Page 38 of Smoke and Fire
Sione studied me as he cracked the top of the water bottle off.
“You hear anything from home?” he asked.
Another question lay under that one. I shook my head, shoulders lifting with a deep breath.
“No, thankfully. Still quiet on the Jakob front for the most part. We text every now and then, but it’s not much.”
He grunted and gazed around. The RV made him claustrophobic after awhile. When he traveled with me, he slept outside or with all the windows open in the back.
“How long are you going to stay in Pineville?” he asked.
“Not sure.” My thoughts flittered to Bastian, then back again. “I’d like to see how a few things play out before I decide. Regardless, I’ll need to figure out somewhere to park this thing. Wintering in the mountains in an RV? Doesn’t sound as fun as Texas or something.”
Sione shuddered. He hated snow. The “white stuff” as he called it.
“Don’t blame you. Get out of here when the cold comes. Hey, any luck on deciding your life path? My mom said you thought about fashion design a while ago.”
I rolled my eyes with a groan. “Fashion design would be fun but too much upfront work. Not as interested as I thought. I called a veterinary office to see if I could shadow for a day, but they’re only open a few days a week. I’m always working. Not sure I could handle sad animals anyway, so I didn’t follow up with them.”
His brow wrinkled. “What happened to the auto mechanic idea?”
“Seems fun but . . . too dirty.”
“You’ve never cared about grease and dirt when you helped my Dad restore the old truck. The two of you worked on that thing for years!”
“Yes, but being covered with grease and smelling like cars all the time is different from smelling like grease and cars on the weekend.” I shrugged. “Meh. How is Adventura?”
“Good. I love it. I’m so happy there. Seeing the positive change in the teenagers when they come through? It’s my dream job.”
“Mark still threatening to have it open all winter?”
Sione chuckled. “No. It’s a pipe dream. He thinks he’d like to have Adventura functional all year round, but then he’d have people up in his space too much. He and Stella like the quiet, especially with their new baby.”
“Huh.”
Sione grunted, then chugged the whole water bottle, crushed it with his fist, and tossed it into the sink to put in the recycling later. “I heard from Lofa,” he said.
My voice pitched a bit too high when I said, “From home?”
The expression on his face made my stomach sour. Lofa was a notoriously popular guy from our neighborhood. Lofa knew a lot of people, including Jakob.
I lowered onto the couch next to Sione. The air conditioning blew on the back of my neck now, sending a chill all the way down my skin.
Sione and I grew up only a block away from each other in California. His mother and my father, siblings, needed quick access to the ocean to be happy. We’d spent our childhoods in each other’s houses and running into the crisp California waves together.
Sione was, in a word, safety. Which is why I slept in an RV on a reservoir in a landlocked mountain chain, far from my family, my ocean, and my people. Right now, he was the only place I felt not so alone, yet still far from old ghosts.
“Yes, Lofa.” Sione leaned forward, forearms on his legs. “Said that Jakob asked about you the other day.”
“What did he ask?”
Sione shrugged, which meant he didn’t want me to know everything. “Just wanted to know how you were and where you went.”
I frowned. “He doesn’t get to ask that.”
“Why not?”
“This whole breakup was his idea.” I waved a hand in the air to encompass the RV. “If I’d had my way, I’d be happily married and probably pregnant with his baby. But, no. He’s the one that had to get bored.”
