But wasn’t that the theme of his life? Losing people, the best people, the most necessary people. This time it would be his own fault. If he wanted a life of freedom and adventure, he would make and lose many friends over the years. Loss would be woven into the fabric of his life. He might as well get used to it.
———
author’s note: please remember this man has an “irresponsible” trait. 🙃
pose credits: “a dandelion for you” by Natalia-Auditore
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