Page 31 of Monk
But when the time came, I made like a deer in the headlights and basically just stared blankly at him. All of the things I wanted to say, all of the cutting remarks and sarcastic, brutal asides, all of the slings and arrows I’d planned on hurling at him—all went by the wayside. Like an idiot, I stood there practically speechless and scrambling for something—anything—to say.
I run up the trail, dodging around the broad trunks of the trees and doing my best to avoid any of the detritus on the ground that can trip me. The last thing I need is a busted ankle. That will just be the cherry on top.
By the time I make it to the top of the trail, I’m sucking in deep, heaving breaths. My legs are shaking, and I feel like I’m on the verge of passing out. I need to sit down and stagger over to a bench, dropping down heavily onto it. Pulling my backpack off, I pull a bottle of water out and drink deeply, the cold liquid quenching the fire that’s raging in my throat.
I use my wristband to wipe the sweat from my forehead as the dizzy, lightheaded feeling that’s gripping me finally starts to ease. My vision clears, and in the parking lot ahead of me, I see the early morning sun glinting off the black tank and chrome of a large, mean-looking motorcycle. A Harley, I assume. It immediately brings me back to yesterday and the scene with Jacob at the church. The tsunami of emotions that sweep over me threaten to tip me over that edge of rage that has sent me on this suicidal run in the first place.
Thankfully, I don’t think my body can take the punishment again. I feel like I can barely move right now, so running is out of the question.
I’m in pretty good shape. I run regularly. I do yoga. But there’s a universe of difference between a hot room doing yoga poses, running on the flat sidewalks of my old suburban neighborhood, and these steep, pitted mountainous running trails that snake through the forest above Blue Rock Bay.
I pull out my earbuds and take another long swallow of water as my breathing starts to slow. Unfortunately, my heart still feels like it’s about to burst out of my chest, but a little more rest will slow it down. I’m not sure what I’m going to do about my legs, though. Running home is out of the question right now, as far as I’m concerned. Walking is going to be a challenge.
“Moore’s Trail is a pretty rough run. Challenging.”
I whip my head around at the sound of his voice. My eyes widen and my mouth falls open as I stare at him. Jacob is walking toward me, his boots thumping hard on the pavement of the parking lot. My heart lurches, threatening to stop dead in my chest as I stare at him. My mouth opens and closes but no words come out.
I clear my throat and look away, trying to stuff down all of the emotions that are welling up within me. I don’t want him to see them. Don’t want him to see anything. I refuse to give him that power over me. I want to be as blank as a stone. Need to be. I need to show him as little as he showed me yesterday.
The moment he sits down on the other end of the bench—a respectful distance away—I feel my resolve already weakening. It feels like cracks in that dam are already forming faster than I can patch them up. Yeah, I’m a stone all right.
Putting on the best mask of cold indifference and the air of neutrality I can manage, I turn to him.
“What do you want?” I ask.
“I wanted to talk to you,” he replies.
“How’d you know where I was? Are you stalking me or something?”
I feel pleased with myself for remembering. “When you’re pissed off you like to run. And I remember you preferred running in the morning,” he says. “I figured after yesterday that you’d probably be running today.”
I’d be lying to myself if I said the fact that he recalls so much about me is strangely flattering. Small, trivial details like the time of day I prefer to run, while ultimately meaningless in the grand scheme of things, still hits an unexpected note within me. I stuff it down ruthlessly, not wanting to give him that much credit. He doesn’t deserve it.
Turning to him, I narrow my eyes and glare at him. “Wow. You sure seem to remember a lot. Except, you know, to tell me you’re going to drop off the face of the earth.”
He looks away and I can tell the venom in my voice strikes a chord with him. Good. I shift on my seat and flex my legs, wanting nothing more than to get up and walk away. But they aren’t cooperating right now, and the pain that radiates through me is searing. I bite my tongue. Hard. And It takes all my will to keep from crying out. I scowl in frustration, feeling like a rat in a trap, unable to wiggle my way out.
Instead of focusing on the pain, I turn my attention to Jacob. Maybe this is my second chance to say everything I wasn’t able to get out yesterday. Maybe this is the Universe throwing me a bone and giving me a second bite of the apple. All I need to do is keep myself calm enough to actually get it all out.
Jacob turns to me, an inscrutable expression on his face. “I thought about it a lot last night. It was pretty much all I thought about, to be honest—”
“Is that supposed to make me feel all warm and fuzzy inside?”
He shakes his head. “No. Just telling you that I thought about it. About how… I acted.”
“I’m impressed. You thought about somebody other than yourself for a change.”
He sighs and runs a hand through his hair. The frustration in his eyes is as obvious as the nose on his face, but he’s doing his best to keep it reined in. Jacob always had a quicksilver temper, though he never actually turned that on me. But I saw him get into it with others back in the day over minor things. Mostly it was the snotty rich kids at school who mocked him endlessly for his home life. Like it was his fault that his parents liked to get high and smack him around. They screwed with him relentlessly, and I saw him get into more than a few fights about it.
“I know you’re pissed. And you have every right to be. I get it,” he said.
“Thank you for your permission to be pissed. I can’t tell you how much that means to me.”
I know I’m being petty and sound like a wounded teenage girl even to my own ears. But I can’t seem to stop myself from spewing all of this childish angst all over him. It’s like it’s all been stored up deep inside all this time, and seeing Jacob yesterday shook it all up. Now, it’s just exploding like an out-of-control champagne bottle, and I can’t put the cork back in.
This is all pointless. There’s no sense in rehashing everything that happened more than a decade ago. But dammit, I think I’m entitled to some answers. I think I deserve them.
“You’re married,” he notes.
