Page 125 of A Heart Worth Finding
Josh sat back in his chair so hard it rocked up onto two legs before crashing back to the floor. “And you’re all at MSU together,” Josh said.
“Yep,” Jessica said proudly.
“This is…wild.”
It really was, Jack thought. The threads of fate wove together in mysterious ways, but he’d never question it, because it had all brought him here, to this moment. To this life with Jessica.
“Well, speaking of siblings…” Josh trailed off, shooting Jack a devilish grin.
“Oh, fuck off,” Jack said, knowing instantly what story Josh was about to tell.
“Mine is kind of a dumbass,” Josh finished. “And incredibly gullible.”
Their parents chuckled good-naturedly, and Jessica leaned forward in her seat, intently waiting for Josh to share this mortifying piece of Jack’s past.
“Once, we went camping at this lake in the middle of nowhere Pennsylvania,” Josh started. “It was us, our cousins, Mom, Dad, grandparents, aunts and uncles. The whole gang. At the time, Jack was maybe five or six. It wasn’t until after we moved. And…we had a habit of picking on him.”
“More like endlessly harassing me,” Jack muttered.
“It was all in good fun,” Josh protested. “This particular trip, we were walking through the woods, playing some dumb game as kids do, when Jack stopped suddenly and bent to examine something on the ground. We all crowded around him to see what it was.”
“And?”
“It was deer shit,” Josh said, and his grin grew.
“Oh no,” Jessica said, slapping a hand over her mouth, as though she already knew where this was going.
“Oh, yes,” Josh said. “We convinced little Jacky here that the deer shit was pieces of chocolate left in the woods by magical fairies, and if he ate some, he’d grown big and strong, and all of his wildest dreams would come true.”
Jessica turned to him, pure horror written on her face. “You didn’t.”
Jack grimaced. “I’m afraid I did, sunshine.” Then he paused and gestured to his body, and his girl sitting next to him. “In my defense…it worked.”
“Jack!” Jessica yelped, then burst out laughing. “You let me kiss you knowing you’ve eaten deer poop before!”
“To be fair, it was almost twenty years ago,” he said. “I think it’s worked its way out of my system by now. And why are you worried about that when you should be concerned about the fact thathe”—Jack pointed an accusatory finger at Josh—“convinced poor, innocent me to do something so vile.”
“That’s a good point,” Jessica said, whirling that crystal blue gaze on Josh. “Explain yourself.”
Josh shrugged. “He’s my little brother. It’s my job to toughen him up.”
Jack laughed and shook his head. In the grand scheme of things, Josh had been a great big brother, and the whole deer shit incident really was something they could look back on now and laugh about.
As his parents and brother continued to regale Jessica with embarrassing stories about Jack from childhood, though Jack tried to join the merriment, he couldn’t. There was an undercurrent of sadness to the whole affair. Jack could easily picture endless nights like this, where he and Jessica spent hours with his family—or hers—telling stories and making memories, and he wished so badly that he could have them.
But she was leaving, and days of just the two of them were numbered and dwindling quickly. It was like watching sand pass through an hourglass. Now that it had been tipped on its end, there was nothing Jack could do to stop it.
NOW: April 20, 2024
“Are you nervous?” Jessicaasked Jack.
“Why would I be?” he asked, shooting her a sidelong glance from the driver’s seat before returning his attention to the road. “I’ve already met all these people. The hard part is over.”
“Okay, that’s fair,” Jessica said slowly. “But, you know…this is my hometown. People are inevitably going to ask me what my plans for after graduation are. I guess what I’m asking is if you’re sure you’ll be okay hearing people talk about it all weekend.”
Truth be told,Jessicawasn’t going to be okay talking about it all weekend, but there was no getting around it. In fact, Jessica didn’t even want tothinkabout the fact that she’d be leaving Jack—and the only place she’d ever known—in two short weeks.Time was moving too fast, and Jessica felt herself spinning out of control along with it. The harder she tried to hold on, the quicker the days slipped through her fingers. She planned to come home for a few days after graduation, but that would mainly be to move anything she wasn’t taking to Russia into storage in her parents’ basement.
This weekend, this trip to Traverse City with Jack to spend time with her family, was her last chance to say goodbye.
