Page 18 of Everything's Better With You
Marti had hugged him extra tight. “I’m so glad you’re here, although I’m sorry it’s getting off to a rocky start.”
“It’ll befiiiiine,” Joe said and he kept telling himself it would be, otherwise he never would have gotten on the plane, nor would he have made it the additional two-hour drive to Ayre Valley.
“The President called an all-hands meeting for tomorrow to go over the situation,” Terrence said.
“You’re more than welcome to stay with us and I can take you out there for the meeting, since you don’t have a ride?”
“I’m going to buy something. I didn’t want to drive mine out from Hollywood.”Because there’s no way I could have spent all those hours in the car without a joint or five freezing up.“The house wasn’t too far, I planned to walk—”
“Right, and I guess you thought you’d be having groceries delivered? And what about the snow?”
“Yeah, I was postponing thoughts of weather. It’s the only way I could make myself get on the plane.”
They chatted the rest of the way, and Joe was wishing Terrence drove faster. He needed to see Leslie. He needed to make sure he was okay. And now he needed to rethink his living arrangements.
His phone buzzed when they were about ten minutes from the exit.
Are you almost here?
Joe grinned.
Where is here?
The three dots hovered for quite a while. They exited I-35 and Joe was ready to tell Terrence to just head to their place when Les’s text popped up.
Can you meet me at Higdon?
“The old dorm?” Joe muttered.
Yeah, sure. Be right there.
“Higdon? Wait, did you hear from Les?” Marti turned around in her seat. “That’s where he wants you?”
“Yeah, he asked me to meet him at Higdon.”
“Oh, right. Yeah, we can do that.”
Terrence took a left and then they were on Campus drive. Jacket’s Pond was to the right and—
“Oh!”
The row of cute faculty cottages was now flattened with debris strewn about the road and floating in the pond. Giant sycamore trees were split in two and lying on their sides, casualties of Mother Nature.
“At least the school was mostly spared,” Marti said. “It would have been devastating to lose the dorms or administration building.”
Terrence turned right and drove around the back of the boys’ dorm, Booth, and pulled into the small lot between Mesle, where the women lived, and Higdon.
Leslie’s big 4x4 was parked out front and he stood next to it with Barry and the twins. They all wore grim expressions and were dressed for getting their hands dirty.
This was not the reunion Joe had been hoping for, though his heart did some fancy footwork in his chest at the sight of Les. Not that he had any clue what would happen between them, but he didn’t picture arriving in the middle of a disaster.
“Thank you, Terrence and Marti, for bringing Joe,” Barry said.
Leslie didn’t speak, but Joe saw a twinkle in Les’s eye that let him know, despite the dire circumstances, he was happy to see him. Relieved, maybe. A little nervous. Same as Joe.
“Joe,” Barry said, holding his hand out. Joe shook his and the other men’s hands, lingering with Les. “I’m so sorry about all this. We had the cottages all ready and then this.”
Joe felt sorry for the guy. He assumed Barry would normally be under a huge amount of pressure to get school started smoothly, but throw a tornado into the plans…
