content warnings: grief, despair
He went dark when he was upset, like he vanished from the whole world, Maria’s world included. And she craved a text, a note, anything. She could give him space. She wasn’t a clingy girlfriend, except that she yearned for some sort of tether, some connection, and maybe that made her clingy after all. But she didn’t want to nag. She didn’t want to be exactly what he was running from in the first place.
She didn’t need him to tell her that it was Colette on the phone. His whole body announced it with tension and grit. The last she heard of him, his voice boomed with a desperation she’d never heard before. He had already walked away from the campsite and she couldn’t hear his words, only the echo of his pleading on the rocks. Mostly she saw the way he shriveled into himself, growing smaller and smaller, until eventually, he stopped arguing back. Maria didn’t need to hear what Colette said to know it was ugly.
“Is he coming home now?”
“Soon,” Maria told her, which was only a hope, of course. She had no way of knowing where he was or when he was coming home. It had been three hours. The last time this happened, she didn’t hear from him for almost two days. But things were different now, and she couldn’t possibly wait that long before she started to panic. At the same time, she had JoJo to think about so panic wasn’t even an option.
JoJo was too riled up to go to bed, but she had finally agreed to put on her pajamas. She was too riled up to even wait inside. Outside, a sharp chill swept across the north Nevada desert, making clear that it would be December in a matter of days. Maria lit the campfire, and they sat beside it.
“Is he mad at me?”
“No, he’s not. It’s not your fault, monkey. Are you cold? Maybe we should wait inside.”
In the end, they didn’t need to wait any longer. Maria wished Johanna was in bed already, but she wasn’t, and nobody could stop the little girl from running to him at the first sound of his footsteps in the dust.
His face looked blank, like he had seen a ghost.
“Jordan, you were gone so long. Did you get lost in the dark?”
“I got so lost, kiddo,” he said.
Johanna reached her tiny fingers into his hand and held it sweetly. “Don’t be scared,” she said. “You’re home now.”
Panic on his face, like he might tear himself in two. “I just wanted to be home.”
He started to cry. Maria had never seen him cry before, trying to remember a time she had ever seen any grown man cry. Not her father, certainly not Joseph. He crumbled to the ground and hugged Johanna ferociously, sobbing into her hair. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”
Maria hovered near, worried. She came closer to wipe his face, but he pulled her into the hug, too, still crying, “I’m so sorry.”
“JoJo, can you be a big, big girl and wait in your bed? I’ll come tuck you in very soon.”
“Okay,” she said and did as her mother asked.
Jordan came up off the ground.
Maria asked, “What happened? What are you sorry for?”
He couldn’t answer that question. He only gaped at her with so much overwhelm on his face. “Don’t say he’s watching over us. It doesn’t help, because I don’t believe it.”
“I won’t say it if you don’t want me to.”
He inhaled sharply, a tremble in his voice. “I don’t know how to fix it.”
“I know.” She touched his face. “You don’t have to fix it right now.”
She didn’t know what he was talking about exactly, until she did, and then she understood the decades of sorrow in his eyes. This ran deeper than Colette, deeper than his boys, and no, she didn’t know how to fix this for him, either. She just wanted to get him inside where they could all be warm and safe.
“You must be starving. We saved you some dinner in the fridge. Come inside and I’ll warm it up for you.”
She pulled his hand until he started moving.
He sat on the couch in some kind of shock. Maria moved around the kitchen with purpose, while constantly watching him like he might fracture into a thousand pieces. Or like he already had. She had food warming on the stove, and she filled a glass of water.
“I need to get JoJo settled,” she said, looking like she thought he might bolt out the door again the second she took her eyes off him. She didn’t need to worry. His legs wouldn’t take him anywhere, even if this wasn’t the only place he wanted to be. And as the shock wore off, it left only shame in its wake. He had more to be sorry for.
“I think I scared her,” he said. “Can I say goodnight first?”
“Of course you can.”
She was such a sweet girl. So brave and so much stronger than he was.
“Don’t worry, monkey. Everything will be okay.”
She was well exhausted, hours past her bedtime, and with everyone home and accounted for, she fell fast asleep.
He guzzled the water, but he couldn’t eat more than a couple bites of food, so he took himself to bed while Maria finished with JoJo.
She made it so cozy in here. With so many pillows and candles and potted plants, it looked like a little napping nook from a magazine. He never had the creativity to do something like that.
Their little home on wheels was a cozy one, filled with laughter and love, comfort and nourishment. This life was such a natural fit, they worked together like a team, their love for him was nourishing and pure, and he needed that. He hasn’t felt belonging like this since his dad was alive. Home.
And he left his boys to get this, which meant he was the biggest piece of shit alive. And he couldn’t be that anymore.
Fuck, he did set up with a new family.
How could he not? They were perfect. They were everything he ever needed. Almost. Because he needed his boys, too. He didn’t want to be just a summertime dad. He didn’t want to see them only a few weeks a year. And he had just enough presence of mind to know that Colette couldn’t legally prevent him from seeing his boys ever again forever. Probably.
But his boys weren’t here.
This could have been everything he ever wanted. It almost was. He could hold it, taste it, feel it. It was real, and he would have lived this dream forever.
But you can’t, so welcome back to reality.
You might need it all, but you can’t have it all, and there’s the tragedy. It doesn’t work. Not in this lifetime where you are bound by the choices and mistakes you made.
So he would return to the suburbs of Wisconsin and do what he needed to do. For now, and for the next nine years at least. Goodbye climb club. Goodbye sharp cliffs and breathtaking views. Goodbye dusty endless road. He would park the camper and hang up his gloves. He’d get the lawyer, he’d go to the courts. He’d get the union job to pay the suburban rents. All the things he should have been doing all along instead of trying to live this ridiculous fantasy like a frivolous playboy.
There was another pile of grief to add to the mountain, knowing that this dream was on its deathbed. It would perish, and he would bury it with all of his other ghosts.
Maria took only another ten minutes with Johanna before she came to the bedroom. She edged herself cautiously onto the bed. “Can I sit with you?”
“Of course,” he said. He scooted a few inches to give her space, but neither of them really wanted to be very far apart.
She leaned her face to his shoulder and kissed him there. “Okay, so, I’m gonna ask for something and you’re not gonna like it.”
“Oh.”
“I want you to show me her messages.”
He was instantly petrified. “You really don’t want to see those.”
“But that’s why I want to see them, because you don’t tell me things.” She had a tremble in her voice, but she insisted. “I suspect you haven’t been standing up for yourself with her, and I wonder if I’m right. But you don’t tell me about it. You just try to act like everything is fine, and I know it’s not fine.”
He wouldn’t look her in the eyes. “Because I’m a failure, a loser, a mess. If I told you everything, you wouldn’t want me anymore.”
“How about you let me decide what I want? Does she say those things about you?”
She held out her open palm. He didn’t want to talk about this, but he also knew he couldn’t hide from it all anymore, not after tonight with all of his shame swimming at rock bottom. He handed her the phone.
She read the messages, horrified. She thought she knew what to expect, but she still found the words horrifying, cruel, and bullying. She had read enough. “You don’t believe her, do you? Please tell me you know she’s wrong.”
“I’m trying.”
“Oh, no, no, no. She’s so wrong.”
“She’s not all wrong though. I left my boys to shack up with a new family. I did that, didn’t I?”
Her eyes welled with tears. “Do you regret it?”
“No. Not for a minute. This has been everything I wanted for so long, but it doesn’t work, does it? I can’t make it all work. I don’t want to be a summer and school break dad. I won’t want that for them. I don’t want it for me. I want my boys back.”
“I know, honey, it’s eating you up. You need to see your boys. Let’s go tomorrow, first thing in the morning. Home on wheels, right? We can go wherever we want. You’re not giving up, it’s not quitting.”
“But what if it is? How can I come back here for training? I won’t leave them again, I can’t do it. And they can’t come, so that’s that. It’s over. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, you guys were having fun. I promised you all of this, and it was amazing, and now, they can’t be part of it, so I can’t be part of it. Fuck, I’m sorry. I told you I’m not reliable. I told you that. Oh god. I asked you to quit everything for this.”
She put her arms around his hunched body. “I didn’t quit anything that mattered,” she said.
“You should hate me.”
“Stop it, I can’t hate you.”
“Why not?”
“Because loving you makes my heart feel at home. Where else am I gonna go?”
He turned around to look her in the eyes, finally. “Please don’t go anywhere. I need you.”
“That’s better,” she said. “I’m not giving up on you.”
“You’re going to get sick of me dragging you around, changing my mind, messing everything up.”
“Or maybe I won’t.”
“I don’t deserve you.”
“Yes, you do. You deserve everything in the world.”
He shook his head.
“Yes, you do,” she said, as he continued shaking his head. “Yes, you do.”
Maria felt caught in the whirlwind, too. Well, he did warn her that a life with him would be messy and unpredictable. She expected it, but she hadn’t thought it would come for them so soon or so fiercely. They lay in their bed, clinging to each other, as if this storm might tear away every last thing. But not this. This stays. And when everything in their life looked different, again and again, still, this stays.
“I love that you want your boys” she said. “I love it. And you know, I always kind of thought you would.”
“You could have told me that.”
She shook her head. “No. You had to come to that conclusion on your own. But let me help you. You need an address for the courts. Well, you already have one. You’ll use mine. The townhouse back in Evergreen Harbor. It’s leased until February and we can renew it if you want. It’s a permanent address. It’s a fine enough house.”
“But it’s too small for the five of us. There’s only two bedrooms.”
“They’re big rooms. And guess what, my landlord is Stephanie’s dad, and you’re a licensed contractor. I bet we could move some things around. It would improve the property value and he’d let us.”
But Jordan was resistant to help, because that’s what Colette did. He didn’t want to make the same mistakes again. He didn’t want to become Maria’s burden, too. “That’s what Colette says about me. I make messes I can’t fix and let other people take care of my problems for me.”
“It’s okay to need help sometimes,” she said. “I’m sorry she made you feel like it wasn’t.”
“I’ll make it up to you.”
“I know you will. But first, I know what would make you feel better.”
“What?”
She grinned. “Pajamas.”
Pajamas could never be a wrong idea.
They changed into warm wintertime pajamas and curled up, cozy and quiet, whispering more between each other. “But, you know, maybe I don’t tell you everything either,” Maria said.
“You don’t?” He looked worried.
“Because we want it to be fun and easy and romantic all the time, but that’s not real. Real love isn’t a fairytale. It’s messy and complicated.”
“Okay, then, what don’t you tell me?”
“I feel bad,” she started. “Because I pushed you so fast, before you were ready. You told me you weren’t ready. I didn’t mean to pressure you into all this. You wanted to be alone, it would have been a healthy thing after everything you went through with her, but I didn’t give you that.”
He shrugged. “You gave me a couple weeks.”
“I’m so serious, though.”
“I know,” he said. “But what if sometimes we want something that’s not good for us? I wanted to run and be alone. It was scarier to let you love me, to ask you to take that chance. It wasn’t what I wanted, but I needed it. Never feel sorry for that.”
“Well, okay. You make that sound okay. But what else don’t you tell me?”
“I feel bad about Joseph, that he’s the one you were meant to be with and he was the perfect husband and father, and your life would have been so comfortable and simple, and I’m nothing like him at all.”
She was quiet for a moment, digging in her own secrets. “I like that you’re not like him,” she said. “I feel bad about Joseph, too. I feel like I’m supposed to miss him more. Or want him back. I don’t want him to be dead, but I don’t want him back. I don’t think I would have been as happy if that marriage had lasted. Not like deeply happy, not like this.”
“This makes you deeply happy? You deserve better. You should want more.”
She smirked at him. “When are you going to stop telling me what I should want?”
The seriousness faded from her eyes, she started to grin.
“Sometimes I fantasize that he hadn’t died, but I still would have met you, and you and I would have had the most scandalous affair. And then there would be a hideous divorce. He’s a war hero, so he’d win everything, and I’d be destitute. And we’d end up living in your camper anyway, but we’d be outcasts. You’d be a pariah, I’d be a harlot. You broke up a whole family, you naughty boy.”
They both giggled quietly. It was the first smile she’d seen on his face in hours. “I’m sorry, that would probably be awful to go through,” he said. “But I’m glad you like me in that lifetime, too.”
“I’ve been in love with you for almost three years, mister. You’re not getting rid of me that easily.”
“Is there anything else?”
So, I kind of have some money… A whole lot of money and it all came from brave, heroic, untouchable, dead Joseph. She’d sooner set that money on fire than tell him that tonight. Instead, she said, “I’m jealous that Colette got to know your dad.”
Jordan smiled. “He always said, ‘If my grandkids didn’t come from that girl…’ and then he would just shake his head and stopped talking because he never said anything bad about anybody.”
“Sounds like he was so great.”
“I miss him so much.”
“I know.”
They both took a deep breath and exhaled it, having spent themselves on emotion. They just wrapped up in each other. They didn’t need to say goodnight, it was understood, and in their calm silence, they both fell asleep.
He woke again at some point in the night. His throat was dry. Maria had fallen asleep with her arms wrapped around and tucked underneath him like she worried he might sneak out into the night and disappear again. When he moved her, she startled awake.
“Wait, where are you going?”
He wasn’t going anywhere. He just needed a glass of water. Oh, sweet Maria. He had traumatized everyone tonight, it seemed.
“I’m just getting some water. I’m not going anywhere. Don’t worry. You can go back to sleep.”
He got up, got the glass of water, and sat down in the dark living room of their camper lit only by the red glow of embers in the wood stove. This was their first home together, and they had made this place so cozy. It was also the first real home he’d had since he lost his dad’s place all those years ago. Now where would they put it? Maria’s townhome didn’t even have a parking spot for a car, she had to park hers on the street. They’d need to rent a space for it somewhere. The idea of selling it was heartbreaking. He would do what they needed to do, if it came to that, but Maria had already vetoed that idea.
“No, we’re not selling it,” she decided. “You would regret that until the end of your days.”
And he was quite okay with letting her make that decision for them. He considered this camper half hers now. Maybe he got this ragged old thing running again, but she made it into a home.
He just needed to take another minute here before it was all over. It would all be okay. He wasn’t sure if he believed it, but he would make it true, one way or another. He was still thinking. He felt slaughtered and hollow, but resolute about what needed to happen next.
The mountains have been there for millions of years, and they’ll still be there tomorrow, next year, even if it takes ten years. If he got that long. Not everybody does, and that’s not fair. Plenty of people die young with a life of unfulfilled dreams. He thought of his mom and everything she must have wanted to do with the time she didn’t get. He thought of his dad, too. And maybe nobody gets to do everything they want. You can only do what’s important while you have the chance. Sometimes one important thing trumps another. Sometimes life is just not fair and it’s nobody’s fault and there’s nothing you can do about it.
He tried to sleep for another couple of hours, but he felt restless as the morning came. He wanted one last sunrise on the rocks. He told Maria first where he was going. He made sure she was awake and wouldn’t worry. He took his phone and made sure it was charged. The climb was just a simple rock scramble on the edge of the campground, and the view was as impressive as he hoped it would be. But the great thing about sunrises is that they happen everywhere. Sunrise over Lake Michigan is probably pretty spectacular, too.
When he came down from the rocks, Maria had most of the campsite ready to go. She wanted nothing to do with emptying the toilet tanks, but she’d gotten pretty efficient at packing up to roll out.
“JoJo, don’t get sand everywhere before it’s time to get on the road.”
There hadn’t been much time to explain to JoJo that they were going back to Wisconsin for good. She had grown used to the packing and moving to somewhere new. She was a wild, feral child and she loved living like this. She would be almost as disappointed to leave it all behind as Jordan was, but it hadn’t sunk in for her yet. And it probably wouldn’t until they got back home to the old townhouse.
The adventure would have to pause for a little while, or take a different shape. But it wasn’t a silly idea. It was real and it was working, and Maria would miss this, too. Maybe not as much as he would, not as much as JoJo would, but she would miss it all the same.
“It was fun. It wasn’t a mistake,” she said. “I’m glad you brought us out here.”
She hugged him, but he smothered her instead.
“I love you so much,” he cried into her neck.
And Maria felt that in her bones. That was everything she ever wanted. Who would have thought, all those months ago, standing on her front porch and saying goodbye, that someday she would be the one getting everything she once wanted while he gave it all up? It didn’t feel good to be the one winning. It wouldn’t count unless he could be happy, too. Please.
“It will be beautiful,” she said. “It will be so good, even if it’s not the life you hoped for. It will be worth it, I promise.”
He nodded, feeling little faith in his own instincts, so he would trust hers instead. They were ready to start the drive.
JoJo had gotten herself thoroughly sandy before it was time to get on the road.
He went dark when he was upset, like he vanished from the whole world, Maria’s world included. And she craved a text, a note, anything. She could give him space. She wasn’t a clingy girlfriend, except that she yearned for some sort of tether, some connection, and maybe that made her clingy after all. But she didn’t want to nag. She didn’t want to be exactly what he was running from in the first place.
She didn’t need him to tell her that it was Colette on the phone. His whole body announced it with tension and grit. The last she heard of him, his voice boomed with a desperation she’d never heard before. He had already walked away from the campsite and she couldn’t hear his words, only the echo of his pleading on the rocks. Mostly she saw the way he shriveled into himself, growing smaller and smaller, until eventually, he stopped arguing back. Maria didn’t need to hear what Colette said to know it was ugly.
“Is he coming home now?”
“Soon,” Maria told her, which was only a hope, of course. She had no way of knowing where he was or when he was coming home. It had been three hours. The last time this happened, she didn’t hear from him for almost two days. But things were different now, and she couldn’t possibly wait that long before she started to panic. At the same time, she had JoJo to think about so panic wasn’t even an option.
JoJo was too riled up to go to bed, but she had finally agreed to put on her pajamas. She was too riled up to even wait inside. Outside, a sharp chill swept across the north Nevada desert, making clear that it would be December in a matter of days. Maria lit the campfire, and they sat beside it.
“Is he mad at me?”
“No, he’s not. It’s not your fault, monkey. Are you cold? Maybe we should wait inside.”
In the end, they didn’t need to wait any longer. Maria wished Johanna was in bed already, but she wasn’t, and nobody could stop the little girl from running to him at the first sound of his footsteps in the dust.
His face looked blank, like he had seen a ghost.
“Jordan, you were gone so long. Did you get lost in the dark?”
“I got so lost, kiddo,” he said.
Johanna reached her tiny fingers into his hand and held it sweetly. “Don’t be scared,” she said. “You’re home now.”
Panic on his face, like he might tear himself in two. “I just wanted to be home.”
He started to cry. Maria had never seen him cry before, trying to remember a time she had ever seen any grown man cry. Not her father, certainly not Joseph. He crumbled to the ground and hugged Johanna ferociously, sobbing into her hair. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”
Maria hovered near, worried. She came closer to wipe his face, but he pulled her into the hug, too, still crying, “I’m so sorry.”
“JoJo, can you be a big, big girl and wait in your bed? I’ll come tuck you in very soon.”
“Okay,” she said and did as her mother asked.
Jordan came up off the ground.
Maria asked, “What happened? What are you sorry for?”
He couldn’t answer that question. He only gaped at her with so much overwhelm on his face. “Don’t say he’s watching over us. It doesn’t help, because I don’t believe it.”
“I won’t say it if you don’t want me to.”
He inhaled sharply, a tremble in his voice. “I don’t know how to fix it.”
“I know.” She touched his face. “You don’t have to fix it right now.”
She didn’t know what he was talking about exactly, until she did, and then she understood the decades of sorrow in his eyes. This ran deeper than Colette, deeper than his boys, and no, she didn’t know how to fix this for him, either. She just wanted to get him inside where they could all be warm and safe.
“You must be starving. We saved you some dinner in the fridge. Come inside and I’ll warm it up for you.”
She pulled his hand until he started moving.
He sat on the couch in some kind of shock. Maria moved around the kitchen with purpose, while constantly watching him like he might fracture into a thousand pieces. Or like he already had. She had food warming on the stove, and she filled a glass of water.
“I need to get JoJo settled,” she said, looking like she thought he might bolt out the door again the second she took her eyes off him. She didn’t need to worry. His legs wouldn’t take him anywhere, even if this wasn’t the only place he wanted to be. And as the shock wore off, it left only shame in its wake. He had more to be sorry for.
“I think I scared her,” he said. “Can I say goodnight first?”
“Of course you can.”
She was such a sweet girl. So brave and so much stronger than he was.
“Don’t worry, monkey. Everything will be okay.”
She was well exhausted, hours past her bedtime, and with everyone home and accounted for, she fell fast asleep.
He guzzled the water, but he couldn’t eat more than a couple bites of food, so he took himself to bed while Maria finished with JoJo.
She made it so cozy in here. With so many pillows and candles and potted plants, it looked like a little napping nook from a magazine. He never had the creativity to do something like that.
Their little home on wheels was a cozy one, filled with laughter and love, comfort and nourishment. This life was such a natural fit, they worked together like a team, their love for him was nourishing and pure, and he needed that. He hasn’t felt belonging like this since his dad was alive. Home.
And he left his boys to get this, which meant he was the biggest piece of shit alive. And he couldn’t be that anymore.
Fuck, he did set up with a new family.
How could he not? They were perfect. They were everything he ever needed. Almost. Because he needed his boys, too. He didn’t want to be just a summertime dad. He didn’t want to see them only a few weeks a year. And he had just enough presence of mind to know that Colette couldn’t legally prevent him from seeing his boys ever again forever. Probably.
But his boys weren’t here.
This could have been everything he ever wanted. It almost was. He could hold it, taste it, feel it. It was real, and he would have lived this dream forever.
But you can’t, so welcome back to reality.
You might need it all, but you can’t have it all, and there’s the tragedy. It doesn’t work. Not in this lifetime where you are bound by the choices and mistakes you made.
So he would return to the suburbs of Wisconsin and do what he needed to do. For now, and for the next nine years at least. Goodbye climb club. Goodbye sharp cliffs and breathtaking views. Goodbye dusty endless road. He would park the camper and hang up his gloves. He’d get the lawyer, he’d go to the courts. He’d get the union job to pay the suburban rents. All the things he should have been doing all along instead of trying to live this ridiculous fantasy like a frivolous playboy.
There was another pile of grief to add to the mountain, knowing that this dream was on its deathbed. It would perish, and he would bury it with all of his other ghosts.
———
Maria took only another ten minutes with Johanna before she came to the bedroom. She edged herself cautiously onto the bed. “Can I sit with you?”
“Of course,” he said. He scooted a few inches to give her space, but neither of them really wanted to be very far apart.
She leaned her face to his shoulder and kissed him there. “Okay, so, I’m gonna ask for something and you’re not gonna like it.”
“Oh.”
“I want you to show me her messages.”
He was instantly petrified. “You really don’t want to see those.”
“But that’s why I want to see them, because you don’t tell me things.” She had a tremble in her voice, but she insisted. “I suspect you haven’t been standing up for yourself with her, and I wonder if I’m right. But you don’t tell me about it. You just try to act like everything is fine, and I know it’s not fine.”
He wouldn’t look her in the eyes. “Because I’m a failure, a loser, a mess. If I told you everything, you wouldn’t want me anymore.”
“How about you let me decide what I want? Does she say those things about you?”
She held out her open palm. He didn’t want to talk about this, but he also knew he couldn’t hide from it all anymore, not after tonight with all of his shame swimming at rock bottom. He handed her the phone.
She read the messages, horrified. She thought she knew what to expect, but she still found the words horrifying, cruel, and bullying. She had read enough. “You don’t believe her, do you? Please tell me you know she’s wrong.”
“I’m trying.”
“Oh, no, no, no. She’s so wrong.”
“She’s not all wrong though. I left my boys to shack up with a new family. I did that, didn’t I?”
Her eyes welled with tears. “Do you regret it?”
“No. Not for a minute. This has been everything I wanted for so long, but it doesn’t work, does it? I can’t make it all work. I don’t want to be a summer and school break dad. I won’t want that for them. I don’t want it for me. I want my boys back.”
“I know, honey, it’s eating you up. You need to see your boys. Let’s go tomorrow, first thing in the morning. Home on wheels, right? We can go wherever we want. You’re not giving up, it’s not quitting.”
“But what if it is? How can I come back here for training? I won’t leave them again, I can’t do it. And they can’t come, so that’s that. It’s over. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, you guys were having fun. I promised you all of this, and it was amazing, and now, they can’t be part of it, so I can’t be part of it. Fuck, I’m sorry. I told you I’m not reliable. I told you that. Oh god. I asked you to quit everything for this.”
She put her arms around his hunched body. “I didn’t quit anything that mattered,” she said.
“You should hate me.”
“Stop it, I can’t hate you.”
“Why not?”
“Because loving you makes my heart feel at home. Where else am I gonna go?”
He turned around to look her in the eyes, finally. “Please don’t go anywhere. I need you.”
“That’s better,” she said. “I’m not giving up on you.”
“You’re going to get sick of me dragging you around, changing my mind, messing everything up.”
“Or maybe I won’t.”
“I don’t deserve you.”
“Yes, you do. You deserve everything in the world.”
He shook his head.
“Yes, you do,” she said, as he continued shaking his head. “Yes, you do.”
Maria felt caught in the whirlwind, too. Well, he did warn her that a life with him would be messy and unpredictable. She expected it, but she hadn’t thought it would come for them so soon or so fiercely. They lay in their bed, clinging to each other, as if this storm might tear away every last thing. But not this. This stays. And when everything in their life looked different, again and again, still, this stays.
“I love that you want your boys” she said. “I love it. And you know, I always kind of thought you would.”
“You could have told me that.”
She shook her head. “No. You had to come to that conclusion on your own. But let me help you. You need an address for the courts. Well, you already have one. You’ll use mine. The townhouse back in Evergreen Harbor. It’s leased until February and we can renew it if you want. It’s a permanent address. It’s a fine enough house.”
“But it’s too small for the five of us. There’s only two bedrooms.”
“They’re big rooms. And guess what, my landlord is Stephanie’s dad, and you’re a licensed contractor. I bet we could move some things around. It would improve the property value and he’d let us.”
But Jordan was resistant to help, because that’s what Colette did. He didn’t want to make the same mistakes again. He didn’t want to become Maria’s burden, too. “That’s what Colette says about me. I make messes I can’t fix and let other people take care of my problems for me.”
“It’s okay to need help sometimes,” she said. “I’m sorry she made you feel like it wasn’t.”
“I’ll make it up to you.”
“I know you will. But first, I know what would make you feel better.”
“What?”
She grinned. “Pajamas.”
Pajamas could never be a wrong idea.
They changed into warm wintertime pajamas and curled up, cozy and quiet, whispering more between each other. “But, you know, maybe I don’t tell you everything either,” Maria said.
“You don’t?” He looked worried.
“Because we want it to be fun and easy and romantic all the time, but that’s not real. Real love isn’t a fairytale. It’s messy and complicated.”
“Okay, then, what don’t you tell me?”
“I feel bad,” she started. “Because I pushed you so fast, before you were ready. You told me you weren’t ready. I didn’t mean to pressure you into all this. You wanted to be alone, it would have been a healthy thing after everything you went through with her, but I didn’t give you that.”
He shrugged. “You gave me a couple weeks.”
“I’m so serious, though.”
“I know,” he said. “But what if sometimes we want something that’s not good for us? I wanted to run and be alone. It was scarier to let you love me, to ask you to take that chance. It wasn’t what I wanted, but I needed it. Never feel sorry for that.”
“Well, okay. You make that sound okay. But what else don’t you tell me?”
“I feel bad about Joseph, that he’s the one you were meant to be with and he was the perfect husband and father, and your life would have been so comfortable and simple, and I’m nothing like him at all.”
She was quiet for a moment, digging in her own secrets. “I like that you’re not like him,” she said. “I feel bad about Joseph, too. I feel like I’m supposed to miss him more. Or want him back. I don’t want him to be dead, but I don’t want him back. I don’t think I would have been as happy if that marriage had lasted. Not like deeply happy, not like this.”
“This makes you deeply happy? You deserve better. You should want more.”
She smirked at him. “When are you going to stop telling me what I should want?”
The seriousness faded from her eyes, she started to grin.
“Sometimes I fantasize that he hadn’t died, but I still would have met you, and you and I would have had the most scandalous affair. And then there would be a hideous divorce. He’s a war hero, so he’d win everything, and I’d be destitute. And we’d end up living in your camper anyway, but we’d be outcasts. You’d be a pariah, I’d be a harlot. You broke up a whole family, you naughty boy.”
They both giggled quietly. It was the first smile she’d seen on his face in hours. “I’m sorry, that would probably be awful to go through,” he said. “But I’m glad you like me in that lifetime, too.”
“I’ve been in love with you for almost three years, mister. You’re not getting rid of me that easily.”
“Is there anything else?”
So, I kind of have some money… A whole lot of money and it all came from brave, heroic, untouchable, dead Joseph. She’d sooner set that money on fire than tell him that tonight. Instead, she said, “I’m jealous that Colette got to know your dad.”
Jordan smiled. “He always said, ‘If my grandkids didn’t come from that girl…’ and then he would just shake his head and stopped talking because he never said anything bad about anybody.”
“Sounds like he was so great.”
“I miss him so much.”
“I know.”
They both took a deep breath and exhaled it, having spent themselves on emotion. They just wrapped up in each other. They didn’t need to say goodnight, it was understood, and in their calm silence, they both fell asleep.
———
He woke again at some point in the night. His throat was dry. Maria had fallen asleep with her arms wrapped around and tucked underneath him like she worried he might sneak out into the night and disappear again. When he moved her, she startled awake.
“Wait, where are you going?”
He wasn’t going anywhere. He just needed a glass of water. Oh, sweet Maria. He had traumatized everyone tonight, it seemed.
“I’m just getting some water. I’m not going anywhere. Don’t worry. You can go back to sleep.”
He got up, got the glass of water, and sat down in the dark living room of their camper lit only by the red glow of embers in the wood stove. This was their first home together, and they had made this place so cozy. It was also the first real home he’d had since he lost his dad’s place all those years ago. Now where would they put it? Maria’s townhome didn’t even have a parking spot for a car, she had to park hers on the street. They’d need to rent a space for it somewhere. The idea of selling it was heartbreaking. He would do what they needed to do, if it came to that, but Maria had already vetoed that idea.
“No, we’re not selling it,” she decided. “You would regret that until the end of your days.”
And he was quite okay with letting her make that decision for them. He considered this camper half hers now. Maybe he got this ragged old thing running again, but she made it into a home.
He just needed to take another minute here before it was all over. It would all be okay. He wasn’t sure if he believed it, but he would make it true, one way or another. He was still thinking. He felt slaughtered and hollow, but resolute about what needed to happen next.
The mountains have been there for millions of years, and they’ll still be there tomorrow, next year, even if it takes ten years. If he got that long. Not everybody does, and that’s not fair. Plenty of people die young with a life of unfulfilled dreams. He thought of his mom and everything she must have wanted to do with the time she didn’t get. He thought of his dad, too. And maybe nobody gets to do everything they want. You can only do what’s important while you have the chance. Sometimes one important thing trumps another. Sometimes life is just not fair and it’s nobody’s fault and there’s nothing you can do about it.
He tried to sleep for another couple of hours, but he felt restless as the morning came. He wanted one last sunrise on the rocks. He told Maria first where he was going. He made sure she was awake and wouldn’t worry. He took his phone and made sure it was charged. The climb was just a simple rock scramble on the edge of the campground, and the view was as impressive as he hoped it would be. But the great thing about sunrises is that they happen everywhere. Sunrise over Lake Michigan is probably pretty spectacular, too.
When he came down from the rocks, Maria had most of the campsite ready to go. She wanted nothing to do with emptying the toilet tanks, but she’d gotten pretty efficient at packing up to roll out.
“JoJo, don’t get sand everywhere before it’s time to get on the road.”
There hadn’t been much time to explain to JoJo that they were going back to Wisconsin for good. She had grown used to the packing and moving to somewhere new. She was a wild, feral child and she loved living like this. She would be almost as disappointed to leave it all behind as Jordan was, but it hadn’t sunk in for her yet. And it probably wouldn’t until they got back home to the old townhouse.
The adventure would have to pause for a little while, or take a different shape. But it wasn’t a silly idea. It was real and it was working, and Maria would miss this, too. Maybe not as much as he would, not as much as JoJo would, but she would miss it all the same.
“It was fun. It wasn’t a mistake,” she said. “I’m glad you brought us out here.”
She hugged him, but he smothered her instead.
“I love you so much,” he cried into her neck.
And Maria felt that in her bones. That was everything she ever wanted. Who would have thought, all those months ago, standing on her front porch and saying goodbye, that someday she would be the one getting everything she once wanted while he gave it all up? It didn’t feel good to be the one winning. It wouldn’t count unless he could be happy, too. Please.
“It will be beautiful,” she said. “It will be so good, even if it’s not the life you hoped for. It will be worth it, I promise.”
He nodded, feeling little faith in his own instincts, so he would trust hers instead. They were ready to start the drive.
JoJo had gotten herself thoroughly sandy before it was time to get on the road.
author’s note: we are past the worst of it now. If you’re still here, thank you for coming along with us on this harrowing ride! ❤️
So, finally, *this* is really why he hasn’t gotten an apartment out here yet. It’s a feeling he’s been chewing on for a little while now. He doesn’t want to be so far away from his boys for so long. Sometimes you don’t know how a thing is going to feel until you’re deep in it. He thought he would be fine being a summertime and long weekends dad, because plenty of dads do that. But he’s not fine about it. Live and learn?
So, like it or not, we’re going back to Wisconsin. 🙃
I love how their story has grown. I love how much thought and work you put in every sim and I keep wanting more. 🙂 More new interesting sims, more stories, more drama. Its been such a great ride and Im so glad I discovered your blog thanks to a friend.
ReplyDeleteHaven't they come such a long way from such a fickle start? Granted, he has Maria's intuition and persistence to thank, but it was also challenging for him to open up after having dealt with Colette’s cruelty for so long, so he earns some credit for that, too.
DeleteThank you! 😊 I'm so glad your friend pointed you over here! I always wish I could write and publish these things faster, but you know, life and work and kids and stuff. 😵💫 But I'm always picking at the next one, little by little! And if you ever need more to read, feel free to dig through the years of archives! (Have you read Stephanie's story on here yet? Drown, which I wrote back in 2015-2017. I think you'd enjoy that one, too!)
Oh, dont worry. I read everything here that was a TS4 story, including Stephanie And Justins. I have been following these stories a few years Now. Time flies. I remember biting my nails when reading about Stephanies evil husband. And the whole space war was mindblowing. You really have a talent And amazing imagination .Your characters feel so Real and you make me come back for more.
DeleteOh, thank you for reading all that! It really makes this so worth doing to hear from you guys. I'm sure you've noticed it's gotten a little quiet around here, but knowing that you're still reading and how generous you are to share your thoughts and feelings about the story, it keeps me going! ❤️
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