Page 8 of Hot Mess Express
The rest of the afternoon, Cody and Pete are inseparable. Like brothers, the two keep one-upping each other with stories of their lives over the past six years as we hang in the living room, the TV playing some soccer game no one’s paying attention to. Now and then Pete makes me share a part of a story I tell better (or rather: more accurately, as Pete loves to embellish), but I try to keep out of the conversation, giving the guys plenty of space to catch up.
Trey won’t stop apologizing for the sleeping arrangement.I insist the couch is best, since I tend to wake up way before anyone else and go on early morning jogs to help center myself and keep my mind clear—a ritual I developed after my first tour—and I won’t disturb anyone if I’m on the couch. When he doesn’t seem fully convinced, I make a joke about needing a break from Pete’s snoring (not actually a joke) and he commiserates; though Cody is a total rock when he sleeps, Trey’s father was a buzz saw when he used to live in the house. Now the former reverend of Spruce lives down the street, barely a stone’s throw away, where he can sing the whole alphabet in his sleep for all anyone cares. “Assuming he doesn’t have any guests staying over,” Trey amends absently, then grows lost in thought—yet again drawn back into nightmares of his father’s maybe-not-so-secret affair with his husband’s mother. I quickly ask Trey if he’d give me a tour of the house while Pete and Cody are busy catching up, and I guess my instinct is spot-on because he grabs on to my request like rope, pulled out of the dark hole of his stepbrothery thoughts, and shows me around.
When Pete and Cody take their chat into the backyard in the early evening as the warm and humid air becomes slightly more tolerable, Trey wrangles me into helping with dinner. “It’s a good thing this is happening now,” he says as he checks on the brisket, which smells fucking heavenly already. “Cody has so many bottled up feelings from the Army I don’t know how to help him process, even all these years later. This is good for him, to reconnect with Pete, go through the memories. Only wish it’d happened sooner.”
“Me too.” All of the chances Pete has had to come out here to Spruce—chances Pete ignored, too guilty, postponing this reunion over and over again. I nod at a small pile of cucumbers by the sink. “Want me to chop those up for the salad?”
“If it’ll give you pleasure.” He slides a knife my way. I take it and get to work. He stops what he’s doing, watching me. “Wow… something on your mind? You’re hacking at those poor things like you see your ex’s face on them.”
I glance down.Issomething on my mind? “Nope. I don’t really think about my ex anymore.” The knife gets stuck in a cucumber.
Then I see the guy from the gas station. His aggressive blue eyes. Pressing his chest to mine. Twisted lips as he snarled at me.
The red smiley sticker stuck to his ass.
“Well …” Should I even mention it? “There was this … minor, totally insignificant run-in at a gas station just outside of town …”
Trey leans on the counter. “Which one?”
“With a super old pump, the kind where you crank a lever …”
“Oh, Duncan’s spot. What happened?”
“Nothing much. Just the clerk there, temporary clerk, I guess. He was a real … well … I just …” After a moment of uncharacteristic indecision, I take a deep breath, gently free the knife from the cucumber, and shake my head. “Not worth mentioning. I’m over it. Picked out a dressing for the salad yet?”
Trey, whose mind is already working at light speed, goes to the fridge and distractedly returns with a couple options. “So the guy there … he was rude to you?”
“It’s not a big deal.”
“Happen to catch his name?”
I swallow the name right down like a literal nametag. With as small a town as this is, the moment it’s out of my lips, I won’t be able to slap it back in to save my life. “Nope.”
“Hmm.” Trey’s fingers play along the counter in thought. “I could probably find out.”
“No, no,” I quickly insist, “don’t worry about it, please. Not a big deal, really.” I chop another slice, then pause. “Some people … just go through life without learning common rules of decency.”
“Phew, tell me about it.”
“Yep.”Chop. “I mean, what evenisa jack-off wagon?”Chop. “We all have bad days. Doesn’t mean we need to take everyone down around us, right?”Chop, chop.
“Right.”
I just realized I’m making a bigger deal out of something I just said not to make a big deal out of. Also, I don’t want him thinking that last thing I said had anything to do with him. I pivot. “But you and your husband seem like really great people. I’m very grateful for your hospitality, welcoming us into your house like this.”
“Oh, it’s our pleasure. We’ve been looking forward to this for a while now, and you’re an added bonus—a cucumber-massacring one at that.” He watches my hands for a moment. “I’m sorry that guy was your first impression of Spruce, though … whoever he is. Everyone’s really nice here, I promise. Even my dad whose neck I might wring,” he adds in a voice so small, I don’t think he meant me to hear it. “Duncan’s a sweetheart. I keep trying to talk him into being Santa for us at the church. He keeps turning me down.” He takes a breath and refreshes his smile. “So what about you?”
I look up from the cucumbers. “What about me?”
“I get Pete, but what brings you out to Spruce? Why’d you tag along? I get a sense you’re not just here for moral support.”
I shrug. “I guess you can say the last eight or so years of my life have been … loud.”
“So you came here for … quiet,” Trey finishes for me. I nod. “You couldn’t have picked a better place. That’s all you’ll find out here in sleepy Spruce, especially this time of the year.”
Anthony’s angry blue eyes.
Bare body drenched and dripping and stinking of gasoline.
